michael moorcock

Updates: Recent Science Fiction Acquisitions No. CXXXIV (Mann + Moorcock + Farmer + Adlard)

/ Joachim Boaz / 25 Comments

I bought and am in the process of reading a novel from the 90s… Look below to find out which one! (SHOCKING).

Also, more in line with my common (recent) reading patterns, a lesser known but supposedly brilliant 70s novel, Interface (1971) by Mark Adelard.  According to SF Encyclopedia: “The series is set in a city of the Near Future.[…] With a rich but sometimes sour irony, and a real if distanced sympathy for the problems and frustrations of both management and workers, Adlard plays a set of variations, often comic, on Automation, hierarchical systems, the Media Landscape, revolution, the difficulties of coping with Leisure, class distinction according to Intelligence, fantasies of Sex and the stultifying pressures of conformity.”  The banal back cover description indicates a rather lesser novel than Clute’s praise…

More Philip José Farmer—early work, early work only!

And, well, I’ve never Moorcock’s SF/F but, perhaps my first collection of his short fiction will indicate what people claim he is capable of.

All but the last novel came via Carl at Stainless Steel Droppings on his book store trip…. Thanks again!

Thoughts?

1. Interface, Mark Adlard (1971) (MY REVIEW)

NTRFCKRGSP1977

(Paul Alexander’s cover for the 1977 edition) Continue reading →

Updates: Recent Science Fiction Acquisitions No. CXXXI (Cowper + Aldiss + McKenna + New Worlds Anthology)

/ Joachim Boaz / 34 Comments

While in Scotland a few weeks ago I could not help but peek into a few used book stores! As an American, I am intimately acquainted with the common US publishers (Ballantine + Signet + Avon + et al) but do not own very many 70s/80s UK editions (Pan + Grenada + Panther, etc).  Thus, there was something special about snatching a copy of Best SF Stories from New Worlds 8  (1974) as it was one of the few in the series never published in the US…

Enjoy the cover art!

[I am not sure what to make of the Jim Burns’ cover…  I have the feeling that it appeared on Good Show Sir a while back]

Thoughts?

[If you are in Edinburgh and want new SF/F stop by Transreal Fiction—and talk to the owner Mike!]

1. The Moment of Eclipse, Brian W. Aldiss (1970)

THMMNTFCLP1985

(Vincent Di Fate’s cover for the 1985 edition) Continue reading →

Updates: Recent Science Fiction Acquisitions No. CXXIX (Platt + Smith + Anthologies)

/ Joachim Boaz / 14 Comments

I bought these a while back with Admiral Ironbombs at Battered, Tattered,  Yellowed, and Creased at the best used SF store I’ve encountered in the United States—Dawn Treader Books in Ann Arbor, MI (if you are ever in Michigan it’s worth the trip).  I’m glad I don’t live there else I would have no money.  I also discovered that Admiral Ironbombs doesn’t actually buy books that are battered and tattered—I do.  I guess he’s more of a “collector” than me.  Haha.

Enjoy some nice covers!

Has anyone read the work of Evelyn E. Smith?

Thoughts?

1. Best SF: 1970, ed. Harry Harrison and Brian W. Aldiss (1971)

BSTSFTSRHF1971

(Paul Lehr’s cover for the 1971 edition) Continue reading →

Book Review: Best SF Stories from New Worlds 3, ed. Michael Moorcock (1968)

/ Joachim Boaz / 18 Comments

(Uncredited cover for the 1968 edition)

3.5/5 (Collated rating: Good)

New Worlds was one of the premier British SF magazines under the editorship of Michael Moorcock.  It features some of the most experimental works of the era and was important in the growth of the New Wave movement.  Many of the frequent contributors went on to make a name as premier SF authors (Ballard, Aldiss, etc).

This best of collection (1964-1967) is on the whole uneven.  Its big name authors—such as Keith Roberts and Moorcock himself under a pseudonym—disappoint.  The most evocative stories are by rather lesser known voices, Langdon Jones, Charles Platt, and Pamela Zoline.  Zoline’s brilliant entropic vision, “The Heat Death of the Universe” is not to be missed.  The second best work in the collection is (surprisingly) an early story by Barrington J. Bayley (as P. F. Woods) whose novels I have reviewed Continue reading →

Book Review: The Ice Schooner, Michael Moorcock (1969)

/ Joachim Boaz / 24 Comments

IMPULSENOV1966

(Keith Robert’s cover for the 1966 edition)

3.25/5 (Average)

The Ice Schooner (1969) is the second of Michael Moorcock’s novels I’ve read — the first was the equally unremarkable adventure The Warlord of the Air (1971).  The Ice Schooner, an homage to seafaring  works of Joseph Conrad, functions as a standalone novel without the trappings of Moorcock’s multi-verse mythology.  Despite the lack of explicit connection between this novel’s hero and the “eternal champion” character archetype that features in so many of his works, one could argue that Konrad Arflane displays many of the same Continue reading →