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Being a long-standing fan of science fiction (as well as the other types of speculative fiction), it turns out that I've reviewed quite a number of books Easley Library has in this part of its collection. To start with, I'm posting links to my reviews to some of the genre's older classics, all written before World War I:Frankenstein. www.goodreads.com/review/show/18335060 .
The Lifted Veil, by George Eliot. www.goodreads.com/review/show//70703171 . (This is an early treatment of what we would today call psychic phenomena.)
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and Journey to the Center of the Earth, both by Jules Verne. www.goodreads.com/review/show/21637335 and www.goodreads.com/review/show/18335474 .
Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. www.goodreads.com/review/show/15570806 .
The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds, both by H. G. Wells. www.goodreads.com/review/show/18335613 and www.goodreads.com/review/show/18335643 .
The Napoleon of Notting Hill, by Gilbert Keith Chesterton. (This is an early example of SF that takes the social sciences as its field of speculation, to explore imagined future changes in social organization.) www.goodreads.com/review/show/71951525 .
The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. www.goodreads.com/review/show/18227453 . (This was the novel that introduced the character Prof. Challenger, Doyle's other larger-than-life creation.)
As a quick postscript to the post above, readers should note that in our collection, both of the Wells novels I've reviewed are part of the omnibus volume, H. G. Wells: Seven Novels (our edition is titled Seven Science Fiction Novels of H. G. Wells). We have separate copies of The War of the Worlds (as well as of The Food Of The Gods; but the other five novels aren't listed separately in our catalog.
In American science fiction, the period between 1926-1945, starting with the founding of the first magazine devoted to SF, Hugo Gernsback's Amazing Stories, was the heyday of the optimistic, technophilic "hard" SF pulp tradition. The genre in those days was the province of a relatively small and insular fan community, pretty much isolated from the literary mainstream and disdained by most critics. The anthology Famous Science-Fiction Stories: Adventures in Time and Space: is a gathering of tales from this era; here's my review: www.goodreads.com/review/show/18225943 .The writing career of reclusive, eccentric New England author H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) overlapped much of this period; but although his work is definitely SF, he wrote outside of the SF community of that day, was generally published in other kinds of pulp venues, and displays very different assumptions and stylistic qualities. My reviews of two collections of his work that we have in the library are here: www.goodreads.com/review/show/16092832 (The Best of H.P. Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre) and www.goodreads.com/review/show/16093053 (The Transition of H. P. Lovecraft: The Road to Madness).
Easley Library has several landmark works of science fiction from the postwar era (1945-1965); here are the ones I've reviewed:The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury. www.goodreads.com/review/show/18226458
The Demolished Man, by Alfred Bester. This was the first novel to win the Hugo Award, the SF award established in 1953 and named after Hugo Gernsback (see message 4). www.goodreads.com/review/show/18226311 .
Alas, Babylon, by Pat Frank. www.goodreads.com/review/show/18227648 .
A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr. www.goodreads.com/review/show/18333722 .A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess. www.goodreads.com/review/show/18226599 .
Dune, by Frank Herbert. www.goodreads.com/review/show/22698731 .
Historically, a great deal of 20th-century American SF was written in the short format, long dominated as the genre was by a handful of pulp magazines. We have a number of anthologies that collect science fiction short stories, several of which I've reviewed here on Goodreads:The Science Fiction Hall of Fame: Volume 1. www.goodreads.com/review/show/16090096
Science Fiction: A Historical Anthology. www.goodreads.com/review/show/16090335
Science Fiction: The Science Fiction Research Association Anthology. www.goodreads.com/review/show/19280398
The Mammoth Book Of Science Fiction. www.goodreads.com/review/show/114271590 .
Two more of our collections differ from the others in that they're strictly of contemporary, rather than older, SF stories, and feature the work of Christian writers:
Sky Songs: Stories of Spirituality and Speculative Science. www.goodreads.com/review/show/18609925
Sky Songs II: Spiritual SF. www.goodreads.com/review/show/18611291 .
One of the authors featured in the Sky Songs collections is Dr. Andrew Seddon, whom I proud to say is one of my friends (both on and off of Goodreads). We're fortunate to have his first SF novel, Red Planet Rising, in our collection (it's in the Christian Fiction collection). Here's the link to my review: www.goodreads.com/review/show/18334941 .
Above, I've linked (twice, in one case!) to my reviews of the two collections of short fiction by H. P. Lovecraft that we have here in the library. But I've only recently reviewed one of his longer works (which we also have), The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, although I read it some years ago. Here's that link: www.goodreads.com/review/show/18333631 .
A while back, I'd reached the point where I'd posted all my reviews written so far of books Easley Library actually has. But we've recently added several new titles that I either donated or selected from personal knowledge, and which I'd also already read and reviewed. So, I have some catching up to do!Two of these titles are science fiction books, both of them well known to genre fans: Ingathering: The Complete People Stories of Zenna Henderson, and On Basilisk Station, the first novel in David Weber's Honor Harrington series. My reviews: www.goodreads.com/review/show/18100416 .
www.goodreads.com/review/show/39117448 .
Harlan Ellison's epochally ground-breaking SF anthology Dangerous Visions (originally published in 1967) is probably the one most praised by the modern critical community in the entire history of SF. (Whether or not you see this as a good recommendation for the book, of course, depends on how much confidence you place in the axe-grinding modern critical community!) And we have it in our collection.The write-up I did on it, linked below, isn't really a review, because I didn't read the whole book, and don't presume to rate it. But it can serve as a basic introduction to the socio-cultural background of the book and its significance in SF history, and a "review" of sorts of the numerous stories that I did read.
www.goodreads.com/review/show/16089681 .
My most recently posted review is for Robert Hugh Benson's 1907 novel Lord of the World, which is little known today but still worth reading, IMO. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... .
A review of Madeleine L'Engle's
, which I read nearly 20 years ago, by a Goodreads friend reminded me that I'd never reviewed it myself, and I knew it definitely deserved a review! So, I've finally remedied that lapse, here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... .
C. S. Lewis is one of my favorite authors; I've read a good many of his writings, though by no means all of them. But most of them were read before I ever discovered Goodreads, so there aren't many of them, relatively speaking, that I've reviewed here. Eventually, I'd like to remedy that; it's a long, slow process, but I took another step in it yesterday with my review of the small but significant collection Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories, here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... . (Excuse the cross-posting; because of its varied content, this collection fits into a couple of our threads!)
Noted American author Ursula K. Le Guin's recent death has focused some attention on her large body of work. Over the years, I've read several of her books, but until this weekend had only reviewed one, the novel The Left Hand of Darkness. Since the Bluefield College library recently added two of her short story collections to its shelves, I decided it's about time I reviewed those as well. Here's my review of one of them,
The Compass Rose: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... .
Following up on my review of The Compass Rose last weekend, this weekend I reviewed the other collection of Le Guin's short stories that I've previously read,
The Wind's Twelve Quarters. This one earned a higher rating from me; that review is here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... .
Edgar Rice Burroughs' opener for his Barsoom series,
A Princess of Mars, is an early (1912) landmark of American science fiction, which was one of the first books I reviewed on Goodreads. I'd never linked to that review here until now, because we didn't have a copy of the book here in the library. But (yay!) we've now added it to our SF collection. So, here's the link to that review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... .
Although I posted my review (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ) of
Eternity Road by Jack McDevitt seven years ago, I'd never linked to it until now, because Easley Library didn't own a copy. But now, through a kind donation, we've added a copy. That means that McDevitt is no longer an unrepresented author in our collection, a gap genre fans will be glad to see relieved.
George Orwell's
1984 was a book I read the summer before I started college, and one of the fiction reads that had the most impact on shaping my thinking; but until today, I'd never reviewed it here. Today, I finally remedied that, and my five-star review is here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... .
Since I've been reading HPL's work for over 30 years, I'd already read most of the material contained in
The Complete Fiction of H. P. Lovecraft before I started reading the collection late last month; but I wanted to read all of the stories I'd never read before. Now that I've done so, it marks sort of a milestone in my reading --there's nothing more unread by this author to look forward to! My five-star review is here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... .
Here's my review of
The Casebook of Carnacki the Ghost Finder by William Hope Hodgson: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... . There was a first edition in 1913 that only had six stories (all that the author had written up to that time) and that's apparently the one used for the free public domain e-books available online. However, this edition is based on the 1947 Arkham House edition, and has all nine of the Carnacki stories WHH wrote.
Mark Twain's 1889 novel
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court was a pre-Goodreads read for me; when I added it to my Goodreads shelves years ago, I slapped a one-star rating on it, but had never gotten around to writing a review. Late last year, my Goodreads friend Jean asked the reason for that; and I promised her I'd try to post a review soon. So, I got that done today, and here it is: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... . :-)
In order to bolster Easley Library's speculative fiction collections (and to make some room on my own shelves), I recently donated some of my own books, which I'd reviewed here on Goodreads before the library had copies. So, it's appropriate to link to those reviews now! In the science fiction genre, the four books that now need review links are:
Gulliver of Mars, a very forgettable 1905 novel by Edwin Lester Arnold (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... )and three books form Stephen R. Lawhead's Bright Empires series,
The Skin Map,
The Spirit Well, and
The Shadow Lamp) Those reviews are here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... .
One of many books that I read before Goodreads existed, and which I took a long time to get around to reviewing, is
We by Russian author Yevgeny Zamyatin. It's one of the great novels of the 20th century (a powerful challenge to totalitarianism, which the author paid for with years of persecution and exile), so I was really glad to finally post a review, here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... .
Frankenstein. www.goodreads.com/review/show/98405509
Out of the Silent Planet (first volume of C. S. Lewis' Space Trilogy). www.goodreads.com/review/show/40588088
At the Mountains of Madness. www.goodreads.com/review/show/870076957 . We don't actually have a separate copy of this novella, but it's contained in our collection The Transition of H. P. Lovecraft: The Road to Madness. Here's the link to my review of that collection as a whole: www.goodreads.com/review/show/16093053 .