paperbacks

Adventures in Science Fiction Cover Art: Human Transformations + Transfigurations

/ Joachim Boaz / 13 Comments

LNHRZNSEB1974

(Vincent Di Fate’s cover for Alien Horizons (1974), William F. Nolan)

I have been gathering this series of SF covers for a while—the human shape contorting, manipulated, transforming into in-human forms (trees, keys, insects, etc).  Some are more metaphoric, for example Josh Kirby’s cover for the 1970 edition of A Century of Great Short Science Fiction Novels (1964).  While a few are clearly aliens which look “human”—Charles Shield’s incredibly uncanny cover for the 1979 edition of Fireflood and Other Stories (1979) by Vonda N. McIntyre….

All hint at bigger mysteries, and seduce with their uncertain Continue reading →

Updates: Recent Science Fiction Acquisitions No. CXII (Spinrad + Vonnegut, Jr. + Mitchison + Anthology)

/ Joachim Boaz / 27 Comments

I’m a proponent of book store traveling (travel where bookstores are the first target).  Two Half Price Books and a quality independent used books store yielded what will be the first of many acquisition posts of worthy SF.

Who could resist a $5 signed copy of Spinrad’s masterpiece Bug Jack Barron (1967)?  Or a normally pricey edition of Naomi Mitchison’s Memoirs of a Spacewoman (1962) for $2?  And some Vonnegut, Jr. and a quality anthology containing the best of New Worlds….

Thoughts?

1. Bug Jack Barron, Norman Spinrad (serialized 1967)

(Alex Gnidziejko’s cover for the 1969 edition) Continue reading →

Book Review: Transfigurations, Michael Bishop (1979)

/ Joachim Boaz / 10 Comments

(Mike Hinge’s cover for the 1979 edition)

4.25/5 (Good)

Note: A slightly shorter version of this review will appear in Big Sky, # 4 (a fanzine put together by Pete Young).

On the surface, Michael Bishop’s anthropologically inclined science fiction appears deceptively simple. In his first novel and unacknowledged masterpiece A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire (1975), the premise (moving an alien people from a planet) evolves into a vast and complex anthropological tapestry filled with stories within stories creating an almost claustrophobic doubling of characters. In Stolen Faces (1977) the biological mystery of a virulent disease grows, tumor-like, into a brilliantly nightmarish exploration of bodily and societal decay and the gravimetric forces of memory.

Bishop’s Hugo- and Nebula-nominated novella, “Death and Designation Among the Asadi” ( Continue reading →

Book Review: False Dawn, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro (1978)

/ Joachim Boaz / 16 Comments

(Gary Friedman’s cover for the 1978 edition)

3.25/5 (Vaguely Good)

“One of the women wasn’t dead yet.  Her ravaged body hung naked from a broken billboard.  Her legs were splayed wide and anchored with ropes; legs and belly were bloody, there were heavy bruises on her face and breasts, and she had been branded with a large “M” for mutant” (1).

Before there was Mad Max (1979) dir. George Miller there was Chelsea Quinn Yarbro’s False Dawn (1978)… In 1972 she published her brutal and terrifying short story “False Dawn” in Thomas N. Scortia’s anthology Strange Bedfellows  (1972).  A few years later the work was deemed important enough to be included in Pamela Sargent’s famous anthology Women of Wonder (1975).  This story forms the first chapter of her post-apocalyptical novel False Dawn (1978).

In the 60s highly inventive post-apocalyptical stories flourished: for example, J. G. Ballard’s masterpiece The Drowned World (1962) filled with images of uterine spaces Continue reading →

Updates: Recent Fantasy Acquisitions No. I (Hoban + Peake + Eddison)

/ Joachim Boaz / 36 Comments

Something different!

I have always had a soft sport for fantasy (mostly the non-Tolkein ripoff type) à la Mervyn Peake’s Titus Groan (1946), Stephen Donaldson’s Lord Foul’s Bane (1977), Jeff VanderMeer’s Shriek: An Afterword (2006).  Yes, as a kid I read tons of “standard fanasy” i.e. almost all those horrid Wheel of Time novels + Tad Williams’ Memory, Sorrow & Thorn  sequence, etc. etc.  And then I discovered SF and my reading parterns shifted drastically….

Over the past few months I’ve collected the two sequels to Titus Groan and a few Russell Hoban novels—my site name Joachim Boaz is  partially derived from Hoban’s remarkable The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz (1973).

I’m not sure if I’ll review these novels here but, I might read Peake’s Gormenghast (1950) soon.

Thoughts?

1. Pilgermann, Russell Hoban (1983)

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

Adventures in Science Fiction Cover Art: The Skull (connected to mysterious contraptions + looming above all + the moon mutated), Part I

/ Joachim Boaz / 18 Comments

DRDFLSNCTR1972

(Richard Weaver’s cover for the 1972 edition of Dreadful Sanctuary (1948), Eric Frank Russell)

THE SKULL. The bones of the dead, the empty sockets gazing at us, a deathly gaze….  I have collected for your [horror filled] enjoyment a vast variety of SF skulls: the moon mutated into a skull, the half-skinned skull as part of mysterious contraptions, photographs of real human skulls interspersed with statuary and wigs, bizarre pink skulls pulsating with green radiation-esque Continue reading →

Book Review: The Gamesman, Barry N. Malzberg (1975)

/ Joachim Boaz / 11 Comments

(Ed Soyka’s cover for the 1975 edition)

4.5/5 (Very Good)

“The Game is not a metaphor. The Game is not a closed system which represents something larger; but the choices made within its pathways are exactly that, choices which have to do with the immediate outcome. It would be a mistake to think of the success or failure in the Game having anything to do with the world. There are not metaphors. There are no outer significances. There is merely the Game itself and what it accomplishes upon its participants” (37).

In Jorge Luis Borges’ 1941 short story, “The Library of Babel” the universe is conceived of as a vast library stretching in all directions.  In this spectacular environment—an endless series of hexagonal rooms, each one with the same number of shelves with the same number of books with the same number of letters inscribed on each page, etc. Borges brings into sharp, and unsettling relief, complex metaphysical speculations.

In The Gamesman (1975) Barry N. Malzberg creates a similarly sculpted world with two bifurcated Continue reading →

Updates: Recent Science Fiction Acquisitions No. CIX (Holland + Snyder + Malzberg 2x)

/ Joachim Boaz / 17 Comments

A grab bag of risk (Cecelia Holland + Guy Snyder) and great reward (Barry N. Malzberg)!  I would love to know what you think.  I know Holland’s Floating Worlds (1976) was picked up by the SF Masterwork series put out by Gollancz but I know next to nothing about the novel.

And, well, Malzberg is my favorite SF author (metafiction + experimentation + Freud + recursive elements) so I know what I’m getting with his stuff!

Thoughts?

1. Floating Worlds, Cecelia Holland (1976)

(Melvyn Grant’s cover for the 1978 edition) Continue reading →

Book Review: Indoctrinaire, Christopher Priest (1970)

/ Joachim Boaz / 20 Comments

(Bruce Pennington’s cover for the 1971 edition)

3.25/5 (Slightly Above Average)

“There is an element of terror in any natural object that does not exist in its proper place. Wentik experienced the full force of this as he stood in the dark. A hand grows from a table, and an ear from a wall. A maze is constructed to sophisticated mathematical formula, yet is housed in a tumbledown shack. A minor official terrorizes me, and a man tries to fly a helicopter without vanes. Land exist in future time, through I feel and believe instinctively that I am in the present. What else will this place do to me? (83)”

Christopher Priest’s first novel Indoctrinaire (1970) explores the mystery of a vast perfectly round plain with a series of strange buildings that appears in the middle of the Amazonian jungle.  Seemingly displaced in time, the transformed landscape is not only a visible sign of the ecological transformation the world will undergo but also, less visibly, the unseen but pernicious scars Continue reading →