Guest Post: Brighten to Incandescence (selections), Michael Bishop (2003)

April 28, 2014May 24, 2014 / Joachim Boaz / 2 Comments

(Jamie Bishop’s cover for the 2003 edition)

The fourth installment of my The Science Fiction of Michael Bishop guest post series was written by MPorcius (twitter: @hankbukowsi) at MPorcius Fiction Log—a valued and longtime commentator on my site. I have procured quite a few books due to his quality reviews which I highly recommend perusing. Check out his site (especially if you like classic SF)!

Over the course of this series we moved from Michael Bishop’s most well known novella (“Death and Designation Among the Asadi“) to his novels (Brittle Innings, No Enemy but Time) and now to an intriguing collection of lesser known short SF and non-genre stories.

MPorcius decided to only focus on the SF in Brighten to Incandescence but points out that all the stories in the collection are worth reading!

Enjoy!

~~~

Brighten to Incandescence (2003) — Michael Bishop

Brighten to Incandescence, published by Golden Gryphon Press in 2003, is Michael Bishop’s seventh collection of stories. In the final chapter of the book, a series of notes on the stories, Bishop explains that he and the people at Golden Gryphon initially were thinking of putting out a Best Of volume, then decided to publish a collection of previously uncollected pieces instead. What we have in Brighten to Incandescence, then, are 17 stories, many of which were passed over for inclusion in previous collections for years or even decades; these stories probably do not represent Bishop’s best or most salable work.

Happily, the stories are all worth Continue reading →

Guest Post: No Enemy But Time, Michael Bishop (1982)

April 25, 2014May 24, 2014 / Joachim Boaz / 6 Comments

(Vincent Di Fate’s cover for the 1983 edition)

The third installment of my Guest Post Series on Michael Bishop’s SF was written by Megan (twitter: @couchtomoon) over at the relatively new but completely worthwhile SF review site From Couch to the Moon. She’s already put together a substantial list of delightful reviews. Megan selected Bishop’s single most famous and Nebula award-winning novel, No Enemy But Time (1982)—and sadly, one of few books of his still in print. Along with Transfigurations (1979), it was republished and selected for the Gollancz Masterwork [list].

No Enemy But Time (1982) — Michael Bishop

Coming out of Bishop’s 1982 Nebula award winning novel, No Enemy But Time, is like coming out of a time travel trance: the experience is jarring, hazy, and unwelcome. Bishop sweeps the reader into his world—humanity’s distant past—and paints a primitive African landscape dappled with hippos, hyenas, and volcanoes, but lush Continue reading →

Updates: Recent Science Fiction Acquisitions No. CII (Disch 2xs + Anderson + Pollack)

April 24, 2014April 24, 2014 / Joachim Boaz / 16 Comments

My fiancé picked these up for me as she perambulated through Dallas, TX—the birthplace of Half Price Books. And, easily the best one in the country.

Two more Disch novels to add to my collection (I only owned Camp Concentration). The cover and cover blurb for On Wings of Song (1979) is terrifyingly bad—the contents are supposedly magisterial.

I have no idea if Rachel Pollack’s Golden Vanity (1980) will be any good—looks like average space opera.

And, who can resist Poul Anderson?

Thoughts?

1. Echo Round His Bones, Thomas M. Disch (1966)

(Uncredited cover for the 1967 edition) Continue reading →

Guest Post: Brittle Innings, Michael Bishop (1994)

April 23, 2014May 24, 2014 / Joachim Boaz / Leave a comment

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(Paul Swenson’s cover for the 2012 edition)

The second installment of my guest post series on Michael Bishop’s SF is the critically acclaimed Brittle Innings (1994) (Nominated for the 1994 Hugo + Won the 1995 Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel)—his last published genre novel. In the words of the wonderful James Harris—over at Auxiliary Memory—who wrote the following review, “Brittle Innings is Flannery O’Connor mashed up with Mary Shelley, and a dash of A League of Their Own.” Make sure to check out his site [here] where he discusses writing, science fiction, movies, and definitely track down his best SF novels of the each decade lists!

Brittle Innings by Michael Bishop: Literary v. Genre Fiction

Stories about minor league baseball always have to deal the ambition of making it big, of going to the show, and playing for the majors. Brittle Innings by Michael Bishop is a baseball novel by a science fiction writer, and I can’t help but wonder if this novel isn’t about writing in the minor leagues hoping to make it big in the literary majors Continue reading →

Guest Post: “Death and Designation Among the Asadi,” Michael Bishop (1973)

April 22, 2014May 24, 2014 / Joachim Boaz / 15 Comments

The first installment in my Guest Post Series on The Science Fiction of Michael Bishop was written by Jesse over at the remarkable SF review site Speculiction… Not only is he incredibly prolific (and has a large back catalog of reviews to browse) but his reviews are also a joy to read. If you are interested in both classic and contemporary SF, and the occasional post on Chinese poetry, make sure to check out his site.

Jesse has previously posted on his site about Bishop’s “The Samurai in the Willows” (1976) and “Cri de Coeur” (1994). Both reviews are worth reading.

“Death and Designation Among the Asadi” (1973) is one of Michael Bishop’s more well known novellas that was nominated for both the Hugo and Nebula in 1974. It was first published in the magazine Worlds of If January-February 1973, ed. Ejler Jakobsson. If you are interested in finding a copy the story can be found in multiple later collections and forms the first part of his novel Transfigurations (1979) [listing here].

Enjoy!

“Death and Designation Among the Asadi,” Michael Bishop (1973)

The alien is perhaps the most recognized, if not the most used trope of Continue reading →

Update: Guest Post Series Announcement, The Science Fiction of Michael Bishop

April 21, 2014November 12, 2023 / Joachim Boaz / 14 Comments

Collage of Bishop’s SF covers created by my father

“[Michael Bishop’s] early stories and novels display considerable intellectual complexity, and do not shirk the downbeat implications of their anthropological treatment of aliens and alienating milieux” — John Clute, SF Encyclopedia

Michael Bishop (b. 1945) [official website] is no stranger to critical success for both his novels and short SF: he has won the Nebula Award twice (“The Quickening” and No Enemy But Time) and picked up nine Hugo nominations and an additional thirteen Nebula Nominations. Two of his more famous novels, No Enemy But Time (1982) and Transfigurations (1979), were selected for inclusion and republication in the Gollancz Masterwork List. Although Bishop has not published a novel since the Hugo-nominated Brittle Innings in 1994, he received a Nebula nomination for his novelette “Vinegar Peace, or, The Wrong-Way Used-Adult Orphanage” (2008) as recently as 2010!

With this in mind it is surprising that his extraordinary talent is not better known within the SF community. John Clute in his article for SF Encyclopedia argues that “the earnest ardour and rigorousness of Bishop’s fiction has made Continue reading →

Book Review: The Dream Master, Roger Zelazny (1966)

April 19, 2014April 19, 2014 / Joachim Boaz / 37 Comments

(Kelly Freas’ cover for the 1966 edition)

4/5 (Good)

Roger Zelazny’s The Dream Master (1966)—expanded from the Nebula Award winning novella “He Who Shapes” (1965)—revolves around the Freudian notion of the centrality of dreams and importance of decoding dreams for psychoanalytical treatment. Susan Parman, in Dream and Culture (1990), points out that Freud was initially focused on “treating ‘abnormal’ patients” but soon “expanded his theory of psychoanalysis to explain puzzling events in ‘normal’ behavior” including dreams. Freud’s influential work The Interpretation of Dreams (1899) argued that the “dream expresses the secret wishes of the soul” where the dreamscape is the “arena” in which good and bad forces are engaged in a struggle. Thus, the dream is a message that must be deciphered by an “allegorical Continue reading →

Updates: Recent Acquisitions No. CI (Clarke + Bishop + Varley + Maclennan)

April 12, 2014April 12, 2014 / Joachim Boaz / 9 Comments

A nice range of SF authors/works! A Michael Bishop collection containing many of his most famous 70s short stories for my upcoming guest post series…. And a SF juvenile written by Phyllis Maclennan with an intriguing premise (although, as always, I’m very dubious about juveniles in general). John Varley’s famous novel Titan (1979) seems like a fascinating take on the Big Dumb Object trope. And finally a 50s adventure by the indomitable Arthur C. Clarke.

I am most intrigued by the Varley’s Titan and Bishop’s Blooded on Arachne.

Some of the covers are cringe inducing.

Thoughts?

1. Titan, John Varley (1979)

(Ron Waltosky’s cover for the 1979 edition) Continue reading →

Book Review: Juniper Time, Kate Wilhelm (1979)

April 11, 2014February 26, 2021 / Joachim Boaz / 48 Comments

(Bob Aulicino’s cover for the hideous 1979 edition)

3.5/5 (Good)

Nominated for the 1980 Nebula Award

“Everything that is, Robert had said, must be. Every cycle must be completed, must lead to the next cycle. He had talked about times when the desert had been drier than it now was, times when it had been lush and wet, and there had been no questions in his mind that this too must be” (170-171).

At the heart of Kate Wilhelm’s Nebula-nominated novel Juniper Time (1979) is the notion of historical cyclicality at both the macro- (earth cycles) and the micro- (human historical time) levels. Wilhelm’s near-future mysteriously drought-stricken world is at an important juncture of two such cycles. The macrocycle concerns devastating world-wide desertification, which is most likely caused by a natural cycle but the precise nature of which is unknown. The microcycle concerns a shift in human populations in the drought stricken countries: mass migrations towards coasts as the springs and rivers of the hinterlands turn to mud. In this world the farmer, in the past linked tightly to his fields, abandons his traditional position in American society and moves to a cluttered and violent state Continue reading →