In a recent episode, we looked at Frederik Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth, who formed the most important science fiction writing team of the 1950s. This instalment looks at a key book by a dominant collaboration of the 1970s and 1980s - Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.

These right-wing hard SF authors worked together on numerous books, and even collaborated on fantasy at times. Their 1981 novel Oath of Fealty is an interesting fusion of their scientific speculations and their unsettling, libertarian politics. It is also a prominent work of SF focusing on the theme of arcologies - high-tech, self-contained, urban communities cut off from the outside world.

Oath of Fealty was published just after Ronald Reagan became President of the United States, and reflects the hard-right atmosphere of the time. A few years later it was included, with some misgivings, in David Pringle's book Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels. This episode gives an overview of this memorable book, and its significance in 1980s political SF.

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.

Barrington J. Bayley's novel The Soul of the Robot (1974) fits within the wider context of robot stories in SF - these include Isaac Asimov's influential tales from the 1940s, and the more subversive work of John Sladek in the 1980s. The protagonist of Bayley's novel, the fully conscious robot Jasperodus, can be seen as a kind of middle ground between these two approaches.

Featuring fallen empires, a strange mix of technologies, a war for control of Mars, and a robot revolution, The Soul of the Robot is another of Bayley's clever confections. However it also explores deeper questions of consciousness, identity, and free will.

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.

 Charles L. Harness' 1953 novel The Paradox Men was originally published under the title Flight Into Yesterday. It is a classic example of elevated pulp, which features swordfights, superpowers, voyages to the sun, and a strange furry creature that can speak - if only to speak the phrase "don't go..."

The Paradox Men is featured in David Pringle's 1985 book Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels. This inclusion is arguably a key reason why Harness and his work have avoided a descent into obscurity. But as we'll see, The Paradox Men is a superior pulp story, which combines influences from Einstein, the historian Arnold J. Toynbee, and the strange of the Canadian writer A.E. Van Vogt.

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.

 Originally published in the December 1971 issue of Playboy, “A Meeting With Medusa” is generally thought of as Clarke’s last significant shorter work. Notably, it won the Nebula Award for Best Novella the following year. It was also an early inspiration for two of Clarke’s successors in the British SF scene. 45 years after the novella’s publication, Stephen Baxter and Alastair Reynolds delivered their novel-length sequel, The Medusa Chronicles.

Taken together, these two works form an exciting exploration of the possibility of life on Jupiter, the effects of transhumanism, and the relationship between humans and machines. They are also a fascinating link between two generations of British science fiction talent. 

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.

 In The Forge of God (1987), the Earth’s demise is an inevitability. Greg Bear’s novel of apocalypse was published when he was establishing himself as a leader of American hard SF in the 1980s. This is a sophisticated, chillingly believable, and scientifically rigorous view of the end of the world. Crucially, Bear is as interested in human beings as he is in the devastation that unfolds. Knowing the outcome does not undermine the emotive power of his human-scale story.

While humankind makes a stab at self-preservation, this novel confronts the chilling idea of a broadly hostile universe for which Earth is woefully unprepared. In a way, though, The Forge of God is oddly uplifting - dealing as it does with the vanishing beauty of our world and that sturdy cliché, the strength of the human spirit. 

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.

Robert Silverberg's To Open the Sky (1967) combines five pre-planned stories originally published in Galaxy magazine in 1965 and 1966, it is an interestingly structured piece of work published at a time when Silverberg was just entering his own personal golden age. It also combines themes of religion, psychic powers, terraforming, immortality, and political conflict into a unique take on the "future history" subgenre of SF.

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.

George R.R. Martin is easily one of the best-known, most successful, and wealthiest genre writers still working today - albeit slowly.

While Martin is a giant of modern fantasy writing, even some of his ardent fans may not be aware that he first made an impact in science fiction. This episode first covers his debut novel from 1977, Dying of the Light. It's a gloomy, mournful story of lost love and personal obligations set on a dying, rogue planet. Next, I'll take a look at the very different Tuf Voyaging from 1986. A more light-hearted affair, it collects seven stories of eco-engineering, monstrous creatures, and witty dialogue, and cats.

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.

John Brunner was a startlingly prolific British writer of science fiction, whose reputation rests on four acclaimed books he published from the late 1960s to the mid 1970s. However, earlier in his career he wrote many SF adventures which while less ambitious, are a rich source of pulp excitement.

This episode focuses on two of these many novels. The Atlantic Abomination and Sanctuary in the Sky were both published in 1960 by Ace Books. They represent only half the novels Brunner published that year through the same US publisher. Listen on for a brisk look at these two fast-paced books, little-remembered but accomplished genre exercises from a giant of British SF.

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.

Pure SF pulp, The Fall of Chronopolis (1974) is the fifth novel by British author Barrington J. Bayley. While it superficially resembles a space opera, it is really more of what could be called a "time opera". The Chronotic Empire rules hundreds of years of human history, using powerful time-ships to head off threats from the past and the future. But when officer of the Third Time Fleet, Mond Aton, glimpses the true nature of the "temporal substratum", it begins to change everything...

This episode is a brisk look at the novel which Rhys Hughes called "perhaps the ultimate time travel story", and which was possibly was an influence on the setting of Warhammer 40,000. To catch up with a previous review of Bayley's The Garments of Caean (1976), listen to episode 108.

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.

This special feature episode focuses on three novels written in partnership by Frederik Pohl and Cyril M. Kornbbluth - The Space Merchants (1952), Gladiator-at-Law (1955), and Wolfbane (1959). Each unique in their own way, these three books are classics of the genre in the 1950s. They are the products of a special partnership between two writers who complemented each other perfectly.

Significantly, all three books were originally serialised in Galaxy magazine, which at the time was edited by H.L. Gold. In this sense, the three books represent some of the high watermarks of magazine SF in the exciting, productive 1950s. All three were also published in book form by Ballantine, then a new company which was helping to build a market for SF novels, which had never existed prior to the '50s.

The partnership ended early due to the untimely death of Kornbluth in 1958. Soon afterwards, H.L. Gold stepped down from Galaxy, and left Pohl to take over from him. These three novels, then, arrived at a time of tremendous change in the genre. In this episode, I try to do them some justice - especially Gladiator-at-Law and Wolfbane, which I feel deserve the classic status already afforded to The Space Merchants. 

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.