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'I was reproaching Bob Tucker last night for inventing the term "space opera." I told him there had been only one true space opera, and that was a Swedish opera, Aniara. That's the only opera that's about space.' (Edmond "World Wrecker" Hamilton in a 1976 interview with Tangent conducted at Minicon 11.)

So far I find I disagree with Bleiler's judgments as much as I agree with them, which isn't all that surprising and not all that interesting as a general observation. People always disagree in their judgments on literature. The biggest disagreement I've had with him so far is his assessment of Murray Leinster's early SF, which he doesn't think much ( Read more... )

Darkness. The black silence of the tomb. He strained his ears, but even the supersonic torture of the drive was slipping away, receding beyond reach. Blue witch-lights flared from every metal surface in the ship, and then it began: the subtle slide and wrench and twist that took each separate atom in a man's body and moved it in a new direction ( Read more... )

So I'm working my way through Leigh Brackett's novels. I probably should have started with her first novel, a mystery called No Good from a Corpse (1944), but I read it not too long ago and didn't think enough of it to want to read it again. So far I've read Nemesis from Terra (aka The Shadow over Mars, 1944), The Starmen of Llyrdis (aka The ( Read more... )