paperbacks

Updates: Recent Science Fiction Acquisitions No. CXXV (Pangborn + Janifer + Anthology + Biggle, Jr.)

/ Joachim Boaz / 15 Comments

A very odd selection today…  Some Christmas gift card holdovers and one volume I purchased online.  Including Edgar Pangborn’s most famous novel, a bizarre anthology of future artistic visions (with stories by Ellison, Clarke, Effinger, Zelazny, Dickson, Kornbluth, et al.), a collection of Lloyd Biggle, Jr.’s SF stories on music, and a most likely horrible pulp slave planet rebellion type novel by Laurence M. Janifer.

Thoughts?

1. Davy, Edgar Pangborn (1964)

(Robert Foster’s cover for the 1965 edition) Continue reading →

Book Review: Ice, Anna Kavan (1967)

/ Joachim Boaz / 58 Comments

Ice

(Gene Szafran’s cover for the 1967 edition)

5/5 (Masterpiece)

“Despairingly she looked all around. She was completely encircled by the tremendous ice walls, which were made fluid by explosions of blinding light, so that they moved and changed with a continuous liquid motion, advancing in torrents of ice, avalanches as bid as oceans, flooding everywhere over the doomed world” (37)

Anna Kavan’s masterful post-apocalyptical novel Ice (1967) parallels the death throws of a relationship with the disintegration of the world.  As the unnamed narrator (N) and the girl (G) traverse an indistinct, interchangeable, world transformed by glacial encroachment, only the same movements are possible: flight, pursuit, flight, pursuit…  Repetition reinforces the profoundly unnerving feel of both physical and mental imprisonment: as movements are predicted, trauma is repeated.

Kavan described her own writings as “‘nocturnal, where dreams and reality merge” (Booth, 69).  In the Continue reading →

Updates: Recent Science Fiction Acquisitions No. CXXIV (Wolfe + Clement + Mann + Wylie)

/ Joachim Boaz / 12 Comments

A nice batch of used book store finds.  Including the best of surprises i.e. when a clearance $1 SF novel by a rather famous author turns out to be signed!  I only realized it when I sat down to type up this post.

I have officially delved into the 80s—2theD at SF Potpourri included this novel in his “should be picked up by Gollancz Masterworks” list so I grabbed a hardback copy.

And some early Gene Wolfe….

And a what if women disappeared from the world novel by the author of When Worlds Collide (1933)…

Thoughts on any of the novels?

1.  The Fifth Head of Cerebrus, Gene Wolfe (1972)

(Martin Rigo’s cover for the 1981 edition) Continue reading →

Book Review: The Marching Morons and Other Famous Science Fiction Stories, C. M. Kornbluth (1959)

/ Joachim Boaz / 26 Comments

thmrchngmb1959
(Uncredited cover for the 1959 edition)

3.5/5 (collated rating: Good)

C. M. Kornbluth has long been one of my favorite short story authors of the 50s due to his first collection The Explorers (1954).  The Marching Morons (1959) contains two novelettes and seven short stories including some of his most famous works: namely, “The Marching Morons” (1951) and my personal favorite of his oeuvre so far, “MS. Found in a Chinese Fortune Cookie” (1957).

Ultimately, this is a more uneven collection than The Explorers (1954).  Despite duds such as “I Never Ast No Favors” (1954), I still recommend the collection to fans of 50s SF and satirical masterworks such as Kornbluth’s co-authored Continue reading →

Updates: Recent Science Fiction Acquisitions No. CXXIII (Zelazny + Sheckley + White + St. Clair)

/ Joachim Boaz / 27 Comments

Here are the rest of the books my fiancé purchased for me while on her vacation from my “to acquire” master list.  I’m having a lot of fun reading White’s All Judgement Fled (1969) so I can’t wait to read The Dream Millennium (1973)—and, who can resist overpopulation themed SF? More Sheckley stories…. always good.  A St. Clair novel and short story collection + more Zelazny.

Have you read any of them? Thoughts?

1. The Dream Millennium, James White (1973)

(John Berkley’s cover for the 1974 edition)

From the back cover: “Earth was a polluted, dying planet.  Violence was rampant and civilization was doomed.  If Man was to survive, John Devlin had to find him a new home somewhere in the galaxy.  He had 1,000 years to look—and 1,000 Continue reading →

Updates: Recent Acquisitions No. CXXII (Vance + Silverberg + Cooper + Zelazny)

/ Joachim Boaz / 21 Comments

Part I of II. Thankful to have a fiancé who takes my massive, alphabetized, master list of used SF to acquire and wades through the dusty shelves of used book stores (while on a trip home to visit her family)…  Here are some gems.  More Zelazny (short story collection!), another Silverberg collection (he holds the crown for author most reviewed on Science Fiction and Other Suspect Ruminations), an unknown quantity by Cooper, and the final novel I needed to round out the Alastor Cluster “trilogy” by Jack Vance.

Thoughts on the purchases?  Have you read any of them?

1. The Doors of His Face, The Lamps of His Mouth and Other Stories, Roger Zelazny (1971)

(Jeff Jones’ cover for the 1974 edition) Continue reading →

Book Review: The Hole in the Zero, M. K. Joseph (1967)

/ Joachim Boaz / 13 Comments

the hole in zero(Ed Soyka’s cover for the 1969 edition)

3.5/5 (Good)

I love finding a SF book on the used bookstore shelf by an author I have never heard of.  I am even more excited when a virtually unknown novel is endorsed by one of the great SF critics, in this case John Clute. According to Clute’s SF Encyclopedia entry [link] M. K. Joseph was a UK-born resident of New Zealand where he worked as a professor of English and writer.  His early novels and poetry were not SF—The Hole in the Zero (1967) is his first, and one of his only, SF works.

Brief Plot Summary/Analysis (*as always, some spoilers*)

The Hole in the Zero is primarily a character driven novel that takes a space opera premise, with (initially) very standard space opera characters, and contorts and Continue reading →

Updates: Recent Science Fiction Acquisitions No. CXXI (Zelazny + White + Daventry + Gerrold)

/ Joachim Boaz / 33 Comments

A nice grab bag of used book store finds…  I’m nearing completion of my collection of Zelazny’s pre-1980 novels (I do not own nor really want to read any of his purely fantasy works).  Also, I couldn’t help but pick up David Gerrold’s 1974 Hugo and Nebula Award nominated novel The Man Who Folded Himself (1973) although I have been utterly underwhelmed with his work in the past—for example, Space Skimmer (1972) and Yesterday’s Children (1972).

I also found the first volume of a trilogy by Leonard Daventry—owned only the third one for some reason.  And, who can resist another James White novel.  I desperately want to recreate the joy that was White’s The Watch Below (1966).

Thoughts?

1. Damnation Alley, Roger Zelazny (1969) (MY REVIEW)

(Alan Gutierrez’s cover for the 1984 edition) Continue reading →

Adventures in Science Fiction Cover Art: A Multiplication of Faces

/ Joachim Boaz / 22 Comments

MNDFGGRQDQ1976

(Uncredited cover for the 1976 edition of Mindfogger (1973), Michael Rogers)

It’s been more than four months since my last Adventures in Cover Art post….  Here is a bizarre, and perhaps less than artistically satisfying, collection of 50s-70s covers.  So what do we mean by a multiplication of faces? The multiplication of a single face might be a more apt title.  The theme evokes images of mind echoes (whatever they might be), bifurcated realities, abnormal, mental abilities, the manifestation of unusual nightmares, awesome alien might.

I am not sure I have a favorite although Howard Winters’ cover for the 1969 edition of The Man Without a Planet (variant title: Siege Perilous) (1966) by Lester del Rey is genuinely Continue reading →