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DrNefario
Posted 2015-03-17 8:38 AM (#9905 - in reply to #9162)
Subject: Re: The Definitive 1950s Reading Challenge		Quote Reply



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Location: UK		I'm 43, but I feel like I have some grounding in 50s SF. For these early years, I haven't read too many books, but they mainly fall into two categories: books I read quite recently for the Retro Hugos and Hugos (Farmer in the Sky and the Foundation trilogy), and books I read in my formative years, which were in this omnibus, the St Michael book of Great Science Fiction Stories, published in 1982, and featuring 2001, The Demolished Man, Day of the Triffids and I, Robot. I wish I still had it! Day of the Triffids and Martian Chronicles were both televised in the early 80s, too.

Later on we'll be getting into PKD territory. I had a bit of a PKD phase in my youth, and I've read quite a lot of his work, but I can't really remember which ones I've read and which ones I haven't. Alfred Bester was another big personal favourite, but has rather less output.

Anyway, I finished Childhood's End last night. It makes an interesting companion to City.

SPOILERS FOLLOW

Both books feature the end of humanity, but City seems weirdly gloomy about what was actually not a bad result - most of us are living in paradise on Jupiter - where Childhood's End seems oddly upbeat about what seems like a catastrophe, with humanity subsumed into some kind of group mind.

END SPOILERS

I think CE was the most novel-like of the books I've read so far, even though it's still split into three parts, and one of them was sort of previously published. I've never particularly been a Clarke fan, and this one still has a lot of his usual flaws, but it held together pretty well and achieved what it set out to achieve. I don't think I was ever going to love it, but I can recognise why it's regarded as a classic.

I'm not really prepared for 1954, yet. I already own The Star Beast and, it turns out, The Forgotten Planet (which is included in the Baen book, Planets of Adventure), but I'd really like to read Caves of Steel, and also have a strange desire to investigate Trouble on Titan. (I've already read I Am Legend and Mission of Gravity.)



Edited by DrNefario 2015-03-17 8:40 AM

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