Book Review: The Falling Astronauts, Barry N. Malzberg (1971)

January 26, 2013January 26, 2013 / Joachim Boaz / 25 Comments

(Davis Meltzer’s cover for the 1971 edition)

4.25/5 (Good)

The Falling Astronauts (1971) (from now on FA) is the first in Barry N. Malzberg’s thematic trilogy on the American space program. Although not as engaging or experimental as the other two masterpieces in the sequence — Beyond Apollo (1972) and Revelations (1972), FA is highly readable and a notable work in Malzberg’s extensive corpus. FA attempts to debunk the so-called cult (in part propagated by the media) of the astronaut (and his ideal family) and in so doing questions the ultimate purpose of the space Continue reading →

SF Article: Barry N. Malzberg (b.1939): Metafiction and the Demystification of the Cult of the Astronaut

January 14, 2013July 2, 2017 / Joachim Boaz / 10 Comments

This was my recent guest post on Little Red Reviewer.

For those who didn’t see it I decided to post it here….

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Barry N. Malzberg (b. 1939): Metafiction and the Demystification of the Cult of the Astronaut

In the World Book Encyclopedia Science Service publication The United States Astronauts and their Families: A Pictorial Presentation (1965), each astronaut is allotted a two-page spread replete with staged photos of their family life and hobbies. Otis L. Wiese, the editor of the volume, proclaims grandiosely “Man’s reach for the world of space is born of his insatiable curiosity about the unknown… his indomitable drive for accomplishment… his instinctive response to a challenge. Astronauts-Husbands-Fathers: these men are the men featured here but it’s essentially as family men that we portray them” (i).

The photographs are fascinating. Roger B. Chaffee’s wife Martha teaches him lunar geography (22), L. Gordon Cooper, Jr. sits at the helm of his speedboat Bluebonnet which is capable of reaching 80 knots (28), in another photo him and his family spend time with their German shepherd (29), Donn F. Eisele teaches his daughter “the finer points of marksmanship” (35), while Alan B. Shepard, Jr. plays piano tunes for his daughters (61) and in the facing image shakes hands with John F. Kennedy (61).

Their families illustrate the epitome of the American family: the ultra-masculine man with his cars and boats, the supportive wife facilitating Continue reading →

Book Review: No Time Like Tomorrow, Brian Aldiss (1959)

January 14, 2013January 14, 2013 / Joachim Boaz / 6 Comments

(Richard Powers’ cover for the 1959 edition)

3.75/5 (collated rating: Good)

This collection of Brian Aldiss short stories from the mid-to-late 50s is a notch above the middling Galaxies Like Grains of Sand (1960), collated from the same period, which I reviewed a few months back. Aldiss is definitely one of the more bizarre and original (along with Philip K. Dick) sci-fi voices of the 50s (and beyond).

Most collections are purposely comprised of a mixture of good and bad stories hence the generally low collated ratings I hand out. Unlike Galaxies, most of the stories in this collection are worth reading and none are egregiously bad. ‘Not for an Age,’ ‘Judas Danced’, ‘The Failed Men’, and ‘Outside’ are all highly Continue reading →

Updates: Recent Science Fiction Acquisitions, Magazine Edition No. I (Galaxy 2x, Worlds of If 3x, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction 1x)

December 29, 2012December 29, 2012 / Joachim Boaz / 15 Comments

My first science fiction magazines!

Although I’m not sure that I want to collect the entire catalogues of either Worlds of If or The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, I wouldn’t mind starting a collection of Galaxy (one of the more famous magazines). I’ve been tentative in the past about purchasing magazines for one simple reason: a large percentage of their contents, especially if by well-known authors, are rewritten/expanded/re-conceptualized for later short story collections or novel publication form. Thus, what version you read in the magazine is rarely the more polished version found in later editions. For example, in the August 1965 issue of Galaxy Frank Herbert’s Do I Wake or Dream? was expanded for the 1966 novel publication under the title Destination: Void (which was revised again for the much later 1978 edition). Novels like Dune (1965) are themselves fix-up novels from shorter novels previously serialized in magazines — Dune World (1963) and The Prophet of Dune (1965). However, six magazines for one dollar each was too good of a deal to pass up….

The only magazine I desperately want to collect is New Worlds due to the quantity of experimental New Wave material which was published during Moorcock’s editorship.

(Gray Morrow’s cover for the August 1965 issue) Continue reading →

Book Review: Dark Dominion, David Duncan (1954)

December 25, 2012December 25, 2012 / Joachim Boaz / 2 Comments

(Richard Powers’ cover for the 1954 edition)

2.5/5 (Bad)

David Duncan, most famous for writing the screenplay to George Pal’s film The Time Machine (1960), produced a handful of genre and non-genre novels in the 1950s. Bluntly put, the Dark Dominion (1954) was one of the more disappointing novels I’ve read this year. It is worthwhile for one thing alone, Richard Powers’ gorgeous cover. Duncan’s novel is characterized by an incredibly painful strain of melodrama even for the 50s, downright preposterous science Continue reading →

Book Review: Lords of the Starship, Mark S. Geston (1967)

December 23, 2012October 17, 2019 / Joachim Boaz / 12 Comments

(John Shoenherr’s cover for the 1967 edition)

3.75/5 (Good)

Mark S. Geston’s first novel Lords of the Starship (1967), written at the age of 21 while he was an undergraduate history student, revolves around a fascinating premise: The construction of a massive (fake) spaceship intended to lift a society out of a crippling malaise. The narrative covers hundreds of years and seemingly innumerable characters. The lack of distinct characters is the most frustrating aspect of the work. However, the extremely dark tone and satirical underpinnings lift the novel above the endless morass of earlier pulp sci-fi.

For fans of 50s/60s space opera and more traditionalist 60s Continue reading →

Updates: Recent Science Fiction Acquisitions No. XLVII (Merril + Sheckley + Stableford + Anderson)

December 20, 2012December 23, 2012 / Joachim Boaz / 2 Comments

Three short story collections and one novel from my Texan hunting grounds. I enjoyed Merril’s short story collection Daughters of Earth (1968) so I quickly snatched up another… I’ve been disappointed with Brian M. Stableford before but multiple fellow readers have claimed that The Halcyon Drift (1972) is worth reading. We shall see… And one can never have too many Sheckley and Anderson short stories…

1. Out of Bounds, Judith Merril (1960)

(John Schoenherr’s cover for the 1963 edition) Continue reading →

Book Review: Needle in a Timestack, Robert Silverberg (1966)

December 18, 2012April 14, 2017 / Joachim Boaz / 23 Comments

(Richard Powers’ cover for the 1966 edition)

*Review for the 1966 edition. The 1979 and 1985 editions were revised.*

collated rating: 3/5 (Average)

Needle in a Timestack (1966) is an uneven collection of ten short stories from the late 50s and early 60s by Robert Silverberg. By the late 60s and early 70s Silverberg was producing his masterpieces. However, earlier in his career he wrote mostly pulp novels and short stories. A few in this collection tackle, in varying degrees of success, social science fiction themes: the media, war propaganda, colonialism, unusual criminal punishment, the suburban lifestyle etc. Many of these Continue reading →

Adventures in Science Fiction Cover Art: Pyramids (spaceships + future earthscapes + alien temples)

December 17, 2012December 18, 2012 / Joachim Boaz / 64 Comments

(Jack Faragasso’s cover for the 1971 edition of The Pyramids from Space (1970), Jack Bertin and Peter B. Germano)

This post is in a series on the interaction between television/film and science fiction cover art (The Statue of Liberty on Pre-1968 Magazine and Novel Covers and Cosmic Fetuses + Other Uterine Spaces). In the former, the scene at the end of Planet of the Apes (1968) drew directly on pre-existing pulp science fiction art tropes. In the later, Kubrick’s baby in a balloon scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) inspired many artists to reproduce the image of the cosmic fetus. There isn’t a direct line of influence in this post between these covers and Stargate (1994) and its sequels. I simply seek to illustrate that there has always been an obsession, verging into the sci-fi genre, with re-interpreting Continue reading →