Many years back (9 years) when I really got into sci-fi I decided to use the Hugo Award for Best Novel list as a way to find interesting authors and read the classics. I’ve done pretty well! Continue reading
science fiction
Book Review: The Dueling Machine, Ben Bova (1969)
2/5 (Bad)
This novel feels like two separate stories connected by the presence of the dueling machine. The story when the dueling machine is a dueling machine and the story when the Bova decides that the dueling machine is also teleportation device and a therapy device and only occasionally used for duels. The first part of the novel Continue reading
Book Review: The Seedling Stars, James Blish (1957)
Overall score 3.75/5 (Good)
James Blish’s The Seedling Stars is a collection of three novelettes (Seeding Program, The Thing in the Attic, Surface Tension) and a short story (Watershed). Each is loosely connected by internal chronology and subject matter: pantropy (the modifications of humans for live on other planets instead of terraforming). The quality Continue reading
Book Review: The Man Who Japed, Philip K. Dick (1956)
4/5 (Good)
“At seven A.M., Allen Purcell, the forward-looking young president of the newest and most creative of the Research Agencies, lost a bedroom,” and so begins The Man Who Japed.
This novel, published in 1956 (a product of the very early period of Philip K. Dick’s career) is an immense step forward from his inferior, disjointed, and amateurish novel, The World Jones Continue reading
Book Review: The People of the Wind, Poul Anderson (1973)
4.5/5 (Very Good)
Notable Awards: Hugo and Locus SF Awards nominee, 1974 Nebula Award nominee, 1973
Poul Anderson’s delightful space opera chronicles the struggle between the growing Terran Empire and the Ythrian Domain (inhabited by birdlike beings). The main action occurs on the planet Avalon, a colony of Ythri but settled by BOTH humans and Ythrians who have managed to create a multicultural Continue reading
A Short Story Review: ‘The Builder’, Philip K. Dick, (1953)
2/5 (Poor)
For Philip K. Dick, ‘The Builder’ is not one of his better stories — nor is close to the best of his early 1950s works (‘The Preserving Machine’). A man (with the aid of his son) despite the continuous Continue reading
Update: Another egregious science fiction classic movie remake in the works, When Worlds Collide
Another timeless classic, When Worlds Collide (1951) dir. Rudolph Maté, is going to be abused by another incompetent director — Stephen Sommers, who helmed the recent G. I. Joe: Rise of Cobra debacle.
Some off the cuff complaints:
1. The Continue reading
A Short Story Review: ‘The Preserving Machine’ Philip K. Dick, (1953)
5/5 Brilliant
What an odd and profoundly moving (and disturbing) little gem.
A man visits Dr. Labyrinth who, in the past, had Continue reading
A Film Rumination: When Worlds Collide, Rudolph Maté (1951)
6/10 (Average)
The famous science fiction producer, George Pal (Destination Moon, The War of the Worlds, Conquest of Space, Time Machine, 7 Faces of Dr. Loa), vividly brings to the silver screen an adaptation of the famous 1930s novel, ‘When Worlds Collide’ by Philip Gordon Wylie and Edwin Balmer. The visual spectacle is quite Continue reading
