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jwharris28

Posted 2015-01-15 3:20 PM (#9297 - in reply to #9162)
Subject: Re: The Definitive 1950s Reading Challenge

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I've accidentally discovered that some of the 1950s books we're reading are free audio at YouTube. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFvpy1-5Uok for The City at the Worlds End by Edmund Hamilton. With more books here
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLD2iZ1i2502HtWJqcfyRn55MhGrRh...

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Posted 2015-01-15 4:04 PM (#9298 - in reply to #9297)
Subject: Re: The Definitive 1950s Reading Challenge

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jwharris28 - 2015-01-15 3:20 PM I've accidentally discovered that some of the 1950s books we're reading are free audio at YouTube. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFvpy1-5Uok for The City at the Worlds End by Edmund Hamilton. With more books here https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLD2iZ1i2502HtWJqcfyRn55MhGrRh...

That's a great resource for audio books! They have The Big Time, Deathworld, 2BR02B and The Black Star Passes to name just a few that I've got on my to read list. Thanks for the tip. We need to get these links on to the novel pages for each.

DrNefario

Posted 2015-01-16 8:00 AM (#9301 - in reply to #9296)
Subject: Re: The Definitive 1950s Reading Challenge

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jwharris28 - 2015-01-15 6:08 PM

Why does some science fiction become dated? DrNafario says the pulp style pushes him out of Galactic Patrol.

It's a tricky one, really. I think it might simply be Smith's version of the pulp writing style. There are other older SF books I can read quite happily, even if their visions of the future seem quaint, and there are plenty of contemporary works of other genres that are absolutely fine. The viewpoint and the pacing are just a little bit off compared to what I'm used to, so I never quite feel comfortable. It's a bit too breathless and a bit too distant. I'm nearly done with it now, though.

I'm kind of expecting Galactic Patrol to be my least favourite book of the challenge. It wasn't really my first choice for 1950, but I'm trying to read what I already own where possible, and I wanted to get started as soon as possible, meaning I didn't get to scout out too many second-hand book stores.

I am aiming to read books I haven't previously read, and I can currently cover 8 of the 10 years (having just bought City by Simak about half an hour ago), but a few of those 8 aren't my first choice, and I hope to replace them before I reach those years. It gives me an excuse to browse second-hand books, which I haven't had since I completed my Agatha Christie collection last year.

justifiedsinner

Posted 2015-01-16 11:26 AM (#9306 - in reply to #9296)
Subject: Re: The Definitive 1950s Reading Challenge

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jwharris28 - 2015-01-15 1:08 PM

Why does some science fiction become dated? DrNafario says the pulp style pushes him out of Galactic Patrol.

gallyangel

Posted 2015-01-17 3:35 AM (#9312 - in reply to #9306)
Subject: Re: The Definitive 1950s Reading Challenge

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Definitely the writing style. Wells is still read, Verne too. Orwell and Huxley are classics. I would also say that the simpler the style the longer the book lasts. Simple is difficult to achieve, though, and requires greater writing skill.

I don't know about your library but around here the stock for Wells has shrunk to four titles. With Verne it's three. Still, a hundred plus years after the fact seems remarkable in our consume and forgot entertainment society. Some day perhaps, they might refer to Wells and Verne as the ancients, like they do to Plato and Plutarch today.

gallyangel

Posted 2015-01-17 3:38 AM (#9313 - in reply to #9282)
Subject: Re: The Definitive 1950s Reading Challenge

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dustydigger - 2015-01-14 3:11 AM

I was very gratified that out of the 12 books per decade that you think may survive a century I had read 10 or 11 from the 50s to 80s lists,then failed miserably with the 90s,only 2 read!

Just getting through the highlighted, best possible candidates for those decades, could be a challenge all by itself.

gallyangel

Posted 2015-01-17 3:50 AM (#9314 - in reply to #9306)
Subject: Re: The Definitive 1950s Reading Challenge

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justifiedsinner - 2015-01-16 9:26 AM

jwharris28 - 2015-01-15 1:08 PM

Why does some science fiction become dated? DrNafario says the pulp style pushes him out of Galactic Patrol.

The classic elements of storytelling, in other words. There are some SF books which are terribly dated, the science in them is just plan wrong. That must be a sin if you're working in the hard SF sub-genre. But still it can stand the test of time, if all those things from english class work. Readers have been known to forgive a lot if other parts of the story work well. What dates a story for me is culture. If the society/culture of some far flung place feels like 1955, 1968, whatever, then I have problems very quickly. I'd like to think I can handle bad, indifferent writing (I have to read my own), so that's not an issue for me. What breaks that suspension of disbelief is different for everyone.

jwharris28

Posted 2015-01-17 3:18 PM (#9317 - in reply to #9162)
Subject: Re: The Definitive 1950s Reading Challenge

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I don't know who recommended this link, and it will be embarrassing if it was from one of you, but check out this history of the paperback book.

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/features/rise-paperback-novel/

It covers the rise of science fiction book publication in the 1950s, with the emphasis on paperback books. Before 1950 there were very few science fiction books being published, which is one reason why I didn't do a 1940s list. There was some. Like Heinlein's first juveniles came out from Scribner's in the late 1940s. Fantasy Press's first books came out in 1947. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantasy_Press - and Gnome Press in 1948, but the number of titles was very limited.

jwharris28

Posted 2015-01-18 2:02 PM (#9320 - in reply to #9162)
Subject: Re: The Definitive 1950s Reading Challenge

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I wrote up my summary of our discussion about why science fiction books go stale.

http://auxiliarymemory.com/2015/01/18/when-does-science-fiction-go-...

I copped out and didn't try to get into very specific things. Like mutants. In the 1950s and 1960s we loved stories with radiation mutants. But that idea has fallen out of favor. There's probably a whole list of such concepts. PSI stories were big in the 1950s, but we seldom read about people with telepathy today. I'm listening to City at the World's End by Edmund Hamilton, about a small town sent into the far future by a A-Bomb blast. Heinlein did something similar with Farnham's Freehold. But we don't read more about atomic bombs doing magical things any more.

dustydigger

Posted 2015-01-19 4:01 PM (#9323 - in reply to #9162)
Subject: Re: The Definitive 1950s Reading Challenge

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What I am feeling nostalgic about at the moment ,Jim,is that whole area of Lost Worlds. I saw a Wildside Press Megapack of books for the Kindle like King Solomon's Mines.Conan Doyle's Professor Challenger,Verne's Journey to the Centre of the Earth,ERBs Pellucidar series and The Land that Time Forgot. Even Bulwer-Littons Vril! All for 0.39,or 99 cents! What a pity that we made the earth so mapped and photographed,and with tourists visiting every corner to the point of killing all that exciting sort of book. And what has happened to exploring new planets in the way of the old pulp authors? Now it seems most books about planets are boring things about human conspiracies,like Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars.I long to go roving over Barsoom 's ancient plains with John Carter and faithful Woola!.Much more fun lol.

jwharris28

Posted 2015-01-19 9:14 PM (#9328 - in reply to #9323)
Subject: Re: The Definitive 1950s Reading Challenge

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Dusty, if you love old lost worlds stories, try Goslings by J. D. Beresford. Yeah, I loved those stories too, lost races, lost lands, hidden valleys, Shangri-La.

Edited by jwharris28 2015-01-19 9:15 PM

jwharris28

Posted 2015-01-19 11:19 PM (#9329 - in reply to #9162)
Subject: Re: The Definitive 1950s Reading Challenge

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I switched from Foundation to City at World's End by Edmond Hamilton. I found an audio book version at YouTube, and got hooked. It wasn't great, but it wasn't bad either. I'm was doing data entry at GoodReads and City at World's End kept me company. Like many SF books from the 1950s, it featured an atomic bomb causing a fantastic event - this time sending Middletown, population 50,000, into the far future where the Earth has grown cold, and abandoned by our descendants. The writing wasn't horrible, but on the thin side, reminding me more of the 1930s than the 1950s, a story that would fit into Thrilling Wonder Stories.

Edited by jwharris28 2015-01-19 11:20 PM

DrNefario

Posted 2015-01-20 7:17 AM (#9334 - in reply to #9162)
Subject: Re: The Definitive 1950s Reading Challenge

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I've chosen Green Hills of Earth for 1951. I have a sub-challenge to try to read a short story every day, so I can get this collection ticking over in the background while reading something else as my "main" book.

jwharris28

Posted 2015-01-20 1:32 PM (#9339 - in reply to #9162)
Subject: Re: The Definitive 1950s Reading Challenge

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Are we defined by the science fiction we read? Does an affinity for 1950s science fiction reflect a certain personality type? I ask this because of the blog I just wrote, wondering if I could psychoanalyze myself by studying the books I choose to read.

http://auxiliarymemory.com/2015/01/20/self-psychoanalysis-by-studyi...

jwharris28

Posted 2015-01-21 4:18 PM (#9345 - in reply to #9162)
Subject: Re: The Definitive 1950s Reading Challenge

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I see two people have read The Day of the Triffids, but no reports. I'm surprised since I think that's such an exciting book that people would be raving about it. If you don't write about the books you read at this forum, but do at your blog, put a link up here. I'm curious what people think about all these old SF books. I'll go read your blog.

dustydigger

Posted 2015-01-22 7:15 AM (#9346 - in reply to #9162)
Subject: Re: The Definitive 1950s Reading Challenge

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` Couldnt resist joining you,though I already have over 50 SF books on my TBR for this year. Had a slight problem choosing a book for 1950,since 9/13 are not available from my library.I had reread I Robot about 18months ago,and Farmer in the Sky and Pebble in the Sky only a few months ago,so by default it had to be Martian Chronicles.The book blew me away as a teenager. I found the writing intoxicating,and the irony,in all shades very telling. I was about 15,we had sweated through the Cuba Crisis( I vividly remember lying in bed rigid with fear,sure we were all going up in smoke). So Bradbury,though he had written the book in the 40s and up to 1950, was of major interest. Also the racial aspect was coming to the fore for my generation,and Bradbury touched on that too. I am looking forward to seeing just how accurate my impressions of past readings are( I read it again in the 90s.)

DrNefario

Posted 2015-01-23 5:22 AM (#9348 - in reply to #9346)
Subject: Re: The Definitive 1950s Reading Challenge

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Welcome aboard. The challenge runs for two years, if you find it hard to fit in the extra books this year. Actually, I kind of wanted to do a five-year (or even open-ended) challenge for all 50 years in the list, but the best I could do was two years.

I guess library availability is another measure of how well the books have lasted.

jwharris28

Posted 2015-01-23 10:30 AM (#9350 - in reply to #9348)
Subject: Re: The Definitive 1950s Reading Challenge

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DrNafario, libraries are an indicator, but they are changing. I do a lot of used book shopping and I'm amazed at the number of library discards out there. My libraries removes thousands of books each year. If they aren't checked out, they aren't retained. I know people who go to libraries to check out books to help their favorites remain in the collection. But there are other good indicators of long term life for books. I think getting the audiobook treatment on Audible is a good sign. Ditto for the ebook treatment. Or inspiring a movie.

I also thought about starting a 50 SF Books in 50 Months book club - but at Yahoogroups. Mailing lists make a great way to participate in a book club. But you got this one started, so I'm putting in here instead.

By the way, I'm listening to The Man Who Sold the Moon, not one of my 10, but an extra one. D. D. Harriman reminds me of Elon Musk. The first story, "Let There Be Light" is about inventing LED lights and solar panels, and the problem of corporations blocking the roll-out of solar energy and high efficiency.

I think this experiment of reading books by order of year is working out. I can feel the early 1950s in what I'm reading. I'm expecting the SF to evolve with the years.

DrNefario

Posted 2015-01-23 10:57 AM (#9351 - in reply to #9162)
Subject: Re: The Definitive 1950s Reading Challenge

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The thing that has tripped me up twice so far is that "computer" is a job title. It's cropped up in both my books so far, although it is actually used in both senses in Heinlein's "Space Jockey" in Green Hills of Earth.

Also, everybody smokes, even inside spaceships, and they still seem to use slide rules. I guess those are just signs of the times, but some authors did see past that (Foundation, I seem to remember, has computers with actual interactive displays, albeit only in monochrome). I've only seen a slide rule once, and I have no idea how they work. I'm reading the current book on my unimaginably futuristic touchscreen phone. Sometimes it's nice to feel that we do live in the future.

Edited by DrNefario 2015-01-23 10:58 AM

jwharris28

Posted 2015-01-23 11:28 AM (#9353 - in reply to #9351)
Subject: Re: The Definitive 1950s Reading Challenge

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I used to use a slide-rule in the late 60s and early 70s. I remember getting permission in math classes to be allowed 2 decimals of accuracy on homework and tests. But for the life of me I can't remember how to use them now. I haven't seen a slide rule in forty years.

The amazing thing to me about then and now, is the immense lack of knowledge those people lived with. They really had no idea what was coming, even with the help of science fiction. I can remember reading astronomy books back in the early 1960s that were published in the 1950s. The Hubble telescope, and all the other wonders of astronomy and robots to the planets has caused an immense explosion in awareness of the universe. Hell, they didn't know about multiple galaxies until the late 1920s.

All of which begs the question. What aren't we seeing that everyone will know about in the 2060s?

dustydigger

Posted 2015-01-23 11:42 AM (#9354 - in reply to #9162)
Subject: Re: The Definitive 1950s Reading Challenge

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Oh yes,the smoking,how quickly we have become shocked at heroes smoking! I find the old rockets with fins very endearing. Easy for take-off,but what about landing? Slowing down without stalling,then putting the fins down first is taken for granted in most books,but it must have taken great skill! I also love the way private individuals build their own spacecrafts.All that sort of thing disappeared once we saw the reality of the sheer complexity of building the Apollo series,and the sheer scale of people needed to get it up in space. No more Rocketship Galileo homemade converted rockets developed into spaceship with a few tools in a delapidated hut!. But cover artists stuck to showing the old rocket-with-fins design for quite a long time after. An indelible part of my youth,those rockets!

dustydigger

Posted 2015-01-25 11:09 AM (#9358 - in reply to #9162)
Subject: Re: The Definitive 1950s Reading Challenge

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Finished the Martian Chronicles,though that title has no resonance for me,I knew it as a teenager under the UK title The Silver Locusts. Much more romantic and fitting than the dry as dust US title,dont you think?
This book was one of 10 books that were promoted as possibly still being read in a hundred years. I definitely think it will be.There is a complexity of viewpoints and themes enough that the book will always strike a chord somewhere. Fear of a nuclear war destroying earth may be in abeyance at the moment,but that insistence in trampling over and simply destroying other cultures than its own is as rampant as ever,as is the destruction of the environment by crass commercialism and greed. The book is more a dream than an actual depiction of colonizing Mars,and its elegiac style,poetic rhythm and intense emotionalism making any outdated concepts or attitudes seem unimportant. We dont stop to pick holes in dodgy science or even sneer at some sentimentality (would everyone go back home in the case of a nuclear war? sounds unlikely!) because we are moving on to the next little vignette which gives us a rush of nostalgia,awe at the martian landscape,sadness at mans seeming inability to learn from mistakes etc etc. The whole work is suffused with delicious irony from beginning to end,and this neutralises any sugariness and sentimentality. That irony will be what preserves this book for the future I believe. A true classic
At an earlier time I also read severalmother of the 1950 books. Hope it is OK to post about them,since not many books seem to have been read or reviewed yet
Isaac Asimov - Pebble in the Sky.Asimov's firsst full length novel is no spectacular masterpiece, but still is a solid enjoyable read. It was a change to see a middle-aged sedentary man as the hero for once, and the story was engaging enough. I was reading Zelazny's This Immortal at the same time, and there was a similar theme, a post nuclear war badly radiated earth, much of the population fled to other planets as second class citizens, outsiders in control of the earth. A nicely developed plot here, with a few surprises, though the characters are as usual rather cardboard, and there is quite a bit of coincidence. There was an obligatory stilted romance, though it was of interest in the prejudices the young archaeologist hero had to overcome to accept one of the despised earth citizens as a worthy lover. All in all a good effort from the young Asimov, and a pleasant read.
Robert A Heinlein - Farmer in the Sky. One of my favourite Heinlein juveniles about a typically ebullient young man who goes off to the moon Ganymede with his father to escape the bleak life on an overpopulated earth,where food is strictly rationed.Young Bills 'practicality and quick wits leads him to save the ship on the journey, They intend to become farmers on Ganymede which is in the process of being terraformed,but various disasters cause great problems,but our intrepid young man sees it through. Lots of fun on the spaceship,and some very interesting info on terraforming,and some quite dark emotional issues for a juvenile book. Well worth a read by adults,for the terraforming alone. No wonder I was disappointed with KSRsRed Mars,I was looking for something similar to Heinlein!

Edited by dustydigger 2015-01-25 11:13 AM

jwharris28

Posted 2015-01-26 1:18 PM (#9369 - in reply to #9162)
Subject: Re: The Definitive 1950s Reading Challenge

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Just finished listening to The Man Who Sold The Moon. My second 1951 book. Listening to the 2013 Brilliance Audio edition let me appreciate these Heinlein stories like I had never had before. The narrator acted them out in a way I never read. In fact, I always thought these stories were on the boring side because they're so talky. Hearing them presented this way is the way I imagined Heinlein heard them in his head.

I was also surprised the stories were out of order though from the original Shasta edition. And the original Shasta edition had two introductions by Heinlein that get left out of all latest editions. "Blow-Ups Happen" comes last in the book, but its events happen before "The Man Who Sold the Moon." If you look at ISFDB http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?31918 it appears almost every edition is slightly different. I find that annoying.

Edited by jwharris28 2015-01-26 1:20 PM

dustydigger

Posted 2015-01-26 3:41 PM (#9370 - in reply to #9162)
Subject: Re: The Definitive 1950s Reading Challenge

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Was very pleased to see that my library just got new editions of two Heinleins I hadnt read,so I will read Between Planets for 1951,and Assignment in Eternity for 1953. I was delighted and a bit surprised that when I ordered Vonnegut's Player Piano for my 1952 read I got it within a few days. Asking for the only copy in the Depository is hit and miss. I ordered Hoyle's Black Cloud early November,and its not in sight yet! The Player Piano copy is the original 1950s edition,very dusty and careworn,so I will have to treat it with at least metaphorical kid gloves!
I have also lined up several other books,and found a few in the Wildside Megapacks on kindle,so I am pretty much sorted for the 1950s challenge.

DrNefario

Posted 2015-01-27 7:13 AM (#9371 - in reply to #9162)
Subject: Re: The Definitive 1950s Reading Challenge

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I didn't think to check the Megapacks. I can cover every year but 1959 without a re-read, at the moment, but four of those are not my first choices. (Three of them are Andre Norton books, which I seem to have accumulated somehow over the years. I'm happy to read one Norton for the challenge, but three seems like too many.)

I'm finding The Green Hills of Earth a lot more readable than Galactic Patrol. The stories don't seem particularly major, but it's relief to have some competent prose.

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