Book Review: Eight Against Utopia (variant title: From Carthage Then I Came), Douglas R. Mason (1966)

September 7, 2012September 7, 2012 / Joachim Boaz / Leave a comment

(Dean Ellis’ cover for the 1970 edition)

2.25/5 (Bad)

Eight Against Utopia (1966) is the second escape from a domed city novel published by Paperback Library I’ve read — the first, Rena Vale’s Beyond the Sealed World (1965) was a truly dismal “adventure.” Mason’s take on the theme is only marginally better. The first half, life and escape from the domed city of Carthage, is more intriguing and engaging than the second half, an endless unexciting chase sequence along the coast of North Africa. Mason’s novel is painfully flawed in its social theory and mechanics of delivery. Even on the level of a future adventure tale, most of Eight Against Continue reading →

Updates: Recent Acquisitions XXXVI (Malzberg + Gallun + Harrison + Silverberg)

September 3, 2012September 21, 2012 / Joachim Boaz / 6 Comments

More Marx Book purchases along with some random 99 cent thrift store finds (Raymond Z. Gallun + M. John Harrison) that seemed intriguing enough. I will eventually get to M. John Harrison’s magnum opus series of novels, Virconium– beginning with The Pastel City (1971) — but, as always, I approach an author’s masterpieces through an often circuitous manner. I suspect my Malzberg find will be of a lesser quality than either Beyond Apollo (1972) or Revelations (1972).

I reviews I’ve found online of Gallun’s The Eden Cycle (1974) proclaim it an underrated masterpiece — with layers of virtual reality, etc. I’ll read it soon…

As always, have you read any of these? If so, what did you think?

1. The Day of the Burning, Barry N. Malzberg (1974)

(Don Ivan Punchatz’s cover Continue reading →

Book Review: Three for Tomorrow, novellas by Robert Silverberg, Roger Zelazny, and James Blish, (1969)

September 2, 2012March 3, 2013 / Joachim Boaz / 2 Comments

(Uncredited cover for the 1970 edition)

3.5/5 (collated rating: Good)

Three for Tomorrow (1969) contains three novellas written specially for the volume on the following theme selected by Arthur C. Clarke: “with increasing technology goes increasing vulnerability: the more man conquers Nature, the more prone he becomes to artificial catastrophe” (foreword, 8). In my continuing quest for Robert Silverberg’s work from his Glory Period (proclaimed by me) 1967-1976, I was delighted to come across one of his shorter works paired with two other great authors, James Blish and Roger Zelazny. If you want to read Silverberg’s novella but not the others, it appeared in many of his later collections — Earth’s Other Shadow (1973) for example.

As with most collections, Three for Tomorrow is uneven. Silverberg’s installment is the best due to its intriguing social analysis of a city suddenly whose inhabitants are suddenly missing Continue reading →

Adventures in Science Fiction Cover Art: Inside the Skull (rats + women + sword fights + robotic circuits + space)

August 31, 2012June 15, 2014 / Joachim Boaz / 33 Comments

(Ebel’s cover for the 1953 issue of Space Science Fiction)

Previous art explorations which looked at disembodied brains and visualizations of the ultra-intelligent set the stage for this post. Imagine skulls without brains: sometimes metaphorically, but often, literally hollow skull cavities that hold a vast array of mechanical devies and living captives. Or, the reader is gifted a voyeuristic peek into the skulls of bodies masquerading as humans but in reality, a mesh of circuits or a metal sheen operates those beautiful limbs and terrifying weapons….

My favorite is by far the pulp goodness of Ebel’s cover (if anyone knows the full name of this artist please let me know) for the 1953 issue of Space Science Fiction. The gorgeous heroine is held captive in gigantic stone heads with partially glass skulls — a robot that fails to conjure any menace stomps Continue reading →

Adventures in Science Fiction Cover Art: Chess/Checkers (with people + planets)

August 9, 2012August 9, 2012 / Joachim Boaz / 21 Comments

(Ed Valigursky’s cover for the 1962 edition of Cosmic Checkmate (1962), Charles V. DeVet and Katherine MacLean)

Queue Ed Valigursky’s cover for the Cosmic Checkmate (1962): a chessboard arrayed against a background of stars, men stand on different colored squares, as much pawns of some distant player as the pieces nearby. Spaceships flash across the vast expanse of space — remember, the game has galactic ramifications — with our characters arrayed, the game opens, and the battle (of wits and secret weapons) begins. Although I have not (yet) read Charles V. DeVet and Katherine MacLean (whose later novel Missing Man (1975) I highly recommend) is explicitly about Chess, or more precisely, a similar alien game, and the ramifications are indeed, galactic in scope. Other covers are more metaphoric Continue reading →

Book Review: Sargasso of Space, Andre Norton (1955)

August 8, 2012August 9, 2012 / Joachim Boaz / 29 Comments

(Ed Emshwiller’s cover for the 1964 edition)

4/5 (Good)

Andre Norton’s Sargasso of Space (1955), the first installment of her Solar Queen sequence of novels, delivers everything a 1950s juvenile science fiction adventure should. Sargasso of Space is not only blessed with genuine tension, intriguing situations, heroic young adults, but also a multi-racial cast (an African-American apprentice engineer and two crew members of Asian descent). This is my first of Andre Norton’s massive body of work I’ve read — Secret of the Lost Race, Star Born, Daybreak-2250 A. D., and Witch World are all on my shelf waiting to be devoured — and I will be looking to add more to my collection. There’s something so appealing in the classic archetypal trope of the young hero–with the help of loyal friends–solving an intriguing (and dangerous) puzzle.

Brief Plot Summary

Our young/intrepid hero Dane Thornson is an apprentice Cargo-Master Continue reading →

Adventures in Science Fiction Cover Art: Models, Dolls, Mannequins

August 5, 2012May 16, 2013 / Joachim Boaz / 16 Comments

(David Davies’ cover for the 1968 edition of The Syndic (1953), C. M. Kornbluth)

Occasionally I dabble in the incredibly esoteric and artistically painful. Apparently in the 60s and the early 70s — heralded by the artist David Davies — there was momentary interest in sci-fi covers constructed from manipulated photographs of store window mannequins, dolls, wire contraptions vaguely suggesting spaceships, toy spacemen, wooden artist mannequins dressed in clothes/wigs, and copyright violating models of the Star Trek: The Original Series Enterprise NCC-1701.

Unfortunately, most of the covers I’ve discovered are uncredited — they might all be the work of David Davies. Internet Speculative Fiction Database has seventeen of his covers listed but I suspect that he made many many more — I’ve gone ahead and credited a few Continue reading →

Book Review: Beyond Apollo, Barry N. Malzberg (1972)

July 29, 2012August 3, 2019 / Joachim Boaz / 35 Comments

(Roger Hane’s cover for the 1972 edition)

5/5 (Masterpiece — but please consider the caveats below before procuring a copy)

(This review is a product of lengthy dialogues with my girlfriend, a graduate student in English, who devoured the work with great relish and enthusiasm. Her remarkable eye peeled away levels I didn’t even know existed and heightened my appreciation for this underread classic. I owe large portions of this review to her.)

Barry N. Malzberg’s Beyond Apollo (1972), the third of his novels I’ve read (Conversations, In the Enclosure, Guernica Night), is generally considered his best work (he won the inaugural John Campbell Award for best Novel). In a genre infrequently blessed with literary experimentation — of course, there are a few exceptions, Ballard’s The Atrocity Exhibition (1970), Joanna Russ’ The Female Man (1975), Russ’ And Chaos Died (1970), and John Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar (1968) among others — I’m always more predisposed to works which are structurally/stylistically inventive and thought-provoking. Barry N. Malzberg’s Beyond Apollo more than fulfills Continue reading →

Updates: Recent Science Fiction Acquisitions No. XXXIV (Brunner + Tucker + Brackett + et al.)

July 26, 2012July 26, 2012 / Joachim Boaz / 6 Comments

A mixture of a few clearance section novels from Austin bookstores (Chandler and Siodmak) and three recent purchases from a nice used bookstore (for science fiction) in my current town… I can’t wait to read another Leigh Brackett novel (one of the most renowned pulp sci-fi writers of the 50s) — I’ve only read her novels, The Big Jump (1955) and was pleasantly surprised.

One can never have too many Brunner novels (I have 21 at the moment and I’ve read a majority of them) — even average works from the early 80s….

And Wilson Tucker’s The Year of the Quiet Sun (1970) — yes, I generally dislike time travel, but I’ve yet to read one of his works so I might as well start with what is generally considered his best novel.

(*note: I include images of what I consider the best cover for the novel if it has multiple editions because I enjoy good examples of sci-fi art. I own perhaps half of the exact editions shown. A few readers have expressed confusion.)

1. The Long Tomorrow, Leigh Brackett (1955)