I have a huge collection of vintage science fiction books. 7,200+ books from 1880 - 2008. Most are in the 1940-1970 range, though.
Anyone else into vintage science fiction, or even horror?

I just finished reading Frank Herbert's, Dragon of the Sea, and just started Frederic Brown's, Honeymoon in Hell.

I do like some vintage Science Fiction but the trouble with the majority of it is that it is very outdated, technology wise.

I'm a huge fan of vintage Horror though, H P Lovecraft and M R James are 2 of my favourite authors as it wasn't about gore it was about building the terror. I have the collected works of both of these authors.

I brought the Necronomicon: The Best Weird Tales of H P Lovecraft (Commemorative Edition).

Just finished 2001: A Space Odyssey again last weekend. Was better the second time.

I can't calculate the number I've lost in storage... several times.
I do have some of my favorites... Asimov, of course, I had all of Herbert's, but if I still do, they're in a box somewhere in the garage. I just started reading Dr. Who-- talk about dated. Now I see why the series is so popular (finally caught two episodes, and was delighted) but the dating still doesn't mask the underlying good v. evil.

I was talking to a writing group that included a 16 yr. old-- He's rightfully pissed at my (hippie) generation for getting comfortable and buying new tv's instead of making real change- and the old comics came up- V for Vendetta, the Watchmen...and our writers have reflected that desire to make the hard changes, yet my generation slid comfortably into middle age and did very little.

When I think back on the old stuff- I used to have all of E.R. Borroughs-- and while the science was bad-- the goals remained to stop the evil slavers, or corporate baddies that were corrupting folk-in the Tarzan series-
Isn't that what we have continuously seen in sci-fi or fantasy? Heinlein was obsessed with our relationships to each other, but he still had some form of corrupt baddie that had to be fought while we figured out the relationship thing... life is complex, and there aren't postage stamp solutions to the problems we're dealing with.

I don't remember reading 2001--- might have to go looking!

I have to admit that I've never got round to reading any Frank Herbert, I read Asimov, Clarke and Pohl etc.

Watchmen and V for Vendetta were written by Alan Moore who is a Brit and IMO he put a British slant on the superhero genre and he wrote them because most of the comics at the time were just about spandex superheros and were very black and white in their dealings were good guys and bad guys, Watchmen in particular allowed shades of grey to creep into the superhero comics for both hero's and villians, through people who read those comics going into the industry as writers etc.

Funny story about 2001, it started life as a short story called The Sentinal before it was made into the film 2001 then Arthur C Clarke wrote the novelisation of the movie, some editions of the book have the orignal short story in it.

All Lovecraft fans should read Chamber's The King In Yellow.
I think it is available online in txt format for free.

Brown is a gret writer. I haven't read everything by him but I've never read anything by him that i didn't like.


Best wishes,

Scott

I got the book, as you said in txt format. I may go through it later.

As much as classic as the movie is, the book blows it out of the water (er... out of space?).

Read Dune, absolutely. Then stop. The series just goes downhill from that one.


Bah... Moore was riding Byrne, Claremont, and Miller's wave.

Honestly, comics in the 80s were saved by a woman: Jeanette Kahn. She rocks.

I'm familiar with the short story (my critical analysis of 2001: A Space Odyssey will be published later this year or early next year).

But the novel and the film were written at the same time, and the book wasn't a novelization.

Of course they were.

Seriously, you can't possibly refute that. Nobody can.