Lost in Space<\/em> at my house (it was a prime time show, in the evenings) once in a while, though we had only one TV and I did not always get my way. Friends at school during recess liked to play robot (\u201cDanger, Will Robinson!). (It wasn\u2019t until years later, actually the early \u201870s after we\u2019d returned to California, that I saw the essential opening episodes that show the Jupiter II departing Earth and crash-landing onto their planet.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nFrom the Ridiculous to the Sublime<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n- Being enthused by Lost in Space<\/em> \u2013 a show aimed at kids, and a show that got increasingly absurd through its run — made me attentive to ads for a new science fiction show\u2014for adults, they stressed\u2014to debut in the Fall of 1966. That was Star Trek<\/em>, which I managed to see most episodes of over its three years, and is its own subject for a different page here.<\/li>\n
- Then there\u2019s a curious sequence of links from these relatively primitive TV shows, and my parallel interest in astronomy, to discovering literary science fiction.\n
\n- Another astronomy book I ordered through the Scholastic catalog at school was Environments Out There<\/strong>, by Isaac Asimov, published in February 1967. Because I liked that, I ordered another Asimov title through the catalog, this one called Fantastic Voyage<\/strong>, which turned out to be a novelized version of the script for the 1966 science fiction movie (that I didn\u2019t see until years later).<\/li>\n
- In the Fall of 1967, while I was at junior high school, book fairs were held in the cafeteria where stacks of books were laid out on tables for immediate purchase. Among the books I bought was Star Trek<\/strong>, by James Blish, a collection of short stories based on scripts from individual episodes of the show.<\/li>\n
- About a year later the film 2001: A Space Odyssey<\/em><\/strong> went into wide release, and though my family generally never went to the movies, I asked to be taken to see this one, and managed to see it twice. I had already bought the book\u2014it came out in July 1968\u2014and so had no trouble following the film.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n
- These were the initial triggers. Lost in Space<\/em> was kids\u2019 stuff (though I saw it at such an impressionable age, I retain a nostalgic fondness for parts of it), Star Trek<\/em> was adult but old-fashioned, and 2001<\/em><\/strong> was a work of art. Within three years, serendipitously, I\u2019d progressed from the ridiculous to the sublime.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
From the Visual to the Literary<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n- Then come the links.\n
\n- Because of Isaac Asimov\u2019s film novelization, I moved on to actual Asimov novels and stories.<\/li>\n
- Because of James Blish\u2019s Trek adaptations, I discovered actual Blish novels and stories.<\/li>\n
- Because of Arthur C. Clarke\u2019s novel and film script (both, in a sense, cowritten with Kubrick), I discovered other Clarke novels and stories.<\/li>\n
- In April 1969 Ballantine re-issued five Clarke books, including Childhood\u2019s End<\/strong>, with cover illustrations of various spaceships obviously influenced by those in 2001<\/em><\/strong>. Because they were published by Ballantine, I trusted Ballantine for other writers, writers I hadn\u2019t heard of. One of the first of those was\u2026 Robert Silverberg, whose collection Dimension Thirteen<\/strong> was published in May 1969. (And which I bought at the supermarket in Cambridge, Illinois.)<\/li>\n
- I joined the Science Fiction Book Club, in part to get a hardcover of 2001, and also chose early selections by Asimov and Silverberg.<\/li>\n
- Even though the first Silverberg books I bought were early works before his full flowering in the late \u201860s\/early \u201870s, it was clear to me that he was a level or two above Asimov, Clarke, and Blish, who\u2019d begun their careers two decades before; Silverberg had a literary background and wrote more sophisticated fiction, in terms of prose style and adult themes.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
From the Casual to the Current<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n- I found plenty of books to buy and read for the next few years, though high school, using chains of associations by author or by publisher in many but not all cases. For the most part I was reading paperback editions of novels and story collections that had first been published years, sometimes decades, earlier, by writers who first published in the 1940s and 1950s. Silverberg\u2019s books, along with some anthologies of annual best stories of the year, were the closest I got to what was being published contemporaneously. (The late \u201860s was the era of the \u201cNew Wave\u201d in science fiction, but I was only dimly aware of that, as a still casual, not-quite random reader of the genre.)<\/li>\n
- Then in the Fall of 1973 I began college at UCLA, and as described elsewhere, discovered A Change of Hobbit bookstore. It was significant because the store got, systematically and reliably, all the new books published each month. And because they sold the magazines, including the newsletter Locus<\/em>, then a twice-monthly newsletter stapled and mimeographed.<\/li>\n
- Through Locus<\/em> I suddenly became aware of what was going on in science fiction right now<\/em>. Not just reviews of new books, but news about books authors had just sold to publishers that wouldn\u2019t be out for a year or two. And more significantly, news about what books and stories were being nominated for, and winning, the then two major science fiction awards, the Hugos (presented by fans) and Nebulas (presented by professional writers).<\/li>\n
- This provided a focus for paying attention to current books and stories (mostly in the magazines, like Analog<\/em> and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction<\/em>, which I\u2019d started buying in late 1969), and even playing along. That is, I could read the magazines, and many of the current novels, and decide for myself which ones were best and compare mine to results of the awards, and also to selections in those \u201cbest of the year\u201d anthologies, of which at the time there were two, one edited by Terry Carr, the other by Donald A. Wollheim.<\/li>\n
- The first year I did this seriously was 1973. That is, by the time the awards ballots were announced in 1974, and Carr\u2019s and Wollheim\u2019s volumes were published in 1974, I had already read virtually all of those selections. I eventually read most of the nominated novels and stories from 1972 and before, back into the 1950s, but they were history; I hadn\u2019t become keyed to current events until 1973.<\/li>\n
- And then, reading Locus<\/em> every month (or couple weeks, its schedule was irregular then), I saw Locus<\/em> had its own annual poll, and annual recommended reading list, compiled explicitly to influence the Hugos, according to the editor, Charles N. Brown. He even invited his own readers to submit their lists of favorite novels and stories! And so, by 1975 or 76, I started doing so. I became a reliable correspondent, often sending lists of stories I\u2019d liked along with paragraphs of commentary. In 1980, I noted in my journal, the short fiction categories of the recommended reading list were credited to Terry Carr, Gardner Dozois, and me.<\/li>\n
- And this went on for over a decade before one day Charles Brown called me up on the phone one day and invited me to write a monthly review column for Locus<\/em> magazine.<\/li>\n
- This era that began in the early 1970s was when my tastes matured and I discovered so many writers whose techniques and subject matters were superior and deeper compared to the traditional classic SF writers like Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein. Silverberg was the first; then there were Le Guin, and Bishop, and Dozois, and Effinger, and Malzberg, and Wilhelm, and Wolfe. Earlier writers I\u2019d missed, like Ballard. This continued for a quarter century, as I followed the field closely, discovering important new writers just as everyone else did (Bear, Benford, Willis, Gibson, Sterling, Robinson, Egan). My tastes were \u201cprogressive\u201d in the sense that I welcomed novel styles, ideas, and approaches \u2013 the new is what science fiction is about! — as opposed to \u201cconservative\u201d writers and readers who required simplistic beginnings, middles, and ends, clearly defined good and bad guys, simple-minded battles of good vs. evil translated into space opera.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Leaving Visual SF Behind, Mostly<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n- Which is a nice lead-in to my disdain for virtually all TV and movie science fiction. I retain nostalgic fondness for the original Star Trek<\/em>, and even for Lost in Space<\/em>, but that\u2019s because I was in my pre-teens when I first saw them, and everything you\u2019re exposed to in early life leaves a life-long impression. I watched the later Trek<\/em> series Next Generation<\/em> religiously when first broadcast, and it was fine, but I\u2019ve never bothered to watch it again. I\u2019ve not watched any of the other Trek series at all, and I\u2019ve not cared much for the Trek movies. My general issue with all of them is that their themes devolve into soap opera or politics: does Spock die, or live?; Federation vs Romulans and\/or Klingons. The best original Trek<\/em> episodes were those that involved meeting something unknown, and dealing with it, trying to understand it, be willing to change from the experience. That central theme has vanished from all the later variations of Trek<\/em>\u2014possibly because TV changed, given to seasons with story arcs, rather than individual episodes that can be seen in any order, each with a premise and a conclusion. (I think this reflects why I\u2019ve always preferred SF short fiction rather than novels, let alone series of novels that just keep plot churning without ever reaching any kind of conclusion.)<\/li>\n
- History has validated 2001: A Space Odyssey<\/em><\/strong> as a great film, a work of art, and the most profound science fiction film of all time. That is in part because how newbies react to it: it\u2019s slow, it\u2019s confusing. No, it\u2019s not; it takes understanding; it\u2019s brilliant because it does things differently than anything before it, which is partly what defines a classic. I was lucky to have seen it at an early age (13) and had read the book.<\/li>\n
- The only other science fiction film I\u2019ve liked well enough to have bought several DVD\/Blu-Ray versions of over the years is Blade Runner<\/em><\/strong>, from 1982, and even then I have a slightly mixed feelings about it. I love the music, the visualization of its future, the oddly mannered, poetic dialogue, and the thematic ambiguity of the difference between humans and replicants; I cringe at the too numerous gratuitous moments of physical violence.<\/li>\n
- In recent decades I don\u2019t bother to see most science fiction films. Even though for years I procured and posted Gary Westfahl\u2019s film reviews for Locus Online<\/em>, I never saw the majority of the films he reviewed myself. (Partly for the reasons he expresses in his reviews, generally the formulaic result of virtually all Hollywood films\u2014films and TV are all so much more alike each other than are the literary works of the best writers.)<\/li>\n
- There are some good tries and obscure near-misses, from Solaris<\/em><\/strong> to Contact<\/em><\/strong> to Interstellar<\/em><\/strong>, and I\u2019ll grant that recent films like Annihilation<\/em><\/strong> and Arrival<\/em><\/strong> are very good. (All one-word titles!) But I’m seldom inclined to see them a second time.<\/li>\n
- And TV? The first claimant to an ambitious TV series, following Star Trek<\/em>, was Space: 1999<\/em>, with two major TV stars: Martin Landau and Barbara Bain (from Mission: Impossible<\/em>). The opening card on the debut episode (I vividly remember watching this, with my family, at our home in Sepulveda) identified the location as \u201cThe Dark Side of the Moon.\u201d Nonsense; there is no such place (there is however a far side of the moon, which isn\u2019t the same thing at all). And a nuclear explosion that blew the Moon out of its orbit. Again, nonsense; elementary physics.<\/li>\n
- What followed? Cheesy shows like Logan\u2019s Run<\/em>? The Six Million Dollar Man<\/em>? I didn\u2019t pay them attention. In all these decades, I\u2019ve been impressed only by the recent Battlestar Galactica<\/em>, well-produced and acted in every way, though still relying on stock SF clich\u00e9s like space warps and humanoid robots, and with a lame ending. (Lost<\/em> had science fictional potential for a while, but also suffered from its producers making the story up as they went along, and having no decent conclusion.)<\/li>\n
- And movies? The science fiction field was set back 25 years into comic-book terms by Star Wars<\/em><\/strong>, in 1977, that fantasized spaceships moving like jet fighters, involved a simplistic good vs. evil battle, and relied on a fantasy pseudo-science \u201cforce.\u201d I was astonished when this film took the world by storm, and dismayed that its success led to a dumbing down of science fiction publishing to appeal to readers who liked that film. (Especially at Del Rey, successor to Ballantine.) Its effect wiped out most of the advances of science fiction\u2019s \u201cNew Wave\u201d that brought into prominence those early \u201870s writers I was so impressed with. Science fiction became a field of sequels and endless series, alongside the new popularity of Tolkien-inspired fantasy.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
And Yet Nostalgia<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n- Just as I have some nostalgic interest in revisiting the original Trek<\/em>, and even Lost in Space<\/em>, I\u2019m fascinated by watching older science fiction movies, from the 1960s and before. (Thus my page on this site of \u201cSkiffy Flix\u201d reviews: https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/bibliographies-and-reviews\/skiffy-flix\/<\/a>.) I find them interesting mostly because they reflect na\u00efve ideas about how the universe works, either because the writers and producers were scientifically illiterate, or because they depicted things dishonestly for the sake of not upsetting audience expectations (as Trek<\/em> did with its swooshing sound of the Enterprise flying by).<\/li>\n
- Later films, from the \u201870s forward, I\u2019ve found less interesting partly because of the cheesy costuming and hair styling of the \u201870s and \u201880s, but also because my sense is that by that time the writers and producers should have known better. Audiences really were getting more sophisticated. I\u2019m sure there have been some fine SF films over the past several decades, but very few that measure up to the best SF novels and short fiction. None that I\u2019ve found interesting enough to rewatch, as I still rewatch those creaky 1950s films. (But I need to think about this, and revisit films of the past five decades. If I have time.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>Keeping Current for a While<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n- I wrote the monthly column for Locus<\/em> reviewing short fiction, which entailed reading all the magazines every month (at that time there were three major ones and a couple minor) and the occasional original anthology, beginning early 1988, for three years, then stopped.<\/li>\n
- Writing for Locus<\/em>, the major news magazine of the science fiction field (analogous to the book industry\u2019s Publishers Weekly<\/em>), gave me some legitimacy as a person; it validated my worth. I could go to science fiction conventions \u2013 I\u2019d only done so two or three times before, over 15 years \u2013 and walk up to a major writer like Connie Willis, introduce myself, and be greeted with interest. (Of course I tended to approach writers whose work I liked. Obviously I avoided those whose work I hadn\u2019t. So it goes with all associations among writers and editors, in a field with many different flavors of science fiction, political attitudes, and opinions about how stories should be written.) The first convention I attended after starting the column was a Westercon in a blistering hot Phoenix (the convention is held over July 4th<\/sup> weekend), where I actually met Charles Brown for the first time in person, and met Robert Silverberg for the first time. Later that year at the Worldcon, that year in New Orleans, I chanced upon some famous writer\u2014it may indeed have been Connie\u2014and she not only welcomed me, but invited me along to lunch with her, Greg Bear, Kim Stanley Robinson, and someone else, maybe James Patrick Kelly. That was a heady start to the weekend. On the other hand, not all writers are nice or approachable. At the same convention I introduced myself to George Alec Effinger, who\u2019d published an excellent story earlier in the year, and all he did was complain that I hadn\u2019t reviewed his other story, the one published in Playboy. Oh well.<\/li>\n
- It was also congenial in those years to be a part of the Locus crew. Charles Brown and two or three of his staff would attend, and there would be a Locus Dinner one night during the con, when we\u2019d all go out to a restaurant and Charles would pay. These conventions usually had dealers\u2019 rooms, and there would always be a Locus table (to sell subscriptions), and so I could drop by there to chat. Furthermore, the big publishers like Tor and HarperCollins would host room parties in the evenings, sometimes open-door but usually by invitation, and anyone associated with Locus got an invitation. Snacks, wine, scotch, more people to meet. I\u2019m not particular extraverted, but again, having Locus creds gave me reason to mix a little and be recognized.<\/li>\n
- I stopped after three years due to a combination of fatigue from monthly deadlines and personal matters. The latter passed, Charles hadn\u2019t found a replacement short fiction reviewer by the end of the next year, and so I decided to start up again, in 1992. That ran until the end of 2001.<\/li>\n
- (Several 1997 era columns are linked to this mirror of my first webpage, on Compuserve: http:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/CompuServeHomepage.html<\/a>.)<\/li>\n
- For the first decade, from \u201987 to \u201996, I attended the annual World Science Fiction Convention, and twice the annual World Fantasy Convention, the latter a more professional affair with a quite different manner. Beginning 1997 I got more involved with Locus \u2013 I launched its website \u2013 and started going to more convention, three or four a year. Now I was a web-publisher<\/em>.<\/li>\n
- For purposes of this discussion, though, I ended my monthly column permanently at the end of 2001, partly due again to that fatigue of monthly deadlines, and also because my partner Yeong had moved in and had little patience for my reading and writing. (Reading was for adolescents and single people, he told me.)<\/li>\n
- And so the upshot is, once I didn\u2019t have to read for my monthly column, I stopped keeping up. I had read the magazines and original anthologies and kept current with the best stories published, all the new writers, and so on, for nearly 30 years. And then, for the most part, I just stopped, I stepped away. I still bought all the magazines and many anthologies (and I still do), but I didn\u2019t read them except occasionally after some stories had already been nominated for one award or another. Yet some years go by when I don\u2019t get around to reading any of the year\u2019s short fiction.<\/li>\n
- I\u2019ve kept up on some current novels over the past 20 years, though again there are some award winners I haven\u2019t read.<\/li>\n
- I do plan to visit some of these works of the past 20 years, discovering them belatedly rather as I discovered Asimov and Clarke and the others only years after their works were first published.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Haphazard Decades, with Ambitions<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n- In the past two decades, I\u2019ve lived with a partner who has no interest in books or reading. And yet, intermittently, I\u2019ve read about as much overall as I did in the \u201890s, discounting all the magazine reading I was doing then.<\/li>\n
- In the past five years, since moving to Oakland, I\u2019ve been \u201cretired,\u201d staying at home every day, while my partner goes to work 5 days a week. (Until recently, April 2020, when he\u2019s worked from home given the pandemic.) And so I\u2019ve gotten lots of varied reading done. But not a lot of current SF. My interests have run more to nonfiction in recent years, and to revisiting classic SF. (I\u2019ll explored nonfiction triggers on the Books page.)<\/li>\n
- For a couple years now I\u2019ve been revisiting \u201cclassic\u201d (1950s and before) SF novels with an eye to re-evaluating them from the light of contemporary understanding of science, contemporary perspectives of social and moral issues. As usual I\u2019ve read a lot more than I\u2019ve posted about on my blog. But my review\/summaries of classic SF novels are now appearing every two weeks at Black Gate<\/em> (https:\/\/www.blackgate.com\/<\/a>), which gives me incentive to keep going.<\/li>\n
- At the same time, it\u2019s impossible to read\/reread all the significant novels of the past 7 or 8 decades of science fiction publishing, and I\u2019m now contemplating how to shift my focus from only classic SF novels, to the most significant works by selected authors over all of SF history. In support of my imagined book about \u201cthe intersection of science fiction with ancient and contemporary knowledge,\u201d as I\u2019ve noted elsewhere. Which authors should I focus on? The classics by Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, sure; but then who. Silverberg. Le Guin. Robinson. Egan. Wolfe. And a few more.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Here\u2019s another autobiographical post, probably repetitious with some of the others, about specific events or circumstances that triggered interests or beliefs, some brief, some that have lasted a life. 3500 words just today\u2014a draft. Science Fiction There are several phases … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal-history","category-science-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8924"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8924\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8928,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8924\/revisions\/8928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}