Classic SF with Andy Johnson

Can hope exist in a scientific city of total suspicion?

This episode is a look at Kallocain, the final novel by the Swedish poet and and writer Karin Boye, which was published in 1940. Although little known and not available in English until 1966, this bleak book should be recognised more widely as a key example of 20th century dystopian fiction. Set in a repressive state inspired by Boye's visits to Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, Kallocain focuses on a powerful truth drug, with the potential to help the state lay siege to our most private thoughts - and to stamp out that last bastion of freedom.
Get in touch with a text message!
For more classic SF reviews and discussion, visit andyjohnson.xyz. To get free weekly classic SF updates, sign up here.

In his book Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels, David Pringle aptly described A Canticle for Leibowitz as "a beautifully written novel, rich in character and ironic detail, and at the same time funny and sad." Published in 1959, this book was the only novel published by Walter M. Miller Jr. during his lifetime.

One of the most highly praised science fiction novels of the 1950s, A Canticle for Leibowitz is in part Miller's reflection on his traumatic experiences in World War II, his Catholic faith, and his fears of nuclear conflict. It is also a stark warning about the dangers of both ignorance and knowledge, and an exploration of humankind's capacity for creativity and destruction.
Get in touch with a text message!
For more classic SF reviews and discussion, visit andyjohnson.xyz. To get free weekly classic SF updates, sign up here.

My coverage of Iain M. Banks' wonderful Culture series continues with the seventh novel, Matter, published in 2008. This is the longest Culture novel yet, and in some ways the most complex - set on a vast macrostructure, specifically the artificial planet of Sursamen. Banks weaves an ambitious plot which at times makes the novel feel like Use of Weapons nested inside Inversions - or perhaps it is the other way around. This is literally a story of spheres within spheres, as the different levels of the planet play host to various species, conflicts, and levels of technological development.

In what is in part another Banksian meditation on the ethics of intervention, a novice Culture agent must decide how best to interfere in a conflict that threatens not only her siblings, but the fate of a world.
Get in touch with a text message!
For more classic SF reviews and discussion, visit andyjohnson.xyz. To get free weekly classic SF updates, sign up here.

Confronting a time mystery as a new ice age looms
Climate breakdown, and rising temperatures, are a fact of life. But in the 1970s, there was a subset of climate scientists who believed that global cooling was going to be the challenge of the 21st century. Ice and Iron is a little-discussed 1974 novel by the author, critic and fan Wilson Tucker which explores this scenario. It also follows a strange conflict between heavily armed women from the future, and violent nomads, apparently from prehistory. 

Can the eccentric researcher Fisher Highsmith solve a mystery of deep time and the human future?
Get in touch with a text message!
For more classic SF reviews and discussion, visit andyjohnson.xyz. To get free weekly classic SF updates, sign up here.

Another comic inferno from another stupid timeline
Back in November, in episode 176, I took a look at The Reproductive System, the first novel by the US writer John Sladek, who produced almost all of his work while living in the UK. This episode tackles his second novel, the even more anarchic The Müller-Fokker Effect, published in 1970. It was not successful, and Sladek did not publish another SF novel for a decade.

However, The Müller-Fokker Effect is one of those novels from decades past which captures something of the vibe of today's times. Welcome to a wild ride featuring a tradwife proto-influencer, a semi-literate racist demogogue with an eye on the US presidency, and a mind without a body. 
Get in touch with a text message!
For more classic SF reviews and discussion, visit andyjohnson.xyz. To get free weekly classic SF updates, sign up here.