Christmas = gift cards = more science fiction books, and a few my dad had procured for himself appeared miraculously in my pile — I’ve decided to break down the clump into manageable four book posts.
And of course, I wish you all a good sci-fi book hunting/reading year!
Enjoy!
1. The Santaroga Barrier, Frank Herbert (1968)
(Paul Lehr’s cover for the 1968 edition)
I’ve read a substantial number of Frank Herbert’s non-Dune Continue reading
(Uncredited cover for the 1970 first edition)
3.5/5 (Good)
Magellan (1970), Colin Anderson’s only science fiction publication, is an inventive but emotionally hollow novel, overly brief, and lacking in sufficient prose to adequately convey the lengthy allegorical sequences. It is a shame that Colin Anderson didn’t write other science fiction works because this one holds great potential. The future evolution of mankind — waiting to be subsumed into a computer of their own making — is a fascinating premise. The tepid and unadventurous prose conflicts with the grand and audacious subject matter.
Brief Plot Summary (limited Continue reading
Here are my favorite films and science fiction novels I’ve reviewed this year (and some other interesting categories) with links to my reviews….
Watch them! Read them! Gaze at them! (the array below….)
The World Inside (1971), Robert Silverberg (REVIEW) 5/5 (Masterpiece)
Silverberg’s The World Inside is a fascinating take on the theme of overpopulation — what if society was organized towards a single goal, propagation? What would society look like? What position in society would women occupy? Men? What would cities look like? Hallways? Rooms? Institutions? What happens to those who don’t fit in? Or, can’t have children?
The Unsleeping Eye (variant title: Continue reading
Half-Price Books in Dallas, Texas (its first location!) = bliss.
9 books = only 12 dollars. (curtesy of my girlfriend’s parents’ pre-Christmas gift)
What an amazing haul — and if I had known they were only going to be twelve dollars I would have picked up nine more. Lots of Silverberg from his glory years… Generation ships… City building machines… Weird psychic forcefields out beyond Pluto… Vietnam army camps experimenting with intelligence enhancing (and death inducing) syphilis strains…
1. Camp Concentration, Thomas M. Disch (1972)
(Uncredited cover for the 1971 edition) Continue reading
(Richard Powers’ cover for the 1959 edition of The Rest Must Die (1959), Kendell Foster Crossen)
The electricity turns off in a futuristic city and people turn into animals and everyone slowly kills each other, mysterious winds sweep through cities killing everyone, large machine minds take over, nuclear bombs destroy everything, intelligent dogs take over, the sun expands drying all the oceans, the sun expands (but not as much) and water floods over all the cities, aliens come with large guns and blow everything up, aliens come with brain probes and make others blow everything up, aliens pretend to be humans and annoy the humans enough so they blow each other up with nuclear bombs, people from the past go back in time and see that humans have blown everything up and they try to prevent the aliens from making the humans blow everything up, a bacterial agent from an alien kills everyone, Continue reading
(Uncredited cover for the 1965 edition of Beyond the Sealed World (1965), Rena M. Vale)
While browsing through my collection of cover images I’ve collated over the last few months for science fiction art post ideas, I came across the uncredited cover for Rena Vale’s Beyond the Sealed World (1965) and was transfixed! The angle of the text, the mountain, the dark expanse of space, the little spaceship, the figures silhouetted against the night, and the surreal shape of the domed city connected to other distant domed cities… If anyone knows the artist (or has a good educated guess) please let me know! The second edition cover (below) still has beautiful domed cities but the caveman, helmeted soldier, and white-clad (not for long, the dress is slipping) woman tableau ruins the feel.
Particularly noteworthy is Jack Gaughan’s elevated domed city cover Continue reading
It’s not every day that a signed D. G. Compton novel arrives free in the mail. About half a year or so ago Ian Sales (check out his amazing blog) hooked me on D. G. Compton’s works and ever since I’ve grabbed as many as I can find on used book stores shelves and I’ve written a slew of reviews (The Unsleeping Eye, The Quality of Mercy, The Steel Crocodile, Synthajoy, The Missionaries). I made a comment on one of his D. G. Compton posts — a few days later a SIGNED copy of Compton’s Scudder’s Game (1988) (below) arrived in the mail!! Ian, thanks again and keep up the uncovering of underrated 60s/70s sci-fi authors!
The others, well, the covers are gorgeous! Two Richard Powers covers (the C. M. Kornbluth short story collection and the Conklin edited anthology). I must confess that the Hunt Collins purchase was impulsive — in part due to the vibrant 50s cover by Bob Lavin.
I apologize for the recent absence of book reviews — due to the approaching end of my last semester of graduate course work I’ve been pressed for time. I have reviews for Joanna Russ’ The Female Man (1975), James White’s The Watch Below (1966), and Samuel R. Delany’s Nova (1968) in preparation.
Enjoy!
1. The Explorers, C. M. Kornbluth (1954) (MY REVIEW)
(Walter Popp’s cover for the August 1952 issue of Fantastic Adventures)
The sphere — as a manifestation of the perfectly round geometrical shape or replete with various derivations and modifications (tentacles, slight elongations, eye sockets, limbs both fleshly or mechanical) — holds a particular fascination for sci-fi artists and authors. The possibilities are endless: spherical aliens, spherical ocean descent vehicles, spherical spaceships, spherical robotic doctors, wizards levitating spherical objects, and spherical legged war vehicles…
I’ve selected a delightful variety of these spherical manifestations. In my favorite (above) female scientists alternately shout about, gaze at, and document descending Continue reading
3.25/5 (Average)
According to Future City, the cities of the future are to be avoided at all costs. There are no utopias here — only overpopulation, pollution, racial warfare, natural disasters, robot takeovers, and eventual reversion to primitivism! But there’s a trajectory! In fact, Roger Elwood, the editor of the volume, asked for new stories that fit along this arc. Elwood claims that there are twenty-two leading science-fiction writers who contributed to the volume. Unfortunately, three of these leading authors don’t submit stories: Tom Disch contributes a one page poem, Clifford D. Simak a brief introduction, and Frederick Pohl a short afterword. Also, two of the twenty-two are monikers for Barry N. Malzberg. Famous authors like Frank Herbert and Ellison contribute substandard short stories. Many of the other leading figures are not “leading figures” in any sense of the word!
As with most collections there are gems AND complete blunders. Robert Silverberg, R. A. Lafferty, Ben Bova (and others) all contribute thought-provoking stories making this collection Continue reading
Science Fiction and Other Suspect Ruminations 