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American Science Fiction: Four Classic Novels 1968-1969
| Author: | Gary K. Wolfe |
| Publisher: |
Library of America, 2019 |
| Series: | ASF: Classic Novels of the 1960s: Book 2 |
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0. American Science Fiction: Eight Classic Novels of the 1960s |
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| Book Type: | Omnibus |
| Genre: | Science-Fiction |
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Synopsis
The tumultuous 1960s was a watershed decade for American science fiction. While acknowledged masters from the genre's golden age reached the height of their powers, a new wave of brilliant young voices emerged, upending the genre's pulp conventions with newfound literary sophistication. Amid calls for civil rights and countercultural revolution, female, nonwhite, and other outsider authors broke into the ranks of SF writers, introducing provocative new protagonists and themes.
Here, in the second volume of a two-volume collector's set, editor Gary K. Wolfe presents four of the best novels from the final years of the decade. In R. A. Lafferty's utterly idiosyncratic and uncategorizable Past Master (1968), Renaissance philosopher Thomas More is summoned to Golden Astrobe in the year 2535: Can he save the planet's troubled utopia from its soulless technological perfection and ensure the survival of the faith? Joanna Russ introduces one of SF's first and most engaging female adventurers in her taut and edgy debut novel Picnic on Paradise (1968): the tough, sardonic, unforgettable Alyx, an ancient Phoenician mercenary teleported into the future to serve as guide and bodyguard for a band of stranded space tourists.
The first African American writer to make a name for himself in the genre, Samuel R. Delany was hailed as "the best science-fiction writer in the world" on the basis of Nova (1968), a white-hot, fast-paced, protocyberpunk interstellar adventure featuring a misfit crew on a high-stakes quest. Stumbling on a mysterious ancient text among his father's belongings, the son of a master woodcarver uncovers the key to revolutionary change in Jack Vance's Emphyrio (1969), a marvel of craftsmanship and visionary world-building set on remote, feudal, theocratic Halma.
This second volume contains:
- R. A. Lafferty / Past Master
- Joanna Russ / Picnic on Paradise
- Samuel R. Delany / Nova
- Jack Vance / Emphyrio
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