The Science Fiction Alphabet: K is for King

Stephen Edwin King, who requires no introduction is typically associated with Horror, but many people overlook his Science Fiction works mainly because he focuses on terror and fear in those instances.

He has published several works that belong squarely in the realm of Sci-Fi, such as “The Mist” (which was an excellent short story, and I maintain that it should be spelled “The Myst”), “Tommyknockers“, “Dreamcatcher“, “11/22/63“, “Cell“, “Under the Dome“, “The Langoliers“, and “The Regulators” written under his pseudonym of Richard Bachman.

I have to admit, that like other Sci-Fi fans on the net who are a bit leery of praising King, I was tempted to qualify this post in the usual SF nerd way by saying “I don’t typically like horror, and have nothing against Stephen King but…..” and when I was younger I went through a phase where I did in fact believe that if something was popular it was by definition not good. Stephen King helped me to get over that misconception, yes he is tremendously popular, and perhaps at times those who profit from him squeezed a little too hard instead of letting his ideas coalesce, but I maintain that his Sci-Fi works are solid examples of good and influential SF.

I remember when I was a teenager, and was out of things to read, and my aunt suggested I read her Stephen King book “Skeleton Crew”, I was not at all enchanted with the idea of reading something my aunt thought was great, but out of desperation I started leafing through it, and came across “The Mist” and was thoroughly sucked in, I realized I was reading Sci-Fi, and actually finished the story wanting more (the rest of the book didn’t deliver for me the way that story did) and I realized that the story had come across to me in a way that other Sci-Fi typically didn’t do, somehow the character registered in my brain as ‘more real’, and started to wonder why other Sci-Fi characters seemed more cerebral, and not quite as down to earth as in this story. Perhaps horror in Sci-Fi needs to be explored more.

His book “Dreamcatcher” has always been close to my heart, it was clever, scary, managed to have an Alien reference (they called the disease “The Ripley” in reference to Sigourney Weaver’s archetypal character), had cool aliens, psychic powers etc, and was heart warming, I also suspect that I was strongly attracted to the closeness of the central male characters in the book and movie, perhaps because I am a gay man.

Cell, was a very thrilling and interesting book based on a brilliant idea. The basic idea of the story is that one day, a celestial event of some kind, perhaps an accident, perhaps an attack, known as “the Pulse” hits the Earth, and everyone who was on their cell phone at that instant has their brain wiped, leaving behind only reptilian primal impulses, turning them into vicious zombies, and worse, these vicious zombies start to develop a hive mind, and mental powers such as flight and telepathy. I don’t particularly know why, but the fact that the zombies loved certain songs, like Bette Midler’s “Wind Beneath My Wings” gave me a creepy apprehension about these creatures. It’s up to a small group of un-affected humans to try to survive. At least one thing I find really cool about this story, is that no matter how outlandish it seems, King made zombies scary in a fresh and new way (Hierarchy of zombies: Slow Romero Zombies, Fast running Zombies, Flying Telepathic Zombies) and the story was a very good read (altough the writing style seems a little unusual for King, perhaps ghost-written) and I do recommend the above works as good Sci-Fi.

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The Science Fiction Alphabet: H is for Heinlein

When I was growing up, I loved going to the used bookstores, I always headed straight to the Science Fiction section, and wherever I went, in any store in any town in any state, the Sci-Fi section of the used bookstore always had Robert A. Heinlein books. They seemed to be a standard currency in those stores.

Considered along with Clarke and Asimov to be one of “The Big Three” of Science Fiction (at least Hard Science Fiction) he has had immeasurable influence on the shape and history of Sci-Fi. His series Starship Troopers was made into a series of motion pictures that had tremendous impact, his novel “The Puppet Masters” spawned a motion picture and its remakes which was highly imitated in books, movies and television. If imitation is the severest form of flattery, then Heinlein has been extremely flattered.

The first book of Heinlein’s I ever read was “Stranger in a Strange Land” which I can say was a turning point in my personal development, that book really changed my perception of the world, and made me think. Later in life I found other people who loved the book as much as I did, and some even told me that they tried to live their lives based on the book, they were hippies.

The book itself was centered around a lone survivor of a lost mission to Mars, Valentine Micheal Smith, (his mother was pregnant with him when she started the voyage to Mars) the rest of the crew met a mysterious end, but it seems the Native Martians took pity on him and raised him as a Martian, a heritage that comes with amazing mental powers (including the ability to banish people to other dimensions, destroy planets with your mind, put yourself in a hibernation state, alter your perception of time, etc) and is eventually rescued and taken back to Earth, where he has to learn to be human. This is the book that originated the word “GROK”, which found its way into popular culture, martian society is centered around the extremely valuable commodity of water, and Grok is the martian verb “to drink”, which can be used in extended contexts and meanings as well.

Another fantastic book of his is the novel “Time Enough for Love“, where the central character is Lazarus Long, who via the magic of a genetic anomaly has a lifespan of thousands of years. He’s a fascinating character who has learned to be humble, devious, and wise. He lives during mankind’s future of intergalactic empire and colonization, which makes for a fascinating and exciting read.

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The Science Fiction Alphabet: H is for Herbert

(note: due to lack of some Authors with last names under certain letters such as I, Q, X etc some letters in this series are going to get double-billing, and hence the letter H is getting double entries this month.)

I have been in a little bit of a rush to get to H, so I could write this about my all time favorite author, Frank Herbert.

I can say without exaggeration that Frank Herbert was a genius. He was the author of the worlds most successful and best-selling Sci-Fi novel of all time, Dune and the Dune Saga. Almost universally, fans and critics of the series describe his work as “mature”, “literary” and “intellectually rigorous” in a time when it was not fashionable for Sci-Fi books to be so. Typically from the 40’s to 60’s Science Fiction was a pulp medium, that often focused on sexuality to attract young adults (hence the military soldier or football quarterback is whisked away to a distant world, and must save the cheerleader from an alien menace, only then to have plenty of time to ravish the grateful heroin on the long journey home.) or in hard Sci-Fi you needed a brilliant technological idea or invention as the basis for your novel.

Herbert’s novels were an entirely different kind of animal, and that wasn’t without its risks, the manuscript for Dune was rejected nearly 20 times for publication before an auto manual manufacturer took a chance on his work. Herbert is credited with creating and popularizing Ecological Sci-Fi, and the world he created in the Dune saga stands as a shining example superb world building.

Herbert’s novels were extraordinarily high-brow, dealing with complex religious, political, scientific, and social ideas, integrating them seamlessly into the complex world he created.

Shortly after their publication the novels garnered great success and many awards, including the Nebula Award and the Holy grail of Science Fiction literary prizes, the Hugo Award.

Since his death in 1986 the series has been carried on by his son Brain Herbert working in collaboration with Kevin J. Anderson, some fans of original Dune pan the new prequels, saying they aren’t as intellectually rigorous, even though they are largely produced from Herbert’s own notes for unwritten extensions of the series, however, I ardently disagree with this criticism, I find the new books to be exciting, clever, and satisfying. Maybe it’s because I love the world of Dune so much I don’t want to see the series die, but I think the new prequels are very worthy successors to Herbert and his work, having read his bio and seen documentaries on the man and his work, I find it easy to imagine that he would want to the work to carry on, and I think he would be happy with the direction that world is expanding in.

If you need a recommendation for a book to start with, start with Dune. There’s no need for me to recommend other books in the series, once you read Dune, you won’t be able to help yourself reading the others.

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The Science Fiction Alphabet: F is for Farmer

Philip Jose Farmer

A brilliant and strange writer, he always treated Religion, Sexuality and Stereotypes in such a unique and clever way that you can’t help but like his writing. He is a recipient of the prestigious Hugo award, so I can’t be alone in that opinion.

My first experience with his work was a collection of his short stories called Strange Relations which is an immensely good read which I highly recommend, and one really memorable one was his short story “Mother”, which was about an emotionally derelict young man and his domineering mother who become stranded on an alien world where the dominant life-form are sentient plants, his mother is killed and he is taken prisoner inside one of these plant creatures where he is forced to live out the rest of his life in an alien womb. The story had deep psycho-sexual themes that made me uncomfortable, but the story was brilliant and I will remember it forever.

Another excellent and memorable short story from that collection was the one called “Father”, in which an intergalactic star-liner makes a pit stop on a strange world, and they discover a very strange being there that needs passage on their vessel. The only problem is there is mounting evidence making the crew, passengers, and priest believe that this being may in fact be God. Very Clever, get a copy as soon as you can. His most successful series is his RiverWorld Series.

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The Science Fiction Alphabet: E is for Ellison

You have to love

Harlan Ellison

 

other than being our prestigious Letter E in this series, I am also conferring onto him the title of “Sci-Fi’s Greatest Pugilist”.  Ellison was very well known for his vocal criticism, legal challenges, and being just plain ornery. Ellison was expelled from Ohio State University for striking a professor for belittling his writing ability, he once accused a studio executive who was producing Ellison’s work of having “The Intelligence of an Artichoke”, and even mailed a dead gopher to a certain publishing house. Perhaps the best story of his antics is the story where he was hired as a writer for the powerhouse of hypocrisy Walt Disney, only to be fired on his first day for being over heard suggesting an erotic animated series involving Disney characters, it has to make you smile.

One of the first books I read from Ellison was his book “I have No Mouth, and I Must Scream“, which spawned a PC video game , and to say that it was disturbing would be an understatement. It was about five human beings who are the prisoners of an evil computer named “I AM”, whose only interest is in torturing and killing them, only to continually resurrect them to start the hellish process all over again.

I remember the first time I saw Ellison on cable television, it was a public service announcement that he paid for himself on the Sci-Fi (or as it’s known today SyFy) channel in order to rail against what he thought was unfair online manipulation of votes for a certain sci-fi literary award that had recently decided to start allowing online voting. I remember thinking as I watched it “man this guy likes to fight.”

His influence on Science Fiction is almost immeasurable, having written for or consulted on Star Trek, Outer Limits, Twilight Zone, being published in many of the more famous Anthology and Omnibus series. He served as a judge and lecturer for a sci-fi writers workshop that helped to start Octavia Butler‘s career, Butler is an excellent author who was in contention for Letter B of this series.

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The Science Fiction Alphabet: C is for Clarke

One of the only authors in this alphabet who has been knighted, his name is Sir Arthur C. Clarke. He was considered Along with Hienlein and Asimov to be one of the “Big Three” of Science Fiction, although this seems unfair since that trio really specialized in “hard science fiction”, so the title maybe un-fair on many levels.

He was a very intelligent and technically accomplished man, he served as a radar man during World War II, he has a Geo-Stationary Orbit named after him, “The Clarke Orbit”, and garnered many titles before his death in 2008 at the age of 90.

The motion pictures based on his books “2001 A space Odyssey” and it’s sequel were extraordinarily successful  and Clarke requires little introduction.

An interesting detail about his life that not many know is that he was a gay man, and moved to Sri Lanka because of their more tolerant attitude towards homosexuality. He was an accomplished Diver, and in his life time made several valuable underwater discoveries including a ruined temple, and a sunken ship that contained a fortune in silver coins.

Clarke was a Utopian visionary, believing that wisdom and learning could save mankind, and make us not only a successful species but good custodians of the Universe.

If you are looking for a good read from this author, and don’t want to go for his most popular works, “Childhood’s End” is widely considered his best work, although I also found “Rendezvous with Rama” to be very stimulating.

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The Science Fiction Alphabet: B is for Bradbury

Ray Douglas Bradbury. The name always makes me smile. I still remember the day I first heard about Ray Bradbury. I was about 15 years old, and was talking with my High School Librarian, at Thomas Downey High School in Modesto California, and had mentioned to her that I like Science Fiction and was thinking of reading Bradbury’s stuff.

“Oh, you don’t want to read Bradbury, he’s very anti-social.” she whispered.

“Anti-social? How do you mean?”

“Well, when he writes, he says he pulls down the shades in his study and pretends there’s a raging storm outside. He just sits in there like a hermit and writes for days, he doesn’t have a driver’s license, he’s anti-machine, he hates computers and in his book ‘The Martian Chronicles‘ he basically says we are just going to ruin Mars by filling it with automobiles, billboards and hamburger stands.”

Now, this woman was associated with a learning establishment, and by extension I viewed her as an educator, and bless her misguided attempt to dissuade me from filling my grey matter with anti-social ideas, because I was a young man with perverse sensibility, and I did think it likely if we ever colonized Mars we would do exactly those thing. Those words she had spoken guaranteed that I would read Bradbury. Looking back on that moment I think that if she had described him in any other way, I would not have been as interested.  I read The Martian Chronicles and like so many others, I fell in love.

Bradbury is one of the Sci-Fi Greats because of his humanism, in fact out of all the great writers, I think he is the most human, even more-so than Heinlein.

Born in 1920 in Waukegan, Illinois, he will probably be best known for his novel

‘Fahrenheit 451‘ which is a wonderful book, but not the one I feel really shines. He was a very successful writer, writing in many genres and fields, including screenwriting and play writing.

While I do not feel there is a single bad Ray Bradbury book in existence, I feel the premise of ‘Fahrenheit 451’  was negatively oriented, being driven by what Bradbury didn’t like about the world, instead of on what he did like, but even so, before the end of the novel he  takes a more positive direction and there is a new dawn of his humanist spirit when you meet the “people books”.

If you want an intro to his short stories, anything from “I sing the Body Electric” will do nicely, “The Electric Grandmother” was a very nice and endearing piece from that collection, which I believe was also made into a TV movie.  If you like the macabre, his short story “The Veldt” from the same collection will hypnotize you.

If you are like me, and want a full dose right away, I highly suggest first reading The Martian Chronicles, immediately followed up by Dandelion Wine. When you have finished reading, you will come away from the experience not feeling that you read a book, but that you shared an experience of the man who wrote this book to you, the boy that he was and still is, and that you will have a new friend that you will be proud to call your friend.

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The Science Fiction Alphabet: A is for Asimov

Asimov, Asimov, Asimov…

It is extraordinarily difficult to to speak in a succinct way about the massive dimensions of this man and his mind. It is my firm belief that any attempt at an alphabet system of science fiction writers will now and forever always begin with Asimov. In short Isaac Asimov was a genius of the first rate, exceeding John Von Neuman, Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton and the rest not only for his scientific aptitude and number of fields he impacted, but because of his vision and imagination. He shaped not only Science Fiction, but Science itself.

Russian born, Between October 4, 1919 and January 2, 1920, he died April 6, 1992 (aged 72) having been one of the most prolific writers of all time.  He not only wrote some of the best science fiction ever, he wrote shockingly astute hard science books for the popular interest, I still remember reading his “Intelligent Man’s Guide to Science” which blew the top of my head off, scooped out my brains and put itself in the space left over. I had no idea that Science as a collection of seemingly disjoint branches  could be unified in such a fluid and comprehensive way. If you are looking for an intro to this man’s non-fiction work, get the Guide, it will increase your IQ by 20 points and infect you with a love of Science again.

As for his fiction work, well, I believe I already mentioned he was a prolific writer, you can walk into the Asimov section of any good bookstore, swing a cat, and whatever book you hit will be a good one. His Foundation Series is so epic, with its ability to unify Psychology, History, and Sociology not only within its pages, but in your mind as reader, that you will never look at your world the same way after reading it.

Asimov is the Patron Saint of Robots and Robotics, in fact the term “robotics” was attributed to him. The “Positronic Brain” is also one of his.

I had to think long and hard about which of his fiction writings I was going to recommend as an intro to this brilliant man’s work, and in the end, the decision was easy. It is a work that is so amazing, so utterly world-changing in scope and eloquent in execution that it’s premise should be ruled as the fundamental theorem of all Science Fiction (and maybe Science too). I shall dispense with all hyperbole and simply say I am amazed that Isaac Asimov’s short story “Nightfall” has not been placed at the top of the FDA’s list of most powerful mind altering substances.

It has been rightly called “The Greatest Science Fiction Short Story of All Time”, it actually spawned two motion pictures, one in 1988 and another in 2000 (don’t watch them before reading it for yourself, although the movies are not entirely without merit) and audio versions, if you must explore it in any other media than print, I recommend the Stephen Eley reading for the 100th episode of the weekly Sci-Fi Podcast Escapepod.

To give a brief intro to what the book is about…

The story takes place on a world that has multiple Sun’s, the people of this world have the level of knowledge and technology that is roughly comparable to 1940’s America. They know from history that there was a cataclysmic breakdown of society a few thousand years ago, but no one knows why it happened, and as their world braces for the impact of a never before seen celestial event they must choose to reach for the light or fall into an endless cycle darkness.

Amazon is selling it in paperback and Kindle editions for $7.99, and I can honestly say if they charged triple that it would still be a good deal.

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Behold the Sci-Fi Book Nerd!!

I had something of a strange childhood, like many other kids who grew up in my situation, I was not very well off financially, hyper-active imagination, possible mild autism, smarter than the average bear and socially awkward. Unlike many kids, I loved school, I loved PBS (especially Saturday nights when they showed British stuff like Monty Python, Faulty Towers, and my all time favorite Dr. Who) and most of all I loved the Library and BOOKS. I would go to the Library every chance I got, several times I pestered the school Principle to unlock the school library for me during summer (which he was happy to do) and there were times in High School when I skipped school and went to the Library instead…it seems funny now.  I became permanently warped  one day when I was about twelve years old and I picked up a book called “The Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy” by Douglas Adams

The book was nothing like I expected, it was an adventure, it was FUNNY, it was wickedly clever, and it made me happy. It made me break out in hysterical laughter, I read it all in one day, and went back to the Library on the first bus the next day to get the others, I read them all except for “Mostly Harmless” which they didn’t have, but have now decided to save that one for when I am an old man, to preserve a little of that happiness and wonder in my older self.

This book was not only the book that got me hooked on reading, but because of it I was hooked on Science Fiction forever after.

Of course eventually I read many other books from many other branches of the literary tree, but nothing ever brings me joy like a good Sci-Fi. If I have cold, I am on the couch, with a blanket, cup of tea, and re-reading Dune, or A Canticle for Leibowitz, Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles,  Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, anything by Stanislaw Lem and, well… the list just goes on and on.

Hence this blog!!!

I have three reviews backed up for the dangerously fun giant monsters in the “Daikaiju” collections of short stories volumes 1,2 and 3. Soon to be followed by my reviews of my all time favorite Sci-Fi Saga Dune, both the originals by Frank Herbert and the follow ups by his son Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson, but first comes a series I call “The Science Fiction Alphabet”, and yes, “A is for Asimov” 🙂

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