SFBC 1970
James Nicoll
These just keep getting longer and longer. Lucky for me by
1980 Elwood will have murdered the SF anthology so I won't have to
type in lines and lines of short story titles.
1970
January THE PRESERVING MACHINE by Philip K. Dick
Look. A PKD book I did not read. What a surprise.
TO LIVE AGAIN by Robert Silverberg
But this is Silverberg from the Middle Period and I missed very
few of those.
Basic setup: technology exists to replicate the memories of
the dead in the bodies of the living. It has become something of a
status symbol to carry one or more revenents and if the dead person
had particular skills, it is useful as well. There are risks involved.
Some people are driven mad by the voices in their heads. Others are
taken over by them. This is not enough to stop the custom.
A powerful man dies and a many sided fight breaks out over who
gets to host his mind.
I have fond memories of this.
February I SING THE BODY ELECTRIC! By Ray Bradbury
Crap! Now I have the soundtrack from _Fame_ going through
my head.
Contents:
Any Friend of Nicholas Nickleby's is a Friend of Mine
Christus Apollo
The Cold Wind and the Warm
Downwind from Gettysberg
The Haunting of the New
Heavy-Set
Henry the Nineth
I Sing the Body Electric!
The Inspired Chicken Motel
The Kilimanjaro Device
The Lost City of Mars
The Man in the Rorschach Suit
Night Call, Collect
The Terrible Conflegration Up Here at the Place
The Tombling Day
Tomorrow's Child
The Women
Yes, We'll Gather at the River
The sole one of these I have read and remember is the first,
about a young boy who meets a man using the name Charles Dickens and
of their subsequent friendship.
THREE FOR TOMORROW by Robert Silverberg, Roger Zelazny and James
Blish
Contents:
Editor's Introduction (Robert Silverberg)
Foreword (Arthus C. Clarke)
How It Was When the Past Went Away (Robert Silverberg)
The Eve of RUMOKO (Roger Zelazny)
We All Die Naked (James Blish)
And I seem to have missed all of them.
March THE BEAST THAT SHOUTED LOVE AT THE HEART OF THE WORLD by Harlan
Ellison
Contents:
The Waves in Rio
The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World
Along the Scenic Route
Pheonix
Asleep, with Still Hands
Santa Claus vs S.P.I.D.E.R.
Try a Dull Knife
The Pitll Pawob Division
The Place with No Name
White on White
Run for the Stars
Are You Listening?
S.R.O.
Worlds to Kill
Shattered Like a Glass Goblin
A Boy and His Dog
Well, I have read at least one of these, the last, a dark post WWIII
tale of a boy who shares a telepathic link with his friend and partner in
survival at all costs, a dog. Avoid the movie.
SATAN'S WORLD by Poul Anderson
This is the book that hooked me on Anderson. This is set in the
Polesotecnic League, before it became hopelessly corrupt (1) when it was
still possible to have fun in that universe. Enjoy it while you can, boys,
because the 4000 years after it will suck immensely.
A new company has popped up, offering knowledge services. Not
much is known about it, although the front men are humans. A lead on
a planet well suited for transmutation plants uncovers the hidden rot
in the company and a vast alien plot.
Boy, I liked this as a teen. I think the way human women are
portrayed may have aged badly, though. It also occurs to me that there
seem to have been a lot of supernovas in that region of the galaxy, if
I recall the history of Merseia and of the aliens correctly.
1: Is it hopeless by the time of "Lodestar" (2446/1973) or not until
_Mirkheim_ (2456/1977)?
April NOVA I edited by Harry Harrison
Contents:
Introduction (Harry Harrison)
The Big Connection (Robin Scott)
A Happy Day in 2381 (Robert Silverberg)
Terminus Est (Barry N. Malzberg)
Hexamination (Chandler Davis)
And This Did Dante Do (Ray Bradbury)
The Higher Things (John R. Pierce)
Swastika! (Brian W. Aldiss)
The HORARS of War (Gene Wolfe)
Love Story in Three Acts (David Gerrold)
Jean Dupres (Gordon R. Dickson)
In the Pocket (K.M. O'Donnel)
Mary and Joe (Naomi Mitchison)
Face & Hands (James Sallis)
The Winner (Donald E. Westlake)
The Whole Truth (Piers Anthony)
The apparently bottomless depths of my ignorance continue to be
plumbed.
Note Donald Westlake, who mostly writes mystery and whose books
stay stubbornly midlist, despite the fact that you'd have to look very
hard to find someone who actively hated his books. It's unjust, is what
it is.
I am fairly sure K.M. O'Donnel is another name for Barry Malzberg.
GALACTIC POT-HEALER by Philip K. Dick
Missed this one as well.
May SCIENCE FICTION HALL OF FAME (Volume One) edited by Robert Silverberg
Contents:
Introduction (Robert Silverberg)
A Martian Odyssey (Stanley G. Weinbaum)
Twilight (John W. Campbell, Jr.)
Helen O'Loy (Lester del Rey)
The Roads Must Roll (Robert A. Heinlein)
Microcosmic God (Theodore Sturgeon)
Nightfall (Isaac Asimov)
The Weapon Shop (A.E. Van Vogt)
Mimsey were the Borogoves (Lewis Padgett)
Huddling Place (Clifford D. Simak)
Arena (Fredric Brown)
First Contact (Murray Leinster)
That Only a Mother (Judith Merril)
Scanner Live in Vain (Cordwainer Smith)
Mars is Heaven! (Ray Bradbury)
The Little Black Bag (C.M. Kornbluth)
Born of Man and Woman (Richard Matheson)
Coming Attraction (Fritz Leiber)
The Quest for St. Aquin (Anthony Boucher)
Surface Tension (James Blish)
The Nine Billion Names of God (Arthur C. Clarke)
It's a _Good_ Life (Jerome Bixby)
The Cold Equations (Tom Godwin)
Fondly Farenheit (Alfred Bester)
The Country of the Kind (Damon Knight)
A Rose for Ecclesiastes (Roger Zelazny)
On the 'has James read these' scale, this collection rates fairly
high, I think. The only ones I know I missed are the Padgett, the Knight
and the Zelazny (still). I might raise an eyebrow at the del Rey (sappy
robot love story, as I recall) and the worldbuilding behind 'Roads' is
wacky but on the whole this is a good collection.
CHILDHOOD'S END by Arthur C. Clarke
This is a three part story about humans, their alien overlords
and some serious issues of child care that come up. Either this is about
SPOILERS
the rise of humanity to a glorious post-human destiny or we get
et like a Happy Meal by a Lovecraftian monster. Either way, I remember
parts of this fondly.
June THE BLACK CORRIDOR by Michael Moorcock
I missed this. I was never a huge Moorcock fan and I think I
didn't actually read anything of his until about 1980. UW Bookstore
always had a lot of his stuff, though.
ONE STEP FROM EARTH by Harry Harrison
Contains:
The Matter Transmitter (Introduction)
One Step from Earth
Pressure
No War, Nor Battle's Sound
Wife to the Lord
Waiting Place
The Life Preservers
From Fanaticism, Or for Reward
Heavy Duty
A Tale of the Ending
This was a collection of stories connected by the use of matter
transmitters in each story. I don't think they are on the whole as
interesting as Niven's teleporter stories but one or two stand out in
memory, in particular Ending, in which humans in the distant future
discover that
SPOILER
they are totally unrelated to the hominids of our time.
July A PRINCESS OF MARS by Edgar Rice Burroughs
This is the third Mars book by Burroughs, if I am remembering
correctly, and more or less the end of a trilogy. I am not a huge
Burroughs fan in general and with this series he managed to lose me
right at the beginning by having our old buddy, the eternal warrior,
fight for the South in the ACW.
BEYOND THE BEYOND by Poul Anderson
Contains
Memory
Brake
Day of Burning
The Sensitive Man
The Moonrakers
Starfog
The only one of these I can't recall is "The Moonrakers". "Memory"
is long after the Long Night, and pits a nasty high tech civilization
against its own agent. "Brake" is about a bungled hijacking of a space
craft and the solution found for its inability to slow down. "Day of
Burning" is about an attempt by Falkayn and his buds to profitably help
Mersei and didn't that work out well in the long run? "The Sensitive
Man" is part of the UN Man series, I think (Same universe as "Brake"
but earlier) and "Starfog" is another post-Long Night story, this time
a tragedy.
Summer SEA-HORSE IN THE SKY by Edmund Cooper
I missed this.
NEANDERTHAL PLANET by Brian W. Aldiss
And this.
September WORLD'S BEST SF: 1970 edited by Donald Wollheim & Terry Carr
Contents
Introduction (Donald A. Wollheim & Terry Carr)
A Man Spekith (Richard Wilson)
After the Myth Went Home (Robert Silverberg)
Death by Ecstacy (Larry Niven)
One Sunday in Neptune (Alexei Panshin)
For the Sake of Grace (Suzette Haden Elgin)
Your Haploid Heart (James Tiptree, Jr.)
Therapy 2000 (Keith Roberts)
Sixth Sense (Michael Coney)
A Boy and His Dog (Harlan Ellison)
And So Say All of Us (Bruce McAllister)
Ship of Shadows (Fritz Leiber)
Nine Lives (Ursula K. Le Guin)
The Big Flash (Norman Spinrad)
Is it just me but are we seeing the effects of the death of
magazines in the recurring use of a few stories in various collections
of contemporary SF?
If I recall correctly, that Le Guin is the one that appeared under
the byline UK Le Guin, lest the readers of Playboy get girl-cooties.
ROCKETS IN URSA MAJOR by Fred & Geoffrey Hoyle
I think this started as a radio play that pitted pucky humans
and their starfaring slaver kin against aliens who seemed to have a
pretty good reason to hate us (see also: Ben Bova's history leading
up to "Stars, Won't You Hide Me"). Despite the fact that in a Hoyle
universe, advanced aliens tend not to be like 1970 humans with really
big tail fins on their cars as much as they tend to be the kinds of
entities who can use quasars as weapons, we manage to prevail by using
dodgy physics.
It has a sort of naive charm but the sequel is horrid.
October THE YEAR 2000 edited by Harry Harrison
Contains:
America The Beautiful (Fritz Leiber)
Prometheus Rebound (Daniel F. Galouye)
Far From This Earth (Chad Oliver)
Afterthe Accident (Naomi Mitchison)
Utopian (Mack Reynolds)
Orgy of the Living and the Dying (Brian W. Aldiss)
Sea Change (A. Bertram Chandler)
Black is Beautiful (Robert Silverberg)
The Lawgiver (Keith Laumer)
To Be a Man (J.J. Coupling)
Judas Fish (Thomas Scortia)
American Dead (Harry Harrison)
I own this but most are not memorable, at least not for me.
PHOENIX by Richard Cowper
I missed this.
November ICE CROWN by Andre Norton
And this.
ORBIT 7 edited by Damon Knight
Contains:
April Fool's Day Forever (Kate Wilhelm)
Eyebem (Gene Wolfe)
Continued on Next Rock (R.A. Lafferty)
To Sport with Amaryllis (Richard Hill)
In the Queue (Keith Laumer)
The Livign End (Sonya Dorman)
A Dream at Noonday (Gardner R. Dozois)
Woman Waiting (Carol Emshwiller)
Old Foot Forgot (R.A. Lafferty)
Jim and Mary G. (James Sallis)
The Pressure of Time (Thomas M. Disch)
The Island of Doctor Death and other stories (Gene Wolfe)
Aside from the Laumer (line-waiting as a lifestyle) most of
these I either did not read or don't feel competent to comment on.
December QUEST FOR THE FUTURE by A.E. Van Vogt
Don't know this one.
ANYWHEN by James Blish
Contains:
Preface
A Style in Treason
The Writing of the Rat
And Some Were Savages
A Dusk of Idols
None so Blind
No Jokes on Mars
How Beautiful with Banners
I own this but have been stuck by the amnesia ray.
--
"About this time, I started getting depressed. Probably the late
hour and the silence. I decided to put on some music.
Boy, that Billie Holiday can sing."
_Why I Hate Saturn_, Kyle Baker
Mike Schilling
"James Nicoll" <jdni...@panix.com> wrote in message
news:b580es$qft$1...@panix1.panix.com...
>
>
> THREE FOR TOMORROW by Robert Silverberg, Roger Zelazny and James
> Blish
>
> Contents:
> The Eve of RUMOKO (Roger Zelazny)
Raymond Chandler.
James Nicoll
invent him?
On the whole, I wish my mind had not flashed onto Famous
F&SF Novels As Written by Raymond Chandler, starting with the
snappy patter between Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin...
Niall McAuley
> high, I think. The only ones I know I missed are the Padgett, the Knight
> and the Zelazny (still).
No, no, NO! If James has not read these, his scale needs calibrating.
> July A PRINCESS OF MARS by Edgar Rice Burroughs
> This is the third Mars book by Burroughs, if I am remembering
> correctly,
No, the first.
> he managed to lose me
> right at the beginning by having our old buddy, the eternal warrior,
> fight for the South in the ACW.
Except that John Carter is white, and only the perfidious
priesthood of the Therns are as pasty as he is. The good
guys are either copper red or copper green, or occasionally
ebony black or turmeric yellow.
Why is the SFBC publishing this in 1970? My paperback edition
says:
"First published in Great Britain by Methuen & Co. in 1919"
"First published as a Four Square Edition in 1961"
"New Edition in June 1965"
"Reissued in this NEL edition April 1969"
--
Niall [real address ends in net, not ten.invalid]
Mike Schilling
> In article <ZHLda.2281$cJ1.23...@newssvr13.news.prodigy.com>,
> Mike Schilling <mscotts...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >"James Nicoll" <jdni...@panix.com> wrote in message
> >news:b580es$qft$1...@panix1.panix.com...
> >>
> >>
> >> THREE FOR TOMORROW by Robert Silverberg, Roger Zelazny and James
> >> Blish
> >>
> >> Contents:
> >>...
> >> The Eve of RUMOKO (Roger Zelazny)
> >Same narrator as "Home is the Hangman" and the dolphin story. Zelazny as
> >Raymond Chandler.
> >
> >
> If Raymond Chandler had not existed, would SF been forced to
> invent him?
>
> On the whole, I wish my mind had not flashed onto Famous
> F&SF Novels As Written by Raymond Chandler, starting with the
> snappy patter between Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin...
I already did that one.
Steve Parker
wrote:
>February I SING THE BODY ELECTRIC! By Ray Bradbury
>
> Crap! Now I have the soundtrack from _Fame_ going through
>my head.
< warbles >
I glory in the neon to come!
I toast to my own tomorrow!
When I become one with the suuuuuuuuun!
And I look back on Venus, I look back on Mars
And I burn with the fire of 10,000,000 stars
and in time and in time
We will all
be
STAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRSSS!
me too.
>
> CHILDHOOD'S END by Arthur C. Clarke
>
> This is a three part story about humans, their alien overlords
>and some serious issues of child care that come up. Either this is about
>
> SPOILERS
>
>
>
>
> the rise of humanity to a glorious post-human destiny or we get
>et like a Happy Meal by a Lovecraftian monster. Either way, I remember
>parts of this fondly.
>
Preach drivel about how annoying nanny-esqe aliens who just happen to
share all Clarke's political prejudices come and make us BETTER PEOPLE
whether we want to be or not. The big surprise is the aliens are
shaped like devils. Keith Laumer did a take-off on this called _The
Monitors_ wherein the aliens don't have it so easy, since normal,
bloody-minded people don't autmatically fall on their knees and thank
the annoying nanny-esqe aliens for making them BETTER PEOPLE.
>
>
>Summer SEA-HORSE IN THE SKY by Edmund Cooper
>
> I missed this.
IIRC, aliens(?) kidnap a plane full of people and put them in a ghost
town on a deserted planet. Very "Survivor (the TV show) in
Space"-esque. I remember liking it, but I read it when I was 16,
so....
BTW: How'd Elwood kill the SF Anthology?
Steve
John M. Gamble
James Nicoll <jdni...@panix.com> wrote:
> List courtesy of Andrew Wheeler.
>
> These just keep getting longer and longer. Lucky for me by
>1980 Elwood will have murdered the SF anthology so I won't have to
>type in lines and lines of short story titles.
Sadly, yes. I picked up a lot of SF just by looking up the copyright
entries in the anthologies, and tracking authors and magazines from
there.
>
>1970
>
>February I SING THE BODY ELECTRIC! By Ray Bradbury
>
> Crap! Now I have the soundtrack from _Fame_ going through
>my head.
>
> Contents:
>
> Any Friend of Nicholas Nickleby's is a Friend of Mine
> Christus Apollo
> The Cold Wind and the Warm
> Downwind from Gettysberg
> The Haunting of the New
> Heavy-Set
> Henry the Nineth
> I Sing the Body Electric!
> The Inspired Chicken Motel
> The Kilimanjaro Device
> The Lost City of Mars
> The Man in the Rorschach Suit
I have very fond memories of TMitRS. Excellent short story, about
a psychiatrist who essentially goes freelance.
> Night Call, Collect
> The Terrible Conflegration Up Here at the Place
> The Tombling Day
> Tomorrow's Child
> The Women
> Yes, We'll Gather at the River
>
>
> The sole one of these I have read and remember is the first,
>about a young boy who meets a man using the name Charles Dickens and
>of their subsequent friendship.
>
>
[snippage, of course]
The del Rey is genuinely mediocre-to-bad, but you have to realize
that these stories were proto-Nebula nominees. That is, SFWA decided
to honor those stories that were classics and which were published
before the Nebula awards. Oh, and to make some money for SFWA.
Anyway, historical significance also enters into it, and "Helen O'Loy"
is significant for being the first non-fantasy human-machine love
story, with all the ickiness it had to overcome for readers of that
era (1940s, right? I can't remember).
"Mimsy" is a classic oft-anthologized and oft-quoted piece, about
the dangers of home schooling :). It's found mentioned in mathematical
articles on occasion.
And enough people have nagged you about "Rose", that i don't need
to say anything more.
--
-john
February 28 1997: Last day libraries could order catalogue cards
from the Library of Congress.
Mike Schilling
"John M. Gamble" <jga...@ripco.com> wrote in message
news:b58f9p$7vf$1...@e250.ripco.com...
> And enough people have nagged you about "Rose", that i don't need
> to say anything more.
>
But the Kinght is the best thing he ever wrote, by far, and one of the best
SF stories I've ever read. After you find "Rose", read that next.
And please, can someone explain to me why "Roads" is in here, and not "All
You Zombies", or "Solution Unsatisfactory", or "The Year of the Jackpot", or
another of his good stories?
Andrew Wheeler
>
> BTW: How'd Elwood kill the SF Anthology?
He edited approximately seven billion really bad ones, thus cementing
the "anthology = crap" equation in many impressionable minds.
--
Andrew Wheeler
--
"It's a sad day for American capitalism when a man can't fly a midget on
a kite over Central Park." -Jim Moran
Andrew Wheeler
> > July A PRINCESS OF MARS by Edgar Rice Burroughs
>
> > This is the third Mars book by Burroughs, if I am remembering
> > correctly,
>
> No, the first.
>
> > he managed to lose me
> > right at the beginning by having our old buddy, the eternal warrior,
> > fight for the South in the ACW.
>
> Except that John Carter is white, and only the perfidious
> priesthood of the Therns are as pasty as he is. The good
> guys are either copper red or copper green, or occasionally
> ebony black or turmeric yellow.
>
> Why is the SFBC publishing this in 1970? My paperback edition
> says:
>
> "First published in Great Britain by Methuen & Co. in 1919"
> "First published as a Four Square Edition in 1961"
> "New Edition in June 1965"
> "Reissued in this NEL edition April 1969"
Flippant answer: well, we couldn't well have done it in 1919, now, could we?
More serious answer: as I understand it (and this is from hearsay) there
is a Great Schism in the House of Burroughs. An eternal battle rages
between the Forces of Good (who are pleasant to deal with, and like to
sell rights) and the Forces of Evil (who are insane). When Good is
ascendant, new licenses flower like the petals of the lotus, and the
works of ERB are carried into new lands. When Evil is ascendant, the
world is a dim and smoky place, riven by fires and volcanoes, and the
few surviving souls squabble and bicker over scraps of bread. In 1970,
the forces of Good had overmastered the forces of Evil, and looked upon
the Science Fiction Book Club, and lifted it up into the land of milk
and honey. And so, during the Reign of Good, the tales of John Carter
were brought forth in shiny bookclub hardcovers and clothed in new
jackets of finest Frazetta.
(On second thought, that wasn't any more serious than the first one, was it?)
Bill & Sue Miller
>
> THREE FOR TOMORROW by Robert Silverberg, Roger Zelazny and James
> Blish
>
> Contents:
>
> Editor's Introduction (Robert Silverberg)
> Foreword (Arthus C. Clarke)
> How It Was When the Past Went Away (Robert Silverberg)
> The Eve of RUMOKO (Roger Zelazny)
> We All Die Naked (James Blish)
>
The Zelazny is very good, from my favorite part of his career. Later collected
with "Home is the Hangman" and a story with an long title in Dolphinese in _My
Name Is Legion_. Good stuff.
Bill
--
Home: wbmi...@houston.rr.com
Work: william....@jsc.nasa.gov
Homepage: http://home.houston.rr.com/wbmiller3
Richard Horton
wrote:
> THREE FOR TOMORROW by Robert Silverberg, Roger Zelazny and James
>Blish
>
> Contents:
>
> Editor's Introduction (Robert Silverberg)
> Foreword (Arthus C. Clarke)
> How It Was When the Past Went Away (Robert Silverberg)
> The Eve of RUMOKO (Roger Zelazny)
> We All Die Naked (James Blish)
>
> And I seem to have missed all of them.
>
I think I've read them all but I remember NUSSINK, except that "The
Eve of RUMOKO" is one of the Zelazny stories related to "Home is the
Hangman", along with
"K'wallkjallKasmanyotherconsonantsequencesyoufeellike".
>April NOVA I edited by Harry Harrison
>
> Contents:
> Introduction (Harry Harrison)
> The Big Connection (Robin Scott)
> A Happy Day in 2381 (Robert Silverberg)
> Terminus Est (Barry N. Malzberg)
> Hexamination (Chandler Davis)
> And This Did Dante Do (Ray Bradbury)
> The Higher Things (John R. Pierce)
> Swastika! (Brian W. Aldiss)
> The HORARS of War (Gene Wolfe)
> Love Story in Three Acts (David Gerrold)
> Jean Dupres (Gordon R. Dickson)
> In the Pocket (K.M. O'Donnel)
> Mary and Joe (Naomi Mitchison)
> Face & Hands (James Sallis)
> The Winner (Donald E. Westlake)
> The Whole Truth (Piers Anthony)
>
>
> The apparently bottomless depths of my ignorance continue to be
>plumbed.
>
> Note Donald Westlake, who mostly writes mystery and whose books
>stay stubbornly midlist, despite the fact that you'd have to look very
>hard to find someone who actively hated his books. It's unjust, is what
>it is.
>
I think between the movies and the Richard Stark books and the sum
total of popular if not bestseller books that he has published,
Westlake is probably making a good living, though.
But still -- if you haven't tried him, buy a Dortmunder book. You'll
love it. Most of his SF, though, is rather minor stuff.
> I am fairly sure K.M. O'Donnel is another name for Barry Malzberg.
>
Indeed it is.
I see Harrison trying to resurrect the odd SF career -- Westlake,
Chan Davis, John R. Pierce, Bradbury.
(The Sallis story, I believe, has recently been reprinted in _Lady
Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet_. I like Sallis -- I should probably try
his mystery stories.)
Needless to say, this is a bleeding wonderful collection. Even if the
Del Rey is sappy and silly, and the Heinlein is far from his best.
Well, James, when ARE you going to read "A Rose for Ecclesiastes", eh?
> BEYOND THE BEYOND by Poul Anderson
>
> Contains
>
> Memory
> Brake
> Day of Burning
> The Sensitive Man
> The Moonrakers
> Starfog
>
>
> The only one of these I can't recall is "The Moonrakers". "Memory"
>is long after the Long Night, and pits a nasty high tech civilization
>against its own agent. "Brake" is about a bungled hijacking of a space
>craft and the solution found for its inability to slow down. "Day of
>Burning" is about an attempt by Falkayn and his buds to profitably help
>Mersei and didn't that work out well in the long run? "The Sensitive
>Man" is part of the UN Man series, I think (Same universe as "Brake"
>but earlier) and "Starfog" is another post-Long Night story, this time
>a tragedy.
>
A great collection. "Starfog" is one of the two or three best
Anderson shorts.
>
>September WORLD'S BEST SF: 1970 edited by Donald Wollheim & Terry Carr
>
> Contents
>
> Introduction (Donald A. Wollheim & Terry Carr)
> A Man Spekith (Richard Wilson)
> After the Myth Went Home (Robert Silverberg)
> Death by Ecstacy (Larry Niven)
> One Sunday in Neptune (Alexei Panshin)
> For the Sake of Grace (Suzette Haden Elgin)
> Your Haploid Heart (James Tiptree, Jr.)
> Therapy 2000 (Keith Roberts)
> Sixth Sense (Michael Coney)
> A Boy and His Dog (Harlan Ellison)
> And So Say All of Us (Bruce McAllister)
> Ship of Shadows (Fritz Leiber)
> Nine Lives (Ursula K. Le Guin)
> The Big Flash (Norman Spinrad)
>
>
> Is it just me but are we seeing the effects of the death of
>magazines in the recurring use of a few stories in various collections
>of contemporary SF?
>
> If I recall correctly, that Le Guin is the one that appeared under
>the byline UK Le Guin, lest the readers of Playboy get girl-cooties.
>
That's correct.
This is an awfully good BotY. the Le Guin, Leiber, Ellison, and Niven
stories are classics. The Tiptree is far from her best, but its
Tiptree, so you ought to read it.
>
> ORBIT 7 edited by Damon Knight
>
> Contains:
>
> April Fool's Day Forever (Kate Wilhelm)
> Eyebem (Gene Wolfe)
> Continued on Next Rock (R.A. Lafferty)
> To Sport with Amaryllis (Richard Hill)
> In the Queue (Keith Laumer)
> The Livign End (Sonya Dorman)
> A Dream at Noonday (Gardner R. Dozois)
> Woman Waiting (Carol Emshwiller)
> Old Foot Forgot (R.A. Lafferty)
> Jim and Mary G. (James Sallis)
> The Pressure of Time (Thomas M. Disch)
> The Island of Doctor Death and other stories (Gene Wolfe)
>
>
> Aside from the Laumer (line-waiting as a lifestyle) most of
>these I either did not read or don't feel competent to comment on.
>
Both Wolfe stories are solid stuff. The Lafferty is good, too. I
used to like Sonya Dorman a lot -- and she wrote some first rate
poetry, too -- wonder what she's been up to these last three decades?
>
>December QUEST FOR THE FUTURE by A.E. Van Vogt
>
> Don't know this one.
>
> ANYWHEN by James Blish
>
> Contains:
>
> Preface
> A Style in Treason
> The Writing of the Rat
> And Some Were Savages
> A Dusk of Idols
> None so Blind
> No Jokes on Mars
> How Beautiful with Banners
>
>
> I own this but have been stuck by the amnesia ray.
"A Style in Treason" is a fabulous novella, one of my little-known
favorites. "How Beautiful With Banners" is good too, and famous
enough that Michael Bishop riffed on it in a recent mainstream story.
--
Rich Horton | Stable Email: mailto://richard...@sff.net
Home Page: http://www.sff.net/people/richard.horton
Also visit SF Site (http://www.sfsite.com) and Tangent Online (http://www.tangentonline.com)
Chuck Bridgeland
> July A PRINCESS OF MARS by Edgar Rice Burroughs
>
> This is the third Mars book by Burroughs, if I am remembering
> correctly, and more or less the end of a trilogy. I am not a huge
> Burroughs fan in general and with this series he managed to lose me
> right at the beginning by having our old buddy, the eternal warrior,
> fight for the South in the ACW.
It's the first Mars book, and ERB's first published work. 1912, wasn't it?
The fighting for the South thing didn't bother me any.
> Summer SEA-HORSE IN THE SKY by Edmund Cooper
>
> I missed this.
A few random people wake up in a magic hotel. With a couple other random
settlements they are isolated inside a county sized force field. Turns out
they're duplicates of earthly originals, intended (by alien abductors) to
colonize a new planet.
> December QUEST FOR THE FUTURE by A.E. Van Vogt
>
> Don't know this one.
He wove "Far Centarus" into a time travel novel. Don't remember anything
more about it.
--
War. Win, loose or draw, we get a depression afterwards. 2004 or
2008, we get President Hillary and her Homeland Security brownshirts.
chuck bridgeland, chuckbri at computerdyn dot com
http://www.essex1.com/people/chuckbri
David Tate
> February I SING THE BODY ELECTRIC! By Ray Bradbury
>
> Crap! Now I have the soundtrack from _Fame_ going through
> my head.
You poor man. ObSF: "Tenser, said the tensor" You might try
Coca-cola jingles as a counter-irritant.
> Any Friend of Nicholas Nickleby's is a Friend of Mine
Bradbury at his non-SF best.
> The Terrible Conflegration Up Here at the Place
"The Terrible Conflagration Up At the Place"
This is (by far) my favorite of Bradbury's Irish stories.
> May SCIENCE FICTION HALL OF FAME (Volume One) edited by Robert Silverberg
One of the three or four best SF anthologies ever, IMO. A few
clinkers, but otherwise WOW. I ran into this at age 12 or so, in the
local library. It was my first exposure to all of the authors except
Heinlein, Sturgeon, and Bradbury.
> A Martian Odyssey (Stanley G. Weinbaum)
> Twilight (John W. Campbell, Jr.)
> Helen O'Loy (Lester del Rey)
> The Roads Must Roll (Robert A. Heinlein)
Various people have expressed dismay about this choice for Heinlein.
I seem to recall some discussion in Silverberg's introduction of how
it came to be included. The SFWA decided early on to have at most one
story per author. For a couple of authors, the vote was sharply split
between two or more stories. IIRC, Heinlein was one of them, but I
can't remember what the other story was. It might have been "All You
Zombies".
> Microcosmic God (Theodore Sturgeon)
Sturgeon disliked this story -- it wasn't typical of his work, he
thought, which made its popularity galling.
> Arena (Fredric Brown)
It took some serious hubris to credit Brown as a writer for the Star
Trek episode of this name. The resemblance is not enough to support a
plagiarism suit, much less a credit.
> Fondly Farenheit (Alfred Bester)
Thank god for this one; it might have been years before I stumbled
across Bester in the ordinary course of things.
> The Country of the Kind (Damon Knight)
> A Rose for Ecclesiastes (Roger Zelazny)
Neither one, James? Wow. Of course, at this point there really is no
way "Rose" can live up to the massed hype of all of us telling you to
read it. I predict in advance that your reaction will be "Huh? What
was all the fuss about for *that*?" To everything there is a
season...
"Country" is my favorite Knight story, by quite a bit, FWIW.
David Tate
Mike Schilling
news:9d67e55e.03031...@posting.google.com...
>
> Sturgeon disliked this story -- it wasn't typical of his work, he
> thought, which made its popularity galling.
>
"Scanners Live in Vain" isn't typical Cordwainer Smith, either, actually
having a linear plot. Not that it isn't wonderful.
how...@brazee.net
On 19-Mar-2003, Chuck Bridgeland <chuc...@computerdyn.com> wrote:
> > December QUEST FOR THE FUTURE by A.E. Van Vogt
> >
> > Don't know this one.
>
> He wove "Far Centarus" into a time travel novel. Don't remember anything
> more about it.
Wasn't that how Van Vogt wrote most of his novels? Plug in a few short
stories with various plots (and plot is all Van Vogt had) into a book
length?
Niall McAuley
> Wasn't that how Van Vogt wrote most of his novels? Plug in a few short
> stories with various plots (and plot is all Van Vogt had) into a book
> length?
I sort of imagined he stayed up for 72 hours drinking coffee and
taking amphetamines until he got really punchy, and then sat down
at the typewriter and began.
--
Niall [real address ends in se, not es.invalid]
aRJay
> List courtesy of Andrew Wheeler.
>
>
> Crap! Now I have the soundtrack from _Fame_ going through
>my head.
>
> Contents:
>
A playboy gets a group of people together to go on a joyride as the last
of the old Martian Canals is refilled. They find the lost city of the
title, we get to see what happens as the city provides the guests with
just what they wished for. Creepy sort of story.
>
>
>
> THREE FOR TOMORROW by Robert Silverberg, Roger Zelazny and James
>Blish
>
> Contents:
>
> Editor's Introduction (Robert Silverberg)
> Foreword (Arthus C. Clarke)
> How It Was When the Past Went Away (Robert Silverberg)
> The Eve of RUMOKO (Roger Zelazny)
> We All Die Naked (James Blish)
>
> And I seem to have missed all of them.
RUMOKO is from _My Name is Legion_ and involves making new islands using
nuclear devices.
>
>April NOVA I edited by Harry Harrison
>
> Contents:
> The HORARS of War (Gene Wolfe)
This one I have read in an anthology called _Supertanks_ IIRC, don't
remember much about it apart from a vague recollection of its being
disturbing.
>
>
>July A PRINCESS OF MARS by Edgar Rice Burroughs
>
> This is the third Mars book by Burroughs, if I am remembering
>correctly, and more or less the end of a trilogy. I am not a huge
>Burroughs fan in general and with this series he managed to lose me
>right at the beginning by having our old buddy, the eternal warrior,
>fight for the South in the ACW.
>
First book in the Martian series.
>
>Summer SEA-HORSE IN THE SKY by Edmund Cooper
>
Better Cooper, a group of passengers from an aircraft wake up in a ghost
town like place and try to discover how they got there and where they
are, and of course the biggy why.
>
>
> ROCKETS IN URSA MAJOR by Fred & Geoffrey Hoyle
>
> I think this started as a radio play that pitted pucky humans
>and their starfaring slaver kin against aliens who seemed to have a
>pretty good reason to hate us (see also: Ben Bova's history leading
>up to "Stars, Won't You Hide Me"). Despite the fact that in a Hoyle
>universe, advanced aliens tend not to be like 1970 humans with really
>big tail fins on their cars as much as they tend to be the kinds of
>entities who can use quasars as weapons, we manage to prevail by using
>dodgy physics.
>
> It has a sort of naive charm but the sequel is horrid.
>
It did indeed start out on the radio where I first encountered it (when
I read the book I "hear" the radio version). The sequel (_Into Deepest
Space_) is to be avoided.
>
>November ICE CROWN by Andre Norton
While investigating a quasi feudal planet the heroine of the story finds
that all is not as it seems, in fact the society was set up by an
outlawed group of psychologists as an experiment that might still be
running.
--
aRJay
"In this great and creatorless universe, where so much beautiful has
come to be out of the chance interactions of the basic properties of
matter, it seems so important that we love one another."
- Lucy Kemnitzer
Bill Woods
> James Nicoll wrote:
>
> >
> > THREE FOR TOMORROW by Robert Silverberg, Roger Zelazny and James
> > Blish
> >
> > Contents:
> >
> > Editor's Introduction (Robert Silverberg)
> > Foreword (Arthus C. Clarke)
> > How It Was When the Past Went Away (Robert Silverberg)
> > The Eve of RUMOKO (Roger Zelazny)
> > We All Die Naked (James Blish)
> >
>
> The Zelazny is very good, from my favorite part of his career. Later
> collected with "Home is the Hangman" and a story with an long title in
> Dolphinese in _My Name Is Legion_. Good stuff.
" 'Kjwalll'kje'k'koothailll'kje'k "
Thanks be to the resurrected IFSFDB.
--
Bill Woods
'... Always after a defeat and a respite, the Shadow
takes another shape and grows again.'
'I wish it need not have happened in my time,' said Frodo.
'So do I,' said Gandalf, 'and so do all who live to see
such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have
to decide is what to do with the time that is given us. ...'
Chuck Bridgeland
><how...@brazee.net> wrote in message news:Od0ea.8982$pK4.7...@newsread1.prod.itd.earthlink.net...
>> Wasn't that how Van Vogt wrote most of his novels? Plug in a few short
>> stories with various plots (and plot is all Van Vogt had) into a book
>> length?
>
> I sort of imagined he stayed up for 72 hours drinking coffee and
> taking amphetamines until he got really punchy, and then sat down
> at the typewriter and began.
"There" <twitch twitch> "just right." taptaptaptaptaptap<ding>racktaptaptap.
Richard Horton
>> May SCIENCE FICTION HALL OF FAME (Volume One) edited by Robert Silverberg
>
>One of the three or four best SF anthologies ever, IMO. A few
>clinkers, but otherwise WOW. I ran into this at age 12 or so, in the
>local library. It was my first exposure to all of the authors except
>Heinlein, Sturgeon, and Bradbury.
>
I think I was 14. Still a seriously formative experience.
>> A Martian Odyssey (Stanley G. Weinbaum)
>> Twilight (John W. Campbell, Jr.)
>> Helen O'Loy (Lester del Rey)
>> The Roads Must Roll (Robert A. Heinlein)
>
>Various people have expressed dismay about this choice for Heinlein.
>I seem to recall some discussion in Silverberg's introduction of how
>it came to be included. The SFWA decided early on to have at most one
>story per author. For a couple of authors, the vote was sharply split
>between two or more stories. IIRC, Heinlein was one of them, but I
>can't remember what the other story was. It might have been "All You
>Zombies".
>
>> Microcosmic God (Theodore Sturgeon)
>
>Sturgeon disliked this story -- it wasn't typical of his work, he
>thought, which made its popularity galling.
>
The only worse choice (among vaguely popular Sturgeon stories) would
have been "Killdozer".
Obviously "... And Now the News" or "The Man Who Lost the Sea" would
have been infinitely better choices.
>> Arena (Fredric Brown)
>
>It took some serious hubris to credit Brown as a writer for the Star
>Trek episode of this name. The resemblance is not enough to support a
>plagiarism suit, much less a credit.
>
I didn't think there was a suit. I thought the credit was more of a
cheap CYA by the Star Trek folks.
>> Fondly Farenheit (Alfred Bester)
>
>Thank god for this one; it might have been years before I stumbled
>across Bester in the ordinary course of things.
>
>> The Country of the Kind (Damon Knight)
>> A Rose for Ecclesiastes (Roger Zelazny)
>
>Neither one, James? Wow. Of course, at this point there really is no
>way "Rose" can live up to the massed hype of all of us telling you to
>read it. I predict in advance that your reaction will be "Huh? What
>was all the fuss about for *that*?" To everything there is a
>season...
>
>"Country" is my favorite Knight story, by quite a bit, FWIW.
Greg Feeley has an interesting essay on "The Country of the Kind" in a
recent SFWA Bulletin.
I'd rank stories like "I See You", "Four in One", "Masks", "Stranger
Station", and even the fairly recent "Fortyday" as roughly on a par
with this.
Mike Schilling
"Richard Horton" <rrho...@prodigy.net> wrote in message
news:YTbea.3713$131.24...@newssvr15.news.prodigy.com...
> I'd rank stories like "I See You", "Four in One", "Masks", "Stranger
> Station", and even the fairly recent "Fortyday" as roughly on a par
> with this.
Hell, when I said "Country of the Kind" was by far the best thing Knight
ever wrote, I'd forgotten about "Stranger Station". Make that "by far one
of the best two".
Harry Erwin
> <how...@brazee.net> wrote in message
news:Od0ea.8982$pK4.7...@newsread1.prod.itd.earthlink.net...
> > Wasn't that how Van Vogt wrote most of his novels? Plug in a few short
> > stories with various plots (and plot is all Van Vogt had) into a book
> > length?
>
> I sort of imagined he stayed up for 72 hours drinking coffee and
> taking amphetamines until he got really punchy, and then sat down
> at the typewriter and began.
I have heard that he wrote many of his early works by going to sleep,
getting an idea, waking up, writing it down. Lather, rinse, repeat. I
don't know the truth of this story, but as a cognitive neuroscientist,
it makes me wonder about his sanity during the process.
--
Harry Erwin <http://www.theworld.com/~herwin/>
lal_truckee
> TO LIVE AGAIN by Robert Silverberg
>
> But this is Silverberg from the Middle Period and I missed very
> few of those.
>
> Basic setup: technology exists to replicate the memories of
> the dead in the bodies of the living. It has become something of a
> status symbol to carry one or more revenents and if the dead person
> had particular skills, it is useful as well. There are risks involved.
> Some people are driven mad by the voices in their heads. Others are
> taken over by them. This is not enough to stop the custom.
>
> A powerful man dies and a many sided fight breaks out over who
> gets to host his mind.
>
> I have fond memories of this.
I missed this one. I wonder if it cross-fertilized into Aristoi?
pacm...@hotmail.com
> December QUEST FOR THE FUTURE by A.E. Van Vogt
> Don't know this one.
This must be about when I joined the SFBC as a kid, cause the SFBC
edition is sitting on my shelf. Haven't read it in ages, but as I
recall it's about a guy who sees a film that seems to have been made
in the future. Somehow he determines it's not a fake and he tracks
down where it came from. Can't remember anything else. I thought it
was ok at 8 years old, but probably wouldn't think much of it now.
--
Paul Carter