In general, I tend to frown upon literature in which the language gets in the way of the story.  Some writers seem to be so wrapped up in using the language in creative and unfortunate ways that they often forget that words are the tool, a means not the end.  Of course, once every generation, there is an exception to this rule, but Sturgeon's Law ( Read more... )

Here's a quick excercise for you.  Go to Amazon and look up two novels:  Dune by Frank Herbert, and The Snow Queen by Joan D. Vinge.  I'll save you the trouble: you can get any edition you want of the first, but the second seems to be out of print (it isn't, but there are no "regular" editions of the book).

Obvious, right?  Dune is one of the ( Read more... )

Subway riding over the past three weeks (the first time in years and years that I've commuted to work on some version of a sardine-can on wheels) allowed me to catch up on my reading.  I've already mentioned the horrid Help antho, but there was also some good news.  I read through Jack Williamson's The Humanoids, one of the Masterpieces of Science ( Read more... )

As most of the loyal readers of this blog are aware, the new wave revolution of the sixties is not my favorite era of science fiction literature.  It's not so much that I dislike reading hyper-literary work as it is the fact that when I read science fiction, I prefer for it to be action or tech oriented and to make me think about the concepts, not ( Read more... )

When I signed up to receive Easton Press' Masterpieces of Science Fiction series, I did so for many reasons.  The first is that I could just relax and other people would choose classic works of SF for me to read, and I would get them about once a month.  The second was that these beautiful editions not only look great, they also seem like they'll ( Read more... )

I'll be honest.  I always thought that Anne McCaffrey's Pern books were a fantasy series.  After all, the lurid dragons on the cover of the paperbacks that poulated the bookstores of my youth made it clear that there were dragons there, and in large numbers.  And there were people on the dragons.  That spells fantasy, for sure.

But then I subscribed ( Read more... )