What are the Great SF Novels of the '50s?
Andrew Wheeler
decent on-topic thread out of it, too).
The SFBC turns 50 years old in March of '03 (yay, us!), making us the
co-longest surviving SF publisher (Ace also started in '53, but I don't
think anybody else still publishing books was around before then --
though of course _Astounding_/_Analog_ wins on the magazine side). One
of the things we're doing to celebrate is a series of classics, which we
hope will continue for several years and cover the last fifty years.
But the first year will be eight novels (including some fix-ups) from
the '50s. I've already got my list (and am trying to buy them all right
now), but I'm wondering how different other people's lists would be from
the one we put together. I don't want to prejudice the group, so I think
I'll hold off on giving my list for a few days.
I expect most people will round it off to a Top Ten list, and that's
cool. Our list is eight books because we're only doing it every other
month (so we can still get other classics in during the course of the
year), which gives us eight spaces to work with. (Being weird, we have a
seventeen-month year.)
You don't need to follow our constraints, but I did try to keep all of
the books basically the same length, and no omnibuses are included. I
also have only one book by any single author, to showcase the breadth of
the field. And some things we already had in print (like _The Foundation
Trilogy_) or had just had in print recently (like _The Robot Novels_, an
omnibus of the three Lije Bailey books), so we avoided those.
Anyway, what are *your* Great Eight SFnal books from the '50s?
--
Andrew Wheeler
--
Far beyond the moon and stars,
Twenty light-years south of Mars
Spins the gentle Bunny Planet,
And the Bunny Queen is Janet.
Terrell Miller
news:3D9A4E18...@optonline.com...
> I'm hoping to pick the collective brain of rasfw (and, maybe, to get a
> decent on-topic thread out of it, too).
>
> The SFBC turns 50 years old in March of '03 (yay, us!),
and there was great rejoicing
> Anyway, what are *your* Great Eight SFnal books from the '50s?
Starship Troopers, Heinlein
Space Merchants, Pohl/Kornbluth
Demolished Man, Bester
City, Simak
Mission of Gravity, Clement (hated it, but it's still a classic)
On the Beach, Shute
Caves of Steel, Asimov
Case of Conscience, Blish
Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury
Childhood's End, Clarke
Sirens of Titan, Vonnegut
yes, I know that's *eleven*, you're just gonna have to rearrange your
schedule to fit them all! <g>
--
Terrell Miller
mill...@bellsouth.net
from an online chat with Jeff Probst:
Q: Which Survivor was the biggest jerk?
A: I have to limit it to one?
Stephen Harris
there were maybe 20 books in the Adult section of the library
and the new book carousel had a book maybe once every 2 months.
This is the only book I remember by title from that time as great
though I think Heinlein was writing then. The other SF I remember
was actually a movie, called "Forbidden Planet", way ahead of its time.
I was a boy and also loved dog stories. What a combination!
City by Clifford D. Simak
Regards,
Stephen
I think this was published as a novel in 1952 or 1953 as a collection
of short stories but it read like a book.
"Andrew Wheeler" <acwh...@optonline.com> wrote in message
news:3D9A4E18...@optonline.com...
Richard Horton
<mill...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>"Andrew Wheeler" <acwh...@optonline.com> wrote in message
>news:3D9A4E18...@optonline.com...
>> I'm hoping to pick the collective brain of rasfw (and, maybe, to get a
>> decent on-topic thread out of it, too).
>>
>> The SFBC turns 50 years old in March of '03 (yay, us!),
>
>and there was great rejoicing
>
>> Anyway, what are *your* Great Eight SFnal books from the '50s?
>
>Starship Troopers, Heinlein
>Space Merchants, Pohl/Kornbluth
>Demolished Man, Bester
>City, Simak
>Mission of Gravity, Clement (hated it, but it's still a classic)
>On the Beach, Shute
>Caves of Steel, Asimov
>Case of Conscience, Blish
>Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury
>Childhood's End, Clarke
>Sirens of Titan, Vonnegut
>
Not a bad list. But you forgot:
_The Stars My Destination_, Bester
_A for Anything_, Knight
_The Enemy Stars_ aka "We Have Fed Our Sea", Anderson
_To Live Forever_, Vance
_The City and the Stars_, Clarke
_The Door Into Summer_, Heinlein
_Citizen of the Galaxy_, Heinlein
_Double Star_, Heinlein
_The Dying Earth_, Vance
not to mention, of course, _The Lord of the Rings_
--
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)
David Bilek
>I'm hoping to pick the collective brain of rasfw (and, maybe, to get a
>decent on-topic thread out of it, too).
>
>The SFBC turns 50 years old in March of '03 (yay, us!), making us the
>co-longest surviving SF publisher (Ace also started in '53, but I don't
>think anybody else still publishing books was around before then --
>though of course _Astounding_/_Analog_ wins on the magazine side). One
>of the things we're doing to celebrate is a series of classics, which we
>hope will continue for several years and cover the last fifty years.
>
>But the first year will be eight novels (including some fix-ups) from
>the '50s. I've already got my list (and am trying to buy them all right
>now), but I'm wondering how different other people's lists would be from
>the one we put together. I don't want to prejudice the group, so I think
>I'll hold off on giving my list for a few days.
...
>Anyway, what are *your* Great Eight SFnal books from the '50s?
>
I assume you're including Fantasy in "SFnal", yes? I mean, you guys
seem to sell a lot of it from looking at your website!
The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien (1954-1955).
Um. Ok, you don't need to "reprint" that one, but it can't possibly
be left off a list of great SF&F books from the 50's.
The Dying Earth, Vance (1950)
Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury (1951)
Foundation, Asimov (1951)
Space Merchants, Pohl and Kornbluth (1952)
More Than Human, Sturgeon (1953)
The Stars My Destination, Bester (1956)
Starship Troopers, Heinlein (1959).
That's 8. Yay! Only one from each other.
I'll pay you *not* to include _Childhood's End_. Blech.
-David
David Bilek
>On Tue, 1 Oct 2002 22:38:20 -0400, "Terrell Miller"
><mill...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
>>> Anyway, what are *your* Great Eight SFnal books from the '50s?
>>
>>Starship Troopers, Heinlein
>>Space Merchants, Pohl/Kornbluth
>>Demolished Man, Bester
>>City, Simak
>>Mission of Gravity, Clement (hated it, but it's still a classic)
>>On the Beach, Shute
>>Caves of Steel, Asimov
>>Case of Conscience, Blish
>>Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury
>>Childhood's End, Clarke
>>Sirens of Titan, Vonnegut
>
>some alternates:
>The Stars My Destination, Bester
I included this one instead of _TDM_, too.
>Double Star, Heinlein
I think _Starship Troopers_ is both better and more important.
>The End of Eternity, Asimov
Neither of you wanted to include _Foundation_. Ok, I don't like it,
but it *is* a seminal work, no?
>
>and additions:
>More than Human, Sturgeon
Yeah.
>A Canticle for Leibowitz, Miller
1960, unfortunately, or it'd be on my list.
Oh, wait. I was doing books from 1950-1959. But the decade proper is
1951-1960. Andrew, do we count the "50's" as 1950-1959 or 1951-1960?
If '60 is included, put _Leibowitz_ on my list and switch _The End of
Eternity_ for _Foundation_.
-David
Ethan Merritt
Andrew Wheeler <acwh...@optonline.com> wrote:
>
>But the first year will be eight novels (including some fix-ups) from
>the '50s. I've already got my list (and am trying to buy them all right
>now), but I'm wondering how different other people's lists would be from
>the one we put together. I don't want to prejudice the group, so I think
>I'll hold off on giving my list for a few days.
Only 8<^H>10 for a whole decade? This is hard.
Hmmm. First I picked about 20, then limited any given author to
one appearance, then tried for a sampling of different styles,
then cut a few that could easily have been a different few...
To end up with 10.
9 if you rule out Tolkien on the grounds that there's no way on
earth you're going to be able to get the publication rights.
The Martian Chronicles (1950 anthology) Bradbury
City (1952 fixup) Simak
Mission of Gravity (1953) Clement
The Lord of the Rings (1954/55) Tolkien
A Mirror for Observers (1954) Pangborn
The Chrysalids (1955) Wyndham
Star Guard (1955) Norton
The City and the Stars (1956) Clarke
A Case of Conscience (1958) Blish
The Sirens of Titan (1959) Vonnegut
--
Ethan A Merritt
John Pelan
<acwh...@optonline.com> wrote:
>I'm hoping to pick the collective brain of rasfw (and, maybe, to get a
>decent on-topic thread out of it, too).
>
>The SFBC turns 50 years old in March of '03 (yay, us!), making us the
>co-longest surviving SF publisher (Ace also started in '53, but I don't
>think anybody else still publishing books was around before then --
>though of course _Astounding_/_Analog_ wins on the magazine side). One
>of the things we're doing to celebrate is a series of classics, which we
>hope will continue for several years and cover the last fifty years.
>
>But the first year will be eight novels (including some fix-ups) from
>the '50s.
"Fix-ups"? Oh, you must mean CITY... ;-) Good call.
The others which would seem obvious to me are:
A CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWITZ - Miller
THE DEMOLISHED MAN - Bester
THE DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS - Wyndham
THE DOOR INTO SUMMER - Heinlein
MORE THAN HUMAN - Sturgeon
TO LIVE FOREVER - Vance
THE SOUND OF HIS HORN - Sarban *
*You just knew I had to put something weird on here... ;-)
Cheers,
John
David Dyer-Bennet
> Anyway, what are *your* Great Eight SFnal books from the '50s?
Heck, I can't even pick the Heinlein book for the list with a clear
conscience. _Have Spacesuit, Will Travel_, or _Double Star_, or
_Starship Troopers_? Or one could argue for _Citizen of the Galaxy_
or _The Rolling Stones_ (personal special favorite).
I'm going by initial publication dates here -- which essentially
deprives me of Doc Smith. Lots of reprints from the magazines in the
50s, but little new, and the ones I see I'm not prepared to nominate
for 8 best yet.
I'm sure I'l scream at stuff I've overlooked. And of course we all
have our own idiosyncratic tastes, so I may have omitted your favorite
even though I thought of it.
A lot of the best stuff from that period is in short form, not
novels. That makes it harder -- except when there's a canonical
collection to give, as for Simak.
So here are 10 books from the 50s (defined as 1950-1959,
incidentally):
Arthur C. Clarke _Childhood's End_
C.M. Kornbluth and Frederik Pohl _The Space Merchants_
Clifford D. Simak _City_
Eleanor Cameraon _The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet_
Isaac Asimov _I, Robot_
James Blish _A Case of Conscience_
John Wyndham _The Day of the Triffids_
Ray Bradbury _The Martian Chronicles_
Robert A. Heinlein _Starship Troopers_
Theodore Sturgeon _More Than Human_
--
David Dyer-Bennet, dd...@dd-b.net / http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/
John Dyer-Bennet 1915-2002 Memorial Site http://john.dyer-bennet.net
Dragaera mailing lists, see http://dragaera.info
David Bilek
>Eleanor Cameraon _The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet_
>
Help me out here? I feel stupid.
-David
Rudolf Thiess
> Anyway, what are *your* Great Eight SFnal books from the '50s?
An obviously list:
Asimov, Isaac 55 End of Eternity, The
Bester, Alfred 56 Stars My Destination, The
Bradbury, Ray 51 Martian Chronicles, The
Clement, Hal 53 Mission of Gravity
Heinlein, Robert A. 58 Double Star
Miller, Walter M. 59 Canticle for Leibowitz, A
Simak, Clifford D. 52 City
Sturgeon, Theodore 53 More Than Human
I guess, most of them are longsellers, rather easy to catch,
so I'll suggest another, more 'interesting/unusual' list:
Anderson, Poul 54 Brain Wave
Budrys, Algis 58 Who [1]
Harness, Charles L. 53 Rose, The
Hoyle, Fred 57 Black Cloud, The
Kuttner, Henry 50 Fury
Moore, Ward 55 Bring the Jubilee
Pangborn, Edgar 54 Mirror for Observors, A
Lem, Stanislav 59 Eden
[1] if the year 1960 is eligible too,
I would replace this book with:
Budrys, Algis 60 Rogue Moon
Still to be considered:
Aldiss, Brian W. 58 Star Ship
Anderson/Dickson 57 Earthman's Burdon
Blish, James [*] 58 Case of Conscience, A or
55 Earthman, Come Home
Bradbury, Ray [*] 51 Fahrenheit
Brown, Frederic 55 Martians, Go Home
Clarke, Arthur C. 53 Childhood's End
DelRey, Lester 56 Nerves
Dick, Philip K. 57 Eye in the Sky
Finney, Jack 54 Body Snatchers, The
Kornbluth/Pohl [*] 53 Space Merchants, The
Heinlein, Robert A. 51 Puppet Master, The
Kuttner/Moore 53 Mutant
Lem, Stanislav 52 Astronauci
Matheson, Richard 54 I Am Legend
Oliver, Chad 56 Winds of Time, The
Piper, Henry Beam 50 Paratime
Roshwald, Mordecai 59 Level 7
Russell, Eric Frank 55 Men, Martians and Machines
Sheckley, Robert 57 Pilgrimage to Earth
Shute, Nevil 57 On the Beach
Vance, Jack 56 To Live Forever
Vonnegut, Kurt jr. 59 Sirens of Titan, The
White, James 52 Hospital Station
Williamson, Jack 51 Seetee Ship
Wyndham, John [*] 53 Chrysalids, The
[*]... I really wanted to include these in one the above
lists, but a limit of eight is a hard one... :-(
--
Rudolf Thiess
Tom Scudder
> David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:
>
> >Eleanor Cameraon _The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet_
> >
>
> Help me out here? I feel stupid.
Is it contagious?
Terrell Miller
> Jon Meltzer <jonme...@mindspring.com> wrote:
> >The End of Eternity, Asimov
>
> Neither of you wanted to include _Foundation_. Ok, I don't like it,
> but it *is* a seminal work, no?
since it was originally a set of novellas published in Astounding (IIRC) in
'45-'46, it's not really a novel from the '50s (and I didn't realize that
about Simak's work, so toss it as well). Also, Andrew mentioned that he was
excluding anything they already feature, so there's no need to include TFT.
> >A Canticle for Leibowitz, Miller
>
> 1960, unfortunately, or it'd be on my list.
yeah, I originally had Slan on mine, but I rechecked and it was 1946, so
it's disqualified.
> Oh, wait. I was doing books from 1950-1959. But the decade proper is
> 1951-1960. Andrew, do we count the "50's" as 1950-1959 or 1951-1960?
the sixth decade of the 20th century was from 1951-1960. The "Fifties" were
1950-1959, hence the name.
There isn't a term for this decade yet, for some reason. I like "Noughties"
Terrell Miller
news:Dutm9.1596$MT7.11...@newssvr15.news.prodigy.com...
> Not a bad list. But you forgot:
>
> _The Stars My Destination_, Bester
> _A for Anything_, Knight
> _The Enemy Stars_ aka "We Have Fed Our Sea", Anderson
> _To Live Forever_, Vance
> _The City and the Stars_, Clarke
> _The Door Into Summer_, Heinlein
> _Citizen of the Galaxy_, Heinlein
> _Double Star_, Heinlein
> _The Dying Earth_, Vance
Andrew said he wanted to limit the list to one work per author. I tried to
pick the most widely influential work of each, hence ST instead of the other
Heinleins you mention. In the case of Bester, either one could serve equally
well, but TDM came first.
Haven't read the Knight, Anderson or Vance works you mentioned, so I can't
recommend them.
> not to mention, of course, _The Lord of the Rings_
<shrugs> I tried to read The Hobbit in high school and bounced after thirty
or so pages. Same thing for McCaffrey and the other fantasy I've tried to
make myself read. Not my thing, baby.
Buck Dharma
> Anyway, what are *your* Great Eight SFnal books from the '50s?
When I was a lad, in the early 70's, the local library was stocked
full of old SF books and not many new ones. The following books were
taken and read many times, along with the old faves LOTR and
Foundation:
A Canticle For Leibowitz, Miller
The Midwich Cuckoos, Wyndham
On the Beach, Shute
Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury
Childhood's End, Clarke
The Weirdstone Of Brisingamen, Garner
The Death Of Grass, Christopher
A Case of Conscience, Blish
There's a bit of a cheat in counting 1960 to get Canticle and
Weirdstone in. I've also been compiling the list of my fave 60's books
too, but can't get it down much below twenty (or thirty, or forty!)
Buck.
GSV Three Minds in a Can
Andrew Wheeler <acwh...@optonline.com> said
>I'm hoping to pick the collective brain of rasfw (and, maybe, to get a
>decent on-topic thread out of it, too).
>Anyway, what are *your* Great Eight SFnal books from the '50s?
Omitting Narnia, Lord of the Rings, Cities in Flight, and the Foundation
trilogy (all of which are, apparently continuously, in print), and
assuming 'the 50s' runs from 1950 to 1959, here are my 8.
*Enumerator error. Press reset, halt, or load*
OK, I really can't split this bunch!
Story Title Author Name(s)
copyright date
The Space Merchants Kornbluth - Cyril M. & Pohl - Frederick 1953
The Demolished Man Bester - Alfred 1951
Tiger, Tiger (aka the Stars my Destination) Bester - Alfred 1955
Who? Budrys - Algis 1958
Mission of Gravity Clement - Hal 1953
The Paradox Men Harness - Charles L. 1953
Double Star Heinlein - Robert A. 1956
Three to Conquer Russell - Eric Frank 1955
The Genetic General (aka Dorsai!) Dickson - Gordon R. 1959
The Chrysalids Wyndham - John 1955
The Door into Summer Heinlein - Robert A. 1956
Wasp Russell - Eric Frank 1958
Wolfbane Kornbluth - Cyril M. & Pohl - Frederick 1959
A Canticle for Leibowitz Miller - Walter M. Jr. 1959
City Simak - Clifford D. 1952
The Man Who Sold the Moon Heinlein - Robert A. 1953
Men, Martians and Machines Russell - Eric Frank 1955
Trader to the Stars Anderson - Poul 1956
--
GSV Three Minds in a Can
John Pelan
(Ethan Merritt) wrote:
>In article <3D9A4E18...@optonline.com>,
>Andrew Wheeler <acwh...@optonline.com> wrote:
>>
>>But the first year will be eight novels (including some fix-ups) from
>>the '50s. I've already got my list (and am trying to buy them all right
>>now), but I'm wondering how different other people's lists would be from
>>the one we put together. I don't want to prejudice the group, so I think
>>I'll hold off on giving my list for a few days.
>
>Only 8<^H>10 for a whole decade? This is hard.
>Hmmm. First I picked about 20, then limited any given author to
>one appearance, then tried for a sampling of different styles,
>then cut a few that could easily have been a different few...
>
>To end up with 10.
>9 if you rule out Tolkien on the grounds that there's no way on
>earth you're going to be able to get the publication rights.
>
>The Martian Chronicles (1950 anthology) Bradbury
>City (1952 fixup) Simak
>Mission of Gravity (1953) Clement
>The Lord of the Rings (1954/55) Tolkien
>A Mirror for Observers (1954) Pangborn
>The Chrysalids (1955) Wyndham
Don't know if Andrew will select this, but I'm including the novella
version in the collection NEVER ON MARS I'm editing for Darkside
Press. It's amazing how much of Wyndham's short fiction has never been
collected, or if collected has been unavailable for decades...
Cheers,
John
Konrad Gaertner
>
>
> To end up with 10.
> 9 if you rule out Tolkien on the grounds that there's no way on
> earth you're going to be able to get the publication rights.
Last I checked, they had an edition for sale. In fact, I wouldn't be
surprised if they were the first with a single volume LOTR.
--KG
Abigail Ann Young
To me the great _authors_ from the 50s are Fredric Brown and Fritz Leiber.
Now, Brown is primarily a short story writer (and I guess _Angels and
Spaceships_ doesn't count), but there are _Martian, Go Home_ and the (to
me) difficult and depressing _The Lights in the Sky are Stars_. Can we
count _Gather, Darkness_? I guess not, since it appeared in magazine form
before 1950. I associate Williamson and Wylie (When/After WOrlds Collide)
with the 50s, 'cuase that's when I discovered them, but they are really
authors of the 30s... Now there's a question -- what are the Great SF books
of the 1930's?
Abigail
--
Abigail Ann Young (Dr), Associate Editor/Records of Early English Drama/
Victoria College/ 150 Charles Street W/ Toronto Ontario Canada M5S 1K9
Phone (416) 585-4504/ FAX (416) 813-4093/ abigai...@utoronto.ca
List-owner of REED-L <http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~reed/reed-l.html>
<http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~reed/reed.html> REED's home page
<http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~reed/stage.html> our theatre resource page
<http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~young> my home page
Nyrath the nearly wise
> Star Guard (1955) Norton
I actually prefer Star Rangers (1953) (AKA The Last Planet)
to Star Guard.
I enjoyed the attempts to explain things that are
disgusting to telepaths (Can-hound) which are just
puzzling to non-telepaths.
I enjoyed the anti-race prejudice plot line.
But most of all I enjoyed the revelation of what
planet they were on. That was quintessential
1950's SF for me.
<rot-13 for your spoiler protection>
Gur ybat ybfg cynarg Rnegu, bs pbhefr.
</rot-13>
(I'm sure it was used in other novels, but
the only one that comes to mind is Keith
Laumer's Earthblood. Any others?)
Jerry Friedman
> Anyway, what are *your* Great Eight SFnal books from the '50s?
What everybody else said about _Lord of the Rings_.
Asimov, _The Caves of Steel_
Bester, _The Demolished Man_
Bradbury, _The Martian Chronicles_
Clarke, _Childhood's End_
Honorable Mention:
Heinlein, I guess _Citizen of the Galaxy_ rather than the slight
_Double Star_ or the characterizationally thin and overly polemical
_Starship Troopers_.
Anderson: _War of the Wing-Men_ (which later had the better title _The
Man Who Counts_), since if _Starship Troopers_ isn't on my list, maybe
I should suggest one fascist book. Just kidding!
I've read most of the other books that people have suggested, and
enjoyed some, but I wouldn't call them "great". (I'm assuming you're
asking for what we like rather than what we consider historically
important.) I'd have more trouble limiting my selections from later
decades to eight.
--
Jerry Friedman
David Dyer-Bennet
> More than Human, Sturgeon
> A Canticle for Leibowitz, Miller
ISFDB seems to show that as being 1960, or I would have listed it.
Hmmm. Then it does also show it as being 1955. If it's in-period, it
should definitely be included.
> I'd drop "City"; it's a fixup of stories published in the 1940s.
Since short fiction is so important, I'm accepting original collection
dates as a way to include stories.
David Dyer-Bennet
> _The Enemy Stars_ aka "We Have Fed Our Sea", Anderson
I really wanted to find an Anderson, but none of the ones listed for
the period strikes me as actually a key work, so I ended up without
one.
> not to mention, of course, _The Lord of the Rings_
Good catch. With the "no omnibus" restriction, do we have to use up
three slots?
David Dyer-Bennet
Does spelling her name right, Eleanor Cameron, help any?
It's the first of a series of kids books that were important to me and
a bunch of people I've known, and that I think are very good.
Definitely SF.
(Not the "illustrated book for pre-readers" level of kids books, but
definitely before "young adult").
Pete Fenelon
> I'm hoping to pick the collective brain of rasfw (and, maybe, to get a
> decent on-topic thread out of it, too).
>
> The SFBC turns 50 years old in March of '03 (yay, us!), making us the
> co-longest surviving SF publisher (Ace also started in '53, but I don't
> think anybody else still publishing books was around before then --
> though of course _Astounding_/_Analog_ wins on the magazine side). One
> of the things we're doing to celebrate is a series of classics, which we
> hope will continue for several years and cover the last fifty years.
>
> But the first year will be eight novels (including some fix-ups) from
> the '50s. I've already got my list (and am trying to buy them all right
> now), but I'm wondering how different other people's lists would be from
> the one we put together. I don't want to prejudice the group, so I think
> I'll hold off on giving my list for a few days.
>
> I expect most people will round it off to a Top Ten list, and that's
> cool. Our list is eight books because we're only doing it every other
> month (so we can still get other classics in during the course of the
> year), which gives us eight spaces to work with. (Being weird, we have a
> seventeen-month year.)
Here's my top 10 fifties novels...
Tiger! Tiger! (ideally under that title rather than the plodding
alternative - this narrowly pips The Demolished Man)
A Canticle for Leibowitz (no real need for debate here, surely?)
Citizen of the Galaxy (ok, a Kipling ripoff but what's RAH but the
modern Kipling?)
Day of the Triffids (the book that first introduced the mainstream
British audience to SF, really)
Time Out of Joint (PKD's first classic)
The Space Merchants (still immensely readable and witty to this day)
Immortality, Inc. (if only to ensure Sheckley's inclusion and recover his
reputation after the terrible movie Freejack)
Rogue Moon (a fantastically hard-edged little book - WRITTEN in '59 but
I think not published until 60, does it count?!)
Player Piano (still my favourite Vonnegut - back then he seemed more
interested in content than form)
Wasp (Eric Frank Russell at his best).
pete
--
pe...@fenelon.com "there's no room for enigmas in built-up areas" HMHB
Pete Fenelon
> Bradbury, Ray 51 Martian Chronicles, The
Seems to stay in print anyway....
> Heinlein, Robert A. 58 Double Star
"I Was Monty's Double.... IN SPACE!"
> Simak, Clifford D. 52 City
Simak seems almost forgotten these days. Don't think I've seen a new
edition of a Simak novel since the early 80s. He never appealed much to
me (bit too much like reading Gray's Elegy over and over and over and
over and over and over again) but he was an important genre figure I
guess...
> Budrys, Algis 58 Who [1]
Rogue Moon was written in '59, I think, I'd count it myself ;P
> Hoyle, Fred 57 Black Cloud, The
One has to wodner whether Hoyle considered this fiction or fact given
how cranky he became later on. Perhaps it was his version of "A Voyage
to Arcturus" :)
> Kuttner, Henry 50 Fury
Damn, I knew I'd forgotten a good novel there ;)
> Blish, James [*] 58 Case of Conscience, A or
Another good one. "The Frozen Year" edges it for me though.
David Dyer-Bennet
I have a single-volume edition that I bought in 1973. It's a
hardcover. It's about 1 1/4 inches thick. The maps are big,
two-color, foldouts. Very nice.
lal_truckee
> CLIPPED GOOD LIST
> Kuttner, Henry 50 Fury
ISFdb lists Fury as 1947, reprint [vt Destination Infinity (1958)]
I quit making my list when I realized I couldn't have Clash By Night
and/or Fury ... just didn't seem important, after that.
James Nicoll
Jerry Friedman <jerry_f...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>Anderson: _War of the Wing-Men_ (which later had the better title _The
>Man Who Counts_), since if _Starship Troopers_ isn't on my list, maybe
>I should suggest one fascist book. Just kidding!
No nationalism = not fascist. It's a Mangerial Uber Alles book,
like a positive spin on _The Man in the Grey Suit_.
--
"Frankly, Captain, I feel interstellar diplomacy is out of our
depth."
"Ah, hence the nuclear weapons."
oZ
I can only recall reading four authors who were active in the 50s, seeing as how I hated
tolkien and pk dicks' books here is what I liked:
Foundation by Asimov (Fantastic) or Caves of steel (Excellent)
Non-Stop by brian aldiss(Excellent)
oZ
erilar
plethora so I don't have to find publication dates out of the blue and
see if I can cut it down to eight 8-)
In article <3D9AB67B...@atc.co.at>, Rudolf Thiess
<thi...@atc.co.at> wrote:
but I changed the order
> Sturgeon, Theodore 53 More Than Human
> Simak, Clifford D. 52 City
> Brown, Frederic 55 Martians, Go Home
> Clarke, Arthur C. 53 Childhood's End
> Anderson, Poul 54 Brain Wave
> Kornbluth/Pohl [*] 53 Space Merchants, The
> Bradbury, Ray [*] 51 Fahrenheit
mmmmmmmmm picking #8 seems to be the problem for me
Heinlein, Robert A. 51 Puppet Master, The
??? not my favorite Heinlein, though
> Matheson, Richard 54 I Am Legend
> Shute, Nevil 57 On the Beach
I didnt' LIKE either of these, actually, but both are very memorable.
> Vonnegut, Kurt jr. 59 Sirens of Titan, The
or maybe the ONLY Vonnegut book I ever did like?
> Williamson, Jack 51 Seetee Ship
I recognize the title, but don't really remember the book...
--
Mary Loomer Oliver(aka erilar)
Erilar's Cave Annex:
http://www.airstreamcomm.net/~erilarlo
erilar
<dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:
>
> Isaac Asimov _I, Robot_
>
THERE's my eighth book!
erilar
lal_t...@yahoo.com (lal_truckee) wrote:
I thought I remembered reading that in something like _Startling_ --so
what have I confused it with?
Default User
>
> In article <m2vg4ll...@gw.dd-b.net>, David Dyer-Bennet
> <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:
>
> >
> > Isaac Asimov _I, Robot_
> >
>
> THERE's my eighth book!
You're really bending the definition of novel in that case. I Robot
isn't even a fixup novel, it's just a short story collection with a
common theme.
Brian Rodenborn
David Bilek
It feels contagious.
Anyway, as entertaining as this is...
Seriously, who is Eleanor Cameraon?
-David
MJ Stoddard
<3D9A4E18...@optonline.com>:
>I'm hoping to pick the collective brain of rasfw (and, maybe, to get
>a decent on-topic thread out of it, too).
>Anyway, what are *your* Great Eight SFnal books from the '50s?
My major criterion was "over the top sense-of-wonder"
The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet - Eleanor Cameron
Gormenghast - Mervyn Peake
The Day of the Triffids - John Wyndham
Star Gate - Andre Norton
Citizen of the Galaxy - Robert A. Heinlein
The City and the Stars - Arthur C. Clarke
The Stars My Destination - Alfred Bester
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - C. S. Lewis
Terrell Miller
she wrote lots of children's books, of which her Mushroom Planet stories are
the most famous (you can still find them in public libraries).
Pure classics, but for grade-school children, and I doubt Andrew gets many
members from that demographic.
Jerry Friedman
> In article <96efe132.02100...@posting.google.com>,
> Jerry Friedman <jerry_f...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> >Anderson: _War of the Wing-Men_ (which later had the better title _The
> >Man Who Counts_), since if _Starship Troopers_ isn't on my list, maybe
> >I should suggest one fascist book. Just kidding!
>
> No nationalism = not fascist. It's a Mangerial Uber Alles book,
> like a positive spin on _The Man in the Grey Suit_.
Anderson was just ahead of his time, realizing that the fascism of the
future (now there's an unappealing phrase) would be corporate, not
governmental. Still kidding! I really wouldn't call TMWC fascist.
ObNitpick: _The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit_. Colo(u)r adjective
probably changed to Grey in some countries.
--
Jerry Friedman
David Dyer-Bennet
I'm cheerfully ignoring the word "novel", personally. Even as late as
the 50s, a LOT of the important stuff was short fiction. So I went
for "book", interpreted to allow me to include collections published
in the 1950s. Another approach, probably better, would be to pick and
choose individual stories, but I can't do that from memory and it's
too much work.
Colin Campbell
Brain Wave, Poul Anderson
Dorsai, Gordon Dickson
Under Pressure, Frank Herbert
--
Colin Campbell
Andrew Wheeler
>
> Oh, wait. I was doing books from 1950-1959. But the decade proper is
> 1951-1960. Andrew, do we count the "50's" as 1950-1959 or 1951-1960?
I was using 1950-1959, but that doesn't mean everybody else has to. My
list has two things (well, three, now that I think about it) that could
be seen as cheats -- two are fix-ups, so most/all of the material was
published before the '50s, and one was published in its slightly
revised, final form in 1961.
So if anybody wants it, they have my permission to cheat at least as
much as I am...
--
Andrew Wheeler
--
Far beyond the moon and stars,
Twenty light-years south of Mars
Spins the gentle Bunny Planet,
And the Bunny Queen is Janet.
Andrew Wheeler
>
> Andrew Wheeler <acwh...@optonline.com> wrote:
>
> <snip>
> >Anyway, what are *your* Great Eight SFnal books from the '50s?
> >
>
> seem to sell a lot of it from looking at your website!
I do have one fantasy book on my list -- there was a lot less genre
fantasy in those days, but I wanted to make sure I had at least one.
I also belatedly realized I have no books by *women* on my list (the
only thing I can say is that, so far, I haven't seen anyone else mention
a novel by a woman, either). I do have two books now as back-ups written
or co-written by women, so, if I get shot down on any of my first
choices, those might slip in.
> The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien (1954-1955).
>
> Um. Ok, you don't need to "reprint" that one, but it can't possibly
> be left off a list of great SF&F books from the 50's.
We're still trying to figure out exactly how we're doing this, but I
think we're launching the series on a flyer, and I want to include all
of the important '50s stuff we already have there -- LOTR certainly
qualifies, so it will probably be there.
> The Dying Earth, Vance (1950)
> Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury (1951)
> Foundation, Asimov (1951)
> Space Merchants, Pohl and Kornbluth (1952)
> More Than Human, Sturgeon (1953)
> The Stars My Destination, Bester (1956)
> Starship Troopers, Heinlein (1959).
>
> That's 8. Yay! Only one from each other.
>
> I'll pay you *not* to include _Childhood's End_. Blech.
We already have _Foundation_ (in the trilogy) and _Fahrenheit_, and we
recently did _Starship_, so I chose a different Heinlein. (We also had
_Dying Earth_ in our big 4-in-1 until very recently, so I didn't choose
that, either.) I also chose a different Clarke...how much were you
planning to pay? <grin>
_More Than Human_ was on my preliminary list, and then I tried to
re-read it. Yuck. There are bits of Sturgeon I love, but that fix-up is
a horrible, ridiculous mess, and the so-called "gestalt" is no more a
composite organism than an army squad is. So I used my vast and awful
Editorial Powers to nix it.
Andrew Wheeler
>
> Konrad Gaertner <kgae...@worldnet.att.net> writes:
>
> > Ethan Merritt wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > > To end up with 10.
> > > 9 if you rule out Tolkien on the grounds that there's no way on
> > > earth you're going to be able to get the publication rights.
> >
> > Last I checked, they had an edition for sale. In fact, I wouldn't be
> > surprised if they were the first with a single volume LOTR.
>
> I have a single-volume edition that I bought in 1973. It's a
> hardcover. It's about 1 1/4 inches thick. The maps are big,
> two-color, foldouts. Very nice.
Houghton Mifflin has done a number of one-volume editions over the
years. Actually, they've published LOTR in nearly every conceivable
permutation, though they haven't engraved it on molecules or done a
hand-illuminated version yet.
The SFBC hardcover is actually set directly from the HM trade paperback,
though our edition is physically larger, to make it a bit easier to
read.
Andrew Wheeler
>
> <snip>
>
> I've also been compiling the list of my fave 60's books
> too, but can't get it down much below twenty (or thirty, or forty!)
Well, if Year One works, I hope to do the same thing for the '60s in
2004, so I might be asking a similar question in about a year...
John Pelan
<abigai...@utoronto.ca> wrote:
>
>Andrew Wheeler wrote:
>>
>> I'm hoping to pick the collective brain of rasfw (and, maybe, to get a
>> decent on-topic thread out of it, too).
>>
>> The SFBC turns 50 years old in March of '03 (yay, us!), making us the
>> co-longest surviving SF publisher (Ace also started in '53, but I don't
>> think anybody else still publishing books was around before then --
>> though of course _Astounding_/_Analog_ wins on the magazine side). One
>> of the things we're doing to celebrate is a series of classics, which we
>> hope will continue for several years and cover the last fifty years.
>>
>> But the first year will be eight novels (including some fix-ups) from
>> the '50s. I've already got my list (and am trying to buy them all right
>> now), but I'm wondering how different other people's lists would be from
>> the one we put together. I don't want to prejudice the group, so I think
>> I'll hold off on giving my list for a few days.
>>
>> I expect most people will round it off to a Top Ten list, and that's
>> cool. Our list is eight books because we're only doing it every other
>> month (so we can still get other classics in during the course of the
>> year), which gives us eight spaces to work with. (Being weird, we have a
>> seventeen-month year.)
>>
>> You don't need to follow our constraints, but I did try to keep all of
>> the books basically the same length, and no omnibuses are included. I
>> also have only one book by any single author, to showcase the breadth of
>> the field. And some things we already had in print (like _The Foundation
>> Trilogy_) or had just had in print recently (like _The Robot Novels_, an
>> omnibus of the three Lije Bailey books), so we avoided those.
>>
>> Anyway, what are *your* Great Eight SFnal books from the '50s?
>
>To me the great _authors_ from the 50s are Fredric Brown and Fritz Leiber.
>Now, Brown is primarily a short story writer (and I guess _Angels and
>Spaceships_ doesn't count), but there are _Martian, Go Home_ and the (to
>me) difficult and depressing _The Lights in the Sky are Stars_. Can we
>count _Gather, Darkness_? I guess not, since it appeared in magazine form
>before 1950. I associate Williamson and Wylie (When/After WOrlds Collide)
>with the 50s, 'cuase that's when I discovered them, but they are really
>authors of the 30s... Now there's a question -- what are the Great SF books
>of the 1930's?
>
>Abigail
>
Books? Or novels? Assuming you mean just books we'll discount some
fine novels offered in serial form in the magazines and go with
bonafide books:
Odd John - Olaf Stapledon
The Death Guard - Philip George Chadwick
The Flying Beast - Walter S. Masterman
The Horror on the Asteroid - Edmond Hamilton
The Iron Star - John Taine
The Great Orme Terror - Garnett Radcliffe
The Face in the Abyss - A Merritt
Last & First Men - Olaf Stapledon
Devil's Tor - David Lindsay
The Outsider & Others - H.P. Lovecraft
This is by no means comprehensive, as many of what I consider the best
of the decade were short story collections and I thought 20% of the
list devoted to shorts would be fitting, as would letting Stapledon on
there with two selections.
Cheers,
John Pelan
www.darksidepress.com
Andrew Wheeler
>
> <snip>
>
> Anyway, what are *your* Great Eight SFnal books from the '50s?
Following myself up, here's a list of some of the '50s stuff we already have:
J.R.R. Tolkien, _The Lord of the Rings_
C.S. Lewis, the Narnia novels
Ray Bradbury, _Fahrenheit 451_, _The Martian Chronicles_ and _The
Illustrated Man_
Isaac Asimov, _The Empire Novels_ (3-in-1), _The Foundation
Trilogy_ (3-in-1) and (ahem) _The Complete Adventures of Lucky Starr_ (6-in-1)
Robert A. Heinlein, _The Past Through Tomorrow_ (though I don't
think that can count as the '50s on either side, anyway)
Andre Norton, _Time Traders_ (omnibus of _The Time Traders_ and
_Galactic Derelict_) and _Star Soldiers_ (omnibus of _Star Guard_ and
_Star Rangers_)
Poul Anderson and Gordon R. Dickson, _The Sound and the Furry_
(complete Hoka stories)
Fredric Brown, _From These Ashes_ (complete short fiction,
centering on the '50s)
Gordon R. Dickson, _Four to Dorsai!_ (4-in-1 including _Dorsai!_
aka _The Genetic General_)
Robert Sheckley, _Dimensions of Sheckley_ (4-in-1 including
_Immortality, Inc._)
William Tenn, _Immodest Proposals: The Complete Science Fiction,
Volume I_
We recently had (and so can't really bring back that quickly):
Robert A. Heinlein, _Starship Troopers_
Isaac Asimov, _Robots and Murder_ (3-in-1 of the Lije Bailey
novels) and _The Complete Robot_ (which is from the early '80s anyway)
Algis Budrys, _Rogue Moon_ (which is from 1960, anyway)
Walter M. Miller, Jr., _A Canticle for Leibowitz_ (also 1960)
Jack Vance, _The Compleat Dying Earth_ (4-in-1)
So I didn't consider any of those books, for obvious reasons.
To tease a bit more, the authors I chose are (and some of these are dead giveaways):
Poul Anderson
Alfred Bester
Arthur C. Clarke
Robert A. Heinlein
Frank Herbert
Frederik Pohl & C.M. Kornbluth
Clifford D. Simak
A.E. Van Vogt
I'll post the books tomorrow (though I expect several people will have
already guessed correctly by then).
how...@brazee.net
On 1-Oct-2002, David Bilek <dbi...@attbi.com> wrote:
> 1960, unfortunately, or it'd be on my list.
>
> Oh, wait. I was doing books from 1950-1959. But the decade proper is
> 1951-1960. Andrew, do we count the "50's" as 1950-1959 or 1951-1960?
The '50s is not the same as the 195th decade. The former starts with 1950,
the latter starts with 1951.
Richard Horton
<mill...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>"Richard Horton" <rrho...@prodigy.net> wrote in message
>news:Dutm9.1596$MT7.11...@newssvr15.news.prodigy.com...
>
>> Not a bad list. But you forgot:
>>
>> _The Stars My Destination_, Bester
>> _A for Anything_, Knight
>> _The Enemy Stars_ aka "We Have Fed Our Sea", Anderson
>> _To Live Forever_, Vance
>> _The City and the Stars_, Clarke
>> _The Door Into Summer_, Heinlein
>> _Citizen of the Galaxy_, Heinlein
>> _Double Star_, Heinlein
>> _The Dying Earth_, Vance
>
>Andrew said he wanted to limit the list to one work per author. I tried to
>pick the most widely influential work of each, hence ST instead of the other
>Heinleins you mention. In the case of Bester, either one could serve equally
>well, but TDM came first.
Ah, I hadn't seen Andrew's post. It has showed up since.
--
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)
David Bilek
>
>Poul Anderson
Man, lots of choices for this one. _The Broken Sword_?
>Alfred Bester
_The Stars My Destination_. Okay, so there are only 2 choices, but
I'd go with this one. That's worth what you're paying for it, of
course.
>Arthur C. Clarke
_Against the Fall of Night_
>Robert A. Heinlein
_Double Star_
>Frank Herbert
Eh? Since this is the 50's, it can only be _Under Pressure_ I think?
>Frederik Pohl & C.M. Kornbluth
_The Space Merchants_
>Clifford D. Simak
_City_ as you mentioned fix-ups. Otherwise it would have probably
been _Way Station_.
>A.E. Van Vogt
Hmm. _The Weapon Shops of Isher_? That or _Space Beagle_ I would
wager. Have you re-read either lately, and if so how did they hold
up? You mentioned that _More Than Human_ didn't hold up at all (I
havent re-read it since I was very young), and I've found the same is
true of van Vogt. Not a master prose stylist.
>I'll post the books tomorrow (though I expect several people will have
>already guessed correctly by then).
>
I've never been a van Vogt fan, to say the least. But I recognize his
importance. And I don't think I've read the Herbert (assuming I'm
correct) so I can't comment. Other than that, looks good.
-David
Sea Wasp
Okay... I'm going to try to pick some shoo-ins, and some from off in
left field.
Lord of the Rings is running first in the pack. It created its own
genre, in essence. There is no way to overestimate its importance. We
would not recognize the current state of SF and fantasy without
Tolkien.
The Stars My Destination next. The prototype of much of cyberpunk,
and just a smashing good yarn with Cool Ideas filling it to bursting.
One of the first good examples of an author taking a psi power and
working out its social consequences (Bester also did the same general
thing with his other masterwork, The Demolished Man, which could fit
here just as well)
Double Star (or any of a number of Heinleins, I'm not picky). No list
from the 50s would be complete without something from Heinlein. If one
man could be said to have matured the field, it's probably RAH. All
the newcomers measured themselves against him. All the established
pros looked to him as a master of the craft. And the 1950s were his
peak period; in that time he produced his greatest work (with only a
couple exceptions).
The Caves of Steel (and the Naked Sun). The same can be said of
Asimov. It was often said of Isaac that he couldn't do decent
characters, but these two novels -- and the story of the Mule in
Foundation -- prove otherwise. Elijah Baley and Daneel Olivaw are
characters, both -- one of them purely human, the other clearly not,
yet striving to be... and at the same time serving as a necessary
counterpoint to Elijah. Isaac Asimov was renowned for his ceaseless
output, his quick wit, his clever ideas, but for all that I think
these two novels are the greatest of his work. They also incorporate
his single greatest contribution to science fiction, the Three Laws of
Robotics.
Gladiator-At-Law, Pohl and Kornbluth. Another of the ancestors of
Cyberpunk, and an incisive look at a dystopian society which is echoed
in many more modern productions.
The City and the Stars/Against the Fall of Night (Clarke). While part
of this was published earlier, Clarke did major reworking on it, and
it qualifies as a separate work in its own right. This is a concept
book of awesome scope -- a truly eternal city, outlasting all other
works of man, and the change a single man can make in eternity.
Any of the Chronicles of Narnia (My favorite's Voyage of the Dawn
Treader, but any will do): C.S. Lewis produced these as childrens'
books, and childrens' books they remain... but by virtue of that they
have influenced more readers and authors than can be easily counted.
One of the most successful fusions of Christianity and fantasy, and
one that is both blindingly obvious and yet manages to avoid feeling
like a sermon. I never noticed the parallels until they were pointed
out.
Iceworld (my favorite) or Mission of Gravity (Hal Clement). I liked
Iceworld better partly because it dealt with humanity as the race
living on the impossibly hostile world, and described the differences
very well. What I regret most about it is that there wasn't a sequel.
In any case, at least one of Clement's World-Builder books belongs on
the list.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Finney): A completely new idea for
alien invasion, and one of the most frightening of all. Anyone who was
NOT familiar with the concept beforehand will come away utterly
creeped out.
Danny Dunn and the Anti-Gravity Paint (Williams and Abrashkin): The
titles were pulpish -- Tom Swifties, almost. But the stories were for
children who were willing to THINK. These are a fusion of science
fiction and science fact which are and were all the more powerful
because of that combination. The Danny Dunn series is, to my mind, one
of the best series of childrens' books ever written. And childrens'
books are one of the most important influences in SF.
--
Sea Wasp
/^\
;;;
http://www.wizvax.net/seawasp/index.htm
Richard Horton
wrote:
>Andrew Wheeler wrote:
>> Anyway, what are *your* Great Eight SFnal books from the '50s?
>
>An obviously list:
>
>Asimov, Isaac 55 End of Eternity, The
>Bester, Alfred 56 Stars My Destination, The
>Bradbury, Ray 51 Martian Chronicles, The
>Clement, Hal 53 Mission of Gravity
>Heinlein, Robert A. 58 Double Star
>Miller, Walter M. 59 Canticle for Leibowitz, A
>Simak, Clifford D. 52 City
>Sturgeon, Theodore 53 More Than Human
>
I wasn't very rigorous on my last list, as Terrell pointed out.
According to the ISFDB, A Canticle for Leibowitz, as well as Rogue
Moon, another essential choice, is from 1960. To be sure Canticle is
a fixup of previous stories definitely dating to the 50s.
So, being rigorous this time, and leaving out LotR based on its being
only too prominent, I choose
The Dying Earth, Jack Vance (1950)
The Sinful Ones, Fritz Leiber (1953/1980)
The Paradox Men, Charles L. Harness (1953)
The Stars My Destination (aka Tiger! Tiger!), Alfred Bester (1956)
The Door Into Summer, Robert Heinlein (1957)
The Seedling Stars, James Blish (1957)
We Have Fed Our Sea (aka The Enemy Stars), Poul Anderson (1959)
A for Anything, Damon Knight (1959)
Just missed:
The Space Merchants, Pohl and Kornbluth (1952)
The End of Eternity, Isaac Asimov (1955)
Alternatives from some authors:
The Big Time, Leiber (1958)
The Demolished Man, Bester (1952)
To Live Forever, Vance (1956)
Double Star, Heinlein (1956)
Citizen of the Galaxy, Heinlein (1957)
The best novels by women are all by Leigh Brackett, IMO, and I suppose
The Long Tomorrow or The Sword of Rhiannon would be reasonable
choices.
Sea Wasp
clearly collections of older stories gathered into novel form.
Otherwise the Lensman series takes a slot near the top.
Ethan Merritt
Andrew Wheeler <acwh...@optonline.com> wrote:
>
>I also belatedly realized I have no books by *women* on my list (the
>only thing I can say is that, so far, I haven't seen anyone else mention
>a novel by a woman, either). I do have two books now as back-ups written
>or co-written by women, so, if I get shot down on any of my first
>choices, those might slip in.
At least two of us have suggested Andre Norton titles,
_Star Rangers_ and _Star Guard_, though come to that I'd be just as happy
to see _The Beast Master_ - it's less well-known but is actually more
representative of Norton's writing than the other two.
--
Ethan A Merritt
Brad Templeton
Terrell Miller <mill...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>the sixth decade of the 20th century was from 1951-1960. The "Fifties" were
>1950-1959, hence the name.
>
>There isn't a term for this decade yet, for some reason. I like "Noughties"
Actually, there are various historians who also try to define the
decades based on cultural eras, so that the "sixties" did not begin
until 1964 in some views, and ended around 71 or 72. So there are 2
numeric definitions and several historian's definitions.
--
Alice Pascal -- free Pascal IDE with syntax directed editor
http://www.templetons.com/brad/alice.html
David Dyer-Bennet
> Some candidates I haven't seen mentioned yet:
>
> Brain Wave, Poul Anderson
>
> Dorsai, Gordon Dickson
>
> Under Pressure, Frank Herbert
I looked at all those and passed them over. Ended up with 11 or 12
and had to do some painful pruning at the end, too.
Stephen Harris
> > Anyway, what are *your* Great Eight SFnal books from the '50s?
>
> An obviously list:
>
> Asimov, Isaac 55 End of Eternity, The
> Bester, Alfred 56 Stars My Destination, The
> Bradbury, Ray 51 Martian Chronicles, The
> Clement, Hal 53 Mission of Gravity
> Heinlein, Robert A. 58 Double Star
> Miller, Walter M. 59 Canticle for Leibowitz, A
> Simak, Clifford D. 52 City
> Sturgeon, Theodore 53 More Than Human
>
>
> so I'll suggest another, more 'interesting/unusual' list:
>
> Anderson, Poul 54 Brain Wave
> Harness, Charles L. 53 Rose, The
> Hoyle, Fred 57 Black Cloud, The
> Kuttner, Henry 50 Fury
> Moore, Ward 55 Bring the Jubilee
> Pangborn, Edgar 54 Mirror for Observors, A
> Lem, Stanislav 59 Eden
>
>
> [1] if the year 1960 is eligible too,
> I would replace this book with:
> Budrys, Algis 60 Rogue Moon
>
>
> Still to be considered:
>
> Aldiss, Brian W. 58 Star Ship
> Anderson/Dickson 57 Earthman's Burdon
> Blish, James [*] 58 Case of Conscience, A or
> 55 Earthman, Come Home
> Bradbury, Ray [*] 51 Fahrenheit
> Clarke, Arthur C. 53 Childhood's End
> Dick, Philip K. 57 Eye in the Sky
> Finney, Jack 54 Body Snatchers, The
> Kornbluth/Pohl [*] 53 Space Merchants, The
> Lem, Stanislav 52 Astronauci
> Matheson, Richard 54 I Am Legend
> Piper, Henry Beam 50 Paratime
> Roshwald, Mordecai 59 Level 7
> Russell, Eric Frank 55 Men, Martians and Machines
> Sheckley, Robert 57 Pilgrimage to Earth
> Shute, Nevil 57 On the Beach
> Vonnegut, Kurt jr. 59 Sirens of Titan, The
> Williamson, Jack 51 Seetee Ship
>
>
> [*]... I really wanted to include these in one the above
> lists, but a limit of eight is a hard one... :-(
>
> --
> Rudolf Thiess
This list is supposed to be great SF. How does a Canticle
for Leibowitz get beyond boring, likewise any astronomer
book and the Chrysalids partakes of the horror genre.
I think Vance is near the top as a writing craftsman.
I suppose difference of opinion makes the world go round
but I didn't include City and the Stars because I wasn't sure
it was 50's.
I just remembered Slan but that may have been 40's.
On the Beach? That is hardly SF.
I just remembered a couple of favorites: The RiddleMaster
of Hed and the Wandor series by Roland Green. Roland
Green writes the best sorcerer battles of spells. But he
did not write the last book in the series.
Rudolf Thiess
> Following myself up, here's a list of some of the '50s stuff we already have:
>
I would have need this list yesterday to exclude some of my choices...
;-)
> To tease a bit more, the authors I chose are (and some of these are dead giveaways):
>
> Poul Anderson
Should be "Brain Wave". At least here in Austria/Germany it's sort of a
classic - although oop. Vernor Vinge's "A Fire in the Sky" owes him a
lot.
> Alfred Bester
"Tiger! Tiger!" aka "The Stars My Destination" aka "Hell's my
Destination"
aka "The Burning Spear";
(The latest german reprint is called 'Der Brennende Mann' (The Burning
Man).
> Arthur C. Clarke
"The City and the Stars" (Assuming that the Benford sequel has'nt
damaged the appreciation of the predecessor.)
> Robert A. Heinlein
Still think it will be 'Double Star".
> Frank Herbert
"Under Pressure". I would not call it a 'classic' by myself.
> Frederik Pohl & C.M. Kornbluth
"The Space Merchants" (Other possible Pohl/Kornbluth collaborations
("Gladiator in Law") would be a big surprise!)
> Clifford D. Simak
"City"
> A.E. Van Vogt
"The War against the Rull" (The Fixup)
(I don't think that you choose "The Weapon Shops of Isher", as it is
part of a series.)
I don't like Van Vogt very much, and I would call him an author from
the fourties.
I feel old... :-( Looks like I own and have read all of the
possible choices...
--
Rudolf Thiess
David Bilek
>
>This list is supposed to be great SF. How does a Canticle
Because the world doesn't always completely correspond with "Stephen
Harris' personal opinions"?
Canticle is one of the great classics of the field.
-David
Dan Clore
>
> I'm hoping to pick the collective brain of rasfw (and, maybe, to get a
> decent on-topic thread out of it, too).
>
> The SFBC turns 50 years old in March of '03 (yay, us!), making us the
> co-longest surviving SF publisher (Ace also started in '53, but I don't
> think anybody else still publishing books was around before then --
> though of course _Astounding_/_Analog_ wins on the magazine side).
Arkham House, founded 1939.
> One
> of the things we're doing to celebrate is a series of classics, which we
> hope will continue for several years and cover the last fifty years.
>
> But the first year will be eight novels (including some fix-ups) from
> the '50s. I've already got my list (and am trying to buy them all right
> now), but I'm wondering how different other people's lists would be from
> the one we put together. I don't want to prejudice the group, so I think
> I'll hold off on giving my list for a few days.
>
> I expect most people will round it off to a Top Ten list, and that's
> cool. Our list is eight books because we're only doing it every other
> month (so we can still get other classics in during the course of the
> year), which gives us eight spaces to work with. (Being weird, we have a
> seventeen-month year.)
>
> You don't need to follow our constraints, but I did try to keep all of
> the books basically the same length, and no omnibuses are included. I
> also have only one book by any single author, to showcase the breadth of
> the field. And some things we already had in print (like _The Foundation
> Trilogy_) or had just had in print recently (like _The Robot Novels_, an
> omnibus of the three Lije Bailey books), so we avoided those.
>
> Anyway, what are *your* Great Eight SFnal books from the '50s?
Henry Kuttner, _Fury_ (1950).
Samuel Beckett, _Three Novels_ (_Molloy_, 1951; _Malone
Dies_, 1951; _The Unnamable_, 1953)
Bernard Wolfe, _Limbo_ (1952).
William Golding, _Lord of the Flies_ (1954).
Alfred Bester, _Tiger! Tiger!_ (1956, aka _The Stars My
Destination).
Philip K. Dick, _Eye in the Sky_ (1957).
C.L. Moore, _Doomsday Morning_ (1957).
Ivan Yefremov, _Andromeda_ (1959).
Last and best, and an unbelievable omission from everyone
else's list:
William Burroughs, _Naked Lunch_ (1959).
--
Dan Clore
Now available: _The Unspeakable and Others_
All my fiction through 2001 and more. Intro by S.T. Joshi.
http://www.wildsidepress.com/index2.htm
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1587154838/thedanclorenecro
Lord We˙rdgliffe and Necronomicon Page:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/
News for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
Said Smygo, the iconoclast of Zothique: "Bear a hammer with
thee always, and break down any terminus on which is
written: 'So far shalt thou pass, but no further go.'"
--Clark Ashton Smith
GSV Three Minds in a Can
Andrew Wheeler <acwh...@optonline.com> said
>David Bilek wrote:
>>
>> Oh, wait. I was doing books from 1950-1959. But the decade proper is
>> 1951-1960. Andrew, do we count the "50's" as 1950-1959 or 1951-1960?
>
>I was using 1950-1959, but that doesn't mean everybody else has to. My
>list has two things (well, three, now that I think about it) that could
>be seen as cheats -- two are fix-ups, so most/all of the material was
>published before the '50s, and one was published in its slightly
>revised, final form in 1961.
So are you going to tell us what your list is/was at some point?
--
GSV Three Minds in a Can
Konrad Gaertner
>
> Houghton Mifflin has done a number of one-volume editions over the
> years. Actually, they've published LOTR in nearly every conceivable
> permutation, though they haven't engraved it on molecules or done a
> hand-illuminated version yet.
What about an omnibus including _The Hobbit_? Ideally with an
appendix or something giving the original version of how Bilbo
found the Ring.
--KG
Abigail Ann Young
Well, I would certainly put Wylie and (oh, darn, what is the other fellow's
name?) Wazzit on any list from the 30's with Before Worlds Collide and
After Worlds Collide. They may not be great literature, but I think they
are very characteristic of the time, and also, for me at least, the scenes
of exploration of the new earth still convey a sense of wonder.
And I don't think we should leave off Jack Williamson, who I think was at
his best in the 1930s and 1940s, with Cometeers (1936; the best of the
Legion of Space, I think, with those eerie flashbacks to John's
hazing/torture at the Academy that turns out to drive much of the plot) and
Darker Than You Think (1948).
Nor can we ignore Huxley's Brave New World (1939 but reflecting the British
economic collapse of the early thrities more than the slide to war in the
latter part of the decade) -- I think it's arguably SF!
AAY
--
Abigail Ann Young (Dr), Associate Editor/Records of Early English Drama/
Victoria College/ 150 Charles Street W/ Toronto Ontario Canada M5S 1K9
Phone (416) 585-4504/ FAX (416) 813-4093/ abigai...@utoronto.ca
List-owner of REED-L <http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~reed/reed-l.html>
<http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~reed/reed.html> REED's home page
<http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~reed/stage.html> our theatre resource page
<http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~young> my home page
Patrick
news:HoNm9.5775$lV3.5...@newsread1.prod.itd.earthlink.net:
>
> On 1-Oct-2002, David Bilek <dbi...@attbi.com> wrote:
>
>> 1960, unfortunately, or it'd be on my list.
>>
>> Oh, wait. I was doing books from 1950-1959. But the decade
>> proper is 1951-1960. Andrew, do we count the "50's" as
>> 1950-1959 or 1951-1960?
>
> The '50s is not the same as the 195th decade.
Or even the 196th decade.
> The former starts
> with 1950, the latter starts with 1951.
Not quite. We're in the 21st century now.
Pat
Randy Money
> In article <bsBm9.5970$OM4.1...@e3500-atl1.usenetserver.com>,
> Terrell Miller <mill...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
>>the sixth decade of the 20th century was from 1951-1960. The "Fifties" were
>>1950-1959, hence the name.
>>
>>There isn't a term for this decade yet, for some reason. I like "Noughties"
>
>
>
> Actually, there are various historians who also try to define the
> decades based on cultural eras, so that the "sixties" did not begin
> until 1964 in some views, and ended around 71 or 72. So there are 2
> numeric definitions and several historian's definitions.
>
Usually hear it as beginning in 1963 with JFK's assassination and ending
in '74 with the Kent State killings.
Definitions on when the baby boom ended are similarly fuzzy. Defining
eras is art, not math, when trying to group events rather than look at
years.
Randy M.
Randy Money
> Default User <first...@company.com> writes:
>
>
>>erilar wrote:
>>
>>>In article <m2vg4ll...@gw.dd-b.net>, David Dyer-Bennet
>>><dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>Isaac Asimov _I, Robot_
>>>>
>>>
>>>THERE's my eighth book!
>>
>>You're really bending the definition of novel in that case. I Robot
>>isn't even a fixup novel, it's just a short story collection with a
>>common theme.
>
>
> I'm cheerfully ignoring the word "novel", personally. Even as late as
> the 50s, a LOT of the important stuff was short fiction. So I went
> for "book", interpreted to allow me to include collections published
> in the 1950s. Another approach, probably better, would be to pick and
> choose individual stories, but I can't do that from memory and it's
> too much work.
The other thing is, a large number of the novels published then were
fix-ups of short stories or novellas, or both. And I'd argue most of the
best sf writers of the period were better at short stories than at novel
length -- including Heinlein, Asimov, Pohl and others -- because the
magazines still defined the range of s.f. and were still the training
ground for writers who came to the fore later.
Randy M.
James Nicoll
Quick question: does anyone know if there are any differences
between the texts of _Under Pressure_, _Dragon Under the Sea_ and _21st
Century Sub_?
--
"Frankly, Captain, I feel interstellar diplomacy is out of our
depth."
"Ah, hence the nuclear weapons."
James Nicoll
erilar <erila...@SPAMchibardun.net.invalid> wrote:
>In article <m2vg4ll...@gw.dd-b.net>, David Dyer-Bennet
><dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:
>
>>
>> Isaac Asimov _I, Robot_
>>
>
>THERE's my eighth book!
>
of the sales, I hear). If I had to pick an Asimov, I'd pick _The End of
Eternity_.
James Nicoll
Jerry Friedman <jerry_f...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>jdni...@panix.com (James Nicoll) wrote in message news:<anfbdp$dji$1...@panix2.panix.com>...
>> In article <96efe132.02100...@posting.google.com>,
>> Jerry Friedman <jerry_f...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >Anderson: _War of the Wing-Men_ (which later had the better title _The
>> >Man Who Counts_), since if _Starship Troopers_ isn't on my list, maybe
>> >I should suggest one fascist book. Just kidding!
>>
>> No nationalism = not fascist. It's a Mangerial Uber Alles book,
>> like a positive spin on _The Man in the Grey Suit_.
>
>Anderson was just ahead of his time, realizing that the fascism of the
>future (now there's an unappealing phrase) would be corporate, not
>governmental. Still kidding! I really wouldn't call TMWC fascist.
No. Really very firmly no. Fascism has an inherent mystical anti-
rationalism, which any fascist will admit to, although you might have
to run electrical current through their genitals for a while beforehand
(Don't let an immediate admission stop you from wiring them up, of course).
If you sift their brains and don't find some region of thought based on
somethign analogous to 2+2 = oranges and Bach, they probably weren't
fascists before you dropped them into the blender. Of course they won't
be afterwards, either. The characters might appeal to non-rational thought
processes in the natives but -they- don't believe the propaganda and they
are not hostile to the idea of rational thought.
Someone who was pushing corporate fascism would have loved the Seven
Sisters in _Mirkheim_ but I don't get the feeling tha the author or his
characters did.
>ObNitpick: _The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit_. Colo(u)r adjective
>probably changed to Grey in some countries.
Ah, thanks.
James Nicoll
>
> Danny Dunn and the Anti-Gravity Paint (Williams and Abrashkin): The
>titles were pulpish -- Tom Swifties, almost. But the stories were for
>children who were willing to THINK. These are a fusion of science
>fiction and science fact which are and were all the more powerful
>because of that combination. The Danny Dunn series is, to my mind, one
>of the best series of childrens' books ever written. And childrens'
>books are one of the most important influences in SF.
>
answer to showing the paint's effect was a chair, hidden behind a set
piece. I -wanted- a rope but there was no place to attach it on the ceiling
of the stage (Which was also our library, which is sort of odd now that
I think about it).
David Dyer-Bennet
> I also belatedly realized I have no books by *women* on my list (the
> only thing I can say is that, so far, I haven't seen anyone else mention
> a novel by a woman, either). I do have two books now as back-ups written
> or co-written by women, so, if I get shot down on any of my first
> choices, those might slip in.
Well, make sure you find stuff that really *belongs* on the list, or
it'll just make it stand out that women didn't write good SF then.
I'd think C.L. Moore was a good place to look. I considered a number
of books she was involved with, but found I needed to choose other
books. I'm not a big fan of Andre Norton.
> _More Than Human_ was on my preliminary list, and then I tried to
> re-read it. Yuck. There are bits of Sturgeon I love, but that fix-up is
> a horrible, ridiculous mess, and the so-called "gestalt" is no more a
> composite organism than an army squad is. So I used my vast and awful
> Editorial Powers to nix it.
Hmmm; haven't read it lately (or any other Sturgeon). Interesting.
Terrell Miller
news:3D9C7A03...@spamblocklibrary.syr.edu...
> Usually hear it as beginning in 1963 with JFK's assassination and ending
> in '74 with the Kent State killings.
Kent State was in 1970. Watergate was in '74
--
Terrell Miller
mill...@bellsouth.net
from an online chat with Jeff Probst:
Q: Which Survivor was the biggest jerk?
A: I have to limit it to one?
Joel Rosenberg
> "Randy Money" <rbm...@spamblocklibrary.syr.edu> wrote in message
> news:3D9C7A03...@spamblocklibrary.syr.edu...
>
>> Usually hear it as beginning in 1963 with JFK's assassination and ending
>> in '74 with the Kent State killings.
>
> Kent State was in 1970. Watergate was in '74
>
In this time-stream, the break-in actually happened in 1972.
--
Distance doesn't make you any smaller, but it does make you part of a
larger picture.
------------------------------------------------------------
http://islamthereligionofpeace.blogspot.com
Andrew Wheeler
Sure, I was going to post that tonight anyway (though I still haven't
gotten in touch to make the last offer yet), so why not right now.
(This is the order they'll probably appear in the club.)
Robert A. Heinlein, _Double Star_
Frederik Pohl & C.M. Kornbluth, _The Space Merchants_
Arthur C. Clarke, _The City and The Stars_
Poul Anderson, _Three Hearts and Three Lions_
Clifford D. Simak, _City_
Frank Herbert, _Under Pressure_
A.E. Van Vogt, _The Voyage of the Space Beagle_
Alfred Bester, _The Stars My Destination_
--
Andrew Wheeler
--
Far beyond the moon and stars,
Twenty light-years south of Mars
Spins the gentle Bunny Planet,
And the Bunny Queen is Janet.
Andrew Wheeler
>
> In article <erilarloFRY-DF4F...@news.airstreamcomm.net>,
> erilar <erila...@SPAMchibardun.net.invalid> wrote:
> >In article <m2vg4ll...@gw.dd-b.net>, David Dyer-Bennet
> ><dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:
> >
> >>
> >> Isaac Asimov _I, Robot_
> >>
> >
> >THERE's my eighth book!
> >
> Mind you, anthologies sell a lot more poorly than novels (20%
> of the sales, I hear). If I had to pick an Asimov, I'd pick _The End of
> Eternity_.
Hm. _End of Eternity_ was the only Asimov that seemed at all eligible,
but we passed it over because it just seemed *too* minor.
(Of course, I say this after posting yesterday that we have the complete
"Lucky Starr" novels in one volume...)
Andrew Wheeler
>
> <snip>
> Tiger! Tiger! (ideally under that title rather than the plodding
> alternative - this narrowly pips The Demolished Man)
Unfortunately, it's *never* been published by that title in the USA, so
using it would only be confusing.
And some of us actually *like* "The Stars My Destination." (People used
to chant that bit of doggerel at cons...)
Andrew Wheeler
>
> Andrew Wheeler wrote:
> >
> > I'm hoping to pick the collective brain of rasfw (and, maybe, to get a
> > decent on-topic thread out of it, too).
> >
> > The SFBC turns 50 years old in March of '03 (yay, us!), making us the
> > co-longest surviving SF publisher (Ace also started in '53, but I
> > don't think anybody else still publishing books was around before then
> > -- though of course _Astounding_/_Analog_ wins on the magazine side).
>
> Arkham House, founded 1939.
Thank you. I thought there must be someone, but I kept running through
the same houses. (Shasta? long dead. Doubleday? Out of the skiffy
business for ten years now. and so on)
Andrew Wheeler
>
> Andrew Wheeler wrote:
>
> Henry Kuttner, _Fury_ (1950).
> Samuel Beckett, _Three Novels_ (_Molloy_, 1951; _Malone
> Dies_, 1951; _The Unnamable_, 1953)
> Bernard Wolfe, _Limbo_ (1952).
> William Golding, _Lord of the Flies_ (1954).
> Alfred Bester, _Tiger! Tiger!_ (1956, aka _The Stars My
> Destination).
> Philip K. Dick, _Eye in the Sky_ (1957).
> C.L. Moore, _Doomsday Morning_ (1957).
> Ivan Yefremov, _Andromeda_ (1959).
>
> Last and best, and an unbelievable omission from everyone
> else's list:
>
> William Burroughs, _Naked Lunch_ (1959).
Well, I did hope for one or two that club members would actually *buy*...
(Though we do agree on the Bester, and I have considered _Fury_.)
csm
Has _Flight Into Yesterday_ (aka _The Paradox Men_),
Charles Harness, 1953, been mentioned? That would
have to be on my list of eight.
- csm
Stephen Harris
"David Bilek" <dbi...@attbi.com> wrote in message
news:5eqnpugk9pamqqvpq...@4ax.com...
No, it is not great nor classic, but labored. It enjoys an undeserved
reputation
similar to the one afforded "Stanger in a Strange Land" by shallow
intellectuals.
Heinlein admitted that the symbolism that fans acclaimed was unintentional.
The type of mentality that also nominated the ghastly Gormenghast as SF.
Stephen Harris
Chris Maloney wrote:
The reason I like the book as much as I do, I think, is for the way
it captures human folly with such clever irony and satire. At the end
of Part II, there is this passage:
"As always the wild black scavengers of the skies laid their eggs in
season and lovingly fed their young. They soared high over prairies
and mountains and plains, searching for the fulfillment of that
share of life's destiny which was theirs according to the plan of
Nature. Their philosophers demonstrated by unaided reason alone
that the Supreme Cathartes aura regnans had created the world
especially for buzzards. They worshipped him with hearty appetites
for many centuries."
Matt Austern
> In article <bsBm9.5970$OM4.1...@e3500-atl1.usenetserver.com>,
> Terrell Miller <mill...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> >the sixth decade of the 20th century was from 1951-1960. The "Fifties" were
> >1950-1959, hence the name.
> >
> >There isn't a term for this decade yet, for some reason. I like "Noughties"
>
>
> Actually, there are various historians who also try to define the
> decades based on cultural eras, so that the "sixties" did not begin
> until 1964 in some views, and ended around 71 or 72. So there are 2
> numeric definitions and several historian's definitions.
An entirely reasonable definition. Similarly, Eric Hobsbawm defines
the "short 20th century" as beginning in 1914 and ending in 1989.
Brad Templeton
Though it does seem that there will be minimal doubt in the minds of
historians on the division between the 20th and 21st being fairly sharp
in 2000-2001 with the end of the internet bubble, the shift in U.S.
politics and the terrorist attacks.
Of course that's with my close-up perspective, which could alwasy be
wrong, but these events have the smell of it.
It's also possible though, that since the 21st century has a serious
chance as being defined as the century of nanotech and biotech, that
it will be defined in terms of seminal events in those technologies.
Or they may just give up on using centuries as eras. So much took place
in the 20th century that it's hard to define it in terms of anything
that matches the year numbers. It was the century of:
Electronics -- and recorded music
Computers
Television and Mass Media and the Internet
All sorts of industrial automation and mass production
Home appliances altering domestic labour dynamic
Agricultural automation and urban migration
Air Travel
The Car
Space travel
Nuclear Weapons -- Also Tanks, Air Warfare
Global War
Pollution
Medicine -- vaccines, antibiotics, hundreds of others
Cosmology
Non-religion
Birth Control and the emancipation of women
Racial equality
Socialism
Revolution in India, China, Russia (most of world population)
Population boom
And this is not a complete list, but all these things were begun or
revolutionized in the 20th century.
So who knows when it started and ended after all?
--
See Darth-Darth Binks. "Meesa find yousa's lackin' in faith disturbin-me!
http://www.templetons.com/brad/dardar.html
Dan Clore
> Dan Clore wrote:
> > Andrew Wheeler wrote:
> > > Anyway, what are *your* Great Eight SFnal books from the '50s?
> >
> > Henry Kuttner, _Fury_ (1950).
> > Samuel Beckett, _Three Novels_ (_Molloy_, 1951; _Malone
> > Dies_, 1951; _The Unnamable_, 1953)
> > Bernard Wolfe, _Limbo_ (1952).
> > William Golding, _Lord of the Flies_ (1954).
> > Alfred Bester, _Tiger! Tiger!_ (1956, aka _The Stars My
> > Destination).
> > Philip K. Dick, _Eye in the Sky_ (1957).
> > C.L. Moore, _Doomsday Morning_ (1957).
> > Ivan Yefremov, _Andromeda_ (1959).
> >
> > Last and best, and an unbelievable omission from everyone
> > else's list:
> >
> > William Burroughs, _Naked Lunch_ (1959).
>
> Well, I did hope for one or two that club members would actually *buy*...
I'll assume that you mean that your customers have such good
taste that they will already have these items sitting on
their shelves, rather than any other implication one might
draw.
--
Dan Clore
Now available: _The Unspeakable and Others_
All my fiction through 2001 and more. Intro by S.T. Joshi.
http://www.wildsidepress.com/index2.htm
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1587154838/thedanclorenecro
Lord Weÿrdgliffe and Necronomicon Page:
John Pelan
No Wyndham? Tsk-tsk.
John Pelan
Randy Money
> "Terrell Miller" <mill...@bellsouth.net> writes:
>
>
>>"Randy Money" <rbm...@spamblocklibrary.syr.edu> wrote in message
>>news:3D9C7A03...@spamblocklibrary.syr.edu...
>>
>>
>>>Usually hear it as beginning in 1963 with JFK's assassination and ending
>>>in '74 with the Kent State killings.
>>
>>Kent State was in 1970. Watergate was in '74
>>
>
>
> In this time-stream, the break-in actually happened in 1972.
>
Was Kent State that early?? Wow. Obviously, I'd have sworn it was
somewhat later.
Still, the academics and social historians I've come across label Kent
State as the true end of the '60s because it was the first real show of
life and death consequences for college-age protestors.
Randy M.
Randy Money
> Dan Clore wrote:
>
>>Andrew Wheeler wrote:
>>
>>>Anyway, what are *your* Great Eight SFnal books from the '50s?
>>
>>Henry Kuttner, _Fury_ (1950).
>>Samuel Beckett, _Three Novels_ (_Molloy_, 1951; _Malone
>>Dies_, 1951; _The Unnamable_, 1953)
>>Bernard Wolfe, _Limbo_ (1952).
>>William Golding, _Lord of the Flies_ (1954).
>>Alfred Bester, _Tiger! Tiger!_ (1956, aka _The Stars My
>>Destination).
>>Philip K. Dick, _Eye in the Sky_ (1957).
>>C.L. Moore, _Doomsday Morning_ (1957).
>>Ivan Yefremov, _Andromeda_ (1959).
>>
>>Last and best, and an unbelievable omission from everyone
>>else's list:
>>
>>William Burroughs, _Naked Lunch_ (1959).
>
>
> Well, I did hope for one or two that club members would actually *buy*...
>
> (Though we do agree on the Bester, and I have considered _Fury_.)
*cough*
I would buy the Sarban that John Pelan mentioned. Really. Call it a
reclamation project.
Of the ones you list,
> Robert A. Heinlein, _Double Star_
> Frederik Pohl & C.M. Kornbluth, _The Space Merchants_
> Arthur C. Clarke, _The City and The Stars_
> Poul Anderson, _Three Hearts and Three Lions_
> Clifford D. Simak, _City_
> Frank Herbert, _Under Pressure_
> A.E. Van Vogt, _The Voyage of the Space Beagle_
> Alfred Bester, _The Stars My Destination_
The only one I don't have, I think, in some form is the Heinlein, which
I probably won't purchase since I don't think he was much of a novelist
-- great short story writer, but the three novels I've read were at best
clunky.
By the way, Andrew, thanks for starting this thread. I thought I was
pretty well read in '50s s.f. novels until this came along. Now I see I
have some work to do.
Randy M.
(proving he can be as idiosyncratic as everyone else here)
erilar
years ago, before I decided hardcovers take up too much space.
> Poul Anderson, _Three Hearts and Three Lions_
But I thought the list was just sf 8-)
--
Mary Loomer Oliver(aka erilar)
Erilar's Cave Annex:
http://www.airstreamcomm.net/~erilarlo
erilar
mer...@u.washington.edu (Ethan Merritt) wrote:
> In article <3D9B975E...@optonline.com>,
> Andrew Wheeler <acwh...@optonline.com> wrote:
> >
> >I also belatedly realized I have no books by *women* on my list (the
> >only thing I can say is that, so far, I haven't seen anyone else mention
> >a novel by a woman, either). I do have two books now as back-ups written
> >or co-written by women, so, if I get shot down on any of my first
> >choices, those might slip in.
>
> At least two of us have suggested Andre Norton titles,
> _Star Rangers_ and _Star Guard_, though come to that I'd be just as happy
> to see _The Beast Master_ - it's less well-known but is actually more
> representative of Norton's writing than the other two.
I think _Beast Master_ is a better book, too.
erilar
wrote:
> (This is the order they'll probably appear in the club.)
>
> Robert A. Heinlein, _Double Star_
> Frederik Pohl & C.M. Kornbluth, _The Space Merchants_
> Arthur C. Clarke, _The City and The Stars_
> Poul Anderson, _Three Hearts and Three Lions_
> Clifford D. Simak, _City_
> Frank Herbert, _Under Pressure_
> A.E. Van Vogt, _The Voyage of the Space Beagle_
> Alfred Bester, _The Stars My Destination_
>
Very nice list 8-) Of course, ancient fans like me probably have them on
the shelves, but it's a nice selection for those who don't. And that
is, for various reasons, my favorite Anderson 8-)
Jack Love
<stephen....@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>
>"David Bilek" <dbi...@attbi.com> wrote in message
>news:5eqnpugk9pamqqvpq...@4ax.com...
>> "Stephen Harris" <stephen....@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>> >
>> >This list is supposed to be great SF. How does a Canticle
>> >for Leibowitz get beyond boring.. (snippage)
>>
>> Because the world doesn't always completely correspond with "Stephen
>> Harris' personal opinions"?
>>
>> Canticle is one of the great classics of the field.
>>
>> -David
>
>No, it is not great nor classic, but labored. It enjoys an undeserved
>reputation
Hear, hear!
>similar to the one afforded "Stanger in a Strange Land" by shallow
>intellectuals.
>Heinlein admitted that the symbolism that fans acclaimed was unintentional.
>The type of mentality that also nominated the ghastly Gormenghast as SF.
>
ditto
j...@jolomo.net
Not so long ago, Richard Horton wrote:
> _A for Anything_, Knight
Wow, don't think I've ever seen this one. What's it like?
--
Joe Morris, SysAdmin and Not Insane
Atlanta stories: http://jolomo.net
James Nicoll
Andrew Wheeler <acwh...@optonline.com> wrote:
>James Nicoll wrote:
>>
>> In article <erilarloFRY-DF4F...@news.airstreamcomm.net>,
>> erilar <erila...@SPAMchibardun.net.invalid> wrote:
>> >In article <m2vg4ll...@gw.dd-b.net>, David Dyer-Bennet
>> ><dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:
>> >
>> >>
>> >> Isaac Asimov _I, Robot_
>> >>
>> >
>> >THERE's my eighth book!
>> >
>> Mind you, anthologies sell a lot more poorly than novels (20%
>> of the sales, I hear). If I had to pick an Asimov, I'd pick _The End of
>> Eternity_.
>
>Hm. _End of Eternity_ was the only Asimov that seemed at all eligible,
>but we passed it over because it just seemed *too* minor.
!
!!!!
EoE is the best book Asimov ever wrote! Parts of _The Gods
Themselves_ come close and I have a great fondess for others but I
really like EoE.
GSV Three Minds in a Can
Andrew Wheeler <acwh...@optonline.com> said
<snip>
>> So are you going to tell us what your list is/was at some point?
>
>Sure, I was going to post that tonight anyway (though I still haven't
>gotten in touch to make the last offer yet), so why not right now.
>
>(This is the order they'll probably appear in the club.)
>
>Robert A. Heinlein, _Double Star_
>Frederik Pohl & C.M. Kornbluth, _The Space Merchants_
>Arthur C. Clarke, _The City and The Stars_
>Poul Anderson, _Three Hearts and Three Lions_
>Clifford D. Simak, _City_
>Frank Herbert, _Under Pressure_
>A.E. Van Vogt, _The Voyage of the Space Beagle_
>Alfred Bester, _The Stars My Destination_
Yep, I could live with that, (since you apparently have EF Russell
covered already).
Of course, with modern book-binding technology, all 8 of these only
amount to two or three fat volumes. 8>.
--
Dan Goodman
> In the various lists of 50's novels . . .
>
> Not so long ago, Richard Horton wrote:
>> _A for Anything_, Knight
>
> Wow, don't think I've ever seen this one. What's it like?
>
Starts off with the invention of the matter duplicator, in the then-current
US. It then deals with the social changes this brings about (a really dumb
extrapolation in my opinion, but it doesn't ruin the story) and then the
society a few generations on.
Nyrath the nearly wise
> I'd think C.L. Moore was a good place to look. I considered a number
> of books she was involved with, but found I needed to choose other
> books. I'm not a big fan of Andre Norton.
I love her collection SHAMBLEU (1958), but it
is composed of stories written in the 1930's.
Andrew Wheeler
>
> I particularly loved this one--which I acquired from SF book club MANY
> years ago, before I decided hardcovers take up too much space.
>
> > Poul Anderson, _Three Hearts and Three Lions_
>
> But I thought the list was just sf 8-)
<cue canned reference to "what SF stands for in this newsgroup">
I did start out wanting more fantasy (to have a wider variety on the
list), but there just wasn't much of it that was published in book form
in the '50s. I did want to make sure there was at least *one*
indisputably fantasy book -- and the fact that it's by Anderson is nice, too.
Mike Schilling
news:3D9BA9...@wizvax.net...
> Ten. Good god.
>
> Okay... I'm going to try to pick some shoo-ins, and some from off in
> left field.
> ...
This was a really persuasive and well-reasoned list. Apparently you're
taking your new stature seriously:-)
Sea Wasp
>
> "Sea Wasp" <sea...@wizvax.net> wrote in message
> news:3D9BA9...@wizvax.net..
> >
> > Okay... I'm going to try to pick some shoo-ins, and some from off in
> > left field.
> > ...
>
> This was a really persuasive and well-reasoned list. Apparently you're
> taking your new stature seriously:-)
Heh. I'd have made the same list before. Or a similar one. I got
reminded of Danny relatively recently, so a year or two ago I might
not have thought of that one.
--
Sea Wasp
/^\
;;;
http://www.wizvax.net/seawasp/index.htm
Mike Schilling
"Andrew Wheeler" <acwh...@optonline.com> wrote in message
news:3D9CE2A0...@optonline.com...
> > So are you going to tell us what your list is/was at some point?
>
> Sure, I was going to post that tonight anyway (though I still haven't
> gotten in touch to make the last offer yet), so why not right now.
> A.E. Van Vogt, _The Voyage of the Space Beagle_
Isn't a fixup of much older material? The first section, at least, is from
1939..
Mike Schilling
"Konrad Gaertner" <kgae...@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message
news:3D9C4B97...@worldnet.att.net...
> Andrew Wheeler wrote:
> >
> > Houghton Mifflin has done a number of one-volume editions over the
> > years. Actually, they've published LOTR in nearly every conceivable
> > permutation, though they haven't engraved it on molecules or done a
> > hand-illuminated version yet.
>
> What about an omnibus including _The Hobbit_? Ideally with an
> appendix or something giving the original version of how Bilbo
> found the Ring.
You can find that in _The Annotated Hobbit_, which I believe I got from the
SFBC.