Which books/covers/authors intrigue you? Which have you read? Disliked? Enjoyed?
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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(David McCall Johnston’s cover for the 1971 edition)
3/5 (collated rating: Average)
Preliminary publication note: The UK and US editions of the New Writings in Science Fiction anthology series (1964-1977) varied in content—even volumes indicated by the same number. They are often treated as separate entries in the isfdb.org anthology listing. I read and reviewed the US edition.
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The back cover of New Writings in Science Fiction 7 (1971), ed. John Carnell promises a form of “future shock”—plunging us into a world derived from ours but foreign and alien. Is the collection successful? As with the three other volumes in this anthology series I’ve read—New Writings in SF 4 (1965), New Writings in SF 6 (1965), and New Writings in SF 9 (191972)–the answer is a mixed “somewhat.”
In the volumes I’ve explored so far, Vincent King is the biggest surprise—i.e. an author I had never read who produces regularly solid work. As with “Testament” (1968), King’s “Defence Mechanism” (1966) evokes “existential emptiness” Continue reading
Science Fiction and Other Suspect Ruminations 