I’ve built up a new stash of recently acquired books to add to my ever-growing “To Read” pile. If I can acquire a couple of extra lifetimes, I might even get to read a few of them.
First up is a large hardback anthology, Machines That Think, edited by Isaac Asimov, Patricia S. Warwick and Martin [...]
One of the things that I enjoyed most about the old SF magazines was the letters sent in by readers. Have a look through any magazines from (say) the 1940s or 1950s and you’ll find missives from fans of all descriptions, including some names that would later become big-name authors in the SF field. But [...]
I buy a lot of books. And I do mean a lot of books. Most of them second hand (”used” books for our transatlantic pals). I think it’s a tragedy that so many classic SF novels and short story collections/anthologies are out of print. But it does make for a booming trade in “used” books.
This [...]
Someone once said (I think it was Isaac Asimov) that the Golden Age of SF was when we were twelve years old (as opposed to the standard answer of “the few years after John W. Campbell took over at Astounding magazine”). And y’know something, he was spot on.
I remember those heady, distant days back when [...]
Way back in the day there was no such thing as a separate science fiction “genre”. If you go back far enough (sometime in the 19th Century), there were no separate genres at all, just a single, all-encompassing “literature” umbrella.
Then, with the spread of literacy in the “Western World” and the advent of technology for [...]
The books keep on rolling in (mostly SF), faster than I can keep up with reading them. I sometimes wonder if I’ll ever get to read even half of them (I’ll be lucky) before I die of old age. But it won’t be for lack of trying on my part.
Lessee - over the past two [...]
Another quiet night in, and I’ve been doing a bit of reading. It started off with a bit of history - a couple of chapters of The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes - and then, as a direct result, I took a notion to read two classic alternate histories, He Walked Around [...]
Once upon a time, back in the “Good Old Days”, short fiction was King in SF. It was the bedrock upon which the genre was built, and was the impetus that powered, well… pretty much everything in SF. Most of the early paperback SF classics of the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s, the Foundations and Dunes, [...]
Now Reading - Galactic North by Alastair Reynolds
Just bought a very nice collection of SF stories by leading British/Welsh “hard” SF author Alastair Reynolds. A signed 1st edition hardcover of Galactic North, a collection of stories set in his Revelation Space universe. I’ve been a fan of Alastair’s SF going right back to “Spirey and [...]
The first of my Favourite SF Authors postings, and who better than the author who started it all for me, the man dubbed the “father of science fiction”, H.G. Wells.
The first time I saw George Pal film adaption of The Time Machine on television was probably the point in my life where I can definitely [...]
