What's Keeping Your Love of Old SF Alive?

[Danny McG]

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.

Been looking through the SF Masterwork and, apart from two, I've got the lot, amongst heaps of others.
I started reading Grass but lost interest about two thirds through it, back to the library and I never bought a copy.
The other one is The Child Garden, never heard of it until I looked at the list.
I wasn't aware of there being a set like that, my collection had just built up gradually. Does this mean I am 'Mr Average' in my reading tastes?

 

[Emphyricist]

I just looked at the list of SF and Fantasy Masterworks. What's interesting is that I haven't read the majority of either, but I have read and not liked two of the SF Masterworks. One is Babel 17, which I'll have to reread. At the time I read it, I was a strong opponent of Whorfianism and had difficulty divorcing my objections to the plot to my enjoyment of the book. I'll have to reread it.

My objections to Bring the Jubilee are similar, a Confederate victory at Gettysburg leading to a Confederate conquest of California, a destitute US economy, and a Confederate conquest of every country in Latin America is just far too hard to swallow, and the plot isn't compelling enough to make me overlook it, or references to "the southern tip of Nevada," which was part of Arizona territory until 1866 and suggests the author had rather limited knowledge of the non-military history of the United States. It seemed like the whole point of the plot was just to have the "twist" at the end, and that works for short stories but not for novellas.

That said, I've read about twenty of the SF Masterworks series, and most of the ones I liked I really liked. And several of the ones I haven't read I've been meaning to read for years, things like like Cities in Flight, Mission of Gravity, The Stars My Destination, and The Sirens of Titan.

 

[TL Walker]

Nailed it.

I agree. As a SF author myself, I strive to achieve the quality of old even as I strive to be original. Glad for this site to read about what fans think.

 

[TL Walker]

I just looked at the list of SF and Fantasy Masterworks. What's interesting is that I haven't read the majority of either, but I have read and not liked two of the SF Masterworks. One is Babel 17, which I'll have to reread. At the time I read it, I was a strong opponent of Whorfianism and had difficulty divorcing my objections to the plot to my enjoyment of the book. I'll have to reread it.

My objections to Bring the Jubilee are similar, a Confederate victory at Gettysburg leading to a Confederate conquest of California, a destitute US economy, and a Confederate conquest of every country in Latin America is just far too hard to swallow, and the plot isn't compelling enough to make me overlook it, or references to "the southern tip of Nevada," which was part of Arizona territory until 1866 and suggests the author had rather limited knowledge of the non-military history of the United States. It seemed like the whole point of the plot was just to have the "twist" at the end, and that works for short stories but not for novellas.

That said, I've read about twenty of the SF Masterworks series, and most of the ones I liked I really liked. And several of the ones I haven't read I've been meaning to read for years, things like like Cities in Flight, Mission of Gravity, The Stars My Destination, and The Sirens of Titan.

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.

Wonderful points. I agree with them too.

 

[BAYLOR]

I agree. As a SF author myself, I strive to achieve the quality of old even as I strive to be original. Glad for this site to read about what fans think.

Welcome to Chrons.

 

[J-Sun]

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.

Not unprecedented, in that Fritz Leiber's Hugo-winning epic disaster novel The Wanderer (1964), though shorter than Dune would be, was longer than most anything of modern genre significance that had come before, being 318 pages of small type. Doesn't sound like much now but it was when most books didn't crack 200. But, yeah, it and Dune (1965, 412pp) were very much the exceptions to the rule. Books gradually lengthened in the late 60s to 80s but maybe the late 80s (certainly the 90s) sounds about right to me, too, for the mega kakon really kicking in.

 

[Tom Hering]

Last and First Men 355 pages (first edition hardcover, 1930).
Earth Abides 373 pages (first edition hardcover, 1949).
A Canticle for Leibowitz 320 pages (first edition hardcover, 1960).

 

[BAYLOR]

Limbo by Bernard Wolfe . They just came out with a a Masterworks edition

I would love to see them come out with a Masterworks edition of Stanton Coblentz's The Caverns Below.

 

[J-Sun]

Last and First Men 355 pages (first edition hardcover, 1930).
Earth Abides 373 pages (first edition hardcover, 1949).
A Canticle for Leibowitz 320 pages (first edition hardcover, 1960).

I wouldn't count those first two as they were mainstream publications. I remembered Canticle being an awfully slow read but didn't remember it being literally that long. So, yep, that's an even earlier and longer precedent.

 

[Galactic Journey]

Adding books and magazines to your collection? Discovering minor authors you've never read before? Or finally reading a major author who - for one reason or another - you've avoided or neglected? Finally getting around to the lesser-known books and stories of your favorite authors? Or upon rereading it, now seeing something in an old favorite you've never seen before? Maybe just getting around to something you've always wanted to read?

Might it be something social? Participating in some gathering of Classic SF lovers? An old or new friend who shares your interest? Or just talking about your interest in forums like this one?

Three main things:

1) It's my job. I can't post links (yet), but some of you know what I do.

2) Every woman character or author, every minority character or author, reminds me (and us) that marginalized voices were active and vital long before the "accepted" beginning of involvement. Recovering these lost voices, these hidden classics, is the most pleasurable archaeology.

Not that many here haven't also discovered Henderson, MacLean, DeFord, early Russ and MacAffrey, Smith, Rice, Emshwiller, Wilhelm, and on and on and on... but say "classic" and people respond "Asimov (meh), Heinlein (mixed), Bester (bleah), and Clarke (good)." Of course, there's diversity even in that short list (Asimov a Jewish Atheist, Clarke was some flavor of gay). SF brings out those of us on the fringes, and back in the classic days, it was even more of a place apart. A refuge.

3) There's plenty of good stuff! As a young friend of mine with a huge vinyl collection said, "It's not that I dislike new music -- I just haven't finished listening to all the old stuff!

 

[AE35Unit]

Possibly my disenchantment with modern SF which seems to exist under the delusion that everything has been done, and so we have to look inwards. We don't.

 

[Connavar]

There is two answers to this question for me that i have often thought because SF is by far the most imporant field, genre in literature for me.

1. So the avid genre reader in me thinks my mind, my world view is perfect for intellectual, serious SF that dominate my bookshelves, what i look for in the genre. I confess i find good, great old SF to be like classic literature there are many author in this fields history that wrote great novels in max 200 pages. Its like reading Camus, Hemingway, Achebe etc they dont need much space, filler pages to tell their story.

2. The more important reason for me personaly i dont see the field as old SF or new SF, i just want to read important authors to me. It doesnt matter if the author im reading the book in 1950 like a Philip K Dick or Vance or Heinlein or Bester or CL Moore or Brackett. The classic SF great dictate what i read of new SF of course. If your fav wrote social sf like PKD or science fantasy like Vance thats what you will enjoy reading. The only minus of modern SF that i can take or leave is the way the publishing world has changed how big the books are. Unless you are telling epic space opera you dont need a SF novel that is 500+ pages.

So whats keeping my love is simply the writers who wrote the stories and thanks to them there is no old SF feel, name to me because for example i have read 30+ PKD, 30+ Jack Vance books since 2010. Those are new SF reads to me !

 

[BAYLOR]

Possibly my disenchantment with modern SF which seems to exist under the delusion that everything has been done, and so we have to look inwards. We don't.

And in the process the writer box themselves in.