1950s

Updates: Recent Science Fiction Acquisitions No. XLVIII (Asimov + Brunner + Aldiss)

/ Joachim Boaz / 7 Comments

It’s been a while since I returned to one of the more well-known authors of the 50s — Isaac Asimov.  I’ve read many of his novels and short story collections (Foundation Trilogy, The Caves of Steel, The Naked Sun, The Robots of Dawn, Robots and Empire, The Currents of Space, The Gods Themselves, Nemesis, etc) and have never been too impressed.  However, with a run of recent bad 50s sci-fi works under my belt (review for David Duncan’s egregious Dark Dominion is upcoming) I feel the need to reappraise a few of the 50s greats. So, when I was perusing some gorgeous old paperbacks with well-preserved covers I purchased two Asimov novels for the first time since I was a young teenager.

And another Brunner to add to the 20+ works of his I already own….  Unfortunately the one edition I find was the one edition where the editor edited + modified Brunner’s words without his permission.

And some Aldiss short stories from the 50s….

A gorgeous collection of covers!

1. Pebble in the Sky, Isaac Asimov (1950) (MY REVIEW)

Screen shot 2012-12-24 at 9.50.07 AM

(Uncredited cover for the 1957 Continue reading →

Updates: Recent Science Fiction Acquisitions No. XLVII (Merril + Sheckley + Stableford + Anderson)

/ Joachim Boaz / 2 Comments

Three short story collections and one novel from my Texan hunting grounds.  I enjoyed Merril’s short story collection Daughters of Earth (1968) so I quickly snatched up another…  I’ve been disappointed with Brian M. Stableford before but multiple fellow readers have claimed that The Halcyon Drift (1972) is worth reading.  We shall see…  And one can never have too many Sheckley and Anderson short stories…

1. Out of Bounds, Judith Merril (1960)

(John Schoenherr’s cover for the 1963 edition) Continue reading →

Book Review: Needle in a Timestack, Robert Silverberg (1966)

/ Joachim Boaz / 23 Comments

(Richard Powers’ cover for the 1966 edition)

*Review for the 1966 edition.  The 1979 and 1985 editions were revised.*

collated rating: 3/5 (Average)

Needle in a Timestack (1966) is an uneven collection of ten short stories from the late 50s and early 60s by Robert Silverberg.  By the late 60s and early 70s Silverberg was producing his masterpieces.  However, earlier in his career he wrote mostly pulp novels and short stories.  A few in this collection tackle, in varying degrees of success, social science fiction themes: the media, war propaganda, colonialism, unusual criminal punishment, the suburban lifestyle etc.  Many of these Continue reading →

Adventures in Science Fiction Cover Art: Pyramids (spaceships + future earthscapes + alien temples)

/ Joachim Boaz / 64 Comments

THPRMDSFRM1971

(Jack Faragasso’s cover for the 1971 edition of The Pyramids from Space (1970), Jack Bertin and Peter B. Germano)

This post is in a series on the interaction between television/film and science fiction cover art (The Statue of Liberty on Pre-1968 Magazine and Novel Covers and Cosmic Fetuses + Other Uterine Spaces).  In the former, the scene at the end of Planet of the Apes (1968) drew directly on pre-existing pulp science fiction art tropes.  In the later, Kubrick’s baby in a balloon scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) inspired many artists to reproduce the image of the cosmic fetus.  There isn’t a direct line of influence in this post between these covers and Stargate (1994) and its sequels.  I simply seek to illustrate that there has always been an obsession, verging into the sci-fi genre, with re-interpreting Continue reading →

Updates: Recent Science Fiction Acquisitions N. XLVI (Reed + Pratt + Brown + anthology)

/ Joachim Boaz / 20 Comments

Finally getting near the end of the pile of science fiction novels procured during my latest journey to Texas (a few were in clearance dollar bins) + gifts from 2theD.  I know very little about any of the authors (any info would be read with relish) — and I even bought a book from the early 1980s!  I know, shocker, but it has to do with drowned cities…. one of my favorite themes…. although it’ll never equal the uterine joys of Ballard’s magisterial The Drowned World (1962).

1. Under the City of Angels, Jerry Earl Brown (1981)

(Lou Feck’s cover for the 1981 edition) Continue reading →

Adventures in Science Fiction Cover Art: Cosmic Fetuses + Other Uterine Spaces (+ levitating baby parts)

/ Joachim Boaz / 9 Comments

Screen shot 2012-10-24 at 9.22.09 AM

(Paul Lehr’s cover for the 1970 edition of The Eyes of Heisenberg (1966), Frank Herbert)

Stanley Kubrick’s iconic baby in a balloon image at the end of his film 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) spawned a handful of intriguing cosmic fetus science fiction covers.  Even the famous artist Paul Lehr crafted perhaps the most artistically interesting version for Frank Herbert’s novel, The Eyes of Heisenberg.  Other artists, for example the uncredited creator of The Adam Experiment‘s cover, render incredibly hokey + spooky rip-offs.  Because I’ve found only a few on this particular theme I’ve included a variety of other baby related covers — hovering baby heads in space, mini-holograms of babies, adult men Continue reading →

Book Review: Slave Ship, Frederik Pohl (1956)

/ Joachim Boaz / 8 Comments

(Robert Foster’s cover for the 1969 edition)

2.75/5 (Bad)

Robert Foster’s salacious cover for the 1969 edition of Slave Ship (1956) implies a sort of John Norman-esque — of Gor “fame” — sexist slave girl sci-fi fantasy with collars and all.  Don’t worry, I bought the novel knowing full well that the “slaves” were not nubile young women but dogs + cats + chimps + seals drafted into the war effort.  But a naked seal on a leash won’t sell many books… At least Foster’s outlandish fabrication and manipulation of Pohl’s vision includes a hapless chimpanzee strapped into a mechanical device!  In case you’re fourteen years old and find Foster’s cover all dusty in some abandoned seldom seen corner of a used book store be warned Continue reading →

Updates: Recent Science Fiction Acquisitions N. XLIV (Anderson + Brunner + Bova + Budrys)

/ Joachim Boaz / 6 Comments

My Austin, TX haul….

Two classics I’ve yet to read: Budrys’ Who? (1958) and Poul Anderson’s Tau Zero (1970)…  The second in a trilogy by John Brunner, The Avengers of Carrig (1969) — the first, Polymath (first published in 1963 but expanded in 1974) was a readable Brunner pulp.

I’ve never enjoyed Bova’s novels, but I impulsively picked up As on a Darkling Plain (1972), perhaps influenced by the Ellis’ cover.

1. Who?, Algis Budrys (1958)

(Robert V. Engel’s cover for the 1958 edition) Continue reading →

Book Review: The Wall Around the World, Theodore R. Cogswell (1962)

/ Joachim Boaz / 8 Comments

(John Schoenherr’s cover for the 1962 edition)

collated rating: 2.25/5 (Bad)

In my quest to bring to light the esoteric, the worthwhile yet forgotten, and to re-examine unjustly maligned works of science fiction I’m unfortunately more likely find incredibly average works than if I were to stick to the more well-trod path.  Theodore Cogswell’s short stories attempt unsuccessfully to wed clichéd fantasy + horror elements — à la vampires, werewolves, broomsticks and all that drek — with science fiction staples, including alien invasions and alien visitations.  I suspect there was, and still is, a market for such hybridity.  I don’t have to mention the conveyor belt chunking out vampire/zombie excreta all over our modern bookstore shelves… (I apologize to anyone who’s offended or implicated by that statement).  Almost all of Cogswell’s stories are lighthearted (besides ‘The Burning’), replete with heavy doses of whimsy, and in the few readable stories, some vibrancy.

Not my type of science fiction or fantasy.

Continue reading →