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Post by Ish Kabbible on Nov 22, 2015 1:22:14 GMT -5
A hard cover book I just found in pristine condition on the shelves of a NYC public library. ITS 61 FREAKING YEARS OLD. My god, it looks as good as new but no dust jacket. SF websites say its one of the finest anthologies of the 1950s, the lineup looks great. Some I've read in the past but about 2/3 I haven't or maybe forgotten. I've read 100 of the over 600 pages so far and it'll keep me occupied for some time
TITLE: STORIES FOR TOMORROW
EDITED BY: William Sloane
CATEGORY: Short Fiction
SUB-CATEGORY: Anthology
FORMAT: Hardback, 628 pages
PUBLISHER: Funk & Wagnalls, US, 1954
CONTENTS LISTING:
About This Book by William Sloane
PART I: THE HUMAN HEART
"The Wilderness" by Ray Bradbury (Today, April 6th 1952, revised for Fantasy & Science Fiction, November 1952)
"Starbride" by Anthony Boucher (Thrilling Wonder Stories, December 1951)
"Second Childhood" by Clifford D. Simak (Galaxy, Feb 1951)
"Homeland" by Mari Wolf (first published as "The Statue", If Magazine, January 1953)
"Let Nothing You Dismay" by William Sloane (written for this anthology)
"A Scent of Sarsaparilla" by Ray Bradbury (Star Science Fiction Stories #1, February 1953
PART II: THERE ARE NO EASY ANSWERS
"The Exile" by Alfred Coppel (Astounding Science Fiction, October 1952)
"The Farthest Horizon" by Raymond F. Jones (Astounding Science Fiction, April 1952)
"Noise Level" by Raymond F. Jones (Astounding Science Fiction, December 1952)
"First Contact" by Murray Leinster (Astounding Science Fiction, May 1945)
PART III: SWEAT OF THE BROW
"Franchise" by Kris Neville (Astounding Science Fiction, February 1951)
"In Value Deceived" by H. B. Fyfe (Astounding Science Fiction, November 1950)
"Okie" by James Blish (Astounding Science Fiction, April 1950)
"Black Eyes and the Daily Grind" by Milton Lesser (If Magazine, March 1952)
PART IV: DIFFERENCE WITH DISTINCTION
"Socrates" by John Christopher (Galaxy, March 1951)
"In Hiding" by Wilmar H. Shiras (Astounding Science Fiction, November 1948)
"Bettyann" by Kris Neville (reprinted from New Tales of Space & Time, edited by Raymond J. Healey, 1951)
PART V: THE TROUBLE WITH PEOPLE IS PEOPLE
"The Ant and the Eye" by Chad Oliver (Astounding Science Fiction, April 1953)
"Beep" by James Blish (Galaxy, February 1954)
"And Then There Were None" by Eric Frank RussellAstounding Science Fiction, June 1951)
"The Girls from Earth" by Frank M. Robinson (Galaxy, January 1952)
PART VI: VISITORS
"Minister Without Portfolio" by Mildred Clingerman (Fantasy & Science Fiction, Feb 1952)
"The Head-Hunters" by Ralph Williams (Astounding Science Fiction, October 1951)
"Dune Roller" by Julian May (Astounding Science Fiction, December 1951)
"Disguise" by Donald A. Wollheim (Other Worlds Science Stories, February 1953)
"The Shed" by E. Everett Evans (Avon SF&F Reader, January 1953)
PART VII: THREE EPILOGS
"The Nine Billion Names of God" by Arthur C. Clarke (Star Science Fiction Stories #1, ed. Frederik Pohl, Ballantine, 1953)
"The Forgotten Enemy" by Arthur C. Clarke (King’s College Review, December 1948)
"The Answers" [also as “...And the Truth Shall Make You Free”] by Clifford D. Simak (Future, March 1953)
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Post by berkley on Nov 26, 2015 2:11:31 GMT -5
A hard cover book I just found in pristine condition on the shelves of a NYC public library. ITS 61 FREAKING YEARS OLD. My god, it looks as good as new but no dust jacket. SF websites say its one of the finest anthologies of the 1950s, the lineup looks great. Some I've read in the past but about 2/3 I haven't or maybe forgotten. I've read 100 of the over 600 pages so far and it'll keep me occupied for some time TITLE: STORIES FOR TOMORROW EDITED BY: William Sloane CATEGORY: Short Fiction SUB-CATEGORY: Anthology FORMAT: Hardback, 628 pages PUBLISHER: Funk & Wagnalls, US, 1954 First I heard of it but looks like a good one. The only ones I'm pretty sure I've read are the Bradbury stories (don't recognise the titles but I read almost everything of his in print when I was a kid), the two by Arthur C. Clarke, and possibly Leinster's "First Contact" if it's the one I'm thinking of. This might be a good SF collection for me to look for once I'm done with Adventures in Time and Space, which was published in the mid-40s. Speaking of science fiction, I took a break this month from that 40s anthology and moved ahead a few decades to the early 60s to read JG Ballard's early novel The Drowned World: a well-written book that made me wonder how it was received at the time: its strengths - an introspective and descriptive power that creates a cumulative, oppressive effect corresponding to the physical changes the earth is undergoing in the novel's global-warming scenario - aren't of the kind I imagine would have appealed to the average SF fan at the time, while readers who might have been more open to its style and leisurely pace probably wouldn't have thought of picking up a science fiction book in the first place. Things are a little different now, I'd like to believe, but I'd be curious to learn more about the reaction back in the day. Maybe I'm underestimating the audience of the period. Still in the speculative fiction vein, I just finished Italo Calvino's The Castle of Crossed Destinies, which might be considered a fantasy novel, of a sort - though definitely not of the sort we unfortunately now tend to automatically associate with the term "fantasy". It's a postmodern, meta-fictional thing, a story about stories, that I think will have to percolate in my sub-conscious for awhile before I really get to grips with it, but was very intriguing and enjoyable on a first reading.
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Post by Ish Kabbible on Nov 26, 2015 21:35:59 GMT -5
... Leinster's "First Contact" if it's the one I'm thinking of. but I'd be curious to learn more about the reaction back in the day. Maybe I'm underestimating the audience of the period. Leinster's First Contact written in 1945 is an all time classic and an untold number of subsequent stories expounded on its plot. A story of an Earth ship meeting up with an alien craft for the first time in deep, deep space. Both ships have no way of communicating, have no idea if the other is peaceful or warlike and both unable to depart due to the fear they could be tracked and the location of their home planet revealed. It's Leinster's best story and has been constantly included in anthologies Couldn't tell you about Ballad's reception when he debutted in the late 50s/early 60s. But he was part of the opening shot of what was to be known as New Wave SF which split the SF community by the late 60s. New Wave writing was much more literate, increasingly experimental, less concerned with scientific expertise and more with allegory and new age thinking Some of the older SF writers embraced it like Harlan Ellison and Robert Silverberg. Some dismissed it like Isaac Asimov.Many of the New Wave stories in later years where not even true SF though published as such. It began to disappaite by the mid 70s, the majority of the SF readers didn't support it and SF swung the pendulum fully by getting more conservative and juvenile with the advent of Star Wars. Ballad, I opine, was one of the best of the New Wave writers
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Post by berkley on Nov 28, 2015 2:31:20 GMT -5
Thanks Ish, that sounds like the one I had in mind but it was so long ago I can't say for sure.
Didn't know that Asimov had had anything to say about the New Wave of SF at the time, good or bad. Not surprising, of course, that it wouldn't be his kind of thing.
I'll say this much, reading Ballard's Drowned World has given me the taste to move on to a few more things in that vein, so I'll probably be shifting one or two of his later novels closer to the top of my reading list, as well as some other European SF - Stansilaw Lem and the Strugatskys in particular.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Nov 28, 2015 7:40:41 GMT -5
A Global Warming sci-fi from the 60s? Interesting!
I didn't realize that Leinster story was the 1st alien first contact one... that seems too late for that, unless there's another similar on other than the one I read.
Today's book:
Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart
I think I liked the prequel better...this grabbed my attention because it sounded enough like X-Men to check out.. and there definitely are some similarities. I found it a bit too simplistic and predictable (often the case in Young Adult targeted novels). It was pretty fun overall, but any time the main focus of the plot is that children are so much smarter than adults, it gets a little weird. Especially when those adults practically conquer the world first, but can't stop 4 kids ending their plans. Then there's the fact the kids screwed up several times, but the bad guys weren't able to get their act together.
That said, it was a pretty fun read with some clever puzzles, just a little too young adult-y for me. I'd definitely recommend it for it's target audience, though.
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Post by Ish Kabbible on Nov 28, 2015 10:50:14 GMT -5
I didn't realize that Leinster story was the 1st alien first contact one... that seems too late for that, unless there's another similar on other than the one I read. Leinster's wasn't the first. It was the most intelligent and covered all the ramifications. Previously , the stories would rely on ray guns and kidnapped daughters of the chief scientist
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Nov 28, 2015 13:33:54 GMT -5
Down for the Count by Stuart Kaminsky Toby Peters delves into the seamy side of boxing as he works to keep Joe Louis from being tied to the murder of Toby's ex-wife's new husband. Another nice entry in the life of Hollywood's favorite hard-luck P.I.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Nov 28, 2015 13:41:01 GMT -5
Wintersmith by Terry Pratchett The third of the Tiffany Aching books. Tiffany catches the attention of the Wintersmith when she lets herself get drawn into the fall Morris Dance. A bit weaker than the other two, but still a good read.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Nov 30, 2015 19:57:40 GMT -5
Odd and the Frost Giant by Neil Gaiman
My 5th grader was reading this for book club, and I was surprised I'd never seen it before. It's really a novella, written very much in the style of the 'real' Norse fables you might find in Bullfinch, but with modernized language.
It works great as that, giving us a interesting hero that's easy to root for, and recognizible yet slightly different than usual Norse icons. The story could easily have been a few issues of Sandman, and would in fact make a pretty awesome comic. Well worth the read.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Nov 30, 2015 20:10:26 GMT -5
Odd and the Frost Giant by Neil Gaiman My 5th grader was reading this for book club, and I was surprised I'd never seen it before. It's really a novella, written very much in the style of the 'real' Norse fables you might find in Bullfinch, but with modernized language. It works great as that, giving us a interesting hero that's easy to root for, and recognizible yet slightly different than usual Norse icons. The story could easily have been a few issues of Sandman, and would in fact make a pretty awesome comic. Well worth the read. I like the book. I think all of Gaiman's...kids books...are good. This isn't by any means the best of them, but it's definitely a fun quick read.
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Post by thwhtguardian on Nov 30, 2015 22:16:30 GMT -5
Odd and the Frost Giant by Neil Gaiman My 5th grader was reading this for book club, and I was surprised I'd never seen it before. It's really a novella, written very much in the style of the 'real' Norse fables you might find in Bullfinch, but with modernized language. It works great as that, giving us a interesting hero that's easy to root for, and recognizible yet slightly different than usual Norse icons. The story could easily have been a few issues of Sandman, and would in fact make a pretty awesome comic. Well worth the read. The story really did feel genuine myth and the illustrations were fantastic.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Dec 1, 2015 13:15:48 GMT -5
The illustrations were very good... I'd love to see it as a comic with Mark Buckingham art... I think his style (especially in panel layout) would be perfect for it.
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Post by Dizzy D on Dec 2, 2015 6:29:41 GMT -5
Oh quite a list in the last two/three weeks:
Neil Gaiman's Trigger Warnings: Another bundle of short stories. It has a Doctor Who story, a Sherlock Holmes story and another Shadow story (Gaiman says that he will do 1 other Shadow story in England and then will return him to the US for a longer story). For the rest a heap of short stories (and I was liking the short stories overall pretty well this time. (Usually there are at least a few I don't like in his bundles).)
Clive Barker's Scarlet Gospels: (Warning! Minor Spoilers!) Clive Barker's sequel to the Hellbound Heart/Hellraiser stories and a continuation of his Harry D'Amour stories. A mixed bag to me. It jettisons the Hellraiser mythos, but does keep Pinhead's personality more like his Hellraiser incarnation , than the personality the Cenobites (Pinhead was a background character in Hellbound Heart) displayed in Hellbound Heart; Pinhead repeatedly uses violence and torture against his enemies as a way of vengeance or punishment, while in the Hellbound Heart, the Cenobites saw their torture of their victims as a gift, which was the point of that story (people opening the puzzle box where looking for ultimate pleasure, but didn't count on the truly alien nature of the beings on the other side). Granted during the story the Hell Priest (as Pinhead prefers to be called and the name Pinhead is seen as an insult by him) has left the Cenobites and turned against their teachings, but still it shows a change in mentality from an unknowable being to a being that is pretty much human. Gone also are Leviathan, the Cenobites obsession with order and Pinhead's origin as a human; the story tells some rumours as to Pinhead's origins, but nothing definitive. None of them fit with his movies origins.
So the movies are out (which is not a problem, I always liked the concept of the novella more than the movie, especially the later ones), but that should not make the boook bad, right? The problem is that I like the beginning of the book and I like the last part a lot, but the middle part is really lacking. Possible a result of the way the book was writing (Barker had been working on and off on it for about 15-20 years). During the middle part Harry and his friends (three friends, but plotwise, they could have easily be turned into 1 person. And for some reason the book keeps calling them the Harrowers, as if they are a superhero team) follow the Hell Priest into Hell itself to rescue their friend Norma. My problem with that part is that it's a pretty long bit where Harry and his friends basically just follow the Hell Priest, but don't really do anything and Hell as described in the Scarlet Gospels, seems rather .. mundane.(Compared to the weird worlds Barker has created in his other stories, Hell is even boring. Most demons seem not that different from humans in behaviour and without any special powers, they tend to be easily and anticlimatically dispatched by either the more important characters. Speaking of which, the only characters that are important to the story are Harry, Norma and the Hell Priest (and a fourth character in the final part). Harry's friends have personalities, but too little to do.
Overall, I wouldn't recommend this one. Barker has better books out there. Get it if you really want closure on some of his recurring characters. The ending does open up some interesting ideas for a future book, so I'm not writing off Barker yet.
Richard Stark's Parker - Dirty Money: I'm late too the Parker books, I got to them through Cooke, Brubaker and Elmore Leonard, so it was finally time to buy one of the regular books (already have Cooke's adaptions.) Dirty money is my first Parker book in novel form. It is an enjoyable crime story, for once not focusing on the crime itself, but on the aftermath. Parker has been part of a robbery and made of with 2 million in cash, but they are forced to hide the money to get away. Turns out the money is tainted: the serial numbers are known and one of the criminals is caught (but manages to escape). The whole story is criminals distrusting each other, trying to think of ways to get the money and a way to do launder the "dirty money"(and we have the title.)
William Gibson's Pattern Recognition I'm ashamed to admit how long it took me to realize that this wasn't set in some cyberpunk future, but was contemporary. (For those interested; when Cayce talks about her father's disappearance during 9/11, the ball dropped for me.). Cayce Pollard has a talent (or rather an allergy) to marketing and especially logos. She uses her allergy as a freelancer to determine whether a corporate logo will be effective or not. In her free time, Cayce is part of an online group of people who have become interested in a series of short movie clips that have been posted anonymously. The clips are released without any context and the group heavily discusses the meaning of the clips. Cayce then gets hired by a corporation to find out more about the clips, its owner believing that the clips show a very effective form of marketing. It's Gibson, so technology plays an important part in the story, but we also get a very human backdrop with Cayce trying to come to terms with her father's disappearance. I'd recommend it, especially if you're a fan of Gibson.[/b][/b]
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Dec 2, 2015 15:14:55 GMT -5
Thuglit 18 ed. Todd Robinson Another collection of short contemporary crime/noir tales. I've never felt bad about reading a single issue of this publication.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 11, 2015 23:04:32 GMT -5
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