Tag Archives: science-fiction

Tower of Glass by Robert Silverberg # The 1970 Club

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Tower of Glass Book CoverI had read all of my own published in 1970 books, so I dived into the garage to delve into the overflow bookcases and came up with one of Jack’s books, an SF book – Tower of Glass by Robert Silverberg, it was published in the US in 1970. It’s a good long while since I read any science fiction.

Simeon Krug is fabulously wealthy. He has created a community of androids, three different grades, Alphas, Betas and Gammas, they are made in vats starting with a sort of chemical soup and then they are given a training to learn how to become almost human, to understand their needs, the Alphas being the closest to being human. They look similar to humans, apart from their skin being red. The androids exist to do the dirty work and make life easier for humans.

Simeon Krug, their creator has moved on to a new project and he has become obsessed, he has designed a massive tower of glass and he hopes that as it reaches far into space he’ll be able to communicate with other galaxies, one in particular which is sending signals which can’t be deciphered.   .

Unknown to Krug the androids have set up chapels where they can worship Krug their creator, but he does know about the AEP which is a political group founded by disgruntled androids who are determined to gain equal rights with the humans. They want it to be made illegal for them to be sold and for anyone harming them to be held responsible legally.

So there are parallels with slavery, and social inequalities, but also the dangers of creating what could be superior beings which could take over society if they felt that way inclined.

Fifty-four years ago Robert Silverberg was imagining an AI takeover, except nowadays no androids are required, just computers.

This was a surprisingly good read, although I don’t really know why I was surprised as Silverberg was one of the best SF authors of his time. I have read a few of his previous books, but decades ago.

 

 

 

# 1962 Club – The Drowned World by J.G. Ballard

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The Drowned World by J.G. Ballard isn’t exactly an uplifting read. I was trying to imagine how it would have felt to read it back in 1962. I imagine that it wasn’t quite as  unnerving as I found it to be. The fact is that the world in which the story is set is getting too close for comfort nowadays.

Global warming isn’t actually mentioned as that phrase hadn’t been coined by then, but that is what is causing the death of the Earth. The temperatures are reaching unbearable heights (some places have already reached the temperatures mentioned) and the consequences are the growth of rampant tropical jungles which are being over run by all sorts of alligators. The year is 2145.

It’s a watery world which is clogged with sargasso type weeds and only the tops of tall buildings poke out of the water. Later in the book it’s revealed that the city below the water is actually London.

Solar radiation has melted the polar ice caps and has caused much of the world to be engulfed with water. The main character is Dr Robert Kerans and he’s part of a group of people who have been sent to study the flora and fauna that is appearing in the lagoon which is covering London. Kerans is living in a penthouse in what had been The Ritz Hotel, poking above the lagoon. The scientists are all having nightmares, but one of them, Beatrice, has decided that she won’t be leaving her hotel room when the time comes for them to leave the area, despite the fact that she wouldn’t be able to last long with the heat becoming ever more unbearable and food running out.

When a group of pirates headed by a man called Strangman turn up things go from bad to worse. They’re looting whatever they can from the water above London and they have quite a haul of gold, jewels and historical artefacts.  It all turns into a horrific experience, particularly for Kerans.

So, as you will realise, this was not a relaxing and enjoyable read although I found the characters and the situations to be believable.

This is the first book that I’ve read by Ballard, but Jack has read most of his books and he says they tend to be depressing. It’s probably not all that surprising given that as a teenager he spent two and a half years in a Japanese internment camp during WW2. I dread to think what he experienced then.

 

 

Eric Brown – author, family man, friend and a true gentleman

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Eric Brown

March was a very sad month for us as our dear friend of over 30 years Eric Brown unexpectedly got the worst news possible. The medication just didn’t work and his hopes of being able to hang around for between two to five years faded, and it was down to a couple of weeks at best. We still can’t believe it, but yesterday we were at his humanist funeral, along with his much beloved family and many friends and neighbours. This afternoon I actually managed to get some gardening done, and I found myself thinking because he was a keen gardener, ‘I must tell Eric ….’ it’ll be some time before it all sinks in.

Eric was a well-known SF author and more recently he turned to crime fiction with his Langham and Dupre series, set in the 1950s, right up my street. He was lovely enough to dedicate one of his books to Jack and myself. Truly you couldn’t find a better human being, it all seems so unfair. He was 62.

Anyway, the poem below was part of his service.

Poem by Mary Fry

He chose The Byrds Turn! Turn! Turn! as his final music.

Three Twins at the Crater School by Chaz Brenchley – 20 Books of Summer 2022

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Three Twins at tha Crater School by Chaz Brenchley is a strange combination of a girls’ boarding school book, science fiction and steam punk, but it all added up to an entertaining read for me. I have to say that the science fiction aspects are slight because although the setting is Mars, there’s absolutely no problem about actually living there, no mention of how they were able to breathe or anything like that. Although there’s no date mentioned, there are plenty of references to the Tsar and the Queen Empress and it’s the age of aetherships and steam. The Crater School is on the edge of a crater, there’s a lake nearby which is home to some dangerous Martian wildlife.

There has been a war between Britain and Russia, and Russia came off worst. Mars is a British colony, the furthest outpost of the Empire, much to the chagrin of the Russians. They would like it for themselves. Some of the Crater School girls are in part Russian, but they certainly aren’t on the side of the Tsar.

But at its heart this book is a faithful homage to the Chalet School books, with twins, visits to the san, threats of being sent to the headmistress, a goddess of a head girl, out of control middle school girls and brave girls willing to take on any danger. As a child the author had had to read not only his own choice of books, but those of his sister and brother too. As his sister was a fan of the Chalet School series he developed an appreciation of them too. The books are really all about friendship and decency.

Jack was sent a copy of this book to review, and you can read his much more detailed thoughts on it here.

Wild Harbour by Ian Macpherson

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Wild Harbour cover

Wild Harbour by Ian Macpherson was published in 1936 but it has been reprinted by British Library in the Science Fiction category. Actually it’s a bit of a difficult book to categorise, I wouldn’t really call it SF. Ian Macpherson was a Scottish author and he was obviously influenced by what was happening in the news in the 1930s, with Hitler tooling up for WW2 and indeed the Spanish Civil war already ongoing.

Hugh has no intention of waiting for his call up papers, he doesn’t want to take part in any war, so he and his wife Terry pack their little car with as many things from their home as they can and as much food as possible, and set off for the western Highlands of Scotland. They know of a well hidden cave there that they can hide out in. Hugh has also managed to buy lots of ammunition for his gun and takes a lot of rabbit traps too, he plans to shoot deer to feed them.

The next part of the book is all about them trying to make their cave into a home, levelling the floor, building a chimney and hearth. It’s fine in the warm summer weather but they know that it’ll be brutally cold and snowy in the winter. This section reminds me of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie except they were building a cabin, not fitting out a cave.

Life is much harder than they could have imagined and eventually the war catches up with them as starving gunmen make their way into the Highlands. Certainly towards the end this wasn’t an uplifting read as I’m sure you can imagine. I’m sure that in the 1930s there were a lot of ordinary people who just felt like getting away from the threat of a wartime situation, just as many people nowadays hanker after going off grid and withdrawing from society – even without the prospect of being called up to ‘do their bit’.

The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes The Martian Menace by Eric Brown

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The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes The Martian Menace cover

Sherlock Holmes and the Martian Menace by Eric Brown is the most recent publication in the series which is published by Titan Books. It’s not at all my usual kind of reading fare, I’ve never been a huge Sherlock Holmes fan mainly because I found his smart Alec observations to be quite tedious, thankfully they don’t feature too much in this book, but otherwise I think this strange mixture of the Edwardian era and SF works really well.

Earth has been invaded by Martians who are obviously much more technologically advanced than humans. The first invasion was very violent and culminated in many deaths but the invaders couldn’t fight off a common terrestrial virus (yep) so it was ultimately a failure. Six years later another Martian armada arrives on Earth, suposedly they’re peace-loving and their technological advances are very welcome by the people of Earth as they bring prosperity. There’s no doubt though that the Martians are in charge and Earth is just a part of their empire.

When Holmes and Watson are asked to investigate the death of an allegedly famous Martian philosopher and the investigation takes them to Mars, it isn’t long before Holmes realises that the whole thing is a con to get them to Mars.

All is not hunky dory on the planet and there’s a rebel faction, they’re not at all happy with those in power. Can they team up with Holmes and Watson?

I really enjoyed this book which has plenty of tension, interesting characters, is well written and also manages to convey an authentic Edwardian atmosphere at the same time as being futuristic.

I must admit that I was given this book by the author who is an old friend of ours. He writes science-fiction and also a crime series which is set in the 1950s. Although Eric Brown is a proud Yorkshireman he has been living happily in Scotland for several years now, but I’m not sure if he can be counted as a Scottish author.

The 1956 Club – The Man Who Japed by Philip K. Dick

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The Man Who Japed cover

The 1956 Club is a meme hosted by Simon at Stuck in a Book and Karen at Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings.

The Man Who Japed by the science fiction writer Philip K. Dick is such an echo of the time it was written in – 1956. The year is 2114 but there had been a devastating nuclear war in the 20th century. General Streiter had headed up a revolution in 1985 and the society he formed is strict and puritanical, named Moral Reclamation (Morec). Neighbours are encouraged to spy on each other, sex is more or less outlawed, certainly outside marriage and there are weekly denunciations in apartment buildings with people being accused of ‘vile enterprise’ which was generally sex. But there are also punishments for using very mild swear words such as damn. There are also robot spies.

There are several other planets where people strive to produce food and there’s a rehabilitation planet which people who don’t toe the line are sent to. There’s a museum to the 20th Century where the most popular exhibit is a 20th century house, the exhibit is titled The Age of Waste and people are mesmerised by the opulence of it all.

Allen Purcell lives in Newer York with his wife Janet, they feel lucky to have a teeny room to themselves, inherited from Allen’s family. The bathroom is communal so you have to queue up for it in the morning. But Allen has an important job and is later given the position of Director of Entertainment and Propaganda. The statue of General Streiter has been vandalised and has been hastily boarded up, but it’s rumoured that the few people who saw the damage had laughed at it, it’s the beginnings of revolution.

As this book was written in 1956 the American author was obviously heavily influenced by the McCarthy era which was just beginning to break down by then. I’m sure if he had written it ten years earlier Dick would have been hauled in front of some sort of committee and accused of Un-American Activities and would have been lucky to come out of it with a viable career as publishers would have been too scared to touch his books.

It seems that revolutions always begin with the statues!

This was an enjoyable read, and I always find it amusing that science fiction dates so much faster than any other type of writing. It was funny that despite the fact that there is interplanetary travelling in this book, if you want to make a phone call you’ll have to use a phone in a street phone box.

The Passion of New Eve by Angela Carter

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1977 Club
I’m participating in The 1977 Club this week which is hosted by Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings and Simon at Stuck in a Book. I’m also reading The Honourable Schoolboy by John le Carre, but I still have 100 or so pages of that one to read.

The Passion of New Eve cover

The Passion of New Eve by Angela Carter was first published in 1977, which is why I read it. It really isn’t my sort of book. It’s well enough written but is extremely weird and I suppose when it was written it was hailed as some sort of feminist wonder read. Each to their own. I suspect the author had recently visited the US and she just let her imagination run wild into a future it could be heading for.

Evelyn (a man) lives in London but by chapter two he has travelled to New York, a place that all of his American friends had warned him about. It’s a lot worse than he could have imagined though as society has completely broken down and it’s mayhem, it’s a bit of a civil war situation and everyone’s out for themselves. After some adventures Evelyn decides it might be safer outside the city, but that’s when all his troubles really begin.

After getting lost in the desert he’s kidnapped by a young woman, taken back to an underground society of women headed by a large multi-breasted fertility goddess who performs a sex change on him – hey presto, now Evelyn is Eve.

After escaping from there he/she ends up at the home of Zero who’s a one-legged, one-eyed pirate type who has seven young female followers, they’re all supposed to be his wives and he decides that Eve will be his eighth, she has no say in the matter. This part seems a bit Manson family-ish and that had certainly been in the news not long previously. Bizarrely Zero blames an old movie actress called Tristessa for his infertility and he thinks she lives somewhere in the desert. He uses his helicopter to track her down and things get even weirder. Eventually Eve ends up in the hands of a heavily armed army of right-wing supposedly Christian schoolboys and paedophilia is added to the mix.

There’s a lot more of course but I’ve already written more than I usually do about the storyline of a book. In this book gender is flexible and I suppose in its day that was a strange thought, but now it seems that it’s quite common for people to choose which gender they want to be. I’m just not that interested as I think of people as people not a sex.

So this was a weird read by an author who nicked ideas from various places, it might have shocked readers back in the day but as often happens with science- fiction some things have just about caught up with it.

This is the first book by Angela Carter that I’ve read but I have a few more in the house so I’ll eventually give her another go – sometime.

Thanks Kaggsy and Simon for setting this up.

Science Fiction and Fantasy Literary Map of the UK

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Map

Jack was thrilled to bits when a writer friend of his sent him a link to this literary map of British Science Fiction and Fantasy writers, made up of all their names, inscribed on the part of Britain that they are living or were born in.

Admittedly it’s a few years since he has got round to writing anything, what with pressure of work and then moving house and such. It is about time I gave him a swift kick up the bahookie (bum/ass) in the hopes of galvanising him into action again. He has only had one novel published but has had quite a few short stories appearing in anthologies.

Anyway, there he is, Jack Deighton up on the west coast of Scotland, sandwiched in between Naomi Mitchison and Edwin Morgan amongst others. It’s an interesting and pretty map I think.

The Moon King by Neil Williamson

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The Moon King cover

The Moon King by Neil Williamson was published in 2014, it’s the first novel by the author and I think it comes under the genre of fantasy, not something that I read much but I did enjoy this one.

Glassholm is a strange place to live as everything is affected by the moon’s phases. When the moon is waning the whole of society goes a bit crazy and terrible things happen as the inhabitants’ moods can become violent and argumentative. The whole place is constantly swinging between highs and lows in a bi-polar way, and the people put their faith in the Moon King, otherwise known as the Lunane who is apparently immortal and had been their saviour hundreds of years ago when he had managed to harness the moon’s power via a machine.

Although fantasy isn’t really my cup of tea there are some very likeable characters in this book which is always a must for me if I am going to enjoy a book.

Neil Williamson is a Scottish author and that is very obvious from his writing which is sprinkled with Scots words and for me has that typically Scottish knack of conjuring up an atmosphere. This one counts towards the Read Scotland 2016 Challenge.

For some reason bits of this book reminded me of the film of The Wizard of Oz – I’ve never got around to reading the book. Have you read it. It also reminded me a bit of Alasdair Grey’s Lanark, but I think The Moon King is better than Lanark.

You can read Jack’s much fuller review of The Moon King here.