What pre-1985 science fiction are you reading? + Update No. XIV

July 13, 2024July 13, 2024 / Joachim Boaz / 73 Comments

A selection of read science fiction novels from my shelves

What pre-1985 science fiction are you reading or planning to read this month?

Here’s June’s installment of this column.

I’m periodically plagued by the virulent Esoterica virus, the relentless desire to catalogue and write about the less known, and even better, the completely unknown. While attending a Medieval English literature graduate class, I remember a conversation I had with the professor, Robert D. Fulk, during office hours about the sheer quantity of scholarship on Beowulf (here’s his edition of the iconic text). I pointed out the panic I experience if I’m unable to read ALL the scholarship on a popular text.

Continue reading →

Updates: Recent Science Fiction Purchases No. CCCXIV (Harlan Ellison, Gillian Freeman, Mick Farren, Fritz Leiber)

January 4, 2023January 5, 2023 / Joachim Boaz / 32 Comments

A new year and new books!

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

1. From the Land of Fear, Harlan Ellison (1967)

Diane and Leo Dillon’s cover for the 1st edition

From the back cover: “SCIENCE FICTION STORIES by Award Winning Author

WHERE DID HARLAN ELLISON COME FROM?

At 13 he ran away from home in Ohio and joined a carnival. At 15 he was driving a dynamite truck in North Carolina. At 19 he was thrown out of college and at 21 had sold his first novel. Today he is 33 and is considered one of the top screenwriters in Hollywood. Fairly ordinary background? True.

But somewhere along the way, Harlan Ellison made a strange detour. He vanished into a country of the mind where time and space ceased to exist, where strange ideas and wild adventures were commonplace. He came back from that dark world, carrying away with him its richest treasures: stories unlike any ever told before. In this unusual book you will sample these “stray dreams.”

FROM THE LAND OF FEAR!”

Continue reading →

Book Review: The Texts of Festival, Mick Farren (1973)

November 30, 2019November 30, 2019 / Joachim Boaz / 10 Comments

(Peter Jones’ cover for the 1975 edition)

2.5/5 (Bad)

Mick Farren (1943-2013)—science fiction author, counterculture musician, underground newspaper journalist—spins a wild drug-tinged adventure, replete with innumerable musical references, across a devastated, decadent, and depopulated future United Kingdom. The Texts of Festival (1973), dolled up with half-baked attempts at philosophy (counterculture becomes mainstream and loses its radical and society-transforming meaning), careens forth with extensive sequences of action-packed exploitative sleaze. A sword-and-fantasy plot unfolds Continue reading →

Updates: Recent Science Fiction Acquisitions No. CCIX (de Camp + Farren + Effinger + Silverberg Anthology)

May 5, 2019May 5, 2019 / Joachim Boaz / 9 Comments

1. Mick Farren, of the “protopunk” and rock band The Deviants fame, wrote SF: drug-addled SF about the cult of musicians in a post-apocalyptical England. At least it’ll be a crazy romp! And probably not very good….

2. I’ve been slowly posting all the New Dimensions anthologies edited by Robert Silverberg that I purchased a few months ago. Inspired by my enjoyment of New Dimensions 3 (1973).

3. A gift from a family friend… Definitely not a book I’d look for but, who knows, sometimes I get a hankering for pre-WW II science fiction of the pulp sort.

It comes with a solid Paul Lehr cover.

4. Huge fan of Geo. Alec Effinger (that should go without saying if you following this site). I want ALL his short story collections.

I’ve reviewed the following Effinger novels/collections: