The Evolution of Science Fiction discussion

This month we're looking for nominations for the Pulp Era of SF: 1920-1939 that has not previously been read by the group. Please check the bookshelf (https://www.goodreads.com/group/books...) & the nomination rules (https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...) before nominating a book as it also contains a list of books we have read in this period. This topic has a list of authors. It's not complete, just some possibilities.

Please also add your nominated book title as a clickable link directly to the Goodreads' book page, so it looks like this:

Lock In
Ideally, add the author, too: John Scalzi
And mention the *Publication Year,* please!

Everything you can do to help the moderators' bookkeeping will help the group flourish, so thank you!

This comment is held for the current nominations.

1) Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon (1937)
2) Stowaway To Mars by John Wyndham (1935)
3) The New Adam by Stanley G. Weinbaum (1939)
4) Gladiator by Philip Wylie (1930)
5) At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft (1936)
6) Proud Man by Katharine Burdekin (1934)

Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon (1937)

Stowaway To Mars by John Wyndham 1935

The New Adam by Stanley G. Weinbaum 1939

I'll nominate Gladiator by Philip Wylie (1930) again. Hugo Danner is the template for the original Superman.

At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft. It was written in 1936.

It is sci-fi horror and I do not see why it wouldn't qualify as sci-fi.

I've never considered Lovecraft SF, but 346 people on GR do so we'll accept it as SF. The line between SF & horror is awfully thin & gray.

Ain't it just a subgenre, like military sci-fi or space opera or post-apocalypse or cuberpunk?The biggest difference being commonality.

Could be, Marc-André. I'm terrible at genres, although most horror impresses me as fantasy, not SF. I don't think alternate timelines are necessarily SF either, but most people do. Shrug. It's not worth much argument, IMO. It's the story that matters most to me.

While we are offtopic - my take: horror is not SF. horror frightens you with unknown, makes you want to run away; SF investigates unknown, to make it known - the difference is in approaches

We have 5 nominations so far & it's going to be a tough choice. Both the stories & the authors have been cited as influential by many SF authors, both contemporary & afterward.

1) Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon (1937) - possibly the first galaxy spanning SF.

2) Stowaway To Mars by John Wyndham (1935) - the female stowaway upsets the entire ship. They can't deal with her gender.

3) The New Adam by Stanley G. Weinbaum (1939) - as a new type of human with a double mind, Adam Hall contemplates the differences.

4) Gladiator by Philip Wylie (1930) - Hugo Danner is a superman, but no altruist. He tries to find a place for himself in human society. Progenitor of Superman & many other heroic figures.

5) At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft (1936) - Described as the 'quintessential work of supernatural horror', this story has been influential throughout SF & horror for it's descriptions of alien works as well as its style.

Maybe availability would help some ppl choose? Are these all in the public domain and online?

Cheryl wrote: "Maybe availability would help some ppl choose? Are these all in the public domain and online?"

Stowaway To Mars is available as a paperback and on Kindle. I just happen to know that as I nominated it :)

Cheryl wrote: "Maybe availability would help some ppl choose? Are these all in the public domain and online?"

Good thought. A quick google search shows:

Gladiator is available
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/42914

Star Maker is available
https://www.goodreads.com/ebooks/down...
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0601...

Stowaway To Mars didn't pop right up, but it was serialized in a couple of pulps, so is probably available for free.

At the Mountains of Madness
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0600...

The New Adam seems to be downloadable as a of here https://freeditorial.com/en/books/the...

I nominate Proud Man by Katharine Burdekin. Burdekin wrote material that would appeal to feminists, so may not be everyone's cup of apple cider. However, this one in particular interests me as an early version of Stranger in a Strange Land, this "land" being 1930s England.

edit: This book is not easily found. Four used copies are for sale for about $15 each. The next used copy costs a little over $20. The Feminist Press, which republished it in 1993, no longer carries it. To get an edition of any of the ten books or so Katharine Burdekin wrote under her pseudonym, Murray Constantine, starts at about $200 and then goes up from there because they're rare 1920s and 1930s editions. Too bad.

Pat wrote: "The New Adam by Stanley G. Weinbaum 1939"

Interesting. You're the second person to nominate this. Is it in the news, or being featured in a prominent blog, or something?

Oh, well, this topic is just for nominations.
We don't need people to 'second' books in this group.
Feel free to nominate a title not on the list, if it meets the other requirements (see first message).

I found the story "Tidal Moon," written by Stanley G. and Helen Weinbaum: https://archive.org/details/Thrilling... It appeared posthumously.

Marc-André wrote: "At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft. It was written in 1936.

It is sci-fi horror and I do not see why it wouldn't qualify as sci-fi."

This nomination will have my vote.

Rafael wrote: "Marc-André wrote: "At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft. It was written in 1936.

It is sci-fi horror and I do not see why it wouldn't qualify as sci-fi."

This..."

It won't have mine. I don't consider Lovecraft to be an SF writer. He used one SF trope: the alien. But his aliens are not from another star system or planet. They're from another dimension and used purely for horror effect. Unlike in the movie Alien, Lovecraft's aliens don't get on board a spacecraft in the future. They go to Antarctica, a real place, in the present. Nothing other than the fact that Lovecraft occasionally wrote about undefined non-humans makes it possible for anyone to claim he writes SF. It isn't enough. There's no science here.

For those who want to read Lovecraft in a group setting, my recommendation is to find a group that reads weird fiction, or classic horror, instead of insisting a square peg fits in a round hole. Moreover, the nominated work isn't even a novel. It's a novella, a long short story originally published in a magazine devoted to weird tales, not science fiction.

While I agree with Dan's assessment of Lovecraft's work, he was also very influential with SF authors for his exchange of letters/ideas with them. His aliens & settings show up in many later works due to the fine line between horror & SF. On top of that, SF is tough to define, so one of our benchmarks is how a book is shelved & a large number of GR users shelve it as SF. All of this means I'm willing to allow his work for a group read. I won't vote for it, though.

IMO, both Gladiator & Starmaker are both true SF & every bit as influential. I've read both & I enjoyed Gladiator. Stapledon bores me to tears for all his universe spanning ideas. I'm not terribly fond of Lovecraft's writing, either. A little goes a long way.

I actually love and admire Lovecraft's writing. I wish I could write anything like that. I find his choice of topics to write about somewhat mundane. I believe it's because I don't particularly fear the unknown. If one doesn't have that fear, Lovecraft's plots tend to seem pointless. If there were a worthwhile, active Weird literature group I could be a part of (there isn't) and this story were chosen by it, I'd probably vote for it and participate.

I still maintain that he shouldn't be part of an SF discussion group. That Lovecraft influenced SF writers doesn't make him SF. That's like saying Aristotle influenced 20th century crime fiction writers and wrote about what was little known in his time so he's really a mystery writer. Therefore, the mystery club needs to vote on whether or not to read Book 12 of the Metaphysics. Not all of the work, of course, because now we're voting on part books, or novellas, just the most mysterious part.

Some of Lovecraft's work is sci-fi or proto-sci-fi and not just fantasy. Like Herbert West: Reanimator or the The Whisperer in Darkness. Whisperer is just the tale of aliens downloading people's brain in hard drives. It is seen as brains in jars for the protagonist who comes from the early 20th Century.

There were lots of inconsistencies between his cosmic horror tales. Sometimes they are aliens from another dimension and sometimes aliens from distant stars.

I read the synopses of these two works and I'm not seeing science fiction, just horror. Anyone can broaden a definition of the genre until it becomes a nearly meaningless distinction to call it science fiction, but I won't. The argument that something like 5-10% of a readership labels a work science fiction is not at all persuasive to me either because that means 90-95% think it's something else.

I think it a shame that with so much good science fiction to choose from there would be a desire to go down dark fantasy's rabbit hole.

Now I'm extra-tempted to vote for At the Mountains of Madness. I prefer not to have "Science Fiction" defined for me by other people.

This is a nomination topic. I think we've gone far enough with this conversation here. It's an interesting one, but let's continue in the "Pre 1920: Old SF > Important Authors" topic
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

It's pretty similar to the one about Voltaire.

We have 6 nominations so far & it's going to be a tough choice. Both the stories & the authors have been cited as influential by many SF authors, both contemporary & afterward.

1) Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon (1937) - possibly the first galaxy spanning SF.

2) Stowaway To Mars by John Wyndham (1935) - the female stowaway upsets the entire ship. They can't deal with her gender.

3) The New Adam by Stanley G. Weinbaum (1939) - as a new type of human with a double mind, Adam Hall contemplates the differences.

4) Gladiator by Philip Wylie (1930) - Hugo Danner is a superman, but no altruist. He tries to find a place for himself in human society. Progenitor of Superman & many other heroic figures.

5) At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft (1936) - Described as the 'quintessential work of supernatural horror', this story has been influential throughout SF & horror for it's descriptions of alien works as well as its style.

6) Proud Man by Katharine Burdekin (1934) - feminist literature & an early version of "Stranger in a Strange Land". Tough to find, though.

The current poll says that it was to the May read, so I suppose that it is actually to April?

Oh hell. Did I screw that up? Cheryl, help! What's right?

We're reading A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court in April.

Cheryl wrote: "We're reading A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court in April."

Well, that poll isn't closed yet, but I personally have no objections to you closing it.

I decided not to vote for my own nomination (The New Eve) because not many people would likely read it with me. But it is on my shelf, so I think I will read it myself.

Ed wrote: "Cheryl wrote: "We're reading A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court in April."

Well, that poll isn't closed yet, but I personally have no objections to you closing it.
..."

You're right. Oops. Well, it does certainly seem very likely that we'll be reading Twain's yarn. And also that we'll have only fewer than a third of the voters in that plurality, so, again, lots of disappointed folks. Ack.

(As it's turning out, I'm spending more than half this month on the road; was gone March 1-11 and going out twice again. Sorry.)

OK, I closed the poll. The Yankee it is. Cool! The rest are spread pretty evenly across the board/ Does anyone really want a quick run-off among the others? If so, let us know & we can make up a poll for a week from the rest.

Meaning we could read a second book in April, chosen from the others? That's a neat idea.

Re' the May book, with 6 nominations already (this thread right here), I ask you members to get your last noms in asap so we can get started on the poll next week.

The nomination period is done, so I'm closing this topic.
We have 6 nominations, so we'll make one poll to choose among them. It will be tough since both the stories & the authors have been cited as influential by many SF authors, both contemporary & afterward.

1) Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon (1937) - possibly the first galaxy spanning SF.

2) Stowaway To Mars by John Wyndham (1935) - the female stowaway upsets the entire ship. They can't deal with her gender.

3) The New Adam by Stanley G. Weinbaum (1939) - as a new type of human with a double mind, Adam Hall contemplates the differences.

4) Gladiator by Philip Wylie (1930) - Hugo Danner is a superman, but no altruist. He tries to find a place for himself in human society. Progenitor of Superman & many other heroic figures.

5) At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft (1936) - Described as the 'quintessential work of supernatural horror', this story has been influential throughout SF & horror for it's descriptions of alien works as well as its style.

6) Proud Man by Katharine Burdekin (1934) - feminist literature & an early version of "Stranger in a Strange Land". Tough to find, though.

Poll is up! https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/1...

You have until the 15th to vote, and to lobby (in the comments on the poll page) to lobby for your choice!