avant-garde

Updates: Recent Science Fiction Purchases No. CCCXXV (Walter Tevis, Katherine MacLean, Michael Frayn, and Jeffrey A. Carver)

/ Joachim Boaz / 35 Comments

My rough start to the semester proves hard to dispel. I’ll get back to my regular programming soon–I promise. In the meantime, I’ve collected some goodies!

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

1. The Man Who Fell to Earth, Walter Tevis (1963)

  • Jim Burns’ cover for the 1982 edition

From inside page: “He was not a man; yet he was very much like a man. He was six and a half feet tall, and some men are even taller than that; his hair was as white as that of an albino, yet his face was a light tan color, and his eyes a pale blue. His frame was improbably slight, his features delicate. There was an elfin quality to his face, a fine, boyish look to the wide intelligent eyes.

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

/ Joachim Boaz / 61 Comments
  • A selection of SF volumes from my shelves

What pre-1985 science fiction are you reading this week?

Thanks again for all the great conversation. Make sure to check out the previous installment if you haven’t already. As before, I’ve included a bit about the books in the photograph, birthdays from the last two weeks, and brief ruminations on what I’ve been reading and writing.

Let me know what pre-1985 SF you’ve been reading!

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

/ Joachim Boaz / 77 Comments
  • A selection of SF volumes from my shelves

What pre-1985 science fiction are you reading this week?

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the conversations and connections you all have made in the comments over the last two months of this column. Make sure to check out the previous installment if you haven’t already. As before, I’ve included a bit about the books in the photograph, birthdays from the last two weeks, and brief ruminations on what I’ve been reading and writing.

Let me know what pre-1985 SF you’ve been reading!

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

/ Joachim Boaz / 68 Comments
  • A selection of SF volumes from my shelves

What pre-1985 science fiction are you reading this weekend?

After the success of the previous installment, I’ve decided to make this a bimonthly post (“column”) for my site (“fanzine”). As before, I’ve included a bit about the books in the photograph, birthdays from the last two weeks, and brief ruminations on what I’ve been reading and writing.

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Short Story Reviews: Russell Bates’ “Legion” (1971), “Get With the Program” (1972), and “A Modest Proposal” (1973)

/ Joachim Boaz / 3 Comments

Welcome fellow vintage science fiction fans!

This is Part I of II in a series covering the short fiction of Russell Bates (1941-2018), one of a handful of Native American science fiction authors active in the 1970s [1]. I first came across his name while investigating all the authors featured in Craig Strete’s Native American fanzine Red Planet Earth (6 issues in 1974) [2]. I’ve managed to piece together the following information about his SF career.

Born in Lawton, Oklahoma (I’ve also seen Anadarko, OK implied as a birthplace), Bates was an enrolled member of the Kiowa tribe. After he finished high school, he entered the U.S. Air Force. While injured after an explosion at a missile assembly building, he was encouraged to take up a hobby. He began writing science fiction stories–including Star Trek fanfiction (discussed in more detail below) [4].

Interested in honing his craft, Bates attended the famous Clarion workshop in 1969, and his first story, “Legion” (1971), hit print two years later [4]. He published six science fiction short stories between 1971-1977. A seventh–“Search Cycle: Beginning and Ending 1. The Last Quest; 2. Fifth and Last Horseman”–was scheduled to appear in Harlan Ellison’s infamous Last Dangerous Visions, originally slated for 1973. It hasn’t been published elsewhere.

Bates decided to try his luck in Hollywood. He joined a Writer’s Guild program for minorities with the assistance of D. C. Fontana. Initially unsuccessful, his rejected Star Trek story attempt later appeared in The New Voyages 2 (1978). He kept the American Indian crew member Walking Bear that later appeared in his only co-written Star Trek credit ST: The Animated Series’ “How Sharper Than a Serpent’s Tooth” (1974). It is for this episode that Bates is probably best known as it is the only episode of the two original Star Trek series that won an Emmy Award. Unfortunately, despite quite a few sales to the motion picture industry, few of his stories saw the screen after his early Star Trek credit [5].

Without further tangents, lets turn to his first three science fiction short stories–each a rumination on violence and trauma–to hit print.

  • Jim Steranko’s cover for Infinity Two, ed. Robert Hoskins (1971)
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Updates: Recent Science Fiction Purchases No. CCCXIX (Kim Stanley Robinson, Pamela Sargent, Greg Bear, and René Barjavel)

/ Joachim Boaz / 42 Comments

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

1. The Wild Shore, Kim Stanley Robinson (1984)

  • Andrea Baruffi’s cover for the 1st edition

From the back cover: “Seventeen-year-old Henry wanted to help make America great again, like it had been sixty years ago, before all the bombs went off. But for the people of Onofre Valley, just surviving was challenge enough. Then one day the world came to Henry, in the shape of two men who said they represented the American Resistance…”

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Updates: Recent Science Fiction Purchases No. CCCXVIII (Eric Frank Russell, Christine Brooke-Rose, Colin Kapp, and a Mars-themed anthology)

/ Joachim Boaz / 20 Comments

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

  • Kelly Freas’ cover for the 1966 edition

1. Somewhere A Voice, Eric Frank Russell (1965)

From the back cover: “A band of shipwrecked spacemen making their way across a world so fierce that all Earth’s jungles tame by comparison…

A future euthanasia agency with a double-barreled scientific secret…

The unexpected problem of a lone astronaut with an entire ocean world to himself…

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Updates: Recent Science Fiction Purchases No. CCCXVII (Roger Zelazny, Philip José Farmer, Steve Wilson, and an anthology with Ursula K. Le Guin)

/ Joachim Boaz / 21 Comments

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

1. My Name is Legion, Roger Zelazny (1976)

  • Ralph Brillhart’s cover for the 1981 edition

From the back cover: “HE DID NOT EXIST… OR DID HE? He had destroyed his punch cards and changed his face. There was no credit card, birth record, or passport for him in the International Data Bank.

His names were many… any he chose.

His occupation was taking megarisks in the service of a vast global detective agency.

His interworld assignments were highly lucrative, incalculably vital, and terrifyingly deadly.

And more often than not, his life was a living hell!”

Contents: “The Eve of RUMOKO” (1969),” “‘Kjwalll’kje’k’koothaïlll’kje’k” (1973), “Home Is the Hangman” (1975)

Initial Thoughts: In the early days of my site read I reviewed the first in the Nemo sequence–“The Eve of RUMOKO” (1969). At the time I did not care for it. However, I recently read F. Brett Cox’s monography Roger Zelazny (2021) and retrospectively I’m not sure that I understood the character or what Zelazny was trying to accomplish with the story sequence. Often after I read a monograph, I end up making a few impulsive purchases and this is one of them! I hope, at the very least, it gives me a deeper understanding of Zelazny’s SF project. And “Home Is the Hangman” (1975) is a Hugo and Nebula-winning novella that I have not read.

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Updates: Recent Science Fiction Purchases No. CCCXIV (Harlan Ellison, Gillian Freeman, Mick Farren, Fritz Leiber)

/ Joachim Boaz / 33 Comments

A new year and new books!

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

1. From the Land of Fear, Harlan Ellison (1967)

  • Diane and Leo Dillon’s cover for the 1st edition

From the back cover: “SCIENCE FICTION STORIES by Award Winning Author

WHERE DID HARLAN ELLISON COME FROM?

At 13 he ran away from home in Ohio and joined a carnival. At 15 he was driving a dynamite truck in North Carolina. At 19 he was thrown out of college and at 21 had sold his first novel. Today he is 33 and is considered one of the top screenwriters in Hollywood. Fairly ordinary background? True.

But somewhere along the way, Harlan Ellison made a strange detour. He vanished into a country of the mind where time and space ceased to exist, where strange ideas and wild adventures were commonplace. He came back from that dark world, carrying away with him its richest treasures: stories unlike any ever told before. In this unusual book you will sample these “stray dreams.”

FROM THE LAND OF FEAR!”

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