Adventures in Science Fiction Cover Art: Alien Friends

/ Joachim Boaz / 14 Comments

(H. W. Wesso’s June 1941 issue of Thrilling Wonder Stories)

In science fiction aliens are usually evil and generally end up dead — killed by our human heroes via pseudo-videogames (Ender’s Game), guns of endless variety, nuclear weapons detonated on their home worlds, horrific  diseases (Deep Space Nine), tossed into the vacuum of space, tossed into wormholes, etc etc.  They are rarely “humanized” — their families, societies, and history ignored by their human enemies — they are often depicted as “true” evil.  I’ve included the above cover, shooting aliens under the American flag (it is a wartime 40s issue so such overt jingoism is explainable), in order to highlight the attitude towards space fauna which we are all familiar with.

Sometimes “friendship” is feigned.  C. M. Kornbluth’s short story ‘Friend To Man’ (1951) (in this collection) is a disturbing example — the maternal feeling felt by the alien towards our antihero is just a ploy to lure him into her den where she implants him with eggs, which Continue reading →

Book Review: Dr. Futurity, Philip K. Dick (1960)

/ Joachim Boaz / 27 Comments

(Ed Valigursky’s cover for the 1960 edition)

2.75/5 (Average)

Over the years I’ve found Philip K. Dick’s early novels hit or miss.  Along with The World Jones Made (1956), Dr. Futurity (1960) (expanded from the 1954 short story “Time Pawn”) is the least satisfying of his novels I’ve read so far.  My total PKD consumption is extensive — around 20 novels and at least 60 short stories.

Time travel is by far my least favorite major science fiction trope.  However, in many of Philip K. Dick’s novels and short stories time travel is transformed into something surreal and often, downright fascinating.  But unlike his later novels, the trope in Dr. Futurity is an endlessly laborious plot device.  Our hero doctor, Jim Parsons, is constantly whisked back and forth in time with hardly a moment of rest or discussion. Continue reading →

Adventures in Science Fiction Cover Art: Underwater Expeditions (futuristic submarines + underwater labs + sea monsters + cities), Part II

/ Joachim Boaz / 21 Comments

(Roger Stine’s cover for the 1979 edition of On The Run (variant title: Mankind on the Run) (1955), Gordon R. Dickson)

Part II of my Underwater Expeditions Series (Part I) is a veritable deluge of undersea wonders.  Unusual monsters/aliens proliferate the seascapes — snapping at our aquatic heroes.  A vast array of submersibles and submarines — including a mechanical whale equipped with a harpoon (Jack Coggins’ cover for the April 1957 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction) — trek across the oceanic expanses.  Cities, ruins, hidden scientific facilities are all to be discovered amongst the seaweed and deep water trenches…

There is something so mysterious about the ocean depths — almost as alienating and frightening as space.  Although due to our recent deep sea explorations increasingly less Continue reading →

Book Review: Seed of Light, Edmund Cooper (1959)

/ Joachim Boaz / 22 Comments

(Uncredited cover for the 1959 edition — I suspect it might be David Davies)

3.25/5 (Average)

Edmund Cooper’s Seed of Light (1959) is less of a traditional narrative of the voyage of a generation ship as are its fellow generation ship novels of the 40s/50s. The best examples are Brian Aldiss’ Non-Stop (1958) and Robert Heinlein’s Orphans of the Sky (1941).  Seed of Light is more like a piece of pseudo-history interlaced with fragments of narrative of varying effectiveness.  The work is best described as a thematically-linked series of novellas tracking the future development of man in broad strokes à la Brian Aldiss’ Galaxies Like Grains of Sand (1960).  Unfortunately, Cooper’s original splicing of the generation ship theme onto a Future History template (made popular but Olaf Stapleton and Isaac Asimov among others) is extremely uneven.  Some portions are involving while others are plagued by laborious epoch-spanning pseudo-historical lectures.

Because each part is a separate novella (the last two are more closely Continue reading →

Adventures in Science Fiction Cover Art: Chess/Checkers (with people + planets)

/ Joachim Boaz / 21 Comments

(Ed Valigursky’s cover for the 1962 edition of Cosmic Checkmate (1962), Charles V. DeVet and Katherine MacLean)

Queue Ed Valigursky’s cover for the Cosmic Checkmate (1962): a chessboard arrayed against a background of stars, men stand on different colored squares, as much pawns of some distant player as the pieces nearby.  Spaceships flash across the vast expanse of space — remember, the game has galactic ramifications — with our characters arrayed, the game opens, and the battle (of wits and secret weapons) begins.  Although I have not (yet) read Charles V. DeVet and Katherine MacLean (whose later novel Missing Man (1975) I highly recommend) is explicitly about Chess, or more precisely, a similar alien game, and the ramifications are indeed, galactic in scope.  Other covers are more metaphoric Continue reading →

Book Review: Sargasso of Space, Andre Norton (1955)

/ Joachim Boaz / 29 Comments

(Ed Emshwiller’s cover for the 1964 edition)

4/5 (Good)

Andre Norton’s Sargasso of Space (1955), the first installment of her Solar Queen sequence of novels, delivers everything a 1950s juvenile science fiction adventure should.  Sargasso of Space is not only blessed with genuine tension, intriguing situations, heroic young adults, but also a multi-racial cast (an African-American apprentice engineer and two crew members of Asian descent).  This is my first of Andre Norton’s massive body of work I’ve read — Secret of the Lost Race, Star Born, Daybreak-2250 A. D., and Witch World are all on my shelf waiting to be devoured — and I will be looking to add more to my collection.  There’s something so appealing in the classic archetypal trope of the young hero–with the help of loyal friends–solving an intriguing (and dangerous) puzzle.

Brief Plot Summary

Our young/intrepid hero Dane Thornson is an apprentice Cargo-Master Continue reading →

Book Review: A Choice of Gods, Clifford D. Simak (1971)

/ Joachim Boaz / 17 Comments

(Paul Lehr’s cover for the 1973 edition)

3.25/5 (Average)

Nominated for the 1972 Hugo Award for Best Novel

Clifford D. Simak’s A Choice of Gods (1971) is a flawed but intriguing novel.  Simak’s renowned for his original anti-technology pastoral visions.  His science fiction (replete with unusual aliens) is more likely to intersect our future world in the environs of the rural farm, the depopulated/gutted earth covered with forests or an isolated Native American tribe than an urban dystopia, trans-galactic spaceship, or distant planet.  The more famous examples are his Hugo winning Way Station (1963), deserving of at least some of the effuse praise it receives, and City (1952), rightly considered a classic.

Simak’s favorite themes are on show in A Choice of Gods including what happens to robots, whom Simak portrays as almost human but with a programmed need to Continue reading →

Adventures in Science Fiction Cover Art: Models, Dolls, Mannequins

/ Joachim Boaz / 16 Comments

(David Davies’ cover for the 1968 edition of The Syndic (1953), C. M. Kornbluth)

Occasionally I dabble in the incredibly esoteric and artistically painful.  Apparently in the 60s and the early 70s — heralded by the artist David Davies — there was momentary interest in sci-fi covers constructed from manipulated photographs of store window mannequins, dolls, wire contraptions vaguely suggesting spaceships, toy spacemen, wooden artist mannequins dressed in clothes/wigs, and copyright violating models of the Star Trek: The Original Series Enterprise NCC-1701.

Unfortunately, most of the covers I’ve discovered are uncredited — they might all be the work of David Davies.  Internet Speculative Fiction Database has seventeen of his covers listed but I suspect that he made many many more — I’ve gone ahead and credited a few Continue reading →

Book Review: Beyond Apollo, Barry N. Malzberg (1972)

/ Joachim Boaz / 37 Comments

(Roger Hane’s cover for the 1972 edition)

5/5 (Masterpiece — but please consider the caveats below before procuring a copy)

(This review is a product of lengthy dialogues with my girlfriend, a graduate student in English, who devoured the work with great relish and enthusiasm.  Her remarkable eye peeled away levels I didn’t even know existed and heightened my appreciation for this underread classic.   I owe large portions of this review to her.)

Barry N. Malzberg’s Beyond Apollo (1972), the third of his novels I’ve read (Conversations, In the Enclosure, Guernica Night), is generally considered his best work (he won the inaugural John Campbell Award for best Novel).  In a genre infrequently blessed with literary experimentation — of course, there are a few exceptions, Ballard’s The Atrocity Exhibition (1970), Joanna Russ’ The Female Man (1975), Russ’ And Chaos Died (1970), and John Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar (1968) among others — I’m always more predisposed to works which are structurally/stylistically inventive and thought-provoking.  Barry N. Malzberg’s Beyond Apollo more than fulfills  Continue reading →