My 2024 in Review (Best Science Fiction Novels and Short Fiction, Articles/Podcasts, Reading Initiatives, and Bonus Categories)

Here’s to a happy reading in 2025! I hope you had a successful reading year. Whether you are a lurker, occasional visitor, a regular commenter, a follower on Bluesky or Mastodon, thank you for your continued support. It’s hard to express how important (and encouraging) the discussions that occur in the comments, social media, and via email are to me. This was the third year running of record-breaking numbers of viewers and views in the 13-year history of my site. What were your favorite vintage SF reads–published pre-1985–of 2024? Let me know in the comments.

Clifford D. Simak defined my 2024. Starting with a February review of his collection Worlds Without End (1964), I embarked on a fiction and non-fiction reading extravaganza that culminated in my article for Journey Planet, which I spent most of the summer writing, titled “‘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.” Despite his Grand Master status, there’s little scholarship on Simak’s work and so much more to be done. As expected, there was little response to the article outside of my website. I also wrote two Exploration Logs on six of his interviews and his 1971 Worldcon speech and contributed to a podcast on “The Huddling Place” (1944) (the second City story). Sometimes you find a little niche that you never expected to inhabit which you feel there’s so much more to explore and say. I hope my Simak focus continues into 2025.

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Book Review: Alas, Babylon, Pat Frank (1959)

4/5 (Good)

Pat Frank (1907-1964) began his writing career working for local papers in northeastern Florida before a stint in The Office of Wartime Information (OWI) during WWII. The popular success of Frank’s three nuclear war-themed novels, that culminated with Alas, Babylon (1959), led him to take on the role as a speechwriter for the 1960 Kennedy campaign and beyond.1 As Frank was a lifelong Democrat, Alas, Babylon contains a range of 50s political views that manifest anti-communism and align with the small minority within the party interested in Civil Rights. The novel advocates for vigorous anti-Communist ideology at home and abroad and, in case deterrence fails, survival is possible for those who embody American virtues.

The Narrative Vantage Point Amidst the Mushroom Clouds

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