I must confess, I’ve never read an Octavia Butler novel… I now own one and will read it soon. More Ballard! More Brunner (a review of his 1969 masterpiece The Jagged Orbit is coming soon)! And a complete mystery, I mean, who besides Tarbandu over at The PorPor Books Blog has read Newton and the Quasi-Apple (1975) by Stanley Schmidt?
Thoughts?
1. The Voices of Time, J. G. Ballard (1962) (MY REVIEW)
(Richard Powers’ cover for the 1962 edition) Continue reading
(Walter Popp’s cover for the 1953 issue of Fantastic Story Magazine, ed. Samuel Mines)
It has been along time since I cobbled together a cover art post…
…but it’s a good one!
This is Part II of my Visualizing Time sequence—if you haven’t seen it already check out Part I. And in Part II we have a standoff across time with your primitive ancestors, decay and the hourglass, rewriting America’s racist past, the sundial as an arena for an epic showdown with an alien, jumping through cave paintings (a metaphor Continue reading
More Simak! More Philip José Farmer Farmer! And two unknown qualities, Harness’ collection The Rose (1955) and Sydney van Scyoc’s Saltflower (1971)…
And three of the the covers for this collection are top-notch—two Powers’ gems and a wonderful Lehr “cityscape.”
Thoughts?
1. Saltflower, Sydney Van Scyoc (1971)
(Paul Lehr’s cover for the 1971 edition) Continue reading
(Richard Powers’ cover for the 1955 edition
4/5 (collated rating: Good)
Robert Sheckley’s easily one of the best SF satirists in the short story form. The collection Citizen in Space (1955), although not as uniformly brilliant as the collection Store of Infinity (1960), is chock full of gems including “The Luckiest Man in the World” (1955), “Something for Nothing” (1954), “Ask a Foolish Question” (1953), and “Skulking Permit” (1954). Sheckley exposes in all their glory the vast variety of humankind’s follies and utopic delusions.
Later in the 50s and in the span of 6os his visions would become increasingly searing and metafictional. This early collection Continue reading
I while back I put out a call for SF novels/short works on immortality to add to a preliminary list I put together. Due to my lack of knowledge of newer SF and uncanny ability to forget relevant previously read works I eagerly added your suggestions. And Marta Randall’s Islands (1976) motivated me to finally post it…
Here’s the LIST!
If you can think of any that I might be missing be sure to Continue reading
First, a painful example of early 60s marketing for a SF novel written by a women: “WOMEN ARE WRITING SCIENCE-FICTION! ORIGINAL! BRILLIANT!! DAZZLING!!! Women are closer to the primitive than men. They are conscious of the moon-pulls, the earth-tides. They posses a buried memory of humankind’s obscure and ancient past which can emerge to unique color and flavor a novel.”
Uh huh.
I wish I possessed a buried memory of humankind’s obscure and ancient past…
A wonderful batch. My first Avram Davidson collection although the blurb and cover are utterly unappealing. More Ballard, my first Margaret St. Clair novel, more Ellison…
Thoughts?
1. Vermillion Sands, J. G. Ballard (1971)
(Richard Powers’ cover for the 1971 edition) Continue reading
One of the better groups of acquisitions in a while! After Katherine MacLean’s masterpiece Missing Man (1975) I was very excited to come across a collection of her late 40s and 50s short stories. Unfortunately, my edition — from 1973— had such an awful cover that I couldn’t put in on this post. Instead, I put the first edition cover by Paul Lehr which is simply gorgeous….
Ballard collections are always welcome! I have all of his short works in a single volume but the Powers cover is top-notch.
One of Ian Watson’s most famous novels…
And an unknown work by Brian Aldiss, Enemies of the System (1978)… Has anyone read it? I suspect it will be the weakest book of the bunch.
1. The Diploids, Katherine MacLean (1962)
(Uncredited — but looks like Lehr — cover for the 1962 edition) Continue reading
(Blanchard’s cover for the 1960 edition)
4/5 (collated rating: Good)
Blanchard’s abstract vaginal cover for the 1960 first edition of Philip José Farmer’s Strange Relations (1960) hints, just obliquely enough to avoid being explicit, at the collection’s radical and groundbreaking contents. Nothing else existed like this from the 50s! Having exploded onto the scene with the “transgressive” (SF encyclopedia) novella “The Lovers” (1952) (later expanded to novel length), Strange Relations (1960) collects a further five short works from the mid-50s and later on similar themes — theology, sex, xenobiology, Freud, and social satire.
Each work revolves around a particular Freudian scenario, a Freudian fantasy. One can imagine that authors such as Barry N. Malzberg Continue reading
More Dallas, TX Half Price Book finds… and a few gifts from 2theD at Potpourri of Science Fiction Literature (found on one of his infrequent trips to the states).
Can’t wait to tackle the Ian Watson collection — Ian Sales has characterized him one of the treasure of the British SF (I’ll post a book of his in the coming weeks). Wilhelm’s extensive reputation seems to be based mostly on her Hugo-winning fix-up novel, Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang (1976). It’s unfortunate that few read her other novels and short story collections. The Nebula-nominated Margaret and I (1971) is a welcome edition to my collection.
I’ve not had success with Philip José Farmer in the past—To Your Scattered Bodies Go (1971) might be the worst novel to win a Hugo—but the collection of 50s novelettes Strange Relations (1960) was too good to pass up.
And finally, my find of the holiday break, a SIGNED (with personal note) copy of Edward Bryant’s collection Cinnabar (1976)! For a mere two dollars (incorrectly placed in the non-signed SF books)….
1. The Very Slow Time Machine, Ian Watson (1979) (MY REVIEW)
(Paul Alexander’s cover for the 1979 edition) Continue reading
Science Fiction and Other Suspect Ruminations 