1950s

Book Review: No Time Like Tomorrow, Brian Aldiss (1959)

/ Joachim Boaz / 6 Comments

Screen shot 2013-01-10 at 11.21.02 PM

(Richard Powers’ cover for the 1959 edition)

3.75/5 (collated rating: Good)

This collection of Brian Aldiss short stories from the mid-to-late 50s is a notch above the middling Galaxies Like Grains of Sand (1960), collated from the same period, which I reviewed a few months back.  Aldiss is definitely one of the more bizarre and original (along with Philip K. Dick) sci-fi voices of the 50s (and beyond).

Most collections are purposely comprised of a mixture of good and bad stories hence the generally low collated ratings I hand out.  Unlike Galaxies, most of the stories in this collection are worth reading and none are egregiously bad.  ‘Not for an Age,’ ‘Judas Danced’, ‘The Failed Men’, and ‘Outside’ are all highly Continue reading →

Updates: Recent Science Fiction Acquisitions No. XLVV (Herbert + Anderson + Brackett + Kornbluth)

/ Joachim Boaz / 19 Comments

More Christmas gifts + Winter break used bookstore finds….

Two more Richard Powers covers from the 50s…

A non-Dune Frank Herbert find with a wonderful Vincent Di Fate cover…  I’ve been somewhat ambivalent with Herbert’s non-Dune corpus in the last few years.  A 50s Poul Anderson adventure, a later Leigh Brackett novel, and another scathing satire from the delightful pen of C. M. Kornbluth…

1. The God Makers, Frank Herbert (1972) (MY REVIEW)

(Vincent Di Fate’s cover for the 1973 edition) Continue reading →

Book Review: Level 7, Mordecai Roshwald (1959)

/ Joachim Boaz / 36 Comments

(Sanden’s cover for the 1960 edition)

4.75/5 (Very Good)

I recently received a copy of Modecai Roshwald’s Level 7 (1959) from 2thD at Potpourri of Science Fiction Literature (his enthusiastic review of the novel here).  Roshwald’s novel should be considered along with Walter Miller, Jr.’s A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959, published 1960) as one the best nuclear disaster sci-fi novels of the late 50s (and all time).  Unlike Nevil Shute’s On the Beach (1957) or Pat Frank’s Alas, Babylon (1959) the allegiance (Soviet or American) of the protagonists of Level 7 remains Continue reading →

Updates: Recent Science Fiction Acquisitions No. XLVIV (Crowley + Strete + McAllister + Bond)

/ Joachim Boaz / 8 Comments

Christmas presents!

Intriguing literary sci-fi by Craig Strete and John Crowley…

Works of unknown quality, Bruce McAllister’s Humanity Prime (1971) and Nelson Bond’s collection No Time Like the Future (1954)…

And one of my favorite Powers’ covers.

1. Humanity Prime, Bruce McAllister (1971)

(David Meltzer’s cover for the 1971 edition) Continue reading →

Book Review: Dark Dominion, David Duncan (1954)

/ Joachim Boaz / 2 Comments

Screen shot 2012-12-22 at 9.06.53 PM(Richard Powers’ cover for the 1954 edition)

2.5/5 (Bad)

David Duncan, most famous for writing the screenplay to George Pal’s film The Time Machine (1960), produced a handful of genre and non-genre novels in the 1950s.  Bluntly put, the Dark Dominion (1954) was one of the more disappointing novels I’ve read this year.  It is worthwhile for one thing alone, Richard Powers’ gorgeous cover.  Duncan’s novel is characterized by an incredibly painful strain of melodrama even for the 50s, downright preposterous science Continue reading →

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)

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(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 →