Which books/covers/authors intrigue you? Which have you read? Disliked? Enjoyed?

1. The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction, 8th Series, ed. Anthony Boucher (1959)

From the back cover: No summary blurb.

Contents: C. S. Lewis’ “Ministering Angels” (1955), Poul Anderson’s “Backwardness” (1958), Kit Reed’s “The Wait” (1958), Isaac Asimov’s “The Up-to-Date Sorcerer” (1958), Fritz Leiber’s “A Deskful of Girls” (1958), Damon Knight’s “Eripmav” (1958), Brian W. Aldiss’ “Poor Little Warrior!’ (1958), Shirley Jackson’s “The Omen” (1958), Jules Verne’s “Gilt Braltar” (1887), Avram Davidson’s “The Grantha Sighting” (1958), C. M. Kornbluth’s “Theory of Rocketry” (1958), John Shepley’s “Gorilla Suit” (1958), Zenna Henderson’s “Captivity” (1958), and Alfred Bester’s “The Men Who Murdered Mohammed” (1958)

Initial Thoughts: I love anthologies. I need to finally tackle a Zenna Henderson story!

2. Aldous Huxley’s Island (1962)

From the back cover: Contains no clear blurb about the book. I’ve quoted the blurb from SF Encyclopedia: “Island (1962) presents a utopian alternative to the previous books, though without much energy. Pala and Rendang – the primary Islands in question – are set safely in the Indonesian Archipelago, and Pala in particular has long enjoyed a mildly euphoric existence, sustained spiritually by religious practices derived from Tantric Buddhism, and physically by moksha, a sort of benign soma, whose psychedelic effects – as shared by the island’s inhabitants in unison – smooth the rough edges of the world. But the book itself is powerless to convince.”

Initial Thoughts: I’ve read, and enjoyed, Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) and the bizarre Ape and Essence (1948) (which I never managed to review). When I saw Islands (1962) in the bargain bin at my local used book store foe $1, I couldn’t resist.

3. Joyce Thompson’s Conscience Place (1984)

From the back cover: “The People of the Place are the victims of progress, although they are unaware of their physical deformities, and their existence, in a community somewhere in America, is a closed guarded secret from a guilty world.

For the People are the mutant offspring of nuclear plant workers. Loved and cherished by the Fathers, they are allowed to live out their brief lives in dignity and harmony and in something approaching joy. Until their miniature civilization is threatened by the very ones who nurture them.

In the ensuring struggle to survive, the People learned the bitter truth of who they are and the lessons of their history.”

Initial Thoughts: Not sure where I learned of this one. SF Encyclopedia, in its limited fashion, aims a kind description its way.

4. John Collier’s Tom’s A-Cold (1933)

From the inside flap: Unfortunately, copies with dust jackets are FAR too expensive for me to purchase. Here’s the blurb from SF Encyclopedia: “Radically dissimilar to his most familiar work is Tom’s A-Cold (1933; vt Full Circle 1933), a remarkably effective Scientific Romance set in a 1990s Ruined Earth, long after an unexplained Disaster has decimated England’s (and presumably the world’s) population and thrust mankind back into rural barbarism, a condition out of which the eldest survivors, who remember civilization, are trying to educate the young third generation. The simple plot plays no tricks on the reader: the young protagonist, a born leader, rises through raids and conflict to the chieftainship, undergoes a tragedy, and reconciles himself at the novel’s close to the burdens of a government which will improve the lot of his people. Throughout the novel, very movingly, Collier renders the reborn, circumambient natural world with a hallucinatory visual intensity found nowhere else in his work. Along with Alun Llewellyn’s The Strange Invaders (1934), Tom’s A-Cold can be seen, in its atmosphere of almost loving conviction, as a genuine successor to Richard Jefferies’s After London (1885).”

Initial Thoughts: I encountered a few mentions of this one in Andrew Hammond’s monograph Cold War Stories: British Dystopian Fiction, 1945-1990 (2018). Clute’s blurb above makes it out to be a real winner. Can’t wait to read this one.

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