book reviews

Updates: Recent Science Fiction Purchases No. CCCXXXII (Vernor Vinge, Brian Stableford, Joan Cox, and Pierre Boulle)

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

1. The Witling, Vernor Vinge (1976)

  • George Barr’s cover for the 1976 edition

From the back cover: “Witling: A pretender to wit. (Webster’s Dictionary)

In the eyes of the inhabitants of Giri the scientific explorers from outer space were witlings. In the context of that primitive-seeming planet, they were.

Because on Giri a peculiarity of evolution had given a special talent to all living things–and this talent had made unnecessary most of the inventions associated with intelligent life elsewhere. Roads and planes, engines and doors… these were the products of witlings, not of ‘normal’ people.

So when the little band from Earth’s exploration team fell into Giri hands, their problem was unprecedented. How to demonstrate that science is worthwhile and how to keep the medieval masters of Giri from realizing their potential for cosmic mischief.”

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Short Story Review: Kōbō Abe’s “The Flood” (1950, trans. 1989)

/ Joachim Boaz / 18 Comments

Today I’m joined by Rachel S. Cordasco, the creator of the indispensable website and resource Speculative Fiction in Translation, for something a bit different!

We will both offer our reviews of one of Kōbō Abe’s first published speculative short stories, “The Flood” (1950). Over the next few months, we’ll post reviews of speculative fiction in translation from Romania, Chile, Austria, Poland, France, and the Netherlands. Depending on the story and our thoughts, I might also include our responses to each other’s review.

Also if you haven’t checked out Rachel’s website, you must. Not only does she review the global phenomena of speculative fiction but gathers lists of translated fiction by language. Also check out her reference monograph Out of This World: Speculative Fiction in Translation from the Cold War to the New Millennium (2021). In 2016, she contributed to my site reviews of three French SF stories in translation.

We read Kōbō Abe’s “The Flood” (1950) in The Best Japanese Science Fiction Stories, ed. John L. Apostolou and Martin H. Greenberg (1989). Translated by Lane Dunlop. You can read it online here.

Now let’s get to our reviews!

  • Uncredited cover for the 1997 edition
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What pre-1985 science fiction are you reading? + Update No. X

/ Joachim Boaz / 59 Comments
  • A selection of read volumes from my shelves

What pre-1985 science fiction are you reading or planning to read this month? Here’s February’s installment of this column.

Before we get to books and birthdays and writing plans…

Do you have the inner strength to survive the panic of a nuclear attack? Take a test in the August 21st 1953 issue of Collier’s and find out! Sample question: “HOW DO YOU FEEL WHEN: […] You are alone in an automatic elevator when it stalls between floors?” Possible answers: “I’m not bothered,” “I become tense,” “It jars me badly,” and “I blow up.”

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Updates: Recent Science Fiction Purchases No. CCCXXXI (Iain M. Banks, Mike Resnick, Sydney J. Van Scyoc, and David J. Skal)

/ Joachim Boaz / 30 Comments

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

1. Santiago: A Myth of the Far Future, Mike Resnick (1986)

  • Michael Whelan’s cover for the 1st edition

From the back cover: “SEBASTIAN NIGHTINGALE CAIN: County hunter. You can call him Songbird–but only once. He’s after Santiago.

VIRTUE MECKENZIE: Freelance reporter. She never give up. She wants an interview… with Santiago.

THE SWAGMAN: He collects art–at gun point. He wants a few pieces currently in the hands of Santiago.

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Book Review: The Squares of the City, John Brunner (1965)

/ Joachim Boaz / 16 Comments
  • Murray Tinkelman’s cover for the 1978 edition

4/5 (Good)

Nominated for the 1966 Hugo Award for Best Novel

John Brunner’s The Squares of the City (1965) transposes the moves of a 1892 chess game between Wilhelm Steinitz (1836-1900) and Mikhail Chigorin (1850-1905) onto a near future landscape of political intrigue. Inspired by Brazil’s planned capital Brasília (founded in 1960), the action takes place in Ciudad de Vados, the capital city of the imaginary Latin American nation of Aguazul.1 Conjured out of a “barren, rocky stretch of land,” Ciudad de Vados contains all the homogenized trappings of an ultra-modern metropolis (170). It’s sterile. Planned. Mechanized. Quickly the monumental urban regularity fades into the background and the intricate game across its squares takes over.

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Book Review: Worlds Without End, Clifford D. Simak (1964)

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  • Richard Powers’ cover for the 1st edition

3.5/5 (collated rating: Good)

I’m a compulsive list maker. In the past few years I’ve gathered and submitted older science fiction short stories that depict worker unions–from Robert Silverberg’s “Guardian Devil” (1959) to Mari Wolf’s “Robots of the World! Arise!” (1952)–to the Hugo Book Club’s fantastic index. It’s about time I finally get around to reviewing a few of my submissions!1

Clifford D. Simak’s collection Worlds Without End (1964) contains two novellas and one short story that appeared in Robert W. Lowndes’ magazines (second/third tier SF markets in the 50s). Two of three–“Worlds Without End” (1956) and “Full Cycle” (1955)–speculate on evolution of the trade union after the breakdown of the state.

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Short Story Reviews: Howard Waldrop’s “Mary Margaret Road-Grader” (1976), David J. Skal’s “Chains” (1971), and Tom Purdom’s “Courting Time” (1966)

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Howard Waldrop (1946-2024), David J. Skal (1952-2024), and Tom Purdom (1936-2024) all passed away since the beginning of the year. As I’ve only read Howard Waldrop’s “God’s Hooks!” (1982), “My Sweet Lady Jo” (1974), and “The Ugly Chickens” (1980) and Tom Purdom’s “Toys” (1967), I impulsively thought I’d stich together a post featuring a tale by each.

Please note that I have not read enough to identify their best work and a negative review is not intended to be a statement about their entire oeuvre and impact on the genre. If you have any fond memories, recommendations for stories, or other tangents related to the three authors, let me know in the comments.

Terry Bisson (1942-2014) also passed away this year but did not publish any short fiction until the 90s. I’ll make sure to review one of his 80s novels—Wyrldmaker (1981) or Talking Man (1986)–this year instead. I’ve also procured novels by Purdom and Skal to feature later this year.

Now let’s get to the stories!

  • David Plourde’s cover art detail for the 1978 edition of Best Science Fiction Stories of the Year: Sixth Annual Collection, ed. Gardner Dozois (1977)

4.5/5 (Very Good)

Howard Waldrop’s “Mary Margaret Road-Grader” first appeared in Orbit 18, ed. Damon Knight (1976). If you have an Internet Archive account, you can read it online here.

Nominated for the 1977 Nebula Award for Best Short Story. Lost to Charles L. Grant’s “A Crowd of Shadows” (1976).

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

/ Joachim Boaz / 96 Comments
  • A selection of science fiction novels from my shelves

I hope you’ve gotten off to a great reading start to 2024! What pre-1985 science fiction are you reading this month?

If you’re new and curious about my rationale for the perimeters of my site, check out this recent interview and podcast. And follow me on Mastodon if you don’t already as I no longer post on my Twitter account. Also make sure to check out the previous installment of this monthly column

And, most importantly, let me know what pre-1985 SF you’ve been reading!

The Photograph (with links to reviews and brief thoughts)

  1. Adrian Mitchell’s The Bodyguard (1970) might be one of the oddest dystopias ever written.
  2. Kate Wilhelm’s Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang (1976) is a fascinating peek into her vast oeuvre of disquieting visions. While I read it before I started my site, a friend reviewed it for my guest post series on Wilhelm’s fiction. As I recently covered Wilhelm’s far lesser known anti-Vietnam War novel The Killing Thing (1967), her work was on my mind.
  3. M. John Harrison is rightly famous for his Viriconium Nights sequence: The Pastel City (1971), A Storm of Wings (1980), and In Viriconium (1982). If you enjoyed them, I highly recommend tracking down his first novel — The Committed Men (1971). From my review: “Possessed by destructive melancholy, the inhabitants of a post-apocalyptical UK–where political powers have sunk into oblivion–attempt to recreate a semblance of normalcy.  Clement St John Wendover, teeth long since rotted, still administers to the skin diseases and ailments of his one-time patients although he cannot cure them. […] Gathering together a troop of “committed men” (and a woman!), Wendover sets off across the corroded landscape with a newborn mutant child: a new species for an altered Earth or an accidental abnormality….”
  4. I recently covered a Barrington J. Bayley short story in my cities of the future series and it reminded me of his most extreme moments of off-the-wall invention — The Garments of Caean (1976) immediately came to mind.

What am I writing about?

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Short Story Reviews: Michael Bishop’s “The Windows in Dante’s Hell” (1973), Barrington J. Bayley’s “Exit from City 5” (1971), and A. J. Deutsch’s “A Subway Named Mobius” (1950)

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My first review of 2024!

To quote a much younger me: “I’ve always been fascinated by imaginary and historical cities: the utopian (Tommaso Campanella’s 1602 work The City of the Sun), the allegorical (Calvino’s Invisible Cities), the multi-layered (Ancient, Medieval, and Renaissance Rome), the planned (Palmanova), the [fantastically] decaying (Jeff VanderMeer’s Ambergris), the multi-tiered (Tolkein’s Minas Tirith)…”

The science-fictional examples–from the urban gestalt of San Francisco in John Shirley’s  City Come A-Walkin’ (1980) to the arcologies of an overpopulated world in Robert Silverberg’s The World Inside (1971)–hold special appeal. As manifestations of societal decadence and vice or vibrant communities of interaction and discovery, they often become characters—changing and evolving over the course of the narrative.

To inaugurate my brand new short story review series on The Urban Landscape in Science Fiction, I’ve selected one of my favorite SF short stories: Michael Bishop’s “The Windows in Dante’s Hell” (1973). Bishop adeptly renders a human drama in a future Atlanta, replete with soaring dome and nine subterranean levels. I’ve paired it with two stories entirely new to me: Barrington J. Bayley’s “Exit from City 5” (1971) and A. J. Deutsch’s “A Subway Named Mobius” (1953). Bayley depicts a city as generation ship. A. J. Deutsch imagines a mathematical mystery within a rapidly expanding metro system underneath a future Boston.

Let me know if you have any favorite city-centric short stories that I haven’t covered on the site published pre-1985 that I could include in this series.

Up Next: Robert Abernathy’s “Single Combat” (1955).

  • Paul Lehr’s cover for the 1974 edition

5/5 (Masterpiece)

Michael Bishop’s “The Windows in Dante’s Hell” first appeared in Orbit 12, ed. Damon Knight (1973). If you have an Internet Archive account, you can read it online here.

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