Topic: Robert Stacey McCain On Science Fiction Books

[trapeze]

In this installment of the weekly book post, we’re going to take a look at two sets of novels which are set in the aforementioned Grim Future, but which have very different approaches to the Crapsack Universe humanity finds itself in, whether it’s Twenty Minutes Into The Future or forty millenia hence.

First link.

Last month I did a compare & contrast between John Ringo’s Legend of the Alldenata/Posleen War novels and Sandy Mitchell’s Warhammer 40K Ciaphas Cain novels. This week, I’d like to introduce some of the classic military SF novels for your consideration, starting with what is arguably the seminal military SF novel: Robert Heinlein’s, Starship Troopers, not to be confused with Paul Verhoeven’s movie of the same name. Heinlein’s novel is a combination of Bildungsroman, philosophy lecture, and hard-fought tales of combat against an implacable alien foe. The book won the Hugo Award for best novel in 1960. It has been accused of being a fascist tract by people who fail at reading comprehension, but you should be ignoring idiots like that anyway. Inspired two other great novels which I’ll touch on a little bit later.

Second link.

Last week we looked at classic military SF involving soldiers on the ground; this week, we’re going to do the same with space navies.
Any discussion of space opera HAS to start with E.E. “Doc” Smith, who single-handedly created the genre with two epic series. The Skylark of Space is the first of four novels in which Richard Seaton matches wits, engineering skill and diplomacy against his nemesis, “Blackie” DuQuesne, in an epic struggle prefiguring the battles between Reed Richards and Victor von Doom. To give you some idea of the scale Smith was operating on here, by the fourth novel Seaton and DuQuesne have been forced to join together in an epic intergalactic war against psionic chlorine-breathing aliens who seek to exterminate humanity and its allies, and the weapons are entire suns teleported from a third galaxy into the home systems of the chlorine-breathers so as to trigger novae. More familiar to most fans are the Lensman novels, which begin with Triplanetary and continue on for five more novels concluding with Children of the Lens. These chronicle the adventures of the Galactic Patrol, its leaders the incorruptible Lensmen, and especially Kimball Kinnison, the protagonist of most of the novels and the first Second Stage Lensman. Battles interplanetary, interstellar and finally intergalactic are found in plenty, with humanity and its allies not always having the technological edge. Pretty much everything that comes in later space operas is rooted in Doc Smith’s works, no matter how dated they seem now. Truly, he’s one of the giants on whose shoulders modern SF stands.

Third link.

And while I am on the subject of vintage sic-fi...

There is this great short story that does a terrific job with the theme of resisting a tyrannical government and the theme of freedom and liberty by way of gun ownership. It's called "The Weapon Shop" by A.E. Van Vogt and it can be found in this book, one of the greatest collections of early sci-fi works of all time. This story is notable for, among other things, coining this phrase: "The right to buy weapons is the right to be free." Here is a link to the first two pages of the story. The rest, unfortunately, has to be purchased. And again, unfortunately, no Kindle version available. But the collection is an incredible value and I highly recommend it. The stories in that book are among the best ever written...seriously, they really are that good. But I always liked "The Weapon Shop" because it is a fictional essay of sorts about how liberty triumphs over tyranny, how a person can be led to believe lies for most of their life and the importance of gun rights.

[AmericanPatriot]

Wow, Trap.
Those names bring back memories.  50 years old ones.

As a young adolescent, I devoured sci-fi.
Heinlein was far and away my favorite. Memory of all the details from those books has dimmed with time so I have started re-reading.

I had forgotten about Doc Smith until you mentioned him and van Vogt was something I read but remember nothing

[trapeze]

Yeah, I cut my scifi teeth on Heinlen during my junior high school years. I think my favorites were "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress" and "Farnham's Freehold" plus the collection of his short stories, "The Past Through Tomorrow." I did get tired of his constant over emphasis on sexual themes, though, and I coined the term "Heinlenitis" to refer to any scifi author who, in their later years, would try and spice up their otherwise weaker offerings with sex.

Here is the complete list of stories found in "The Science Fiction Hall Of Fame Volume 1:"

A Martian Odyssey -- Stanley G. Weinbaum

Twilight -- John W. Campbell

Helen O'Loy -- Lester del Rey

The Roads Must Roll -- Robert A. Heinlein

Microcosmic God -- Theodore Sturgeon

Nightfall -- Isaac Asimov

The Weapon Shop -- A. E. van Vogt

Mimsy Were the Borogoves -- Lewis Padgett

Huddling Place -- Clifford D. Simak

Arena -- Fredric Brown

First Contact -- Murray Leinster

That Only a Mother -- Judith Merril

Scanners Live in Vain -- Cordwainer Smith

Mars is Heaven -- Ray Bradbury

The Little Black Bag -- C. M. Kornbluth

Born of Man and Woman -- Richard Matheson

Coming Attraction -- Fritz Leiber

The Quest for Saint Aquin -- Anthony Boucher

Surface Tension -- James Blish

The Nine Billion Names of God -- Arthur C. Clarke

It's a Good Life -- Jerome Bixby

The Cold Equations -- Tom Godwin

Fondly Fahrenheit -- Alfred Bester

The Country of the Kind -- Damon Knight

Flowers for Algernon -- Daniel Keyes

A Rose for Ecclesiastes -- Roger Zelazny

These are all very, very good stories from the golden age of science fiction.

Besides "The Weapon Shop" my other personal favorite from this list is Ted Sturgeon's "Microcosmic God." Sturgeon had one of the wildest imaginations in science fiction and it was coupled with an excellent writing style which resulted in lots of hits and almost zero misses in his bibliography.

Another really good (and exceptionally creepy) story is "Mimsy Were The Borogoves" by Lewis Padgett which was recently bastardized (and hence, ruined) in film. This story is one of those rarities in scifi, a unique take on first contact with extraterrestrial life.

Anyway, The entire set of the "Hall of Fame" books is a highly recommended purchase for anyone who appreciates science fiction. The stories in Volume 1 was chosen (by Robert Silverberg) from a vote tally by the Science Fiction Writers of America. Subsequent books in the series (there are four more volumes) were all Nebula Award winners that run through 1974.