short stories Archives - Martin's Booklog

The Grain Kings – Keith Roberts

Published on August 16, 2009

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).

New Skies — Patrick Nielsen Hayden (editor)

Published on August 4, 2008

Cover of New Skies

New Skies
Patrick Nielsen Hayden
275 pages
published in 2003

I didn’t know this was meant to be an “anthology of today’s science fiction” for a “new, younger generation of science fiction fans” until I got this home from the library, as I only got it because Patrick Nielsen Hayden was the editor and I was curious to see what his tastes were like. I thought New Skies was an anthology of new science fiction, but instead it’s a showcase of science fiction stories from the last twenty years, aimed at an audience new to the genre. Still, it’s as good a test of Patrick’s tastes as any, as not only did he have to select his entries from over two decades of stories, but he also had to select them to show off the width and breadth of the genre, be not too long and accessible to younger reader. A huge task indeed.

Since I’ve been reading science fiction for quite some time now, I’m not exactly the target audience for New Skies; I don’t know how some thirteen year old kid would like this book, but I enjoyed it. New Skies does a good job of representing how much different kinds of science fiction stories there are and how much fun they can be. None of the stories were the kind that makes your hair stand on edge, but they’re good representations of what you can expect in science fiction and they’re accesible.

The Testament of Andros — James Blish

Published on June 17, 2008

Cover of The Testament of Andros

The Testament of Andros
James Blish
216 pages
published in 1973

James Blish was a science fiction writer of the same generation as Isaac Asimov, the first science fiction writers to have grown up with science fiction as a separate genre, to have become science fiction fans before they became science fiction writers. Blish’s first short stories were written in the early forties, before World War II interfered, so it was only in the fifties that he made his reputation. During that decade he wrote quite a few classic short stories and novels, including the Cities in Flight series, with its vision of New York flying off amongst the stars and A Case of Conscience, in which a young Jesuit wrestles with the question whether or not the aliens he lives amongst posses souls. At the same time, writing under the pseudonym of William Atheling, Jr., he was one of the pioneers in applying literary criticism to science fiction. His later work is less interesting, being spend mostly on writing Star Trek novels.

Though Blish is an important early science fiction writer, one who has written several excellent novels and short stories, I’ve always found myself a bit lukewarm about him. I’ve read the novels I’ve mentioned above, attempted some other, later works of his, as well as most of his better known short stories; they were alright, but no more than that. Part of the trouble I had with him is that he, for a science fiction writer, had quite a conservative pessimistic atttitute towards the future, adhering to a Spenglerian, cyclical view of history, most notably in the Cities in Flight series. I got nothing against a bit of conservatism or pesssimism in my science fiction perse, even if I don’t share it, but Blish’s philosophy is a particularly dreary one.