paperbacks

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

/ Joachim Boaz / 89 Comments

What pre-1985 science fiction are you reading or planning to read next month? Here’s the October installment of this column.

  • A selection of read volumes from my shelves

If I’m feeling a bit unmotivated to write about science fiction, I always end up on Fanac or another online repository of fanzines/newspapers exploring all the old historical fannish debates. I especially enjoy their reports on various conventions and the community (from accepting to reactionary) that emerges. For example, the details I uncovered about a lost Philip José Farmer speech titled “SF and the Kinsey Report at the 11th World Science Fiction Convention (Philcon 2) in Philadelphia (September 1953) and Pat M. Kuras and Rob Schmieder’s article “When It Changed: Lesbians, Gay Men, and Science Fiction Fandom” (1980) on the first Worldcon panel with an openly LGBTQ topic: “The Closed Open Mind: Homophobia in Science Fiction Fantasy Stories” moderated by Jerry Jacks, one of the “early openly gay fans.” I recently edited a friend’s article for academic publication on the role of conventions in forming feminist and political activism. Conventions sound like fascinating places, at least from my historically-minded vantage point and lens.

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Updates: Recent Science Fiction Purchases No. CCCXLVI (Kim Stanley Robinson, Miriam Allen DeFord, Keith Laumer, and Jack Dann)

/ Joachim Boaz / 22 Comments

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

Finally acquired a new scanner!

1. The Memory of Whiteness, Kim Stanley Robinson (1985)

  • Fred Gambino’s cover for the 1999 edition

From the back cover: “In the 33rd century humanity is scattered among the planets of the Solar System. Millions of lives depend on the revolutionary physics of Arthur Holywelkin; millions of hears are moved by the music created by the strange, eerie instrument he built in the last years of his life: the Orchestra. Johannes Wright is the Ninth–and youngest–Master of the Orchestra. But as he sets out on his first Grand Tour of the Solar System, unseen foes are at his heel, ready to reveal all but the meaning of their enmity. In confronting them, Wright must redefine the Universe–for himself and all humanity.”

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Book Review: Octavia E. Butler’s Clay’s Ark (1984)

/ Joachim Boaz / 22 Comments
  • Alan Gutierrez’s cover for the 1985 edition

4.5/5 (Very Good)

Octavia E. Butler’s Clay’s Ark (1984) is the final published volume of her Patternist sequence (1976-1984).1 It is the third novel according to the internal chronology of the series. Clay’s Ark is, without doubt, the most horrifyingly bleak science fiction novel I have ever read.2 It’s stark. It’s sinister. It’s at turns deeply affective before descending into extreme violence and displaced morality. The moral conundrum that underpins the central problem, the spread of an extraterrestrial disease, unfurls with an unnerving alien logic. Butler’s characters are trapped by the demands of the alien microbes, scarred by the pervasive sense that their humanity is slipping away, and consumed by the fear of starting an epidemic. A true confrontation of the moment cannot lead to anything other than suicide or the first steps towards an apocalyptic transformation.

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

/ Joachim Boaz / 62 Comments
  • A selection of read volumes from my shelves

What pre-1985 science fiction are you reading or planning to read next month? Here’s the August installment of this column.

The Power of the List. I adore lists. I’ve compiled lists of science fiction stories on my site about generation ship stories, immortality (abandoned), overpopulation (abandoned), and sports and games (abandoned). I religiously update my SF Novel and Short Story Review index and the Best SF Novels I’ve reviewed index. In your exploration of genre, I imagine you’ve encountered a “Best Of” list that horrified you — they tend to generate controversy, argument, and all sorts of impulsive takes. Lists can be dangerous. Lists can suggest canon. Lists exclude. Lists can be incomplete. Lists can motivate. Ian Sales, a long-time critic, author, and visitor to my site, created the SF Mistressworks (unfortunately, also abandoned) website in response to an egregious list that demonstrate utter ignorance about the wonderful SF written by women.

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

/ Joachim Boaz / 54 Comments
  • A selection of read volumes from my shelves

What pre-1985 science fiction are you reading or planning to read next month? Here’s the July installment of this column.

One of my favorite forms of SF scholarship is careful identification of a intellectual genealogy–tracing what an author read and engaged in dialogue with. Authors are readers. They also can’t escape references and textual traces of what they’ve consumed (or, of course, engagement with the world in which they lived).

I’ve read two interesting examples recently. The first, Carol McGuirk’s “J. G. Ballard and American Science Fiction” in Science Fiction Studies, vol. 49 (2022), is the perfect example of this type of scholarship. She traces Ballard’s engagement with SF, his earliest stories, and the various parallels an interactions between his work and American SF that he read (Galaxy Magazine, Theodore Sturgeon, Fritz Leiber, Robert Heinlein, Frederik Pohl, C. M. Kornbluth, Ray Bradbury, Judith Merril, Federic Brown, Henry Kuttner, C. L. Moore, etc.). She argues that Ballard engaged in “retelling with a twist” (476). She writes that “early Ballard stories rework prior sf in moods ranging from measured homage to barbed repose to parodic photo-bomb” (483).

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

/ Joachim Boaz / 57 Comments
  • A selection of read volumes from my shelves

What pre-1985 science fiction are you reading or planning to read next month? Here’s the June installment of this column.

I adore teaching American History for college credit. Every summer I ponder what to change and improve. And this year, I want to integrate a few science fiction stories!

My 1950s unit in the spring semester could be modified with a few science fiction short stories. Considering my ongoing fascination with media landscapes of the future, I want to integrate one story on fears over television and one on nuclear horror (which would fit nicely with a group of assignments I have using song lyrics about atomic panic). Feel free to suggest a story that you would include or wish was included in your own US college course (or advanced high school course). No novels unfortunately. I have access to a range of syllabi and a TON of ideas but I always love to hear your selections.

Before we get to the photograph above and the curated birthdays, let me know what pre-1985 SF you’re currently reading or planning to read! 

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Adventures in Science Fiction Cover Art: The Flowering Bodies of Attilio Uzzo

/ Joachim Boaz / 3 Comments
  • Attilio Uzzo’s cover for the 1973 edition of Michael Moorcock’s The Ice Schooner (1969) (Galassia 163)

If you’ve ever browsed through an Italian SF catalogue, the name that springs out immediately is the fantastic Dutch painter Karel Thole (1914-2000). Thole’s surreal (and often stunning) covers dominated the Italian visual SF landscape for years and even appeared on a handful of American editions. However, the main Italian SF press Casa Editrice La Tribuna (with its Galassia series) frequently commissioned new artists, often fresh out of art school, for short runs of covers.

Galassia played an instrumental role in introducing Italian audiences to the New Wave movement. Issues often contained both translations of English-language authors and original Italian short stories and novels. Italian covers were often on the experimental side of the SF art spectrum. The styles changed on a dime. Cover art produced in Italy might be my second favorite after the United States for the 60s/70s.

Milan-based Italian artist, sculptor, and jeweler, Attilio Uzzo (unknown dates) created five covers for the Italian SF magazine Galassia (issues between -#176) in 1972. According to The Internet Speculative Fiction Database‘s (potentially incomplete) credits, Uzzo created two additional covers for Casa Editrice La Tribuna‘s Science Fiction Book Club series and one for Dall’Oglio’s SF Andromeda imprint. I’ve included all eight in this post. I could find little about him online. He has an old, and not very helpful, website with a few low-resolution examples of his art and jewelry. And here is a short video about a 1964 gallery exhibit in Milan with Uzzo’s work. In 1992, a book of his art title Attilio Uzzo: Pittore della Lealtà hit print. If anyone can find more information about him, let me know!

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Recent Science Fiction Purchases No. CCCXLIV (Margaret St. Clair, Edgar Pangborn, Keith Laumer, and Edmund Cooper)

/ Joachim Boaz / 17 Comments

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

It’s the summer Joachim Boaz. Where are the reviews? I’m currently on a much needed vacation (Iceland). I will be back soon! In the meantime here are four recent purchases.

1. The Dancers of Noyo, Margaret St. Clair (1973)

  • Davis Meltzer’s cover for the 1st edition

From the back cover: “Like so many others before him, reluctant Sam MacGregor was sent on a pilgrimage for the Frail Vision by the Dancers: androids grown from the cells of one man, with the powers of hypnotism and illusion–androids who held the tribes of the Republic of California in thrall.

But soon Sam began to doubt his own identity, for he experienced, in close succession, extra-lives in different corridors of time and space.

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Recent Science Fiction Purchases No. CCCXLIII (Philip K. Dick, Roger Zelazny, Chuck Rothman, Philip José Farmer, and an anthology on Future Love)

/ Joachim Boaz / 18 Comments

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

1. Deus Irae, Philip K. Dick and Roger Zelazny (1976)

  • Richard Corben’s cover for the 1980 edition

From the back cover: “One their own, they have written landmarks works that have added whole new dimensions of wonder to the field of science fiction. Now, in Deus Irae, they have created what ALA Booklist calls “the most successful collaboration in years!”–set in in bizarre world where you will encounter…

A bunch of backwoods farmers who happen to be lizards…

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