Stephen’s Reviews > In Dreams Awake > Status Update

"Plan for the Assassination of Jacqueline Kennedy" is less of a story and more of a prose poem, sort of. It reminded me of an excerpt from the "Unknown Armies" tabletop RPG, actually.

Some very lovely writing in Joanna Russ's "Second Inquisition," but it toes the line of 'mere' magical realism rather than sf. Still, a fine story.

Samuel Delany can really craft some excellent phrases and sentences, but "Time Considered as a Helix of Semiprecious Stones" suffers a bit from excessive style in the beginning, which mostly fades away by the middle. The story is interesting, if you can stick it out.

Harlan Ellison plays ee cummings with "'Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman," which is sort of a loving fuck-you to the overly ordered future megacities of Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke, in particular (I think). The Britishisms were a bit odd, but the whole thing was a bit odd, and I guess Britain was at peak "cool" around that time anyway.

"Nine Lives" is a decent story but nowhere near the others I've read by Ursula Le Guin. The concept of twin-empathy or whatever, but extended to clones, doesn't make any sense. (I suspect this story was chosen due to Fiedler's critical preferences for a unifying theme in "new wave" sf, which, fair enough?)

Philip Jose Farmer's "Mother" goes pretty much exactly where the erotic symbology would suggest, minus actual sex: so, Freudian as fuuuuuck.

"Resurrection" by A. E. Van Vogt - Pure "humanity fuck yeah" cheese. An overpopulated alien race looking for empty (or emptiable) planets finds Earth in ruins, but it was a gamma ray burst and not atomic war which ended civilization. Then they resurrect a Man From Our Future who has godlike psi powers and fucks with them. Hee hee.

So "It's a Good Life" is one of the best episodes of The Twilight Zone, and the original story is better, scarier, and grotesque in a way that Fifties TV could never be.