Science Fiction Book Club $1 Books, December 1969

Oh, good, all except the first fit in the length available. Here's the complete (longer) blurb for the "Treasury":

A TREASURY OF GREAT SCIENCE FICTION
Edited by Anthony Boucher

A giant two-volume collection of great science fiction reading. Over 1,000 pages of exciting fiction -- four full-length novels, twelve novelettes, eight short stories by Ray Bradbury, Robert A. Heinlein, A.E. Van Vogt, Poul Anderson, Arthur C. Clarke, Theodore Sturgeon, Alfred Bester, and a dozen more. Counts as 1 choice.

I thought about leaving this one off, but if anyone wants to vote a random book club assemblage of who-knows-what, be my guest. I know I won't.

When I created a poll like this:
Best book from the ads at the back of an old Bantam paperback of Crompton Divided

oh that's a good poll! we'll see what responses this one gets

Ubik because I’ve actually read it.

voted Dangerous Visions b/c I own it!!

Considering both of those

Or else The Illustrated Man.

Some of the other famous ones are okay but overrated or limited.

yeah i can't decide between "ubik" or "dangerous visions". both bangers.

books i don't know:

october the first is too late - i have never heard of fred hoyle. i'm racking my brain here but all i'm getting is "card games".

7 conquests - i know of poul anderson, but i haven't read any of his stuff.

omnivore - my general impression is that every single piers anthony book is about his panty fetish, though i've heard that his early stuff is different. kind of like john norman, except piers anthony was apparently way creepier than john norman. i never heard that john norman was "creepy", only that he was "boring".

nova - yeah mostly i just know dhalgren. and i tried to watch that erotica film he did once.

the lion of comarre & against the fall of night - i know clarke certainly but i've never heard of these.

Will I be the only person here who has read October the First is Too Late? I enjoyed Fred Hoyle's The Black Cloud when I was a kid, only found out this year he had written other novels so gave it a go. It was... meh.

asimov doesn't really hold up... honestly though i kinda thing bradbury is _underrated_. a lot of these early guys - and i'd count asimov among them, really - weren't novelists so much as they were short story writers. bradbury had some bangers.

Dangerous Visions is mostly terrible! Just a bunch of white American male edgelord stories.

Delaney and the two or three female authors excepted of course.

love the blurbs in this list.

Dangerous Visions is mostly terrible! Just a bunch of white American male edgelord stories.

― I am Novus Praxus (ledge), Monday, October 12, 2026 9:31 AM (three minutes ago)

oh good to know, i haven't reread it lately. i used to be an edgelord and i'm kinda over it now. i don't think dick is a particularly great writer, but his ideas are interesting enough to carry him.

Bradbury's best stuff holds up. He deserved his widespread popularity.

The first Dangerous Visions is okay, I guess, but the next one is kind of pointless

Against the Fall of Night was rewritten as/expanded into The City and the Stars. Both are okay iirc, but the second version is a bit better, I think.

https://strangehorizons.com/wordpress/non-fiction/who-is-in-danger/

Hoyle's main gig was as an astronomer tho i think i already knew he'd written SF

Foundation is pretty good imo and Asimov's prose is generally decent but c'mon i've only toe-dipped

Bradbury mostly great

Ubik yeah sure but not today

In joined the SFBC when I was ten and got The Foundation Trilogy as a bonus; really enjoyed it (esp. revealed identity of the Mule, and what happened about Hari Seldon, eventually). Also liked I,Robot and especially A Treasury of Great Science Fiction, which didn't seem like a "random assemblage," but a wide range of all the heavy hitters of that era. Also dug Ubik and maybe several of the others on here (well yeah Nova), but these are all that I recall liking.

This looks like a much more discerning look at A Treasury than I could possibly do w/o re-reading, which I would do if had it handy (maybe in storage): https://adeeplookbydavehook.wordpress.com/2025/05/17/a-treasury-of-great-science-fiction-volume-one-two-anthony-boucher-editor-1959-doubleday-1960-sf-book-club/

I can't copy the image of Boucher's intro that the author of this piece includes, but here's his summary of it:

Boucher aimed at this...

Not a definitive anthology of the best of SF.
Not a scholarly survey of the history and development of SF.
Not a theme anthology, but a very large collection of stories which Boucher likes and he hopes are unfamiliar to many.
Presenting works new to hard cover in the USA, with most not reprinted in an anthology before.
A focus on good reading in modern SF, 1938 to 1958, overlooked by earlier anthologists

In the UK Fred Hoyle was a Penguin SF author and the groovy covers they gave his books are more appealing these days than the rather dull SF he traded in (a more 'scientific' spin on Wyndham catastrophe):

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/27/e4/3d/27e43da5efa8fdd588d042148321cc29.jpg

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/07/3c/aa/073caabffec44221a09842f02673d6d2.jpg

https://preview.redd.it/into-deepest-space-fred-hoyle-geoffrey-hoyle-penguin-1977-v0-r8hjw1izxf7e1.jpeg?auto=webp&s=06e682242bc426a705d90f2adf39406e27359d92

He was famously against the Big Bang hypothesis.

Love the psych lettering on the original US hardcover of Dangerous Visions, would def be tempted by a book club edition (voted Ubik of course):

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/92/DangerousVisions%281stEd%29.jpg?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=index&utm_content=original

In the UK Fred Hoyle was a Penguin SF author and the groovy covers they gave his books are more appealing these days than the rather dull SF he traded in (a more 'scientific' spin on Wyndham catastrophe):

penguin had such great covers

if anyone wants to vote a random book club assemblage of who-knows-what, be my guest

lol, I actually have this collection (both volumes) on my bookshelf. It has some good stuff in it.

lol, I actually have this collection (both volumes) on my bookshelf. It has some good stuff in it.

― o. nate, Tuesday, October 13, 2026 8:44 AM (thirty minutes ago)

well now that i know what's in it i would vote for it! i would've been going in blind on the anthology, so i didn't vote for it

Vaguely knew who Hoyle was although whilst I was a nipper I had the same bridge confusion as upthread at the beginning. Always figured he must not be very good and don't think i even saw any of his (their) books on any shelves in the US, so I succesfully avoided him. Don't think he even snuck into any anthologies I had access to.

Forgot what my current screenname was and surprised myself upon opening the thread.

Out of these I've read 2001, Stranger in a Strange Land and Ubik, so I guess if I was joining the science fiction club I'd get something I haven't read before so out of these probably "Nova" since I've enjoyed the other 2 Delany novels I've read (Dhalgren and Babel 17). If I had to pick my 3 for 1$ I'd also get the Bradbury and the Treasury of Science Fiction.

out of the ones I've read, Ubik is easily the best, did a reread of it not so long ago and it holds up incredibly well

Reminded that I just saw Southland Tales again over the weekend and it totally made sense to me to parse it as a PKD-inspired jam, especially since there were a few obvious references to Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

i guess once you know the "martian love secret" it's less interesting, i mean who wants to be david crosby