Welcome to Science Fiction Reader

Welcome to the new Science Fiction Reader blog.

This blog is focused solely on science fiction literature, and is intended to be a review and recommendations showcase for the best SF stories that I\’ve come across over the years, as well as any new material that I happen to read. As such, the nature of the blog posts will be very subjective, focused on what I like, rather than made up from lists of mainstream \”Best-Sellers\”.

I see this as a Very Good Thing. There are numerous blogs and websites \”out there\” reviewing the best of mainstream SF&F, and I intend this site to be something completely different. My own tastes in SF are heavily biased towards short fiction and older/classic SF, so those tastes will be reflected in the posts that I make here. I\’m very widely read in older SF, and have an enormous collection of SF novels, individual author short story collections, and anthologies of short fiction by a range of authors, some of them very old and remembered only by a few of the \”wrinklies\” out there. So there will be no shortage of material to review.

I also have some truly eclectic and obscure tastes when it comes to older SF, so there will be quite a few posts spotlighting \”forgotten\” gems from the earlier days of the genre, as I attempt to bring them not only to the attention of the younger generation of SF readers who have never seen these stories before, but also to jog the memories of older readers who might have read some of these stories way back at the dawn of time.

As for more modern SF, I\’m a huge fan of Hard SF, Classic Space Opera, and their modern offspring, New Space Opera. I absolutely LOVE New Space Opera! It\’s easily my favourite sub-genre of modern SF. So there will be quite a few posts featuring some of the best new releases in New Space Opera novels and short fiction.

Okay, I\’m off now to do some reading. I\’ll not be making many reviews if I sit around here all day yapping. 🙂

What Do I Look For in a Good SF Story?

I know that everyone has their own views on what makes a good SF story and what doesn\’t, and I\’ve obviously got a few opinions of my own. As with most things, it\’s obviously all a matter of personal preference. Indulging my own completely subjective views, here\’s what I look for (or don\’t) in an SF story, starting off on a very basic level, then moving onto specifics:

What do I look for in a good SF story? Well, I have a few basic requirements of any story, SF or not. First and foremost, and I\’m speaking in the most general sense here, I want to be entertained (don\’t we all?). It sounds so obvious, but is the Number One requirement (for me, anyway) when reading any novel or short story. I\’m reading fiction, not studying for a science degree, so, first and foremost, I want a solid, entertaining STORY. I want a good ripping yarn, a real page turner, not a darned college paper. If I really want to read something like that, to be intellectually challenged, I\’ll go dig up a science textbook or a good article or three in Scientific American or Astronomy magazine. For me, reading fiction is primarily for fun and relaxation.

That said, an intelligent, well-written story is a big plus, something with a few twists and turns, and a surprise ending. Or, at least, something that isn\’t totally predictable or telegraphed. I can tolerate a few plot and logic inconsistencies (but not too many) for the sake of an entertaining story, but not something that insults my intelligence. On the flip side, sure, the story may be intelligent and \”educate\” as much as it wants, just as long as it tells a riveting story, manages to keep me glued to the page and doesn\’t try to blind me with jargon or fancy, unnecessary literary gymnastics. I absolutely cannot abide authors trying to show us how clever they are with the written word at the expense of good, clear storytelling.

I also really, REALLY don\’t like to be lectured when I\’m reading fiction, or beaten around the head with the author\’s religious or political obsessions. These things should be part of the fascinating background of the story, fleshing it out and making the \”world\” more realistic and entertaining. But they should never be in your face, the core of the story, constantly preaching at you, otherwise it\’s no longer a story, but rather a political or religious pamphlet. If I come across this kind of thing, it gets binned very quickly after the first chapter. If I even make it that far – I usually give it the first chapter, but if it\’s really dire…

From an SF perspective, I need a story that has plenty of that good old classic sensawunda. This is probably the most vital ingredient in any SF story, as far as I\’m concerned. Even modern Hard SF (one of my favourite sub-genres of SF) has to have a strong element of sensawunda to keep me interested, or it simply becomes a dry science thesis. For me, sensawunda is an absolutely essential part of any SF story. If a story doesn\’t have it, I\’m just not interested.

I\’m not referring to \”escapism\” here, that\’s a completely different thing altogether (and I enjoy a bit of that as well). I\’m talking about that inherent, great WOW! factor that no other literary genre but SF has. A story can be an ultra-realistic Hard SF story, and still have that WOW! factor, that sense of unlimited imagination and infinite boundaries unique to SF. If you\’re an SF fan, you know what I mean. If you\’re not (and if you\’re not, why are you reading this?), then this is all completely unintelligible to you. 🙂

As a reader, I\’m rather old-fashioned, at least in the stylistic sense. I prefer a decent \”traditional\” story, with a good plot, a beginning, a middle and an end. I\’ve never been a fan of the more extreme styles of literary experimentation, such as those common during the New Wave period. Most of that stuff was unrecognizable to me as SF, or even as proper storytelling. I think those guys were taking way too many drugs!

When it comes to SF, I\’m (with very few exceptions) pretty much strictly hardcore \”old school\”/\”old guard\”, certainly pre-New Wave, and most definitely pre-\”Speculative Fiction\”. I\’m one of those readers who grew up in the era when the SF that I read in book form was the kind of thing that had originally been published in Astounding and (later) Analog, from an era when SF had not yet been polluted by any of the modern mutated aberrations of mainstream fiction posing as SF. As far as I\’m concerned, the \”S\” in SF means SCIENCE Fiction, and ONLY Science Fiction, not bloody SPECULATIVE Fiction, or any of the other more recent labels that certain publishers and literary wannabe elements within SF have been attempting to foist upon us.

As someone fascinated by the ideas and concepts in science, I prefer plot-driven SF, of the old classic \”nuts \’n\’ bolts\” variety, although it\’s a big bonus if there are also decent characters in the story. I do NOT like one-dimensional cardboard cut-outs in place of real characters. I prefer realistic characters that I can empathize with, be they the \”good guys\” who I can root for, or \”bad guys\” that I can boo and hiss at, or (even better) more complex characters of every shade of grey in between the black and white ends of the spectrum. But no matter how interesting and complex the characters are, they should NEVER displace the main SF themes as the primary focus of the story, as far as I\’m concerned.

When the story becomes primarily about the characters, squeezing out the SF elements from centre stage, it becomes soap opera, not SF. I strongly believe that real SF is supposed to be \”Big Picture\” fiction, dealing with huge issues relating to humanity, life, the universe and everything. It\’s that \”sense of unlimited imagination and infinite boundaries unique to SF\” that I was referring to earlier.

That\’s why I\’m not fond of a lot of the fiction at the extreme soft end of the traditional SF spectrum, particularly slipstream and similar shades of so-called \”Speculative Fiction\”. Most of the time, the stories in these sub-genres of SF actually contain very little (if any) SF or science at all. They can\’t, at least in my book, be truthfully categorized as science fiction. They are basically mainstream literary fiction posing as SF.

The author throws in a few casual SF terms like \”nanotechnology\” or \”genetic engineering\”, or maybe a hint that the story is set ten, twenty or thirty years in the future. But aside from this, These stories focus almost totally on the emotions and interactions of a few characters, and contain very little real science or anything else that makes up what I consider to be important elements of an SF story.

This inward-looking, \”Small Picture\” fiction deals with the internalized personal conflicts of individuals, and other issues that are very small in the overall scheme of things, a strong characteristic of mainstream literary fiction, but not science fiction. It is the absolute opposite of what true, \”Big Picture\” SF is all about. I refer to this kind of fiction rather derogatorily as \”touchy-feely\” SF.

Lots of people out there might enjoy that kind of thing (and good for them – whatever floats yer boat), but I don\’t like it, and I don\’t even consider this kind of fiction to be real SF at all.

These happen to be my own opinions, and I\’m sticking to them! 🙂

Classic Albums – Silk Degrees by Boz Scaggs (1976)

Original album 1976 (Columbia Records)

Remastered Audio CD (24 Feb 2007)

Three extra live tracks

Number of Discs: 1

Label: Sony Music CMG

 

 

 

Track listing:

  1. What Can I Say (3:02)
  2. Georgia (3:56)
  3. Jump Street (5:13)
  4. What Do You Want The Girl To Do (3:51)
  5. Harbor Lights (5:59)
  6. Lowdown (5:17)
  7. It\’s Over (2:52)
  8. Love Me Tomorrow (3:17)
  9. Lido Shuffle (3:43)
  10. We\’re All Alone (4:14)
  11. What Can I Say (Live Version) (3:29)
  12. Jump Street (Live Version) (5:08)
  13. It\’s Over (Live Version) (3:37)

Two of the greatest feel-good, easy listening albums of all time are Fleetwood Mac\’s Rumours and Boz Scaggs\’ Silk Degrees, both of which came out within a year or two of each other in the mid-1970\’s, an era which was a fertile period for such music.

Boz Scaggs is a highly talented and versatile, but sadly very underrated guitarist and musician, who worked with the Steve Miller Band in the late-1960s. When he went solo in the early 70s, he made the switch from r\’n\’b to producing his own strand of smooth, silky jazz-funk, a genre which was enjoying some considerable commercial success at that time. He set up stall with a bunch of excellent session musicians (most of whom were to go on to later form the acclaimed band Toto), a combination which was to prove, along with his own undeniable talent, the main driving force behind the polished, classy quality of his albums.

Scaggs produced his first two solo albums back in the 60s (1965 and 1969), but both of these were commercially unsuccessful. He moved to Columbia records at the beginning of the 1970s, and his first four albums with them all entered the charts, but were not exactly raging smash hits, except for Slow Dancer (1974), which went Gold. It wasn\’t until his fifth Columbia album, Silk Degrees, that his solo career went stratospheric.

The mid-to-late-1970s was by far his most successful period, during which he had no less than four hit albums, one Gold and three Platinum-selling smash hits. Down Two Then Left (1977) and Middle Man (1980) both went Platinum, and Hits! (1980) went Gold. But it was the 1976 smash-hit Silk Degrees that has proven to be the most enduring of all of them. This one went five times Multi-Platinum, reached #2 and spent 115 weeks on the US Billboard Charts, and was the album which skyrocketed Scaggs to the top of the \”absolutely must listen to\” musical league.

There are so many good tracks on this album, which produced no less than four successful chart singles over 1976-1977 – the sublime \”What Can I Say?\” (my personal favourite on the album), the sultry \”Lowdown\” (my third-favourite), the catchy floor-filler \”Lido Shuffle\” (my fourth-favourite) and the even more catchy \”It\’s Over\” (my second-favourite). But I also rate \”Georgia\” pretty highly, as were a couple of excellent ballads, \”Harbor Lights\” and \”We\’re All Alone\”, the second of which which was to be a massive US and UK hit cover single for Rita Coolidge in 1977.

\”We\’re All Alone\” was also covered by Frankie Valli and The Walker Brothers during 1976, and Bruce Murray, The Three Degrees and country & western singer LaCosta in 1977, which means that there were at least half a dozen different cover versions of the song circulating the various charts in the US, UK and Europe during 1976-1977, and none of them were actually by original artist Boz Scaggs! Scaggs only released \”We\’re All Alone\” as a B-Side to \”Lido Shuffle\” in 1977.

I originally bought Silk Degrees on vinyl way back in the early 1980\’s, and more recently also bought the remastered 2007 CD edition (the one I\’m reviewing now), which contains three extra bonus tracks, live versions of \”What Can I Say?\”, \”Jump Street\” and \”It\’s Over\”, all of which are also excellent, and show just what a force Scaggs and his group must have been on tour.

I can listen to this amazing album over and over and over again, and I never get fed up with it. If you are a fan of soulful, silky-smooth jazz-funk, and you\’ve never heard Silk Degrees, you are missing one of the true classics of the genre. Do yourself a huge favour, go out and buy this great album, pour yourself a cool drink, and just sit back and let the music flow over you.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…

Comic Books In The Movies – The Purist Conundrum

I\’m a life-long geek, and, like most other hardcore geeks, I\’m a huge fan not only of comics, but of films based on comics. I really enjoy most modern superhero films, and I\’m obviously also a huge fan of many of the original comics that these films are based on, particularly those based on characters created by Marvel Comics.

However, this love of superheroes in both the comics medium and the cinema poses a major problem for some of those more \”die hard\” fans watching films based on their favourite comics. Hardcore comics fans tend to be extreme purists, who can\’t abide even the slightest changes to their favourite comics and characters. These people are almost impossible to please when it comes to any kind of movie adaption of their favourite comic books.

I myself used to be like that, totally obsessed with films being \”exact reproductions\” of my favourite comics or books, but I\’ve wised up over the years and long ago given up any hope of ever seeing any direct translations from comic books to screen. Nowadays all I hope for is to get a decent, fun film.

I still have a few purist tendencies of my own, especially when it comes to my favourite comics. Hell, I\’m almost guaranteed to moan incessantly about any reboot of one of my old classic comics favourites (the Legion of Super-Heroes being a perfect example), let alone a loosely-based movie version. But, in general, these days I\’ve chilled greatly and now I do tend to be a bit more compromising than many of my more \”fanatical\” brothers and sisters.

I\’m also very lucky in that I have a really strong ability to compartmentalize, which means that I can still sit and enjoy a film, even if I spend most of the time criticizing the changes and omissions compared to the comic. If the film is a good FILM in itself, even if it\’s NOT a good adaption of the original comic, I\’ll probably still like it. Sure, I\’ll nitpick about all the continuity errors and differences, the little (and large) inconsistencies and the seemingly gratuitous and unnecessary changes made to the characters, continuity and story (hell, let\’s be honest, all geeks love to nitpick and complain). But if the film is a fun FILM, I\’ll still give it a thumbs-up.

Unfortunately, most of the hardcore purists are much harder to please. They want nothing but a direct translation of their favourite comics to the big screen, and no changes, however small, to the characters, story, continuity and history of the comic concerned are permitted. Well, listen guys, if that\’s what you expect from Hollywood, then you\’re living in cloud cuckoo land. IT AIN\’T EVER GONNA HAPPEN! Hollywood has always done things their own way, and they use comics and books as a vague basis for their films, rather than doing inch-by-inch faithful adaptions (only the \”classics\” get the premium \”don\’t mess with the story\” treatment, and I\’m not referring to classic comics here either).

Add to this the fact that these films are NOT aimed at hardcore comic book geeks at all, but at a completely different, more general cinema audience, and the reality is that you have to accept that superhero films will be completely different beasts to the original comics, with characters and plot ideas cherry-picked from all over the place, rather than from one story.

There are also a few other practicalities which make faithful adaptions a definite no-no. Comics and film are completely different mediums, and direct translations are often simply not possible. What might look or sound great in a comic might definitely NOT look or sound so good in a live action film. A perfect example of something that doesn\’t work at all in movies is comic book characterization and dialogue. It simply does NOT translate well to film. People just do NOT talk and behave in \”real life\” like they do in superhero comics, and anything like that appearing on film either has to be a crazy pastiche, or a comedy, otherwise it just won\’t work at all.

An even more perfect, and more visual example of this failure to translate across media is superhero costumes – the guys and gals wearing their underclothes on the outside. They look great in comics and animation, but my own strongly held opinion (and I\’m far from being on my own here) is that they almost always look ABSOLUTELY pathetic, stupid and laughable in live action movies. With the exception of a handful of \”iconic\” characters (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Spider-Man and a few others) who should NOT have their costumes messed with under any circumstances (do ya hear that Man of Steel? Damned flyin\’ condom…), it\’s almost always better to get rid of the silly \”men in tights\” costumes in movies if you want to be taken seriously. The X-Men films are a perfect example of how to do it right – those padded leather uniforms looked really slick and functional, and were much, much better onscreen than the original costumes. Wolverine definitely looked a heckuva lot better than he would have if he\’d appeared in the silly yellow or brown costume that he wears in the comics.

But let\’s face it, none of the above comments will sway purists at all. No matter what anybody says or does, the purists will never be happy. There\’s always gonna be someone who has to moan, and there\’s absolutely no pleasing these people. Look, all I have to add (aside from \”Chill, and get a life!\”) is this: if you\’re a die-hard purist, and you absolutely CANNOT abide these movies because they dare to alter some of your sacred comic book texts, then ignore them. Don\’t watch them at all. Go down the pub instead and relax with a nice, cool brewski.

Why put yourselves through all the soaring blood pressure, hair pulling, the swearing and frustration? Why do you continue to go to these films if you know you\’ll hate them so much? Do you enjoy torturing yourselves or what? Or is it that you\’re a bunch of drama queens and just LIKE to complain and kick up a fuss so you can get some attention? Y\’know what? Either judge the film as a FILM, not a comic book, because it ISN\’T a damned comic book, it\’s a M-O-V-I-E, or quit yer endless griping and don\’t bother watching the darned thing in the first place.

Or why don\’t you do something really smart and just go away and read some comic books instead? If you want the Real Thing, then read the real thing. Ignore the films altogether and go out and buy all those lovely trade paperbacks and hardback Marvel Masterworks or DC Archives, and other collections of classic Silver and Bronze Age Marvel and DC comics, and drift off into comic book nirvana. The originals will ALWAYS be out there if you want them.

Whether they were good adaptions of the comics, or not, recent years have given us a raft of truly classic superhero films, including the most recent Avengers film, Thor, Captain America: The First Avenger, X-Men: First Class, The Dark Knight, and Watchmen, among others. There have also been some truly excellent films based on non-superhero comics – the first Hellboy film and the absolutely brilliant Dredd, for example – both of them not only two darned good films, but two of the very best comic book-based films EVER.

If Hollywood keeps dishing out quality comic book films like this, I\’ll be more than happy, as will most fans. And sod the purists. 🙂

VOYAGERS IN TIME edited by Robert Silverberg

[I]n my last SF Anthologies post I commented that I\’d recently bought a couple of nice old SF anthologies from Amazon UK. I made a few comments about the newer of the two anthologies, TRIPS IN TIME and gave a contents listing for it. Here\’s the same routine for the second anthology, which was published ten years earlier, but can be considered a \”companion\” anthology, from a thematic viewpoint, since both books contain short stories about time travel. This one is VOYAGERS IN TIME, edited by Robert Silverberg.

TITLE: VOYAGERS IN TIME – Twelve Stories of Science Fiction
EDITED BY: Robert Silverberg
CATEGORY: Short Fiction
SUB-CATEGORY: Anthology
PUBLISHER: Meredith Press, New York, 1967
FORMAT: Hardcover, 243 pages.

This anthology is a collection of more traditional (but still fun) time travel stories than those in TRIPS IN TIME. The stories in this one span a thirty year period, the earliest originally published in 1937, and the last in 1967. Here\’s a listing of the contents:

  • The Sands of Time by P. Schuyler Miller (1937)
  • …And It Comes Out Here by Lester del Rey (1950)
  • Brooklyn Project by William Tenn (1948)
  • The Men Who Murdered Mohammed by Alfred Bester (1964)
  • Time Heals by Poul Anderson (1949)
  • Wrong-Way Street by Larry Niven (1965)
  • Flux by Michael Moorcock (1963)
  • Dominoes by C. M. Kornbluth (1953)
  • A Bulletin from the Trustees by Wilma Shore (1964)
  • Traveler\’s Rest by David I. Masson (1965)
  • Absolutely Inflexible by Robert Silverberg (1956, revised version 1967)
  • THE TIME MACHINE [Chapter XI, XII – part] by H. G. Wells (1895)

This looks like another very interesting anthology of short fiction. Silverbob certainly does know how to put together a good anthology of stories. Again, some of them I remember well (Wells, Bester, Tenn, and Moorcock), others I vaguely remember (Miller, del Rey, Anderson, Niven, Kornbluth and Silverberg), and the last two I\’m not familiar with at all (Shore, Masson).

As I\’ve already said, this is a kinda/sorta \”sister\” anthology to the later TRIPS IN TIME (1977), which is a more unusual and quirky collection of time travel tales. I\’ve already read several of the stories in TRIPS IN TIME, but now I\’ve started reading some of the stories in VOYAGERS IN TIME as well. I\’m dipping in and out of both books, and it will be nice to compare the two anthologies when I\’ve finished both of them.

As usual, I\’m working my way through the stories in both books slowly, as and when I get free time to do so, and not in any kind of order. I\’ll just pick stories at random, usually with favourite authors first and working my way to least favourite or least familiar. Once I\’ve finished I\’ll start posting comments on individual stories (with the exception of the excerpts from The Time Machine, as I\’ll be reviewing the novel at some point), and comments on the two anthologies as a whole.

VOYAGERS IN TIME edited by Robert Silverberg

TITLE: VOYAGERS IN TIME – Twelve Stories of Science Fiction
EDITED BY: Robert Silverberg
CATEGORY: Short Fiction
SUB-CATEGORY: Anthology
PUBLISHER: Meredith Press, New York, 1967
FORMAT: Hardcover, 243 pages.

In my last post I commented that I\’d recently bought a couple of nice old SF anthologies from Amazon UK. I made a few comments about one of the anthologies, TRIPS IN TIME and gave a contents listing for it. Here\’s the same routine for the other anthology, which was published ten years earlier, but can be considered a \”companion\” anthology, from a thematic viewpoint, since both books contain short stories about time travel. The second of the two anthologies is VOYAGERS IN TIME, edited by Robert Silverberg.

This anthology is a collection of more traditional (but still fun) time travel stories than those in TRIPS IN TIME. The stories in this one span a thirty year period, the earliest originally published in 1937, and the last in 1967. Here\’s a listing of the contents:

  • The Sands of Time by P. Schuyler Miller (1937)
  • …And It Comes Out Here by Lester del Rey (1950)
  • Brooklyn Project by William Tenn (1948)
  • The Men Who Murdered Mohammed by Alfred Bester (1964)
  • Time Heals by Poul Anderson (1949)
  • Wrong-Way Street by Larry Niven (1965)
  • Flux by Michael Moorcock (1963)
  • Dominoes by C. M. Kornbluth (1953)
  • A Bulletin from the Trustees by Wilma Shore (1964)
  • Traveler\’s Rest by David I. Masson (1965)
  • Absolutely Inflexible by Robert Silverberg (1956, revised version 1967)
  • THE TIME MACHINE [Chapter XI, XII – part] by H. G. Wells (1895)

This looks like another very interesting anthology of short fiction. Silverbob certainly does know how to put together a good anthology of stories. Again, some of them I remember well (Wells, Bester, Tenn, and Moorcock), others I vaguely remember (Miller, del Rey, Anderson, Niven, Kornbluth and Silverberg), and the last two I\’m not familiar with at all (Shore, Masson).

As I\’ve already said, this is a kinda/sorta \”sister\” anthology to the later TRIPS IN TIME (1977), which is a more unusual and quirky collection of time travel tales. I\’ve already read several of the stories in TRIPS IN TIME, but now I\’ve started reading some of the stories in VOYAGERS IN TIME as well. I\’m dipping in and out of both books, and it will be nice to compare the two anthologies when I\’ve finished both of them.

As usual, I\’m working my way through the stories in both books slowly, as and when I get free time to do so, and not in any kind of order. I\’ll just pick stories at random, usually with favourite authors first and working my way to least favourite or least familiar. Once I\’ve finished I\’ll start posting comments on individual stories (with the exception of the excerpts from The Time Machine, as I\’ll be reviewing the novel at some point), and comments on the two anthologies as a whole.

TRIPS IN TIME edited by Robert Silverberg

[R]ecently I bought a couple of nice old SF anthologies from Amazon UK, both edited by Robert Silverberg. The first of the two is:

TITLE: TRIPS IN TIME – Nine Stories of Science Fiction
EDITED BY: Robert Silverberg
CATEGORY: Short Fiction
SUB-CATEGORY: Anthology
PUBLISHED: Wildside Press, 1977
FORMAT: Trade paperback, 152 pages.

The anthology is a collection of quirky time travel stories, which span a thirty-five year period, the earliest being originally published in 1941, and the last in 1976. Here\’s a listing of the contents:

  • An Infinite Summer by Christopher Priest (1976)
  • The King\’s Wishes by Robert Sheckley (1953)
  • Manna by Peter Phillips (1949)
  • The Long Remembering by Poul Anderson (1957)
  • Try and Change the Past by Fritz Leiber (1958)
  • Divine Madness by Roger Zelazny (1966)
  • Mugwump 4 by Robert Silverberg (1959)
  • Secret Rider by Marta Randall (1976)
  • The Seesaw by A. E. van Vogt (1941)

This looks like a very interesting anthology of short fiction. Some of these stories I remember well as old favourites (the Priest and Leiber), others I vaguely remember (Sheckley, Anderson, Zelazny, van Vogt, Silverberg), and the other two I\’m not familiar with at all (Phillips, Randall).

Apparently this is a kinda/sorta \”sister\” anthology to an earlier one, VOYAGERS IN TIME (1967), which is a more traditional/typical collection of time travel tales. That\’s the other paper book I mentioned, and I\’ll get to that anthology once I\’ve finished with this one. It will be nice to compare the two collections of short stories.

I\’m looking forward to working my way through TRIPS IN TIME (however slowly, and most likely not in order of the contents listing), and will make a short progress report in this discussion thread as I finish each story.

Welcome to Science Fiction Reader

Welcome to the new Science Fiction Reader blog.

This blog is focused solely on science fiction literature, and is intended to review and recommend the best – in other words, my favourite 🙂 – SF anthologies and single-author short fiction collections that I\’ve come across over the years, as well as any new material that I happen to read along the way. There will, of course, be the occasional posting about individual short stories, novelettes and novellas (and the VERY occasional novel, although I tend to read very few of those these days).

As such, the nature of these blog posts will be very subjective, focused purely on what I like, rather than made up from lists of mainstream \”Best-Sellers\” (I read very few Best-Sellers, to be honest). There are numerous blogs and websites \”out there\” reviewing the best of current mainstream SF&F, and I don\’t intend to reinvent the wheel. I want this site to be something different, an individual fan\’s (that\’s me) totally subjective views on the SF that he has read over the years.

My own tastes in SF are very heavily biased towards short fiction and older/classic SF, so those tastes will be reflected in the posts that I make here. I have a huge collection of SF novels, individual author short story collections, and anthologies of short fiction by a range of various authors, some of them very old and remembered only by a few of the \”wrinklies\” out there. So there will be no shortage of material to review.

I also have some pretty eclectic and obscure tastes when it comes to older SF, so there will be quite a few posts spotlighting \”forgotten\” gems from the earlier days of the genre, as I attempt to bring them not only to the attention of the younger generation of SF readers who have never seen these stories before, but also to jog the memories of older readers who might have read some of these stories way back at the dawn of time.

I\’m a huge fan of Classic Space Opera, Hard SF, and their modern mutant offspring, New Space Opera. I absolutely LOVE New Space Opera! It\’s easily my favourite sub-genre of modern SF. So there will obviously be a few posts featuring some of the best new releases in New Space Opera novels and short fiction.

Okay, I\’m off now to do some reading. I\’ll not be making many reviews if I sit around here all day yapping. 🙂

DJ Phil, a Brief Career Introspective – The Early Years (Part Three)

Sometime around October-November 1986, the \”Gay Disco\” left the disastrous venue of the Union Hall and returned to its original home on the Magee College campus. A new Student\’s Union had opened, a temporary portacabin structure known as \”The Terrapin\”, which was to house all the student entertainment facilities until the current permanent Student\’s Union opened in September 1990.

As soon as the \”Gay Disco\” moved back to its original venue, the crowds came back and it returned to its former glory days again, with a packed house at every gig. The only fly in the ointment was that, from 1987-1990, until moving to the permanent Student\’s Union building, the entertainment license available to the Student\’s Union at that time only permitted the discos to play until 11.30pm. Admittedly, that was really irritating, but the solution was for the \”Gay Disco\” to begin earlier on Friday nights, and the revellers could then move onto another venue at 11.30 to continue the partying. Once the Student\’s Union moved into the new, permanent building, the late license permitted the disco to stay open until 1am. The \”Gay Disco\” would continue its association with myself and Magee College right up until 1998, when it moved out of Magee altogether and onto another permanent venue.

But back to late 1986, and the return of the \”Gay Disco\” to Magee, where a whole new chapter in my DJ career was to begin. As a direct result of that move, I was to begin my long residency as in-house DJ for the students in Magee Student\’s Union. After I\’d performed at several Magee gigs for the local gays, all the time under the watchful eyes of members of the Student\’s Union Bar Committee and a few students who attended the \”Gay Disco\” on Friday nights (still once a month), I was in for a really unexpected surprise. They must have really liked what they heard, because after only a couple of \”Gay Discos\”, I was approached by the Student\’s Entertainments Officer and asked if I would like to start as in-house DJ for the Student\’s Union, two nights a week, Tuesdays and Thursdays. I jumped at the offer, and thus began a very long residency as DJ at Magee Student\’s Union, all twenty-seven years of it, lasting right up until the end of September 2013, when I eventually decided to call it a day.

As I said, the closing time for discos at Magee during this period was 11.30pm, but we were all able to move on to another local nightclub afterwards to continue having even more fun, so things weren\’t so bad. For the first time since I\’d started as a DJ, back in 1980-1981, I was now in regular work, two nights each week (along with live bands) for the students, one friday night per month for the gays, and almost every Saturday night and Fridays that I wasn\’t in Magee, I was working random gigs outside of my regular workplace, mostly weddings, christenings and birthday parties. It was a good time during my DJ career, and this continued for over a decade, up until the end of the 1990s.

I detailed in my last post about the radically different nature of the music at the \”Gay Disco\” compared to my earlier gigs – mostly hi-energy dance, disco, funk, soul and pop. Well, the regular Student gig on Tuesdays and Thursdays added yet another dimension to my music. It had some music in common with the \”Gay Disco\”, mostly soul and late-1970s and early-1980s chart music, with lots of New Romantic tunes, which were very popular at that time. But there was also quite a bit of classic rock and glam rock music, such as Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, Jefferson Airplane, Cream, Pink Floyd, Deep Purple, Led Zepplin, T-Rex, The Sweet and Gary Glitter, and some hard rock favourites such as Thin Lizzy, AC/DC, Guns \’n\’ Roses and Black Sabbath.

But, aside from the above music, if I was to give a general description of the overall tone of the music that I was playing at the Student\’s Union in those early days of 1986-1990, I\’d have to say \”alternative\”. That\’s how student music was back then. Lots of punk rock, post-punk, early goth, ska, reggae and general New Wave, and indie/alternative music. The Sex Pistols, the Damned, the Clash, the Buzzcocks, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Killing Joke, the Fall, early U2 and Simple Minds, Echo and the Bunnymen, the Teardrop Explodes, early B-52s, the Pixies, Bauhaus, Joy Division, early New Order, the Police, the Beat, Madness, the Specials, the list goes on and on. It was a classic era for music at the Student\’s Union.

I played my final gig in the old (portacabin) \”Terrapin\” in June 1990, before it was finally demolished during the summer to make way for the new, permanent Student\’s Union, where I was to play my first gigs at the start of October 1990. This was to be the start of yet another new era in my career as a DJ. But I\’ll leave that story for another time.

To Be Continued…

DJ Phil, a Brief Career Introspective – The Early Years (Part Two)

Last time out, I made the comment that, if I was going to get regular work, I\’d have to start gigging outside my comfort zone of the rock and alternative scene, sell my soul to the dark side and start playing at commercial discos.

Well, sometime in 1983 (I can\’t remember the exact date), and after several years of random, one-off soul, Northern Soul, punk, alternative, and hard rock discos (which I continued to gig at, by the way – the random gigs didn\’t just stop), I got my first regular gig. Actually, it was only one Friday night per month, but it was still my first \”regular\”. And the music certainly was different from anything that I\’d ever played before. Radically different. But it was most definitely NOT your typical Top 30 chart disco…

I\’d been asked by some close friends if I would start playing once a month at a regular disco for the local gay community, which I thought was quite amusing, as I\’m a card-carrying heterosexual myself. I was delighted to say \”yes\”, and this was to begin a fifteen-year association between myself and the gay community, during which I was the official DJ, from 1983-1998, at what everyone in Derry almost universally referred to as the \”Gay Disco\”. For the first couple of years, the disco was held in Dill House, an old Victorian red brick building which served as the Student\’s Union at the local University of Ulster campus, sited at Magee College, a nice, quiet spot on the outskirts of the town, well away from the city centre.

Back in the early-1980s, the local gay music scene (and gay society as a whole) was much more underground and progressive than it is today. Many younger gays might disagree with me, but I\’d argue that, in taking huge strides towards becoming more accepted and assimilated into \”normal\” society, the gay scene (in my town, at least), AND its music have lost their edge and become not only extremely similar to the \”mainstream\”, but, dare I say it, bland and dull, at least in comparison to the underground heyday of the 1980s, when virtually \”anything goes\” was the norm on the local gay scene.

Back in those days, anyone of LGBT orientation usually tried not to display their true nature and behaviour too much in public, in fear of the rampant homophobia (gay-bashing was pretty common in our town) in mainstream local society. The \”Gay Disco\” and other similar venues were usually in less central (to city centres) venues, well out of sight of any hostile anti-gay groups, and were places where gays of all shades could feel safe, let their hair down, and have fun. And, boy, did those people know how to have fun!

Everything about the \”Gay Disco\” was, exhibitionist, loud, and Proud To Be Gay. From the patrons themselves, many in drag, all trying to outdo each other with the most outrageously camp behaviour and dancing, to the music, which was, with very few exceptions (maybe a very short \”slow set\”), relentlessly upbeat in tempo. Aside from a handful of the better dance songs from the charts, it was non-stop classic soul, disco, funk, eurodance, and gay club anthems, many of which I had never even heard before. At the very beginning, I didn\’t know whether I was coming or going half the time, and I was certainly winging it for the first few gigs before I started to find my feet. 🙂

Well, I had to learn the ropes pretty darned fast, I can tell you. So I went out and started hunting down some completely new (new to me, anyway) types of music, most of it unique to the gay music scene, just for this one monthly gig. As a guy who was accustomed to playing loud, heavy, guitar music to hairy rockers, or frenetic punk riffs and weird New Wave tunes to spikey-haired \”fraggles\”, punks and skinheads, this was like stepping into a completely different world. There wasn\’t a hard rock or punk rock tune in sight. Absolutely NO guitar music at the \”Gay Disco\”.

And y\’know what? It was FUN! For a long time, the \”Gay Disco\” was the place to be for the best nightlife in Derry. Even the \”straights\” from the town (in the shape of crowds of gay-friendly punks and \”fraggles\”), looking for a late-night spot to hang out, would land up in large numbers at around 1.30am or 2am with their carry-outs (it was a \”bring your own booze\” gig), as the other pubs in the town would close around 1am, and the \”Gay Disco\” continued on sometimes until 3am or even 3.30am. For a couple of years, from 1983-1985, it was the best disco in the town.

But that all got put on hold for a year or two, as things temporarily took a turn for the worse on the gay social scene. The new, growing university campus at Magee College was being greatly expanded and redeveloped, with many of the older Victorian buildings demolished to make way for the brand spanking new modern university buildings. Unfortunately for the \”Gay Disco\”, venerable old Dill House was scheduled for demolition, and at some point during early 1985, the \”Gay Disco\” found itself without a home.

A quick relocation of venue was organized, but, unfortunately it was a very bad move, to the Union Hall, which was right bang smack in the centre of town, beside the city walls. This was very hostile territory for gays, with gangs of drunken \”gay bashers\” roaming the town and waiting outside at the end of each gig to give some unfortunate victims a beating. So very few gays actually ever went to this gig (there were rarely any more than a couple of dozen people at each disco), bar a handful of hardcore, brave, hardy souls. The \”Gay Disco\” limped along in limbo to near-empty halls for the best part of a year and a half.

Then, in late 1986, the \”Gay Disco\” returned to its original home on the Magee College campus, and a whole new chapter in my DJ career was to begin…

To Be Continued…