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Category: Vintage Treasures

Sci-Fi Dystopias We Should Learn From

Sci-Fi Dystopias We Should Learn From

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Hardwired (Tor Books, June 1986). Cover by Luis Royo

Sci-fi has long been home to nightmarish views of the future as thrilling as they are frightening. The genre simply would not be the same without our post-apocalyptic wastelands.

But for every Handmaid’s Tale there’s a dystopian vision that doesn’t get the appreciation it deserves. Some have certainly sold millions of copies but are more recognized for drama or action as opposed to what they have to say about the challenges facing us tomorrow.  Here are several such examples that definitely deserve a bit more love from readers. Not for how epic or cool they are but for the underlying ideas their authors hoped we would absorb.

Hardwired by Walter Jon Williams

Hardwired is rightly celebrated for its contributions to cyberpunk. So much of the verbiage, flare, and aesthetic of the subgenre can be traced back to this relatively short novel. A future where the lines between man and machine are blurred? A ruined Earth? The illicit struggle to survive despite overwhelming odds? It’s all here, the ingredients many a choom would run with over the years.

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An Uplift Classic: Aldair by Neal Barrett, Jr.

An Uplift Classic: Aldair by Neal Barrett, Jr.

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Aldair in Albion and Aldair, Master of Ships (DAW Books, May 1976 and September 1977). Covers by Josh Kirby

My feature today is what I call an “honorary Sword & Planet series.” The Aldair series by Neal Barrett, Jr. (1929 – 2014) not only doesn’t have a human hero, but it’s set on Earth.

But it has the feel and charm and adventure that defines S&P fiction. It also has some great covers and illustrations by artists who worked on the Dray Prescot series. DAW did it right in those days. I just love their paperbacks of that time.

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Tor Doubles #33: Mike Resnick’s Bwana and Bully!

Tor Doubles #33: Mike Resnick’s Bwana and Bully!

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Cover for Bwana and Bully!

As we move into the final month of reviews, there is a significant change in the format of the Tor Doubles. The series began with the proto-Tor Double of Keith Laumer’s The House in November and The Other Sky, but every volume since then has contained stories by two different authors.  However, three of the four final published volumes are single author books. This week looks at a volume with two stories by Mike Resnick, next week will be two stories by Damon Knight, and in three weeks, the final published volume contained two stories by Fritz Leiber. This volume was originally published in June 1991, which sharp eyed readers will note skips a month from last week’s volume. That is because Tor Doubles #33 and 34 were published in reverse numerical order, with this one published after the next one.

Bwana was an originally published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine in January 1990. Between 1988 and 1996, Resnick wrote ten connected stories about the utopian planetoid Kirinyaga, eight of which earned him Hugo nominations, including two winners. Describing the entire series as a “Fable of Utopia,” each story followed a similar pattern.

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A Storm of Another Kind: Mother of Storms by John Barnes

A Storm of Another Kind: Mother of Storms by John Barnes

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Mother of Storms (Tor Books, July 1994). Cover by Bob Eggleton

One of science fiction’s subgenres is that novel that emulates the style of bestsellers — bestsellers as they were before the fantastic genres became a big part of the cultural mainstream. Michael Crichton, for one, specialized in this type of writing, from The Andromeda Strain to Jurassic Park; but other writers take it up from time to time: Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle in Lucifer’s Hammer, David Brin in Earth, and much more recently Andy Weir in The Martian and Harry Turtledove in Supervolcano.

Some markers are common in this sort of book: reduced use of expository passages, a more demotic prose style, a near future setting that’s easy to imagine, multiple viewpoints and a large cast of characters — and despite this, a much reduced presence of characters who have a detached, scientific view of the world. John Barnes’s Mother of Storms is a classic example of that kind of science fiction.

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The Fantastic Art of Boris Vallejo, Part II

The Fantastic Art of Boris Vallejo, Part II

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I Am a Barbarian by Edgar Rice Burrough (Ace Books, September 1975). Cover by Boris Vallejo

The Fantastic Art of Boris Vallejo , which I discussed in my post last week, contains three more paintings that became paperback covers that I own and well remember, although none of these are Sword & Planet covers.

First up we have I Am a Barbarian by Edgar Rice Burroughs, from Ace Books. If you discount his westerns, this is one of only two historical novels ERB wrote, the other being The Outlaw of Torn. Torn is my favorite of ERB’s standalone novels but Barbarian also ranks up there.

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Tor Doubles #32: Harlan Ellison’s Run for the Stars and Jack Dann and Jack Haldeman II’s Echoes of Thunder

Tor Doubles #32: Harlan Ellison’s Run for the Stars and Jack Dann and Jack Haldeman II’s Echoes of Thunder

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Cover for Run for the Stars and Echoes of Thunder by Barclay Shaw

Tor Double number #32 was originally published in April 1991 and includes Echoes of Thunder, an original story, in this form, for the Tor Double line, which, as with the Popkes story a couple volumes earlier, has not been reprinted in this form. This is Dann and Haldeman’s only appearance in the series. It also includes Harlan Ellison’s only appearance in the series.

Run for the Stars was originally published in Science Fiction Adventures in June 1957. Ellison has noted this as the author’s preferred edition of the story.

Benno Tallant is a drug addict on war torn Deald’s World. While ransacking the corpse of a grocer for money with which to buy drugs, he is taken prisoner by three men who need his assistance in their attempt to keep Earth safe from invasion of the alien Kyban, whose fleet is preparing to destroy the human outpost on Deald’s World.

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An Original Ballantine Adult Fantasy: The Children of Llyr by Evangeline Walton

An Original Ballantine Adult Fantasy: The Children of Llyr by Evangeline Walton

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The Children of Llyr (Ballantine Adult Fantasy #33, August 1971). Cover by David Johnston

This latest entry in my series of essays about mostly obscure SF and Fantasy from the ’70s and ’80s looks at a novel published in one of the most celebrated publishing series of the early ’70s. This was the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series, which ran from 1969 to 1974, under the editorship of Betty Ballantine, with the assistance of “Editorial Consultant” Lin Carter.

I’ve discussed Carter’s work before, and I subscribe to the more or less standard view that he was not a very good writer of fiction, but that his contributions to the field as an editor (or “consultant”) were tremendous. And nowhere more so than in this series of books — though Ballantine’s oversight was also important.

The first volume was The Blue Star, by Fletcher Pratt, a reprint of a 1952 novel. The final official Ballantine Adult Fantasy publication was #65, Over the Hills and Far Away, by Lord Dunsany.

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Tor Doubles #31: Gordon R. Dickson’s The Alien Way and Naked to the Stars

Tor Doubles #31: Gordon R. Dickson’s The Alien Way and Naked to the Stars

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Cover for The Alien Way and Naked to the Stars by Brian Waugh

Tor Double #31 was originally published in April 1991. The proto-Tor Double, which included two stories by Keith Laumer, was the only volume up to this point to include content from a single author. This volume, with two stories by Gordon R. Dickson, is the first official Tor Double to include content from only one author. However, of the remaining five Tor Doubles, four of them would prove to be single author collections.

Naked to the Stars was an originally serialized in F&SF in October and November 1961. Although the story begins as a fairly typical piece of military science fiction, Dickson takes it into a different direction, which makes the story stand out.

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Tor Doubles #30: Poul Anderson’s The Longest Voyage and Steven Popkes’ Slow Lightning

Tor Doubles #30: Poul Anderson’s The Longest Voyage and Steven Popkes’ Slow Lightning

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Cover for The Longest Voyage and Slow Lightning by Wayne Barlowe

 

Tor Double #30 contains Poul Anderson’s third and final appearance and was originally published in February 1991. He is joined by Steve Popkes with a story original to this volume and which has not been reprinted.

“The Longest Voyage” was originally published in Analog in December 1960. It won the Hugo Award for Best Short Story, which makes it a strange choice for the Tor Doubles series, which generally published novellas, but the second story in the volume may be the longest story published in the series.

There are many science fiction stories that take historical characters and use them as the basis for a different take on the world. Robert J. Sawyer notably published his trilogy of novels Far-Seer, Fossil Hunter, and Foreigner whose characters were based on Galileo, Charles Darwin, and Sigmund Freud. In “The Longest Voyage,” Captain Rovic appears to be based on Ferdinand Magellan, leading the Golden Leaper (shades of Francis Drake’s Golden Hind) on a circumnavigation of the moon on which they live in search of the fables Aureate Cities.

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The Sword & Planet of S. M. Stirling and Al Sarrantonio

The Sword & Planet of S. M. Stirling and Al Sarrantonio

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In the Courts of the Crimson Kings and The Sky People by S.M. Stirling (Tor Books, March 2008 and November 4, 2006). Covers by Gregory Manchess

In 2006 and 2008, Tor books sought a revival of Sword & Planet fiction with two books by S. M. Stirling. It didn’t quite work out but the readers got some interesting results, including a book that is now in my top ten of S&P novels.

First up was The Sky People, set on Venus in an alternate solar system where the planets are inhabitable and inhabited, much like the solar system of ERB, Brackett, and Moore. In the acknowledgements, Stirling even thanks ERB, Brackett and Otis Adelbert Kline, and mentions the Northwest Smith stories of Moore, as well as ERB’s “Wrong Way” Carson of Venus.

Stirling posits a space race that pits the US and their allies against the Soviets for control of this habitable solar system. When they land on Venus they find a jungle world, much like the Venus of ERB. It turns out to be inhabited by both Homo sapiens and Neanderthals, a mystery that is eventually solved. This one is definitely not Sword & Planet. It combines standard SF with hints of Pellucidar’s time lost world of dinosaurs and sabretooths. Fun but not stellar in my opinion.

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