book-reviews

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

/ Joachim Boaz / 53 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 the January installment of this column (sorry I missed a month).

Before John W. Campbell, Jr. (1910-1971) attempted to raise the “standards and thinking in magazine SF,” David Lasser (1902-1996) attempted his own brief (1929-1933) program to improve science fiction as managing editor of Hugo Gernsback’s Science Wonder Stories, Wonder Stories, and Wonder Stories Quarterly. According to Mike Ashley’s The Time Machine: The Story of the Science-Fiction Pulp Magazine from the Beginning to 1950 (2000), Lasser is a “much neglected revolutionary in science fiction” and through his efforts the genre “started to mature” (66).

Ashley highlights Lasser’s letter of instruction mailed to his regular contributors on the 11th of May, 1931, in which he “exhorted them to bring some realism to their fiction” (72). He also outlawed common tropes like the giant insect story and space opera (73). He emphasized the need to focus on characters that “should really be human” — not everything needs to be a “world-sweeping epic” (73). Stories in this vein, according to Ashley, include Clifford D. Simak’s religiously themed “The Voice in the Void” (1932), P. Schuyler Miller and Walter Dennis’ “The Red Spot on Jupiter” (1931) and “The Duel on the Asteroid” (1974), which featured a grim realism and character development (74).

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

/ Joachim Boaz / 58 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 the December installment of this column.

Lost texts, and the act of reconstructing the fragments, fascinates. The questions pile up. Would the contents reveal a pattern in an author’s work? Intriguing personal details? A startling modus operandi? At the 11th World Science Fiction Convention (Philcon 2), Philadelphia (September 1953), Philip José Farmer gave a speech titled “SF and the Kinsey Report.” Considering Farmer’s recent publication of “The Lovers” (1952), this is not surprising. Alfred Kinsey, the famous sexologist and founder of the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction on Indiana University’s campus, published his controversial Sexual Behavior in the Human Male in 1948. Sexual Behavior in the Human Female appeared in 1953. Like many of Farmer’s earliest speeches, he did not keep copies.

Deeply intrigued by what the speech might have contained, Sanstone and I (on Bluesky) managed to piece together a few general responses from fanzines and magazine con reports.

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

/ Joachim Boaz / 53 Comments
  • Graphic created by my father

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: Future Power, ed. Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois (1976) (Ursula K. Le Guin, Damon Knight, James Tiptree, Jr., Gene Wolfe, etc.)

/ Joachim Boaz / 17 Comments
  • Uncredited cover for 1st edition

4/5 (collated rating: Good)

What a way to finish 2024! Future Powers, ed. Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois (1976) is a well-crafted thematic anthology with seven original stories and two older classics. Other than R. A. Lafferty’s average contribution, all the tales effectively engage with the theme of the complexities of future control both in everyday and the macropolitical contexts.

A few tantalizing fragments: Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Diary of the Rose” (1976) explores the operations of dystopic control through the eyes of a neophyte doctor (“scopist”); Damon Knight ruminates on the nature and treatment of the psychopath in “The Country of the Kind” (1956); and A. K. Jorgensson’s “Coming-of-Age-Day” (1965) takes the reader through all the unnerving and confusing moments of a child in a strange future attempting to understand the nature of sex.

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Short Story Review: Poul Anderson’s “The Troublemakers” (1953)

/ Joachim Boaz / 27 Comments

This is the 20th post in my series of vintage generation ship short fiction reviews. You are welcome to read and discuss along with me as I explore humanity’s visions of generational voyage. And thanks go out to all who have joined already. I also have compiled an extensive index of generation ship SF if you wish to track down my earlier reviews on the topic and any that you might want to read on your own.

Previously: Fred Saberhagen’s “Birthdays” (1976)

Next Up: George Hay’s Flight of the “Hesper” (1952)

  • Uncredited cover for Cosmos Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine, ed. L. B. Cole (September 1953)

3.25/5 (Above Average)

Poul Anderson’s “The Troublemakers” (1953) first appeared in Cosmos Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine, ed. L. B. Cole (September 1953). You can read it online here.

Anderson’s tale is a fascinating collision of two of my recurring interests in post-WWII science fiction: generation ships and organized labor. Due to my love of Ursula K. Le Guin’s “Paradises Lost” (2002) and Brian W. Aldiss’ Non-Stop (variant title: Starship) (1959), I started a review series on generation ship short fiction in 2019. The series has languished recently as I am running out of pre-1985 depictions of the theme available in English to read. I read Anderson’s vision last year but could not muster a review. However, my recent focus on organized labor caused me to reread Anderson’s account of generational conflict, the working class experience, and the contours of power and government.

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

/ 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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Book Review: Best Science Fiction Stories of Clifford D. Simak, Clifford D. Simak (1967)

/ Joachim Boaz / 12 Comments
  • Lawrence Ratzkin’s cover for the 1st edition

3.5/5 (collated rating: Good)

I can’t get off my Clifford D. Simak (1904-1988) kick–the author that’s defined, directly and indirectly, my 2024 reading and writing adventure. Rather than hunt for more stories on the theme of organized labor, I fished out a collection languishing in a dusty corner of my shelves instead. Best Science of Science Fiction Stories of Clifford D. Simak (1967), not to be mixed up with the later collection The Best of Clifford Simak (1975), contains seven short stories published between 1954-1963. Of the bunch, “Founding Father” (1957) ranks amongst the best of Simak I’ve read. Only one, “Lulu” (1957), should be avoided.

While I still recommend City (novelized 1952) for readers new to Simak, this collection contains a nice representative group of stories from those nine years.

Short Summaries/Analysis

“Founding Father” (1957), 4.75/5 (Very Good). First appeared in Galaxy Magazine, H. L. Gold (May 1957). You can read it online here.

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

/ 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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