paperbacks

Book Review: Clifford D. Simak’s The Worlds of Clifford Simak (1960)

/ Joachim Boaz / 10 Comments
  • Richard Powers’ cover for the 1961 paperback edition

3.25/5 (collated rating: Above Average)

At this point in my reading adventure, I approach Clifford D. Simak’s science fiction with a clear intention to expand my understanding of his economic, political, and technological critiques of American society. This culminated in 2024 with my article “’We Must Start Over Again and Find Some Other Way of Life’: The Role of Organized Labor in the 1940s and ’50s Science Fiction of Clifford D. Simak.” Since then, albeit at a slower pace, I’ve continued to cover his science fiction, speeches, and additional interviews I’ve been able to track down. I find him a deeply fascinating author who’s often pigeonholed as “bucolic” or “pastoral” with no real attempt to read beyond his tendency to set a few of his narratives in a rural simulacrum of his childhood corner of America.

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Updates: Recent Science Fiction Purchases No. CCCXLX (Jack Vance, Adolfo Bioy Casares, Thom Keyes, and Kenneth Bulmer)

/ Joachim Boaz / 20 Comments

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

1. Jack Vance’s Galactic Effectuator (1980)

  • David Mattingly’s cover for the 1981 edition

From the back cover: “Meet Miro Hetzel, Galactic Effectuator. He’s part gentlemen, part detective, part fraud, and his trail of exploits cuts through some of the more improbably civilizations in the universe. Join him in a trip to the planet Maz, whose natives are so fierce that they’ll fight three battle before lunch and then dine on the enemy–a planet that only a man with Miro Hetzel’s steely nerve would dare to visit at all.”

Initial Thoughts: This is a fix-up novel containing “The Dogtown Tourist Agency” (1975) and “Freitzke’s Turn” (1977). I previously reviewed “Freitzke’s Turn” (1977) and did not classify it amongst Vance’s best. As many know, I’ve soured a bit on Vance in the last decade. That said, I still think novels like Wyst: Alastor, 1716 (1978) and Emphyrio (1969) are worth the read.

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

/ Joachim Boaz / 32 Comments

First update post of 2026! What pre-1985 science fiction adventures have you started this year? Any great reads? Disappointing ones? Intriguing discoveries? Here’s the November 2025 installment of this column.

  • A selection of read volumes from my shelf

Exciting news! Rachel S. Cordasco, who occasionally joins me to review older SF short stories in translation, will soon launch Small Planet: The SF in Translation Magazine. As the announcement on File 770 states, “the magazine will come out 4 times per year (February, May, August, and November) and include columns on such topics as: interesting upcoming books and notable reviews, interviews with authors, translators, editors, translators talking about books they’d like to see in English, essays on Anglophone awards, databases, and publishers that should recognize translators/SFT, essays on Anglophone awards, databases, and publishers that should recognize translators/SFT, pieces on interesting translation conundrums, notes on what’s happening in other countries in SF. It will be available for free on Cordasco’s Speculative Fiction in Translation website.”

Missing from the list will be my reviews of vintage SF in translation! The plan is to have one review in each issue for at least the next year or for as long as I can keep up a schedule (schedules and I do not mesh). I’ve already tracked down some lesser known gems from German, Norway, and Italy.

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Short Book Reviews: Fritz Leiber, Jr.’s Gather, Darkness! (1943, novelized 1950) and Gillian Freeman’s The Leader (1965)

/ Joachim Boaz / 21 Comments

Note: My read but “waiting to be reviewed pile” is growing. Short rumination/tangents/impressions are a way to get through the stack before my memory and will fades. My website partially serves as a record of what I have read and a memory palace for future projects. Stay tuned for more detailed and analytical reviews.

1. Fritz Leiber’s Gather, Darkness! (1943, novelized 1950)

  • Uncredited cover for the 1950 1st hardback edition

3.25/5 (Above Average)

Frtiz Leiber’s Gather, Darkness! first appeared across the May, June, and July 1943 issues of Astounding Science-Fiction, ed. John W. Campbell, Jr. It was novelized in 1950. Written in the midst of WWII, Gather, Darkness! is a product of an important moment in Leiber’s life. The previous year he abandoned his profession as a speech and drama instructor at Occidental College (1941-1942) and decided that “the struggle against fascism mattered more than his long-held pacifist convictions.” He joined Douglas Aircraft as a quality inspector and continued to publish science fiction.1

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Book Review: William Tenn’s Time in Advance (1958)

/ Joachim Boaz / 16 Comments
  • Mitchell Hooks’ cover for the 1st edition

3.5/5 (collated rating: Good)

Over the years, I’ve slowly made my way through a substantial portion of William Tenn’s output: I’ve reviewed his only SF novel Of Men and Monsters (1968), two short story collections–The Human Angle (1956) and Of All Possible Worlds (1955), and three additional short stories “Bernie the Faust” (1963), “Eastward Ho!” (1958), and “Generation of Noah” (1951). I’ve found him an effective satirist with a penchant for often self-defeating twist endings. At his best, Tenn challenges grand narratives of American progress and exceptionalism, 50s consumerist culture and gender roles, and renders an absurdist spin on Cold War conflict. I imagine his reluctance to write novels relegates his often brilliant ouvre to the fringes of contemporary interest in 50s SF.

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Updates: Recent Science Fiction Purchases No. CCCXLVII (Edgar Pangborn, Rudy Rucker, Sally Miller Gearhart, and a SF anthology)

/ Joachim Boaz / 21 Comments

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

The first purchases of 2026!

1. A Mirror For Observers, Edgar Pangborn (1954)

  • Richard Powers’ cover for the 1985 edition

From the back cover: “We would call them Martians, though they refer to themselves as Salvayans. Refugees from their dying planet, they arrived on our world almost 30,000 years ago to make new lives for themselves. From their vast underground cities, hidden from discovery, the Salvayans have ben observing us with care and concern, waiting for the day when humans will be ready to meet them. The Salvayans are not many, but they are long-lived and patient….

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

/ Joachim Boaz / 92 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 / 23 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 / 27 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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