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XXXIII: Octavia Butler, Kindred (1979)
Rare Butler singleton, and one that's proved popular among the academilentsia: hardly sf at all, but time travel from recent present (1976 - spot the significance) to antebellum Maryland. Dana's great-great etc is nearly killed and she is yanked back in time where she rescues him. The snag - he's white, she's black, so she's not welcomed with opened arms. Subsequent visits get no better, and her (white) boyfriend joins her. The science if you are looking for it is genetics, or heredity, and time travel paradox, but Butler avoids explaining the mechanism (does it matter - there may be one but Dana does not know it?). The present is no post-race utopia either.
XXXIV: Joe Haldeman, The Forever War (1974)
One of those classics I've never previously read: the space opera version of Vietnam and a veteran's response to Heinlein's Starship Troopers. This version had a restored middle section (I'm not clear whether it replaces a section or the serialisation left it out - I shall have to track down the copies of Analog.
Of course - and there's a quote I need to dig out from an article in Movie to this effect - most Vietnam movies are not about Vietnam, but rather about the legacy on the soldiers on their return. The Deerhunter only has a few minutes set there; even Apocalypse Now is more Cambodia. One of the books I took notes from in Liverpool was Vietnam and Other Alien Worlds, which made a few points about this - Haldeman has passed through the alien worlds of Vietnam, hospital and home. Of course, one of the world-building changes is homosexuality being more common, indeed the default sexuality, but the protagonist maintains his straightness.
XXXV: Angela Carter, The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault (1977)
I tried to track this down some years ago - and Amazon is lousy for this, as it suggested a 1950s translation. I gave up - and forgot what project I needed this for - and then Penguin brought out this edition, with an introduction by Jack Zipes. It's roughly contemporaneous with The Passion of New Eve (1977), The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories (1979) and The Sadeian Woman and the Ideology of Pornography (1978), and shows Carter's rather interesting brand of feminism which embraces a violent sexuality. The interesting thing about the translation is her use of the morals - present in Perrault - to point or undercut. Will repay a reread - and a digging into the voluminous Carter secondary literature which scares me off her.
XXXVI: Angela Carter, The Passion of New Eve (1977)
A Ballardian tale of Evelyn, a lecturer who moves to an apocalyptic New York, loves and is abandoned before travelling west into the desert (of the real?) and the land of a matriarchal cult who make him into a woman. This is far more inventive and thought provoking than I Will Fear No Evil, and seems to be both essentialist and constructionist at the same time.
XXXVII: Kate Wilhelm, Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang (1976)
Post-apocalyptic novel, presumably constructed from novellas.
Pollution and famine look likely to wipe out humanity, but one family set up a laboratory to work on cloning to find a way to keep the human race going. The strength and fertility of individuals seems to weaken through the generations, and there's a danger that there will be a genetic end of the line. The theme of the novel is the individual vs the group - and individualism wins out, I'd say. I need to go back for a reread to work out how.
XXXVIII: Kate Wilhelm, Juniper Time (1979)
An attempt is made to restart the space programme and to return to an abandoned space base - then an alien message is located or relocated in space. At first it's thought that a brilliant professor can translate it, but his breakthrough was orchestrated by his PhD student, who now needs to be found. It's a hall of mirrors, though, as anyone could be lying, and she would rather hang out with Native Americans.
Again this timing is good - as I read in the archives, the colonisation of space is mappable onto the colonisation of America, and somewhere in there is white flight, too.
I next started reading The Great Fetish. This I may not finish.
Rare Butler singleton, and one that's proved popular among the academilentsia: hardly sf at all, but time travel from recent present (1976 - spot the significance) to antebellum Maryland. Dana's great-great etc is nearly killed and she is yanked back in time where she rescues him. The snag - he's white, she's black, so she's not welcomed with opened arms. Subsequent visits get no better, and her (white) boyfriend joins her. The science if you are looking for it is genetics, or heredity, and time travel paradox, but Butler avoids explaining the mechanism (does it matter - there may be one but Dana does not know it?). The present is no post-race utopia either.
XXXIV: Joe Haldeman, The Forever War (1974)
One of those classics I've never previously read: the space opera version of Vietnam and a veteran's response to Heinlein's Starship Troopers. This version had a restored middle section (I'm not clear whether it replaces a section or the serialisation left it out - I shall have to track down the copies of Analog.
Of course - and there's a quote I need to dig out from an article in Movie to this effect - most Vietnam movies are not about Vietnam, but rather about the legacy on the soldiers on their return. The Deerhunter only has a few minutes set there; even Apocalypse Now is more Cambodia. One of the books I took notes from in Liverpool was Vietnam and Other Alien Worlds, which made a few points about this - Haldeman has passed through the alien worlds of Vietnam, hospital and home. Of course, one of the world-building changes is homosexuality being more common, indeed the default sexuality, but the protagonist maintains his straightness.
XXXV: Angela Carter, The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault (1977)
I tried to track this down some years ago - and Amazon is lousy for this, as it suggested a 1950s translation. I gave up - and forgot what project I needed this for - and then Penguin brought out this edition, with an introduction by Jack Zipes. It's roughly contemporaneous with The Passion of New Eve (1977), The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories (1979) and The Sadeian Woman and the Ideology of Pornography (1978), and shows Carter's rather interesting brand of feminism which embraces a violent sexuality. The interesting thing about the translation is her use of the morals - present in Perrault - to point or undercut. Will repay a reread - and a digging into the voluminous Carter secondary literature which scares me off her.
XXXVI: Angela Carter, The Passion of New Eve (1977)
A Ballardian tale of Evelyn, a lecturer who moves to an apocalyptic New York, loves and is abandoned before travelling west into the desert (of the real?) and the land of a matriarchal cult who make him into a woman. This is far more inventive and thought provoking than I Will Fear No Evil, and seems to be both essentialist and constructionist at the same time.
XXXVII: Kate Wilhelm, Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang (1976)
Post-apocalyptic novel, presumably constructed from novellas.
Pollution and famine look likely to wipe out humanity, but one family set up a laboratory to work on cloning to find a way to keep the human race going. The strength and fertility of individuals seems to weaken through the generations, and there's a danger that there will be a genetic end of the line. The theme of the novel is the individual vs the group - and individualism wins out, I'd say. I need to go back for a reread to work out how.
XXXVIII: Kate Wilhelm, Juniper Time (1979)
An attempt is made to restart the space programme and to return to an abandoned space base - then an alien message is located or relocated in space. At first it's thought that a brilliant professor can translate it, but his breakthrough was orchestrated by his PhD student, who now needs to be found. It's a hall of mirrors, though, as anyone could be lying, and she would rather hang out with Native Americans.
Again this timing is good - as I read in the archives, the colonisation of space is mappable onto the colonisation of America, and somewhere in there is white flight, too.
I next started reading The Great Fetish. This I may not finish.
