Which books/covers/authors in the post intrigue you? Which have you read? Disliked? Enjoyed?
1. In Alien Flesh, Gregory Benford (1986)
Joe Bergeron’s cover for the 1986 edition
From the back cover: “A journey into the depts of space and time by Gregory Benford, winner of the Nebula Award.”
Contents: “In Alien Flesh” (1978), “Time Shards” (1979), “Redeemer” (1979), “Snatching the Bot” (1977), “Relativistic Effects” (1982), “Nooncoming” (1978), “To the Storming Gulf” (1985), “White Creatures” (1975), “Me/Days” (1984), “Of Space/Time and the River” (1985), “Exposures” (1981), “Time’s Rub” (1984), “Doing Lennon” (1975).
Initial Thoughts: While I’ve only reviewed two of Benford’s stories on the site (both co-written with Eklund), I remember reading Timescape (1980) and Heart of a Comet (1986) (with David Brin) before I started my site. I look forward to exploring more of his short fiction.
2. The Man Who Wanted Stars, Dean McLaughlin (1965)
John Schoenherr’s cover for the 1st edition
From the back cover: “THE TAUNTING STARS… One man on all Earth still believed in spaceflight. One man knew the burning urgency of mankind’s next great step into the unknown.
He wanted the stars–and even the stars mocked him.
He sacrificed everything he had to keep the spark of an idea alive–and when that wasn’t enough, he sacrificed everything his friends had, too.
His fight went on for weary decades, making him something more than human–and something less…
His name was Joe Webber. This is his story.
This is the first appearance in book form of The Man Who Wanted Stars, a science-fiction novel of first-rank importance.”
Initial Thoughts: I’ve not read anything by Dean McLaughlin. I’ve heard his work described as Libertarian in bent, which one can gather from the back cover blurb. I assume this style of SF is what Musk and his ilk get high off of.
3. The Windhover Tapes: An Image of Voices, Warren Norwood (1982)
Tony Roberts’ cover for the 1st edition
From the back cover: “Journey across the wide reaches of space with roving diplomat Gerard Manley and his sentient starship Windhover, into danger and adventure on a half-dozen far-flung alien worlds. Wildly imaginative and witty, picaresque and poignant, AN IMAGE OPF VOICES is the first in a spellbinding new series of a man on a pilgrimage in search of himself.”
Initial Thoughts: I know little about Norwood or his science fiction. I’m all for SF about sentient spaceships!
4. Cry Wolf, Aileen La Tourette (1986)
Jane Furst’s cover for the 1st edition
From the back cover: “Curie has inherited one world and created another. A survivor of the nuclear holocaust, and venerated by the inhabitants of the new world, she protects them from the knowledge of the old, which only she now possesses. But there is one face, Sophia’s, that shows no awe, no gratitude. Instead, her eyes say, ‘We know nothing. But you do.’ In response to her challenge, Curie recognises that she must tell at last the story of the world that destroyed itself–the story of her own mother, Bee Fairchild, who cried wolf at Greenham Common; the story of her sisters and their attempt to use the ancient charm of story-telling, Scheherazade-like, to forestall annihilation. Now Curie is the only Mother let to face the fact that her denial of a knowledge of evil also means denying a knowledge of good. In Cry Wolf, a novel of present and future worlds, Aileen La Tourette displays her remarkable gifts as a storyteller to explore the dangers of lying and those of truth, and the hazards of dreaming in a world fraught with the most concrete dangers.”
Initial Thoughts: I know little about the author or her sole SF novel. SF Encyclopedia writes the following: “however, [Cry Wolf] essays a somewhat jumbled moral scan of the events leading up to a nuclear Holocaust in language both too ornately self-referential and too abstract to convey much of the subsequent shattered world as it attempts to sort truth from myth and to build anew.” Not a positive assessment! I am always willing to explore. The cover is hideous… alas.
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Science Fiction and Other Suspect Ruminations 
Dean McLaughlin is or was (still alive, but hasn’t published in 15 years as far as I can see) a dedicated practitioner of the Astounding/Analog school who shuffled the deck chairs with ordinary skill and utter sincerity. I read THE MAN WHO WANTED STARS when it came out and remember it as . . . okay. I wouldn’t bother unless the book falls into one of your thematic pigeonholes.
Were any of his stories remotely memorable? At one point I was obsessed with underwater SF and was tempted to read Dome World (1962), but that interest has long since passed.
DOME WORLD was expanded from or fixed up using his novelet “The Man on the Bottom,” ASTOUNDING March 1958 if memory serves, so you could take a look at that on-line without a huge investment of time.
He did write some other short fiction based on clever if airless ideas of the sort that Campbell’s magazines specialized in. “The Permanent Implosion” was one (what to do when somebody’s experiment goes wrong and at the location air starts vanishing from our universe (ANALOG Feb ’64, and you can look at the magazine cover and get an idea of what one proposed solution looked like. I forget if it was the one that worked. Another, quite popular I believe, was “Hawk Among the Sparrows,” about–what if a modern jet plane was time-slipped back to WWI among all the Spads and Fokkers?
‘Hawk Among the Sparrows,’ probably more notable for the handsome Kelly Freas cover it got —
–than as a story.
The contrast between the quality of Campbell’s 1960s-era ANALOG as, on the one hand, a fine-looking physical artifact, with its Freas and Schoenherr illustrations and its Conde Nast paper stock from a Conde Nast-approved press, and, on the other hand, the vacuous nature of most of the stories Campbell put in it, was marked.
As for the Benford collection, it’s … okay, as I recall. Nothing that hits it out of the park, but solid SF, with ‘Doing Lennon’ and ‘To the Storming Gulf’ good, and maybe some of the others, too. ‘Relativistic Effects’ is based around the same idea as Anderson’s ‘Tau Zero’ but as a short story doesn’t overstay its welcome and the science, Benford being a physicist, is stronger.
And nevertheless at this distance in time from my reading I can’t recall the ending. And that would be my main criticism of Benford’s stuff, generally, as I think about it: it almost always goes to where you expect it to go, with not much in the way of surprises.
To my taste Benford’s most memorable short fiction is “Matter’s End,” published in the ’90s and then made the title story of another collection. It’s out of your catchment area, but you could peek.
Yes. That’s a good one with a pretty unique premise.
Though matter does indeed end in the story. So, again, the story’s ending goes exactly where its title promises.
On the other hand, in this story’s case it arguably would have been a cop-out if Benford hadn’t ended matter. So good for him for not copping out.
Yeah, I do love the Schoenherr art especially. Never really cared for Freas… although there are some notable exceptions.
I have a story from Analog in that era lined up for a review — part of my unions/organized workers in SF angle I’m currently obsessed with. Let’s just say a certain famous SF author who needed a paycheck knew exactly the type of story to write to excite Campbell.
Like Mark noted, I certainly know the cover for the “Hawk Among the Sparrows” story…
The word “libertarian” triggers you, leading to that bit about “Musk and his ilk” “getting high off of.”
Clicking “don’t show me any more of this” on my feed. “Ilk.”
To be honest, you seem to be the one who is triggered. You don’t comment until now but once you saw a little snark aimed at Musk you’re all up in arms. I tend to hate billionaires who support wanna be dictators who seek to subvert democracy. As for libertarian SF, I’m a scholar of SF — I read all different types.
Interesting cover from Schoenherr.
Yeah, I enjoy his textures and color schemes.
A great artist. And Furst’s cover is not so bad. In France, we can have very bad covers (or, worst, non interersting covers) for SF books.
And I smiled when you kicked Musk. A thumb’s up for this.
I enjoy a lot of French SF art (magazines and books) — Wojtek Siudmak has his moments, Claude Lacroix, Philippe Curval’s collage covers, etc.
Siudmak, I don’t like his work. I bought a lot of books with his covers and it’s just… I cannot describe it.
Oh, I love his work. Especially his earlier magazine stuff — https://sciencefictionruminations.com/2017/04/04/adventures-in-science-fiction-cover-art-the-uncanny-bodies-of-wojtek-siudmak/
I’m a post-modernist at heart — most of the art I show on the site I could care less about. If it’s collage, surreal, experimental, etc. — > that’s my vibe.
I have nothing against experimental and collage and so on, but I don’t think Siudmak’s covers I know add any value to the book.
The later into the 80s he went the more he turned into a slick sort of pop version of Dali. But… stuff like his canvas “Time” (1977) that appeared as the cover for Michel Jeury’s Le Sablier Vert — gorgeous!
https://www.wikiart.org/en/wojciech-siudmak/time
I agree that the 70’s stuff is more interesting. But I know only the 80’s stuff 🙂
If I were to pick a single piece of SF-related art that is me in a nutshell, Platt’s interior art in New Worlds — specifically his illustration for Harvey Jacob’s “Gravity” in New Worlds (August 1969). I scanned them in for my review here: https://sciencefictionruminations.com/2020/08/16/book-review-the-best-sf-stories-from-new-worlds-6-ed-michael-moorcock-1965-stories-by-j-g-ballard-hilary-bailey-carol-emshwiller-m-john-harrison-et-al/