J-Sun
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By Any Other Name: A Norman Spinrad Retrospective
My own take (loong, but short for eighteen-book-reviews-in-one
): I haven't really read Norman Spinrad in years but, when I was, he established himself as one of my favorite authors and certainly, by light years, my favorite "New Wave" author (unless Zelazny is counted as such and then he still is, but not by light-years). His first three novels are for fans only: The Solarians (1966) is Spinrad lopping himself off in a Procrustean space opera with mostly presumably unintentionally amusing results - I like it, but it can't be called good. The Men in the Jungle (1967) is a savage satire of Viet Nam set on an alien world which may be effective in a sense, but was so unappealing that I just couldn't like it. Agent of Chaos (1967) (anarchists... in spaaace!) is a more successful attempt than his first novel at Spinrad being himself within genre conventions but is still uncomfortable. But at this same time, his short story craft was excellent, with numerous can't-miss stories (in varying degrees of conventionality) collected in The Last Hurrah of the Golden Horde (1970) which was one of the first SF books I ever read and which permanently bent my brain.
Spinrad really came into his own with Bug Jack Barron (1969), for which, see the article. He transcended even this with the masterpiece The Iron Dream (1972), also discussed in the article - Adolf Hitler's science fiction novel. It was inspired by sword and sorcery conventions but dresses it up in more SF-styled clothing. I'm a fan of Golden Age SF in even its square-jawed Nordic variety but I love this book. In a way, it's like the Valkyries scene in Apocalypse Now. If you are comfortable with certain "heroic" conventions in myth and literature, SF and fantasy or, on the other hand, are blind to them, you shouldn't be and this will help. Oddly, this was followed by a lull in his career as he only published a non-SF novel I haven't read (Passing Through the Flame (1975)) and two collections until his next novel in 1979. The first of those collections, No Direction Home (1975), may not match Last Hurrah but is still pretty indispensable. The second (The Star-Spangled Future (1979)) may be intended to be a "best of" or a themed collection or something but was disappointing to me. It takes four of the eighteen stories from his first collection, six of the eleven of his second, and adds four new stories. The first two collections are both essential and the four additional stories do not linger in the mind, so it's pointless. But an important story to note apart from those collections is Riding the Torch (1974, published as a solo novella in 1984) which is the first true Spinradian version of a "space opera" in which he adapts the form completely to his own purposes, succeeds magnificently, and prefigures The Void Captain's Tale.
After the mid-70s book-length lull, it seems he had a hard time getting back up to speed. A World Between (1979) is one of those books that fluxes in the time flow - its depiction of electronic democracy was ludicrously far-fetched in 1979, remarkably prescient in 1990, and hopelessly, naively optimistic in 2000 and so on. Similarly, its treatment of "gender wars" was timely, then dated, and is probably timely once again. It's an important book to read, but not so fictionally successful as some others. Then Songs from the Stars (1980) is a sort of neo-hippy "green" book which is fair but probably little more. And The Mind Game (1980) is usually billed as SF even though I don't think it is, much, and covers some of the same Bug Jack Barron ground. But then, with 1983's The Void Captain's Tale, he burst into perfection once again. The article says, "if you’re not put off by my description of it, you should read it immediately" but I would probably be put off by the description and would say you just have to read it regardless. That novel is like a poem in that "the heresy of paraphrase" applies - you simply can't describe it, but have to experience it. I found the sort of tangential "same universe" follow-up (the closest Spinrad has ever come to obeying the commercial requirement of producing a series) Child of Fortune (1985) to be a relatively flabby and disappointing book but probably only due to unrealistic expectations inspired by its predecessor. Despite the common universe, it's a very different book.
Unfortunately, this marked the peak, in my experience. Little Heroes (1987) was enjoyable enough on a first read but did not survive a re-read. Its derivative cyberpunk nature and awkward "literature about music" motif and a sort of dated feel to it despite all that, just didn't work for me. This was followed by another collection (Other Americas (1988)) of just four stories, which reprinted one for the third time, included a great over-the-top satire I'd already read in a magazine, and one okay and one not-so-okay story. Then came Russian Spring (1991) which was almost a Russian novel in the sense of being very long - in this case, too long, It also was about the collapse of the USSR apparently written before but published after said collapse, so suffered from weird dissonances. Then came another mainstream novel or two I missed, a novella published as a book (Deus Ex (1993)) which was another cyberpunk derivative which I actually hated and then I lost track of him, even before (as he describes it) his career was assassinated by a malevolent publisher and the death-spiral. (I did buy Greenhouse Summer (1999), his global warming novel, based on its being SF and having some buzz but have yet to get around to reading it.) And, given that he produced a masterpiece after the relative '73-'82 lull, I don't doubt there could be a masterpiece I missed or another yet to come.
Still - even leaving aside that he's also written brilliant criticism and been President of the SFWA and edited an anthology or two and accomplished other things in the SF and literary fields - for Bug Jack Barron, The Iron Dream, Riding the Torch, The Void Captain's Tale, and most of the stories in Last Hurrah and No Direction Home, and other lesser but excellent works, he'd have my vote for (a now overdue) Grand Master.
My own take (loong, but short for eighteen-book-reviews-in-one
): I haven't really read Norman Spinrad in years but, when I was, he established himself as one of my favorite authors and certainly, by light years, my favorite "New Wave" author (unless Zelazny is counted as such and then he still is, but not by light-years). His first three novels are for fans only: The Solarians (1966) is Spinrad lopping himself off in a Procrustean space opera with mostly presumably unintentionally amusing results - I like it, but it can't be called good. The Men in the Jungle (1967) is a savage satire of Viet Nam set on an alien world which may be effective in a sense, but was so unappealing that I just couldn't like it. Agent of Chaos (1967) (anarchists... in spaaace!) is a more successful attempt than his first novel at Spinrad being himself within genre conventions but is still uncomfortable. But at this same time, his short story craft was excellent, with numerous can't-miss stories (in varying degrees of conventionality) collected in The Last Hurrah of the Golden Horde (1970) which was one of the first SF books I ever read and which permanently bent my brain.Spinrad really came into his own with Bug Jack Barron (1969), for which, see the article. He transcended even this with the masterpiece The Iron Dream (1972), also discussed in the article - Adolf Hitler's science fiction novel. It was inspired by sword and sorcery conventions but dresses it up in more SF-styled clothing. I'm a fan of Golden Age SF in even its square-jawed Nordic variety but I love this book. In a way, it's like the Valkyries scene in Apocalypse Now. If you are comfortable with certain "heroic" conventions in myth and literature, SF and fantasy or, on the other hand, are blind to them, you shouldn't be and this will help. Oddly, this was followed by a lull in his career as he only published a non-SF novel I haven't read (Passing Through the Flame (1975)) and two collections until his next novel in 1979. The first of those collections, No Direction Home (1975), may not match Last Hurrah but is still pretty indispensable. The second (The Star-Spangled Future (1979)) may be intended to be a "best of" or a themed collection or something but was disappointing to me. It takes four of the eighteen stories from his first collection, six of the eleven of his second, and adds four new stories. The first two collections are both essential and the four additional stories do not linger in the mind, so it's pointless. But an important story to note apart from those collections is Riding the Torch (1974, published as a solo novella in 1984) which is the first true Spinradian version of a "space opera" in which he adapts the form completely to his own purposes, succeeds magnificently, and prefigures The Void Captain's Tale.
After the mid-70s book-length lull, it seems he had a hard time getting back up to speed. A World Between (1979) is one of those books that fluxes in the time flow - its depiction of electronic democracy was ludicrously far-fetched in 1979, remarkably prescient in 1990, and hopelessly, naively optimistic in 2000 and so on. Similarly, its treatment of "gender wars" was timely, then dated, and is probably timely once again. It's an important book to read, but not so fictionally successful as some others. Then Songs from the Stars (1980) is a sort of neo-hippy "green" book which is fair but probably little more. And The Mind Game (1980) is usually billed as SF even though I don't think it is, much, and covers some of the same Bug Jack Barron ground. But then, with 1983's The Void Captain's Tale, he burst into perfection once again. The article says, "if you’re not put off by my description of it, you should read it immediately" but I would probably be put off by the description and would say you just have to read it regardless. That novel is like a poem in that "the heresy of paraphrase" applies - you simply can't describe it, but have to experience it. I found the sort of tangential "same universe" follow-up (the closest Spinrad has ever come to obeying the commercial requirement of producing a series) Child of Fortune (1985) to be a relatively flabby and disappointing book but probably only due to unrealistic expectations inspired by its predecessor. Despite the common universe, it's a very different book.
Unfortunately, this marked the peak, in my experience. Little Heroes (1987) was enjoyable enough on a first read but did not survive a re-read. Its derivative cyberpunk nature and awkward "literature about music" motif and a sort of dated feel to it despite all that, just didn't work for me. This was followed by another collection (Other Americas (1988)) of just four stories, which reprinted one for the third time, included a great over-the-top satire I'd already read in a magazine, and one okay and one not-so-okay story. Then came Russian Spring (1991) which was almost a Russian novel in the sense of being very long - in this case, too long, It also was about the collapse of the USSR apparently written before but published after said collapse, so suffered from weird dissonances. Then came another mainstream novel or two I missed, a novella published as a book (Deus Ex (1993)) which was another cyberpunk derivative which I actually hated and then I lost track of him, even before (as he describes it) his career was assassinated by a malevolent publisher and the death-spiral. (I did buy Greenhouse Summer (1999), his global warming novel, based on its being SF and having some buzz but have yet to get around to reading it.) And, given that he produced a masterpiece after the relative '73-'82 lull, I don't doubt there could be a masterpiece I missed or another yet to come.
Still - even leaving aside that he's also written brilliant criticism and been President of the SFWA and edited an anthology or two and accomplished other things in the SF and literary fields - for Bug Jack Barron, The Iron Dream, Riding the Torch, The Void Captain's Tale, and most of the stories in Last Hurrah and No Direction Home, and other lesser but excellent works, he'd have my vote for (a now overdue) Grand Master.
