No. 23 – 2014 January – David Weber, Military SF, and Neutral Combatants
J. Jay Jones surveys the history of David Weber’s Honor Harrington universe and then offers up some second-hand critiques.
No. 22 – 2013 October – Elizabeth Moon, Military Science Fiction, and Female Leads
If you like military science fiction, raise the alarm, beat your drum to send all hands to general quarters, and light up your sensors for deep scan. Ms. Moon has several series you won’t want to miss.
Special Report: Science Fiction Publishing and Art in Italy
This Amazing Stories special report interviews several science fiction artist working at Edizioni Della Vigna (Vineyard Publishing). Included are responses to questions from Alessandro Bani, Alexa Cesaroni, and Guiseppe Festino. It’s richly sprinkled with dozens of images that will simply AMAZE you.
No. 20 – Philip K Dick – “Where’s My Head?”
Angst is a modern condition that few of us can escape. How many people, I wonder, wake up each day and ask themselves: “How did I get into this situation? How can I fix my life? What can I do to straighten out my life?” Philip K Dick had other questions: “Am I mad? Why […]
No. 19 – James Benjamin Blish, Cities in Flight, and Technical Exposition.
No. 19 – 2013 June – James Benjamin Blish, Cities in Flight, and Technical Exposition. James Benjamin Blish may not be as widely known as he ought to be, not when you consider the number of Star Trek novelizations he produced. There are a few of Star Trek’s TOS episodes he didn’t adapt into novels: […]
No. 18 – C.J. Cherryh, The Faded Sun, and a World Building Ethos.
No. 18 – 2013Jun02 – C.J. Cherryh, The Faded Sun, and a World Building Ethos. The next time you look into the night sky, try finding the asteroid, 77185 Cherryh. Admittedly, it’s not an easy task. But it’s up there and named after Carolyn Janice Cherry, aka C.J. Cherryh. The discoverers believed Cherryh had “… […]
No. 17 – Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, and Book Burning.
No. 17 – 2013May26 – Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, and Book Burning. Ray Bradbury would have you believe that he only wrote a single science fiction story. The rest, he claims, are actually fantasy yarns. That story was the first book of his that I ever read. It was an assignment for a high school […]
No. 16 – Alice Bradley Sheldon, The Screwfly Solution, and the Secret Life of a CIA Operative.
No. 16 – 2013 May12 – Alice Bradley Sheldon, The Screwfly Solution, and the Secret Life of a CIA Operative. It took a long time before the truth about Alice came out. In 1921-22, Alice, as Alice Bradley, traveled in central Africa with a pith helmet on her head and mingled with the elephant herds with […]
No.15 – Arthur Charles Clarke, A Space Odyssey, and Childhood’s End
No. 15– 2013May05– Arthur Charles Clarke, A Space Odyssey, and Childhood’s End I met Arthur Charles Clarke once when he spoke at my university. He was ebullient and seemed to relish the attention from young academics seduced by the promise of technology. Occasionally, his face would cloud over when a particularly inept gushing of […]
No. 14 Marion Zimmer Bradley, Darkover, and the Sexual Identity of Telepaths.
Bradley made her first sale as an adjunct to an amateur fiction contest in Amazing Stories in 1949 with the short story “Outpost“, which was published in Amazing Stories Vol. 23, No. 12, the December 1949 issue. Bradley has had a long association with lesbian and gender issues. Her first professional short story was published […]
No. 13 – The Number Thirteen, Black Magic, Mysticism, Swordplay and Sorcery
Number 13: a 13th Amazing Stories post. I interrupt my regularly scheduled posts, in my ongoing series of discussing writers of classic science fiction (and the inner meanings therein), to consider the number 13 (and its inner meanings therein). A full quarter of the year has passed and it seems some kind of celebratory diversion […]
No. 12 Alfred Elgin van Vogt, Weapons Masters, and The Big Three.
$1995.00. For 15 pages. That’s how much a copy of A. E. van Vogt’s speech, Tomorrow on the March, goes for today. He delivered this speech as the guest of honor at PACIFICON, July 4, 1946. I have to wonder what he would have to say about that today. That would be quite a chunk of change […]
No. 11 Ursula Le Guin, Darkness, Exile, Dispossessed, and Human Sexuality.
Dear Miss Kidd, Ursula K. Le Guin writes extremely well, but I’m sorry to have to say that on the basis of that one highly distinguishing quality alone I cannot make you an offer for the novel. The book is so endlessly complicated by details of reference and information, the interim legends become so much […]
No. 10 Robert Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and Self-Reliance
No. 10 – 2013Mar10 – Robert Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and Self-Reliance. As a Navy man, Heinlein recruited Isaac Asimov and L. Sprague de Camp into working at the Philadelphia Navy Shipyard. Like Asimov, Heinlein worked with Astounding Science Fiction magazine editor John W. Campbell, Jr. After selling Life-Line (1940 to Campbell), […]
No. 9: Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, and Who’s The Real Monster?
Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley, while on holiday, visited Lord Byron’s Villa Diodati near Lake Geneva in 1816. Percy Shelley, her lover and future husband, and two close friends entertained Lord Byron, over several days, with discussions about galvanic responses, reanimation, and vivisection. After a lucid dream, she meditated upon these ideas and so inspired, began […]
No.8 Isaac Asimov, Psychohistory, Robot Crimes, and Positronic Brains.
2013Feb24 Isaac Asimov, Psychohistory, Robot Crimes, and Positronic Brains. Isaac Asimov, aka: Isaak Yudovich Ozimov, aka: Исаак Юдович Озимов, is another member of the Big Four of the Golden Age of Science Fiction. Isaac Asimov drawing In a sense, I think of Asimov as the Grandmaster of Science in Science Fiction. He has the science […]
No. 7 Andre Norton, Telepaths, Telempathic Animals, and The Entrepreneurial Spacer.
2013Feb17 – Time spent in front of a computer will suck you into a rift in the space-time continuum. You doubt this? Leave a clock near your computer and voila … tempus fugit. (If you expect to get any work done, place the clock behind you. A watched clock doesn’t tock … but … ticks […]
No. 6 – Theodore Sturgeon, The Next Question, Well-Meaning Scientists and The Evil They Can Cause.
2013 Feb 10 – Theodore Sturgeon, aka/Edward Hamilton Waldo, is best remembered for asking “What’s the next question?” In some portraits, you’ll see Sturgeon wearing a “Q,” with an arrow pointing forward, suspended from a thin, silver chain around his neck. He believed in questioning our assumptions. He would push further inquiry by suggesting that […]
No. 5 – John W. Campbell, Who Goes There?, The Ultimate Weapon, and Hostile Aliens.
John W. Campbell, aka – Don A Stuart, wrote for Astounding Science-Fiction. His work Who Goes There? was voted the best science fiction novella EVER. Okay, slip of the tongue. ONE of the best. Sorry. I guess I just saw RED when I first misread the article. My first thought was” Hey! You can’t do […]
No. 4 – H. G. Wells, The Time Machine, War of the Worlds, and the Social Impacts of Science
I suspect what most people remember most about H. G. Wells gets confused with Orson Welles, the actor. You know, that infamous radio announcement? When the radio started blaring out reports on Halloween, 1938, that New Jersey was being invaded by aliens from outer space, the resulting panic led to unofficial evacuations on a large […]
No. 3 – Jules Verne, From The Earth To The Moon, and Space Opera.
Jules Verne hovers between number two and number three on the list of the most translated books worldwide and I think it’s deserved. He became one of the earliest science fiction writers to make it financially from book sales. He is frequently referred to as the “Father of Science Fiction,” a distinction he shares with H. […]
No. 2 – Edgar Rice Burroughs, John Carter of Mars
Any SF library without Edgar Rice Burroughs and John Carter of Mars is hardly complete. Burroughs’ John Carter series captured the imagination of many noted SF writers, like Ray Bradbury, early in their youth. As a teenager, I noted that Burroughs works were a multimedia experience with mass-marketing appeal: comic books, comic strips, novels, and […]
No. 1 – Philip Francis Nowlan, Buck Rogers, and Military SF.
I’m both stunned and excited by the comeback of Amazing Stories and that I have become a part of this historic process. And it is a historic process. I’ve been looking back at what Amazing Stories’ accomplished in the past and it just increases my anticipation. With a history of so many great writers and […]