colonialism

Adventures in Science Fiction Cover Art: A Selection of Bleak Alien Landscapes

/ Joachim Boaz / 16 Comments

(Alex Schomburg’s cover for the 1953 edition of Space, Space, Space (1953), ed. William Sloane)

Our science fiction heroes are often confronted by bleak alien landscapes adorned with rocks, vast deserts, adverse atmospheres — commonly these vistas are traversed, colonized, tamed…  Spaceships touch down on virgin surfaces, the explorers tentatively step forward, aliens peer from the distance.  When settlements are built the alien vista remains an ever present source of fear and fascination.  The depiction of a convincingly bleak alien landscape (think Arrakis in Frank Herbert’s Dune) can be of paramount importance in conveying not only  otherworldliness but the backdrop for human drama and the challenges our heroes must overcome (by technology or other Continue reading →

Update: Sci-fi about the social ramifications of overpopulation, a call for suggestions

/ Joachim Boaz / 9 Comments

    

I need reading suggestions.

After reading John Brunner’s Hugo winning masterpiece Stand on Zanzibar (1968) a few years back I became entranced by science fiction exploring social themes (intelligently) extrapolated from a future Earth condition of extreme overpopulation.  In the recent months I’ve read and reviewed a glut of similarly themed works of uneven quality.  Many of these works were inspired by Paul and Anne Ehrlich’s non-fiction The Population Bomb (1968) which warned of the mass starvation of humans in the 1970s and 1980s as a result of overpopulation. Continue reading →

Book Review: Bow Down To Nul (variant title: The Interpreter), Brian W. Aldiss (1960)

/ Joachim Boaz / 12 Comments

2/5 (Bad)

Ok, I admit, I bought this book because of the gorgeous red/helium-breathing alien/humans toting spears cover…  Sadly, there’s very little behind the cover besides a standard uninventive pulp-ish romp.  Aldiss expends little effort and as result the work lacks an interesting society or an involving plot and all the action takes place in the slip-shop last few pages.   Continue reading →

Book Review: Meeting at Infinity, John Brunner (1961)

/ Joachim Boaz / 4 Comments

 

https://i0.wp.com/www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/3/39/MTNGTNFNTF0000.jpg

A wonderful creepy cover by John Schoenherr

4/5 (Good)

Readers from the first days of my blog might recall my rather dismissive comment in my review of John Brunner’s abysmal Born under Mars (1967),

“I have still yet to find in Brunner’s early pulp(ish) novels any solid indication of his future brilliance that manifests itself so poignantly in his great novels of the late 60s Continue reading →