1970s

Book Review: There Will Be Time, Poul Anderson (1972)

/ Joachim Boaz / 21 Comments

(Fernando Fernandez’s cover for the 1973 edition)

4/5 (Good)

Nominated for the 1973 Hugo Award for Best Novel

(Hugo Award related tangent: how Silverberg’s Dying Inside lost to Asimov’s The Gods Themselves is beyond me.  There Will Be Time is the lesser of the three)

Frequent readers of my reviews will have noticed my general dislike of time travel themed SF.  I have two central qualms: Firstly, I am frustrated by the tendency of authors to expound endlessly on the nuances of the particular temporal theory they have chosen to deploy;  secondly, the common obsession with “understanding how the past really was” strikes me as an incredibly superficial/fallacious analysis of the nature of history and historical thinking — individuals today cannot understand “the true nature of the present” simply by existing in it yet alone a different historical period.  Rather, perspective taking, Continue reading →

Book Review: Chronocules (variant title: Hot Wireless Sets, Aspirin Tablets, the Sandpaper Sides of Used Matchboxes, and Something that Might have been Castor Oil), D. G. Compton (1970)

/ Joachim Boaz / 12 Comments

(Diane and Leo Dillon’s cover for the 1970 edition)

3/5 (Average)

D. G. Compton has long been one of my favorite SF authors.  Regrettably, his readership remains small and he has ceased publishing SF.  Novels like The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe (variant title: The Unsleeping Eye) (1973) and Synthajoy (1968) are first rate masterworks with Farewell, Earth’s Bliss (1966) and The Steel Crocodile (1970) close behind.  All of his works have a distinctly English feel with solid, and occasionally beautiful, prose.

Chronocules (1970), with its outrageous variant title Hot Wireless Sets, Aspirin Tablets, the Sandpaper Sides of Used Matchboxes, and Something that Continue reading →

Book Review: As on a Darkling Plain, Ben Bova (1972)

/ Joachim Boaz / 17 Comments

(Chris Moore’s cover for the 1981 edition)

2.75/5 (Average)

Unfortunate title aside (“darkling” sound like a small evil creature in a work of fantasy), Ben Bova’s As on a Darkling Plain (1972) is a middling fix-up novel in every respect.  It is worth noting that Chapters 5 (‘The Jupiter Mission’) and 6 (‘The Sirius Mission’), which comprise a great majority of the novel, appeared earlier in If February 1970 and Galaxy January 1969 as “Pressure Vessel” and “Foeman, Where Do You Flee?” respectively.  I’m not sure how much was expanded or subtracted.  If anyone knows please leave a comment — I find that the act of revising earlier work interesting in itself.

Bova’s novel inspired my recent cover art post on Future Archeology and Mysterious Artifacts.  The premise is a standard one: A mysterious artifact Continue reading →

Updates: Recent Science Fiction Acquisitions No. LXVIII (Varley + Cherryh + Cummings + et. al)

/ Joachim Boaz / 17 Comments

Some fun finds!  Perhaps surprisingly, I still haven’t read Clarke’s “The Sentinel” (1951) so I was happy to find it in a collection collated by Kingsley Amis and Robert Conquest — Spectrum 3 (1963).  Even more appealing are the famous Poul Anderson, J. G. Ballard, and Murray Leinster tales in the same volume…  The entire Spectrum collection (I-V) brings together some fantastic works.

John Varley is one of the important 70s writers that I still haven’t read. Thus, despite the egregious cover, I snatched his collection of 70s stories, The Persistence of Vision (1978)…  I look forward to diving into this one.

Also, C. J. Cherryh was one of my favorite authors as a teen so it’s always nice to come across one of her works I hadn’t devoured yet — in this case, her second novel Brothers of Earth (1976).

1. The Persistence of Vision, John Varley (1978)

(Jim Burns’ cover for Continue reading →

Book Review: Approaching Oblivion, Harlan Ellison (1974)

/ Joachim Boaz / 56 Comments

(Leo and Diane Dillon’s cover for the 1974 edition)

4.25/5 (collated rating: Good)

Ellison’s stories punch where it hurts.  Approaching Oblivion (1974) is filled with transfixing tales about violent future racism (“Knox”), humanity’s last moments (“Kiss of Fire”), the desperate desire to change one’s own past (“One Life, Furnished in Early Poverty”), a last rebel against the militarizing system (“Silent in Gehanna”), and familial rivalry within a vast arcology (“Catman”), etc…

They are terrifying and vicious, immersive and gut-wrenching, and span from baroque far future speculations to near future warnings.  Above all, they are well-written and intelligent.  Many are infused with (pseudo) autobiographical content and lament the societal ills Continue reading →

Adventures in Science Fiction Cover Art: Future Archaeology and Mysterious Artifacts (Alien + Human)

/ Joachim Boaz / 22 Comments

SPCSCNCFCC1953

(Hannes Bok’s cover for the  Space Science Fiction [UK], Volume 1 No. 4 (1953), ed. unlisted)

A spaceship arrives on Mars…  After a cursory initial exploration, the human astronauts conclude that the planet has always been barren and uninhabited.  But in some chasm or scattered in desolate plain, a column is found, and rows of mysterious buildings, and a pulsating crystal…  An abandoned outpost of an alien society?  Or, Earth’s mysterious forebearers…  Summaries such as this one proliferate the dusty SF paperbacks on back shelves of used book stores and the closets of SF fans — the variations are countless.

Queue my cover art theme: The future discovery of mysterious ruins/artifacts Continue reading →

Book Review: Herovit’s World, Barry N. Malzberg (1973)

/ Joachim Boaz / 14 Comments

(Charles Moll’s cover for the 1974 edition)

3.5/5 (Good)

Note: Today is Barry N. Malzberg’s birthday!

Upon reading In the Enclosure (1973) I was immediately seduced by Barry N. Malzberg’s metafictional brand of science fiction — best illustrated by his masterpieces Beyond Apollo (1972) and Revelations (1972).  Although Herovit’s World (1973) contains many of the same metafictional trademarks of Malzberg’s best work, it should be noted that the novel is not science fiction and more a work about writing (pulp) science fiction.  In this case, the mental collapse of a pulp writer whose life may or may not contain “true” autobiographical kernels from Malzberg’s own experience Continue reading →

Adventures in Science Fiction Cover Art: Domed Cities (and Outposts) of the Future, Part IV

/ Joachim Boaz / 12 Comments

Screen shot 2013-01-25 at 9.47.21 PM

(Ley Kenyon’s cover for the 1953 edition of Adventures in Tomorrow (1951), ed. Kendell F. Crossen)

Since the release of the TV series Under the Dome (2013-), based on Stephen King’s 2009 novel by the same name, there has been a resurgence of interest in domed cities.  And for good reason — the trope is one of the most popular of science fiction artists and authors since the 30s (and probably earlier).  Not only do the societal implications and visual allure of the trope of a domed outpost on a harsh planet or a domed city amidst the ruins of Earth arouse the creative authorial juices but also generate some fantastically Continue reading →

Adventures in Science Fiction Cover Art: The Space Station, Part III

/ Joachim Boaz / 12 Comments

8fb71adc43d8c6f43977b5522a534504(Graham Kaye’s cover for the 1955 edition of Tom Swift and his Outpost in Space (1955), Victor Appleton II)

This is Part III of my series on space stations (Part I + Part II).  Ever since I watched 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) as a teen I’ve been fascinated by space stations — platforms for further space exploration!  I can only imagine how exciting it was for fans of science fiction who read about stations before they existed to see them finally constructed. The fact that they became reality — well, perhaps not (yet) as a launching point for space going exploration vessels — almost vindicates the scientific extrapolation of some of these early visions.  Also, Arthur C. Clarke’s Islands in the Sky (1952) happened to be one of my first science fiction novels…..  And C. J. Cherryh’s Downbelow Station (1981) Continue reading →