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kilroyPrint date: 1950 (20s: 1, 50s: 1, 60s: 2, 70s: 3, 80s: 4, 90s: 3, 00s: 7)
It's really difficult to describe this kind of science fiction to someone who hasn't read it-- you can draw all sorts of connections between it and other media, but it's like trying to describe an orange as somewhere between a banana and an apple but mostly closer to the apple. It's the kind of scifi that's first published in installments in pulp magazines with titles like Amazing Stories and pictures of rockets with fins on the covers; heedless, cocksure stuff that gets high on its own energy and crams in as many Big Ideas as it can fit in 5000 words.
Looked at by my usual standards, this book doesn't have much to recommend it. It's not so much a plot as it is a string of startling! amazing! mind-bending! developments. Calling the characterization paper-thin would be generous. It's casually sexist and gleefully free of internal logic.
Yet when I was reading it I found myself smiling this big, stupid grin. It taps directly into the part of my brain that let me run around the yard when I was a kid with my arms extended, making whooshing noises and pretending to be a spaceship. It's the most perfect example of its genre I've seen in years.
I mean: Hellhounds from Space! A disembodied schizophrenic intelligence that traps you on its planet and makes you fight to the death for its amusement! Time travel to alternate future Earth to meet the last man alive! A woman trapped in suspended animation for a millenium but still able to think, who comes out telepathic and with a thorough understanding of the mathematics of space-time! Four-dimensional hyper-universal collisions being solved by judicious application of five-dimensional eternity energy! It's like the kid running ahead of you laughing and daring you to keep up. If you're the kind of person who can just take the mental brakes off and go, this book is a hell of a ride.
This book and its entire genre are not for everyone. It's not sophisticated, it's not considerate, and it's not plausible. But it took me to a place I'd almost forgotten, and for that I am extremely grateful.
Verdict: Absolutely worth reading once, will recycle. (12.5/38 keepers)
Page count: 159 (8079 total)
Completed: 21 (10 female authors, 11 male authors)
Rejected: 17 (9 male authors, 8 female authors)
Next book due: 7/15
It's really difficult to describe this kind of science fiction to someone who hasn't read it-- you can draw all sorts of connections between it and other media, but it's like trying to describe an orange as somewhere between a banana and an apple but mostly closer to the apple. It's the kind of scifi that's first published in installments in pulp magazines with titles like Amazing Stories and pictures of rockets with fins on the covers; heedless, cocksure stuff that gets high on its own energy and crams in as many Big Ideas as it can fit in 5000 words.
Looked at by my usual standards, this book doesn't have much to recommend it. It's not so much a plot as it is a string of startling! amazing! mind-bending! developments. Calling the characterization paper-thin would be generous. It's casually sexist and gleefully free of internal logic.
Yet when I was reading it I found myself smiling this big, stupid grin. It taps directly into the part of my brain that let me run around the yard when I was a kid with my arms extended, making whooshing noises and pretending to be a spaceship. It's the most perfect example of its genre I've seen in years.
I mean: Hellhounds from Space! A disembodied schizophrenic intelligence that traps you on its planet and makes you fight to the death for its amusement! Time travel to alternate future Earth to meet the last man alive! A woman trapped in suspended animation for a millenium but still able to think, who comes out telepathic and with a thorough understanding of the mathematics of space-time! Four-dimensional hyper-universal collisions being solved by judicious application of five-dimensional eternity energy! It's like the kid running ahead of you laughing and daring you to keep up. If you're the kind of person who can just take the mental brakes off and go, this book is a hell of a ride.
This book and its entire genre are not for everyone. It's not sophisticated, it's not considerate, and it's not plausible. But it took me to a place I'd almost forgotten, and for that I am extremely grateful.
Verdict: Absolutely worth reading once, will recycle. (12.5/38 keepers)
Page count: 159 (8079 total)
Completed: 21 (10 female authors, 11 male authors)
Rejected: 17 (9 male authors, 8 female authors)
Next book due: 7/15