Exploration Log 9: Three More Interviews with Clifford D. Simak (1904-1988)

April 27, 2025April 28, 2025 / Joachim Boaz / 10 Comments

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Back in July 2024, I posted six interviews with Clifford D. Simak (1904-1988). Since then I’ve tracked down three more. As in that post, I’ll provide a rundown of each interview and provide quotes of interesting passages. In the interviews, Simak comes across as an author deeply suspicious of rigorous generic distinctions, passionate about all life, and open to science fiction as an ever-changing and evolving entity.

As readers of the site know, I have a substantial interest in Simak’s SF that culminated last year in my September article “‘We Must Start Over Again and Find Some Other Way of Life’: The Role of Organized Labor in the 1940s and ’50s Science Fiction of Clifford D. Simak” (2024) in Journey Planet #84. Since then I’ve posted an Exploration Log on his 1971 Worldcon speech, reviewed Best Science Fiction Stories of Clifford D. Simak (1957), and contributed to a podcast on “The Huddling Place” (1944) (the second City story).

Enjoy! And if you know of more interviews (or are able to update the Internet Speculative Fiction Database entry as it only includes five of the nine interviews I’ve covered) let me know.

THE INTERVIEWS

Jim Odbert’s cover for Rune # 43 (May 1975)

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Updates: Recent Science Fiction Purchases No. CCCXLII (Robert Silverberg, C. L. Moore, Henry Kuttner, Peter Tate, and Thomas Burnett Swann)

March 24, 2025March 24, 2025 / Joachim Boaz / 16 Comments

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

1. Tom O’Bedlam, Robert Silverberg (1985)

Jim Burns’ cover for the 1986 edition

From the back cover: “MESSIAH OR MADMAN? It is 2103 and Tom O’Bedlam, madman, prophet, and visionary, wanders through California, dwelling place of the last humans on a continent decimated by radioactive dust. Tom, caught up in a living vision of distant worlds ruled by godlike beings, is the herald of a new age, a herald no one wants to hear until others too begin to dream of salvation beyond the stars. Yet while many dream, only tom has the power to make the wondrous visions real, to give people the ultimate escape they desire. Across the universe they must go… if Tom is humanity’s last hope–and not its final destroyer.”

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Exploration Log 8: Pat M. Kuras and Rob Schmieder’s “When It Changed: Lesbians, Gay Men, and Science Fiction Fandom” (1980)

February 15, 2025February 16, 2025 / Joachim Boaz / 17 Comments

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“We also encountered many gay people, feminists and progressives of every stripe. These people were at the convention because present day science fiction has much to offer them. Science fiction is the fiction of ideas, and the ideas coming from the minds of the new writers more and more concern progressive analyses of social issues.”

— Pat M. Kuras and Rob Schmieder (1980)

At the 38th World Science Fiction Convention (29th August–1st September, 1980) held in Boston, MA, organizers scheduled the first Worldcon panel with an openly LGBTQ topic: “The Closed Open Mind: Homophobia in Science Fiction Fantasy Stories” moderated by Jerry Jacks, one of the “early openly gay fans.”¹ Around 200 fans attended to hear Elizabeth A. Lynn (SFF author), Samuel R. Delany (SFF author), Frank M. Robinson (SF author and activist), and Norman Spinrad (SFWA President and SF author) (“the token straight”) discuss issues of representation.

Pat M. Kuras and Rob Schmieder’s “When It Changed: Lesbians, Gay Men and Science Fiction Fandom” in the September 27th, 1980 issue of Gay Community News

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Exploration Log 7: Interview with Jordan S. Carroll, author of Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right (2024)

January 6, 2025January 6, 2025 / Joachim Boaz / 22 Comments

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Over the last few years, I have attempted to incorporate a smattering of the vast range of spectacular scholarship on science fiction into my reviews and highlight works with my Exploration Log series that speak to me.¹ Today I have an interview with Jordan S. Carroll about his brand-new book, Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right (2024). In the book, he examines the ways the alt-right uses classic science fiction imagery and authors to mainstream fascism and advocate for the overthrow of the state.

You can buy an inexpensive physical copy ($10) directly from the University of Minnesota Press website or an eBook version ($3.79) on Amazon.

Thank you so much for agreeing to this interview. First, can you introduce yourself and research interests?

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My 2024 in Review (Best Science Fiction Novels and Short Fiction, Articles/Podcasts, Reading Initiatives, and Bonus Categories)

January 5, 2025January 5, 2025 / Joachim Boaz / 53 Comments

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Here’s to a happy reading in 2025! I hope you had a successful reading year. Whether you are a lurker, occasional visitor, a regular commenter, a follower on Bluesky or Mastodon, thank you for your continued support. It’s hard to express how important (and encouraging) the discussions that occur in the comments, social media, and via email are to me. This was the third year running of record-breaking numbers of viewers and views in the 13-year history of my site. What were your favorite vintage SF reads–published pre-1985–of 2024? Let me know in the comments.

Clifford D. Simak defined my 2024. Starting with a February review of his collection Worlds Without End (1964), I embarked on a fiction and non-fiction reading extravaganza that culminated in my article for Journey Planet, which I spent most of the summer writing, titled “‘We Must Start Over Again and Find Some Other Way of Life’”’: The Role of Organized Labor in the 1940s and ’50s Science Fiction of Clifford D. Simak.” Despite his Grand Master status, there’s little scholarship on Simak’s work and so much more to be done. As expected, there was little response to the article outside of my website. I also wrote two Exploration Logs on six of his interviews and his 1971 Worldcon speech and contributed to a podcast on “The Huddling Place” (1944) (the second City story). Sometimes you find a little niche that you never expected to inhabit which you feel there’s so much more to explore and say. I hope my Simak focus continues into 2025.

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Book Review: In the Drift, Michael Swanwick (1985)

December 14, 2024December 28, 2024 / Joachim Boaz / 17 Comments

Mark Salwowski’s cover for the 1989 edition

3.25/5 (Above Average)

In The Drift (1985), a fix-up novel comprised of two Nebula-nominated short works–“Mummer Kiss” (1981) and “Marrow Death” (1984), maps a new way forward in an ecologically and genetically ravaged post-apocalyptic age. The entire concoction decays with a sense of grim unease and cavorts around piles of dead that would make a triumvir from the Late Roman Republic proud. It’s a violent, erotic, and disquieting experience that can’t entirely hide its flaws behind the decadent panache.

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Short Fiction Reviews: Leigh Kennedy’s “Salamander” (1977), “Whale Song” (1978), “Detailed Silence” (1980), and “Speaking10 to Others2; Speaking3 to Others20” (1981)

November 17, 2024November 17, 2024 / Joachim Boaz / 24 Comments

In the past few years, I’ve put together a series on the first three published short fictions by female authors who are completely new to me or whose most famous SF novels fall mostly outside the post-WWII to mid-1980s focus of my reading adventures.

Today I’ve selected the first four stories by an author I’ve only recently started to read–Leigh Kennedy (1951-). I’d previously reviewed “Helen, Whose Face Launched Twenty-Eight Conestoga Hovercraft” (1982) and placed her on the list for this series. According to SF Encyclopedia, Kennedy’s “writing is succinct, polished, lucent, and her stories are emotionally penetrating; it is unfortunate that she has fallen from the world of novel publishing, though continuing to work as a professional indexer.” And I can’t agree more! Her first four stories show great promise and moments of refined vision. I can’t help but think the backlash to her Nebula-nominated (and best-known work) “Her Furry Face” (1983) might have had some effect on her trajectory.

So far I’ve featured Alice Eleanor Jones (1916-1981), Phyllis Gotlieb (1926-2009), Sydney J. Van Scyoc (1939-2023), Josephine Saxton (1935-), Carol Emshwiller (1921-2019), Wilmar H. Shiras (1908-1990), Nancy Kress (1948-), Melisa Michaels (1946-2019), Lee Killough (1942-), Betsy Curtis (1917-2002), and Eleanor Arnason (1942-). To be clear, I do not expect transformative or brilliant things from first stories. Rather, it’s a way to get a sense of subject matter and concerns that first motivated authors to put pen to paper.

Let’s get to the stories!

George Schelling’s interior art for Leigh Kennedy’s “Salamander” in Analog, ed. Ben Bova (June 1977)

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Updates: Recent Science Fiction Purchases No. CCCXXXVIII (Gregory Benford, Dean McLaughlin, Warren Norwood, and Aileen La Tourette)

October 5, 2024 / Joachim Boaz / 21 Comments

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

1. In Alien Flesh, Gregory Benford (1986)

Joe Bergeron’s cover for the 1986 edition

From the back cover: “A journey into the depts of space and time by Gregory Benford, winner of the Nebula Award.”

Contents: “In Alien Flesh” (1978), “Time Shards” (1979), “Redeemer” (1979), “Snatching the Bot” (1977), “Relativistic Effects” (1982), “Nooncoming” (1978), “To the Storming Gulf” (1985), “White Creatures” (1975), “Me/Days” (1984), “Of Space/Time and the River” (1985), “Exposures” (1981), “Time’s Rub” (1984), “Doing Lennon” (1975).

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