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XXXVII: Kingsley Amis, The Alteration (1976)
I don't recall reading any Amis before (and I've found his son unreadable), with the exception of New Maps of Hell. This is Amis's sf novel, an alternate history which references The Man in the High Castle and indeed Pavane, not necessarily to its own advantage. Here the reformation has taken a very different route - Arthur survived and Henry VIII never became king, whereas Martin Luther became pope in a rather different Europe. In the more or less present day, a British boy soprano comes to the fore, and it is decided that he should be castrated, in order to protect his voice. Cue a trip across Europe to see the pope, and an attempt to escape, until a narrative hand is waved rather too conveniently. The book asks us to believe that despite the different politics and geography of this world, artists like Blake, Mozart and Hockney would still have existed and would have thrived, at expense to their own characters (Hockney's career being made by an America and a sexuality unlikely to exist here).
XXXVIII: Poul Anderson, Tau Zero (1970)
I wonder if this is the same basic universe as Orbitsville. In a Scandinavian-dominated future, 25 men and 25 women are sent off on a one-way mission to colonise a new planet. Their spaceship will accelerate toward the speed of light, so relative ship's time will pass more slowly than Earth time. Unfortunately, there's no brake, and the ship keeps accelerating. Hard sf with attempts at characterisation, with a cosmological sleight of hand to resolve the narrative.
XXXIX: Vonda N. McIntyre, The Exile Waiting (1975)
Nebula-nominated debut, set on a post-apocalyptic Earth where a telepathic girl, Mischa, struggles for survival in the technical capital, Center. Into her world come the quasi-telepathic Subone and Subtwo, sort of but not really twins, and the quasi-Japanese Jan Hikuri, trying to break the link with his father. Intriguing and exciting, oh, and gosh, a journey into the underworld to resolve the narrative. There's a baffling article by Fredric Jameson which effectively says it's a soap opera (without noting the gendered dimension of that) and a useful section in Jenny Wolmark's book.
I don't recall reading any Amis before (and I've found his son unreadable), with the exception of New Maps of Hell. This is Amis's sf novel, an alternate history which references The Man in the High Castle and indeed Pavane, not necessarily to its own advantage. Here the reformation has taken a very different route - Arthur survived and Henry VIII never became king, whereas Martin Luther became pope in a rather different Europe. In the more or less present day, a British boy soprano comes to the fore, and it is decided that he should be castrated, in order to protect his voice. Cue a trip across Europe to see the pope, and an attempt to escape, until a narrative hand is waved rather too conveniently. The book asks us to believe that despite the different politics and geography of this world, artists like Blake, Mozart and Hockney would still have existed and would have thrived, at expense to their own characters (Hockney's career being made by an America and a sexuality unlikely to exist here).
XXXVIII: Poul Anderson, Tau Zero (1970)
I wonder if this is the same basic universe as Orbitsville. In a Scandinavian-dominated future, 25 men and 25 women are sent off on a one-way mission to colonise a new planet. Their spaceship will accelerate toward the speed of light, so relative ship's time will pass more slowly than Earth time. Unfortunately, there's no brake, and the ship keeps accelerating. Hard sf with attempts at characterisation, with a cosmological sleight of hand to resolve the narrative.
XXXIX: Vonda N. McIntyre, The Exile Waiting (1975)
Nebula-nominated debut, set on a post-apocalyptic Earth where a telepathic girl, Mischa, struggles for survival in the technical capital, Center. Into her world come the quasi-telepathic Subone and Subtwo, sort of but not really twins, and the quasi-Japanese Jan Hikuri, trying to break the link with his father. Intriguing and exciting, oh, and gosh, a journey into the underworld to resolve the narrative. There's a baffling article by Fredric Jameson which effectively says it's a soap opera (without noting the gendered dimension of that) and a useful section in Jenny Wolmark's book.
