Back from Norway! Time to acquire more science fiction.
Which books/covers/authors in the post intrigue you? Which have you read? Disliked? Enjoyed?
1. The Dreaming Dragons, Damien Broderick (1980)
Carl Lundgren’s cover for the 1st US edition
From the back cover: “TO THE PLACE WHERE SECRETS LIE SLEEPING. Alf Dean, an aborigine trained as an anthropologist, knew that his tribesmen, for centuries beyond memory, had warned of a dreadful secret in the mountains of Australia.
His ‘slow-witted’ nephew led him to the secret spot–the same spot where men were claimed by deaths that were secret to the world.
Today I have the third post in my Exploration Logseries.
I would like to welcome Adam Rowe to Science Fiction and Other Suspect Ruminations. He is the author of a brand new book–Worlds Beyond Time: Sci-Fi Art of the 1970s (2023)–on 70s science fiction cover art with a foreword by artist Vincent Di Fate. You can follow Adam’s art account on Twitter and Tumblr. I also recommend subscribing to his free 70s SF art newsletter. You can buy Worlds Beyond Time on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
Adam Rowe is a writer who has been collecting retro science fiction art online since 2013. He covers technology at Tech.co and has been a Forbes contributor on publishing and the business of storytelling. He has also written for iO9, Popular Mechanics, Tor.com, and the Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog. Worlds Beyond Time: Sci-Fi Art of the 1970s (2023) is his first book.
Which books/covers/authors intrigue you? Which have you read? Disliked? Enjoyed?
1. The Saliva Tree and Other Strange Growths, Brian W. Aldiss (1966)
Les Edwards’ cover for the 1979 edition
Contents: “The Saliva Tree” (1965), “Danger: Religion!” (1962), “The Source” (1965), “The Lonely Habit” (1962), “One Role with Relish” (1966), “Legends of Smith’s Burst” (1959), “Day of the Doomed King” (1965), “Paternal Care” (1966), “Girl and Robot with Flowers” (1965)
2022 was the single best year in the history of my site for visits and unique viewers!
As I mention year after year, I find reading and writing for the site—and participating in all the SF discussions generated over the year—a necessary and greatly appreciated salve. Whether you are a lurker, occasional visitor, or a regular commenter, thank you for your continued support.
Continuing a trend from 2021, I read only a handful of novels this year. Instead, I devoted my obsessive attention to various science short story review initiatives (listed below), anthologies, and histories of the science fiction genre. Without further ado, here are my favorite novels and short stories I read in 2022 with bonus categories. Descriptions are derived from my linked reviews.
Check out last year’s rundown if you haven’t already for more spectacular reads. I have archived all my annual rundowns on my article index page if you wanted to peruse earlier years.
My Top 5 Science Fiction Novels of 2022 [TITLES LINK TO FULL REVIEWS]
George Underwood’s cover for the 1979 edition
1. Vonda N. McIntyre’s Dreamsnake(1978), 4.75/5 (Near Masterpiece): Won the 1979 Hugo, Locus, and Nebula Award for Best Novel. Snake journeys across the post-apocalyptic wastes of a future Earth with three serpents healing the sick and caring for the dying. She is a member of the healers, who adopt orphans and rescue the oppressed and train them how to use the serpents. Mist and Sand are genetically modified vipers of terrestrial origin. But Grass comes from another alien world. Snake uses Mist and Sand’s venom to create vaccines, treat diseases, and cure tumors. Grass, the rare dreamsnake, with its alien DNA is the most important of them all–it provides therapeutic pleasure and dreams that facilitate conquering one’s fear and healing in the ill. In Snake’s voyages, she encounters prejudice and violence. A joyous sense of sexual freedom permeates the proceedings. A powerful and different take on a post-apocalyptic worldscape in every possible way.
Brian W. Aldiss’ Hugo-winning Hothouse (1962) imagines an oppressive, violent, and alien Earth transformed by “the long age of the vegetable” (187). The surviving humans live–“more by instinct than intelligence” (54)– in a continent-encompassing banyan tree in constant fear of killer flora and fauna. Aldiss succeeds in constructing a profoundly unsettling worldscape encyclopedic in its details with unusual rituals of survival. There’s the existential sense throughout that the humans, detached from any memory of their past, who attempt to survive are but frantic movements of an apocalyptic paroxysm. Inventive, relentless, hallucinogenic.
Which books/covers/authors intrigue you? Which have you read? Disliked? Enjoyed?
1. The Sundial, Shirley Jackson (1958)
Richard Powers’ cover for the 1963 edition
From the back cover: “THE SUNDIAL is a chilling, suspenseful, bloodcurdlingly macabre novel of twelve strange people awaiting the end of the world in a fantastical house like no other on earth.” SF Encyclopedia describesThe Sundial as “the closet to SF she came.”
The fourth story in my series on the science fictional media landscape of the future. Aldiss spins a wild satire of a television screen that views you!
Gerard Quinn’s cover for the December 1955 issue of New Worlds
3.75/5 (Good)
Brian W. Aldiss’ “Panel Game” first appeared in New Worlds Science Fiction, ed. John Carnell (December 1955). You can read it online here.
At 8:12 pm on September 22nd, 1955 the UK’s first TV advertisement–for Unilever’s Gibb’s S. R. [Sodium ricinoleate] toothpaste–aired on ITV (source). You can watch the commercial here with its toothpaste tube suspended in ice, a model excitedly brushing, and a hilarious graph that does not even pretend to convey data. Just a year earlier, the Television Act of 1954 allowed the formation–to great debate–of ITV, the first commercial television network in the UK.
Which books/covers/authors intrigue you? Which have you read? Disliked? Enjoyed?
1. In the Drift, Michael Swanwick (1985)
Ron Lieberman’s cover for the 1st edition
From the back cover: “The meltdown at Three Mile Island created the death zone known as the Drift, where the sky burned dark blue and pink and where boneseekers destroyed bodies within.
Science Fiction and Other Suspect Ruminations 