Ira Levin

[Toby Frost]

Whist not remembered as a science fiction writer, Levin wrote several thrillers using SFF elements. Most famously, Rosemary’s Baby and Son of Rosemary are about a woman who may be the mother of the antichrist, but there are SF elements in The Boys From Brazil, Sliver and The Stepford Wives. I’ve not read Son of Rosemary (it doesn’t sound great) but I enjoyed the other three, although Sliver is probably a lesser novel.

Levin’s books are really concise. There’s a bit in The Boys From Brazil where the hero basically flies around Europe in two paragraphs. Everything pushes the story forward; almost anything else is left out. Levin is very good at capturing the feel of a place or scene in a phrase, and has a good eye for when to leave the reader to fill in the details. He also has an ability to combine the absurd and the disturbing: Rosemary’s Baby, The Stepford Wives and The Boys from Brazil look lurid and slightly ridiculous written down, but they are sinister to read. Levin seems to realise the pulpy nature of what he’s writing and his books are stronger for that.

I’d recommend Rosemary’s Baby, The Stepford Wives and The Boys from Brazil as good-quality thrillers that are very light on science (pure handwaving, really) but have an SFF element. I have his earlier noir crime novel, A Kiss Before Dying, about which I’ve heard very good things, which is next on the list to be read.

 

[Dave]

I have This Perfect Day on my "to be read" pile (which is considerable in size so it may be some time.) Amazon says that it is "Considered one of the greatest dystopian thrillers ever written." Amazon also thinks I should definitely read Silver and A Kiss Before Dying. Who am I to argue with a sophisticated computer algorithm?

 

[Toby Frost]

One of the things that impressed me the most about The Stepford Wives and The Boys From Brazil is that they both take a slightly cheesy SF concept (man replaces wife with robot, Nazis clone Hitler) and tell a pulpy story, but also introduce a deeper point. Someone (Stephen King?) said that The Stepford Wives asked the question of what men really wanted. The Boys From Brazil raises the question of whether you can punish someone for what they are likely to do in the future because of the sort of person they are. Neither book goes into those questions very deeply, but they're there, and the books are probably more entertaining because they don't get too serious.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

This Perfect Day and Son of Rosemary are not good. The first is a really poor imitation of Brave New World, and the second is just weird. (Much of it deals with Rosemary calmly considering whether or not to have a sexual relationship with her son.) Rosemary's Mary and The Stepford Wives and The Boys From Brazil are better.