Updates: Recent Science Fiction Purchases No. CCCXLVII (Edgar Pangborn, Rudy Rucker, Sally Miller Gearhart, and a SF anthology)

Which books/covers/authors intrigue you? Which have you read? Disliked? Enjoyed?

The first purchases of 2026!

1. A Mirror For Observers, Edgar Pangborn (1954)

• Richard Powers’ cover for the 1985 edition

From the back cover: “We would call them Martians, though they refer to themselves as Salvayans. Refugees from their dying planet, they arrived on our world almost 30,000 years ago to make new lives for themselves. From their vast underground cities, hidden from discovery, the Salvayans have ben observing us with care and concern, waiting for the day when humans will be ready to meet them. The Salvayans are not many, but they are long-lived and patient….

…Most of them, that is. for some have already tired of waiting. They call themselves Abdicators, setting themselves apart from the more passive Observers; they’d like to rid the Earth once and for all of the greedy, petty race that populates its surface. And with a little help from the Abdicators, perhaps the humans will destroy themselves.

In the small town of Latimer, Massachusetts, dwells a 12-year-old boy named Angelo Pontevicchio. Angelo is no ordinary human child, though he often wishes he would be. The handicap of his polioed leg and his unassuming gentleness are more than compensated for by his soaring mind. To Namir the Abdicator, Angelo is the human tool he needs. Angelo’s genius, his read-to-mold-personality, give him the potential of a Ghandi–or a Hitler. For Namir, it is but a matter of careful manipulation…

Learning of Namir’s plans, the Observers send in their own agent, poet-historian Elmis. Alone in the field, disguised as a mild, middle-aged ex-school teacher, Elmis must reach Angelo and somehow counteract the influence of the renegade Namir, whose resources and determination will stop at nothing–including murder. Elmis’ weapons: only the power of love and truth… and an ancient bronze mirror from the last civilization of Crete, a mirror that can show what one really is–or could be.

Following Elmis, Namir and Angelo over nine years–years in which the boy will be drawn into corruption, violence and, ultimately, a Nazi-like cult that threatens to fulfill Namir’s sinister wishes for human catastrophe–A Mirror for Observers showcases the captivating talents of of one of the SF’s most brilliant, most human and most innovative writers.”

Initial Thoughts: I love Pangborn. This is actually a second copy as my 1st edition paperback crumbled as I attempted to read it.

2. The 57th Franz Kafka, Rudy Rucker (1983)

• Uncredited cover for the 1st edition

From the back cover: “Mathematical philosopher, former unground cartoonist, aruthor of three wild sf novels and two works of mathematical non-fiction, great-great-great-grandson of G. W. F. Hegel and father of three, Rudolf von Bitter Rucker has a mind and a wit all of his own. Come enter his bizarre and delightful world in this collection of fact, fancy, and mangled history.”

Contents: “The 57th Franz Kafka” (1982),  “Schrödinger’s Cat” (1981), “A New Golden Age” (1981), “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” (1983), “Sufferin’ Succotash” (1983), “Faraway Eyes” (1980), “Hyperspherical Space and Beyond” (1980), “The Indian Rope Trick Explained” (1983), “A New Experiment with Time” (1982), “The Man Who Age Himself” (1982), “The Facts of Life” (1983), “Tales of Houdini” (1981), “Buzz” (1981), “The Last Einstein-Rosen Bridge” (1983), “Pac-Man” (1982), “Pi in the Sky” (1983), “Inertia” (1983), “Message Found in a Copy of Flatland” (1983), “The Jack Kerouac Disembodied School of Poetics” (1982).

Initial Thoughts: Rudy Rucker remains a complete unknown to me. I’ve read a few reviews here and there and picked up a copy of Software (1982) (which remains unread). I’ve heard good things about White Light (1980) in particular.

3. Wanderground: Stories of the Hill Women, Sally Miller Gearhart (1978)

• Jim Hanlon’s cover for the 1984 edition

From the back cover: No summary provided. See my quote from SF Encyclopedia below.

Initial Thoughts: According to SF Encyclopedia, Gearhart’s first sf book, one of the most extreme of those that envisage men and women as effectively different races, is The Wanderground: Stories of the Hill Women (coll of linked stories 1978). It is set in the outlaw, all-women, Utopian hill communities of a future when men are restricted to the Cities and dependent on Technology, while women (in a somewhat New Age manner) have developed Psi Powers through harmony with Nature. Even the Gentles, men no longer driven by violence, know that “maleness touched women only with the accumulated hatred of centuries.” She’s an author I’ve frequently encounter in scholarship of feminist SF but hadn’t picked up a copy, until now.

4. Science-Fiction Carnival, ed. Fredric Brown and Mack Reynolds (1953)

• Uncredited cover for the 1957 edition

From the back cover: “….in science fiction carnival you’ll find out how a screenwriter traded personalities with Ivan the Terrible in THE EGO MACHINE.

What happens when thinking machines can give the answers to any question in A LOGIC NAMED JOE.

When a hillbilly finds a Martian is easier to handle than a “revenoer” in THE MARTIANS AND THE COYS.

How a glorified slot machine solved the problem of interplanetary travel in THE COSMIC JACKPOT.

What Jeremiah Jupiter, “mad scientist” deluxe, thought in THE WHEEL OF TIME.

And six other yarns of the fabulous future collected for your enjoyment.”

Contents: Robert Arthur’s “The Wheel of Time” (1950), Murray Leinster’s “A Logic Named Joe” (1946), Larry T. Shaw’s “Simworthy’s Circus” (1950), H. B. Fyfe’s “The Well-Oiled Machine” (1950), Clive Jackson’s “The Swordsmen of Varnis” (1950), Fredric Brown’s “Paradox Lost” (1943), Eric Frank Russell’s “Muten” (1948), Mack Reynolds’ “The Martians and the Coys” (1951), Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore’s “The Ego Machine” (1952), George O. Smith’s “The Cosmic Jackpot” (1948), Nelson S. Bond’s “The Abduction of Abner Greer” (1941).

Initial Thoughts: Sometimes I cast my eyes on anthologies as a way to finally read SF authors that have escaped my focus. In this instance, I haven’t read anything by Robert Arthur, H. B. Fyfe, Larry T. Shaw, George O. Smith, or Nelson S. Bond.

For book reviews consult the INDEX

For cover art posts consult the INDEX

For TV and film reviews consult the INDEX

#1950s #1970s #1980s #CLMoore #EdgarPangborn #FredricBrown #HenryKuttner #MackReynold #MurrayLeinster #paperbacks #RudyRucker #SallyMillerGearhart #sciFi #scienceFiction #technology

My 2025 in Review (Best Science Fiction Novels and Short Fiction, Reading Initiatives, and Bonus Categories)

• Graphic created by my father

Here’s to happy reading in 2026! I hope you had a successful reading year. Whether you are a lurker, occasional visitor, a regular commenter, a follower on Bluesky or Mastodon, thank you for your continued support. As I say year after year, It’s hard to express how important (and encouraging) the discussions that occur in the comments, social media, and via email are to me. I’m so thankful for the lovely and supportive community of readers, writers, and discussion partners that stop by.

What were your favorite vintage SF reads–published pre-1985–of 2025? Let me know in the comments.

Throughout the later part of the year I’ve dropped hints about a research project. Perceptive readers might have parsed together the contours of the research: late 19th/early 20th century, utopian, African American, the American South, radical politics… It’s taking longer than expected. I’ve read a good ten monographs, five dissertations, countless articles. I’ve written twenty pages. I hoped to have it posted by early in this year. Alas. It’s coming together–slowly. Stay tuned.

Without further ado, here are my favorite novels (I only read a few) and short stories (I read a ton of those) I read in 2025 with bonus categories. I made sure to link my longer reviews where applicable if you want a deeper dive.

Check out my 2024, 2023, 2022, and 2021 rundowns if you haven’t already. I have archived all my annual rundowns on my article index page if you wanted to peruse earlier years.

My Top 5 Science Fiction Novels of 2025

• Alan Gutierrez’s cover for the 1985 edition

1. Octavia E. Butler’s Clay’s Ark (1984), 4.5/5 (Very Good). Full review.

Octavia E. Butler’s Clay’s Ark is the final published volume of her Patternist sequence (1976-1984). It is the third novel according to the internal chronology of the series. Clay’s Ark is, without doubt, the most horrifyingly bleak science fiction novel I have ever read. It’s stark. It’s sinister. It’s at turns deeply affective before descending into extreme violence and displaced morality. The moral conundrum that underpins the central problem, the spread of an extraterrestrial disease, unfurls with an unnerving alien logic. Butler’s characters are trapped by the demands of the alien microbes, scarred by the pervasive sense that their humanity is slipping away, and consumed by the fear of starting an epidemic. A true confrontation of the moment cannot lead to anything other than suicide or the first steps towards an apocalyptic transformation.

• Mark Weber’s cover for the 1st edition

2. Kim Stanley Robinson’s Icehenge (1984), 4.5/5 (Very Good). Full review.

Kim Stanley Robinson’s Icehenge, a fix-up from two previously published stories “To Leave a Mark” (1982) and “On the North Pole of Pluto” (1980), tells three interconnected tales that all connect to a mysterious monolith left on Pluto (the titular Icehenge). By design Icehenge instead follows the action after the action: men and women attempting to figure out their own place in a world characterizes by lifespans that stretch hundreds and hundreds of years. And its this brilliant interconnection between self-conception and the operations of history that Robinson succeeds and casts his spell. The story is well-told, polished, and filled with fascinating details (technological and sociological).

• Peter Jones’ cover for the 1978 UK edition

3. Joe Haldeman’s All My Sins Remembered (1977), 4/5 (Good). Full review.

The vast Confederación is comprised of radically distinct worlds ruled by the entire spectrum of political systems with both alien and non-alien inhabitants. There are few rules: don’t take advantage of indigenous populations and don’t wage wars on neighboring planets. At 22, the naive Otto McGavin, an Anglo-Buddhist, joins the Confederación as an agent to protect the rights of humans and non-humans. But there’s a twist. Under deep hypnosis a construct of Otto McGavin will be created for each mission. He’ll take on the identity–under a sheath of plasticine flesh–of whatever person he needs to be depending on the task.  The story follows Otto on three missions over many years.  The interlocking segments convey the deep trauma Otto must confront before he’s immersed in another persona and sent on another mission. His idealism clashes with the violence he must perpetuate. His sense of self conflicts with the violent actions of his “constructs.” The looming sense of dread and despair must finally have its reckoning.

• Uncredited cover for the 1983 edition

4. Zoë Fairbairns’ Benefits (1979), 3.75/5 (Good). Full review.

Zoë Fairbairns charts the struggles of the British women’s liberation movement in a dystopic near future. An anti-feminist fringe political party called FAMILY comes to power, simultaneously proclaiming family values while systematically dismantling the welfare state. Benefits effectively eviscerates governmental doublespeak and champions the need to organize and educate in order to fight against patriarchal forces and messianic movements that promise to solve all our ills.

• Colin Hay’s cover for the 1976 edition

5. Edgar Pangborn’s The Company of Glory (1975), 3.5/5 (Good). Full review.

Edgar Pangborn is an unsung SF hero in my book. At his best, he’s a deeply humanistic writer interested in moments of effective metafictional play on the nature of narrative. The Company of Glory (serialized 1974, 1975) is the third novel in the Tales of Darkening World sequence. It forms a prequel to Pangborn’s masterpiece Davy (1964). As with Davy, The Company of Glory attempts to create multiple interlocking layers of narrative, stories within the stories, quotations from various diaries, and the interjections of the overarching narrator of the entire collection of texts who remains anonymous until the final pages. Unfortunately, The Company of Glory is a deeply flawed novel. Recommended only for Pangborn’s fans. Read Davy first if you’re new to his work.

My Top 20 Science Fiction Short Stories Reads of 2025 (click titles for my full review)

1. Philip K. Dick’s “Foster, You’re Dead” (1955), 5/5 (Masterpiece): I featured on a podcast about this story. When the episode is posted, I’ll make sure to link it. Mike Foster spends his school days practicing survival skills–digging, making knives, weaving baskets–in case of a nuclear attack. The kids snicker at him as he walks past. They don’t own a fallout shelter at home. His father refuses to pay into the NATS (National Security fund). If a bomb hit, Mike wouldn’t even be granted access to the school shelter. He’s possessed by a deep, perpetual, encompassing trauma.

2. Fritz Leiber’s “Coming Attraction” (1950), 5/5 (Masterpiece): A rare reread! Leiber imagines an America transformed after a limited nuclear war with the Soviet Union. The physical landscape mirrors the psychological scars of New York’s inhabitants. Perverse new forms of TV entertainment, in particular male wrestlers pitted against masked women, transfix all audiences.

3. Jack Dann’s “A Quiet Revolution for Death” (1978), 5/5 (Masterpiece): Roger and his family head out of the city for a picnic in a vast cemetery. Roger dreams that he is an angel of God guiding mankind through the realm. Visiting the cemetery is an act of devotion. While other kids plug themselves into feelies, Bennie is a fanatic disciple of his father’s pseudo-philosophy of embracing the macabre. Sandra, Roger’s wife, plays along. The kids see through her dislike of the cemetery and the burial rituals happening around them.

4. Izumi Suzuki’s“Terminal Boredom” (1984, trans. by Daniel Joseph 2021), 4.5/5 (Very Good): A nameless young female main character recounts her interactions her one-time boyfriend. HE wants to reconnect with his mother, who abandoned his family. HE joins a staged show called The Psychoanalysis Room in an attempt to convince his mother to take “pity and come and find” him. She also has a dysfunctional family. Her mother, a TV executive, struggles/refuses to connect to her daughter. Like some manifestation of the modern hikikomori, they often refuse to communicate with others, eat as a group or eat at all for days on end, or leave their dwellings for the sun and vista of the aboveground. Both find solace and escape in the vacuities and artifice of television.

5. Philip K. Dick’s “Explorers We” (1959), 4.5/5 (Very Good): Six astronauts return to earth from a voyage to Mars. But they are not treated as heroes. Instead people flee. I found “Explorers We” a well-crafted existential terror. The story plays with narrative expectation and hints at a cosmic enormity that will, at least in this iteration, remain unknown.

6. James Tiptree, Jr.’s “Painwise” (1972), 4.5/5 (Very Good): An explorer who feels no pain is hurled mercilessly from planet to plant where is he tortured, experimented upon, and broken again, and again, and again. His sense of time dissipates. Space becomes a hellscape that he cannot escape. And each time he’s lifted back to his scout ship where a mechanical boditech stitches him back together.

7. Jack Dann’s “The Dybbuk Dolls” (1975), 4.5/5 (Very Good): Chaim Lewis works at a sex shop down below in the Undercity, one of many identical spheres, one mile in diameter, buried one thousand feet below the ground.  As Chaim finishes up his shift in the dingy shop, a group of visitors ask about his hook-ins and 21st century pornos. Eventually one of them asks him about his alien sex doll collection. And when he returns to the room with the dolls, he discovers they’ve all been unpacked and they imprint themselves on his mind! Cue a descent into the bizarre…

8.  Jack Williamson’s “Guinevere for Everybody” (1955), 4.5/5 (Very Good): An artificially created Guinevere stands “chained” in a “vending machine” tempting sleepy passengers in an airport with her plaintive calls. I did not know Williamson had this type of vision in him! The surprise of the year!

9. George H. Smith’s “The Last Days of L. A.” (1959), 4/5 (Good): A nameless character (“you”) wakes from a recurring dream: “the dream that has haunted the whole world since that day in 1945.” A dream of apocalyptic annihilation, in infinite variations. A narrative repetition takes form: Nuclear nightmare. The waking moment. The aimless quest for understanding. Communing with other lost souls. The retreat to the bottle. Fragments of the news suggest a world unraveling.

10. Theodore Sturgeon’s “The Stars Are the Styx” (1950), 4/5 (Good): The premise: Humans created Curbstone, an artificial satellite around Earth, to facilitate the ultimate scientific achievement–near instantaneous transportation across the galaxy. How? Individual spaceships, with a solitary crew person or couple, will be hurled out from Curbstone at various points across the space time continuum. The story revolves around the aging (and rotund) Senior Release Officer on Curbstone, who certifies, counsels, and guides the strange collection of humans who gather at the station willing to take such a risk.

11. Richard Matheson’s “Dance of the Dead” (1955), 4/5 (Good): In a drug and alcohol drenched near-future, a group of young adults take a break-neck road drip and stray from the path set out by parents and small town community. Manifesting the SPEED of the car, Matheson’s prose resonates with pulse and hum, snippets of song and signage, slang and youthful lust. It’s frantic. It’s zappy. It’s vibrant. Recommended for fans of the more linguistically experimental (and bleak) of 50s visions.

12. Jack Dann’s “Rags” (1973), 4/5 (Good): Joanna wanders the streets without seeing a single person. Everything she sees—from garbage cans to parked cars–seem in be various states of decay (“dented, rusted, and discolored”). She teaches herself a new way to walk to avoid the “invisible beings” that flit around her (6). She remembers a past sickness. Deaths in the family. She makes new rules of movement and perception as an act of preservation.  And suddenly she sees The Purple Cat.

13. Jack Dann’s “Fragmentary Blue” (variant title: “There are no Bannisters”) (1973), 4/5 (Good): he elderly dwell underground in large domed cities. It’s a commercial and media-inundated world — tiny machines grant “feeling” as you watch commercials. Professor Fleitman, who “could not rationalize having an orgasm over a cigarette advertisement,” presents a new idea to galvanize the elderly to Entertainment Committee. Rather than a feelie or a movie he wants to put on a circus.

14. Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s “Wanderers and Travellers” (1963, trans. 1966), 4/5 (Good): Stanisław Ivanovich spends his days submerged in lakes and rivers tagging septopods, a new octopus-like species discovered on Earth. His daughter, Marsha, assists from above. When he emerges from a lake, Marsha is deep in conversation with Leonid Andreevich Gorbovsky, an astroarchaeologist implied to be on leave from an expedition. The two scientists–IIvanovich, with his eyes on earthly mystery, and Gorbovsky, untangling the traces of potential intelligences across the cosmos–and Marsha engage in a series of discussions about the nature of the universe.

15. John Wyndham’s “The Man From Beyond” (variant title: “The Man from Earth”) (1934), 3.5/5 (Good): Somewhere on the Venusian surface the Valley of Dur, with its amalgamation of gasses, traps unsuspecting denizens who wander into its depths. In the city of Takon, Venusians, six-limbed creatures with silvery hair, ogle the strange beasts extricated and caged and exhibited from the Valley. The child, transfixed by the man’s noises and scrawls, pushes his stylus and pad under the bars. And Morgan Gratz, stranded astronaut and self-confessed murderer, draws for the child the respective locations of their planets.

16. Katherine MacLean’s “Contagion” (1950), 3.5/5 (Good) is a contact with an alien planet tale that’s legitimately odd. A hunting party looking for specimens of alien life in order to dissect, sets off from the spaceship Explorer across an alien planet called Minos. Reasonably, the crew is obsessed with a minute medical analysis of flora and fauna. The hunting party encounters a majestically shaped human who spins a crazy tale of adaptation and disease. 

17. Cherry Wilder’s “The Ark of James Carlyle” (1974), 3.5/5 (Good): Carlyle spends his tour of duty in a hut with a wood platform on small landmass surrounded by an “oily purple sea” on an alien planet. A crisis hits — and he suddenly learns the reason for the singular trees that grow in the center of each island.

18. E. C. Tubb’s“Without Bugles” (1952), 3.5/5 (Good): A naive journalist struggles to confront her heroic idealism, regurgitated through the media, in her attempt to save the Mars colony afflicted with a futuristic case of the black lung.

19.  Frank K. Kelly’s “Famine on Mars” (1934), 3.5/5 (Good): President Herbert Hoover infamously proclaimed on the eve of the Great Depression that “given the chance to go forward with the policies of the last eight years, we shall soon with the help of God, be in sight of the day when poverty will be banished from this nation.” “Famine on Mars,” published five years into the Great Depression, evokes similar paradigmatic shifts between propagandistic proclamation and harsh reality. Kelly spins a nightmare account of a famine on Mars and a plan to save the starving legions.

20. Gerald Kersh’s “Whatever Happened to Corporal Cuckoo?” (1953), 3.5/5 (Good): Kersh imagines a literary version of himself returning to New York City from WWII interacting with a fantastical manifestation of a Wound Man on board the Cunard White Star liner Queen Mary. Corporal Cuckoo, the “Wound Man” in question, regals the narrator (Kersh) with the history of his scarred and mutilated form that mysteriously heals from every injury.

Reading Initiatives

I have continued, resurrected, and created new science fiction short story reading series over the course of the year. Most of the stories I’ve picked for the series are available in some fashion online via links to Internet Archive in each review. I’ve included installments from 2024 in each series below. Feel free to read along with me! And thanks for all the great conversation.

Galaxy Science Fiction Read-through (started 2025)

Organized Labor and Unions in Science Fiction (started in 2024)

The First Three Published Short Fictions by Female Authors (continued from 2021)

Translated Short Stories in Translation (with Rachel S. Cordasco) (started in 2024)

The Media Landscape of the Future (started in 2022)

The Search for the Depressed Astronaut  (continued from 2020)

Generation Ship Short Stories (continued from 2019)

Exploration Logs (continued from 2022)

My Top 4 History Reads of 2025

A large portion of my history reading this year pushed my general interest in labor history and leftist politics backwards into the 19th century. Unusual for me I know! Often I write about what I can write about not what I plan on writing about. A brief caveat worth repeating: I’m a PhD-wielding historian and have a high tolerance for academic texts. That said, I’d classify everything in my list as on the approachable side of things if you know the broad strokes of American history.

1. Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp’s Setting Down the Sacred Past: African-American Race Histories (2010): This filled a complete hole in my knowledge. While I had encountered history-centric militant abolitionist texts written by black authors, I did not know how they fitted into the larger historiographic project of the era. As my PhD looked at universal histories in the medieval period, I’m a sucker for all kinds of histories of historiography! This is a good one.

2. Deborah Beckel’s Radical Reform: Interracial Politics in Post-Emancipation North Carolina (2011): I read this one for my research project on a black utopian author. Beckel’s brilliant monograph looks at the race and politics in North Carolina after the end of Reconstruction–a “fusion” government of Republicans and Populists managed to take power (temporarily) from the white supremacist Democratic status quo in the 1890s. Depressing. Fascinating. I’m waiting for an alt-history that uses the 1898 election in North Carolina as a jonbar hinge — hah!

3. Edward K. Spann’s Brotherly Tomorrows: Movements for A Cooperative Society in America (1989): While an older monograph, Spann’s work is a fantastic survey of the fascinating range of radical social idealism-inspired communities that proliferated across America. I’m obsessed by left-wing ideologies that permeate the rural world and movements for working-class utopianism. Spann will inspire you to track down newer monographs on the social movements he surveys.

4. Jordan S. Carroll’s Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right (2025): Rightly won the Hugo! I interviewed Carroll in January. In the book, he examines the ways the alt-right uses classic science fiction imagery and authors to mainstream fascism and advocate for the overthrow of the state. This is a short monograph designed to encourage thought. Highly recommended.

Goals for 2026

1. Keep reading and writing.

2. Read more reviews by other bloggers.

3. Cover more SF in translation.

For cover art posts consult the INDEX

For book reviews consult the INDEX

For TV and film reviews consult the INDEX

#1950s #1960s #1970s #ArkadyAndBorisStrugatsky #bookReview #bookReviews #books #CherryWilder #ECTubb #EdgarPangborn #fiction #FrankKKelly #fritzLeiber #GeorgeHSmith #GeraldKersh #IzumiSuzuki #JackDann #JackWilliamson #JamesTiptreeJr #JoeHaldeman #JohnWyndham #KatherineMacLean #KimStanleyRobinson #OctaviaEButler #philipKDick #RichardMatheson #sciFi #scienceFiction #TheodoreSturgeon #ZoeFairbairns

Synopse dreier Innen-Illustrationen von David Stone
für "Angel's Egg" von Edgar Pangborn
aus Galaxy June 1951

#scifi #sciencefiction #GalaxyMag #EdgarPangborn #DavidStone

Recent Science Fiction Purchases No. CCCXLIV (Margaret St. Clair, Edgar Pangborn, Keith Laumer, and Edmund Cooper)

Which books/covers/authors intrigue you? Which have you read? Disliked? Enjoyed?

It’s the summer Joachim Boaz. Where are the reviews? I’m currently on a much needed vacation (Iceland). I will be back soon! In the meantime here are four recent purchases.

1. The Dancers of Noyo, Margaret St. Clair (1973)

• Davis Meltzer’s cover for the 1st edition

From the back cover: “Like so many others before him, reluctant Sam MacGregor was sent on a pilgrimage for the Frail Vision by the Dancers: androids grown from the cells of one man, with the powers of hypnotism and illusion–androids who held the tribes of the Republic of California in thrall.

But soon Sam began to doubt his own identity, for he experienced, in close succession, extra-lives in different corridors of time and space.

And he could not know whom his search would destroy: the Dancers… or himself.”

Initial Thoughts: Um, the tagline: “How long would men dance beneath the whips of the androids?” Good question! A reader of the city recommended this novel to me as an example of intriguing SF inspired by the Counterculture.

2. Still I Persist in Wondering, Edgar Pangborn (1978)

• Uncredited cover for the 1st edition

From the back cover: “The waters rose, and darkness was upon the earth… For a few decades after the Twenty-Minute War and the Red Plague, there were those who remembered the ways and pleasures of civilization, but soon the harsh realities of life in the flooded seaboard of North America pushed the survivors into a new Dark Age–an age of superstition and brutality, but one of seeking and poetry as well. This is the world of Edgar Pangborn’s classic Davy.”

Contents: “The Children’s Crusade” (1974), “Harper Conan and Singer David” (1975), “The Legend of Hombas” (1974), “Tiger Boy” (1972), “The Witches of Nupal” (1974), “My Brother Leopold” (1973), “The Night Wind” (1974).

Initial Thoughts: Acquired due to my goal to read all of Pangborn’s fiction. This contains most of his short stories within the same universe as Davy (1964), “The Music Master of Babylon” (1954), and The Company of Glory (1974, novelized 1975).

3. Tomorrow Came, Edmund Cooper (1963)

• Uncredited cover for the 1st edition

From the back cover: “WORLDS OF IMAGINATION–OR REALITY? Ranging from sheer terror to the frankly incredible, from the mysteries of outer space to a world of destruction and a society where everyone lives like millionaires by order, these stories probe deep into the unknown tomorrow–a tomorrow where the unexpected is an everyday occurrence and the unforeseen an ever-present danger… the tomorrow that is about to become TODAY!”

Initial Thoughts: To be completely honest, I can’t for the life of me remember why I bought this one. Maybe one of the stories came up in a work of scholarship I was reading. Looking through the contents, none of the stories ring a bell. It’s been sitting in my pile of purchases next to my desk for at least two years. At least my mysterious late-night purchases tend to only cost a few dollars!

4. Worlds of Imperium, Keith Laumer (1961, novelized 1962)

• Ed Valigursky’s cover for the 1967 edition

From the inside page: “For Brion Bayard, the discovery of an alternate world to Earth where history took a different turn in the road was not a pleasant experience. His kidnapping brought him some startling revelations. Here was a world in which appeared identical doubles of famous personages–including a dangerous and hated dictator named Brion Bayard!

His assignment was simple enough. Dressed as his double, Brion was to enter the enemy stronghold, kill the dictator, and take his place until law and order could be maintained.

But once having seen his mirror-image brother, Brion had a little inclination to murder him as some other people had to let him live.”

Initial Thoughts: SF Encyclopedia describes Laumer’s Imperium sequence as his most interesting series. I assume that’s why I acquired the first volume.

For book reviews consult the INDEX

For cover art posts consult the INDEX

For TV and film reviews consult the INDEX

#1950s #1960s #1970s #art #avantGarde #books #EdgarPangborn #EdmundCooper #KeithLaumer #MargaretStClair #paperbacks #sciFi #scienceFiction

Short Book Reviews: Edgar Pangborn’s The Company of Glory (1974, novelized 1975) and Harold Mead’s Mary’s Country (1957)

Note: My read but “waiting to be reviewed pile” is growing. Short rumination/tangents/impressions are a way to get through the stack before my memory and will fades. My website partially serves as a record of what I have read and a memory palace for future projects. Stay tuned for more detailed and analytical reviews.

1. Edgar Pangborn’s The Company of Glory (1975)

• Vincent Di Fate’s cover for the 1st edition

3.5/5 (Good)

Edgar Pangborn is an unsung SF hero in my book. At his best, he’s a deeply humanistic writer interested in moments of effective metafictional play on the nature of narrative. The Company of Glory (serialized 1974, 1975) is the third novel in the Tales of Darkening World sequence. It forms a prequel to Pangborn’s masterpiece Davy (1964). As with Davy, The Company of Glory attempts to create multiple interlocking layers of narrative, stories within the stories, quotations from various diaries, and the interjections of the overarching narrator of the entire collection of texts who remains anonymous until the final pages.

In its simplest form the story revolves around the figure of Demetrios, a survivor of the limited nuclear conflict (the Twenty-Minute War of 1993) that plunged the United States into a tapestry of petty fragmented states and aborted democratic dreams. Demetrios is a storyteller. He ruminates on his birthplace, his memories, and the history of the King’s Republic of Nuber and its claims that it’s resurrecting the United States of America and the “Golden Age” (15). His storytelling runs afoul of Nuber’s increasingly draconian government as its descends into authoritarianism. He must set off with a group of devoted followers and a dream to resurrect a new democratic community based on love and compassion for all. Pangborn’s fictions give space for all forms of sexual variation (Demetrios is in a ménage à trois with a woman and a man) and strong characters with disabilities (the narrator is one of multiple characters with dwarfism).

Unfortunately, The Company of Glory is a deeply flawed novel. The metafictional ruminations feel like tired and inarticulate regurgitations (without the poetry) of Davy. It’s a struggle to identify a planned purpose for the jarring narrative shifts as the novel comes to a close. There isn’t a deeply vivacious figures at the center of it all. Demetrios could be but Pangborn seems to grow tired of the older man as the story progresses.

That said, in a historical moment where the forces of crypto-fascism seems to be making massive, destructive, and disturbing inroads in American government, The Company of Glory (1975) provided a wholesome salve. It’s rare to encounter a quiet post-apocalyptic novel in which the characters actively aspire to create new democratic communities in the wasteland. Too often stories shift to espousing various forms of dictatorship, all dolled up as good American values, as a necessity for survival. I’m looking at you Alas, Babylon (1959). Even American presidents like Dwight D. Eisenhower ruminated on the need to turn America into a regimented camp if the bombs hit.

While a half-fledged echo of his magisterial Hugo-nominated Davy (1964), elements of The Company of Glory will still be appreciated by Pangborn’s fans. You will also be simultaneously disappointed and wish Pangborn had applied a bit more of his magic to the pages. If you’re new to his work, pick up Davy first.

• Wendi Pini’s cover for Galaxy Science Fiction (August 1974)

• Colin Hay’s cover for the 1976 edition

2. Harold Mead’s Mary’s Country (1957)

• Barton’s cover for the 1st edition

3.25/5 (Above Average)

Imagine William Golding’s Lord of the Flies (1954) simultaneously collapsed into a brutal Cold War-inspired post-apocalyptic novel à la John Christopher’s contemporary The Death of Grass (1956) with elements of the classic quest. Out of this strange amalgamation comes Harold Mead’s intriguing oddity Mary’s Country (1957). Superior to his first novel Bright Phoenix (1955), Mary’s Country (1957) imagines a future dystopia with nebulous geopolitics. Channeling Western Europe’s 50s fear over rising Cold War tensions, Mead suggests Europe, after an ill-defined cataclysm, will be conquered by the Totes (Totalitarians: i.e. Communists). The United States, the “Dems,” unleash a biological attack on the Totes. The third powerbock, Asia, watches from afar.

The novel follows a group of young children within Tote-controlled Europe. These children were indoctrinated in communal camps to be the Guardians of the People (the two classes which appear to be perpetuated by eugenics). As the biological weapon kills off the adults, they must set off across the depopulated and violent landscape. They are “guided” by a collective imaginary world called Mary’s country (after one of the children who gives voice to the place). Soon they encounter various bands of People, a People child whom they adopt, a dog, and a new, and horrifying, root-formed idol called The Watcher. The children believe the idol, think symbolic manifestation of the iconic pig’s head in Lord of the Flies, must be appeased in order for the group to make it to Mary’s Country.

As with Mead’s Bright Phoenix (1955), he’s less interested in describing the mechanisms of the future state and more interested in the slow evolution of characters coming to grips with their indoctrination and the brutal world that birthed them. Mary’s Country does not hold back its punches. It’s an odd work.

I’ve consumed a lot of forgotten British post-apocalyptic novels as of late: Margot Bennett’s The Long Way Back (1954), Robert Duncan’s The Last Adam (1952) (didn’t manage to review this miserable novel), Philip McCutchan’s A Time For Survival (1966) and The Day of the Coastwatch (1968), Sarban’s The Sound of His Horn (1952), Reginald Hall’s Albion! Albion! (1974), Dave Wallis’ Only Lovers Left Alive (1964), Adrian Mitchell’s The Bodyguard (1970), etc. And many more await!

Recommended only for fans of lesser-known British apocalypse.

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