Monday 25 August 2014

Dates Of Future Past

1984 is a novel.
2000 AD is a comic.
2001 is a film.
Year 2018! is an alternative title of They Shall Have Stars, Volume I of James Blish's Cities In Flight future history.
Revolt In 2100 is Volume III of Robert Heinlein's Future History.

A Case Of Conscience, Volume III of James Blish's After Such Knowledge Trilogy, is set in 2049-'50.

Having lived from 1949 until, so far, 2014, I hope to live until the years of the two Blish novels.

Saturday 23 August 2014

Lines Of Development

In the 1960's and early '70's, I read as much science fiction (sf) as I could find. Thus, I became very familiar with the works of certain authors. I caught up with Clifford Simak and read his then newly published The Goblin Reservation but did not continue to buy new works by Simak partly because I thought that he had become repetitive and self-parodying and partly because I was by then less interested in reading new sf.

I know of only a single work by Ward Moore, Bring The Jubilee, and have read only a single work by Tim Powers, The Anubis Gates. In both these cases, the common topic of interest is time travel.

The following lists are not intended to be exhaustive but they do represent what I regard as certain major lines of development among the sf writers that I have read:

British
Wells
Stapledon
Lewis
Aldiss

American
Burroughs
Heinlein
Asimov
Blish
Bradbury
Anderson
Niven
Pournelle

Wells and Heinlein are two starting points. Sf readers will notice that many prominent names are absent, often because they started to write long after I had ceased to read. I have appreciated rereading the works of several of the listed authors. Because Poul Anderson uniquely combines quality with quantity, he has become the subject of a blog. Because of Greg Bear's connections with Anderson, I have this month started to read, and post about, Bear's Way Trilogy.