Order [book in series=yearoffirstbook.book# (eg 2014.01), stand-alone or one-author collection=3333.pubyear, multi-author anthology=5555.pubyear, SFM/MM=5000, interview=1111]: 1979

Electric Forest: Interesting, but not one of Lee’s best

Electric Forest by Tanith Lee

Magdala Cled is an unattractive disabled woman living in a world where genetic engineering has ensured that everyone around her is beautiful and healthy. She’s a genetic misfit who has no family, friends, or social support of any type.

When a handsome rich man offers to make her beautiful, she goes along with his plan. What Magda doesn’t know is that her new body is the clone of a scientist/entrepreneur that her benefactor is competing with and for whom he has some evil plans.

I greatly admire Tanith Lee’s style,

Roadmarks: The Road must roll

Roadmarks by Roger Zelazny

Roadmarks (1979) is a fragmented, experimental type of novel, tied together by a Road (with a capital R) that leads to all times and places and alternative timestreams in our world’s history, for those who know how to navigate it (a certain German named Adolph briefly pops up in an early chapter, eternally searching for the timeline where he won). The other constant is the character of Red Dorakeen, who has been traveling the Road for years, trying to find something, or somewhen. Sometimes he’s in company with Leila,

Transfigurations: A classic

Transfigurations by Michael Bishop

Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris is one of science fiction’s landmark works. A philosophical and psychological study of a man confronting the inherently unknowable, the imagery, events, and overall experience of the novel lodge in the mind, begging questions for which one uncomfortably has no immediate answer. So strange and haunting, a person can only think of the main character’s experiences as the most figurative representation of ‘alien’ possible.

Bringing the idea closer to home corporeally but no less existentially is Michael Bishop’s “Death and Designation among the Asadi” (1973).

October 19th, 2017. Jesse Hudson´s rating: 4 | Michael Bishop | SFF Reviews | no comments |

The Devils of D-Day: Extraordinary concept; disappointingly delivered

The Devils of D-Day by Graham Masterton

All the devils and demons that appear in this book are legendary creatures of hell, and there is substantial recorded evidence for their existence. For that reason, it is probably inadvisable to attempt to conjure up any of them by repeating out loud the summons used in the text, which are also genuine. I would like to point out that the Pentagon and the British Ministry of Defense strenuously deny the events described here, but I leave it to you to draw your own conclusions.

The Unlimited Dream Company: More art than story

The Unlimited Dream Company by J.G. Ballard

Looking at the spread of colors, shapes, and lines smeared across the canvas that is J.G. Ballard’s 1979 The Unlimited Dream Company, it’s easy to get lost in the details, the view to the whole submerged. Superficially disorienting to say the least, the narrative packs a bewildering visual punch while beneath the surface lurk the powers of nature, myth, and beast — the book is certainly art more than story. Surreal is only the beginning of the description.

Juniper Time: A 1970s “problem story” novel with an iconic feminist protagonist

Juniper Time by Kate Wilhelm

Juniper Time, by Kate Wilhelm, was published in 1979, her first novel after her Hugo-Award winning book Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang. Once again, Wilhelm was interested in ecological collapse. This time, the disaster is a growing drought and the desertification of large parts of world, specifically the US, throwing the country into economic depression and political chaos. Against this backdrop, two people who share a common past struggle to change the present,

Jem: A cynical speculation about humanity’s future

Jem by Frederik Pohl

Like Man Plus (1976) and Gateway (1977), books which Frederik Pohl a number of awards, Jem (1979) is another book from this highly successful period in Pohl’s career. It was nominated for both the Hugo and Nebula awards but didn’t win. It did win a National Book Award.

Jem is set in the near future (as seen from the late 1970s). The world is divided in three large blocs of nations: the food-exporting nations,

April 7th, 2016. Rob Weber | Frederik Pohl | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |

Kindred: A complex exploration of the slave/slaver relationship

Kindred by Octavia Butler

Kindred (1979) is Octavia Butler’s earliest stand-alone novel, and though it features time travel, it’s not really science fiction or fantasy. It’s an exploration of American slavery and its painful legacy from the eyes of a contemporary (well, circa 1976) young black woman named Dana. So don’t expect to learn why she keeps being pulled back in time to a pre-Civil War slave plantation in Maryland every time her ancestor, a white slave owner named Rufus Weylin, finds his life in danger.

The Bloody Chamber: A darkly seductive collection of not-so-traditional tales

The Bloody Chamber: And Other Stories by Angela Carter

Angela Carter’s style is rich and dense. Her short stories are the most sumptuous of literary feasts. In The Bloody Chamber Carter reworks a number of fairy stories and folk tales, from “Little Red Riding Hood” and “Beauty and the Beast” to “Puss-in-Boots”. But Carter never intended to do “versions”. She created brand new stories using the basic premise of the originals as her starting point. In her formidable hands the familiar elements of the tales are moulded into an altogether different beast.

The Best Short Stories of J.G. Ballard: A broad spectrum of Ballard’s capabilities

The Best Short Stories of J.G. Ballard by J.G. Ballard

The Best Short Stories of J.G. Ballard (1979) was published in 1977 in the UK and 1978 in the US. It contains a few stories from J.G. Ballard’s earlier, more conventional SF phase in the late 1950s, his most productive and lyrical phase in the early and mid 1960s, and a small sampling of his experimental ‘condensed novel’ phase of the late 1960s/early 1970s. The stories are taken from these collections: The Voices of Time (1962),

Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

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