Generation Ship Short Story Review: Michael G. Coney’s “The Mind Prison” (1971)

/ Joachim Boaz / 36 Comments

This is the 12th post in my newly resurrected series of vintage generation ship short fiction reviews. Today I have something a bit different — a 1970s commentary on the subgenre. While the story itself is not a generation ship tale as it takes place on Earth, it fits and critiques the theme from within a similar enclosed environment.

As a reminder for anyone stopping by, all of the stories I’ll review in the series are available online via the link below in the review.

You are welcome to read and discuss along with me as I explore humanity’s visions of generational voyage. And thanks go out to all who have joined already. I also have compiled an extensive index of generation ship SF if you wish to track down my earlier reviews on the topic and any that you might want to read on your own.

Previously: Arthur Sellings’ “A Start in Life” (1954).

Next Up: Vonda N. McIntyre’s “The Mountains of Sunset, the Mountains of Dawn” (1974).

  • Frank Kelly Freas’ cover for the 1st edition of Monitor Found in Orbit (1974)

Michael G. Coney’s “The Mind Prison” first appeared in New Writings in SF 19, ed. John Carnell (1971). 3.5/5 (Good). You can read it online here. I read it Coney’s collection Monitor Found in Orbit (1974).

Coney positions “The Mind Prison”, in the introduction to his collection Monitor Found in Orbit, as a commentary on generation ship stories–in particular Robert A. Heinlein’s Orphans of the Sky (serialized 1941) and Brian W. Aldiss’ Non-Stop (variant title: Starship) (1959) which he read and reread over the years. He writes: “I cannot explain why I find the closed environment story so fascinating [..] Why should an adventure story be more exciting, merely because the people therein are not subject to external influences?” (114). Coney emphasizes the centrality of male heroism in many of these stories: “I would rather think that these stories emphasize identification, since the hero is invariably the only normal person around, surrounded by nonsensical religions, illogical facts, widely held misconception, which only he [emphasis Coney’s] can see the stupidity of” (114). “The Mind Prison” explores an enclosed environment remarkably similar to a generation ship, with a female heroine.

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Book Review: Only Lovers Left Alive, Dave Wallis (1964)

/ Joachim Boaz / 17 Comments
  • Uncredited cover for the 1965 edition

4/5 (Good)

The scene: Early 60s London. Conjure displays of cool style at local discothèques. Youthful insolence and wit. Frivolous consumerism. Into this swirling myth/reality of the “Swinging” city in the early 60s, Dave Wallis’ Only Lovers Left Alive (1964) weaves its own petulant “image making.” The youth attempt to create a world in the ashes of their forefathers who commit suicide in droves.

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Updates: Recent Science Fiction Purchases No. CCLXXXI (Brian W. Aldiss, Michael Swanwick, Anita Mason, Robert C. O’Brien)

/ Joachim Boaz / 29 Comments

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

1. In the Drift, Michael Swanwick (1985)

  • Ron Lieberman’s cover for the 1st edition

From the back cover: “The meltdown at Three Mile Island created the death zone known as the Drift, where the sky burned dark blue and pink and where boneseekers destroyed bodies within.

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Generation Ship Short Story Review: Arthur Sellings’ “A Start in Life” (1954)

/ Joachim Boaz / 7 Comments

This is the 11th post in my newly resurrected series of vintage generation ship short fiction reviews. I’m continuing my exploration of 50s visions.

As a reminder for anyone stopping by, all of the stories I’ll review in the series are available online via the link below in the review.

You are welcome to read and discuss along with me as I explore humanity’s visions of generational voyage. And thanks go out to all who have joined already. I also have compiled an extensive index of generation ship SF if you wish to track down my earlier reviews on the topic and any that you might want to read on your own.

Previously: Frank M. Robinson’s “The Oceans Are Wide” (1954).

Next Up: Michael G. Coney’s “The Mind Prison” (1971).

  • Ed Emshwiller’s cover for Galaxy Science Fiction (September 1954)

Arthur Sellings’ “A Start in Life” first appeared in Galaxy Science Fiction (September 1954), ed. H. L. Gold. 3/5 (Average). You can read it online here.

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Book Review: Fellowship of the Stars, ed. Terry Carr (1974) (Ursula K. Le Guin, John Brunner, George Alec Effinger, Pamela Sargent, Fritz Leiber, et al.)

/ Joachim Boaz / 14 Comments
  •  Joel Avirom’s cover for the 1st edition

3.5/5 (Collated rating: Good)

Terry Carr’s anthology Fellowship of the Stars (1974) collects nine original short stories by luminaries of the genre, Ursula K. Le Guin and Fritz Leiber, to lesser known authors such as Alan Brennert and Mildred Downey Broxon. As the title suggests, Carr commissions stories on the “theme of friendship between human and alien beings” (vii). In a bit of a twist, in more than one instance “friendship” might be code for something far more sinister.

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Updates: Recent Science Fiction Purchases No. CCLXXX (Brian W. Aldiss, Judith Merril, Brian M. Stableford, and Chad Oliver)

/ Joachim Boaz / 62 Comments

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

1. Barefoot In the Head, Brian W. Adliss (1969)

  • Diane and Leo Dillon’s cover for the 1972 edition

From the back cover: “AFTER THE ACID WAR…. Rising from the dust and ashes of a Europe still reeling from the effects of the great Acid War comes Colin Charteris, a futuristic Don Quixote riding the mechanized brontosaurus of the times.

Charteris tries desperately to make sense of the drugged, chaotic world he lives in, and finds himself hailed as the new Messiah. Stranger still, Charteris himself comes to believe this.

His adventures as he tries to save the world from its insanity are brilliantly told, a satiric science fiction comment on the future of mankind.”

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Book Review: In Watermelon Sugar, Richard Brautigan (1968)

/ Joachim Boaz / 31 Comments
  • Edmund Shea’s photograph for the 1969 edition

4.5/5 (Very Good)

Desperate for something unlike any other New Wave SF experiment, I came across Richard Brautigan’s surreal post-catastrophe novel In Watermelon Sugar (1968). Brautigan, best known as a Counterculture poet and the author of Trout Fishing in America (1967), spins a poetic thread simultaneously elegiac and nightmarish. More a sequence of short linked scenes, In Watermelon Sugar charts the memories of a nameless narrator (N) attempting to write a book about the community and inhabitants of iDEATH. Brautigan juxtaposes the terrifying calamities of N’s past–including his memories of his parents consumed before his eyes by the human-like Tigers and the violent rhetoric and self-immolation of inBOIL–with N’s tender memories of his blossoming love for Pauline.

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Book Review: Furthest, Suzette Haden Elgin (1971)

/ Joachim Boaz / 4 Comments
  • Diane and Leo Dillon’s cover for the 1st edition

3/5 (Average)

Coyote Jones arrives on the planet Furthest, a world of water with “spangled life” that danced and pulsed with “red and green and gold and deep soft blue” (7), to learn more about the descendants of a puritanical religious group that fled persecution. The reason for his mission? Little is known about Furthest as it only joined the Federation three years earlier. The psychological readings of the colonists in the central computer seems askew. And, due to the charms of bureaucracy, the delegate from Furthest will soon be appointed the President of the Tri-Galactic Federation! So off goes the bumbling Coyote Jones, folk musician/telepath/relentless lover, to uncover the mysteries of the world. Mostly frustrated by the prudish nature of the women he encounters, Coyote also discovers that the city domes do not contain cities. And the one he is allowed to explore seems a bit too planned and the people a bit too controlled.

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Generation Ship Short Story Review: Frank M. Robinson’s “The Oceans Are Wide” (1954)

/ Joachim Boaz / 24 Comments

This is the 10th post in my newly resurrected series of vintage generation ship short fiction reviews. I’ve returned to an author, Frank M. Robinson (1926-2014), that I promised to read more of after the wonderful “The Wreck of the Ship John B.” (1967).

As a reminder for anyone stopping by, all of the stories I’ll review in the series are available online via the link below in the review.

You are welcome to read and discuss along with me as I explore humanity’s visions of generational voyage. And thanks go out to all who have joined already. I also have compiled an extensive index of generation ship SF if you wish to track down my earlier reviews on the topic and any that you might want to read on your own.

Previously: Leigh Brackett’s “The Ark of Mars” (1953).

Next Up: Arthur Sellings’ “A Start in Life” (1954).

  • Robert Gibson Jones’ cover art for Science Stories (April 1954)

Frank M. Robinson’s “The Oceans Are Wide” first appeared in Science Stories (April 1954), ed. Bea Mahaffey and Ray Palmer. 3.75/5 (Good). You can read it online here. Note: I read the story in Starships, ed. Isaac Asimov, Martin Harry Greenberg, Charles G. Waugh (1983).

A Boy Comes of Age, or How Do You Make a Machiavellian Tyrant

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