Articles with the Tag science fiction

Old Twentieth – Joe Haldeman

science fiction
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Cover of Old Twentieth


Old Twentieth
Joe Haldeman
272 pages
published in 2005

If there is such a thing as a baby boomer generation of science fiction writers, Joe Haldeman is the type specimen of them. Born in 1943 he was just old enough to be drafted at the height of the War on Vietnam after finishing college, got wounded in action and wrote his first book as a straight up retelling of his war experiences. His most famous novel is of course The Forever War (1975), which is often read as an allegory of the war and its impact on the people who fought it, a not completely unjustified view. Since then, the Vietnam war has cropped up again and again in his books as well as a more general grounding in sixties pop culture, often coupled with an encroaching sense of his own mortality as he has gotten older and obsession with the promise of evading death by becoming immortal (as e.g. The Long Habit of Living). This isn’t unique to the baby boomers of course, but this was the generation that promised themselved they’d stay young forever and then found out even they weren’t immune to entropy…

The Old Twentieth is a showcase for all these themes. It is not a good novel, if entertaining enough to finish. It’s not a good novel not just because the plot is dull, the resolution is trite, the characters are barely twodimensional and the setting is uninteresting, but because there just seems to be no point to this novel. It’s just 272 pages of not very interesting things happening, before they come to an unsatisfying conclusion and no clue as to why this story needed to be told. It reads reasonably enough on a sentence and paragraph level, but the overall story is so thin that Haldeman’s obsessions shine through it, bringing them to the foreground.

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The Real-Time World – Christopher Priest

science fiction
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Cover of Real-Time World


Real-Time World
Christopher Priest
158 pages
published in 1974

After finishing Camp Concentration I was in the mood for some New Wave science fiction and since I’d just bought this Christopher Priest collection of short stories this was as good a choice as any to read. Most of this I actually read while at the gym, on the treadmill — short stories being ideal, quickly enough read in a forty minute session and not requiring too much sustained concentration like a novel would. Some of the stories in Real-Time World I’d read before, in Dutch translation, some were new to me. All but one of the stories were published between 1970 and 1974, perhaps the height of the New Wave, and all are very much of their time. As a writer Christopher Priest has always seemed more comfortable to me at novel length than at shorter lengths, which is also notable here.

The reason why I wanted to read these stories was because I knew how seventies they were, but as often when confronted with the reality of what I was looking for, I was disappointed with it. None of the stories were entirely satisfactory and although each was competently written, they were written to formula. You could see they were written to achieve a specific effect and how Priest achieves that effect and as a result most of the effect is lost. The first story for example, “The Head and the Hand”, about automutilation as a form of performance art, with some graphic scenes including a final auto-guillotining which may have been shocking when first published, but certainly aren’t now and without this shock effect the story falls apart.

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The Grain Kings – Keith Roberts

science fiction
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Cover of The Grain Kings


The Grain Kings
Keith Roberts
208 pages
published in 1976

Nothing says seventies science fiction as much as a Fossian cover like this, slapped by Panther and Pan on every book they published regardless of contents. Big, blocky machinery, preferably some sort of spaceship, with brigh colours and no human figures: that’s science fiction and you don’t need anything more. For once, the cover is even justified, showing one of the huge grain combine harvesters from the title story of this collection. Course, you’ll still be disappointed if you get this expecting the sort of cool, clinical, techno-driven stories the cover suggests; Keith Roberts isn’t that kind of writer.

Keith Roberts debuted as a writer in 1964 in New Worlds, involved with, but not a part of, the New Wave. Partially this was due to his personality as he allegedly was quite a difficult character to work with, getting into fights with his editors and publishers. But it was also because he was less interested in the two main obsessions of the New Wave, death & entropy and sex & taboos. Nevertheless if you like Brian Aldiss or Christoper Priest changes are you’ll like Roberts as well. Roberts was more than just a writer; during the sixties he worked both as an editor for the British magazine Science Fantasy/SF Impulse, as well as its artistic director, designing most of the covers for it, as well as for several issues of New Worlds. A shame he didn’t get the chance to design the cover of this book, as the impressionist look he used in his own designs would’ve been much more suited for it. Keith Roberts has always been somewhat of a cult author, best known for his second novel Pavane, a classic alternative history story and one out of two of his books still in print today (the other one is The Furies).

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Some good cyberpunk

science fiction
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Inspired by M. John Harrison’s list of fantasy works. I reserve the right to update it.

  • “Notes on the Anaytical Engine”, Ada Lovelace, 1842-43
  • Memex, Vannevar Bush, 1936-1945
  • Computer bugs, Grace Hopper, 1945
  • Future Shock, Alvin Toffler 1970
  • “The Girl Who Was Plugged In”, James Tiptree 1973
  • Altair 8800, 1975
  • The Shockwave Rider, John Brunner 1975
  • Usenet, Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis 1979
  • Web of Angels, John M. Ford 1980
  • The Third Wave, Alvin Toffler 1980
  • Software, Rudy Rucker 1982
  • Blade Runner, Ridley Scott 1982
  • American Flagg!, Howard Chaykin 1983
  • Videodrome, David Lynch 1983
  • “Rock On”, Pat Cadigan, 1984
  • Neuromancer, William Gibson 1984
  • Frontera, Lewis Shiner 1984
  • Big Bang, 1986
  • Burning Chrome, William Gibson 1986
  • Schismatrix, Bruce Sterling 1985
  • Mirrorshades, Bruce Sterling, editor 1986
  • Hardwired, Walter Jon Williams 1986
  • Bubblegum Crisis, Katsuhito Akiyama et all 1987
  • When Gravity Fails…, George Alec Effinger 1987
  • Max Headroom, Annabel Jankel and Rocky Morton 1987
  • Akira, Katsuhiro Otomo et all 1988
  • Islands in the Net, Bruce Sterling 1988
  • HTTP/WWW, Tim Berners-Lee 1990
  • Operation Sundevil, US government 1990
  • Snowcrash, Neal Stephenson 1992
  • Mosaic, Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina 1993
  • WiReD, Louis Rossetto et all 1993
  • Fairyland, Paul J. McAuley 1995
  • Headcrash, Bruce Bethke 1995

Locus recommended reading 2008

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The Locus Magazine 2008 recommended reading list is up, a decided on by their editors, reviewers and friends. I’ll excerpt the sf novels list:

  • Matter, Iain M. Banks (Orbit UK)
  • Flood, Stephen Baxter (Gollancz, Roc ’09)
  • Weaver, Stephen Baxter (Gollancz, Ace)
  • City at the End of Time, Greg Bear (Gollancz, Del Rey)
  • Incandescence, Greg Egan (Gollancz, Night Shade)
  • January Dancer, Michael Flynn (Tor)
  • Marsbound, Joe Haldeman (Ace)
  • Spirit, Gwyneth Jones (Gollancz)
  • Escapement, Jay Lake (Tor)
  • Song of Time, Ian R. MacLeod (PS Publishing)
  • The Night Sessions, Ken MacLeod (Orbit)
  • The Quiet War, Paul McAuley (Gollancz)
  • The Company, K. J. Parker (Orbit)
  • House of Suns, Alastair Reynolds (Gollancz, Ace ’09)
  • Pirate Sun, Karl Schroeder (Tor)
  • Anathem, Neal Stephenson (Atlantic UK, Morrow)
  • Saturn’s Children, Charles Stross (Orbit, Ace)
  • Rolling Thunder, John Varley (Ace)
  • Half a Crown, Jo Walton (Tor)
  • Implied Spaces, Walter Jon Williams (Night Shade Books)

Of the list, I’ve already read Matter, Anathem and Saturn’s Children and will definately read The Night Sessions, Half a Crown, House of Suns, Implied Spaces and The Quiet War. The Company, Escapement and Song of Time are also possibilities; the rest not so much and I already know I won’t read the Baxter novels. In all, a good list and as far as I can judge a good overview of the more important novels of last year.

There are remarkable few women on this list, just Gwyneth Jones, Jo Walton and K. J. Parker. The fantasy list has a better gender divide: six out of eighteen novels are by female authors. Is science fiction really such a male preserve?