#176 Silicon and steel: The Reproductive System (1968) by John Sladek
The Science Fiction Encyclopedia states that "there is a false belief that SF and humour do not mix." The SFE does concede, though, that the two are more successfully fused in short stories rather than in the novel form. Like Douglas Adams, Harry Harrison, and Robert Sheckley, John Sladek was a writer who was able to make it work. The Reproductive System (1968) is Sladek's first SF novel, originally published in 1968. This frenzied satire is built on the comic potential of robots gone awry, consuming everything in their path and remaking the world in their own image. As absurd as it is, there is something surprisingly prescient about what the novel has to say about the high-tech world we live in, decades later.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.
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#175 Collision with the future: The Masks of Time (1968) by Robert Silverberg
The definitive time travel story, H. G. Wells' The Time Machine (1895), focuses on a protagonist who visits the extremely far future. Across over a century of time travel tales, in most cases it is the people of our own time who visit either the past or the future. Rather less commonly, the contemporary world plays host to a visitor from another era. The Masks of Time (1968) is one of those exceptions. This Robert Silverberg novel is set in the year 1999. A mysterious visitor, apparently a time traveler from the year 2999, arrives in Rome and brings chaos with him. This is the beginning of an unusual kind of time travel story, in which the contemporary characters try to make sense of this enigmatic figure and what his hints about his own time imply about the future of humankind.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.
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#174 Reign of evil: Swastika Night (1937) by Murray Constantine
Published in 1937, Katharine Burdekin's Swastika Night is a chilling depiction of a far-future fascist dystopia, in which the triumph of Nazism also represents oblivion for humanity and freedom. A precursor to Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), this is an under-recognised and chilling vision of the future which is troublingly relevant today.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.
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#173 Hanging by a thread: the Society of Time trilogy (1962) by John Brunner
Originally published in 1962, John Brunner's Society of Time stories are set in an alternate Britain in the 1980s. It is 400 hundred years since the Spanish Armada was not defeated, and the Catholicism of the Spanish Empire rules much of the world. The Empire possesses the gift of time travel, though only a new pope is given the ultimate privilege of going back to witness the life of Jesus Christ...These fantastic stories follow the adventures of Don Miguel Navarro, an agent of the Society of Time tasked with protecting the integrity of the timeline. They are fine examples of Brunner's hugely entertaining and thought-provoking early work.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.
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#172 The endless plain of fortune: Orbitsville trilogy by Bob Shaw (1975 - 1990)
It was British science fiction writer Olaf Stapledon, not US physicist Freeman Dyson, who first imagined the "Dyson sphere" - an immense macrostructure which would enclose and harness the entire energy of a star. Beginning with his BSFA Award-winning novel Orbitsville (1975), Northern Irish SF writer Bob Shaw explored this dizzying concept in a trilogy of novels.This episode explores not only Orbitsville but also its belated sequels Orbitsville Departure (1983) and Orbitsville Judgement (1990).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.
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