Monday, May 30, 2022

Journey into SF

 

Paperbacks, that is.

 

After spending many, many nights in the thick of thousand-page classic epics, Hopper has decided to lighten his fare with a voyage through some of his collected and gnarled science fiction paperbacks. Sadly, few have made the southwest journey from New Jersey to Texas, but what hasn’t has been replaced by newer gnarled works.

 

So I decided, tentatively, to spend the end of May and the month of June returning to my science fiction roots, with the following reading plan:

 

The Galactic Rejects (1973) by Andrew J. Offutt

The Water of Thought (1981) by Fred Saberhagen

The Colors of Space (1963) by Marion Zimmer Bradley

Voyage to the Cities of the Dead (1984) by Alan Dean Foster

 

and two novellas (novellae?) by one of the truly greats, Robert Silverberg

 

“Sailing to Byzantium” (1985)

“Born with the Dead” (1975)

 


Each work is barely an inch thick at most, anywhere from 75 to 275 pages. I budget about 5 days reading time for each (if that).

 

I’ve already finished one in an epic three-day read amidst a lot of graduation hoopla (to be discussed in tomorrow’s post).

 

And I realize it’s Memorial Day. Those who peek in here every now and then note that I’ve had a heavy fascination with the American Civil War, World War II, and the Napoleonic Wars, going back at least a decade. Once summer is in full swing and the little ones have their schedules down and the dog days fall upon us, I intend to make my way through the following works:

 

With the Old Breed (1981) by Eugene Bondurant Sledge (battle of Peleliu in the Pacific)

The Battle of Kursk (1999) by David M. Glantz and Jonathan M. House

Dirty Little Secrets of World War II (1994) by James F. Dunnigan and Albert A. Nofi

 

And again, these will all feed in to a project I’m working on with all the force and fury of a Mediterranean-bound glacier in northernmost Norway.

 

Anyway, say a prayer today for those who’ve given the ultimate sacrifice. The family here plans on viewing the movie Dunkirk this evening.

 

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