Starngely enough, Call only has two stories that feature the lovable human-devouring Old One, and even then he doesn’t directly feature in one of them. He only ever did four stories that dealt with him directly, though he gets a mention in several more.
Some of the Niven books (MK Wars example) are hard to get now. especially some of the short collections that aren’t getting re-released.
Most old 70s-80s sci-fi isn’t easily available anymore. I found Brother Berserker entirely by accident, and Berserker’s World had one copy on Amazon. One. If you find any others then respect to ya. if the Berserker’s you mentioned is just titled ‘Berserkers’ then you’ve found what years of searching haven’t found me. You lucky bastard.
I’d watch out for Greg Bear though. He can suddenly break out into quasi-religious garbling. Stephen Baxter’s Manifold Trilogy does that as well, but with more scope and granduer. I’d recommend Time instantly, if not the other two.
Fritz Lieber did not write A Canticle for Liebowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr., did. Otherwise, I’ve heard of everything you listed, and read quite a bit of it (especially Howard’s Conan stuff).
Originally posted by Slayn Fritz Lieber did not write A Canticle for Liebowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr., did. Otherwise, I’ve heard of everything you listed, and read quite a bit of it (especially Howard’s Conan stuff).
Are you sure? I remember seeing several copies of Canticle at an estate sale in which my Boy Scout Troop was involved (the old woman whose estate it was was a shut-in, and we got about 7000 hardbacks in the deal; the lawyer in charge of the estate didn’t want to hassle with book dealers, because they were too picky. I seem to remember Lieber being credited as the author. So, if you’re right, then maybe I should have grabbed them; can you imagine how much those would be worth?
Or I could just be losing my mind…again. Occam’s Razor will decide.
I’m actually at somewhat of an impasse as to when I will read my newly acquired Howard. I think I might wait until I’ve picked up some other stuff, A. Merritt (sp?) and Zenna Henderson in particular. I’ve also got quite a bit of Van Vogt to get through, stuff like Moonbeast and The Voyage of the Space Beagle.
As far as replacing The USA with the USSR in literary analysis of Orwell’s work, stranger things have happened. Look at the Raelians (sp?).
I dunno, Lovecraft’s works are kinda hard to categorize into any one genre…like Kraken said, there are elements of sci-fi, adventure & fantasy…with a looming tinge of weirdness.
He originally wrote most of his short stories for a pulp magazine called Weird Tales, and that sort of genre-mixing is pretty much so the norm for that type of publication.
That’s not to say novel writers don’t strive for the same in their writing, but pulp writers don’t have 1001 pages to get their story out because, hey, it’s short fiction.
“I got Call of Cthulhu collection of short stories in paperback. He’s not so much horror as that he can get under your skin and make you look behind you when you’re in a dark room.”
i think that is why most people classify him as horror…
Originally posted by Kraken
[b]Are you sure? I remember seeing several copies of Canticle at an estate sale in which my Boy Scout Troop was involved (the old woman whose estate it was was a shut-in, and we got about 7000 hardbacks in the deal; the lawyer in charge of the estate didn’t want to hassle with book dealers, because they were too picky. I seem to remember Lieber being credited as the author. So, if you’re right, then maybe I should have grabbed them; can you imagine how much those would be worth?
Or I could just be losing my mind…again. Occam’s Razor will decide.
I’m actually at somewhat of an impasse as to when I will read my newly acquired Howard. [/b]
I’m certain it was Miller. I did a project on the end of humanity for my science fiction class last spring and he was one of the authors I covered. Amazon.com agrees.
As for when to read Conan stuff… It’s VERY light reading, and the books are just collections of short stories; read one or two whenever you have a free half hour.
I’ve read many sci-fi books and novels. Funny thing is, I’m more of a Fantasy and Super Hero fan; I just found myself with many opportunities to read Sci-Fi books. For example, I actually won a copy of The Voyage of the Space Beagle in a contest. Others I read because I was bored during class breaks at school, so I settled for whatever was in the literature section of the school’s library.
To my surprise, despite being so old, most stories from those eras hold well even today. I’ve read many works of Van Vogh; I also wanted to read Lensman but never found a copy.
Funny, I was waiting for my turn at a doctor’s office the other day and I got bored, so I decided to wait at a nearby library and I found a book that precisely reviewed many SF writer’s works. Lovecraft was indeed described as one, even thought his aim was definitely to scare (he was a pretty paranoid and cynical person.) Van Voght’s work was described as comic-booky, and I have to agree, he had a lot of hairbrained concepts and his heroes beat all obstacles easily. But hey, they were fun! I guess you can split SF authors in two groups, those that want to explore the ramifications of a scientific idea (like AI or cloning) and those that just wanted to tell a story. Van Voght was definitely the latter; people like Isaac Asimov were the former.
One final observation: most of these writers started by writing for fan magazines, and influenced each others thru letters. Reminds me of the current internet community of fan writers. : )
