Book Review: Clifford D. Simak’s The Worlds of Clifford Simak (1960)

June 8, 2026June 8, 2026 / Joachim Boaz / 10 Comments

Richard Powers’ cover for the 1961 paperback edition

3.25/5 (collated rating: Above Average)

At this point in my reading adventure, I approach Clifford D. Simak’s science fiction with a clear intention to expand my understanding of his economic, political, and technological critiques of American society. This culminated in 2024 with my article “’We Must Start Over Again and Find Some Other Way of Life’: The Role of Organized Labor in the 1940s and ’50s Science Fiction of Clifford D. Simak.” Since then, albeit at a slower pace, I’ve continued to cover his science fiction, speeches, and additional interviews I’ve been able to track down. I find him a deeply fascinating author who’s often pigeonholed as “bucolic” or “pastoral” with no real attempt to read beyond his tendency to set a few of his narratives in a rural simulacrum of his childhood corner of America.

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Short Book Reviews: Polly Toynbee’s Leftovers (1966) and Lewis Gibbs’ Late Final (1951)

May 25, 2026May 26, 2026 / Joachim Boaz / 4 Comments

Note: My read but “waiting to be reviewed pile” is growing. Short rumination/tangents/impressions are a way to get through the stack before my memory and will fades. My website partially serves as a record of what I have read and a memory palace for future projects. Stay tuned for more detailed and analytical reviews.

1. Polly Toynbee’s Leftovers (1966)

Paul May’s cover for the 1969 edition

2.5/5 (Bad)

After reading a monograph on the history of science fiction I inevitably find a handful of works that I must track down (more as an act of data collection than a quest for literary genius). Andrew Hammond’s Cold War Stories: British Dystopian Fiction, 1945-1990 (2017) contained a wealth of lesser-known works that immediately dented my pocketbook.¹

Polly Toynbee’s Leftovers (1966) fits into Hammond’s analysis of a British Empire irrevocably weakened by WWII and growing US supremacy in the Cold War. Toynbee’s novel, and in even more severe terms Lewis Gibbs’ Late Final (1951) discussed below, with its focus on a handful of self-absorbed survivors of an apocalyptic event depicts a nation “irrelevant to the geopolitical present and as unrecognizable to its own past.”² Intriguing ideas aside, debilitating flaws sink Leftovers. I found it interesting only as a lens for the moment — youth culture and rebellion in the mid-60s. As a literary and reading experience, Leftovers leaves a lot to be desired. Toynbee would soon abandon her literary career for a famous career in journalism from a leftist perspective.

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Book Review: Knut Faldbakken’s Sweetwater (1976, trans. Joan Tate, 1994)

May 18, 2026May 25, 2026 / Joachim Boaz / 9 Comments

Preliminary note: This review originally appeared in the inaugural issue of Rachel S. Cordasco’s new magazine Small Planet: The SF in Translation Magazine. You can read the entire issue for free here! I plan on contributing one review of pre-1985 SFF in translation for each issue. In addition to my review, there’s a fantastic range of other articles and interviews.

Iain Stuart’s cover for the 1994 edition

4.5/5 (Very Good)

Knut Faldbakken (1941-), a prolific Norwegian novelist, wrote a science-fictional duology titled Sweetwater early in his career. The first volume, Twilight Country (1974, trans. Joan Tate, 1993), followed an odd collection of refugees from a disintegrating urban metropolis, the titular Sweetwater, as they cast off the entangling membranes of lost paths and the weight of melancholy souls and attempt to chart a new beginning in the city Dump.

In volume two, Sweetwater (1976, trans. Joan Tate, 1994), a deathly equilibrium is reached. In an obliquely hinted at dystopia, the city slowly withers and depopulates due to the effects of global warming, industrialization, and malignant societal decay. As the city dies, less and less refuse enters the Dump. The community of outcasts, who inhabit a collection of huts around a camper and crumbling home with small garden plots surrounded by refuse, can no longer scavenge for supplies and food. They must abandon the uncertain topography of the Dump and return to the city.

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Short Story Review: Richard Wilson’s “Strike” (1953)

April 17, 2026April 18, 2026 / Joachim Boaz / 8 Comments

Milton Luros’ cover for Future Science Fiction, ed. Robert W. Lowndes (July 1953)

3.25/5 (Above Average)

“One by one the cargo-liners blew up, most conveniently for I.C. in its squabble with the union. In fact, these accidents were too convenient…”

Richard Wilson’s “Strike” (1953) first appeared in Future Science Fiction, ed. Robert W. Lowndes (July 1953). You can read it online here.

“Strike” is the third story in the “Dateline Mars” sequence by Richard Wilson (1920-1987). To the best of my knowledge, this sequence follows the investigative career of Reporter Scott Warren, chief of the Iopa bureau of the Galactic News Service on Mars.¹ I am unsure how many stories appeared in this sequence as they have not yet been grouped as a unit on The Internet Speculative Fiction Database.² Regardless, there’s an appealing simplicity to the general framework of the series — how news agencies attempt to provide objective reporting in a future in which humanity has settled Mars. “Strike” also clocks in as an unabashedly pro-labor union tale. From the stories I’ve gathered so far, this is somewhat rare for the 1950s.

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Short Fiction Review: Alan E. Nourse’s “Marley’s Chain” (1952) and Edward W. Ludwig’s “The Rocket Man” (1951)

March 26, 2026March 29, 2026 / Joachim Boaz / 6 Comments

Today I’ve selected two lesser-known short stories from the early 1950s that explore issues of race in America. The Civil Rights mass movement gathered steam in the post-WWII world as soldiers returned to segregated hometowns. The federal government took a few tentative steps. In 1948, President Truman issued Executive Oder 9981, which abolished discrimination “on the basis of race, color, religion or national origin” in the United States Armed Forces.¹ Both stories I chose for this post appeared in print before the famous Supreme Court case Brown vs. Board of Education (1954) that ruled segregation was inherently unequal. In Edward W. Ludwig’s “The Rocket Man” (1951), a young white child yearns to lead an expedition to Mars. He finds fellowship with other outcasts, including an African American boy who also dreams of space. In Alan E. Nourse’s “Marley’s Chain” (1951), a man must confront his own problematic past in a new America rebuilding from the wreckage of the old.

If you know of any other 1940s/50s short stories that attempt to tackle the topics of race and racism, let me know. As I’m afflicted with a serious strain of listomania, I’ve collated an incomplete catalog on the topic that I will return to periodically in coming months.

Let’s get to the stories!

Ted Speicher’s interior art for Alan E. Nourse’s “Marley’s Chain” in If, ed. Paul W. Fairman (September 1952)

4/5 (Good)

Alan E. Nourse’s “Marley’s Chain” first appeared in If, ed. Paul W. Fairman (September 1952). You can read it online here.

Alan E. Nourse (1928-1992) re-entered my shortlist of authors I need to read as a result of my hunt for science fiction on the labor movement. Nourse might be best known for his many medical-themed stories (he was a practicing physician and wrote popular columns on medicine). He deviates from that interest with a classic illustration of 1950s anti-union sentiment in “Meeting of the Board” (1955), which I’ll cover eventually. While searching for further labor-related short stories, I came across a far different (and more perceptive) account of race and labor in America: “Marley’s Chain” (1952).²

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Short Book Reviews: Fritz Leiber, Jr.’s Gather, Darkness! (1943, novelized 1950) and Gillian Freeman’s The Leader (1965)

March 7, 2026March 7, 2026 / Joachim Boaz / 21 Comments

1. Fritz Leiber’s Gather, Darkness! (1943, novelized 1950)

Uncredited cover for the 1950 1st hardback edition

3.25/5 (Above Average)

Frtiz Leiber’s Gather, Darkness! first appeared across the May, June, and July 1943 issues of Astounding Science-Fiction, ed. John W. Campbell, Jr. It was novelized in 1950. Written in the midst of WWII, Gather, Darkness! is a product of an important moment in Leiber’s life. The previous year he abandoned his profession as a speech and drama instructor at Occidental College (1941-1942) and decided that “the struggle against fascism mattered more than his long-held pacifist convictions.” He joined Douglas Aircraft as a quality inspector and continued to publish science fiction.¹

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Generation Ship Short Stories: Mari Wolf’s “The First Day of Spring” (1954) and Francis G. Rayer’s “Continuity Man” (1959)

February 16, 2026March 24, 2026 / Joachim Boaz / 14 Comments

This is the 22nd post in my series of vintage generation ship short fiction reviews. While I have dabbled in the more esoteric as of late due the rapidly decreasing number of available choices, thanks go out to all who have joined some part of my read-through already. I’ve also compiled an extensive index of generation ship SF–expanded from a monograph by Simone Caroti–if you wish to track down my earlier reviews on the topic and any that you might want to read on your own.¹

Previously: George Hay’s Flight of the “Hesper” (1952)

Next Up: TBD

Kenn Fagg’s cover for If, ed. James L. Quinn (June 1954)

2.75/5 (Below Average)

Mari Wolf’s “The First Day of Spring” first appeared in If, ed. James L. Quinn (June 1954). You can read it online here.

As I mentioned in my only other review of Mari Wolf’s work, she’s best known for her contributions to fandom including the Fandora’s Box column (1951-1956) in Imagination. In addition, Mari Wolf (1926-) published seven short stories between 1952 and 1954, six of which appeared in If. Unfortunately, after her divorce in 1955 from fellow SF author Rog Phillips (1909-1966), she stopped publishing SF. Here is a brief bibliographic blurb on her life, career, and SF endeavors. Ted White wrote an article about her in the fanzine e*I*5 (Vol. 1 No. 5) December 2002 (here). The issue also includes Wolf’s short story “Prejudice” (1953), which only received a fanzine publication.

The Nature of the Generational Voyage

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Book Review: William Tenn’s Time in Advance (1958)

February 8, 2026February 8, 2026 / Joachim Boaz / 16 Comments

Mitchell Hooks’ cover for the 1st edition

3.5/5 (collated rating: Good)

Over the years, I’ve slowly made my way through a substantial portion of William Tenn’s output: I’ve reviewed his only SF novel Of Men and Monsters (1968), two short story collections–The Human Angle (1956) and Of All Possible Worlds (1955), and three additional short stories “Bernie the Faust” (1963), “Eastward Ho!” (1958), and “Generation of Noah” (1951). I’ve found him an effective satirist with a penchant for often self-defeating twist endings. At his best, Tenn challenges grand narratives of American progress and exceptionalism, 50s consumerist culture and gender roles, and renders an absurdist spin on Cold War conflict. I imagine his reluctance to write novels relegates his often brilliant ouvre to the fringes of contemporary interest in 50s SF.

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Short Story Review: Herbert W. Franke’s “Slum” (1970, trans. by Chris Herriman 1973)

January 11, 2026January 11, 2026 / Joachim Boaz / 8 Comments

Today I’m joined again by Rachel S. Cordasco, the creator of the indispensable website and resource Speculative Fiction in Translation, for the seventh installment of our series exploring non-English language SF worlds. Last time we covered Izumi Suzuki’s disturbed shocker “Terminal Boredom” (1984, trans. by Daniel Joseph 2021).

Please note that Rachel and I are interested in learning about a large range of authors and works vs. only tracking down the best. That means we’ll encounter some stinkers. This time we have an interesting German-language tale of ecological dystopia from Austria.

You can read Herbert W. Franke’s “Slum” (1970, trans. by Chris Herriman 1973) here if you have an Internet Archive account. This is an six page story. It’s really hard to talk about it in any substantial way without revealing spoilers.

Thank you Cora Buhlert for the recommendation!

Enjoy!

Gianni Benvenuti’s cover for the 1978 edition

Rachel S. Cordasco’s Review

Austrian-born author and cyberneticist Herbert W. Franke used speculative fiction to imagine distant planets and alternative societies for over half a century. Known to Anglophone readers mostly for three novels translated in the 1970s (The Orchid Cage, The Mind Net, and Zone Null) and a few short stories, Franke asked readers to think through what “exploration” really means and the responsibilities that the explorers have to those whom they find (or don’t find). Appearing first in English in F&SF (1963), Franke was subsequently featured in Franz Rottensteiner’s three major SFT anthologies: View From Another Shore: European Science Fiction (1973),The Best of Austrian Science Fiction (2001), and The Black Mirror and Other Stories: An Anthology of Science Fiction from Germany and Austria (2008). Other Franke stories appeared in Donald A. Wollheim’s The Best from the Rest of the World (1976) and James Gunn’sThe Road to Science Fiction 6: Around the World (1998).

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