| Author | Message | ||
     Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus) Username: Rhysaurus Registered: 01-2010 Posted From: 80.4.12.3 |
I've just read this: http://rhysaurus.blogspot.com/2011/01/before-golden-age-review.html It took a long time to read... | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
I suppose quite a few of the later Lovecraft stories belong in this category... when pulp horror was morphing into pulp sci-fi. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
Asimov had a lower opinion of Lovecraft than Rhys does, if that's possible. He described Lovecraft as "a sick juvenile, writing for juveniles going through a sick stage". | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.153.151.150 |
'a sick juvenile, writing for juveniles going through a sick stage'. Are we back to school shooters again? | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Trying to think of how much 1930s sci-fi I've actually read and can only think of Lovecraft, early John Wyndham & 'Out Of The Silent Planet'. I do have Olaf Stapledon's two classics in the TBR pile though and 'Brave New World' of course. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
Edmund Hamilton is terrific on a good day – he wrote too much but some of his short stories are splendid. Donald Wandrei is verbose but has fantastic ideas, somehow never quite found his voice as a writer and gave up early. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.116.51.34 |
Asimov is for nerdy juveniles who love robots. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Thanks for the recommendations, Joel. I've never even heard of Edmund Hamilton! The marked shift from pulp horror/fantasy in the 20s/30s to pulp sci-fi/fantasy in the 40s/50s was arguably the most fascinating period in genre literature. The first 20 years harked back to the secret lore and barbarity of the past (influenced, no doubt, by Frazer's 'The Golden Bough', the resurgence of modern witchcraft/satanism & high profile hedonists such as Aleister Crowley) but the technological horrors and massive advances of the War years made all that mystic "mumbo jumbo" appear passé virtually overnight, and Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein & their progeny moved in to clean up. Those forty years represent a double golden age of genre literature for me and, I would say, the transition years, of the late 30s-early 40s, are its most fascinating period. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Hubert, Asimov is actually a great pulp adventure writer with the technical skill and original ideas of a genuine scientific genius imo. The same could be said of Arthur C. Clarke, only with better prose, from my limited experience of his writing. Robert A. Heinlein is a different kettle of fish entirely. The guy is one of the great popular literary writers of the 20th Century imo. His success as a Dickensian satirist and social commentator should be as widely acknowledged as his scientific accuracy, technical skill and storytelling genius as a sci-fi writer imho. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.225.98 |
Stevie, you should read some of the great treatments of sf history and sf fandom. The Encyclopedia of science fiction by Nicholls and Clute is arguably the bible for researchers and readers. Also, Sam Moskovitz's The Immortal Storm, even if I'm not sure whether this got published in its entirety (it used to be a feature of Langley Searles' "Fantasy Commentator", where it was run in installments). FC #44 was an Asimov special, btw. I have read tons of sf, but always found myself more attracted by borderline stories included in sf books and presented as such, while they were really 'horror' stories. Much of the work by Matheson, Bradbury and Dick comes to mind, even John Wyndham whose "Survival" fascinates me to this day. Conversely, Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness and "The Shadow out of Time" are really science fiction. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
I have 'The Encyclopedia Of Science Fiction', Hubert, and its sister volume 'The Encyclopedia Of Fantasy' - wonderful treasure troves of books, that thankfully survived my recent deluge! I started off a pure horror fan, who dipped in and out of the best sci-fi & fantasy, but as I've grown older I've come to appreciate science fiction as much as the horror genre. And now Ramsey Campbell & Robert Heinlein are battling it out in my affections for favourite genre writer of them all! H.P. Lovecraft surely must be unique, though, as he crystalised perfectly a moment in literary history when supernatural horror, epic fantasy & high concept science fiction were inextricably intertwined and interchangeable. These are just my own amateur ruminations from enjoying all this wonderful material.  | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.225.98 |
That notion of an aeon-old non-human city engulfed by the desert sands in "The Shadow out of Time" is cosmically intimidating enough, but aparently Lovecraft didn't see it like that and hence produced an invisible whistling octopus. He somehow had to add that bit of (by then) old-fashioned claptrap. Imagine Clarke's 2001 with an alien like that - it's enough to spoil the entire story. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
It didn't strike me as old-fashioned claptrap, Hubert, because I believed implicitly in Lovecraft's voice. It was instead a perfect merging of the old with the new imo. |