What's Keeping Your Love of Old SF Alive?

[dask]

There's a lot of new SF that I love and sometimes it's harder and/or wilder than ever and there's plenty of old SF that's unreadable either in the same senses that some new stuff is or in the sense of just being poorly done but there is a sort of "classic zeitgeist" that was dominant that I actually do prefer to the recent/current one. So that'll keep me reading the classics indefinitely.

Sums it up quite nicely. Wish I had said it first.

 

[BAYLOR]

Renewed Interest from readers?

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

One factor is that, with the benefit of hindsight, it is possible to find what has survived over the decades as a classic worth reading. Old stories found in anthologies, and old novels still in print, are likely to be of higher quality than those that have disappeared. (Not always, of course. Like biological evolution, literary evolution is messy and sloppy and full of missteps and false paths.)

My personal quirks are also involved. I shy away from very long novels, which seem to be the trend these days. (I realize that's mostly a result of external economic factors, such as the price of paper.) There's something pleasant about holding a slender paperback from the old days (or the Doubleday hardcovers intended for libraries, which, if memory serves, were always 181 pages long.) I am also leery of endless series, and it chills my heart a bit to see an author's very first book touted as "Book One in the [whatever] Saga."

Some of it is simply the fact that my youthful reading tastes developed in the late 1960's and early 1970's. Just as I still listen to Classic Rock, I still read speculative fiction from that era (as well as the best of the older stuff and whatever grabs my attention as probably worthy of reading of the newer stuff.)

I don't think it's so much the content of the fiction or what the attitude of the author might be. I can greatly enjoy well-written Hard SF, well-written Soft SF, and well-written New Wave.

Please note that the number one factor for me is "well-written," which is very hard to define. Like pornography, I know it when I see it.

 

[Bick]

I am also leery of endless series, and it chills my heart a bit to see an author's very first book touted as "Book One in the [whatever] Saga."

Please note that the number one factor for me is "well-written," which is very hard to define.

Agree completely with these two.

 

[hitmouse]

Agree completely with these two.

Yup.
Also, what is this thing about clear lines between good and bad in the old stuff? Fine for the Heinlein juveniles, EE Smith, and not much of a problem for Clarke or Asimov, but in my teens I read loads of New Age stuff by Ballard, Moorcock et al which was really eye opening. Going back further, authors as different as Wy dham and Vance had morally ambiguous societies and characters.

 

[hitmouse]

New wave not new age

 

[clovis-man]

I shy away from very long novels, which seem to be the trend these days. (I realize that's mostly a result of external economic factors, such as the price of paper.) There's something pleasant about holding a slender paperback from the old days (or the Doubleday hardcovers intended for libraries, which, if memory serves, were always 181 pages long.) I am also leery of endless series, and it chills my heart a bit to see an author's very first book touted as "Book One in the [whatever] Saga."

Very much in agreement. I shun authors who might otherwise be acceptable because of the "neverending story" aspects of much of their work.

Please note that the number one factor for me is "well-written," which is very hard to define. Like pornography, I know it when I see it.

Amongst the oldies, I would put Vance, Dickson, Anderson and a few others in that "well-written" category. Others, like Simak and Leinster I love anyway, with or without any pretense at literary accomplishment.

I would like to note that a couple of Nancy Kress' recent novels are of the 181 page variety. I don't see that as a bad thing at all.

 

[WallaceWood]

I started reading Simak a year ago. And along the way bought all the books i was missing. Preferabel in hardcover. Almost done with buying and reading. Some I had to buy in Dutch pocket because the HC was too expensive. But I keep searching. At the moment I am reading Jack Vance (Alastor series) and Larry Niven (Known Space). Jack Vance is very good but Larry Niven doesn't hold on. Saturn's race and Achille's choice were very disappointed.

 

[zlogdan]

If I ever come across something in classic SF that we know for sure that does not match the events since they were written like for example books that refer to the former Soviet Union still existing after the 90s or analog computers or martians I definitely ignore it and my favorite justification is to consider them results of "a parallel reality" so I can see for example, the 80s or 90s conceived by P k. Dick as timelines that diverged from ours or retro futurism.

In the works Jack Vance - of other of my favorite ones- he usually describes videophones and some of his far future societies seem not so advanced except for some hints and bits of high tech like space travel or bio-engineering, but I assume that in the far future when the Gaen will spread over the universe, technology varies drastically from world to world and some of them might have get used to low techs due to events .

 

[Vince W]

Actually, I still really enjoy stories where the Soviet Union still exists. I find them rather charming now. One of the best is Russian Spring by Norman Spinrad. It assumes that Russia actually thrives and the west (especially the U.S.) declines in the future.

Same for computers. Once of my favourite books, Neuromancer, is hopelessly out of date with the current and future levels of computer power, but I've still read it over many times.

 

[clovis-man]

Actually, I still really enjoy stories where the Soviet Union still exists. I find them rather charming now. One of the best is Russian Spring by Norman Spinrad. It assumes that Russia actually thrives and the west (especially the U.S.) declines in the future.

Try Not This August by C. M. Kornbluth for a real Soviet/U. S. dust-up. Written in 1955, it didn't seem too far fetched at the time.

Moreover, I think it's pointless to dwell on out-dated technology in these old chestnuts. The story is what's important, not whether data is recorded on magnetic tape or microchips.

 

[Vince W]

Try Not This August by C. M. Kornbluth for a real Soviet/U. S. dust-up. Written in 1955, it didn't seem too far fetched at the time.

Thanks for the recommendation. I'll have to look for a copy online.

 

[BAYLOR]

Try Not This August by C. M. Kornbluth for a real Soviet/U. S. dust-up. Written in 1955, it didn't seem too far fetched at the time.

Moreover, I think it's pointless to dwell on out-dated technology in these old chestnuts. The story is what's important, not whether data is recorded on magnetic tape or microchips.

Excellent book.

 

[BAYLOR]

I make it point to recommend older writers that I like.

 

[Emphyricist]

Most of what gets me reading it has already been said here, but...

1. I like shorter SF, and most authors these days don't write many short stories because there aren't many markets for them (admittedly I'm part of the problem here, what with my preference for buying books over magazines).
2. Even with novels, a lot of it is just bloat. It seems like readers take pride in reading long books (I used to be one of them), allowing authors to drag out relatively simple stories to absurd lengths. I have a couple books which are complete collections of an author's novels, thinner than many modern individual novels which are themselves part of series. It's amazing how fast old SF could move, and I like that pacing.
3. I feel like a lot of modern SF writers either don't know how to write an ending or don't care to write one properly. I feel like this is connected to the length of the works; they lose track of the threads and tie things together either with a Deus ex machina, resolve them by hinting about how the human race is going to start over, or—as in the Hyperion series (which I liked until the ending)—both.
   
4. Older SF has been curated. I generally start with multi-author anthologies which collect some really good stories. Then I move on to authors I like. Sometimes I can buy a complete collection of their short work in a volume or two if they weren't that prolific, other times I get "best of" collections. Then, if I really like them, I make an attempt to read everything I've written.
5. It's fun discovering writers I hadn't read, and having whole worlds open up. This is helped by my previous points.
6. Classic SF had Jack Vance.

 

[SilentRoamer]

Hey guys,

Well one thing that hasn't been mentioned but I think is interesting are the age differences between the readers here and what we consider "old" SF.
Personally I consider "old" to be anything published before I was born but some late 80's and early 90's stuff is still aged for me because of my young age at that time.

I think the SF Masterworks series is helping keep the love alive. A lot of the older books I have read in recent years have been reprints from the SF Masterworks and Fantasy Masterworks, I pick these up from charity stores but they also sell them in major retailers:

Fantasy Masterworks
SF Masterworks

I have been trying to fill in the collections, of course I have some non Masterworks books that are part of the collection in other covers as well. Most of the books I have read from either collection has been good.

 

[Emphyricist]

I also use "before I was born" as the dividing line. I was born just before the end of the Cold War, and that would actually make a pretty reasonable dividing line, but the first two Hyperion books were written after I was born but before the Cold War ended, and I consider them modern SF. I think the key dividing line for me is size. Books began to get bloated around the time I was born, and like I said I've come to appreciate leaner, faster writing.

 

[clovis-man]

I also use "before I was born" as the dividing line. I was born just before the end of the Cold War, and that would actually make a pretty reasonable dividing line, but the first two Hyperion books were written after I was born but before the Cold War ended, and I consider them modern SF. I think the key dividing line for me is size. Books began to get bloated around the time I was born, and like I said I've come to appreciate leaner, faster writing.

Well I'm old enough to have grown up during what I consider to be the "Golden Age", i.e., the 1950s up thorough the early 1960s. I think Dune might have marked the beginning of the end of that period. I'm actually getting back into some of those early stories, some of which I neglected to read in my youth. That means more Andre Norton, Clifford Simak and even Eric Frank Russell.

 

[Emphyricist]

Dune was unusual for its time though, wasn't it? Essentially the "American Pie" of SF books. I didn't think publishers started putting out books of that length regularly until the late eighties.

 

[Extollager]

1. Even with novels, a lot of it is just bloat. It seems like readers take pride in reading long books (I used to be one of them), allowing authors to drag out relatively simple stories to absurd lengths. I have a couple books which are complete collections of an author's novels, thinner than many modern individual novels which are themselves part of series. It's amazing how fast old SF could move, and I like that pacing.

Hear, hear!