A selection of read volumes from my site What pre-1985 science fiction are you reading or planning to read this month. Here’s March’s installment of this column. Before we get to books and birthdays and writing plans… Advertising blurb from the 1970 Bantam edition of Pat Frank’s Alas, Babylon (1959). I assume it appeared in earlier Bantam editions as well. I am fascinated by the way SF novels from the era I study were marketed to people. I often think, retrospectively, it’s easy to get caught up in how SF was advertised as revealing the nature of genre at that moment vs ..read more

Today I’m joined again by Rachel S. Cordasco, the creator of the indispensable website and resource Speculative Fiction in Translation, for the second installment of our series exploring non-English language SF worlds. Last time we covered Kōbō Abe’s allegory of Marxist transformation, “The Flood” (1950, trans. 1989). This time we journey east of the Iron Curtain to 1960s Romania with Vladimir Colin’s “The Contact.” It first appeared in his collection of short stories Viitorul al doilea (1966). We read it in Other Worlds, Other Seas: Science-Fiction Stories from Socialist Countries ..read more

Which books/covers/authors in the post intrigue you? Which have you read? Disliked? Enjoyed? 1. The Witling, Vernor Vinge (1976) George Barr’s cover for the 1976 edition From the back cover: “Witling: A pretender to wit. (Webster’s Dictionary) In the eyes of the inhabitants of Giri the scientific explorers from outer space were witlings. In the context of that primitive-seeming planet, they were. Because on Giri a peculiarity of evolution had given a special talent to all living things–and this talent had made unnecessary most of the inventions associated with intelligent life elsewhere. R ..read more

Chris Moore’s cover for the 1st edition 3.5/5 (collated rating: Good) From 1937 to 1958, the dynamic writing duo of Henry Kuttner (1915-1958) and his wife C. L. Moore (1911-1987) wrote countless stories together. As SF Encyclopedia puts it, “much of [Kuttner’s] later work is inextricably entwined” with that of Moore–often to the point of being unable to entangle who wrote what. While the cover of Clash by Night and Other Stories (1980) does not mention Moore, all the stories in the collection were co-written with her.1 Final note before the reviews: Don’t let the collated rating of the col ..read more

Today I’m joined by Rachel S. Cordasco, the creator of the indispensable website and resource Speculative Fiction in Translation, for something a bit different! We will both offer our reviews of one of Kōbō Abe’s first published speculative short stories, “The Flood” (1950). Over the next few months, we’ll post reviews of speculative fiction in translation from Romania, Chile, Austria, Poland, France, and the Netherlands. Depending on the story and our thoughts, I might also include our responses to each other’s review. Also if you haven’t checked out Rachel’s website, you must. Not only does ..read more

A selection of read volumes from my shelves What pre-1985 science fiction are you reading or planning to read this month? Here’s February’s installment of this column. Before we get to books and birthdays and writing plans… Do you have the inner strength to survive the panic of a nuclear attack? Take a test in the August 21st 1953 issue of Collier’s and find out! Sample question: “HOW DO YOU FEEL WHEN: […] You are alone in an automatic elevator when it stalls between floors?” Possible answers: “I’m not bothered,” “I become tense,” “It jars me badly,” and “I blow up.” In my last c ..read more

Which books/covers/authors in the post intrigue you? Which have you read? Disliked? Enjoyed? 1. Santiago: A Myth of the Far Future, Mike Resnick (1986) Michael Whelan’s cover for the 1st edition From the back cover: “SEBASTIAN NIGHTINGALE CAIN: County hunter. You can call him Songbird–but only once. He’s after Santiago. VIRTUE MECKENZIE: Freelance reporter. She never give up. She wants an interview… with Santiago. THE SWAGMAN: He collects art–at gun point. He wants a few pieces currently in the hands of Santiago. SANTIAGO: Bandit, murderer, known to all, seen by none… has he killed thousan ..read more

Murray Tinkelman’s cover for the 1978 edition 4/5 (Good) Nominated for the 1966 Hugo Award for Best Novel John Brunner’s The Squares of the City (1965) transposes the moves of a 1892 chess game between Wilhelm Steinitz (1836-1900) and Mikhail Chigorin (1850-1905) onto a near future landscape of political intrigue. Inspired by Brazil’s planned capital Brasília (founded in 1960), the action takes place in Ciudad de Vados, the capital city of the imaginary Latin American nation of Aguazul.1 Conjured out of a “barren, rocky stretch of land,” Ciudad de Vados contains all the homogeniz ..read more

A selection of read volumes from my shelf What pre-1985 science fiction are you reading or planning to read this month? Here’s January’s installment of this column. When I’m not reading science fiction, I’m more often than not devouring history that touches on my decades of focus: 1945-1985. Recently that’s meant lots and lots of monographs on Cold War culture: from fallout shelters, suburbia, to analysis of the drama of morality and terror that characterized nuclear deterrence. And in Guy Oakes’ transfixing The Imaginary War: Civil Defense and American Cold War Culture (1994), I came ..read more

Richard Powers’ cover for the 1st edition 3.25/5 (collated rating: Above Average) I’m a compulsive list maker. In the past few years I’ve gathered and submitted older science fiction short stories that depict worker unions–from Robert Silverberg’s “Guardian Devil” (1959) to Mari Wolf’s “Robots of the World! Arise!” (1952)–to the Hugo Book Club’s fantastic index. It’s about time I finally get around to reviewing a few of my submissions!1 Clifford D. Simak’s collection Worlds Without End (1964) contains two novellas and one short story that appeared in Robert W. Lowndes’ magazines (second/th ..read more