best story in the penguin science fiction omnibus, 1973

Think I know what you mean but please elaborate

i wrote a fifteen hundred word thing on tumblr about that, god help me. basically that there's a lot of stories here that are based on 'WHAT IF' questions that are actually really dull to any actual human being: also a tendency to fall back on an attempt at a kind of gosh-how-clever-we-are irony which indicates an effort to feel smarter than other people rather than actual intelligence, i think

Wanta link it pls?

Yes. Also, is this shortcoming limited to the stories in this anthology?

http://timocraticyouth.tumblr.com/post/5707708432/some-uses-of-science-fiction-i-the-slippery-hwatiff

para 2 and the footnotes to it being the germane bit, ha ha i suck

errrrrr i don't think it is limited to the stories in this anthology, but i think the selection here really flags up that aldiss genuinely enjoyed a lot of 50s sf in this mode. (the ballard story he chooses, which is the last piece in the first anthology of the three this is combining, is in one light a new wave exaggeration of this, a deliberate hyperbolic version. for that reason it works a lot better at the end of the first volume rather than leading straight into the dickson story, which is another kind of pedestrian example)

hardcorefornerds liked this

still trying to work out if that guy is an ilxor

Been so long since I've read some of these stories (maybe even the whole book), but I def recognize what you're talking about. "Mordant" could always be welcome when not just another auto-ingredient (or not come across that way, even if it is), like the orginal Mad Magazine, which guaranteed "Tales In A Jugular Vein." Good points, thx. About to order the New Worlds anthology rec on other SF thread.

when I revisit this stuff as a grownup - stuff that was so crucially important to me in junior high - it reads to me like it's not actually for grownups. like it's kinda YA fiction whose authorial voice grants its young audience the right to think of themselves as adults. because a lot of it read grown-up as fuck when I was a kid, and I felt that sort of compensatory geek-superiority in reading stuff that was so clearly meant for adults...but I feel now like its intended audience is actually the adults that the young people reading it imagine they will become.

not that it's just kids' stuff - not Ballard obviously, for example. but I feel like in revisiting this stuff as an adult, you're likely to learn about needs you had for self-identification as a teen. that's true for me, anyway.

i think revisiting most anything you felt intensely about as a teen is going to teach you a lot about needs you had for self-identification as a teen! -- but, yeah, it's doubly true for a lot of this stuff.

i don't know to what extent the process you describe was the authors' goal, though - i think it might be _one_ goal of _some_ of the authors - i don't know where it stops being that and is more a matter of how it functions in the world

tho i can't remember - and mayn't have read - all of these, the 2 obvious standouts for me are "Poor Little Warrior!" and "Common Time". choosing between them is gonna be totally dependent on my mood on any given day.

Enjoying the initial turn this thread had taken. Would like to contribute but will have to overcome the constraints of typing into the Zing window as well as the internal struggle of the conflicting priorities the Three Laws of Posterbotics.

Feel like for all its supposed clunkiness sometimes I prefer the pulpiness of the Golden Age stuff and think that sf grew up the same way rock grew up from rock and roll when they added the fancy chords and stopped singing about drive-ins and cheeseburgers

Which of course is not quite fair, I think some stuff is pretty well written, but on the other hand it seems as if everyone has heard of Sturgeon's Law but doesn't want to admit that it applies to them- "Pick me, Theodore!"

In any case, time for a new screenname, which may tell you who I voted for

Speaking of Three Laws, I just downloaded the free sample of the beginning of John Sladek's Tik-Tok. I read the whole thing and I enjoyed it-"Cool, first person robot story!" but how can I be sure? It's a Gollancz, but they publish a lot of stuff- I probably don't want to read all that Bob Shaw stuff. John Clute might have liked it, but he likes everything. I seem to remember Tom Disch was down with him, he's a little discriminating, I guess that's a good sign. But there's still a good chance I'll get a little further and say "Ugh, a story told from the point of view of a robot, why did I ever think I would ever want to read that?"

I did get burned recently by a Clute recommendation:"Cool, zombie messiah story!" Which turned out to be pretty good whilst the zombie was growing up, but took a wrong turn when he found the other zombies and got involved with zombie politics, which seemed to be based on human behavior as observed at a scifi convention- the clomping zombie foot of nerdbuilding

re appealing to fanboys etc: In the 80s, Carol Serling instigated or at least authorized Twilight Zone Magazine, which eventually announced its marketing research had discovered that its readership consisted predominately (or to a significant extent) of white-collar women in their 20s and 30s, maybe beyond. Pretty startling at the time, until I realized that even the 80s-fasionable horror-tinged stuff (even splattery, at times) had the human-interest thing lurking nearby, as in Thomp's comments about the kind of stories represented in this anthology (like, in TZM, a morbid story about hospital hijinks was really about the narrator's father's mortal illness, in a non-tearjerking, empathy-encouraging realistic way) Overall, Twilight Zone Magazine (like the show, given network and sponsors' constraints) seemed meant to have appeal to dif ages, genders, etc., and the stories from whatever source and era that still appeal to me, do so via diff self-images: diff ages yadda-yadda. I don't remember how well that particular magazine succeeded; I do remember getting totally hooked on and fairly often frustrated by Asimov's Magazine, though it always had some good stuff. Haven't seen an issue in years.

OK, so far, so good, in the Sheckley satiric vein. And he was a New Worlds author, so maybe he's in that comp don was just about to buy.

Have enjoyed reading everybody's posts on this thread so far.

Back to the anthology under discussion- there used to be a few copies at the NYPL, but they've all gone missing- boosted by ilxors? The eBook is not available in US, wonder if it's worth ordering an old copy- oh look there is a Tom Godwin story in there!

What's that yr reading in Sheckley vein?

Poll option 2
Lot • Ward Moore

What's that yr reading in Sheckley vein?

ha i am pretty terrible at keeping track of names but: i've read 'bring the jubilee', and i like it way more than 'lot', which i think is bloody awful. i think the formula for silver age sf stories that i hate is something like 'what IF' plus 'do you SEE'

bring the jubilee is a yarn rather than any kind of motivated attempt at doing anything with the civil war, really - it's about a guy who joins a utopic community that are working on time travel - the game of the plot is how the course of history gets changed. but the central what-if doesn't really do much. - i mean, it's a what-if to which a fair response would be a so-what, which it shouldn't be, considering.

i am going to find it difficult to vote for anything but 'build up logically', i fear

The only good alternate Civil War I've read is in Year's Best SF 15: "This Peaceable Land; or, The Unbearable Vision of Harriet Beecher Stowe," by Robert Charles Wilson. It's based something I'd been thinking about too, re not a choice between having or not having conflict, which had been building up long before war was officially declared. And you couldn't just say, go and down't let the Mason-Dixon Line hit you in the ass on the way out. Because the Confederacy wouldn't be going anywhere geographically, except maybe expanding out West, they did have designs on extending slavery to the Territories way before secession. So, this story zooms in on a situation involving the effects of "peace" on particular characters, black and white. Plenty of action, but the main impact is emotional, and succinctly conveyed.

"country of the kind" gets my vote

'WHAT IF' questions that are actually really dull to any actual human being:

This seems a bit harsh (or I am not an actual human being). Honestly the 'what if' question seems like a pretty central part of sf to me - it's not like I'm actually specifically interested in the answer to what would happen on a planet where night falls only once every 10,000 years, it's just that the question is a way of getting an alternate world scenario off the ground. Admittedly the execution & characterisation can be a problem, especially in the short form, and Aerosmith is on point about the YA aspect, there's even a juvenile feel to a lot of them. The Cage for example is a decent enough scenario but the conclusion is just not profound enough to be presented in such a po-faced fashion - it probably would have worked better as a punchline to a comic tale. And of course I hate the even greater pseudo-profundities of all the religious bobbins (even An Alien Agony, which is great for an atheist teen, is pretty tired now).

Anyway my top five would be Build up Logically, Common Time, The End of Summer (still retains a YA air of mystery even now), The Store of Worlds (you gotta love the rug-sweep at the end), and the clear winner Track 12. I don't see it as a what-if (what if - what? we developed microsonics?) but it's a perfectly engineered little revenge fantasy, love the conceit of the real and metaphorical drownings, and it's just wonderfully written.

"Common Time" is sorta full of religious pseudo-profundity! it's just great enough to carry it

i dunno about religious, even with a small 'r', but there is a 'more things in heaven and earth' aspect to it, sure. it's the ones that directly riff on the genesis creation myth that really annoy.

not sure i haven't gone off it after discovering damon knight's symbolic reading tho:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Time

"Sole Solution" et al? i dunno, you cd as easily say that it's deconstructing Genesis or playing with Hindu mythology - v. big with the new wave cats - but i get yr drift. my problem with something like that is more that it's a punchline rather than a story.

re: ballard: i more meant that 'track 12' is something like a grown-up version of the attitude indulged in in 'lot' or 'the cage', somehow.

re: nightfall: i actually like that one! my prime example of the occasional pointlessness would be 'grandpa'. which has absolutely all the appurtenances of a young adult story - an adolescent protagonist notices something the authority figures don't, and carries the day via pluck and moxie after things go wrong. BUT that stuff seems to be totally incorporated on grounds of 'okay, i need a STORY to fit my great idea about symbiotic alien lilypads'

yeah it's true i never did actually give one shit about the made up science in that one, probably never bothered to struggle through it more than once.

The whole YA thing is painful to contemplate. Seem to remember thinking uber-geeky stuff like "these people around me are adapted to their current situation but I'm adapting to THE FUTURE!" Which thoughts of course I later disowned, but maybe you can't disown them, the same way Clint Eastwood couldn't disown being a gunslinger in Unforgiven

i dunno, to be aware that you've thought like that and to dismiss it as you grow older is maybe the only way to not carry those ideas around with you subconsciously

I thought the best way to cope was to be a standup comedian like Eddie Izzard, say, and turn those thoughts into $$$

Should have said "comedy gold"

or an SF writer

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

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

lol didn't vote

i was kind of hoping for no votes at all. i know i didn't

Wow. This thing seems to be readily available in the UK, but in the US they are asking R. A. Lafferty/Macmillan Best of Soviet Science Fiction prices for used copies. Also, best thread ever.

Feel like for all its supposed clunkiness sometimes I prefer the pulpiness of the Golden Age stuff and think that sf grew up the same way rock grew up from rock and roll when they added the fancy chords and stopped singing about drive-ins and cheeseburgers

― MIke Love Battery (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, April 9, 2012 2:52 AM (1 year ago)

i kinda agree with this. i have way more time for the clunky endearing silliness of golden age SF than i do for the equally dated but less likable new wave stuff, most of the time.

Enjoyed the James H Schmitz story on my commute and would read more from him.

Also:

Feel like for all its supposed clunkiness sometimes I prefer the pulpiness of the Golden Age stuff and think that sf grew up the same way rock grew up from rock and roll when they added the fancy chords and stopped singing about drive-ins and cheeseburgers

― MIke Love Battery (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, April 9, 2012 2:52 AM (1 year ago)

i kinda agree with this. i have way more time for the clunky endearing silliness of golden age SF than i do for the equally dated but less likable new wave stuff, most of the time.

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Monday, September 30, 2013 9:01 PM (1 month ago)

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/may/14/science-fiction-authors-choice

John Clute
City by Clifford D Simak (1952)

We know better now, of course. But they still entrance us, the old page-turners from the glory days of American SF, half a century or so ago, when the world was full of futures we were never going to have.

Guess the example I really wanted was one I've posted before, from M. John Harrison

I found the following scrawled in the bedside notebook when I woke up this morning. “The mad poets, paranoid logicians & ceaseless illiterate romantics of science fiction’s Golden Hour, when everything seemed–& was–possible under the light of the pulp sunset.” The writing looks like mine but the content is clearly a rogue transmission from the Curiosity rover. Let’s get that code sorted, people, before the tin can says too much.

Well, Clute contributed reviews and fiction to New Worlds under Moorcock's editorship, so he's def Brit New Wave-aligned, at least

Yeah, thanks. Thought that was the case, but his reach is so, um, encyclopedic, that it was hard to be sure.

"The Liberation of Earth" was robbed.

But Ican't be bothereddon't have time to write a coherent postdon't take my word for it, here is Samuel R. Delany expert, Matthew Chesney on the subject http://mumpsimus.blogspot.com/2004/08/liberation-of-earth-and-other-stories.html?m=1

Thanks for continuing to turn up good essays and reviews, James. Also rec. for the Tennclined: Rule Golden, that Damon Knight collection of novellas I keep bringing up.

You are talking about the one that contains Rule Golden, The Dying Man and Natural State?

You got it. I described the contents a couple times on the Speculative etc thread, but Amazon reviewer Paul Camp gives you the gist up front:
Damon Knight's _Rule Golden and Other Stories (1979) is a collection of five excellent novellas from the fifties that were dealing with "the great unsolved problem of politics: how to keep the bastards from grinding you down" (1). The stories are: "Rule Golden" (_Science Fiction Adventures_, 1954), "Natural State" (_Galaxy_, 1953), "Double Meaning" (_Startling_, 1952), "The Earth Quarter" (_If_, 1955), and "The Dying Man" (aka "Dio," _Infinity_, 1957). Two of the novellas were expanded into novels. "Double Meaning" was expanded as _The Rithian Terror_ (1965), and "The Earth Quarter" was expanded as __The Sun Saboteurs_ (1961). I believe that the original novellas were a bit more tightly written than their expanded versions, though there was little difference in their plots.

The writing gets more and more imaginative--not just barely disguised editorials, like some stuff from the 50s--but Knight's intro confirms that he did mean these stories as word to Campbell's crew and the Cold War establishment too (incl. its increasing interest in science and technology).

OK, thanks. Reason this was confusing to me was there seem to three variant forms of this:

1) an ebook with cheap-looking cover art that is only Rule Golden.
2) An out-of-print collection called Three Novels featuring "Rule Golden" and the other two I mentioned.
3) The book with all five novels or novellas that you have mentioned which is out-of-print in the US but available as a UK ebook.