Updates + Articles

Updates: Recent Science Fiction Purchases No. CCCXXXVIII (Gregory Benford, Dean McLaughlin, Warren Norwood, and Aileen La Tourette)

/ Joachim Boaz / 21 Comments

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

1. In Alien Flesh, Gregory Benford (1986)

  • Joe Bergeron’s cover for the 1986 edition

From the back cover: “A journey into the depts of space and time by Gregory Benford, winner of the Nebula Award.”

Contents: “In Alien Flesh” (1978), “Time Shards” (1979), “Redeemer” (1979), “Snatching the Bot” (1977), “Relativistic Effects” (1982), “Nooncoming” (1978), “To the Storming Gulf” (1985), “White Creatures” (1975), “Me/Days” (1984), “Of Space/Time and the River” (1985), “Exposures” (1981), “Time’s Rub” (1984), “Doing Lennon” (1975).

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What pre-1985 science fiction are you reading? + Update No. XVI

/ Joachim Boaz / 74 Comments
  • A selection of read books from my shelves

What pre-1985 science fiction are you reading or planning to read this month? Here’s the August installment of this column.

I often think back to how I got hooked on science fiction. As I have mentioned many times before, I primarily read fantasy–in particular every bloated Tolkein ripoff I could get my hands on–before I moved to science fiction in my late teens. Tad Williams’ fantasy trilogy Memory, Sorrow & Thorn (1988-1998) holds special significance. While looking for other fantasy titles by Williams at the local used book store, I stumbled across his equally bloated four-volume SF sequence Otherland (1996-2001). And so the slow shift began… I had read other science fiction but nothing hooked me quite like Otherland. It’s one of those works that I plan on never rereading—the spell would break.

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Exploration Log 5: “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

/ Joachim Boaz / 20 Comments
  • Cover art by Atun Purser

My article on organized labor in the 1940s and ’50s science fiction of Clifford D. Simak went live! I’d love to hear your thoughts. I’ve spent the last half year researching and reading religiously for this project–from topics such as Minnesota’s unique brand of radical politics to the work of contemporary intellectuals like C. Wright Mills (1916-1962) whom Simak most likely read.

Please check out the complete issue edited by Olav Rokne and Amanda Wakaruk over at Journey Planet. I have also embedded the PDF below.

The issue contains great work on the depiction of labor rights in a vast variety of other SF mediums. There are four articles that touch on vintage SF. The first two listed are by wonderful community members and official “Friends of the Site.”

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What pre-1985 science fiction are you reading? + Update No. XV

/ Joachim Boaz / 123 Comments
  • A selection of previously read novels from my shelf

What pre-1985 science fiction are you reading or planning to read this month? Here’s July’s installment of this column.

Last month I waxed rhapsodic about a powerful interaction with a professor in graduate school… this month I’ll show you a recent obsessive territory I’ve been reading and ruminating about: 1940s and 1950s (and a few from the 60s) social commentary on American affluence, technology, and media. It all started with my media landscapes of the future series–I could not write on the topic unless I read some Marshall McLuhan. And then I had to read about C. Wright Mills to write about Clifford D. Simak and organized labor. And then I needed to track down other popular authors of social commentary published in era. It should not be surprising so much 50s SF revolved around social commentary — it was in the air. You get the idea. This pile represents some of what I now own:

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Updates: Recent Science Fiction Purchases No. CCCXXXVI (Clare Winger Harris, Frederik Pohl, Barrington J. Bayley, and Robert Asprin)

/ Joachim Boaz / 28 Comments

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

1. Away From the Here and Now, Clare Winger Harris (1947)

  • Uncredited–JM initials but no known name–cover for the 1st edition

From the inside flap: “In this age of atomic bombs and radar to the moon, Mrs. Harris’ stories may prove closer to the “here and now” than the title would indicate. Mrs. Harris Proudly claims the distinction of being the first woman science-fiction writer in the country. Each of her stories is based upon a sound scientific fact, carried so plausibly to the nth degree that at no time does it overstain credulity. The stories possess the qualities of dealing with ideas of big importance to the human race, of presenting those ideas in a plausible form, and of appealing to emotions that exist deep within the heart of every human being whether he be scientific or not.

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What pre-1985 science fiction are you reading? + Update No. XIV

/ Joachim Boaz / 73 Comments
  • A selection of read science fiction novels from my shelves

What pre-1985 science fiction are you reading or planning to read this month?

Here’s June’s installment of this column.

I’m periodically plagued by the virulent Esoterica virus, the relentless desire to catalogue and write about the less known, and even better, the completely unknown. While attending a Medieval English literature graduate class, I remember a conversation I had with the professor, Robert D. Fulk, during office hours about the sheer quantity of scholarship on Beowulf (here’s his edition of the iconic text). I pointed out the panic I experience if I’m unable to read ALL the scholarship on a popular text.

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Exploration Log 4: Six Interviews with Clifford D. Simak (1904-1988)

/ Joachim Boaz / 27 Comments
  • Graphic created by my father

Clifford D. Simak (1904-1988) published science fiction steadily between 1931 and his death in the late 80s. His work–from City (1952) to the Hugo-winning Way Station (1963)–often demonstrates a fascination with the rural environment and the lives of “ordinary” people confronted with the alien. As I am currently working on a mini-project related to Simak,1 I thought I’d give a rundown of six of the seven interviews I’ve found reference to. I’ll also provide quotes of interesting passages, and a scanned version of one that isn’t available online. In the interviews, Simak comes across as an author deeply suspicious of rigorous generic distinctions, passionate about all life, and open to science fiction as an ever-changing and evolving entity.

The Internet Speculative Fiction Database lists five interviews on science fiction conducted with Clifford D. Simak–all published between 1975-1980. Muriel R. Becker’s indispensable Clifford D. Simak: A Primary and Secondary Bibliography (1980) includes two more: a video interview from 1971 and another from 1976 in the Minneapolis Tribune.2 I cannot find a copy of the latter. I provide links to the others in the post.

Obviously, which interview you want to read depends on your interests or questions you have about Simak. That said, I found Paul Walker’s the most fascinating (and frequently references in the little scholarship on the grandmaster).

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Updates: Recent Science Fiction Purchases No. CCCXXXV (Damien Broderick, Brian W. Aldiss, Sydney J. Van Scyoc, and D. G. Barron)

/ Joachim Boaz / 21 Comments

Back from Norway! Time to acquire more science fiction.

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

1. The Dreaming Dragons, Damien Broderick (1980)

  • Carl Lundgren’s cover for the 1st US edition

From the back cover: “TO THE PLACE WHERE SECRETS LIE SLEEPING. Alf Dean, an aborigine trained as an anthropologist, knew that his tribesmen, for centuries beyond memory, had warned of a dreadful secret in the mountains of Australia.

His ‘slow-witted’ nephew led him to the secret spot–the same spot where men were claimed by deaths that were secret to the world.

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What pre-1985 science fiction are you reading? + Update No. XIII

/ Joachim Boaz / 83 Comments
  • A selection of read science fiction novels from my shelves

What pre-1985 science fiction are you reading or planning to read this month?

Here’s May’s installment of this column.

As I am currently exploring the north-of-the-Arctic Circle reaches of Norway, why not segue way into this post by re-ruminating on the only Norwegian SF novel I’ve read: Knut Faldbakken’s spectacular Twilight Country (1974, trans. Joan Tate, 1993). I wish I’d thought to bring the sequel — Sweetwater (1976, trans. Joan Tate, 1994). Twilight Country, my second favorite SF novel read of 2021, contains one of the great depictions of a decaying metropolis. It is a densely metaphoric story of survival within its crumbling edifices. The masterstroke of Faldbakken’s novel is the portrayal of the Dump, a border zone containing the cast off fragments of human existence, as a place of recreation. Our characters run to the Dump to escape, to make their lives anew. They’re deeply flawed figures. There’s a tangible sense of organic transformation within the transients who inhabit this liminal zone. Sweetwater and The Dump act as a closed system. One decays into the other. One creates the other. Not recommended unless you like your SF dark and moody like me!

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