imagination destruction encyclopedia conjunctions

books:

Galactic Patrol (The Lensman Series, Book 3)

28 reviews
Edward E. Smith, John Clute

Old Earth Books, 1998

Be sure your seat belt is fastened before beginning to read this
"Galactic Patrol" is where the lensman series really begins to move. Be sure your seat belt is fastened before beginning to read this story. It is a terrific adventure story. Now, I must admit to some qualifiers. First, I am a retired old (blank). I first read this book in the 1950's. The book was written in the 1920s or 1930s. Back then, Americans spoke differently than they do today. ...

A Voyage to Arcturus (Bison Frontiers of Imagination)

42 reviews
David Lindsay

Bison Books, 2002

Not a journey for everyone
Lindsay offers an imaginative diatribe against a world hopelessly blind to it's true spiritual nature in A VOYAGE TO ARCTURUS. The "hero" is Maskull, but he represents Everyman, and the world he visits is Tormance, which is Earth in disguise, stripped of it's nuances and complexities. Tormance is a world of physical and psychological extremes circling the larger of the twin suns comprising the ...

Inverted World (New York Review Books Classics)

8 reviews
Christopher Priest

NYRB Classics, 2008

My personal SF favorite...
Imagine an encapsulated city trying to survive in a strange world where mysterious "optimum" is moving and the city has to keep moving on it's tracks trying to reach it. Every natural obstacle in this unfriendly environment has to be solved and the city has to keep moving or else... People in the city refer to the landscapes ahead as "the future" and to the landscapes behind as "the past." ...

The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction

9 reviews
John Clute, Peter Nicholls

St. Martin's Press, 1993

Everything Your Mother Didn't Tell You
This is a massive reference work and an obvious labor of love. It covers almost every conceivable aspect of science fiction, from movies to history to criticism. This is the second edition of this work, with large updates to bring the work up to the time of publication (1992), especially new authors and newer works by old hands, and there has also been a good deal of new material added to the ...

The Purple Cloud (Bison Frontiers of Imagination)

9 reviews
M. P. Shiel

Bison Books, 2000

Lush,imaginative use of language.
make this book really worth reading. I find the descriptions of an empty world chilling, the familiarity with some of the places(in England) making the story at once believable yet terribly strange to me. Shiel is a romantic, bringing the story to an optimistic end for our poor protagonist (hasn't the poor guy suffered enough...!), even though it seems like Leda gets the short end of the stick ...

Encyclopaedia of Fantasy

15 reviews
John Clute, John Grant

Orbit, 1997

Bloody Amazing
Fantasy Geeks can't complain any longer--not with the addition of this volume to their already heavily burdened bookshelves: their readerly fetish is now fully indexed, glossed, and cross-referenced. On the face of it, this text represents nothing less than the advent of fantasy literature as a serious field of cultural production; it can not be slighted any more, within reason, for being ...

Science Fiction: The Illustrated Encyclopedia

8 reviews
John Clute

DK ADULT, 1995

Very intelligent, well organised, gorgeously illustrated,
As a reader of science fiction for almost five decades now, I would have to say that this is the finest single-volume reference on the history of the field that I have ever seen. It gains from the fact that it is written by a Brit, since you get many British works and authors that probably would not be covered in an American collection, as well as, a decent covering of international efforts from ...

Her Smoke Rose Up Forever: The Great Years of James Tiptree, Jr

4 reviews
James Tiptree Jr [Alice B Sheldon]

Arkham House Publishers, 1990

My Favorite Book in the World
Do you have a favorite book in the world? This book, quite simply, is mine. This is a posthumously-published collection of eighteen stories by James Tiptree, Jr. (pseudonym for Alice Sheldon). It contains most of her best short fiction. It also contains a compelling introduction by John Clute. Mark Richard Siegel, who wrote the Starmont Reader's Guide on James Tiptree, Jr., wrote the ...

Conjunctions: 39, The New Wave Fabulists

6 reviews
Jonathan Carroll, John Crowley, ...

Bard College, 2002

Often delicious Halloween grab bag
It took me about four months to finally track down a copy of this book (which is a literary journal published quarterly by Bard College). It proved well worth the time and effort. I've been a big fan of Peter Straub's since I was totally captivated and transported by his novel GHOST STORY the summer I was 14. Peter Straub has made a name for himself over the years writing dense, deeply textured, ...

Sci-Fi Western

1 review

Last Gasp, 2003

AWESOME book!
this book is a must have!the pages are filled with awesome art by todd schorr,robert williams and mark ryden. this book also has awesome art by future stars like martin ontiveros and tim biskup! if you like juxtapoz,you'll loooove this book!

Strokes

1 review
John Clute

Cosmos Books (PA), 2001

Hard work for poor reward
Fundamentally Clute is a sci-fan fan with an academic vocabulary. It sounds good until you examine what he's saying. Then you might just as well review fan-boy reviews for all the illumination he gives you.

Look at the Evidence: Essays & Reviews

1 review
John Clute

John D. Barry Design, 1995

dealing with sf as seriously as it probably deserves
Here John Clute goes for broke. This collection of his more recent ('80s for the most part) sf criticism is easier on the vocabulary than his earlier, and often deeply annoying, writings for New Worlds magazine. It still, however, comes at you as though he thinks the world should make sense, and the device for this revelation should be sf. Complex, often very funny (see the demolition of The ...

Appleseed

23 reviews

Tor Books, 2001

My My - Tough, but worth the effort. Okey Dokey?
Since buying the UK first edition from Amazon UK in 2001, I have tried 3 times before to get past page 10. My concentration wasn't up to it. I was out of practice with dense SF language. Whatever the problem, I failed. (One attempt must have been in my doctor's waiting room since I found a receipt from 2003 in the book.) Somehow, I was at the right point earlier this week to tackle it ...

A New Universal History of Infamy

1 review
Rhys Hughes

Night Shade Books, 2004

Uneven and Somewhat Unlikeable
This book is supposed to be an 'homage' to Jorge Luis Borges, but if I was JLB, I'd say, "thanks but no thanks". Mr. Hughes thinks alot about his talent but he is neither as talented or 'smart' as he thinks. True about half of the stories/pieces work, but when they don't, they really don't. Of the four sections he divides the book into, the first and last sections work the best with the ...

The Book of End Times - Grappling with the Millennium (Destruction of the World As We Know It)
John Clute

HarperPrism, 1999

We have waited a thousand years for this epochal night, this awesome dawn. . . . Global warming. Extinction. Social and moral breakdown. . . . Right now, our culture is rife with a pervasive unease about the state of humankind and its future. For many, this despair is defined by millennialism, the superstitious notion that our end times coincide with the dawning of the twenty-first century. Nonsense, scoff the educated, the intelligentsia. ...

Scores: Reviews 1993 - 2003

1 review
John Clute

Beccon Publications, 2003

Very
John Clute is a very smart man who uses very big words to express very deep thoughts about very weird books. I think he is a splendid reader and I'm not just saying that because he likes my writing.

The Shape of Things to Come (Penguin Classics)

3 reviews
H.G. Wells

Penguin Classics, 2006

H. G. Wells - Conspirator.
_The Shape of Things to Come_ is the Penguin Classics edition of the novel first published in 1933 by the famous science fiction writer and British socialist H. G. Wells which provides an account of the "history of the future" and offers predictions as to what the future (at the time of writing) will bring. H. G. Wells envisioned this book in many ways to be a sequel to the historical work _The ...

The Book of End Times

4 reviews
John Clute

Eos, 1999

This book is a mirror.
Concepts such as memetics, hysteria, and the faster-and-faster motion of the world leap from these pages. This book is energetic with articles, quotes and pictures, both old and new. Yes, many of the articles are critical of a number of modern society's tendencies -- but there is nothing knee-jerk about it, and more importantly, nothing unartistic. Open it to a random page and you will find ...

Darkening Garden: A Short Lexicon of Horror
John Clute

Payseur & Schmidt, 2006

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