1960s

Updates: Recent Science Fiction Purchases No. CCCLIII (C. J. Cherryh, Alan Burns, Brian M. Stableford, and Irene Clyde)

/ Joachim Boaz / 13 Comments

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

1. C. J. Cherryh’s Serpent’s Reach (1980)

  • David Mattingly’s cover for the 1980 paperback edition

From the back cover: “The constellation of Hydrus, known as the Serpent, is compact and obscure as seen from Earth’s sky. Even in the great era of interstellar colonization it remained obscure. For it was under strict quarantine – harboring an intelligent race, powerful, alien, and inhuman.

Yet there were human colonies within the Serpent’s Reach, cut off from the galaxy beyond, with their own inbred culture, their Families and traditions, and their special relationships to the inhuman majat.

This is the strange and brilliant novel of Raen, the last of the massacred Sul Family, and of her lifetime pledge to find vengeance. It was to take her across the worlds of the Reach into the very center of the alien webwork, into the strands of thought and counter-thought that knit the forbidden constellation into a complex of interbred cultures that no outsider could hope to unravel.”

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Short Book Reviews: Tanith Lee’s Drinking Sapphire Wine (1977) and Edmund Cooper’s All Fool’s Day (1966)

/ Joachim Boaz / 15 Comments

Note: My read but “waiting to be reviewed pile” is growing. Short rumination/tangents/impressions are a way to get through the stack before my memory and will fades. My website partially serves as a record of what I have read and a memory palace for future projects. Stay tuned for more detailed and analytical reviews.

1. Tanith Lee’s Drinking Sapphire Wine (1977)

  • Don Maitz’ cover for the 1st edition

3.5/5 (Good)

In 2019, I read and mostly enjoyed Tanith Lee’s Don’t Bite the Sun (1976). The sequel Drinking Sapphire Wine (1977) follows the same nameless narrator of the first volume. It’s set in the same post-scarcity future  replete with advanced technology where youth, the Jang, are encouraged (and “taught” via hypno-schools) to engage in all forms of excess. The narrator, sometimes female and other times male, attempts to find life’s purpose in a society without need. In cities surrounded by desert sand and the hidden ruins of ancient habitation, humans deploy technology to satiate all their whims. Society falls into three groups: The Jang, or the youth. In Limbo, new bodies are made for the Jang who commit suicide and others who want a change in costume or gender. Old People, the post-Jang state, are allowed to have children and pursue simple jobs (of course, backed up entirely by machines!). They too are able to change gender and create new bodies… The third and final “human” state are Quasi-Robots, who are humanoid androids and care for every human need.

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Updates: Recent Science Fiction Purchases No. CCCLII (Joe Haldeman, Jack C. Haldeman II, Zenna Henderson, Thomas Burnett Swann, and Edwin Corley)

/ Joachim Boaz / 10 Comments

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

1. Joe Haldeman and Jack C. Haldeman II’s There is No Darkness (1983)

  • Jim Burns’ cover for the 1st edition

From the back cover: “The universe is not interested in fair play. The universe is interested in survival. That is lesson number one aboard the giant advance-training ship called ‘Starschool.’ Those who fail to learn lesson one very rarely have cause to worry about what comes next…”

Initial Thoughts: Even at his worst, I find Joe Haldeman a polished author. I’ve only read a few of his brother’s short stories. I’ve hear this volume is a bit on the juvenile SF side of things. We shall see.

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Updates: Recent Science Fiction Purchases No. CCCLI (Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, Philip K. Dick, Howard L. Cory, Ward Moore and Avram Davidson, and Muriel Jaeger)

/ Joachim Boaz / 38 Comments

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

1. Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s Roadside Picnic (1972, trans. Olena Bormashenko, 2012)

  • Dominic Harman’s cover for the 2012 edition

From the back cover: “Red Schuhart is a stalker, one of those misfits who are compelled, in spite of the extreme danger, to venture illegally into the Zone to collect the mysterious artefacts that the alien visitors left scattered around. His life is dominated by the place and the thriving black market in the the alien products. Even the nature of his mutant daughter has been determined by the Zone. And it is for her that he makes his last, tragic foray into the hazardous and hostile territory.”

Initial Thoughts: One of those obvious holes in my SF knowledge… I certainly have read about the writing pair but I’ve only read a story here and there–for example “Wanderers and Travellers” (1963, trans. 1966)–and one novel that I never managed to review. My father has been pushing me to read more of their work. And yes, Andrei Tarkovsky’s adaptation Stalker (1979) remains one of my favorite movies. I took a History of Russian Film class in college and wrote my term paper on Tarkovsky’s use of color.

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Short Story Reviews: David Ely’s “Court of Judgment” (1961), “The Last Friday in August” (1961), and “The Wizard of Light” (1962)

/ Joachim Boaz / 4 Comments

In 2019, I reviewed and adored David Ely’s science fiction thriller Seconds (1963), the source material for John Frankenheimer’s similarly brilliant 1966 film. I did not know that Ely got his start in genre magazines under the editorship of Cele Goldsmith Lalli (1933-2002), known for “discovering” SF luminaries like Ursula K. Le Guin, Thomas M. Disch, Keith Laumer, Sonya Dorman, and Roger Zelazny (among others).1 Before his writing career, Ely served in the Navy (1945-1946) and Army (1950-1952) and as a reporter in St. Louis (until 1956) before entering the corporate world as an “administrative assistant” for the nebulously named Cold War organization Development and Resources Corporation in New York (1956-1959).2

After a handful of short stories in genre magazines, Ely moved to far more lucrative venues like Playboy and Cosmopolitan. I’ve had my eyes on his collection–containing additional SF tales–Time Out (1968) for years. Unfortunately, prices rarely drop below $70 with shipping. Science fiction seems to have been close to his heart as he returned to the genre with his novel Journal of the Flood Year (1992).

Let’s get to the stories!

  • Alex Schomburg’s cover for Fantastic Stories of Imagination, ed. Cele Goldsmith (October 1961)

3/5 (Average)

“Court of Judgment” (1961) first appeared in Fantastic Stories of Imagination, ed. Cele Goldsmith (October 1961). You can read it online here. Received an Honorable Mention at the 1962 Hugo Award for Best Short Fiction.

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What pre-1985 science fiction are you reading? + Update No. XXIX

/ Joachim Boaz / 45 Comments

What pre-1985 science fiction adventures have you started this summer? Any great reads? Disappointing ones? Intriguing discoveries? Here’s the April installment of this column.

  • A selection of read volumes from my shelves

In a conversation on Blueksy, someone asked for my history of science fiction recommendations (including a few general surveys). I scoured my shelves and came up with an all-too-large pile (with some notable volumes I wanted to include but could not find) of favorite histories of science fiction. See photo below. I tried to include monographs that were not studies of single authors.

As I am a historian by training and trade who holds on to some of my disciplinary ticks and hangups, I also included works by trained academics with two major exceptions 1) Mike Ashley’s multi-volume study of science fiction magazines (but no other recent works exist and they’re really good for the nuts and bolts of genre magazines) and 2) Alec Nevala-Lee’s approachable and well-researched group biography  Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction (2018). Both should be read.

  • A photo of a few of my history of science fiction recommendations

I deliberately avoided works by science fiction authors like Damon Knight, Brian W. Aldiss, and Frederik Pohl. They’re great sources and I own and have read many of them but…. they are not histories by trained scholars. I do not mean for this to come off as elitist. Rather, my personal remit for my list—I needed to winnow down the hundreds and hundreds I own–was deliberately narrow! I read and use sources widely. Remember, these are my favorites — they might not be the best but they got me thinking and reading and writing. And that’s what we all should be doing, reading what makes us happy.

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Updates: Recent Science Fiction Purchases No. CCCL(Jack Vance, Adolfo Bioy Casares, Thom Keyes, and Kenneth Bulmer)

/ Joachim Boaz / 20 Comments

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

1. Jack Vance’s Galactic Effectuator (1980)

  • David Mattingly’s cover for the 1981 edition

From the back cover: “Meet Miro Hetzel, Galactic Effectuator. He’s part gentlemen, part detective, part fraud, and his trail of exploits cuts through some of the more improbably civilizations in the universe. Join him in a trip to the planet Maz, whose natives are so fierce that they’ll fight three battle before lunch and then dine on the enemy–a planet that only a man with Miro Hetzel’s steely nerve would dare to visit at all.”

Initial Thoughts: This is a fix-up novel containing “The Dogtown Tourist Agency” (1975) and “Freitzke’s Turn” (1977). I previously reviewed “Freitzke’s Turn” (1977) and did not classify it amongst Vance’s best. As many know, I’ve soured a bit on Vance in the last decade. That said, I still think novels like Wyst: Alastor, 1716 (1978) and Emphyrio (1969) are worth the read.

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Short Book Reviews: Polly Toynbee’s Leftovers (1966) and Lewis Gibbs’ Late Final (1951)

/ Joachim Boaz / 4 Comments

Note: My read but “waiting to be reviewed pile” is growing. Short rumination/tangents/impressions are a way to get through the stack before my memory and will fades. My website partially serves as a record of what I have read and a memory palace for future projects. Stay tuned for more detailed and analytical reviews.

1. Polly Toynbee’s Leftovers (1966)

  • Paul May’s cover for the 1969 edition

2.5/5 (Bad)

After reading a monograph on the history of science fiction I inevitably find a handful of works that I must track down (more as an act of data collection than a quest for literary genius). Andrew Hammond’s Cold War Stories: British Dystopian Fiction, 1945-1990 (2017) contained a wealth of lesser-known works that immediately dented my pocketbook.1

Polly Toynbee’s Leftovers (1966) fits into Hammond’s analysis of a British Empire irrevocably weakened by WWII and growing US supremacy in the Cold War. Toynbee’s novel, and in even more severe terms Lewis Gibbs’ Late Final (1951) discussed below, with its focus on a handful of self-absorbed survivors of an apocalyptic event depicts a nation “irrelevant to the geopolitical present and as unrecognizable to its own past.”2 Intriguing ideas aside, debilitating flaws sink Leftovers. I found it interesting only as a lens for the moment — youth culture and rebellion in the mid-60s. As a literary and reading experience, Leftovers leaves a lot to be desired. Toynbee would soon abandon her literary career for a famous career in journalism from a leftist perspective.

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Updates: Recent Science Fiction Purchases No. CCCXLIX (Aldous Huxley, Joyce Thompson, John Collier, and an anthology of stories from The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction)

/ Joachim Boaz / 15 Comments

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

1. The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction, 8th Series, ed. Anthony Boucher (1959)

  • Ed Emshwiller’s cover for the 1963 edition

From the back cover: No summary blurb.

Contents: C. S. Lewis’ “Ministering Angels” (1955), Poul Anderson’s “Backwardness” (1958), Kit Reed’s “The Wait” (1958), Isaac Asimov’s “The Up-to-Date Sorcerer” (1958), Fritz Leiber’s “A Deskful of Girls” (1958), Damon Knight’s “Eripmav” (1958), Brian W. Aldiss’ “Poor Little Warrior!’ (1958), Shirley Jackson’s “The Omen” (1958), Jules Verne’s “Gilt Braltar” (1887), Avram Davidson’s “The Grantha Sighting” (1958), C. M. Kornbluth’s “Theory of Rocketry” (1958), John Shepley’s “Gorilla Suit” (1958), Zenna Henderson’s “Captivity” (1958), and Alfred Bester’s “The Men Who Murdered Mohammed” (1958)

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