We’re talking about books disappearing: books originally printed only in paperback—and books that are no longer in issue. I’m going to be listing, among others, people I knew personally, and series I’d expect an sf fan to have read, or looked at, or have some familiarity with.
Let’s start with:
Clifford “Cliff” Simak: City.
Gordon R “Gordie” Dickson. The Dorsai stories.
Hal Clement. Mission of Gravity
Lin Carter. Sword and sorcery…from the Old School.
Poul Anderson: many, many, from SF to near-historical.
Robert Howard. Conan, Kane, Kull.
C.L. Moore: many stories.
Leigh Brackett: many stories.
Edgar Rice Burroughs: Tarzan, John Carter of Mars
Joe Green: Tom Corbett, Space Cadet
Anthony Gilmore: Space Hawk.
Andre Norton: the Witchworld, et al; and Star Man’s Son.
Jack Vance: the Dirdir, the Pneume, etc.
Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven as a team, the hell books.
Larry Niven: Ringworld
Joe Haldeman: the Forever War
Abbey and Asprin: Thieves’ World (give CC time)
Marion Zimmer Bradley: Darkover novels.
Anne McCaffrey: the Pern novels.
Roger Zelazny: Dilvish the Damned [story], Lord of Light, the Amber stories, Damnation Alley.
The point being—most of the younger people coming in may not even have heard of these.
Name more of the ones that are harder to find in print now.
Gordon R “Gordie” Dickson, Poul Anderson, Andre Norton, Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven as a team, Larry Niven, Abbey and Asprin, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Anne McCaffrey, Roger Zelazny.
In listing those authors, I must say that I’ve tried to track down everything from them I could find.
I have just scaned the 80+ comments here and find that I have about 90% of the Authors and Titles listed. Being a bookaholic, I never get rid of a book. I have done a partial lisitng of my library on the web site “Librarything.com and an approching 1800. Anyone else use that website?
My parosal was pretty quick,so I culd have missed him, but I am suprised not to spot J.R.R. Tolken.
I’m on Goodreads and GuruLib. I list the books I read rather than own though. I have book reading goals every year (all because a snotty prof said we’d read less than 5 books a year after we graduated…well, take that Dr. M!) and I use it to keep track of that.
I doubt Tolkien is on the brink of fading out of the canon. After the movies came out even non-readers were buying his books. For years they have college classes for him and his stuff shows up in regular lit classes even. He is probably one of the safest out there.
I like Tolkien quite a lot—discovered it before the buzz, back when I was in University, and the books weren’t commonly available anywhere. So for me it has a different appeal than it does to those who saw the movies first.
I saw the cartoons first, then read the books, then watched the movies. I can’t remember a time prior to LotR. When I was a little kid my parents let me veg in front of worn out VHS tapes of Star Wars, Dune (yes, the David Lynch version), Star Trek IV, the LotR cartoon, and various Doctor Who. I’ll probably indoctrinate my children the same way. It didn’t hurt me, mostly. 🙂 By the time the LotR movie came out I was just happy my peers had finally caught up.
I had a teacher that recommended Tolkien to me when I was in junior high. I also was able to read him in hardcover “before the buzz”. A year or so later, Ace came out with the “pirated” edition. My authorized Ballentine edition is in pretty sad shape – it is still around, but I had to retire it from active reading.
This thread sadly reminds me of all the books I no longer have – either my mother got rid of them, or I did.
Cordwainer Smith is one of the unjustly almost-forgotten authors. I’ve read some of his stories ten times, I think.
As for the authors you have mentioned, except for Joe Green, Anthony Gilmore and Lin Carter, I have most of what the others have written. And some are in my personal top ten: Poul Anderson, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Clifford Simak, Leigh Brackett.
I would recommend Paul O. Williams and the Pelbar Cycle, his series starts with “The Breaking of Northwall” and finishes after seven books with “The Sword of Forbearance.” This series is about culture and society in a future America 1000 years after nuclear war. I read them many times at my small town library as a teenager and later as an adult found the entire set at an Atlanta used book store. I don’t think I’ve every seen them since, but I think they are worth reading if you can find them.
well andre norton is one of my all time fav authors, yes the witch world is one of my preferred series and i have i think all the books were purchased back in the ’70’s, and of course the dragon riders of pern, all the books, including some of her son’s current work – got to meet him and get his autograph at dragon con this year! – i may even have a few of the edgar rice burroughs books hiding in the overflowing sci-fi paperback book case. and roger zelazny as well is roaming there somewhere… these are classic sci-fi/fantasy authors. i probably have some books by a few of the other authors as well. and tolkein – also back in high school long before any of the movies were thought of. another classic. darkover novels – just recently read a newer one, flames of hali. enjoyed that world also.
sweetbo- don’t know what that prof was smokin’ but i tend to read 5 books a month! sometimes more if i’m traveling and have alot of airplane time ;P
speaking of older series lesser known, ms. cherryh, what about the chanur series? anything new on the horizon there? it’s another favorite series of mine and i’ve recommended to to many…
D
Off-the-wall sort-of-SF: Tony Boucher’s Rocket to the Morgue, which involves murder among a group of writers and fans (or their associates). Some of the people are identifiable by their pen names.
–Heinlein, his juvies first, then all I could find. I think I have just about all of ’em (and also Spider Robinson’s story based on notes found in Heinlein’s files, Variable Star). I reread all my Heinleins about once every year or two.
–Hal Clement, both the Heavy Planet stories and also the I-don’t-get-why-they-weren’t-more-popular Hunter stories (Needle, Through the Eye of a Needle).
–Anything collaborated upon by Niven and Pournelle, but especially Fallen Angels (one long inside joke), Legacy of Heorot, The Mote in God’s Eye, Footfall, etc.
–McCaffrey’s Pern books, and the first Doona. For some reason I have always been bothered by the ‘perfectness’ of her heroes but still enjoy the stories.
–Which reminds me, I still re-read Dune every couple of years.
–Bradley, I stumbled upon Spell Sword and was done for (“He had followed a dream, and it had brought him here to die”, what an opening line!), I scarfed up all the Darkover books as quickly as I could afford them.
–And of course, last not least, Our Favorite Scribe. I discovered The Faded Sun: Kesrith (helped, I am sure, by the racy painting of a veil-clad Melein standing hipshot, holding a sword!) and was a goner, what a wonderful frenzy of discovery. CJ, you’re still the only author whose books I buy in hardback! Finding a new favorite author is such a treat, and you get to proselytize to your friends: “Look what I just found!”, waving your newest treasure aloft.
—
—
But I need to build a new house. The one I have is so full of books, there’s no room for me and my long-suffering wife, even though we are now oh-fishully empty-nesters–except for holidays and summers for a couple more years, of course!. 😀
I had made a post earlier about preservation issues in the digital age and how music and other media are being lost. Now it seems the digital age is also victimizing itself too.
http://www.mediacomtoday.com/news/read.php?id=18167923&ps=1011&srce=news_class&action=4&lang=en&_LT=HOME_USNWC00L4_UNEWS
Seems the premise of my short story Lest We Forget is coming true earlier than I imagined (Lest We Forget is about a society that has brought the art of recycling to the point they have no concept of the past.)
Xenophon, this is a very, very important issue, and the reason for it is one part imperfect storage media (I really should do a Post about this issue) such as punch cards and stretchy tape; and the other part is lack of information to the public: a jpeg image when recopied, recompresses, and loses data. Most people store all their photos in jpegs. So every time people store down with that format, they’re losing a bit. I may ask Jane to make a post about that, because she knows more about it than I do. But jpegs are not the ideal way to save your precious pix.
Lest anyone panic, a jpeg can be copied without harm, as when you drag-and-drop from your camera to your hard drive or your hard drive to a flash drive. It is when you open the jpeg and make any change, rotate, crop, adjust brightness, etc., and save the result that you loose a bit of resolution. Do this once, and you probably won’t see any degradation. Do it often and the results will become all too visible.
This is also true of the mp3 audio format. In both cases there are ‘loss-less’ file formats that should be used to mitigate these problems. jpeg and mp3 are formats of convenience; they should not be used for archive quality storage.
Thank you for that clarification: well-stated!
It’s a scary issue indeed Carolyn.
Paleontologists are looking at a fossil record that has only preserved slightly less than 2% of all the life that ever existed on Earth. I would hate to see the postmodern archaeological record mirror it.
It’s hard enough to define a culture based on lithics, ceramics and bones alone. Imagine trying to do the same when all that is left behind is concrete, rust, and plastic residue.
It only takes a few generations to lose or skew past events completely. Like how most people now think the Civil War was about slavery, or the American Revolution was about freedom. These are modern takes on events which didn’t really mean much to those participating in them at the time.
Only through hard evidence can the real motivations be determined. Without it we are lost, not only as a culture, but as a species. For humanity is the one organism on this planet that can change its course in evolution with a thought or ideal. No other posses this ability. And if we lose our grip on the past we have lost our way.
When you only look for profit, you never see the cost..
That is about all the waxing philosophical I can handle, hopefully I made my point.
I’m not usually one to throw into these discussions, but IMO every “erudite” sci-fi collection should have E.E. “Doc” Smith. People seem to remember the Lensman series, but for me it will always be “The Skylark of Space”.
I mean, in the early/mid 1920’s, he invented warp drives, tractor beams, “shields”… one of my favorite bits in the first book has to do with Einstein:
In the 20’s, Einstein was a serious part of any physics discussion, but not everybody was yet “on board” with relativity. One part of Relativity theory is that it is impossible to accelerate past the speed of light. Another is black holes.
Yes in “Skylark,” our intrepid heroes are caught by a black hole, and have to redline the engines to escape… which causes them to accelerate to many, many times the speed of light and have adventures “out there” until they replenish their fuel supply. 🙂
Excellent addition.
I had the honor to know Verna Smith Trestrail, his daughter, however briefly. She was a great presence in the sf community up in Washington and Idaho.
I’d add all those people who wrote what was called ‘pulp’ back in the day, and yet spawned ideas and concepts by the basketful, that we still use. My ‘Space Hawk’ is of that vintage. Not to forget Jack Williamson and Poul Anderson, Fred Hoyle, etc. The inventiveness of Radio Planet—Ralph Milne Farley—and the imagination of Leigh Brackett. Those 10,000 year old Martian cities have got to exist on some little red world somewhere in the cosmos.
Roger Zelazny and Fred Saberhagen worked together on a book, Coils, that was a predate of the TV show Heroes by a good 20 years — people with paranormal abilities being stalked by a faceless, powerful corporate entity. Of course, there was a great deal owing to comic books also…
And don’t forget Berserkers, which predated Predator by quite a bit.
Most of these are not “on” shelves currently, as much as “awaiting shelf space to exist for them to be put back on”.
*** The List ***
OWN one or few: “Gordy”, L Carter (anthologies), P Anderson, A Norton, Pournelle+Niven (Fallen Angels), Hadelman, Zelazney, Silverberg, Kurtz, Vonda McI, H Harrison (“SSR” was one of my earliest online handles)
OWN many or all: Anne McCaffrey (not enthused by Todd’s)
READ BUT NOT OWN: C Simak, H Clement, R Howard, CL Moore, ERB, J Vance, Niven (solo), Abbey+Asprin
HEARD OF: L Brackett, J Green,
AVOIDED: MZB
NOT HEARD OF: Anthony Gilmore.
NOMINATE TO ADD: F. M. Busby (in particular, the “Rissa Kerguelen” series), the recently deceased James P. Hogan, James Blish
NOMINATE TO REMOVE: Herbert’s “Dune” books, which should be read by serious students of the genre, BUT are not hard to find or forgotten, due to TV miniseries. Ditto for Heinlein, who is also in no danger of being forgotten anytime soon.
For what it’s worth: “Gilmore” was a pseudonym for Harry Bates, whose story “Farewell To the Master” was the basis for the movie The Day the Earth Stood Still. The pseudo was used because Bates was the editor of the magazine in which the Hawk Carse stories first appeared. In the day, magazine editors often published their own stores but almost always hid them behind a pseudo.
Neat! I know that Forry Ackerman agented him: Forry gave me a copy of Space Hawk, because I mentioned the book to him at a party, and Forry (an unabashed fan of sf as well as an old-time agent—he would show you Bela Lugosi’s Dracula ring—quite a piece—at any encouragment) was just very happy to hear that name. Shortly after I got home, the book arrived at my house.
Hawk Carse had a black sidekick (who was the sane and competent one) and was himself nuttier than a fruitcake given any chance to get at the bad guy, who had treated him very badly once upon a time. Quite an unusual set of heroes for the 40’s.
My favourite book that is not written by CJ is The Dispossessed by ursula le guin. A must read for all sci-fi fans and anyone else! I read this book whenever I am a bit down. I have never worked out why this book works as a pick-me-up, but it does. Enjoy.