I was looking for a collection of short stories including "First Contact" by Murray Leinster and I came across this:
The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume I: The Greatest Science Fiction Stories of All Time, Chosen by the Members of the Science Fiction Writers of America
Omigod! I FOUND IT I FOUND IT I FOUND IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
CONTACT: First Contact; Intelligence Test; The Large Ant; What's He Doing in There; Chemical Plant; Limiting Factor; The Fire Balloons; Invasion from Mars; The Gentle Vultures; Knock; Specialist; Lost Memory
I love, love, loved this book when I was a teen, read it 'til the cheap paperback fell apart. I cannot believe it exists anywhere.
A bit about this.
"First Contact" is about 2 ships, one human and one alien, that meet and slowly start to trust each other. The human ship is the
Llanvabon which was a very memorable name and how I found the book on Amazon.
"The Intelligence Test" is about a bunch of people in a diner who are trapped by an alien puzzle and have to work together to learn how to get out.
"Specialist" is about an average, ordinary guy who is abducted by aliens to power their ship.
I can't recall the others but those are vivid and I suspect the last time I read any of them was a good 25 - 30 years ago.
This is a truly excellent book and I suspect the first one I found is good, too (it has Asimov's "Nightfall" and Keyes' "Flowers for Algernon").
And - ha! - I just found another good one -
THE YEAR'S BEST HORROR STORIES (2) (ii) Two: David's Worm; Haggopian; The Price of a Demon; The Knocker at the Portico; The Animal Fair; Napier Court; Haunts of the Very Rich; The Long-Term Residents; Like Two White Spiders; The Old Horns
For this one, I don't know any of the other stories except for "David's Worm", which is very special and scary. I know the last time I heard the story (it was read to me and to others at summer camp) was 30 years ago.
jespah wrote:Keyes' "Flowers for Algernon"
There's a good one for you. I loved that story.
Last night I reread Sharyn McCrumb's
Zombies of the Gene Pool. Strictly speaking, this is a murder mystery, but the nostalgic view of fandom of the '50's is worth genre bending.
The novel was published in 1988 and when computer research comes into play there is a double layer of nostalgia.
Our hero has turned on his 14 pound portable computer. He's looking for background information on both the murder victim and the murder suspects.
Quote:...Joel Schumann was the systems operator (i.e. sysop) for an electronic bulletin board to which a number of computer enthusiasts in his area subscribed. ...users could contact other people on other bulletin boards anywhere in the world , but because everyone wasn't always logged on, it could take days for the right person to receive amessage.
Jay decided that he needed some advice before proceeding. Although he dutifully paid his twenty-dollr yearly dues to keep the system operating, bulletin board chatting wasn't something he had much time or inclination for. Once a week he checked themessages to see if someone were trying to reach him, and occasionally he scanned the screens of typewritten conversations to see if anything more substantial than Robocop was being discussed. Most of the time it wasn't, so he let it go at that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharyn_McCrumb
http://www.amazon.com/Zombies-Gene-Pool-Sharyn-Mccrumb/dp/0345379144
In the "Authors that Enlarged my World" department, I'd have to include James Branch Cabell.
Jurgen was published in 1919. Conservative groups were outraged by an amoral hero given to epic language and adventures which included much Freudian sheathing of swords. Neil Gaiman called Cabell "my favorite forgotten American Writer".
http://www.library.vcu.edu/jbc/speccoll/exhibit/cabell/jbclife.html
http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2004/10/novelisting.asp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Branch_Cabell
One of the great joys of graduate school was finding that Northwestern University had a complete collection of Cabell's novels. One of the great disappointments of graduate school was that many of my fellow candidates for the MA couldn't comprehend anyone reading all of a writer's works for recreation rather than in pursuit of academic glory.
Fantasy & Science Fiction worth Reading/Re-reading
Good heavens! I don't know WHEN I've come across anyone who read Cabell!
Tomkitten--
Read and reread Cabell.
Tomkitten--
If you enjoyed Cabell, you'll probably enjoy exploring some more recent modern fantasy.
Mark Del Franco's first novel,
Unshapely Things is an urban fantasy, set in an alternative Boston. Del Franco obviously knows and loves the gritty neighborhoods of Boston. Connor Grey, a disabled druid, ekes out his disability pension by advising the politically-plagued Boston Police Department about crimes involving the fey. In the background in the Auld Country, the fey have their own political wrangling.
http://www.sfreviews.net/delfranco_unshapely_things.html
www.markdelfranco.com
oh, good, this thread has reappeared. I tried posting something a week or so ago, but hit the wrong button and it disappeared into the ether, and when I went to try to find the thread again, the "New Posts" lists had refreshed itself and the link was gone--grr, hamsters.
Second dadpad and the Discworld series--Wodehouse meets social satire.
What I tried to say before was--does anyone of a certain age remember "X Minus 1" and "Tales of Tomorrow", radio dramatizations from the 50s of stories from Astounding, If, and Galaxy Magazines. Some are pretty dated, but some still hold up pretty well. There's a site somewhere which you can get by googling which has free MP3 downloads of a bunch of them--something to play on your iPod other than heavy metal--I'll see if I can find the URL again.
username--
Glad you followed the breadcrumb trail.
******************
Leigh Edding's death after a series of strokes was announced in Ansible this month. She was 69 years old.
Also remember being up early every Saturday, or maybe Sunday, for the radio show 2000 Plus. They also gleaned their sci-fi dramas from Astounding, Galaxy and the short story collections in books. Wonder if those shows can also be located.
Here's one with three of the broadcasts:
http://www.oldtimeradiofans.com/template.php?show_name=2000%20Plus
...and one that perhaps has more of them and the show X Minus One, but it's a membership fee site.
http://www.rusc.com/
Actually, scroll down on this page and there's an X Minus One dramitization of Heinlein's "The Green Hills of Earth!" It downloaded for free but haven't explored what their "25 cents a day" means as far as other shows.
http://www.rusc.com/old-time-radio-downloads.html
Here's one with X Minus One and Dimension X old sci-fi radio shows.
http://www.xminusone.com/index2.htm
More free X Minus One by year:
http://www.radiolovers.com/pages/xminus1.htm
If my memory serves me, 2000 Plus left the air and was revived in concept as X Minus One. It appears there isn't much left of 2000 Plus but got busy at work (!) and haven't done more searching.
For the last few days--and undoubtedly for the next few days--I'm reading the
Jaran Quartet by Kate Elliot.
Most of the story involves members of a nomadic tribe who wander the vast open plains of an interdicted planet. Elliot does a marvelous job both with the physical landscape and with the mental outlook of the people who wander there with their flocks and herds and emotions and ambitions.
Contact with both local and galactic civilizations bring change and change creates complicated stories.
The four books of the quartet:
Jaran, An Earthly Crown, His Coinquering Sword and
The Law of Becoming.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kate_Elliott
The official Kate Elliot website seems to be in difficulty. This site is authorized:
http://www.sff.net/people/Kate.Elliott/info.html
Fantasy and science fiction worth reading and re-reading
Noddy - I just finished a delightful book on English grammar, and in the chapter on verbs I came across the following paragraphs:
"...soon the present was the default tense in short fiction. What was the appeal? I once had the opportunity to ask Ms [Ann] Beattie about the tense and she said she used in in her early stories for no reason other than that she imagined her scenes so vividly; she merely put down on paper what she was 'literally seeing in front of my eyes,' And, indeed, the present gives a strong feeling of immediacy; it mimics the feel of the movies, maybe the preeminent narrative form of the twentieth century. On a more subtle level, the presents conveys some of the indeterminancy and randomness people seem to feel nowadays...
"The present tense is undeniably effective,but, ... it's limiting. When you can say, in the words of the (nineteenth-century) poet Walt Whitman, 'I am the man, I suffer'd, I was there,' you assume authority. The past tense brings with it a faith in the possibility of interpreting an orderly world, beliefs that are apparently ever harder to sustain. By contrast, the present tense gives us something along the lines of a big database of human experience..." from "When You Catch an Adjective, Kill It" by Ben Yagoda, 2007
Tomkitten--
Thank you. I couldn't agree more.
One of the uncouth regionalisms of Western PA was recounting, "So, I sez to him and he sez to me and then I sez to him..." My parents abhorred this narrative style and we were Not Allowed to use it in the house.
Perhaps this accounts for some of my visceral horror for the first person, present tense.
Fantasy & Science Fiction worth Reading/Re-reading
Noddy - Yagoda credits the beginning of the present-tense trend to Tom Wolfe in the early '60s.
I think you'd like this book; it's very entertaining - and I learned a lot from it, me, with a Master's in English Lit!
Tomkitten--
I've made a note of title and author and will check my local library on the next trip. Since it is a very small local library, I'll probably have to request it through InterLibrary Loan, but a book worth reading is a book worth waiting for.
