brainstorms

Thursday June 09, 2005

time travel notes: langford's complete critical assembly

lately i have been enjoying david langford's witty and sharp white dwarf SF reviews between 1983-91, collected in the complete critical assembly [cosmos books, 2002]. it is a reader's time travel: nearly every review mentions SF books i still have on my shelves or in my overflow boxes. first piece, march 83 review includes asimov's foundation's edge and heinlein's friday both of which i had read that year. [never wanted to re-read them since]

Robert Heinlein's Friday was also enthusiastically greeted, largely because it came as such a relief after his unreadably awful The Number of the Beast.

i could not agree more. NOTB is beyond awful, and it has a special place in my memory because it is the only book that i have ever thrown in the garbage, a place rarely so well deserved. even going back to pulp through recycling is too good for this.

june 83 review includes stanislaw lem's more tales of pirx the pilot which i have re-read a couple of times since. lem is a genius, and i wish some of his other writing would show up in english. [for example, his 2003 dilemmas has yet to be translated. peter swirski had mentioned that there was interest in translating summa but i do not know if there is a translation underway.]

july 83 review includes amazing randi's the truth about uri geller, flim-flam, and this line:

Even if inclined towards the loony, i mean the uncritical viewpoint, you should consult these books for the devil's advocate arguments. They are important. In a world where an ounce of sensationalism sells better than a ton of rationality any day, they are very important.

two decades later, we are in a lot worse situation, but at least flim-flam is still in print.

jan 84 review includes lem's masterpiece his master's voice, and douglas adams and john lloyd's the meaning of liff. i have been meaning to go back to HMV, and liff of course have been re-released.

massachusetts: those items or particles which people are searching for when they look into their hankies after blowing their noses.

may 84 review includes the robots of dawn, a good but not great followup to asimov's great caves of steel and the naked sun. [i treasure my original pbk copies of these two now because of the cover art as well]

A considerable improvement on the terminally flatulent foundation's edge, it recaptures the feel of those two robotic puzzles which most critics regard as asimov's best books.

[to be continued]