C. L. Moore

Updates: Recent Science Fiction Purchases No. CCCXLII (Robert Silverberg, C. L. Moore, Henry Kuttner, Peter Tate, and Thomas Burnett Swann)

/ Joachim Boaz / 16 Comments

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

1. Tom O’Bedlam, Robert Silverberg (1985)

  • Jim Burns’ cover for the 1986 edition

From the back cover: “MESSIAH OR MADMAN? It is 2103 and Tom O’Bedlam, madman, prophet, and visionary, wanders through California, dwelling place of the last humans on a continent decimated by radioactive dust. Tom, caught up in a living vision of distant worlds ruled by godlike beings, is the herald of a new age, a herald no one wants to hear until others too begin to dream of salvation beyond the stars. Yet while many dream, only tom has the power to make the wondrous visions real, to give people the ultimate escape they desire. Across the universe they must go… if Tom is humanity’s last hope–and not its final destroyer.”

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Updates: Recent Science Fiction Purchases No. CCCXXXIV (Robert Silverberg, Best SF of 1979, C. L. Moore, George Hay)

/ Joachim Boaz / 31 Comments

Spring semester in the books! It’s now time to read (and go on vacation).

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

1. Invaders from Earth and To Worlds Beyond, Robert Silverberg (1980)

  • Chris Foss’ cover for the 1st edition.

From the back cover: “The Ganymedians had a rich, peace culture, peaceful culture extending back hundreds of thousands of years in human time. But the soil of their Jovian moon held uncountable riches in the form of the nuclear fuels Earth so desperately needed. It was a pattern that had been repeated many times in humanity’s bloody history; in Asia, in Africa, in the American West–but the nations of mankind were not ready to make the same mistake again. So when the Corporation decided it wanted those fissionables whether the Ganymedians wanted to give them up or not, they knew they had a job of selling of their hands, to swing the weight of public opinion behind them. And that was a job for Ted Kennedy, ad-man supreme. Kennedy’s record showed he could sell the public on just about anything. Even genocide.”

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Book Review: Clash by Night and Other Stories, Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore (1980)

/ Joachim Boaz / 52 Comments
  • Chris Moore’s cover for the 1st edition

3.5/5 (collated rating: Good)

From 1937 to 1958, the dynamic writing duo of Henry Kuttner (1915-1958) and his wife C. L. Moore (1911-1987) wrote countless stories together. As SF Encyclopedia puts it, “much of [Kuttner’s] later work is inextricably entwined” with that of Moore–often to the point of being unable to entangle who wrote what. While the cover of Clash by Night and Other Stories (1980) does not mention Moore, all the stories in the collection were co-written with her.1

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Update: Recent Science Fiction and Fantasy Purchases No. CCCXXVI (Octavia E. Butler, Henry Kuttner, C. L. Moore, Clark Ashton Smith, F. Paul Wilson)

/ Joachim Boaz / 38 Comments

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

1. Tales of Science and Sorcery, Clark Ashton Smith (1964)

  • Bob Haberfield’s cover for the 1976 edition

From the back cover: “A universe of remote and paralyzing fright–jungles of poisonous and iridescent blossoms on the moons of Saturn, evil and grotesque temples in forgotten elder worlds and dark-morasses of spotted death-fungi in spectral countries beyond the earth’s rim. Who else has seen such gorgeous, luxuriant and feverishly distorted visions and lived to tell the tale?” — H. P. Lovecraft

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Updates: Recent Science Fiction Purchases No. CCCX (R. A. Lafferty, Jan Morris, Star anthology, and an August Derleth anthology)

/ Joachim Boaz / 43 Comments

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

1. Strange Ports of Call, ed. August Derleth (1948)

  • Uncredited cover for the 1958 edition

From the back cover: “‘Begotten of Imagination, on the body of Technology, there springs forth the wild child Science Fiction.’ –Clifton Fadiman

The above is one of the many attempts that have been made to describe a department of fiction which, in spite of some sniping critics, continues to increase its followers. Recently Bertrand Russell observed that science fiction consists of ‘intelligent anticipation–much more intelligent than the expectations of statesmen.’

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Updates: Recent Science Fiction and Fantasy Purchases No. CCCII (C. L. Moore, Marc Laidlaw, Fredric Brown, Mack Reynolds)

/ Joachim Boaz / 26 Comments

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

1. Dad’s Nuke, Marc Laidlaw (1986)

  • Tony Robertts’ cover for the 1988 edition

From the back cover: “BARBECUE THE NEIGHBOURS. In post-collapse suburban America, keeping up with the Joneses has got a little out of hand. Fallout shelters used to be the ultimate status symbol–until Mr. Johnson had his baby daughter’s digestive system adapted to consume radioactive waste.

Now Jock Smith has the edge on his neighbours–he has installed his very own tactical nuclear missile in the back yard.

After all, these are dangerous times..”

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Recent Science Fiction Purchases No. CCXCIX (Henry Kuttner, C. L. Moore, Jack Williamson, Jacob Transure, Star Anthology)

/ Joachim Boaz / 13 Comments

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

1. Ahead of Time, Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore (1953)

  • Richard Powers’ cover for the 1st paperback edition

From the inside page: “A brain in a box fights a criminal plot

A visitor from the future turns out to be peculiar even for his society

An eternal hillbilly family survives the centuries and gets into political trouble

A sick electronic calculator catches a psychosis from its operator

…these are some of the highly original and vividly written stories you will find in this selection of a master’s work.

Science fiction and fantasy grow constantly in popularity. Writing of this quality and imagination is the reason. Henry Kuttner demonstrates again in his book why more and more readers are becoming devotees of that intriguing fiction which is not content to stay in the world as we see it and know it, which takes us to the farthest reaches of space and time, to the farthest reaches of the human mind.”

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Guest Post: Cyborgs and Intergalactic Freight Transport: “No Woman Born” (1944), C.L. Moore and “Lady in the Tower” (1959), Anne McCaffrey

/ Joachim Boaz / 5 Comments

The scholarly and widely published Kate Macdonald (twitter), a Professor of English Literature and currently a Visiting Fellow at the University of Reading, provides the fifth guest post in my SF Short Stories by Women Writers pre-1969 series (original announcement and list of earlier posts). I recommend browsing her eponymous blog—she recently interviewed the SF author Elizabeth Moon on her collaborations with Anne MacCaffrey and reviews literature and SF (including Iraq + 100. Stories from a Century After the Invasion (2013), ed. Hassan Blasim and the famous post-apocalyptical novel The Long Tomorrow (1955) by Leigh Brackett).

Her post focuses on two of the best known SF women authors from the pre-1969 era: C.L. Moore and Anne McCaffrey.

Cyborgs! Intergalactic Freight Spaceships!

Find copies!

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(“No Woman Born” first appeared in Astounding Science Fiction, December 1944, cover: William Timmins)

Review of “No Woman Born” (1944) by C.L. Moore and “Lady in the Tower” (1959) by Anne McCaffrey

By Kate Macdonald

I teach sf to university students, and knew from the critical literature about gender in sf that sometime in the 1940s a writer called C. L. Moore published a landmark story about the first female cyborg. I tracked down a copy of ‘No Continue reading →

Guest Post: Three SF Short Stories Pre-1969 by Women Authors: “Vintage Season” (1946), C.L. Moore and Henry Kuttner, “The Snowball Effect” (1952), Katherine Maclean, “The Painter of Dead Women” (1910), Edna Underwood

/ Joachim Boaz / 8 Comments

The erudite and prolific Jesse provides the fourth guest post in my SF Short Stories by Women Writers pre-1969 series (original announcement and list of earlier posts). I recommend investigating the archives over at his blog Speculiction, which covers both vintage and new SF ranging from Aliya Whiteley’s The Beauty (2014) to John Brunner’s The Jagged Orbit (1969).

His post focuses on three stories from different authors including one of the best known from the pre-1969 era: the writing pair of C.L. Moore and Henry Kuttner, Katherine MacLean, and Edna Underwood. As no discussion of women in pre-1969 SF would be complete without C.L. Moore, and it is often impossible to discern which stories she wrote individually and which she wrote with her husband Henry Kuttner, I gave the go ahead for Jesse to review one of their best known co-written short stories.

I hope you’ll track them down!

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(Katherine Maclean’s “The Snowball Effect” first appeared in the September 1952 issue of Galaxy, cover: Jack Coggins)

Review of “Vintage Season” (1945) by C.L. Moore and Henry Kuttner, “The Snowball Effect” (1952) by Katherine MacLean, and “The Painter of Dead Women” (1910) by Edna Underwood

By Jesse

Gender in science fiction is surely one of the top three subjects in online genre discussion these days.  The objectification of women, the roles of women in story, the lack of award recognition for female writers, the negative Continue reading →