Archive for the ‘Spec-Fic’ Category
Wednesday, January 20th, 2010
I was once at a party where I had a conversation with a woman artist about Robert A. Heinlein. When I told her that he was my favorite writer, she told me I was an idiot and that Heinlein was a fascist woman hater. This is an attitude that I have come across from time to time, especially from women. It could not be further from the truth, and I don’t know how this has happened. I have read everything that Heinlein has written at least four times and one or two of his books as many as 20 times. He is not a woman hater. He is not a fascist. To me his an intelligent and reasonable observer.
At the The Lensman’s Children blog, Sarah Hoyt has an article defending Robert A. Heinlein. She discusses Heinlein’s problems with women and how they are dead wrong. It does my heart good to read something like this.
Here’s a sample:
But I was raised by Heinlein through his books, and I hope at least the spirit and the intention of the search for truth and individual freedom remains in my work. As well as the certainty that it’s always easier to be a live lion than a live lamb or a dead lion.
Posted in SF, Science Fiction, Spec-Fic | 2 Comments »
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Saturday, November 21st, 2009
There was a discussion about the realness of SF over at one of the Nanowrimo forums. It seems that they read my “Laws Science Fiction” page and I was trashed – the page and me personally.
Also – I wouldn’t worry too much about that website. Personally, I think their “laws” are a load of crap, and that anyone who talks about “laws of writing” in that way should probably go take a hike. :-p
And another:
That website is crappy. Just reading the laws show their ignorance of Science Fiction. I doubt they’ve ever read Asimov.
My own personal opinions are stated clearly in the list of laws, so you might be able to guess what I think about the kind of writing that these people produce.
I imagine that I have sold more stories than everyone on that thread combined. In my brief stint as an editor, I had to read a lot of the stories that these people obviously prefer, and my eyes still hurt when I think about it.
via How real does Sci-Fi have to be? | National Novel Writing Month.
Update:
one commentor said:
The web site referenced has some good points to make, but it takes some uncomfortable hard lines on some things.
The author then goes on to describe how his or her novel is about an alien that (in my view) is really a human in a rubber suit. If you want to write about humans. Using SF to hide your true intentions seems like laziness to me. I guess some people find it easier to cast a story in a an sf setting so they will not have to do the hard work of character development and creating believable conflicts and plots.
There was only one criticism to my list of rules that I could buy into. Writing SF is fun so writing a story that breaks all the rules, but is fun to write and read is the only excuse for not following the rules.
This give me the AHA moment and I will add a disclaimer at the end.
Posted in SF, Science Fiction, Spec-Fic | No Comments »
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Monday, October 12th, 2009
Fred Pohl linked back to the post on the Science Fiction League. This was nice of him and so far I have seen a dozen hits. I hope y’all come back now.
The project wonderful ads have started generating a (very) little income, but I am pleased with the ads. Currently they are for a fairly unique site that lets you continue a shared story by writing posts. I think I’ll even click on it and lurk. It does look like fun.
I know that four or five SF writers and editors have had reservations about advertising on their blogs and zine sites because the ads are out of their control. Specifically the keyword Fantasy often gets some weird ads, as you can imagine. With the project wonderful website you approve the ads before they appear on your site. The downside is that the income is pretty low for small sites. Higer volume sites (over 1,000 hits a day) can make more.
I have started advertising my Name a Star site using project wonderful and I am getting a few click-throughs. The price is quite a bit lower than adwords and I can pick and choose the sites where I want the ads to appear. If you need to advertise a site, on a budget, then project wonderful is perfect. There are numerous gaming and spec-fic sites to choose from (J. Erwine and Ephemeris, please note!)
Posted in Blogging, Science Fiction, Spec-Fic, free quality traffic seo hits, search engine marketing, www | No Comments »
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Thursday, August 20th, 2009
I received 13 critiques from critters.org of my short story “The Perfect Gold”. I used this story as a barometer of how the critiques might help me because it was one of the first stories I wrote after a 35 year hiatus. I wrote it early in 2003 and it appeared online in Atsoise (now defunct) in February of 2004. It had 5 rejections before it was accepted and I believe that this is because of my ignorance of how editors expected a story to be written.
I made lots of mistakes in “The Perfect Gold”. I was trying to write in a fairly remote omniscient viewpoint, which is an older style and not acceptable today. Currently, editors want a tight personal viewpoint, almost first person (but they don’t like first person). Another mistake was that I had a break in the middle of the story where the main character leaves the scene to get something, but it chops off the flow until the character returns. In another break I spend some time describing the background and history of one of the characters, almost as though it were a footnote, and this disrupts the narrative. I had lots of trouble with the language. My words flow a little smoother now, but I remember at the time that I was concerned that the sentences seemed like lines from a technical manual with lots of “she did this” and “then he did this”. This computer programmer approach to narrative has been somewhat abated, but I still tend to write in syllogisms.
The critiques I received were of different kinds. One had an attached word document that cannot be opened due to viruses. Four were people who told me that they really enjoyed the story and went on to tell me their favorite parts (useless other than for moral building). Three people hated the story or thought it was boring. It seems that I wrote a “mood” piece. The people that did not like the story wanted less emotion and more blood and guts. The story has an emotional impact, but it is not an O Henry type story with a twist or revelation at the end (I wanted to write a story like “The Dead” by Joyce).
About three quarters of the critiques had valid remarks. They found numerous typos that I did not see. They complained about the narrative breaks that interrupted the flow. Many complained about my short choppy declarative sentences. I am almost tempted to rewrite the story, give it different title and try to resell it as new. I’ve done this with other stories, but right now I have new ideas, and I have dozens of stories that I have yet to write before I rehash older stuff.
The critters experience has been a good one overall. When I first started writing, I would not have found it useful because I would have disagreed with some of the conclusions. My attitude today is that most editors have had their souls corrupted by the Clarion brainwashing and there is nothing I can do about it. The Clarion workshops have created a static standard that renders classic short stories by Bradbury, Clarke, and Heinlein as “bad”. If I am to publish stories, they must fit into the little box created by advocates of Clarion and the Turkey City Lexicon.
Now that I have been through the critters process, I will be leaving the group. I was going to put my stories “Carnivale of Blood”, “Nigerian Soul”, and “The Reefs of Jupiter” through the process, but it takes too long for too little. In order to get a critique you have to submit 10 critiques, which I find stressful, and then wait 45 days. I’d have to wait four and a half months to get a three stories critiqued, and I usually write one or two stories each month.
I was thinking about hijacking the process in order to speed things up by using four or five different emails and writing a critique a week for all of them, but this would be too much like work. I am far from the right person to criticize a story (pot calling kettle…). I didn’t like most of the stories that I critiqued so it was hard being diplomatic.
I will have to prevail on family and friends to edit my stories. I just don’t see my typos, grammar and syntax mistakes. This would have been a good use for critters, but I don’t have the patience.
Posted in SF, Science Fiction, Short Stories, Spec-Fic, submissions | 3 Comments »
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Friday, January 23rd, 2009
I’ve spent the last two weeks tramping through Middle Earth. (Listening to mp3s on Justine’s iPhone.) Gollum just fell into the crack of doom and I’ve had it with Hobbits for another year. I have read or listened to LOTR probably over 100 times. There was a time, 20 years ago, that I know I passed the 50 count just on reading. At that time I obtained the tapes and listened two or three times a year as I commuted to work. I since found the audio in MP3 format.
I can get back to reading, again. I have rediscovered the simple pleasures of reading since I started taking the bus in the morning. My six months’ bus anniversary came and passed without celebration (I was still bummed about Christmas.)
Monday I start reading Black Glass, by John Shirley. This is billed as Shirley’s Lost Cyberpunk Novel. I like Shirley’s Science Fiction and I am a Cyberpunk kind of guy. Last Year I read Shirley’s Demons, and a couple of months ago I read an old copy of City Come a Walking by Shirley, and I thought it was excellent. I should reread his Eclipse books, since it has been a few years. I went through the link above and got a signed copy of Black Glass at the regular price, although I was raped on shipping. Media mail should have been about $1.50 not $6.50.
Posted in SF, Science Fiction, Spec-Fic | 1 Comment »
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Wednesday, December 31st, 2008
 I have received disparaging words from an unnamed sister-in-law about book reviews on my blog, so this will be brief.
I have always been a fan of Greg Bear, in spite of his novels being too long. The Infinity Concerto; not so much. I prefer hard science and I believe that Bear writes hard science fiction better than fantasy.
The basic story of the Infinity Concerto is that a boy enters the world of Fairy based loosely on Celtic mythology. Bear tries his best to create hard rules, but in a magical world that is difficult. I amused myself by deciding that the third law of thermodynamics didn’t hold in the land of the Sidhe, and then stopped thinking about science.
In a world where nothing is impossible, nothing is very interesting. I felt that Bear continually fabricated a new solution out of thin air whenever the protagonist got in trouble.
The book was well written with good characters and some interesting ideas, but was not my cup of SF. I am, however, reading the sequel, The Magic Serpent. There are entirely too many words where nothing much happens, but I want to find out how the plots all come together. I’ll have a review of The Magic Serpent by early next week. I may move these book reviews to another blog to satisfy in-laws only interested in cat pictures.
I am still on the "B" author row of my collection of unread books. The holidays have cut into my reading time. I am spending all of my spare moments on programming projects. I expect to have my iPhone app done any day now.
Posted in SF, Science Fiction, Spec-Fic | 1 Comment »
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Saturday, December 27th, 2008
 I am saddened to learn that Edd Cartier, one of the great artists of the Golden Age of Science Fiction, passed away on Christmas Day.
I met Edd quite by accident when he and his son were having a garage sale. I was lucky enough to buy some of his work and get it signed and personalized. I have since exchanged email with his sons a few times.
After I met the great man I began seeking out and collecting his art work. I have a shelf of old magazines and illustrated books with Edd’s fantastic drawings.
The photo is Edd Cartier the day I discovered him.
I hate this whole grow old and die thing. It does not seem right that the world should lose a talent like Edd Cartier. He lived a long and rich life, but still, the world is a poorer place without him.
Posted in SF, Spec-Fic, artwork | No Comments »
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Monday, December 15th, 2008
 I bought this dog-eared book at a garage sale a few weeks ago for a dollar. Lord Dunsany is a unique writer. If you read the book Stardust by Neil Gaiman (or even saw the hacked movie version), you would get an idea of what a Dunsany book is about. My edition of The Charwoman’s Shadow was published in 1926. Dunsany was already popular then, because of The King of Elfland’s Daughter, considered his masterpiece (and nearly the same story as Gaimon’s Stardust).
In the 1920s, Branch’s Jurgen in the US, and Eddison’s adult fairy tales in England were best sellers. These are richly written fantasies that also have a real world message. Readers in the 1920s would not have objected to reading a fantasy story that bordered on being a fairy tale.
Dunsany wrote his books with green ink using a quill pen that he would cut by hand. His wife typed out the stories. All of his books and stories are first drafts because he is supposed to have never rewritten or revised any of his work.
Dunsany’s language is absolutely wonderful. Here are the first two paragraphs Charwoman’s Shadow:
Picture a summer evening somber and sweet over Spain, the glittering sheen of leaves fading to soberer colors, the sky in the west all soft, and mysterious as low music, and in the east like a frown. Picture the Golden Age past its wonderful zenith, and westering now towards its setting.
In such a time of day and time of year, and in such a time of history, a young man was traveling on foot on a Spanish road, from a village well-nigh unknown, towards the gloom and grandeur of mountains. And as he traveled a wind rising up with the fall of day flapped his cloak hugely about him.
I missed getting off of my bus once, because I was involved in the unique plot. Dunsany is an extremely resourceful writer. A few times he seems to get a little lost pulling together his plot points, and here and there a paragraph will go on for a page or two while he explains some minor intricacy, but these go by quick. The denouement wanders a bit as it brings all of the threads together, but this is made up for with the wonderful ending, which describes the end of a golden age of magic.
I don’t think anyone reads Lord Dunsany anymore. This is a great loss.
Posted in High Fantasy, Spec-Fic | No Comments »
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Thursday, November 13th, 2008
 Another Side of the Galaxy (1966), edited by Groff Conklin is the second Conklin anthology that I’ve read in this series. The previous Conklin Anthology dealt primarily with golden age writers. I need to refine that a little in that following the incredible decade of the 1940s where John W. Campbell, Jr.’ s Astounding Science Fiction magazine created modern SF (the golden age), there followed the 1950s where Campbell, although still a powerful force, slowly lost his leading position. Readers began to tire of Campbell’s gadget based technology stories and new pulps like The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Galaxy and Worlds of If sprang up and presented alternative forms of SF. Campbell’s abrasive style and absolute certainty of his opinions caused him to lose, one by one, most of his stable of writers. These were the same writers that he had discovered and guided into modern Science Fiction. By 1960, Astounding was still telling technological engineering based gadget stories while the other magazines were exploring characters, social issues and literary forms.
Groff Conklin’s Possible Worlds of Science Fiction presented stories from the 1940s and were mostly Campbell type stories. Another Side of the Galaxy contrasts these with the new writers of the 1950s who wrote about non-technical people with deep emotions, living in interesting societies and coping with problems that could not be solved with a slide rule.
Another Side of the Galaxy starts with a The Red Hills of Summer by one of my favorite writers, Edgar Pangborn. Pangborn produced two of my top 10 SF books, The Judgment of Eve and Davy, but was not as prolific as other writers. It is interesting that the protagonist in The Red Hills of Summer is named Davy. The story, set in a post apocalyptic future, involves humans fleeing a dying Earth, searching for planet where humanity can settle and grow and perhaps, correct the mistakes made on Earth. Four explorers are chosen to land on the planet to see if they can survive with the knowledge that they will never be allowed to return to space. The settlers cannot risk the future of the human race on a hidden disease that might enter the main ship and destroy them all.
The Red Hills of Summer is a love story between a couple who must face the unknown together, but are not quite committed to their love. Although there is little else to the plot other than coping with each of the problems as they arise, we become involved with the lives of the lovers and the story is how they finally come to grips with their own relationship. It is well done and first appeared in F&SF magazine, being the kind of transcendent writing and concepts that they looked for in a story. It was wonderful to find a new (to me at least) Pangborn story.
Paul Ash is in reality Pauline Ashwell, a Hugo nominated Science Fiction writer. Her story Big Sword was published in Astounding. I would guess that Campbell talked her into changing the gender of her pen name to appeal to his overwhelmingly male readership. The story is an odd choice for Campbell because it involves a child with emotional problems and the science is an ecological puzzle on a distant planet. Campbell was nuts about ESP, which figures in this story, and this might explain why he bought it. The conflict involves a child with ESP whose parents are divorced. He is taken by his unemotional and distant father, a spaceship captain, to a strange planet. In an alternate story line, the protagonist is an alien named Big Sword, who needs to communicate with the humans to solve his own serious ecological problem. The resolution is ingenious and satisfying.
The First Lady by J.T. McIntosh was published in Galaxy. It would not have fit in Astounding because the central conflict involves sociology rather than technology. The premise is that a pair of special government agents has to escort a young woman to a planet where she would be the first female on the planet. This would have been a reasonable plot line 1953, although ludicrous by today’s standards. McIntosh envisions a system where planets are settled by men only and then later a woman shows up to be the "First lady". She carries the first child and if it is healthy, the colony is allowed to continue. What makes this a good story, in spite of the silly premise, is the relationships between the male and female agent and the future first lady as they travel in the cramped rooms of the spaceship on the way to the new colony. It becomes a love triangle, which is intensified by the fact that it cannot continue once the planet is reached. The tension involves whether or not the future child will live and the colony survive, as well as the fact that one of the agents knows what the outcome will probably be.
J.F. Bone, Insidekick, is the story of a man who suddenly finds that he can do almost anything because a strange creature has entered his mind in a symbiotic relationship. The title is a pun on sidekick (in-sidekick, get it?). Jesse F. Bone was a prominent veterinarian and was nominated for a Hugo award. He must have been a friend of Robert A. Heinlein because he is mentioned in the Cat Who Walks Through Walls as the veterinarian fetched from another universe to help save the cat Pixel’s life after the raid to save Mike. He is known for his book of sexual mores and animal rights, The Lani People (Available at Project Gutenberg).
The Live Coward by Poul Anderson is a Planetary League Story, one of a series involving diplomacy in a universe where there are literally millions of worlds settle by Humanity and their alien allies. It is an interesting story where Anderson get’s his character Wing Alak, into difficult situation and then bails him out with ingenuity. I first read this in the pages of a an old Astounding from my uncle’s collection that he kept in his attic. I was convinced that these old magazines were a thing of the distant past and did not exist any more, until I found Analog Magazine at a small soda shop down in the village of Nyack.
Eric Frank Russell’s Still Life is the weakest story in the bunch. It deals with the red tape of a huge and top heavy galactic empire and how a junior clerk goes about finding alternate paths through the miles of regulations in order to get a life saving piece of equipment to a distant colony. I work for the County Government and I am not interested in red tape, regulations or bureaucratic nonsense – I see enough at work.
These stories average around 13,000 words each and are Novelettes rather than short stories. The Edgar Pangborn story would be classified strictly as a Novella. I like these longer form short stories. Magazine editors seem to have liked them in the past, but modern editors, especially in the on-line magazines prefer shorter stories less than 5,000 words. The main pro magazines still regularly publish longer stories in the 7,000 to 15,000 word range. It is a conundrum that modern readers seem to prefer short-short stories over the longer ones, yet most modern novels are padded out from 120,000 to as high as 200,000 words. I have read that some romance publishers have gone back to the shorter snack-size 40k book. I wonder if anyone has test marketed shorter SF novels lately. 40k to 60K is a good length for a novel.
Posted in Science Fiction, Short Stories, Spec-Fic | No Comments »
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Wednesday, November 12th, 2008
 I thoroughly enjoyed All the Colors of Darkness. It was published in 1963 and is the second in Biggle’s series of books featuring a detective named Jan Darzek. Biggle was probably more famous for writing detective fiction than he was SF, so this novel is a good blend of Science Fiction themes with detective fiction characters. The emphasis is on characterizations and Biggle even does a good job creating believable alien characters with alien personalities.
The science fiction is limited to one SF element. The story starts out with the creation of a Teleportation Portal. This is stock SF and many stories have used it. It is the primary SF element in the book. The aliens, it turns out, are trying to prevent us from developing the portal. The rest of the world is just early 1960s America with women in cocktail dresses and men in ties all smoking cigarettes.
This limited SF-ness makes the story very enjoyable because the book concentrates on character and plot much more than in the average SF novel of the time. Because of the nerdy engineering tech slant to all the golden age stories, there was never much emphasis on character. Most stories spent all their time on describing technology. Being able to introduce SF elements without being bogged down in long explanations is called Heinleining, because Heinlein was so good at it. The prime example being Heinlein’s phrase: “The door dilated.” This expresses the science fictional element, a very high tech door, without wasting time describing the technology.
Because Biggle wastes no time describing the science behind his portals, his character can use them as a Hitchcockian McGuffin to create exciting and interesting plot points.
The writing is crisp and concise, without a wasted word and pulls you along through the plot to the point where I felt compelled to read it last night while Erica watched TV – something I hardly ever do.
I am going to keep my eye out for more Biggle books. (Notice that I am on the top shelves of my new collection. I will be reading A’s, B’s and C’s. There are a dozen Asimov’s, but I have read them all – so off to eBay with Isaac.)
This novel comes from a time when books were about 60,000 words long. Longer books were edited down and shorter books were padded up or had font adjustment so that they were 160 to 200 pages. I much prefer this short format. It is a good quick read. I am selecting the books that I read by number of pages. I have decided not to read books longer than 200 pages.
Yesterday I created 3 more auctions for books on eBay. I am selling off the High Fantasy, which I don’t have much taste for anymore, and I am selling off the fat books. All the Niven & Pournelle books are going into the sell pile. All the David Gerrold books are going on eBay. Stephen Donaldson books are on their way out. I like these authors, but I have read enough of their works that I don’t want to read more. For each one of their books that I sell, I get to keep two or three thin books, which I like much better.
Posted in Science Fiction, Spec-Fic | No Comments »
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Monday, November 10th, 2008
I was reviewing my “Idea List”. I have too many ideas to actually write them. It is more fun to think about them than to do the hard work of writing down the words.
Here are some interesting entries on my list. If you feel the need to “borrow” any of these, let me know first. I may get around to writing these some day and you don’t want work on a story when I have already sold it (very unlikely).
The Drought – A lake begins to recede revealing skeletons of people who have disappeared years ago. The further the waters recede, the weirder the skeletons. The last of the water in the lake disappears revealing the skeletons of monsters. It ends in a torrential rain.
“It’s a slide rule.” he explained, “An ancient calculating device, like an abacus only capable of much more.” He showed it to the ship’s engineer and explained how it worked. The engineer used it to compute the natural log of the arc-cosine of the product of three numbers and was duly impressed. This was the last anyone thought of it until the computer melted down about half way between Jupiter and Neptune (Uranus was on the other side of the solar system at that time).
The Ruby of Death – steampunk – Victorian inventor explores a Brazilian cave left by an ancient civilization. He makes a laser out of shaving mirrors, a large ruby, and the flash powder from his photography equipment and fights off the angry inhabitants.
GPS story. A couple on vacation plug in “somewhere different” into the GPS and have a weird adventure. Obvious ending is to press in “Go Home” and get a gun (book, large battery, long rope, change of underwear?) before returning.
Time travel story where a scientist couple are abandoned in time far in the past, only to be rescued years later. They are brought back, and are greeted on return by their children, grandchildren and their descendants, who have been working for a 100 years to rescue them, although in their time sense it has only been a few days.
From Louis L’Amour. Ghost Rocker, (Louis did Ghost Boxer) like a ghost writer, but someone who replaces a sick rock and roll star. (think RAH Double Star). Get’s good at it and plays as good or better than the original star. There is conflict and resentment within the band’s other musicians. Finally real rocker is dying, but shows up at a concert, but is actually a ghost, and has one last jam. I think Farewell Tour is a good title or Cover Star, but perhaps Ghost Rocker is better, even though it gives away too much.
From JWC, Jr. Letter: Cosmic rays are evidence of spacecraft engines
From JWC, Jr.. Letter: A World where only women duel.
From JWC, Jr. Letter: A soldier behind enemy lines like the Japanese soldier on the island. He must survive aliens until men come back, but it is 20 years and men have changed.
From JWC, Jr. Letter: Think of a quantum computer that can answer ANY question. What do you do when the device cannot lie and tells the absolute truth, without being asked?
Story of a man who is doing mysterious things – starts out “I’m sorry, but I don’t know why I did that.” He takes wrong turns and winds up in the wrong place. Buys newspapers and scans them quickly and throws them out. Stops mesmerized like a tourist by commonplace things. It turns out that he is being “run” by a time traveler/alien/computer/spirit tourist who views things through his eyes without him knowing it.
Story line about kids who go to the edge of their wireless interconnects to get high on the lack of signal from the central networks. (I wrote a version of this, but there are many other possible variations.)
Weird tale base on the song by Hal Ketchum:
Bobby told Lucy the world ain’t round
Drops off sharp at the edge of town
Lucy you know the world must be flat
Cause when people leave town they never come back
Eating your own babies: It’s a marketing concept. When you release a new product that is better or cheaper than your existing one, you basically destroy the market for the older product. You are hurting any future sales of it. Announcing a new product will freeze sales of the current product. What happens to Artificial Intelligence when the new version of AI is about to appear? What happens to obsolete robots when the next level robot is released?
In the 11th century, it was common for some disputes to be adjudicated by physical trials. Two conflicting Liturgies were decided by jousting knights. Two bishops had a dispute and they were ordered to use judicium crucis, which is when two men spread their arms out in the position of a cross and the first to drop his hands loses. There might be a good S&S story here. How could you modernize it?
“Christ is realized in evolution.” – Teilhard de Chardin
First line: “Eat your supper. There are children in space going hungry.” or “There are children on Earth going hungry.”
“Medium of Exchange” or “Unit of Work” Consider a planet where the unit of currency is not an arbitrary symbolic unit like the dollar, but a small elf like creature capable of doing work. Rich people expend these like burning money. Poor people try to breed them. What does an Earth man do when he buys something and his change is nine small green gremlins?
The Nigerian scam, only this time it’s an Alien or Demon or Time Traveler. Flash?
I think Artie went too far when he hooked the Voder up to Big Jim’s brain. Big Jim is the ugliest and meanest old bull west of the Pacos, and I do not care to hear his opinions about anything.
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Monday, November 10th, 2008
 There are two August Derleth anthologies with the name Beyond Space and Time. The one that I read is the later and much shorter one published in 1958. There was a longer one, full of poems and excepts and even some Jules Vern and Wells that was published in 1950.
August Derleth is a good writer and is known as the publisher of H.P. Lovecraft. His milieu was the world of 1930s Weird Tales and he published many of the Horror, Fantasy and Science Fiction writers from this era. This anthology largely reflects the 1930s, but has a few later stories thrown in, possibly to attract more readers.
The first two stories are from the late 1940s and do not much fit with the rest of the book. Heinlein’s The Long Watch and Theodore Sturgeon’s Minority Report (no relation to the Philip K. Dick story) start the collection. We all should have memorized the Heinlein story – I practically have, but the Sturgeon story might be new to you. It is the most interesting story in the anthology, and might be a considered a bridge between the formal style of the other stories and more immediate style of later SF. Sturgeon presents a fascinating story, partly told by a historical narrator, and partly through the newly discovered words of a mute servant named “Grudge”. An obsessed inventor builds a space ship only to discover a terrible secret that will isolate Earth from the rest of the galaxy forever. This information is filtered through the disturbing mind of the deformed servant that he wrote and hid so well that it was not discovered for centuries. It is an interesting approach with surprising characters and plot.
The rest of the stories are mostly from the 1930s and all are Derleth’s cronies. They are told either in a high fantasy style similar to Lord Dunsany or in a mythic narrative as though it were a retelling of an ancient tale. These formal styles were all the rage in the pages of Weird Tales, but to the modern reader are terribly dated.
Stories:
Colossus [Doane Sharon] – Donald Wandrei – Astounding Jan ‘34
Very early SF which describes the incredible shrinking man, only in reverse. It is interesting in that it describes an earth just as it destroys itself in a war. The story wanders off describing wonders of a huge universe where our universe is just an atom. It meanders, and nothing much else really happens.
A Voyage to Sfanomoë – Clark Ashton Smith – Weird Tales Aug ‘31
An allegorical trip to Venus without much characterization or plot. Its style is a mythical narrative.
Seesaw [Isher] – A. E. van Vogt -Astounding Jul ‘41
The short story which later became The Weapon Shops of Isher. Not as interesting as the novel.
The Flying Men [from Last and First Men] – Olaf Stapledon – London: Methuen, 1930
No story at all, just a description of a race of Flying men told in a mythical narrative.
Fessenden’s Worlds – Edmond Hamilton – Weird Tales Apr ‘37
A man creates a universe and then plays god with it. One of the better stories, although in a dated style.
Humpty Dumpty Had a Great Fall – Frank Belknap Long – Startling Stories Nov ‘48
Not good SF, but more like a good horror tale told with SF elements.
I chose this anthology because I had it in my head to read lots of short stories and learn from them. This collection was interesting and fun, but it was no help in writing. The best story, Minority Report is so unique that it would be very hard to imitate. Sturgeon is known for looking at a story from an odd angle and approaching ideas from left field. That is not something that I set out to do as a plan of action. The Heinlein story is so imbued with his personality that it would impossible to use as a guide without sounding like bad Heinlein. The other stories are an interesting read, but are obviously from another context.
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Saturday, November 8th, 2008
 I bought 337 SF books for $20 including the bookshelf.
I just lugged them out onto the enclosed porch. I’ve read about 1/4 of them and at least half I don’t think I will read, but at 6¢ a book, I have no choice.
These are mostly 1980’s and 90s, but there are many old books from the 1960s and a few from the 1950s.
I will make boxes of 10 or so books each that I want to sell, during the next few weeks. For instance, I like Robert Asprin, but I am not interested in reading the Thieve’s World Books. There are a dozen or more of these, so I will be selling them as a lot.
I now own about 600 books, not counting my original stash. I will read about 300 of them, maybe more.
I have been too busy at work to finish my book selling web site. It is about halfway through. I will sell the books there for a dollar or less, and figure the cheapest way to ship. I want to make it so you get a discount for buying more books, as well as saving on shipping. One good thing is that most books weigh about the same so shipping is easy to calculate.
It is interesting that the person that read these (sadly, it was an estate sale) had very similar tastes to my own. I am not as much into Niven and Pournelle as he was, and he had literally everything by M.Z. Bradley. He did, however have lots of great Ace Doubles (always a good trashy read), and stuff by George O. Smith, H. Beam Piper and Murray Leinster (my sf spirit guide). He had a least 30 Andre Norton’s including a few that I’ve never read. He had all of Bradbury and all of Heinlein and most of these were early first edition paperbacks. I’ve already thrown out the L. Ron Hubbard’s and I hope to make more room I as I read and sell them.
Posted in Garage Sales, Science Fiction, Spec-Fic | 3 Comments »
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Thursday, October 9th, 2008
 Continuing with reading only Ray Bradbury books in October – This is the fourth book that I’ve read. I am averaging a little less than a new book every two days (not counting weekends when I don’t have much time to read).
I have the feeling that I’ve read some of the stories in Quicker Than the Eye. The stories were published in 1995 and 1996, but I don’t remember where I would have read them. I don’t read Playboy or American Way, but many of these appeared in F&SF and Omni, so I might have read them there.
Comparing these stories to the stories in Golden Apples of the Sun, you realize that Ray has mellowed over the years. There is no lurking danger or hidden fear in any of these stories. They, for the most part, are much happier and romantic than the earlier works. Many of the stories are downright maudlin (Maudlin: Extravagantly or excessively sentimental; self-pitying; Affectionate or sentimental in an effusive, tearful, or foolish manner, especially because of drunkenness).
To give you an example, in the story Another Fine Mess, Ray writes about a pair of ghosts haunting a stairway in Hollywood. The ghosts are Laurel and Hardy trying to move a piano. You can’t be afraid of the ghosts of Laurel and Hardy. At the end, the two women who try to banish them invite them to come back once a year. Maudlin, I said. Maudlin, I meant.
There are other stories about the ghost of Bradbury’s mother and the death of a dog, but the sweet sentimentality ruins the stories for me. I smile when I read them and I did enjoy them, but I am eager for the chilled spine or the goose bumps on my arm. I don’t want these feel-good stories.
There are a couple of more chilling stories. Dorian in Excelsus is about what happened to Dorian Gray’s portrait, but it is a one dimensional story where just the one thing happens and then it ends, no real plot to it, just an interesting idea. There is also The Finnegan about a hidden monster in the woods, but that too is over quickly and the final revelation is telegraphed a little too early in the plot to have an impact.
I am going back to his earlier works. I still have a couple of new books in the queue, but I want to cleanse my pallete a little and read some stories from Weird Tales before I get back to the more recent Bradbury.
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Wednesday, October 1st, 2008
 Mission of Gravity is considered one of the best Science Fictions books ever written and is always cited as an example of what Hard Science Fiction is supposed to be. You will forgive, me I hope, for the fact that this is the first time that I’ve read it. I honestly thought that I had read Mission of Gravity and I knew the plot, but when I picked it up, I realized that it was completely new to me.
As in most Clement books, the protagonist is an alien. The humans are reasonable, unconflicted European-American engineers, and as such, are not very interesting characters. Clement removes them from the the action leaving the humans as mere observers about half way through the book. The scene on the cover (shown left) is one of the only times that the human and alien characters have direct contact. It looks like a dangerous episode, but it is over with quickly and the resourceful aliens save the day.
The Alien protagonist, Barelennan, a Melkinite, is a small lobster-like alien that lives on a weird planet with gravity up to 700 time that of earth. The planet is disk shaped and spinning at a tremendous rate so that the gravity at the equator is only around 3 times that of Earth.
Barlennan has learned to speak English without any problems and is a roaming trader who sails the methane seas of the planet in search of profit. He is a good enough person, but he is not above taking advantage of this relationship with the humans. He stands to become rich from the technological information given to him by the humans. All the humans want is for the Melkanites to rescue a probe that has crashed into the heavy gravity polar regions where man cannot go.
Barlennan is an alien Odysseus, traveling unknown seas and encountering strange beasts and civilizations and survives with the aid of the god-like humans. He communicates through a remote communications device that he carries around. Like Odysseus, Barlennan is a bit of a trickster and risk taker. He will lie cheat and even steal in order to make a profit, but his dealings with the humans are mostly on the up and up. One thing that puzzles me, is why did Barlennan go so far to help the humans when the risks were so high? I am sure that he thought that he would profit handsomely from contact with them. I think though that an experienced trader and adventurer might have quit while he was ahead rather than undertake the last dangerous part of the journey.
Mission of Gravity reads much like Jack London or Joseph Conrad novel, without the internal struggles of the protagonists. Science Fiction, in those days, was all about adventure and there is plenty of it here. The Aliens are not rich characters, but endearing. If anything they are too human. Clement wrote a sequel in 1971.
Mission of Gravity was first serialized in 1953 in Astounding Magazine by the editor John W. Campbell.
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Sunday, September 21st, 2008
We went up to Connecticut to the flea market today. Last year we went up at least ten times and in previous years we have gone as far as Pennsylvania to shop flea markets. Because of the price of gas, this trip costs about $50, so we may not make it up again this year.
The Elephant’s Trunk Flea was quite full. Here are some shots from the north side up on the hill.
  
I did very well. At one table a nice couple sold me some Weird Tales Magazines and a vintage 1948 JT-30 microphone. Since I collect both vintage microphones and vintage pulp SF magazines this was an incredible coincidence. I bought a J.J. Cale album for poker for a quarter – it would have been too weird if I had found it at the same table.
The Weird Tales pulps were from 1951 ad 1952, which is not Weird Tale’s best period. The stories are mostly, if not all, reprints. Weird Tales was digging into their contracts and finding stories that had been purchase with All Serial Rights or First and Second Serial Rights. This means that the authors gave Weird Tales or one of her sister publications the right to print their story again and in some instances as often as they wanted.
The magazines were OK quality, but would not be rated good or fine if I wanted to sell them. I thought that I was getting a bargain, but I probably paid just what they were worth. They are the same age as I am, but they are too fragile to take the bus with me.
The JT-30 is a military version called a model 80. It came with a long cable (missing) and had a rising response element. The element, of course, has been dead for 25 years. Some day I’ll find a 60 year old microphone that works. I made up for not getting a bargain on the magazines and got the JT-30 for $10, which is a very good deal.
 
Erica had some good luck and found some vintage quilts, which she was able to get for a very good price. They are all in need of a good cleaning, but there are not that many bad stains. The binding on the pink quilt is shot, but there are only a few small spots on the quilts themselves that need repair.
The first is a Basket Quilt top, made with Cranberry red cloth and muslin. Erica dated it from the patterns of the pieces as 1880 to 1910.
The next is an Indigo Quilt in a "9 patch" pattern (I think that this was called flying geese, but Erica isn’t sure). This was about 1890 from what Erica can tell from her pattern references. It has feed sack, Victorian shirting, and several kinds of Indigo.
Ollie and Gracie were helping us photograph the quilts.
The next quilt is an "Around the World" which Erica dates it possibly the 1920s, although some of the patterns are much earlier. There is cheddar type material and some double pink from 1880s. It also has Indigo and Victorian shirting.
Posted in Flea Markets, Galavanting, Harmonica, SF, Science Fiction, Spec-Fic, cats, quitls | No Comments »
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Thursday, September 18th, 2008
 Space Vikings was serialized in Analog in 1962-63. Piper committed suicide not long afterwards. Piper, as far as I can tell, was not considered to be more than a hack writer in his own time, but has recently risen to the ranks of a truly unique and respected writer from the golden age. He wrote stories an novels from 1947 to 1963.
Piper wrote a series of future history novels, which could be classified as military SF. Space Vikings is one of these. It reads like an historical novel and is probably similar to the mainstream historical novels of the time. Although it is Science Fiction, there is nothing in the story that would prevent it from being set as a real Viking novel or even reset in any time or place. The plot is a good one where a man is nearly killed and his wife murdered by a madman who is insanely jealous. The man joins with free-booting space Vikings, a loosely organized group of planets that survive by trade as well as raiding weaker systems.
The story is the rise of the Space Viking from an educated nobleman to a ruthless Leader of men and his search for the man who killed his true love. Along the way there is plenty of politics, action and a love affair with a beautiful princess.
Piper’s writing is energetic and clear. He is easy to read and understand and yet his plots are full of unexpected twists and turns with rich characterizations. The story is a swashbuckler with lots of blood running down the scuppers. I enjoyed it much more than the endless and plodding Honor Harrington Books, even though they have much in common.
More interesting is Beam’s philosophy, which he includes from time to time. Beam was a gun enthusiast (he killed himself with one of his own weapons), and he would be characterized as a conservative today. He might have belonged to the John Birch society, as far as I can tell from his writings, but it is never obnoxious, strident or even illogical.
Here is an example from the book (page 151):
Every society rests on a barbarian base. The people who don’t understand civilization and wouldn’t understand if they did. The hitchhikers. The people who create nothing, and who don’t appreciate what others have created for them, and who think civilization is a something that just exists and that all they need to do is enjoy what the can understand of it – luxuries, a high standard of living, and easy work for high pay. Responsibilities? Phooey! What do they have a government for?
In spite of the run-on sentence, you have to tend to agree with Piper on this. Piper has some valid points. It is a central theme of the book that Piper doesn’t much like Democracy. He says that it is full of bugs and we need to spend more time getting the bugs out before we put our faith in it. He points out that Hitler rose to power by using a democracy, but got rid of it as soon as possible.
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Thursday, September 11th, 2008
 My Favorite Author. Red Blooded Americans fighting Brain-Stealing alien slugs. No moral ambiguity. No Social Significance. Yankee ingenuity and a good strong right to the jaw is all that is needed to defeat the evil aliens.
This is my kind of science fiction. I could read a book like this every day for the rest of my life.
The Brain-Stealers: About 60,000 words. 1947.
Finished in one day. Lately I’ve been reading about 80 pages an hour. I have to slow down, I think, and enjoy the experience more.
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Sunday, September 7th, 2008
I have three cameras. I use the little Nikon (free at a garage sale) most of the time because it fits in my pocket. It is about 8 years old so it does not really measure up to the quality of cameras today. Second, I use the Kodak that Justine sent one Christmas. It is an excellent quality camera that takes good pictures, but it is a little large and won’t fit in my pocket. I also use the big Nikon DX-70 that has the SLR lens and all the bells and whistles. This is especially good with the telephoto lens, but I can’t bring it anywhere where it might be stolen because it is so expensive and it is very very big.
I cleaned out the little Kodak today and found a bunch of pics that I’ve taken, but never done anything about.
First there were cute Gracie pictures (see the cat blog for more).
Next, the truck went over 175,000 miles. I wanted to catch it in the act, but as you may know this is against the physical laws of the universe.
Next, I found an odd windmill at the side of the road. This was used to aerate a pond, but it was sitting in the corner of someone’s yard.
The virginia creeper vines grew up the side of the house in the back and I was shocked to see them. I have no idea how they grew so fast.
Here are some flowers. A couple are from the back yard, but I don’t where the red one is from.
I found a strange machine on the side of the road. It had about $20 worth of vacuum tubes.
I took pictures of a publication from and H.P. Lovecraft symposium that I may blog about. I have a readable version of this on my hard disk. This article describes about how his friends got HPL drunk at a party and he recited lines from the Mikado.
Now I’ll clean out the Nikon.
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Friday, September 5th, 2008
 Hal Clement’s niche in SF is superb aliens. He creates very real alien personalities that live in very alien environments. He created a strange and compelling race of creatures that lived in a high gravity world in Mission of Gravity, his most famous book. He is considered Hard Science Fiction because the science is often technical and very accurate in a speculative way.
Cycle of Fire is the story of a boy who is stranded on a planet with human-like aliens. They look and act different, but they have much in common with humans including similar senses, shape and metabolism, and use of sound and ears for communication. They both have language. He bonds with an alien that he rescues and goes on to discover the secret of the planet.
The secret that the boy discovers is the key to understanding how intelligent life arrived on the planet, and how it has survived through periodic seasons of close proximity to the sun, is the mystery part of the book. He finds that the aliens are much stranger than he could have imagined.
Although the alien personalities are well crafted, I found the 16 year old boy lacked depth. Often SF authors use characters as like chess pieces, moving them around in the plot with little attention paid to any deeper motivation. Clement, obviously feels more comfortable with his aliens than his humans. The story is intriguing and I found myself wanting to go out to the truck last night to retrieve the book and find out how it comes out. The scientific mystery is the best part for me. I have always enjoyed Clement. He creates such strange aliens and then makes interesting stories out of them. His humans, on the other hand, are less interesting.
Cycle of Fire is about 90,000 words and an easy read. I’ll finish the last 25 pages on the bus trip home tonight.
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Thursday, September 4th, 2008
 I finished Invaders of Space in one day with about 20 pages left over to help me make it through the RNC last night. Since Labor day it takes me an hour or more on the bus each morning and about an hour on the way back, so I am finishing the books faster. I received another 100 books from eBay Tuesday night, I am SF rich, at least until around Christmas.
First off, the title Invaders of Space is misleading. There are no invaders. I imagine that the title was changed by some editor to make it sound more like a Man vs. Alien story. This is a very typical space yarn by Murray Leinster. It is about 65,000 words and a nice relaxed read.
Murray Leinster is the very essence of Science Fiction. When you look up Science Fiction in the dictionary you should see a picture of Murray Leinster. He wrote hundreds of stories for all of the Golden Age magazines and dozens of books. You can see some of the wonderful vintage Leinster book covers at http://www.sfsite.com/~silverag/ml_gallery.html.
Invaders of Space is an adventure story complete with alien life forms on a remote planet and space pirates. I love space pirates, there should be a magazine devoted to space pirate stories.
The protagonist is the conventional well educated engineer type which is the standard for golden age fiction. These reasonable, analytic and logical white male protagonists are probably the chief flaw of the golden age of science fiction. The editors and target audience of the era were well educated engineering types and the fiction of the time reflects this. I can see why women, especially, have a problem with golden age fiction and even I, a reasonable, analytic and logical white male, find this type of protagonist a little tiring.
The plot is about an engineer who is waiting for his fiance at a space port. A ship with old engines comes in for a landing badly in need of repairs. The engineer, who happens to be a specialist in space ship engines, gives some advice. He is immediately shanghaied and forced to repair the engines. The ship is manned by space pirates and the ship they want to pirate is the one with the engineer’s fiance on it.
The plot moves forward with interesting twists and turns and the engineer manages to save the day, not by any technical feats, but by psychologically manipulating the pirates. It makes for an interesting plot.
On the plus side, the ingenuity of the engineer and the totally unexpected and interesting way in which he controls the crew makes for a unique plot. The planet where they are stranded has some interesting flora and fauna, but perhaps not that unexpected in a science fiction novel. The character of the pirate captain is truly nasty, although this is not really pursued. There is an alcoholic ships engineer, that is less interesting and more of a caricature.
On the negative side, the character of the fiance has only a few lines of dialog, no part on the plot other than a prop and is never actually described, although she is present in many of the scenes in the last part of the book. It is almost as though a woman has no place in science fiction. I don’t know why Leinster did this. The plot would have been much more interesting if the engineer’s future wife and the main reason that he was in all this trouble, could have had an important role in the book. Strong women dominated the movies in the 40s and 50s. Strong complex women characters were included in other fiction genres like detective fiction and even some westerns during this time. Why is it that SF seems to exclude women as being anything other than objects?
I love Golden Age SF. It annoys me to have to defend it against charges of sexism, especially when one of my favorite authors has written a book that is seriously flawed by what can only be seen as a sexist viewpoint.
There are at least 4 more Murray Leinster books that I have never read in the boxes out on the porch. I will be reading them soon.
Currently reading Hal Clement – Cycle of Fire.
(I am considering moving these little reviews to another blog. I am sure that no one who reads my blog really minds them, but these entries take up a lot of room. Let me know if you care one way or the other.)
Posted in SF, Science Fiction, Spec-Fic, commute | 1 Comment »
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Thursday, August 28th, 2008
 The only things that I’ve read by George O. Smith were published in Astounding Science Fiction in the late 1940s and early 50s. John W. Campbell, jr. published many of Smith’s stories. As I remember, they were engineering stories and I especially liked the Venus Equilateral ones about engineering and human problems exploiting the planet Venus.
Smith stopped publishing in Astounding when he ran off with Campbell’s first wife. (A nice juicy bit of SF gossip).
Hellflower (1953) is a good space yarn with rockets and aliens and a bustling solar system where a ship could make it to Pluto in a few weeks. The plot surrounds the illegal smuggling of a narcotic flower that is destroying the stability of human society. This, of course, is an alien plot to take over Earth.
The story starts out with an old tried but true plot device. A man ruined by a mistake in his past is offered a chance to redeem himself by working on the side of truth, justice and the American way. The love interest is a remarkably complex but believable drug addicted woman who hates the protagonist. I have known a few drug addicts and the painting of the character is right on the money. In the 1950s, as some might remember and others might know, American society was remarkably naive about drug fiends and how they behaved. Smith must have been close to someone addicted to hard drugs or else known a very bad alcoholic.
The Hellflower drug is all that the drug ecstasy is supposed to be and isn’t. It imbues the user with a sense of sensual well-being and a loss of inhibitions. It also seems to stimulate the pleasure centers of the brain or makes them more receptive. Overuse leads to the inability to feel anything except intense emotions and users become addicted to hatred. This is quite complex for an early Science Fiction novel, which is why I think Smith may have had some experience with addiction. The protagonist only drinks non-alcoholic beverages.
The plot carries the protagonist around the solar system and eventually out of it. He moves in and out of danger and escapes by good luck or quick wits. It is a page turner of a book. The characters are a little out of date (they dress for dinner and the women wear party dresses). The technology is never really gone into in detail. Efficient atomic rocket drives and later FTL travel are assumed, but not explained. The protagonist does some course calculations by looking up angles in an ephemeris and uses a slide rule to do the math. This doesn’t bother me that much. It seems to me that it was not too long ago that I used a slide rule to solve engineering problems.
Interestingly enough, the aliens aren’t any worse than humans. They have read earth history and realized that humans can never deal with aliens on an equal basis. Humans are not to be trusted and eventually, because of their greater numbers they would overwhelm the aliens and exploit their world and reduce the aliens to poverty. (Do Native American’s come to mind?) The aliens decide to do this to earth before it was done to them. This makes sense.
George O. Smith is mostly forgotten today. He wrote in the grand old Golden Age style (think Heinlein). Hellflower is only around 60k words and I finished most of it in just two bus rides. It is fast paced adventure. It is the kind of story I like to read and the kind of story that I would like to write. I am on the lookout now for more George O. Smith books.
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Wednesday, August 27th, 2008
 When I think of Dickson, I think of the Dorsai books that I read a long time ago. These were military SF and probably Dickson, more than anyone else, has defined Military Science Fiction. The war in Vietnam soured me on militarism, so I only read a few of them, but I remember that the Dorsai books were very good.
The Earth Lords (1989) is one of the books I picked up a couple of weeks ago at a garage sale. It is a longish book, about 200K, and suffers a little from what I was talking to J. Erwine about on his blog. There is a general feeling that the prose is padded to make it a longer book. As one of J’s commenters was saying, it could have been edited down by 80%.
The characters are the usual suspects. I am going to write a paper some day on the curse of the reasonable protagonist. The best books have flawed characters. Science Fiction does not. Most SF books suffer from heroic characters who have all the fine characteristics that that author obviously sees in himself, or wants to.
The plot initially appears to be a pretense to paint the image that appears on the cover. It is about a race of super-human little people – the Earth Lords – that live underground and use regular people as "Steeds". They ride around on the backs of humans.
Once the key image is out of the way, the plot becomes the protagonist’s attempt to thwart the Earth Lord’s plan to ruin the earth with a machine that move the tectonic plates and create volcanoes and earthquakes. Yes, it’s a dumb premise. Since it takes place in the 19th century in Canada there are holes in the logic that you could drive a large horse through.
The good things about The Earth Lords is good prose. It reads well and the images are all well painted, although it uses a few too many words. It is hampered by the wooden characters and a love interest that seems illogical and one sided. The plot is not all that believable. A decent read, but not a book I’ll be reading again soon.
Next up is Hellflower by George O. Smith from 1953 – my kind of SF. It’s short, 60-70k so I might have it finished by Friday.
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Friday, August 22nd, 2008
 I bought 57 books on eBay – about 14 pounds. (picture is of a random sample) They arrived today. These are great books, most from the 1960s and 70s. Many are unknown or little known authors. I don’t think that I’ve read about three quarters of them. This is going to last me until around Thanksgiving.
As I finish these, I’m going to put them up for sale. I am well on the way of writing a world class storefront system in PHP (no database required). My system is unique in that it is for small stores with a small inventory that don’t want to have a complex database but still want a full featured system. I also want to to be easy enough to use that it will make selling one-of-a-kind items easy. I want to support only PayPal (and maybe Google Checkout) because I believe that accepting credit cards directly is too expensive for the average small store.
I was searching around for more books, and I found a web site that sells science fiction books by the pound (I am keeping its URL secret). An average paperback weighs about 4 ounces so that’s 4 books to the pound (including packing material.) At $2 a pound, that’s right in my price range. You can make an offer for less, so I will see it they go for $1 a pound for 50 pounds (200 books). The good news is that these are new books, and I probably have not read any of them. The bad news is that they include those ubiquitous D&D, TV show (trek, Dr. who, Buffy et al), Vampire, Zombie, and 6 part series books in the count and you don’t get to choose.
You can expect many more badly written book reviews in the next few months.
Posted in SF, Science Fiction, Spec-Fic, ebay, programming | 3 Comments »
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Friday, August 15th, 2008
 Over the weekend I bought 6 paperbacks at a garage sale for a quarter each. A kid was reading every bit of trash he could find and he was selling off the books that he didn’t want to read again. Well, his trash is my treasure and I found, out of the hundreds, a few that I might read or reread. The rest were the ubiquitous dragon/wizard/magic fantasy series books that I would rather avoid.
I started reading Forerunner Foray with the expectation that I would recognize the plot immediately. I was surprised to find that it was totally new to me. Published in 1973, the book must have been out just as I was married and I started working full time, when my life suddenly had no place for the very solitary act of reading.
Andre Norton is one of a handful of female Science Fiction writers in a field where male voices dominate. She even legally changed her name to Andre Norton from Alice Mary Norton. She wrote largely young adult novels and a very few short stories. Towards the end of her career she teamed up with several of woman writers, but I think little of the actually text was hers. I much prefer her early novels. I do not enjoy novels with feminist themes or ones that center on sexual politics. Though Norton was a pioneering feminist, her stories are for boys and girls and the lessons to be learned do not have the brute force of more modern writers. She teaches by example rather than condemnation and I have always felt comfortable reading her books.
Andre Norton has several overlapping universes where she sets her stories. Cats Eye and related stories are set in a world where young protagonists escape from The Dipple. The Dipple is a galactic slum consisting of worlds where the refugees from the ruined human civilizations live on poverty and crime (I think this is a wonderful sciencefictional setting). Another reoccurring element is the alien Forerunners. The Forerunners lived millions, perhaps billions of years in the past, but their artifacts are occasionally found and are often dangerous. Sometimes the Forerunners break through the barriers of time and threaten the the contemporary world. These are huge themes and they support many of her books.
Andre Norton tales are never complete without cats and a hint of magical powers. Often the power is telepathy or an empathy with animals.
Forerunner Foray has all of these elements. The protagonist is a young woman, marking a change in Norton’s books. Prior to this many of her characters were young men. After the success of the Witch World stories, she discovered she could write books that young women could enjoy as well as young men. Probably, libraries of the 1950s and 60s classified Science Fiction as boy’s stories and were hesitant to buy Young Adult Science Fiction with a female protagonist. Around 1970, this changed.
Forerunner Foray is less of an adolescent book than some of her others. The story is complex and even a little difficult to follow at times. I felt the writing in first few chapters was a little strained, as though Norton was working through a section that she was not entirely comfortable with. She eventually pulls out of it and the main character has as close to a romantic relationship as Norton ever has in her novels. The ending seems contrived with much explanation and filling-in of details. It seems like the ending was tacked on after Norton had finished enough words. (Books around 1970 began to get fatter after Tolkien and Herbert proved that readers would pay for longer books.)
Norton wrote other books in the worlds of Forerunner Foray. I read the first, Storm over Warlock and possibly the second, Ordeal in Otherwhere in the San Francisco Airport while stranded during a week long airline strike on my way back from visiting my Uncle. Both of these were written in the Early 1960s. I’ll have to keep an eye out for these so I can reread them.
Forerunner Foray is engrossing, but I did not feel much sympathy with the characters and the writing seemed a little forced in places. It had some good moments and I enjoyed rediscovering some classic Norton themes, although I would not classify it as one of her best efforts.
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Monday, August 11th, 2008
As an anniversary present, Erica bought me Through Space to Mars from 1910 by Roy Rockwood. It is the story of boys who build a rocket in their garage and pilot it to Mars. Before there was Science Fiction there were boys books.
Roy Rockwood was the house pseudonym at Cupples & Leon publishers for its boys books. This book was written by Howard Roger Garis, best known for the Uncle Wiggly Longears books. He wrote many of the original Tom Swift books under the name Victor Appleton, and many of the Bobsey Twins books.
It is a great present and I will be reading it soon. I only had to buy her expensive jewels. I got the better of the deal.
 
Posted in History, SF, Science Fiction, Spec-Fic | 5 Comments »
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Thursday, July 31st, 2008
I bought a couple of cartons of books from Forest J. Ackerman’s Garage Mahal garage sale. Forey was moving and getting rid of his books. I bought some lots where there was at least one book that I was interested in. The other books were an odd mixture of whatever was on hand.
Since I’ve been reading during my commute, I have been trying to find books to read. I have read most of the books that I own and I don’t want to spend much on new books if possible. I’ve been looking in eBay for odd lots, but so far nothing looks good.
Most of the odd books in the Ackerman lots had titles like “Book 3 of the Magic Ring of the Dragon Wizard” or some such garbage. I don’t want to even try to read these. I will be creating a site where I will trade books or send out books at a minimal cost for mailing.
One book that I tried to read was The Owl Service by Alan Garner. This is a book about magic in Wales. It has lots of talk and nothing much happens. The text is well written, even beautiful in some passages, but it never grabbed me. I am not the intended audience. I like fantasy, but I need a little tension in the plot, but not this endless examination of the internal reactions of uninteresting people.
This is the first book on my commute that I decided that it was a waste of time to finish. Life is too short.
Anyone want it? I’ll send it out media mail for $1 (payment through paypal). It would be better to wait as I will put together a box and weigh it, soon.
Posted in SF, Science Fiction, Spec-Fic, commute | 1 Comment »
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Thursday, July 31st, 2008
This, via SFSignal, is a video of 9 great SF writers. It dates from the late 1960s to the late 1970s and has some of my favorite writers explaining why SF is important.
A nice quote from Asimov:
To those of us who remember the golden age, we are now living in a Sciencefictional world, and one which Campbell’s Science Fiction did significantly succeed in creating.
It is unfortunate that, even in 30 to 40 years ago, these writers are speaking as though Science Fiction has completed its function in society. They speak about fulfilling a promise, as though Spec-fic is done deal and the future is now.
Posted in History, Science Fiction, Spec-Fic | No Comments »
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Friday, July 11th, 2008
JWC died on this day 37 years ago. He was only 63. He was an intelligent man. He graduated from Duke, my Dad’s Alma Mata. Unfortunately, 37 years ago, intelligent men were heavy smokers, lived sedentary lives, ate lot’s of red meat and drank their whiskey neat, so they died relatively young of heart attacks.
I think JWC’s influence in SF was pretty much over by the time he died. Heinlein wouldn’t submit to Analog Magazine and the better writers had moved to Galaxy, IF, and F&SF. Campbell had rejected two of Heinlein’s Hugo award winning stories (with long letters explaining what was wrong with them).
I wonder how SF would be different today if John had quite smoking, taken to long walks and started eating more fish?
In spite of all of the man’s personal failings, he is still a shining figure in the history of Science Fiction. He will always be a personal hero of mine.
Posted in SF, Science Fiction, Spec-Fic | No Comments »
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