SF Book Reviews

Book Review: Traitor to the Living, Philip José Farmer (1973)

/ Joachim Boaz / 9 Comments

(Hans Ulrich Osterwalder and Ute Osterwalder’s cover for the 1973 edition)

2.5/5 (Bad)

In disappointing fashion, Traitor to the Living (1973) follows a similar pattern to Philip José Farmer’s famous Hugo winning To Your Scattered Bodies Go (1971) — the fascinating premise is bogged down by blank characters and repetitive action.  Despite my fervent conviction that To Your Scattered Bodies Go is one of the worst Best Novel Hugo winners (and I’ve read a majority of them) and that the endlessly laborious sequels are a complete waste of ink, paper, and time, I gave Farmer a second chance — albeit with one of his lesser known works.  Because some of the pieces are in place in Traitor to the Living for a worthwhile novel, I hold out hope that he produced a readable work that I might be compelled to acquire (queue question: what is your favorite novel/short story/novella by Farmer?).

If you’re a Farmer completest, Traitor to the Living might be Continue reading →

Book Review: Daughters of Earth, Judith Merril (1968)

/ Joachim Boaz / 14 Comments

daughters of earth

(Robert Foster’s cover for the 1970 edition)

4/5 (Good)

Judith Merril was not only an important early science fiction author of novels and short stories but a political activist and a member of the influential 1940s sci-fi group known as the Futurians (members included her husband Frederik Pohl, James Blish, Damon Knight, David A. Wollheim, C. M. Kornbluth, et al.).  Her fascinating collection, Daughters of Earth (1968), contains three novellas from the 1950s: ‘Project Nursemaid’ (1955), the highlight of the collection — ‘Daughters of Earth’ (1952), and the underwhelming ‘Homecalling’ (1956).  

All three contain a plethora of female characters Continue reading →

Book Review: The Dark Side of the Earth, Alfred Bester (1964)

/ Joachim Boaz / 23 Comments

(Uncredited cover for the 1964 edition)

3/5 (Average)

Despite enjoying Alfred Bester’s famous novels The Demolished Man (1952) and The Stars My Destination (1956), I found his short stories in The Dark Side of the Earth (1964) on the whole nowhere near as masterful.  Yes, they are witty, comedic, playful, silly, pseudo-intellectual (references to film directors such as De Sica, etc), and on occasion refreshingly experimental in structure (‘The Pi Man’).  Of those adjectives, ‘silly’ is the most constant.

Bester is at his best when he blends his satirical/comedic side with a fascinating concept — for example, an inventive theory of time travel in ‘The Man Who Continue reading →

Book Review: The Silent Multitude, D. G. Compton (1966)

/ Joachim Boaz / 10 Comments

(Leo and Diane Dillon’s cover for the 1969 edition)

4.25/5 (Very Good)

“He was out now looking for signs.  He knew how to stay alive.  He was a strangely violent man, to him the fall of the city was some sort of unholy celebration (89).”

The decaying/empty city as allegory: its few post-evacuation occupants (a tramp and his cat, the cathedral’s dean, a young suburban woman, a troubled architect’s son — all well-drawn characters) wander the deserted streets of Gloucester consumed with their own obsessions.  The cement consuming fungus — a vague agent of destruction that severs us from our loci of civilization, our functionalist cityscapes, Continue reading →

Book Review: The Falling Torch, Algis Budrys (1959)

/ Joachim Boaz / 12 Comments

(Bob Engle’s cover for the 1959 edition)

3.25/5 (Vaguely Good)

A smile, or tears, perhaps.  Tears are easier than laughter.  Tears need no gust of breath, as laughter must though breath is short — tears do not crack the muscles of the back or make the jaws ache when the jaws are sore-gummed from the artificial teeth — yes old men’s or old women’s gentle tears; these too are safe; not grown men’s sobs, but children’s tears;  not children’s tantrum-cries but children’s tears upon the moment when they learn that, in all justice, children, too, can fairly died–those are the tears that we regain when we are very old (pg 149).

Algis Budrys’ The Falling Torch (1959) is on the surface yet another simplistic brave oppressed mankind rebelling against the alien invaders who have conquered Earth novel à la Aldiss’ Bow Down to Nul (variant title: The Interpreter) (1960) and the ilk.  And I was deluded into thinking it was Continue reading →

Book Review: The End of the World (1956), ed. Donald Wollheim

/ Joachim Boaz / 12 Comments

(Ed Emshwiller’s? cover for the 1956 edition)

3.75/5 (Good)

 The End of the World (1956) is a highly readable collection of short works by some of the leading figures of the 50s:  Robert Heinlein, Edmond Hamilton, Philip K. Dick,  and Arthur C. Clarke are the most notable contributors.  All the works, including the short by the virtually unknown author Amelia Reynolds Long, have appeared in other volumes but it’s nice to have them grouped according to theme with a quality Ace edition 50s Emshwiller cover.

Wollheim gathers together a fascinating range of accounts of the end of the world — seen through the eyes of aliens, humans from the present viewing the future, the last men on earth surveying the ruins, a robotic bomb who thinks it’s human and “accidentally” triggers the end of the Continue reading →

Book Review: The Bright Phoenix, Harold Mead (1955)

/ Joachim Boaz / 7 Comments

(Richard Powers’ cover for the 1956 edition)

3/5 (Average)

Harold Mead’s The Bright Phoenix is a readable future ultra-regulated “perfect” State themed science fiction novel with a time-worn but proven plot. Unfortunately, the end product, despite moments of intriguing characterization and oppressive gloom, sinks into forgettable melodrama and the conclusion resorts to frustratingly obvious references to a “second coming” (of sorts).  Mead is less interested in describing the mechanisms of the “perfect” state and more interested in the slow evolution of a character coming to grips with the deficiencies of the system.  This is an admirable program that falls woefully short in part due to the paltry descriptions of the before mentioned system.  This causes our hero’s evolution to occasionally ring hollow.  The primitive but somehow “truer” pseudo-Christian civilization contacted by our hero, the fulcrum of his transformation, lacks any seductive qualities that would facilitate Continue reading →

Book Review (rant): Waters of Death, Irving A. Greenfield (1967)

/ Joachim Boaz / 7 Comments

(Hoot von Zitzewitz’s cover for the 1967 edition)

1/5 (Terrible)

I apologize for the lack of deep philosophical insight into the nuances of the book in question. None can be dispensed/inferred/implied or even invented that would adequately embody the throbbing intellect that exudes forth from every word.  Instead, I shall wax nostalgic.

I loved underwater farms/cities/towns when I was a child.  I drew translucent housing domes in cross-section, replete with carefully delineated plots of seaweed stewarded by land dwelling turtle/dog/humans (flippers, tummy fur, soft shells and the like) and an array of mechanical contrivances to facilitate harvesting, processing, and oxygen production.

I picked up a copy of Irving A. Greenfield’s Waters of Continue reading →

Book Review: In The Enclosure, Barry N. Malzberg (1973)

/ Joachim Boaz / 14 Comments

(Davis Meltzer’s cover for the 1973 edition)

4.5/5 (Very Good)

Fresh off Malzberg’s intriguing young adult novel, Conversations (1975), I picked up a copy of the altogether more disturbing, transfixing, unnervingly prescient, and at moments, brilliant In The Enclosure (1972).  As with many of Malzberg’s oeuvre, the work is infused with a steady dose of metafiction — our hero laments (and we writhe along with him in a malaise of unease), “I will never really know” (189).  Just as Quir is unsure of his own reality, his diaristic words — which the reader is desperate to hold on to — are admittedly, “an impression, a conception, nothing more” (190).

Combining the science fiction trope of implanted memories with the literary narrative mode of the unreliable narrator creates an overwhelmingly uncomfortable gulf between reality and constructed reality.  The result, the overpowering desire to pick up a piece of pulp science fiction where the future is rosy, technology = happiness, the kids smart, where rockets Continue reading →