Harlan Ellison

Updates: Recent Science Fiction Acquisitions No. XCII (Ellison + Ballard + Davidson + St. Clair)

/ Joachim Boaz / 26 Comments

First, a painful example of early 60s marketing for a SF novel written by a women: “WOMEN ARE WRITING SCIENCE-FICTION!  ORIGINAL! BRILLIANT!! DAZZLING!!! Women are closer to the primitive than men.  They are conscious of the moon-pulls, the earth-tides.  They posses a buried memory of humankind’s obscure and ancient past which can emerge to unique color and flavor a novel.”

Uh huh.

I wish I possessed a buried memory of humankind’s obscure and ancient past…

A wonderful batch.  My first Avram Davidson collection although the blurb and cover are utterly unappealing.  More Ballard, my first Margaret St. Clair novel, more Ellison…

Thoughts?

1. Vermillion Sands, J. G. Ballard (1971)

(Richard Powers’ cover for the 1971 edition) Continue reading →

Updates: Year in Review (Top Ten SF Novels + Top Ten Short Stories/Novelettes/Novellas + other categories)

/ Joachim Boaz / 25 Comments

Everyone likes lists!  And I do too….  This is an opportunity to collate some of my favorite (and least favorite) novels and shorter SF works I read this year.  Last year I discovered Barry N. Malzberg and this year I was seduced by…. Well, read and find out.

  

Top Ten Novels

1. We Who Are About To…, Joanna Russ (1976): A scathing, and underread, literary SF novel by one of the more important feminist SF writers of the 70s (of The Female Man fame).

2. A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire, Michael Bishop (1975): A well-written anthropological clash of cultures novel.  Slow, gorgeous, emotionally engaging….

3. Level 7, Mordecai Roshwald (1959): A strange satire of the bomb shelter…  Everyday surrealism. Continue reading →

Book Review: Approaching Oblivion, Harlan Ellison (1974)

/ Joachim Boaz / 56 Comments

(Leo and Diane Dillon’s cover for the 1974 edition)

4.25/5 (collated rating: Good)

Ellison’s stories punch where it hurts.  Approaching Oblivion (1974) is filled with transfixing tales about violent future racism (“Knox”), humanity’s last moments (“Kiss of Fire”), the desperate desire to change one’s own past (“One Life, Furnished in Early Poverty”), a last rebel against the militarizing system (“Silent in Gehanna”), and familial rivalry within a vast arcology (“Catman”), etc…

They are terrifying and vicious, immersive and gut-wrenching, and span from baroque far future speculations to near future warnings.  Above all, they are well-written and intelligent.  Many are infused with (pseudo) autobiographical content and lament the societal ills Continue reading →