Jack Williamson – SF Universe

A New Dawn: The Complete Don A. Stuart Stories (2003)

[T]his time out, I\’m taking a brief look at one of the high-quality NESFA Press collections of SF author short fiction. This one contains all of John W. Campbell, Jr\’s short fiction written under his \”Don A. Stuart\” pseudonym, plus a couple of previously unpublished (in book form) articles also written by Campbell under the Stuart handle.

The collection starts off with an excellent introduction, \”The Man Who Lost the Sea\”, written by Barry N. Malzberg, giving a short but fascinating examination of Campbell\’s career. This is followed by sixteen stories, and finishes off with the two essays.

TITLE: A NEW DAWN: THE COMPLETE DON A.STUART STORIES
AUTHOR: John W. Campbell, Jr.
EDITED BY: James A. Mann
CATEGORY: Short Fiction
SUB-CATEGORY: Author Collection
DUSTJACKET ART: Bob Eggleton
FORMAT: Hardback, 464 pages
PUBLISHER: NESFA Press, US, 2003
ISBN: 1-886778-15-9

CONTENTS (16 Stories, 2 Articles):

Introduction: \”The Man Who Lost the Sea\” (2002) by Barry N. Malzberg
\”Twilight\” (Astounding Science Fiction, November 1934, short story)
\”Atomic Power\” (Astounding Science Fiction, December 1934, short story)
\”The Machine\” (Astounding Science Fiction, February 1935, short story, Machine series #1)
\”The Invaders\” (Astounding Science Fiction, June 1935, novelette, Machine series #2)
\”Rebellion\” (Astounding Science Fiction, August 1935, short story, Machine series #3)
\”Blindness\” (Astounding Science Fiction, March 1935, short story)
\”The Escape\” (Astounding Science Fiction, May 1935, novelette)
\”Night\” (Astounding Science Fiction, October 1935, novelette)
\”Elimination\” (Astounding Science Fiction, May 1936, short story)
\”Frictional Losses\” (Astounding Science Fiction, July 1936, novelette)
\”Forgetfulness\” (Astounding Science Fiction, June 1937, novelette)
\”Out of Night\” (Astounding Science Fiction, October 1937, novelette, Aesir series #1)
\”Cloak of Aesir\” (Astounding Science Fiction, March 1939, novelette, Aesir series #2)
\”Dead Knowledge\” (Astounding Science Fiction, June 1938, novelette)
\”Who Goes There?\” (Astounding Science Fiction, August 1938, novelette)
\”The Elder Gods\” (Unknown, October 1939, novella)
\”Strange Worlds\” (Unknown, April 1939, article)
\”Wouldst Write, Wee One?\” (Scienti-Snaps, Vol.3 No.1, February 1940, article)

The stories appear in chronological order, in order of dates of publication, with the exception of the three stories in the Invaders sequence and the two Aesir stories, which have all been re-ordered so they appear in their own correct internal sequence.

Campbell, especially the Don A. Stuart alter ego, was one of my favourite SF writers of the 1930s. Under his own name, he competed with E. E. \”Doc\” Smith, writing stories of superscience (although Campbell was a MUCH better writer than Smith), but under the Stuart pseudonym, he wrote stories that were truly special, dark, moody, decadent, and more akin to the darker tales of H. G. Wells and other classic scientific romance authors than anything hitherto seen in the pulps.

Sure, there were a few other writers in that era who did the dark, moody and decadent thing pretty darned good – Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, C. L. Moore, and Henry Kuttner, to name but a few – but these authors mostly wrote SF&F of a completely different, more fantasy-oriented flavour. In my opinion, Campbell, with the exception of maybe Jack Williamson, who also was writing some similarly dark, moody SF during that period, had no real direct competition in science fiction at that time.

When I was a kid (early-mid teens), I first encountered Campbell\’s short fiction in various collections and anthologies that I checked out of local libraries. Ironically, I encountered the superior Don A. Stuart tales years before I ever read any of Campbell\’s Superscience stories. \”Night\” was the first one, in the Sam Moskowitz-edited anthology Microcosmic God. That story had a huge and formative impact on me as a reader, and I was delighted to find out a year or two later that it was actually a sequel to another excellent story, \”Twilight\”.

After I read \”Night\”, I eagerly hunted down any other Campbell short stories that I could find. Some of them were just as good as \”Night\”, including the aforementioned \”Twilight\” and other tales such as \”Forgetfulness\”, the two Aesir stories \”Out of Night\” and \”The Cloak of Aesir\”, and the classic \”Who Goes There?\”. These all became huge favourites of mine during my teenage years. \”Dead Knowledge\”, \”Blindness\” and the Machine trilogy of stories were all also very good. It\’s been many years since I\’ve read most of these stories, so it\’s going to be fun revisiting them.

When Campbell took over at Astounding as The Editor, and kick-started the Golden Age which totally reshaped SF, he became one of the biggest and most important figures in the history of the genre. But, at the same time, we also lost potentially one of the genre\’s greatest writers, something that I, personally, regret quite a lot. We can only imagine how good he might have become, what other amazing stories he might\’ve written, if he hadn\’t given up writing to concentrate fully on being the editor of Astounding.

But, at least, in this excellent collection, he has left behind some of the greatest SF stories not only of the 1930\’s, but indeed any other era. This is one of my favourite SF author short fiction collections, and definitely recommended reading.

A New Dawn: The Complete Don A. Stuart Stories (2003)

$\"A$

This time out, I\’m taking a brief look at one of the high-quality NESFA Press collections of SF author short fiction. This one contains all of John W. Campbell, Jr\’s short fiction written under his \”Don A. Stuart\” pseudonym, plus a couple of previously unpublished (in book form) articles also written by Campbell under the Stuart handle. The collection starts off with an excellent introduction, \”The Man Who Lost the Sea\”, written by Barry N. Malzberg, giving a short but fascinating examination of Campbell\’s career. This is followed by sixteen stories, and finishes off with the two essays.

CONTENTS (16 Stories, 2 Articles):

Introduction: \”The Man Who Lost the Sea\” (2002) by Barry N. Malzberg
\”Twilight\” (Astounding Science Fiction, November 1934, short story)
\”Atomic Power\” (Astounding Science Fiction, December 1934, short story)
\”The Machine\” (Astounding Science Fiction, February 1935, short story, Machine series #1)
\”The Invaders\” (Astounding Science Fiction, June 1935, novelette, Machine series #2)
\”Rebellion\” (Astounding Science Fiction, August 1935, short story, Machine series #3)
\”Blindness\” (Astounding Science Fiction, March 1935, short story)
\”The Escape\” (Astounding Science Fiction, May 1935, novelette)
\”Night\” (Astounding Science Fiction, October 1935, novelette)
\”Elimination\” (Astounding Science Fiction, May 1936, short story)
\”Frictional Losses\” (Astounding Science Fiction, July 1936, novelette)
\”Forgetfulness\” (Astounding Science Fiction, June 1937, novelette)
\”Out of Night\” (Astounding Science Fiction, October 1937, novelette, Aesir series #1)
\”Cloak of Aesir\” (Astounding Science Fiction, March 1939, novelette, Aesir series #2)
\”Dead Knowledge\” (Astounding Science Fiction, June 1938, novelette)
\”Who Goes There?\” (Astounding Science Fiction, August 1938, novelette)
\”The Elder Gods\” (Unknown, October 1939, novella)
\”Strange Worlds\” (Unknown, April 1939, article)
\”Wouldst Write, Wee One?\” (Scienti-Snaps, Vol.3 No.1, February 1940, article)

A SENSE OF WONDER edited by Sam Moskowitz

[A]t only 197 pages long, A SENSE OF WONDER is quite a short anthology. But it\’s also an old favourite of mine.

TITLE: A SENSE OF WONDER
EDITED BY: Sam Moskowitz
CATEGORY: Short Fiction
SUB-CATEGORY: Anthology
FORMAT: Hardback, 197 pages
PUBLISHER: Sidgwick & Jackson, London, 1967. Originally published in the US in 1967 by Doubleday and Company, Inc. under the title THREE STORIES.

CONTENTS:

Introduction by Sam Moskowitz
\”Exiles on Asperus\” by John Wyndham [as by John Beynon Harris] (Wonder Stories Quarterly, Winter 1933)
\”The Mole Pirate\” by Murray Leinster (Astounding Science Fiction, November 1935)
\”The Moon Era\” by Jack Williamson (Wonder Stories, February 1932)

The edition that I have is the 1967 UK 1st edition hardback, in excellent condition, and complete with pristine condition dustjacket. It was published back in 1967 by good old UK SF reliables, Sidgwick & Jackson. The US 1st edition had been published earlier the same year by Doubleday and Company, Inc. under the much more bland title THREE STORIES.

The anthology is edited by SF legend Sam Moskowitz, contains only three stories, all novellas, and an introduction by Moskowitz himself. Whilst there are only three (pretty long, admittedly) stories in this anthology, the introduction by Moskowitz is also a fascinating read in itself. I often find a really good introduction to a book to be just as interesting as the stories themselves. And this one, though relatively short, at only three pages, is definitely interesting.

According to Moskowitz\’s introduction, this 1967 anthology marked the first time that any of these three stories had appeared since their original publication in the SF \”pulps\”, back in the early-to-mid 1930\’s. So we have Moskowitz to thank for rescuing these three old gems from the depths of literary obscurity, although it must be pointed out that this anthology is forty-seven years old, and is in itself a forgotten gem by today\’s standards. It\’s scary to think that the publication date of the book is actually closer to the original first appearances of the stories in those ancient SF magazines than it is to the present day.

The first of the three novellas is \”Exiles on Asperus\” by John Wyndham, which was first published in the Winter 1933 edition of Wonder Stories Quarterly. It was written under his real name, John Beynon Harris. It\’s a long time since I\’ve read any Wyndham, and I don\’t recall ever reading this one before.

The second story is \”The Mole Pirate\” by Murray Leinster, which first appeared in the November 1935 edition of Astounding Science Fiction. I\’m familiar with this one only by reputation, as I\’ve never read it. I haven\’t read any Murray Leinster in a long time, but I just recently bought the two volumes of Murray Leinster Wildside Press Megapacks on Amazon, so I reckon it\’s well past time for me to reacquaint myself with the old master.

The third and final story is \”The Moon Era\” by Jack Williamson, which was first published in the February 1932 edition of Wonder Stories. I remember reading this one as a teenager (in an old paperback edition of A SENSE OF WONDER, no less), and it has always remained a favourite of mine, one of those stories that still sticks in your mind thirty-five or forty years after you first read it.

Despite being written in 1931, this is essentially an updated nineteenth century \”scientific romance\” in the style of H. G. Wells, which is no bad thing in my book. And we all know that Jack Williamson was a huge fan of Wells and the other scientific romance authors, with the Wells influences showing through very heavily in a lot of his early writing. Since I absolutely love scientific romances (that\’s how I started off reading SF in the first place, with H. G. Wells and Jules Verne), this story was already a winner from the first time I laid eyes on it.

I\’m looking forward to reading this anthology again. It\’s been many years since I read \”The Moon Era\”, and I\’m itching to re-read it. As far as I recall, back when I read A SENSE OF WONDER all those years ago, I just read \”The Moon Era\” over and over again (I was really obsessed with it as a teenager), and didn\’t even bother with the other two stories. So it\’ll also be nice to actually read \”Exiles on Asperus\” and \”The Mole Pirate\” for the first time, as I don\’t recall ever reading either of them before, despite having this anthology on my bookshelves for many years.

THE GREAT SF STORIES VOL. 1 (1939) edited by Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg

TITLE: ISAAC ASIMOV PRESENTS THE GREAT SF STORIES VOL. 1 (1939)
EDITED BY: Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg
CATEGORY: Anthology
SUB-CATEGORY: Short Fiction
FORMAT: Paperback, 432 pages
PUBLISHER: DAW Books, New York, 1st Printing, March 1979.

Those are the various general details, and here\’s a listing of the contents:

Introduction by Isaac Asimov
\”I, Robot\” by Eando Binder (Amazing Stories, January 1939)
\”The Strange Flight of Richard Clayton\” by Robert Bloch (Amazing Stories, March 1939)
\”Trouble with Water\” by H. L. Gold (Unknown, March 1939)
\”Cloak of Aesir\” by Don A. Stuart (John W. Campbell, Jr.) (Astounding Science Fiction, March 1939)
\”The Day is Done\” by Lester Del Rey (Astounding Science Fiction, May 1939)
\”The Ultimate Catalyst\” by John Taine (Thrilling Wonder Stories, June 1939)
\”The Gnarly Man\” by L. Sprague De Camp (Unknown, June 1939)
\”Black Destroyer\” by A. E. Van Vogt (Astounding Science Fiction, July 1939)
\”Greater Than Gods\” by C. L. Moore (Astounding Science Fiction, July 1939)
\”Trends\” by Isaac Asimov (Astounding Science Fiction, July 1939)
\”The Blue Giraffe\” by L. Sprague De Camp (Astounding Science Fiction, August 1939)
\”The Misguided Halo\” by Henry Kuttner (Unknown, August 1939)
\”Heavy Planet\” by Milton A. Rothman (Astounding Science Fiction, August 1939)
\”Life-Line\” by Robert A. Heinlein (Astounding Science Fiction, August 1939)
\”Ether Breather\” by Theodore Sturgeon (Astounding Science Fiction, September 1939)
\”Pilgrimage\” by Nelson Bond (Amazing Stories, October 1939)
\”Rust\” by Joseph E. Kelleam (Astounding Science Fiction, October 1939)
\”The Four-Sided Triangle\” by William F. Temple (Amazing Stories, November 1939)
\”Star Bright\” by Jack Williamson (Argosy, November 1939)
\”Misfit\” by Robert A. Heinlein (Astounding Science Fiction, November 1939)

This is a real gem of an anthology, and what a year 1939 was! It\’s hard to know where to start with this lot, but it would probably be with the three that really stand out for me, Van Vogt\’s \”Black Destroyer\”, John W. Campbell\’s (under his \”Don A. Stuart\” pseudonym) \”Cloak of Aesir\” and Milton A. Rothman\’s \”Heavy Planet\”, which are all stories that impacted greatly on me when I first started reading short SF way back in my early teens.

But there are also so many other good stories here, in particular C. L. Moore\’s \”Greater Than Gods\”, Jack Williamson\’s \”Star Bright\”, Lester Del Rey\’s \”The Day is Done\”, Eando Binder\’s \”I, Robot\”, Isaac Asimov\’s \”Trends\”, and the two Robert A. Heinlein stories \”Life-Line\” and \”Misfit\”. Most of the others I can\’t really remember, as I read them so long ago, and there are a few that I don\’t think I\’ve actually read before.

I\’m really looking forward to reading (or is that re-reading?) Henry Kuttner\’s \”The Misguided Halo\” (I\’m a big fan of his), Theodore Sturgeon\’s \”Ether Breather\” (likewise a big fan of his), Robert Bloch\’s \”The Strange Flight of Richard Clayton\” and the two L. Sprague De Camp stories \”The Gnarly Man\” and \”The Blue Giraffe\”. All big names that I\’ve enjoyed reading before.

This book was the first in a very long series, and Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories, Volumes 1-25, was one of the greatest ever series of science fiction anthologies. Published by DAW Books, the twenty-five volumes each covered a single year, and the entire series spanned the years 1939-1964.

The first twelve of these volumes were also later repackaged in a series of hardcovers, Isaac Asimov Presents the Golden Years of Science Fiction. There were six volumes in total of that one, First Series-Sixth Series, each one containing two of the original paperback volumes. For some reason (I\’ve never found out why), this series of hardcovers stopped at the half-way mark, and the remaining thirteen volumes of the paperbacks were never collected in hardback. Pity. Those hardbacks were really nice, and I\’m fortunate enough to have all six of them.

The twenty-five volume paperback set is a different matter. I only started to collect those several months ago, and so far I only have nine of them, although I continue to pick up the odd one here and there, with the intention of collecting the entire series, eventually. The books in this series are also quite expensive and hard to find, and most of the copies that I\’ve seen are from US sellers, so the shipping charges to the UK and Ireland are also very expensive. I\’ve often seen costs totalling up to $50 on Ebay for one of these paperbacks inclusive of shipping, as some of the US sellers charge ridiculously and inexcusably high transatlantic shipping charges. It\’s much better if you can find them on Amazon UK, as they only charge £2.80 shipping from all Amazon sellers, even those in the US.

Anyways, nine down, sixteen to go. Oboy! I guess it\’s time to get the credit card out and start buying a few more of these books…

Some New Books, First Quarter 2014

Here are some SF books, some new, some old, that I\’ve picked up over the past two or three months from various places such as Ebay UK, Amazon UK and my regular supplier of comics and books in the US:

Novels:

THE SPACE MACHINE & A DREAM OF WESSEX Omnibus by Christopher Priest (paperback)
STARFARERS by Poul Anderson (hardback)
HAWKMOON: THE HISTORY OF THE RUNESTAFF Omnibus by Michael Moorcock (trade paperback)
THE LIGHT AGES by Ian R. MacLeod (paperback)
THE SPACE TRILOGY Omnibus by Arthur C. Clarke (trade paperback)

Collections:

THE BEST OF JACK WILLIAMSON (paperback)
THE EARLY WILLIAMSON (hardback)
BREATHMOSS AND OTHER EXHALATIONS by Ian R. MacLeod (trade paperback)

Anthologies:

THE GREAT SF STORIES 19 edited by Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg (paperback)
THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF TIME TRAVEL SF edited by Mike Ashley (trade paperback)
RAYGUN CHRONICLES – SPACE OPERA FOR A NEW AGE edited by Bryan Thomas Schmidt (trade paperback)
GREAT TALES OF SCIENCE FICTION edited by Robert Silverberg and Martin H. Greenberg (hardback)
THE YEAR\’S BEST SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY 2013 edited by Rich Horton (trade paperback)
AFTER THE END: RECENT APOCALYPSES edited by Paula Guran (trade paperback)
WORLDS OF EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS edited by Mike Resnick and Robert T. Garcia (trade paperback)
MODERN GREATS OF SCIENCE FICTION – NINE NOVELLAS OF DISTINCTION edited by Jonathan Strahan (trade paperback)
RAGS & BONES: NEW TWISTS ON TIMELESS TALES edited by Melissa Marr and Tim Pratt (hardback)

Non-Fiction:

H.G. WELLS: CRITIC OF PROGRESS by Jack Williamson (hardback)
AFTER THE NEW WAVE: SCIENCE FICTION SINCE 1980 by Nader Elhefnawy (trade paperback)

That\’s quite a nice selection, leaning very heavily towards short fiction, particularly anthologies, plus three collections of individual author short stories. There are only two novels, plus three omnibus editions containing two (the Priest), three (the Clarke) and four (the Moorcock) novels, respectively. Only two of the books are non-fiction, which is pretty unusual, given my buying habits in recent years, which has swung sharply towards including much more non-fiction.

But no surprise with the large number of anthologies and individual author collections. Most of my book buying lists will always lean heavily in that direction, as I always tend to read a lot more short fiction than novels.

BEACHHEADS IN SPACE edited by August Derleth

TITLE: BEACHHEADS IN SPACE
EDITED BY: August Derleth
CATEGORY: Anthology
SUB-CATEGORY: Short Fiction
FORMAT: Hardback, 224 pages
PUBLISHER: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1954 (Originally published in the US in 1952 by Pellegrini & Cudahy).

That\’s the various general details, here\’s a listing of the contents:

\”Beachhead\” by Clifford D. Simak (1951)
\”The Years Draw Nigh\” by Lester del Rey (1951)
\”Metamorphosite\” by Eric Frank Russell (1946)
\”Breeds There a Man…?\” by Isaac Asimov (1951)
\”And the Walls Came Tumbling Down\” by John Wyndham (1951)
\”The Blinding Shadows\” by Donald Wandrei (1934)
\”The Metamorphosis of Earth\” by Clark Ashton Smith (1951)

This is an interesting old anthology, edited by another of my favourite SF anthologists, August Derleth. The theme of this anthology, according to the book\’s jacket blurb, is \”invasion from another world, or counter-attack from Earth against the planets\”.

I haven\’t read this one in many years, maybe twenty-five years or more, but I remember that it was a favourite of mine way back in the day, and it still has a special place on my bookshelves. Obviously my memories of the individual stories are vague after all this time, and I don\’t remember all of them clearly, and a couple of them not at all. But the ones that I do recall really liking are Clifford D. Simak\’s very clever short story \”Beachhead\” (AKA \”You\’ll Never Go Home Again!\”, first published in Fantastic Adventures, July 1951), Eric Frank Russell\’s excellent novella \”Metamorphosite\”, (from Astounding, December 1946), and Clark Ashton Smith\’s scary and unusual alien invasion SF/Horror novelette \”The Metamorphosis of Earth\” (Weird Tales, September 1951).

I also remember liking Lester del Rey\’s \”The Years Draw Nigh\” and Isaac Asimov\’s \”Breeds There a Man…?\”, although for some reason I remember a lot less about them than I do about the Russell, Simak and Smith stories. I don\’t recall anything at all about the Wyndham and Wandrei stories. I\’m surprised about not remembering the Wyndham story, as I\’m usually a big fan of his writing.

But as good as my recollections are of the Simak and Smith stories, the stand-out story for me in this anthology has always been Eric Frank Russell\’s classic \”Metamorphosite\”, which I recall having a huge impact on me back when I was a young guy in my twenties. I don\’t think this story is in any of my other anthologies (and I have zillions of the darned things!), so I reckon it hasn\’t been reprinted very often. It\’s far, far too many years since I last read it, and indeed this entire anthology, so it\’s long overdue for a re-read. I\’ve already started on the Simak story, and, so far, it\’s at least as good as I remember it, if not better. If the rest of the stories hold up as well as this one is doing, I\’m going to really enjoy reading this anthology again.

Please take note that this is the 1954 UK edition, which is different from the original 1952 US hardcover edition, published by Pellegrini & Cudahy. Apparently all editions aside from the original hardcover edition have been \”butchered\” in some way, missing stories, etc. This UK edition is missing the Introduction and seven of the stories from the US edition. Also note that John Wyndham has two stories in the original US edition, one under his usual John Wyndham pseudonym, and the other as John Benyon.

Here is the full Contents Listing of the original 1952 US edition:

Introduction by August Derleth
\”The Star\” by David H. Keller, M.D.
\”The Man from Outside\” by Jack Williamson
\”Beachhead\” by Clifford D. Simak
\”The Years Draw Nigh\” by Lester del Rey
\”Metamorphosite\” by Eric Frank Russell
\”The Ordeal of Professor Klein\” by L. Sprague de Camp
\”Repetition\” by A. E. van Vogt
\”Breeds There a Man…?\” by Isaac Asimov
\”Meteor\” by John Beynon
\”And the Walls Came Tumbling Down\” by John Wyndham
\”Blinding Shadows\” by Donald Wandrei
\”The Metamorphosis of Earth\” by Clark Ashton Smith
\”The Ambassadors from Venus\” by Kendell F. Crossen
\”To People a New World\” by Nelson S. Bond

For lovers of old-style, classic SF short fiction, this anthology would be right up their alley. If you can actually find it, that is. As it\’s such an old book, it\’s obviously long out of print, and you\’ll have to hunt through used book stores to find this anthology. But it\’ll be well worth the trouble it takes to find it, as are any other anthologies edited by August Derleth.

After all these years, I think I\’ll actually make a major effort to get off my butt and track down the longer original US hardcover edition, which I didn\’t even realize was different/longer until I recently read the Wikipedia entry on the anthology.

Highly recommended, particularly the original US hardcover edition.

Reading Science Fiction

Reading Science Fiction literature has always been one of my main interests in life, and I\’ve been reading \”proper\” science fiction since I first signed out H.G. Wells\’ The Time Machine from the local library at the tender age of about eight or nine years old (circa 1969-1970).

I usually prefer older (classic) SF, pre-\”New Wave\”, with a particular fondness for the vintage SF of the \”Golden Age\” and the SF \”Pulps\”. Any list of my favourites classic SF authors would contain some very familiar and famous names:

H. G. Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle, Jules Verne, Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Jack Williamson, Robert A. Heinlein, John W. Campbell Jr, Stanley G. Weinbaum, Henry Kuttner, Edmond Hamilton, Leigh Brackett, C. L. Moore, Frederik Pohl, Cyril M. Kornbluth, Philip K. Dick, Poul Anderson, Brian W. Aldiss, Harry Harrison, H. Beam Piper, Cordwainer Smith, Alfred Bester, Algis Budrys… and many, many others (I\’d be here all night listing them).

Although I\’m mainly a reader of older SF, there are a few types of modern SF that I do like to read, in particular New Space Opera, Hard SF, and good old Classic Space Opera, which never seems to go out of fashion, no matter how hard the literary wannabes among the SF writing and reading fraternity have tried to kill it off over the years. Some of the modern SF authors that I\’m a huge fan of would include:

Alastair Reynolds, Stephen Baxter, Peter F. Hamilton, Greg Bear, Greg Egan, Linda Nagata, Iain M. Banks, Ken MacLeod, Wil McCarthy, Peter Watts, Ian R. MacLeod, Paul J. McAuley, Iain MacDonald and a few others.

Although I do still like the occasional good SF novel by my favourite old and modern authors, the volume of novels that I read has declined sharply over the years. I used to read a lot more novels when I was younger, particularly during my teens (the 1970s), but that started to drop off sharply from about 1978 onwards, as the increasingly intensive study commitments during my A-Levels and university years totally wiped out most of my previously plentiful free reading time.

Once I finished university (1983, at the age of twenty-two), started work, discovered a social life (I didn\’t even know what a social life WAS back in my teens, no going out, no drinking, no women – it\’s really no wonder that I\’d had so much reading time), and with the many trials and tribulations of adult life kicking in, any free time that I may have had left for reading disappeared as quickly as Roadrunner with Wile E. Coyote on his tail. So the number of novels that I read declined sharply during those years, and has never recovered to its former levels, even now, thirty years later.

I also loved reading short story collections and anthologies back in my teens. At that time, it was pretty much 50-50 between novels and short fiction, but as the number of novels that I read declined sharply during the late-1970s and early-1980s, the balance swung sharply towards short fiction, which began to take up more and more of what reading time I did have remaining. I\’ve always considered short fiction to be the bedrock of the science fiction genre anyway, and, if you add to that the fact that it\’s simply much easier to fit the occasional short story into a hectic lifestyle, particularly in these days of monstrously bloated and padded novels, nine times out of ten, you\’ll find me reading a good anthology or author collection, rather than a novel.

I do NOT like (and never have liked) reading a novel piecemeal, a few chapters at a time, and prefer to do it all in one go. But that pretty much became impossible once the size of the average SF novel went above four hundred pages or so. I can usually manage about 300-350 pages max before I want to call it a day. That was okay with most classic SF novels, which usually came in at about 250-300 pages, and which I can read in one sitting. I can\’t do that with these bloated modern bricks. I have to read a few chapters at a time, but I often find it very hard to go back and just pick up where I left off. My train of thought and enjoyment of the story has been broken, and before I start on new chapters of the novel I almost always have to go back and do a recap, and re-read the earlier chapters again (certainly if it\’s been days, maybe weeks even, since I\’d read the previous chapters), because I\’ve forgotten details of the story.

I do still sometimes long for the days when a good SF novel was a mere 250-300 pages, and I could finish it in one sitting. If that were still the case, I\’d probably have gotten back into reading SF novels, and I\’d be reading a lot more of them today. But I find myself looking at these eight hundred page bricks and thinking \”Nah, can\’t be bothered\”. It\’s simply too much time and effort to put into reading a single story, when I can read twenty short stories in a similar-sized anthology much more easily. With a short story collection or anthology, I can read one story at a time, one over lunch, another when I visit the bathroom, another before I go to bed. I can leave the book down for days, weeks even, and start on a completely new story when I lift it up again, without missing out on anything, or having to go back and recap.

While I may be much more a fan of short fiction these days, the real truth is that reading short fiction has become habitual for me over the past thirty years, whereas I seem to have lost the knack (and the patience) for reading novels. I\’ve become much more accustomed to reading short fiction in recent decades, and while I can still tackle the much shorter, older classic SF novels easily enough, reading one of those overly-padded modern monsters is a real effort, and one that I\’m rarely willing to make, unless it\’s one of my favourite modern authors (someone like Alastair Reynolds or one of the others mentioned above).

Maybe I can re-train myself to read these big novels. And maybe this blog can help me focus, get back into the groove, and give me a reason to start into reading novels on a regular basis. Fingers crossed.

It’s a Geek\’s Life… (Part Two)

The Golden Years – Geek Nirvana During the Seventies

[T]he start of our teenage years is the sweet spot for the vast majority of us, particularly geeks, the beginning of what is probably the most fondly remembered period of our lives.

It\’s long enough ago that most of our memories are fond, rosy ones, but it\’s also the first time in our lives from which we retain reasonably accurate and continuous recollections of events (unlike our earlier childhood – most memories from our first decade are pretty vague and fragmented). And it is also during these years that many of us have the most fun and freedom to do what we want (after we finish our homework, of course), before adulthood arrives and the bland banalities, responsibilities and worries of “grown-up” life start to descend upon us.

I mentioned in my previous posting that my childhood was a far from happy one. Things got even worse when I was eleven years old, when my parents separated, leaving my father to raise five kids on his own. He was forced to leave his job, and our descent into poverty became even more severe. To top it all off, my father\’s health began to decline sharply after my mother left, and, as the \”oldest\”, I was shoehorned into the role of \”surrogate mother\” from this very tender age, taking over the extremely heavy responsibilities of not only looking after my father, but also the other four kids, one of whom was also very severely disabled.

To be blunt, I was a very unhappy young boy as a teenager, one who sought refuge in a world of make-believe. Any kind of an escape from this dreary and depressing reality was a welcome one, and I immersed myself in an alternate world of comics, sci-fi worlds on television, in films, and in great SF literature. I also became very preoccupied with drawing and writing.

To refer to these interests as mere “hobbies” would be a complete understatement. They were obsessions, a vital lifeline for me, and I depended on them utterly to keep me sane, when everything around me was so gloomy and depressing. Since childhood, and throughout my entire life, these “obsessions” have been entrenched as fundamental pillars of my personality and way of thinking, and I simply cannot imagine my life without them.

I may already have been a proto-geek from a much earlier period in my life, but the beginning of my teens marks the time from which I can seriously start referring to myself as a true, hardcore geek. Things may not have been rosy on the domestic and personal front, but my hobbies and obsessions certainly first started to kick into overdrive in a very big way at this age, almost certainly to compensate for my miserable \”Real Life\”. I was also now growing old enough to be much more sophisticated, systematic and discerning when it came to what I was “into”. And what I was into, and I mean REALLY into, was the Holy Trinity of SF literature, Sci-Fi on television and in films, and Comics.

All through the 1970\’s, up until around 1977-78, was a “Golden Age” for me, from a geek perspective anyway, the completely opposing mirror image of my crappy \”real life\”. All during my teens there was a steady procession of classic sci-fi TV shows and films on local television, and although I had my favourites – Doctor Who, Star Trek, UFO, The Time Tunnel – I loved them all to a lesser or greater extent.

By this stage of my life I was also a totally obsessive reader of both comics (particularly the Marvel UK reprint comics) and SF literature. I\’d started off initially in my pre-teens with Wells and Verne, then moving onto Clarke, Asimov, Heinlein, and anything else that I could read. By my early teens, the whole world of SF literature was my oyster. I was discovering great new (to me, anyway) authors like H. Beam Piper, Cordwainer Smith, Cyril M. Kornbluth, Frederik Pohl, John W. Campbell, Alfred Bester, Henry Kuttner, C. L. Moore, Leigh Brackett, Edmond Hamilton, Jack Williamson, Stanley G. Weinbaum, Robert E. Howard, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Clark Ashton Smith and many, many others.

By my mid-teens, I was neck-deep in my alternate geek world, spending every available second on my hobbies. I just couldn’t get enough of the whole Sci-Fi/Comics/SF Literature thing, and it seemed like the good days would never end.

But I was wrong.

To Be Continued…

It’s a Geek\’s Life… (Part Two)

The Golden Years – Geek Nirvana During the Seventies

The start of our teenage years is the sweet spot for the vast majority of us, particularly geeks, the beginning of what is probably the most fondly remembered period of our lives.

By this stage of my life I was also a totally obsessive reader of both comics (particularly the Marvel UK reprint comics) and SF literature. I\’d started off initially in my pre-teens with Wells and Verne, then moving onto Clarke, Asimov, Heinlein, and anything else that I could read. By my early teens, the whole world of SF literature was my oyster. I was discovering great new (to me, anyway) authors like H. Beam Piper, Cordwainer Smith, Cyril M. Kornbluth, Frederik Pohl, John W. Campbell, Alfred Bester, Henry Huttner, C. L. Moore, Leigh Brackett, Edmond Hamilton, Jack Williamson, Stanley G. Weinbaum, Robert E. Howard, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Clark Ashton Smith and many, many others.

But I was wrong.

To Be Continued…