Worldcon was 3 months ago, but I’ve only just recently finished the last of the books I bought there. Herewith, a mostly-unordered list, complete with reactions, and Amazon links for your buying pleasure.
Of Worldcons that Never Were
One of the first panels I attended this year was about the Worldcon in fiction; I picked up a few of the books mentioned there.
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Now You See It/Him/Them
and Charles Fort Never Mentioned Wombats (Doubleday science fiction)
, both by Gene DeWeese and Robert “Buck” Coulson, fall into the genre of con mysteries, told by authors who love cons, mysteries, and have fun with their ideas. Only the second book actually takes place at a Worldcon, but both were quite enjoyable.
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Gather in the Hall of the Planets/In the Pocket and Other Stories
by Barry Malzberg writing as K. M. O’Donnell. This is an Ace Double that proves that more is not always better. Gather in the Hall of the Planets is cute, if very dated — the protagonist, a fading SF writer, has to figure out who at the Worldcon is an alien, or the aliens will destroy Earth. Very much a work of its era (1971), with the obligatory badly-written sex scenes and inner turmoil. The stories in the other half of the book are, to put it kindly, unreadable.
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Alternate Worldcons, edited by Mike Resnick, is unavailable from Amazon; I got my copy from Dean Wesley Smith on eBay. It was conceived and sold at a Cincinnati Fan Group party at ConFrancisco, and, as Mike said during the panel, paid its authors very little. The stories are uneven and very in-jokish…but that was OK, because I’m on the inside of the jokes.
More Usual Alternate Histories
As usual, I went to a few alternate history panels, and came away with strong recommendations for two series.
Miscellaneous Old Stuff from the Huckster Room
I spent a long time in the Huckster Room and came away with surprisingly few books to show for it, mostly ones which I remembered having owned at some time in the past.
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Wine of the Dreamers
, by John D. MacDonald: This is one of MacDonald’s rare SF novels; it shows its Cold War origins very clearly, but it’s still an interesting read.
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Other Times, Other Worlds
by John D. MacDonald: A collection of MacDonald’s SF shorts, written between 1948 and 1968. You can see his maturation as a writer over those two decades. Some of the stories are minor classics, like “Spectator Sport”; others are good fun, like “Ring around the Redhead” and “The Big Contest”.
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Best Science Fiction of the Year: Third Annual Collection
, edited by Lester Del Rey. The title is accurate. My favorite story in this collection is Norman Spinrad’s “A Thing of Beauty” (especially after having walked across the thing in question last month), but there are many winners, and almost all of the stories have aged well.
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Not This August
by C. M. Kornbluth, revised by Fred Pohl. I remember reading the original version of the book when I was in high school; it was amazingly chilling, and, unlike most SF, drove me to the dictionary. Pohl revised the book in 1981 to “remove glaring anachronisms”, but I’m not sure what those revisions were — the book is, thank God, very dated indeed. Read it along with Heinlein’s Sixth Column
for an overwhelming sense of Cold War gloom and doom!
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The Merchants’ War
by Frederik Pohl. This is the sequel to Pohl and Kornbluth’s The Space Merchants
; the books take place in a world where advertising has gone wild (yes, even more than in our world), but where the Venusians offer an alternative prospect. This was a good one to read during the campaign: “How can we win with truth?”
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The Long Way Home
by Poul Anderson. Dated, but an enjoyable read — like almost everything Poul Anderson wrote.
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Slan: A Novel
by A. E. van Vogt. Yes, it’s a Classic of SF. Yes, Fans are Slans. But most of the plot points make no sense, and the dramatic revelation at the end wasn’t. Read it because it’s a classic, but don’t expect it to meet today’s standards.
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The Joy Makers
by James Gunn. This is three novellas under one set of covers, telling one somewhat contrived story. What would the world be like if happiness could be ensured? Not happy, that’s for sure. Still, worth a read.
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Satan’s World
by Poul Anderson. Chee Lan, Adsel, and David Falkalyn at work, with Nicholas van Rijn along to save the day. Serendipity, Inc., provides a service much like Google — but they are definitely evil. Well worth a read, along with the rest of the Polesotechnic League series.
Related
, was recently released but I haven’t read it yet — I intend to, though.
is the first in a series set on a Nantucket Island which mysteriously is displaced back to the Bronze Age. Unlike the 1632 (The Assiti Shards)
series from Eric Flint, not all of the castaways are good guys — far from it. Strongly recommended.
