Alfred Coppel

(Uncredited cover for the 1971 edition)

4.25/5 (Very Good)

“In my holster I carried a pistol that had never been fired. Yet I was master of ten thousand graves” (72).

Occasionally my childhood love of survival tales—whether post-apocalyptic nightmares or sailors stranded on Pacific islands—rears its head and I am forced to track down a book, languishing in some forgotten corner, that satiates the craving. Alfred Coppel’s Dark December (1960), an unknown gem, successfully distills in ultra-realistic strokes the basic post-nuclear war survival formula: man traverses a bombed landscape, pockmarked with the vestiges of human habitation, on a quest to find his family. Dark December is a careful study of trauma and survival in the face of forces willing to plunge the world back into Continue reading →

September will be a slow month, my apologies in advance. The review backlog grows and grows–reviews of Poul Anderson’s Tau Zero (1970) and The Best SF Stories from New Worlds #2 (1968) should be appearing soon. Although, there are many unreviewed volumes less fresh on my memory…

At least I have a massive review INDEX to keep you all busy.

I am diligently posting all the KWG volumes I snagged from a local Half Price Books—this shadowy person had a spectacular collection.

I am rarely interested in SF series, but, I’ll make an exception as Suzy McKee Charnas’ Walk to the End of the World (1974) was so darn amazing!

More Sheckley!

More Tucker! Fresh off the very satisfying The Long Loud Silence (1952)…

And finally, a novel from an author I’ve never read before—Alfred Coppel.

As always, thoughts/comments are welcome.

1. Motherlines, Suzy McKee Charnas (1978)