Revisiting some old friends

I’ve been spending some of this time in lockdown taking the opportunity to re-read some of the books that have been on my bookshelves for a long, long time. Some of these I bought when I was at school - the newest here was published in 1992.

The Bug Wars, Robert Asprin

I originally bought this at school, but I’m not sure why I kept it. This is the NEL edition published in 1980, with a great Rodney Matthews cover. (I have no doubt that it was the cover that caught my eye.) 

I was 15 when I first read it. Amazingly, it isn’t awful. It’s a not too demanding tale of a race of giant lizards waging war on giant insects. But that’s about it.

Lunar Descent, Allen Steele

Originally published in 1991 and set in 2024 in a lunar mining base. This is proper hard science fiction with proper hard NASA-ish technology and science. 

But being published in 1991 it misses the internet and what’s going on with computers. So key documents are faxed, the moonbase sound system uses a wobbly cassette (not even a CD!) and there’s no sign of tablets, ebooks, email, social media or anything that would actually be present if actually set in 2024.  But the overall story is still great - blue-collar workers on the moon. 

Of the five books here, this is the most recent and also the thickest (probably because it almost certainly wasn’t written on a typewriter).

The Goblin Reservation, Clifford D Simak

Simak was once one of my favourite SF authors, and I remember this tale fondly - it has teleportation, sinister wheeled aliens, trolls, goblins, a sabre-toothed tiger, a neanderthal, Shakespeare, a ghost, time travel, and a crystal planet. Some nice ideas - wheeled hive-insect aliens, a crystal planet that (somehow) came from the universe before ours (this is a big-bang > big-crunch > big bang universe). But it hasn’t aged well and I won’t be keeping it.

This copy is 1987 (originally published in 1968), so I may well have been at university when I read it.

Interestingly, the characterisation feels very different to more modern fiction. Everyone is pretty much decent - the only true villains are the alien Wheelers. There is only one murder, and that happens before the book starts (and is committed by the Wheelers). I’ve noticed this with other early SF books in this list - characters seem to be more decent than in modern fiction. That may just be the changing tastes - I’m not sure.

Monument, Lloyd Biggle Jr

Monument is one of my favourite novels from my youth. I remember being drawn to the striking Tim White cover in Woolworths, but I didn’t buy it then. I eventually picked a copy up in Exeter’s Read & Return bookshop for 60p (I know this because of the stamp in the front of the book).

Monument is the story of Cerne Obrien’s plan to save the paradise world of Langri from greedy developers, and ends with a striking court case. It’s still very readable, and while the style has dated the overall concepts haven’t.

The characters are stronger in Monument than they are in The Goblin Reservation, but the same general decency of the characters remains. While there is corporate corruption in Monument, the government bodies (typically scout and naval captains) are decent men (mostly men!) and abide by the law.

A Wreath of Stars, Bob Shaw

70p of 1976 SF goodness, A Wreath of Stars is set in the far future - 1993! Set in an unstable African state of Barandi, it involves an anti-neutrino planet detected using the newly developed magniluct lenses. The planet misses Earth, but disturbs the orbit of an anti-neutrino planet hiding inside the Earth.

This is classic Bob Shaw - he takes an idea (magniluct lenses and anti-neutrinos) and then runs with it. He does the same in Orbitsville (a Dyson sphere), Other Days, Other Eyes (slow glass) and others. It’s a bit dated now (inevitably), and has a slightly odd, wistful ending that always leaves me feeling a bit melancholy.

In terms of technology, A Wreath of Stars has a moon colony (briefly mentioned), the magniluct lenses that drive the plot. But it’s 1993 and so the lack of laptops, tablets and mobile phones isn’t an issue.

My edition was published in 1978, but I think I read it in the early 80s. I saw Bob Shaw at the 1987 Worldcon in Brighton. He was giving one of his “serious scientific” talks, and I can’t remember laughing so much in a long time.

(A Wreath of Stars is also the name of David Langford’s 1996 obituary for Bob.) 

To keep or not?

I’m keeping Lunar Descent, Monument and A Wreath of Stars. Maybe I’ll read them again in the future. 

The Bug Wars and The Goblin Reservation haven’t aged so well and are off to the charity shop.