Books I have finished reading this month:
- The Early Asimov Volume 3, Isaac Asimov.
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Science fiction of this vintage is a funny thing. Some of the stories seemed very trite or obvious, but would that be the case had I not had access to decades of Asimov-inspired work? Probably not. And there were a couple of stories near the end which, despite their age and the somewhat dated language, were excellent. - The Nightmare Factory, various artists and writers, based on stories by Thomas Ligotti.
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- The Nightmare Factory Volume 2, ditto.
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I enjoy making impulse-borrowings from the library's comics and graphic novels section. Sadly, the pickings up here are much slimmer than at City Library in Melbourne, but some of the creepy stories in these books weren't half bad. At least one actually did inspire a dream, although I wouldn't call it a nightmare.
Also about halfway through a couple of other books, but focusing on anything long has been difficult this past month.
I really like reading "dated" Sci Fi. Robert Heinlein's 'Blow Ups Happen' is a great example. From 1940, the science is way off the mark (and who can blame him, speculating about nuclear physics 5 years before the first A-bombs), but it's still a cracking good story. I think the coupling of dated science with good story-telling makes a really interesting combination. Of course, that doesn't always work.
The main problem that I tend to have with dated scifi is the rampant sexism (and to lesser extents racism and various other unpleasant things). While I understand that such things are largely a "product of its time" issue, I struggle to enjoy something that steps all over my values.
Short stories are usually more bearable than longer-form stuff, probably because they tend to be focused on the cool idea that inspired the story.
Yeah, I just read Michael Moorcock's 'The Rituals of Infinity' (1965) which had lots of subtle sexism, which is arguably much worse than the more blatant kind.