Author Archives: Keith West

We Need More Hillbillies Like the Hogbens

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hbc_posterThe Hogben Chronicles
Henry Kuttner
edited by Pierce Watters and F. Paul Wilson
introduction by Neil Gaiman
Borderlands Press
Signed and numbered limited edition, $50
Leatherbound lettered and traycased edition (signed) $100
Poster of the dust jacket $10 (shown left)

 

If you’re a fan of Henry Kuttner and you missed out on the Kickstarter for this one, all I can say is sucks to be you, ahem, excuse me, read ’em and weep I mean, that’s too bad.  You could have had this volume (minus the signatures) for a song.

The stories in The Hogben Chronicles were in all probability written in collaboration with Kuttner’s wife C. L. Moore. Two of them (“Exit the Professor” and “See You Later”) were published as by Lewis Padgett, the best-known of their pen names. The only thing I can find wrong with them is that there are only five. Continue reading →

Merry Christmas

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Astounding ChristmasEmsh ChristmasGalaxy Christmasgalaxy Christmas Emsh

 

Merry Christmas to all, whatever race you belong to or planet you hail from.  I thought I would provide a few examples of Christmas as seen through the covers of some vintage science fiction magazines.

The Astounding is the January 1955 issue, with a cover by Frank Kelly Freas.  John W. Campbell Jr. published a number of Christmas covers during his tenure as editor.

Ed Emshwiller, who often signed his work Emsh, was the artist for the image in the upper right as well as the Galaxy cover from 1953.  The artist for the December 1960 Galaxy was Ross Rosenberger.  I’m not familiar with his work.  Galaxy ran a whole series of Christmas covers featuring the four-armed Santa in the 1950s.

I really like these covers because, like many sf magazine covers from the 1950s, they have a sense of whimsy about them.  In many ways they show contemporary scenes in a science fiction settings, such as the aliens spying on Santa and Santa receiving the alien carolers.

One of the memories I have about Christmas while in middle school and high school was the science fiction paperbacks I received as Christmas presents, many of them anthologies containing stories from these magazines.  The Christmas breaks were when I had plenty of time on my hands with no homework and could get a lot of reading done.

Have a Merry Christmas, everyone.

Different Christmas posts are up at Adventures Fantastic, Dispatches From the Lone Star Front, and Gumshoes, Gats, and Gams.

The Solaris Book of New SF Rises Again

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solaris_rising_the_new_solaris_book_of_science-fiction_250x384Solaris Rising
Ian Whates, ed.
Solaris Books
mass market paperback $7.99
ebook $6.99 Kindle Nook

A number of years ago, Solaris Books started an original anthology series entitled The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction. The series was edited by George Mann and ran to three volumes. I loved all three. They each contained solid science fiction in a number of subgenres. One of the best things about them was that, since Solaris is a British company, they contained stories by a number of writers who aren’t as well known on this side of the pond. This allowed me to discover some new favorites.

I’m not sure why the original series was discontinued, but I was sad to see it go. Fortunately, it’s back. And it’s been back a while. Solaris Rising was published two years ago. I usually don’t read anthologies in a short period of time, tending to dip into them between novels or when I have a spare minute. (That’s something I’m trying to change.) Solaris has become the Go-To publisher for top-notch anthologies, themed or unthemed. There are several sitting on the shelf I’m going to try to read over the next couple of months, including Solaris Rising 2, Edge of Infinity, and Fearsome Journeys (this one’s fantasy). Continue reading →

Traveling the Time Streams of Fiction River

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FR-Timestreams-ebook-cover-e1375815894720Fiction River: Time Streams
WMG Publishing
Series Editors: Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Volume Editor: Dean Wesley Smith
ebook: $6.99
trade paper: $15.99

My two favorite subgenres in science fiction are space opera and hard science, but a (very) close third is time travel. There are just so many things you can do with time travel, the possibilities are almost endless.

I reviewed the first volume of Fiction River, Unnatural Worlds and interviewed Kris Rusch over at my other blogging gig on the Amazing Stories (TM) website. Time Streams is the third installment of this bimonthly publication, and it’s top notch. There’s not a bad story to be found among the 14 tales presented here.

Starting off the magazine is Sharon Joss with “Love in the Time of Dust and Venom” in which an elderly Japanese man with only months to live tries to find out what happens to the village in which he and his ancestors grew up. The village was made unihabitable in the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. “This Time I Return for Good” by Michael Robert Thomas is an epistolary adventure that unfolds with each letter to reveal what’s really going on. Scott William Carter takes us to something that resembles Ray Bradbury country when a man and his remaining son discover “The Elevator in the Corn Field”.

The terrorist in J. Steven York’s story meets his match when he encounters a man who gets his instruction from a “Radio Free Future”. In “Unstuck” by D. K. Holmberg, a man whose life is in a rut becomes unstuck in more ways than one in this bittersweet tale. Ray Vukcevich tells you what gets written in “Your Permanent Record”. Vukcevich is an author whose work has not always clicked with me, but I really liked this one.

Dean Wesley Smith gives us a dark tale of researching the past through time travel in “Waiting for the Coin to Drop”. Lee Allred’s “Nice Timestream Youse Got Here” was a delight, the story of a time cop that reads as though it was written by Damon Runyon, and just a great deal of fun. In Jeffrey A. Ballard’s “The Highlight of a Life” a regretful scientist gets what most people only wish for, a second chance.

Mike Resnick teams up with new writer Lou J. Berger to give us the story of a man who is essentially invisible and how he uses time travel to form “A Beautiful Friendship”. Michael A. Stackpole envisions the conflicts among a group of people who can travel through time in an attempt to “Fix” things to their liking.

“The Totem of Curtained Minds” is only Ken Hinkley’s third story, and I want to know one thing: where can I find his first two? This is a hardboiled tale of a prisoner who manages to pull off the ultimate escape and find rehabilitation in the process. It was my favorite in the book. A close second for favorite was Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s tale the economics of time travel, in the frightening “September at Wall and Broad”. Finally, Robert T. Jeshonek wraps up the volume wtih “Time, Expressed as an Entree” in which a creature that feeds on time discovers the passage of time is relative.

I liked the first volume of Fiction River very much, but I loved the third volume. (I’ve not read the second, How to Save the World, yet. Yet. If it’s anywhere near as good as the other two, it will be worth reading.) Editor Dean Wesley Smith has compiled an outstanding volume of time travel stories, no two alike. I highly recommend it.

Each volume has a theme and a different editor. The next volume, which should be out shortly, is entitled Christmas Ghosts and is edited by Kristine Grayson, the romance author persona of Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Look for a review of it at Adventures Fantastic in December or late November. Fiction River is available in print and electronic format by subscription ($99.99 print/$39.99 electronic) or single issue.  This is one of the best and most exciting publications in the field today.  Check out an issue and see why I say that.

What is Science Fiction?

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A couple of weeks ago, over at Amazing Stories (TM), Paul Cook stirred up a great deal of controversy when he took some well known authors to task for writing what he viewed as something other than science fiction.  The well-known included Gene Wolfe, Lois McMaster Bujold, and Sharon Lee & Steve MIller.  Of course there was a reaction, including this rebuttal at Amazing by Nina Munteneau; in other places this one and this one as well.  I’m sure there were people voicing their thoughts in parts of the interweb I don’t go into after dark.  (Or before dark, either.)

GatewayI’d already been thinking along these lines, and I’m ready to put my thoughts down in writing, if for no other reason than to get them out of my head.

I like cross-genre writing.  While none of you have seen any of them yet, much of the fiction I attempt to write is a blend of mystery and some other genre, with the mystery being the secondary genre.  In fact the second and third longest things I’ve ever written, and the two longest things I’ve actually completed, are a science fiction private eye story and a fantasy who-done-it.  You may see the latter soon.  Both are too short for traditional publishing and too long for the short fiction markets.

I also like my science fiction pure, like the high end product you can only buy on the schoolyards in the rich part of town.  Err…forget I said that.

Science fiction is one of those things that people can’t necessarily define, but htey know it when they see it.  Kind of like Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall’s definition of pornography.

Here is my definition:  Any story in which the science is so integral to the story that the story collapses without it.  That story can be set in the future, the past, or a time that never was or will be.  The story can be a mystery, a thriller, a western, or (gasp) a romance.  And of course, there’s always the scientific puzzle story.  Whether the science fiction is the main genre or the supporting genre really doesn’t matter as far as this definition is concerned.

Now I personally prefer my science fiction either fairly straight, or if I’m indulging in a mixed genre, on at least equal terms with the other genre.  I realize not everyone feels this way, and that’s fine.  If you won’t tell me what to read, I won’t tell you where to go.Kuttner Thunder in the Void

As a practicing scientist (some would say a scientist who hasn’t practiced enough), I personally prefer hard science and the scientific puzzle.  I also love space opera, military sf, and a good time travel story.  I’m a sucker for a rousing space adventure, especially one with well thought out aliens who are more than just caricatures of the things that used to appear on the covers of second rate pulps.

If an author is a good enough writer to put some other genre in the mix, then great!  I suspect some of Mr. Cook’s objections grew out of finding someone else’s genre mixed in his science fiction.  He’s certainly entitled to his opinion, and I can understand where he’s coming from, even if I don’t completely feel the same way.

 

RIP, Frederik Pohl (November 26, 1919 – September 2, 2013)

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Fred PohlOne of the last living links to the early days of science fiction has died. Frederik Pohl entered the hospital yesterday morning with respiratory distress and passed away yesterday afternoon.

Pohl started out as a fan and moved to become an editor, agent, and writer. His first editing job came when he was just 19, taking the helm at Astonishing Stories and Super Science Stories. He was also a founding member of the Futurians.  He served in World War II, and after the war briefly became a literary agent.

He collaborated with a number of writers throughout the decades, including Lester Del Rey (Preferred Risk as by Edson McCann), Jack Williamson (The Starchild Trilogy, Farthest Star, Wall Around a Star, Land’s End, The Singers of Time) and Arthur C. Clarke (The Last Theorem).  His most famous and successful collaborations were with fellow Futurian C. M. Kornbluth, beginning with the classic The Space Merchants, and including Search the Sky, Gladiator-at-Law and Wolfbane as well as a number of short stories.

Pohl edited Ballantine Books’ Star Science Fiction series in the 1950s, introducing the  concept of the original (nonthemed) anthology.  In the 1960s, he was the editor of Galaxy and If magazines.  During the 70s he was an editor at Bantam.Gateway

Like his collaborator Jack Williamson, Pohl continued to write novels almost until his death.  His most recent was All the Lives He Led (2011).  His Heechee saga is one of the landmarks of modern science fiction, especially the first volume, Gateway.

I had the privilege of meeting Pohl once in the summer of 1991, when the Science Fiction Research Association held a meeting on the campus of the University of North Texas.  Among those in attendance were Pohl, Jack Williamson, L. Sprague de Camp, and James Gunn.  Pohl was very friendly and chatted with me for a bit about what he was working on.  The books he signed for me at that event are among the most prized in my library.

I can’t help but feel like an era has ended.  I grew up reading science fiction by people like Pohl.  In fact, one of the first, if not the first, book I ever bought from the Science Fiction Book Club was The Best of Frederik Pohl.  I bought almost every SFBC edition of his work until I graduated high school.

platinum pohlHe will be missed.  As cliched as it sounds, we shall not see his like again.  Many of his novels are still in print, and his best short fiction was collected a few years ago in Platinum Pohl, which contains a number of stories written after The Best of Frederik Pohl was published.

Opening Salvo 2.0

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Hello. Welcome to the new home of Futures Past and Present. I’m glad you’re here, whether you’ve followed me over from the old site or have found me since the move.

This is my science fiction blog. I started reading science fiction long before I began reading fantasy. Adventures Fantastic was started as a reaction to Leo Grin shutting down The Cimmerian. I couldn’t find a blog that dealt with the topics covered there. While I hold no illusions that my scribblings have ever reached the level of the content found there, I wanted to deal with many of those same topics.

The result was that I didn’t read as much science fiction, although I still read some. Reviewing science fiction at Adventures Fantastic was somewhat problematic, since it was outside the scope of the blog. While you can argue science fiction is a subset of fantasy, in the minds of many people, they are two distinct (albeit related) forms of literature. Since I want the people who follow my blog to know what they’re getting, I decided to spin off a science fiction blog, and Futures Past and Present was born.

In other words, I wanted to establish distinct brands, one for fantasy and historic adventure and one for science fiction. I’ve expanded that with the addition of the two new blogs, Gumshoes, Gats, and Gams for detective fiction and Dispatches from the Lone Star Front for Texas and Southwest history.

For this blog, I’m going to focus on several areas of the science fiction field. Those are classic works from previous eras, space opera, hard science, and short fiction of all varieties. At least as far as reviews are concerned. I’ll stray into other subgenres of the field, especially if a publisher sends me a review copy that looks interesting. There will also be the occasional rant commentary, news item, obituary, or tribute.

One of the things I’ve got planned is to read through all the Heinlein juveniles in order of publication. I read most of them in middle school or high school, but not all of them. It’ll be interesting to view them through the eyes of a middle aged adult rather than a teenager. I’ll try to cover one every month or every other month.

Another project is to do a reread (mostly) of Asimov’s Great SF series that was published in the 80s.  I’ve not read the last couple of volumes, but I’d like to take another look at them.  There are a number of gems contained within their pages.  They’ve been out of print for a while, but they’re worth remembering.

Big Changes Coming to the Blog

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This is the same post I ran yesterday at Adventures Fantastic.  The readership of the two blogs overlaps quite a bit but isn’t identical.  I’m reposting the announcement here in case anyone missed it.  If you saw it yesterday, it’s the same thing, verbatim.

Traffic the last few days has been up quite a bit, so when traffic today was down, I wasn’t too worried.  I’ve noticed that trend before, a drop in hits on the day following higher than usual traffic, even thought the traffic drop today is greater than usual.

Then I noticed something in my inbox.  It was from Google.  It had come in overnight, and at first glance I thought it was spam that had slipped through the filter.  Instead it was accusing this blog of being spam.  The second line read, in part, “As a result of your site having pure spam, Google has applied a manual spam action…”

Excuse me!?!

I’m not sure what is going on here.  Google’s Webmaster Guidelines say that if I post a lot of content from other sites with links back to those site but don’t provide original content, then the site is a spam site.  Reviews of products with links back to other sites are not considered spam sites by the terms of the Guidelines.

Yes, I include links to a book’s page, publisher’s page, author’s page, and vendors (Amazon, etc.) as well as a copy of the cover.  I do this as a courtesy to anyone who might be interested in the book.  But there will always be plenty of original content.  I also post rants and opinion pieces, news items if I hear about them soon enough, trip reports, and the occasional obituary or tribute.  And while I am an Amazon associate, as duly noted at the bottom of the page, I’ve never made enough money ($10, cummulative) from it for Amazon to pay me.  In other words, to the best of my knowledge I am not nor ever have been in violation of Google’s Guidelines.

I’m not sure how this blog got flagged as a “pure spam” since there are (at a guess) hundreds, if not thousands, of book related blogs out there that do essentially what I do in pretty much the same way I do it.  Futures Past and Present wasn’t included in the spam classification.  Just Adventures Fantastic.

So either something at Google flagged as spam or else someone reported this site as spam.  Frankly, I can’t imagine who would do that or why.  I have intentionally stayed out of most of the controversies in the field at the moment.  I don’t usually write totally negative reviews.  My intention isn’t to trash someone’s work.  If I absolutely hate something, I usually don’t review it, assuming I even finish reading it in the first place.  In my post at Amazing Stories this week, I did write a pretty negative review.  (Okay, yeah, I pretty much trashed the book, but it was a biography, not fiction, and the standards of quality are different.)

I submitted a reconsideration request.  The response I got was that it would take a few weeks before they changed anything, if they did.

I’m not going to wait that long.  I bought a domain name earlier this year with the intention of self publishing some of my own work.  Being a creature of inertia, I’ve not made the time to get up the learning curve on that yet, I’m about to.  I’ll still review the items I listed a few posts ago, but August may be pretty sparse. I’m going to be switching blogging platforms and transferring everything from here and Futures over there as well as getting some things up for sale.  If anyone has some suggestions about the best way to go about that, I’d appreciate hearing them.  I want to move all 500+ blog posts over.  I’m familiar with WordPress, but I don’t know if it will let me do that.

Once the site is up, I’ll post a notice here.  At that point everything will move over to the new site.

Happy Birthday, James Gunn

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James Edwin Gunn was born this day in 1923.  He’s still with us, and I  hope he will be for many years to come.  His best known works include The Listeners (1972), Starbridge (with Jack Williamson, 1955), The Immortals (1964), and Kampus (1977).  He edited the six volume historical anthology, The Road to Science Fiction (1977, 1979, 1982, 1998). This is one of the best overviews of the field.  Nearly every story in it is a classic.  Gunn was a Professor of English at the University of Kansas and is currently Professor Emeritus and director of The Center for the Study of Science Fiction.  This is the organization that gives out the John W. Campbell Memorial Award (which is not the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer) and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award at the Campbell Conference.  He was awarded a Grand Master Nebula by the Science Fiction Writers of America in 2007.

I only met him once, in 1989 if memory serves.  There was some sort of gathering at the UNT in which a number of science fiction authors were present.  I think it was a meeting of the Science Fiction Research Association.  Among the other attendees were Fred Pohl, Jack Williamson, L. Sprague and Catherine de Camp, James Frenkel, and Brad Denton.  I remember Gunn as being a quiet and pleasant man.

Happy birthday, Dr. Gunn, and many happy returns!

Essential Space Opera

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I’ve been in the mood for space opera lately.  And I have some in mind that I’m planning on reading.  Just for grins, and because in spite of my best efforts I can’t read everything, I thought I would see what some of you think are the essential works of space opera.  So, what do you think are the essential works of space opera that every well-read fan should be familiar with?