1960s Sci-Fi

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maskedwarrior

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I wrote previously, interested in Wyndham-esque works - and received some brilliant results! Thanks! I was introduced to The Black Cloud, The Wind From Nowhere, The Drowned World, Death Of Grass, Wrinkle In the Skin, Greybeard, The Furies, The Genocides and On The Beach.... MY! not always a cheery bunch, and I'm certainly emotionally drained having read them, but they were truly excellent, enriching books.

Now - I wouldn't want to give the impression this is my main motivation for reading Sci-fi - but I have found I've really appreciated the old, musty books - with old cover-art, browning pages and no barcodes - that came through my door from secondhand online shops! It lent something really tactile and nice to the experience - harking back to old childhood memories, reading my parents' and grandparents books.

Which leads me to ask, does anyone have any other 50s - 60s favourites they'd recommend? Or earlier?

I don''t think it's a bad hobby... reliving ones childhood, clutching old books during my work breaks and having some rattling good reading too. It's got me through work for the last 3 months at least! lol

Tony
 
maskedwarrior said:
.... I have found I've really appreciated the old, musty books - with old cover-art, browning pages and no barcodes - that came through my door from secondhand online shops! It lent something really tactile and nice to the experience - harking back to old childhood memories, reading my parents' and grandparents books....

Tony
Click to expand...

abebooks.com allows you to limit a search to books published in a certain chronological range. The results are sometimes inaccurate -- you will get some matches that are books with 1960s copyrights, but that are actually more recent reprints with barcodes, etc. However, you can readily find some books from your period in this way. You can also communicate with the bookseller and ask for confirmation that the book you're interested in was indeed published then.

You can find old sf magazines at abebooks. They include advertisements and, sometimes, letters columns, editorials, etc. that convey period flavor. I'm not sure how much "nostalgia" is evoked by the interesting double-page spread in an old Galaxy magazine in which sf authors signed their names as favoring or disapproving the Vietnam policy of the US government of the time!
 
What ideas does a story make you think about that apply to the real world. Is sci-fi just for entertainment?

Rite of Passage by Alexei Panshin raises the basic question: Who owns knowledge?

Harry Harrison presents the same question in a different way in The Ethical Engineer. It is better known as the second book in the Deathworld Trilogy.

I don't care about pages, it is all about THE STORY.

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/28346/28346-h/28346-h.htm

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/30964/30964-h/30964-h.htm

In the real world people are hiding information from each other all of the time while claiming to be truthful and scientific. Science fiction is about what society does with science and technology.

There were 8,000 cars in the US in 1900.

Production of cars in the US passed 1,000,000 per year in 1916.

There were 200,000,000 cars in the US in 1995.

When have you ever heard American economists talk about how much Americans lose on the depreciation of automobiles every year? A rather curious thing to not think of mentioning for more than a century. What is Demand Side Depreciation? It does not exist in our economics books. :D

psik
 
maskedwarrior said:
Which leads me to ask, does anyone have any other 50s - 60s favourites they'd recommend? Or earlier?

I don''t think it's a bad hobby... reliving ones childhood, clutching old books during my work breaks and having some rattling good reading too. It's got me through work for the last 3 months at least! lol

Tony
Click to expand...

I have an entire blog devoted to this journey. I'm currently in March 1959... setting the stage for the 60's. :) You might find some good ideas in there. You might also disagree with me violently (I'm not a big fan of Asimov and really don't like Anderson or Garrett).

www.galacticjourney.org
 
Thanks all for your thoughts. I'm currently selecting some of the titles in your links. And thanks for reintroducing me to the Gutenberg Project, a great resource!
Tony
 
I was born in the mid 60's (which I suppose makes me a 70s child, since that's when my childhood really was) but I've always loved science fiction from the 1960s (and 50s to a slightly lesser extent).
Hothouse by Brian Aldiss
The Iron Dream, The Men in the Jungle and Bug Jack Barron by Norman Spinrad
Echo Around His Bones by Thomas M Disch.
The early Elric and Jerry Cornelius stories by Michael Moorcock (in particular The Final Programme)
Virtually anything by Philip K Dick, but especially The Simulacra, The Game Players of Titan, The Clans of the Alphane Moon and Now Wait For Last Year
All well worth checking out, I reckon.
 
Nobody mentioned Eric Frank Russell? I'm gobsmacked.

'Next of Kin' is brilliant. 'Three to Conquer', 'Wasp' and several others equally so.

.
 
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