Weird Science
One of the many joys I find in secondhand book shops is discovering cheap old science fiction, especially by people I've never heard of and especially, for some reason, Gollanz yellow hardcovers. Sometimes I even buy the trashy paperbacks with the naked girls on their covers if there's likely to be an interesting story inside (and then I imagine I'm getting funny looks on the train when I'm reading them and feel awkward.)
I'm sure many people have said so before but science fiction is a great barometer of the preoccupations of its era. The Corgi SF-27 collection of new science fiction from 1977 is no exception to this. Instead of the optimism of earlier decades with people merrily populating the universe, many of the stories have a sense of impending doom and the futility of effort. Problems are both environmental and political. New technology is dangerous. Bureaucracy impedes action. Politicians lie and walls that are meant to be keeping people out may instead be keeping people in. Pollution kills thousands each day. Governments hate students and turn colleges into public housing.
It's also fun when guessing makes them seem a bit prescient. In one story, people in 2010 (not so far away!) are driving through the Chunnel in an old 1998 car (I had one of those!) to a London with areas where private vehicles are banned to reduce pollution.
I almost didn't buy this book because it had a story by Brian Aldiss but he was the only one I'd heard of so I got it anyway. And the cover! A lion is holding a naked blue girl with a very abundant bust - about size 8 double F if you can imagine. (And I'm going to make you imagine because I'm too squeamish to go looking for it online and I still haven't sorted out the whole camera-computer interface)
Most of the stories were ok - some good images that have nagged at my subconscious in recent dreams. But the gender politics of two of stories was the dodgiest thing about the collection. I don't know if it's how the genre developed as a bloke thing - I didn't read much SF when I was a kid because I thought of them as "boy books" - or if it's just what crappy popular fiction was like then - and we are talking about the era of Sydney Sheldon - but in both cases the punchline was about disempowering older women. As a good thing to be doing, I mean. One story was about the slightly unethical but worth it in the end plot by a father to ruin a relationship between his adult son and an older woman (it's not clear how much older she is but she's a retired filmstar who's had plastic surgery, therefore must be a hag. She's certainly depicted as exceedingly unpleasant because she has money and uses it to influence others). At least there's a sense of moral ambiguity in this story.
The other had a complicated and really quite interesting plot about entering the mind of a man in a coma in order to find some secret he'd supposedly discovered. But it turned out to be a convoluted way of getting rid of the woman in charge of a secret service organisation who no-one liked but everyone was scared of. Once again, we aren't told how old she is but she's got a surprisingly young face and completely grey hair. And she's a complete cow. In this case, I diagnose an acute case of the author not liking his boss - who's probably a bit hard on him because he spends all his time at work making up science fiction and chatting up the younger and prettier of the women in the typing pool.
Lesson of the day: Most of the time there's a good reason why you've never heard of most of the people in science fiction anthologies from the 70s.
I'm sure many people have said so before but science fiction is a great barometer of the preoccupations of its era. The Corgi SF-27 collection of new science fiction from 1977 is no exception to this. Instead of the optimism of earlier decades with people merrily populating the universe, many of the stories have a sense of impending doom and the futility of effort. Problems are both environmental and political. New technology is dangerous. Bureaucracy impedes action. Politicians lie and walls that are meant to be keeping people out may instead be keeping people in. Pollution kills thousands each day. Governments hate students and turn colleges into public housing.
It's also fun when guessing makes them seem a bit prescient. In one story, people in 2010 (not so far away!) are driving through the Chunnel in an old 1998 car (I had one of those!) to a London with areas where private vehicles are banned to reduce pollution.
I almost didn't buy this book because it had a story by Brian Aldiss but he was the only one I'd heard of so I got it anyway. And the cover! A lion is holding a naked blue girl with a very abundant bust - about size 8 double F if you can imagine. (And I'm going to make you imagine because I'm too squeamish to go looking for it online and I still haven't sorted out the whole camera-computer interface)
Most of the stories were ok - some good images that have nagged at my subconscious in recent dreams. But the gender politics of two of stories was the dodgiest thing about the collection. I don't know if it's how the genre developed as a bloke thing - I didn't read much SF when I was a kid because I thought of them as "boy books" - or if it's just what crappy popular fiction was like then - and we are talking about the era of Sydney Sheldon - but in both cases the punchline was about disempowering older women. As a good thing to be doing, I mean. One story was about the slightly unethical but worth it in the end plot by a father to ruin a relationship between his adult son and an older woman (it's not clear how much older she is but she's a retired filmstar who's had plastic surgery, therefore must be a hag. She's certainly depicted as exceedingly unpleasant because she has money and uses it to influence others). At least there's a sense of moral ambiguity in this story.
The other had a complicated and really quite interesting plot about entering the mind of a man in a coma in order to find some secret he'd supposedly discovered. But it turned out to be a convoluted way of getting rid of the woman in charge of a secret service organisation who no-one liked but everyone was scared of. Once again, we aren't told how old she is but she's got a surprisingly young face and completely grey hair. And she's a complete cow. In this case, I diagnose an acute case of the author not liking his boss - who's probably a bit hard on him because he spends all his time at work making up science fiction and chatting up the younger and prettier of the women in the typing pool.
Lesson of the day: Most of the time there's a good reason why you've never heard of most of the people in science fiction anthologies from the 70s.
posted by Mary Bennet | 4:48 pm
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