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I forgot to crosspost this
CXXXII: Kate Wilhelm, The Clewiston Test (1976)
Anne Clewiston's lab is in the final stages of animal testing a painkiller, but Clewiston herself is confined to a wheelchair, following a car crash. As a chimp becomes aggressive, the signs don't look good and there's a suspicion that Clewiston has taken the drug herself. Not much sense of the medical ethics as far as I recall, but certainly an interesting study of marriage and women on the side of the main story.
CXXXIII: Richard Brautigan, The Abortion: An Historical Romance 1966 (1971)
A novel with an abrupt change of tone: the narrator is the curator of a repository of manuscripts - anyone can write something and leave it there for anyone else to read. So far, so whimsical, then the curator's girlfriend needs an abortion and a trip to Mexico needs t be arranged. The consequences of this act are more subtle than might be imagined.
CXXXIV: Richard Brautigan, Dreaming of Babylon: A Private Eye Novel 1942 (1977)
A parody of a private eye in the early days of the American second world war - an impoverished PI is asked to steal a body from the morgue, and every one else seems to want it too. Meanwhile he dreams of Babylon. Brilliant.
CXXXV: Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities (1972)
Marco Polo describes cities he has visited, or may have visited, or thinks he may have visited, or claims he may have visited, to Kublai Khan. With aeroplanes. Or is he just describing Venice? Pomo absurdism.
CXXXVI: Barry Malzberg, The Day of the Burning (1974)
A petty bureaucrat has to persuade aliens we deserve to join the federation as a manned mission heads for Venus. Typically is it real/is it madness Malzberg.
CXXXVII: David Gerrold, Space Skimmer (1972)
Slightly dissatisfying account of the discovery of a almost magical spaceship (the skimmer) and the crew assembled to fly it. It's no The Man Who Folded Himself
CXXXVIII: Doris Piserchia, Earthchild (1977)
Weird Last Woman on Earth narrative - a child survives in a strangely jungle infested Earth until she is kidnapped by Martians - who are in fact Earth's exiles.
CXXXIX: Ernest Callenbach, Ecotopia (1975)
A journalist enters the independent northwest US, now an ecological paradise, and the inhabitants explain how brilliant it all is. Very old fashioned utopia, worthy but dull.
CXL: Robert Silverberg, The Book of Skulls (1972)
Secret History thirty years early - four students travel in search of a monastery, where two of them will gain eternal life, but the catch is that two of them will die. I suspect this was intended to be liberal, but it leaves a faintly homophobic, not to say obsessed, taste in the mouth. In fact, the temptation is to hope that - Pardoner's Tale or Treasure of Sierra Madre style, all of them will bite the desert dust.
CXLI: Charles Platt, The City Dwellers (1970)
Odd, distinctly four part, dystopia about a city and population death.
CXLII: Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, The Mote in God's Eye (1974)
Better than I expected, and I'd anticipated that having this as one of only five books with me would force me to read. Instead I tried to sleep on a plane, or found books to buy (the preceding). First contact where the human empire tries to decide whether the aliens are hostile - and since humanity is a military society, they will be soon even if they aren't now. The suspense is destroyed by aliens explaining the twist to a group of humans about a hundred pages too soon, although I could have happily lost three hundred pages from this. Is the fact that there only appears to be one female human meant to be an ironic reflection of the mostly female aliens? And do women do more than reproduce?
CXLIII: Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, Lucifer's Hammer (1977)
Overlong asteroid hits Earth and destroys society novel.
Okay, so there seem to be a whole number of 1970s sf narratives about asteroids/comets/meteors hitting or nearly hitting the Earth (Rama, Lucifer's Hammer, In the Ocean of the Night, The Hermes Whatsit, Meteor, among others). Why then? The dinosaurs wiped out by asteroid theory (Alverez et al) appears to be 1980, and there's already tracking agencies by the mid-1960s. But what triggered all these stories (albeit not the first, but a rash of them)? Was it a meteor visible above the US in August 1972? Tunguska publicity?
CXLIV: Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow (1973)
I bought this in 1990, and previously only got as far as page 70. Several times. Ish. It's frquently baffling, and it's an American Ulysses. It needs a reread with a concordance. I didn't fall in love with it, as I'd expected I might. Paranoiac quasi history of the last months of the war, oddly timely as V2s are recalled on news programmes.
CXXXII: Kate Wilhelm, The Clewiston Test (1976)
Anne Clewiston's lab is in the final stages of animal testing a painkiller, but Clewiston herself is confined to a wheelchair, following a car crash. As a chimp becomes aggressive, the signs don't look good and there's a suspicion that Clewiston has taken the drug herself. Not much sense of the medical ethics as far as I recall, but certainly an interesting study of marriage and women on the side of the main story.
CXXXIII: Richard Brautigan, The Abortion: An Historical Romance 1966 (1971)
A novel with an abrupt change of tone: the narrator is the curator of a repository of manuscripts - anyone can write something and leave it there for anyone else to read. So far, so whimsical, then the curator's girlfriend needs an abortion and a trip to Mexico needs t be arranged. The consequences of this act are more subtle than might be imagined.
CXXXIV: Richard Brautigan, Dreaming of Babylon: A Private Eye Novel 1942 (1977)
A parody of a private eye in the early days of the American second world war - an impoverished PI is asked to steal a body from the morgue, and every one else seems to want it too. Meanwhile he dreams of Babylon. Brilliant.
CXXXV: Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities (1972)
Marco Polo describes cities he has visited, or may have visited, or thinks he may have visited, or claims he may have visited, to Kublai Khan. With aeroplanes. Or is he just describing Venice? Pomo absurdism.
CXXXVI: Barry Malzberg, The Day of the Burning (1974)
A petty bureaucrat has to persuade aliens we deserve to join the federation as a manned mission heads for Venus. Typically is it real/is it madness Malzberg.
CXXXVII: David Gerrold, Space Skimmer (1972)
Slightly dissatisfying account of the discovery of a almost magical spaceship (the skimmer) and the crew assembled to fly it. It's no The Man Who Folded Himself
CXXXVIII: Doris Piserchia, Earthchild (1977)
Weird Last Woman on Earth narrative - a child survives in a strangely jungle infested Earth until she is kidnapped by Martians - who are in fact Earth's exiles.
CXXXIX: Ernest Callenbach, Ecotopia (1975)
A journalist enters the independent northwest US, now an ecological paradise, and the inhabitants explain how brilliant it all is. Very old fashioned utopia, worthy but dull.
CXL: Robert Silverberg, The Book of Skulls (1972)
Secret History thirty years early - four students travel in search of a monastery, where two of them will gain eternal life, but the catch is that two of them will die. I suspect this was intended to be liberal, but it leaves a faintly homophobic, not to say obsessed, taste in the mouth. In fact, the temptation is to hope that - Pardoner's Tale or Treasure of Sierra Madre style, all of them will bite the desert dust.
CXLI: Charles Platt, The City Dwellers (1970)
Odd, distinctly four part, dystopia about a city and population death.
CXLII: Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, The Mote in God's Eye (1974)
Better than I expected, and I'd anticipated that having this as one of only five books with me would force me to read. Instead I tried to sleep on a plane, or found books to buy (the preceding). First contact where the human empire tries to decide whether the aliens are hostile - and since humanity is a military society, they will be soon even if they aren't now. The suspense is destroyed by aliens explaining the twist to a group of humans about a hundred pages too soon, although I could have happily lost three hundred pages from this. Is the fact that there only appears to be one female human meant to be an ironic reflection of the mostly female aliens? And do women do more than reproduce?
CXLIII: Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, Lucifer's Hammer (1977)
Overlong asteroid hits Earth and destroys society novel.
Okay, so there seem to be a whole number of 1970s sf narratives about asteroids/comets/meteors hitting or nearly hitting the Earth (Rama, Lucifer's Hammer, In the Ocean of the Night, The Hermes Whatsit, Meteor, among others). Why then? The dinosaurs wiped out by asteroid theory (Alverez et al) appears to be 1980, and there's already tracking agencies by the mid-1960s. But what triggered all these stories (albeit not the first, but a rash of them)? Was it a meteor visible above the US in August 1972? Tunguska publicity?
CXLIV: Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow (1973)
I bought this in 1990, and previously only got as far as page 70. Several times. Ish. It's frquently baffling, and it's an American Ulysses. It needs a reread with a concordance. I didn't fall in love with it, as I'd expected I might. Paranoiac quasi history of the last months of the war, oddly timely as V2s are recalled on news programmes.
