Flash reviews — November ‘09

Title: Breaking Point
Author: James E. Gunn
Year: 1972
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Short story collection with your standard range of quality: some good ones, some average ones, some poor ones. Solid reading, but nothing overly memorable.
Title: In the Problem Pit
Author: Frederick Pohl
Year: 1976
Rating: 3 out of [...]

Wild adventure and sociopolitical insight come together in Star Bridge

Creation…..
It is its own nemesis. Success is temporary, and idolization will not make the ephemeral permanent. Decay is implicit in the birth of any organism.
An empire is an organism.
Title: Star Bridge
Authors: Jack Williamson and James E. Gunn
Year: 1955
Rating: 3/5 stars
A while back I was looking for more Gunn to [...]

Gunn’s medical dystopia — The Immortals

Was there an optimum beyond which medicine consumed more than it produced in benefits? And was there a point past that at which medicine became a monster, devouring the society that produced it?
Title: The Immortals
Author: James E. Gunn
Year: 1962
Rating: 2/5 stars
When a dying old man receives a blood transfusion and [...]

The voice of that SF master, Stanislaw Lem

My experience with Stanislaw Lem’s work has been limited so far, but the few times I have read one of his books I’ve gotten the inescapable impression that I was reading something written by one of science fiction’s true masters. Lem’s writing is full of philosophical depth and intellectual intensity; and there are emotional [...]

Classic authors speak on the value of science fiction

Here’s a short video clip of some of the big names in science fiction saying a few words about the genre. These are outtakes from a series of interviews recorded by James Gunn between 1968 and 1978 as part of his Literature of Science Fiction Lecture Series. You can actually purchase a 2-DVD [...]

Sagan’s classic tale of first contact

It’s pretty common to hear the phrase “the book was better than the movie,” and usually it’s true; because no matter what the quality of a book is, Hollywood is usually all too willing to lower it by several notches in order to make a movie that appeals to the masses. In the case [...]