SF Book Reviews

Short Story Reviews: Clifford D. Simak’s “City” (1944), “Ogre” (1944), and “Spaceship in a Flask” (1941)

/ Joachim Boaz / 14 Comments

I’ve finally completed my article for Journey Planet on depictions of organized labor in the 40s and 50s science fiction of Clifford D. Simak. I plan on adding to it over the next few months as I read more. After it appears for Journey, I’ll post it on my site in whatever version is current. The project lead me to read a vast range of Simak short fictions, a small slice of which I’ve reviewed on my site, including the first two stories revised for his iconic masterpiece City (1952). I’ll cover “Huddling Place” (1944) soon as well.

Enjoy!

  • William Timmins’ cover for Astounding Science Fiction, ed. John Campbell, Jr. (May 1944)

4.25/5 (Very Good)

“City” first appeared in Astounding Science Fiction, ed. John Campbell, Jr. (May 1944). You can read it online here.

This is a good one! I read the 1952 novelized version of the City stories in my late teens. At the time, logically, I was fascinated by the sentient dogs and the slow apocalypse of humanity that unfolds across the generations. For whatever reason, the earliest stories without dogs, for example “City” (1944) and “Huddling Place” (1944), faded from the culminative aura the novel generated all these years later. This project compelled me to break my deep-seated compulsion to read what I haven’t read before.

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Book Review: Alas, Babylon, Pat Frank (1959)

/ Joachim Boaz / 25 Comments
  • Uncredited cover for the 1960 edition of Pat Frank’s Alas, Babylon (1959)

4/5 (Good)

Pat Frank (1907-1964) began his writing career working for local papers in northeastern Florida before a stint in The Office of Wartime Information (OWI) during WWII. The popular success of Frank’s three nuclear war-themed novels, that culminated with Alas, Babylon (1959), led him to take on the role as a speechwriter for the 1960 Kennedy campaign and beyond.1 As Frank was a lifelong Democrat, Alas, Babylon contains a range of 50s political views that manifest anti-communism and align with the small minority within the party interested in Civil Rights. The novel advocates for vigorous anti-Communist ideology at home and abroad and, in case deterrence fails, survival is possible for those who embody American virtues.

The Narrative Vantage Point Amidst the Mushroom Clouds

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Short Story Review: Kathinka Lannoy’s “Drugs’ll Do You” (1978, trans. 1981)

/ Joachim Boaz / 10 Comments

Today I’m joined again by Rachel S. Cordasco, the creator of the indispensable website and resource Speculative Fiction in Translation, for the fourth installment of our series exploring non-English language SF worlds. Last time we covered Hugo Correa’s intense parables of alienation and exploitation: “Alter Ego” (1967) and “Meccano” (1968). This time we’re tackling Kathinka Lannoy’s strange Dutch language story “Drugs’ll Do You” (1978, trans. 1981).

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!

According to the sources I’ve been able to find, Kathinka Lannoy (1917-1996) grew up in Amsterdam and, due to childhood sicknesses, started writing from a young age.1 Lannoy studied music and elocution and worked as a piano teacher in addition to her writing. Her first published work appeared after 1940 in various newspapers and modelled on Norwegian regional novels that were popular at the time. In the late 1950s, Lannoy started writing horror and science fiction stories and joined the Dutch SF association SF Terra. After the King Kong Award for original Dutch SF stories under 10k words started in 1976, her stories often placed in the top ten.2 In addition to writing SF, she also translated SF — including a work by Damon Knight. From the possibly incomplete Internet Speculative Fiction Database listing, it appears that only two of her genre short stories appeared in an English translation.

“Drugs’ll Do You” appeared in Terra SF: The Year’s Best European SF, ed. Richard D. Nolane (1981). The story was translated by Joe F. Randolph. I cannot find an online copy. Please reach out if you want to read it and don’t want to track down the anthology.

Enjoy!

  • Vicente Segrelles’ cover for Terra SF: The Year’s Best European SF, ed. Richard D. Nolane (1981)

Rachel S. Cordasco’s Review

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Short Story Reviews: Clifford D. Simak’s “Conditions of Employment” (1960), “Retrograde Evolution” (1953), and “‘You’ll Never Go Home Again!'” (variant title: “Beachhead”) (1951)

/ Joachim Boaz / 10 Comments

Bizarre alien civilizations. Homesickness as psychiatric treatment. The dangers of space travel. Capitalism unleashed. Utopian possibilities? Welcome to the strange wonders of Clifford D. Simak.

Today I’ve gathered together three more fascinating Simak tales that chart his deeply critical views of American business ethic. As in my previous post on the theme, the Grandmaster creates a future in which colonization goes hand-in-hand with the exploitation of resources, workers, and threatens the often bizarre alien intelligences they encounter.1

Two of the three rank among my best reads of the year. And now, to the stories!

  • Ed Emshwiller’s cover for Galaxy Magazine (April 1960)

4.75/5 (Near Masterpiece)

“Conditions of Employment” first appeared in Galaxy, ed. H. L. Gold (April 1960). You can read it online here.

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Short Story Reviews: Hugo Correa’s “Alter Ego” (1967) and “Meccano” (1968)

/ Joachim Boaz / 9 Comments

Today I’m joined again by Rachel S. Cordasco, the creator of the indispensable website and resource Speculative Fiction in Translation, for the third installment of our series exploring non-English language SF worlds. Last time we covered Vladimir Colin’s Lem-esque story of an unusual alien encounter “The Contact” (1966, trans. 1970). We have stories from the Netherlands, Austria, Poland, and France in the queue.

This time we shift continents from Europe to South America with two stories by Hugo Correa (1926-2008). According to SF Encyclopedia, Correa was the “leading Chilean sf author of his generation.” Unfortunately, his best-known work, the novel Los altímos (The Superior Ones) (1951, rev. 1959) remains untranslated. Correa’s brief appearance in the American market–three short stories–came courtesy of Ray Bradbury. In 1961, the young Chilean author received a grant to participate in the writers’ workshops at the University of Iowa. He translated a handful of his own stories from Spanish to English and sent them to Ray Bradbury, who responded “with enthusiasm and encouragement.” Bradbury met with Correa when he visited Los Angeles, and the famous SF author sent a few of the translated stories to various magazine editors. Four stories eventually appeared in the North American market. It’s a shame that more of his work hasn’t been translated — yet alone a complete bibliography compiled at The Internet Speculative Fiction Database. The SF Encyclopedia entry mentions works that aren’t listed in the database. And this Spanish-language website contains a far more extensive bibliography.

We’ve selected two of his four translated stories for this post:

  1. “Alter Ego” first appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, ed. Edward L. Ferman (July 1967). You can read it online here.
  2. “Meccano” first appeared in International Science-Fiction, ed. Frederik Pohl (June 1968). You can read it online here.

Both are super short and worth the read.

Now let’s get to our reviews!

  • Jack Gaughan’s cover for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, ed. Edward L. Ferman (July 1967)

Rachel S. Cordasco’s Reviews

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Book Review: Those Who Watch, Robert Silverberg (1967)

/ Joachim Boaz / 20 Comments
  • Gene Szafran’s cover for 1971 edition

3.25/5 (Above Average)

A preliminary note: I’m something of a Robert Silverberg completionist, especially work from his glory years of 1967-1975. I’ve reviewed forty-seven of Silverberg’s short stories and thirteen of his novels–I’ve also read but never reviewed A Time of Changes (1971), The Masks of Time (1968), Tower of Glass (1970), and the stories in Capricorn Games (1976).

While a middling Silverberg novel at best, Those Who Watch (1967) almost succeeds as a revisionist take on UFO panic. The aliens do not seek to experiment on, exterminate, or manipulate humans. Instead, this is a book about the lost and lonely, and how their love and care for the injured interstellar visitors that appear on their doorsteps transform their lives. It’s a problematic work that simultaneously pulses with kindness.

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Short Story Review: Robert Abernathy’s “Single Combat” (1955)

/ Joachim Boaz / 18 Comments

In January, I inaugurated a new review series on the urban landscape in science fiction. I finally present the second post! And it’s a good one. I am joined by Anthony Hayes, a frequent contributor and creator of wonderful conversations over the last few years on the site (as antyphayes). I recommend you check out his website The Sinister Science. In addition to ruminations on science fiction–often through the lens of his academic PhD research in the Situationist International, “as well as other related left-communist and post-situationist writings,” he creates fascinating collages that interweave comic books, textual play, and historical images.

We chose Robert Abernathy’s deceptively complex parable of urban alienation “Single Combat” (1955) as our inaugural story. It first appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, ed. Anthony Boucher (January 1955). You can read it online here.

Previously: Michael Bishop’s “The Windows in Dante’s Hell” (1973), Barrington J. Bayley’s “Exit from City 5” (1971), and A. J. Deutsch’s “A Subway Named Mobius” (1950).

Up Next: TBD

  • Nick Solovioff’s cover for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, ed. Anthony Boucher (January 1955)

Anthony Paul Hayes’ Rumination

Urban alienation writ large: Robert Abernathy’s “Single Combat”’ (1955)

Having planted an explosive device in a forgotten corner of an unnamed, North American city, the similarly unnamed protagonist flees. However, in fleeing the protagonist comes to realise what they had hitherto only suspected: that the city has become a living, conscious thing, and like all such things is willing to fight for its survival.my

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Updates: Recent Science Fiction Purchases No. CCCXXXIV (Robert Silverberg, Best SF of 1979, C. L. Moore, George Hay)

/ Joachim Boaz / 31 Comments

Spring semester in the books! It’s now time to read (and go on vacation).

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

1. Invaders from Earth and To Worlds Beyond, Robert Silverberg (1980)

  • Chris Foss’ cover for the 1st edition.

From the back cover: “The Ganymedians had a rich, peace culture, peaceful culture extending back hundreds of thousands of years in human time. But the soil of their Jovian moon held uncountable riches in the form of the nuclear fuels Earth so desperately needed. It was a pattern that had been repeated many times in humanity’s bloody history; in Asia, in Africa, in the American West–but the nations of mankind were not ready to make the same mistake again. So when the Corporation decided it wanted those fissionables whether the Ganymedians wanted to give them up or not, they knew they had a job of selling of their hands, to swing the weight of public opinion behind them. And that was a job for Ted Kennedy, ad-man supreme. Kennedy’s record showed he could sell the public on just about anything. Even genocide.”

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Short Book Reviews: Clifford D. Simak’s They Walked Like Men (1962) and Jacques Sternberg’s Sexualis ’95 (1965, trans. 1967)

/ Joachim Boaz / 14 Comments

Note: My read but “waiting to be reviewed pile” is growing. Short rumination/tangents 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 apparatus for future projects. Stay tuned for more detailed and analytical reviews.

1. They Walked Like Men, Clifford D. Simak (1962)

  • Richard Powers’ cover for the 1963 edition

3/5 (Average)

In a confrontation with maleficent alien land prospectors in Clifford D. Simak’s They Walked Like Men (1962), the main character ruminates that “it was almost if [we] were acting out an old morality play, with the basic sins of mankind enlarged a millionfold to prove a point by exaggeration” (113). Simak’s moment of meta-commentary on his own narrative and tonal choices gives shape to odd conjuration of juvenile comedy and apocalyptic extrapolation of capitalism unleased.

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