Science Fiction Collector Diary Episode #21: Purchases, Reviews, Rants  

I hear you! I find myself in front of screens when I would rather be reading for exactly that reason.

Yep, I think we're discarding too easily (/conveniently ?), the loads of low-brow litterature published, and forgotten in the previous decades that nonetheless were best-sellers or the fad of their time.

This happens to me and never used to. But habits like that are easily acquired these days

I think we all find our own comfort reading - I turn to certain authors for guaranteed entertainment and ease, but they're often quite serious in intent- Silverberg, Yarbro, Highsmith, Stark. I'm not sure if I could relish the 19th century novel the way I used to in my twenties...

My sister told me “reading is popular again” and my response was “yeah, for teenage girls and young women due to BookTok and romantasy.” I think it serves the same escapist function as screen entertainment. People aren’t intellectually curious like they used to be. The increase of screens in our lives are making all of us more passive. It’s depressing.

Yes, great isn't it? Totally different design to the B Format Edition, which is also a Penguin Modern Classic in the same livery- very strange.

My view has long been that more people would enjoy more books than they think if they were just exposed to them and that's always been my ethos as a bookseller, writer and reader. Nothing delights me more than people discovering or rediscovering reading later in life- it's the Prodigal Son parable, right? An example of this was when 'Game of Thrones' (the TV series started to run). Many people bought the books and said to me "I never thought I'd like stuff like this," to which I'd always reply "Well, your expectations of books have been influenced by bad screen facsimiles of them, but now you've seen a good adaptation your eyes are opened,". One guy in particular stood out for me- a very conventional looking middle-aged successful businessman type- and after reading Martin's books, asked me for a recommendation- he bought Zelazny's Amber series after I talked him into it and loved them. The odds on him doing this without that eye-opening experience were next to nothing. There is always more to see. Thanks for your kind comments.

Very kind.

...which sounds like a plot point from 'Mindswap'.

It will be reviewed in my next recent reads video, about a week from now- thanks as ever for your fealty!

You're right Jules- as you know from long experience in the front line- but when TikTok tells them to try something else, they will. It's like that line from 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' re the Proles "Until they become conscious they will never rebel: Until they rebel they will never become conscious."

The paradox of the long book/short attention span has bothered me for about thirty years. I think the reality is that those readers actually want to be fully immersed and carried away, but somehow think that anything 'short' will not give them time to sink into the fictional world- while not thinking that a more challenging book might after a few pages plunge them deeper....

Exactly. YA was used as a term in US bookselling and publishing as far back as the late 1980s, but in the UK only this century. It has arrested the development of generations of readers, sadly. The 'as long as people are reading,' argument has never washed with me: the mass market YA readers of today will be the celebrity bio readers of tomorrow. Despite the fact that I'm happy to see big sales of books as it keeps me in a job, I'd actually rather see fewer people reading, but reading better stuff- and as you say, young minds of our and previous generations found meat in the like of the authors and imprints you cite. Now, these are books people don't seem to discover until their thirties with a few exceptions...

@@outlawbookselleroriginal The books of my youth took me to Paris and Berlin and beyond. Young readers today have, most likely, their eyes set on a trip to a Harry Potter Fantasy Park or the tattoo parlour. All very sad...

@@CliveSnowden-fx8fp Same here...

@@outlawbookselleroriginal Nearly all of the Golden Age Of SF was written for the average 14 year old American youth. A lot of very serious topics covered,it can be done. I read Flashback by Simmons last Summer. Horrifying story [I do not mean the novel, it was great]. But not rated out of the market.. Heinlein's juveniles are not really juveniles. He was just kept under control by his publisher, who wanted a broader market.

@@joebrooks4448 Golden Age (!(39-1946) obviously appealed to many young readers, but there were undoubtedly older ones too. Anyway, I am referring to current YA not the US 'juvenile' market of the time Heinlein was writing those books.

Walking Bookseller. It's been a year on medication now with six months to go, I think. Good today, was shapeless earlier in the week. It's very up and down.

Thanks Walt- this sounds credible to me, since Sheckley virtually invented the Kill Game subgenre in the 1950s, penning many variations on it, as you know. Time for a new film version of 'The Tenth Victim', perhaps, to show the kids where all this stuff came from...hope you are well, my man.

I love the minimalism of them. And as you know, I'm a complete sucker for titles -'Documents Relating to the Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire' alone does more for my head in terms of expanding it than a whole Iain M Banks culture novel would.

@@outlawbookselleroriginal so true 👌

I can find nothing to add here. 'City of Brass' and its successors are depressingly popular.

Yes, great stuff.

There are Horror videos on the channel already if you scroll down on a PC or Smart TV- I have no idea if you're using a phone to watch, those who do usually don't see the other material- at least one playlist if not two. I've read a lot of Ramsey's books- at least ten- and although he writes very well, I never felt the urge to hang onto his books (I've parted with some quite collectable ones in my time) and I decided I actually don't like his work all that much and I have a feeling I'd dislike him as a person. We've never met, but have had exchanges online and I recently 'unfriended' him on a social network. Every so often his books have central characters who are a bit out of sorts with the world (I understand that) and who also seem to indulge in a mild form of failed sarcasm ('The Count of Eleven' is an example of this). In online exchanges with RC relating to a specific point in publishing I saw a mirror of this in his own posts and decided I didn't need that in my life. I had a feeling he was making assumptions about what lay behind some of my statements -which were based on experience- so our personalities didn't mesh. I know people who know him well and they all say he's a good guy and clearly he's an artist and knows his stuff, but he's not for me. I also think at times he's too subtle for his own good. His novel 'The Overnight' - an overly long work about a retail park bookshop (obviously based loosely on his time at Borders) is an example of this. It's good on describing some aspects of what it's actually like to work in a bookshop- Borders' out of town retail park experiments were doomed to fail (these all closed swiftly and arose in the period when their top man was the guy who'd formerly run a pizza restaurant chain)- but the horror element is too little and too late, I felt.

@@outlawbookselleroriginal Thanks for the in-depth reply; a lot of interesting nuggets. I'll go through the horror list. Much appreciated, Outlaw. I know you're very busy. I will definitely go through your horror list. Cheers.

I've only ever heard good things about the Blackwood. I think you mean censor rather than censure (the latter word means 'blame', so you may have intended it, I guess). Re the Heyer point as it were, I'd suggest that being differently pleasured to the mass re reading tastes is that you'll end up having fewer, but higher quality conversations by cleaving to the authors that move you. I think Catholic reading is good in essence, but I'm all for balance- as Howard Devoto once sang "My mind ain't so open/that anything can crawl right in,". I like Powys too. As for you closing questions, I can only quote Socrates: 'The unexamined life is not worth living,'.....I've just had an image of De Sade getting it on with Pym....thoughtful post, cheers.

Yes, you're quite right, I did mean censor. Still, it will have to be left as it is. I can cope with the sniggering coming from the other viewers ! As for Pym and De Sade, I did actually find reading Crampton Hodnet a good antidote to the 120 Days of Sodom which left me feeling quite ill. (Virago, feel free to use that as a quote). From the scatty to the scatological ! (Both my comment as well as the authors). I'm also aware that it should be de Sade and not De Sade. As for Socrates, I always feel the urge to prove these ancient philosophers wrong so I will with two words - David Beckham. I'd quite happily swap my life for his, though obviously I'd swap Victoria for Baby Spice !

@@ElfGoblin I was always a Victorian man myself- I think Socrates said that too LOL

It is a beauty. The novelty of it being an A when PMC do a B with a different illustration is an inexplicable thing currently, though, unless it is an export edition.

This was the quickest way I could contact you: thanks very much for the comment on a certain video posted today on a certain channel that addressed an entry-level subject. Would-be Outlaw Bookseller indeed! All we need to do now is convert a lot more people. Your support, views and comments here are always appreciated, my friend!

@@outlawbookselleroriginal no problem Dad 🫡

@@OXyShow I bloody love you, made my day.

That's one way of looking at it. However, I feel Culture- and in this case I mean the part we call 'Cultural Production' (i.e. works of art- books, music, film, whatever) is more importantly measured through its evolutionary development when compared to events in history and particularly in the rise of The Age of Reason (aka The Enlightenment) and Modernity. Modernity is definitely over and was a period in which something we never had previously happened - mechanical reproduction of text, image and sound that could be disseminated electronically around the world, so that the average person would see more art in their lifetime that the richest despot would have seen at any other time in human history. We grew accustomed to the new and the novelty and demanded more as it was shot at us faster and faster. This had never taken place in history before. Conseuqently, I see recent history the last 250 years, say, as an upward movement, rather than peaks and troughs. We're in a trough now and don't think we'll see a similar peak again for some time, if ever- and I feel the wholly new is behind us, though I'd love to be proven wrong. I think you make a very good point about hard work and sacrifice- just look how easy it is to make and disseminate a youtube video. This was much harder work even 25 years ago.

@@outlawbookselleroriginal I'm not so pessimistic. I see post-modernism and the end of history as more a theory or educators tool than actual reality. I can't accept that the human race will never again produce great works of cultural significance that can surpass what has gone before. As for peaks and troughs, I was paraphrasing Tarantino speaking about Hollywood movies. McCarthyism era = trough, artistic freedom in the 70s= peak. Plus my own observations of how popular music cyclically becomes stale and bland then explodes back to life through some scene or movement capturing the public imagination. Tarantino believes todays Hollywood will bounce back and produce great movies again. Like him, I believe the cultural desert we currently find ourselves in does have an end . Creative souls can't deny their nature. The human spirit will simply not tolerate the lack of nourishment.

@@jimbomacroth3400 Well, I'm waiting for the evidence. It seems clear to me that Modernism was a moment unlike any other in terms of innovation and that it burned out because of its ability to very, very quickly fill the audience with constant novelty, whereby prior to the mass media, this was impossible. There isn't really any comparison with the past in that sense- one theory is that Modernism was a moment destined to die out because of the innovations I describe and that creativity has now settled back into a pre-Modern craft/artisan basis and I see no evidence that's the case. If you read Simon Reynold's 'Retromania' he addresses the very point in Pop Music you cite and offers a strong argument that music (alongside other forms of cultural production) has slowed down since the end of the 1980s while tech has speeded up. The music of 1985 is considerably different to 1975, the 75 different to 65 and so on - while the music of 2015 is not that different to the music of 1995. SF has similarly been stagnant for decades- compare its early history of evolution and revolution - its naming in 1925, the Golden Age of 1929-1946, the social satire and entry of the dystopian background in the 1950s, the New Wave of the 1960s and early 1970s then Cyberpunk in the 1980s...but no significant steps forward since. I agree that the human spirit may not tolerate lack of nourishment, but it seems to be feeding on thin gruel the last few decades- human consciousness has been changed by the mass media and generations culturally speaking are no longer 20 years but 5 years. The number of reaction videos on YT to-for example- music that is 40-50 years old that blows the minds of young listeners tells you everything about the limited and stagnant state of the Endlessly Contemporary we now find ourselves in. A bleak view, I admit and I hope to be proven wrong, but I doubt it. Thanks for your thoughtful posts.

@@outlawbookselleroriginal Yes, that is a bleak view, but one based in reality which I can't really argue against. I might be living in naïve hope, but given the spectacular and profound works of previous generations and even in the seemingly impossible circumstances we find ourselves , I still cling to the romantic notion that we do not face a future of endless mediocrity. Thanks for your wise and interesting views . Not just here but your whole channel.

@@jimbomacroth3400 Thanks- I am a Romantic myself- in the philosphical sense, as you use it- so I understand your POV. I hope you're right in the long term.

Well, secondhand bookshops are always hit or miss, of course, as their sources of stock are contingent entirely on chance- what people donate or sell to them, so recommending individual secondhand bookshops is hard. Also, which part(s) of the UK are you going to?

Yeah, white spine, had it for years myself!

I like 'The Status Civilisation' a lot, but it is uneven and episodic- as RS often was, as he clearly got bored with conventional plotting and liked to instinctively follow notions, but I see his contradictions as part of his satire- our own present is full of paradoxes too. The Longman/Penguin is the standard UK text with numerous printings and in print for almost forty years, I can't speak for US titles. It will be my first 'overview' text on US history, so currently I'm open minded.

@@outlawbookselleroriginal All anyone can ask.

I've never been drawn to Follet, but I've sold hundreds of his books over the years. Never seen the film of 'Ask', sounds miscast to me too. Re the Japanese crime authors, yes, did them for my International Crime Reading Group between 2016 and 2018- the members loved them.

I have mentioned Bonfiglioli a few times on the channel, probably in my New Wave UK videos, as I have praised his astonishing short SF story "Blast Off" there at least twice and mentioned him as editor of Impulse when Keith was involved, so he's probably mentioned on my KR videos too. I'll have a think about this, though, but I will admit I've never been able to get through his novels.

I think QT swears a bit much in his writing too, detracts from his obvious facility with words- and agree about the family stuff. I don't think I'll ever read the Kesey again. I read 'Sometimes A Great Notion' by him in the 80s as well.

I'm hoping to get that disease LOL

@@outlawbookselleroriginal Well, God gave us free will..

@@AlienBigCat23 I know you're probably being ironic, but what he really did was give us the illusion of free will- of you believe in him, that is. 'Believe in me and you'll go to Heaven,' is not really a choice is it, when the alternative is no eternal life. But who would truly want the latter, it could become very boring....

@@outlawbookselleroriginal Well I'm not fooled, being a Pagan. Free will is what I claim, it's not handed down. I have no morals either, only ethics. Having no free will is an idea out of The Matrix, a social engineering scam. It's hard to break comfortable habits I admit..

😂

As I've said many times on this channel, the Revolutions and moments of Evolution that characterised Genre SF's development from 1925 to the end of the 1980s peaked between 1938 and late 80s, then ceased as young authors came into the field seeming only to want to return to the past - the British Space Opera Renaissance began in 1986 with Iain Banks and incomers from "Interzone" magazine like Baxter and Mcauley and that was it. US Genre SF built on the Humanist school that grew up alongside Cyberpunk in the 80s and created a slick, professional but ultimately dull set of works for the 1990s. There has been no real groundswell since, apart from the massive amount of 'narrative box ticking' over the last 15 years, where what seems to mater is now non-white, non-male and non-heterosexual the authors and their protagonists are: and that's a false groundswell as SF began tackling issues like gender, race and internationalism back in the 1960s. Watch the videos on the channel about Hauntology and SF & Modernism and SF which explain how the genre ceased developing and stagnated alongside the slowing of creativity in cultural production generally- the problem of Postmodernism and the dominance of the Endlessly Contemporary.

@@outlawbookselleroriginal Yes, I see. Strip mining the past and/or other cultures and/or other genres to create something "new" (but not really). Pastiche as an end in itself, rather than as learning step towards something unique. Vietnamese Steam-punk Horror; Senegalese Detective Space-opera; Youth Hostelling with Robert Silverberg.

@@arnoldaardvark4536 Exactly.

I don't doubt it. Probably more people can read -even if adjusted for population growth- but their reading ability above base level is undoubtedly lower. You see this in the Newspeak-style destruction of words through misuse and conflation- school children used to be 'pupils', now everyone in education, even if they are four years of age, is a 'student', which renders practical concepts like 'student discount' difficult to negotiate in the real world. People say 'disorientated' rather than 'disoriented'. Pointless conflations like 'timeline' (instead of chronology) and 'standalone' (instead of singleton) proliferate. 'It's easier for people to understand,' some argue, but what about eloquence and the joy of expressive language and a broad working vocabulary we ask ourselves....

@@outlawbookselleroriginal that is just the laziness. There is also the deliberate retardation(yes i used it), softening, and I don't even have the words to describe how a word can be completely flipped for convenience and gaslighting in the media

This is what I've been saying for almost thirty years and this is exactly how SF stopped evolving in a literary sense in the late 1980s and started to devolve- there always was the lowest common denominator in Genre SF and its readership, but the period between 1950 and 1990 included a lot of steps forward. Interestingly, this mirrored the growth of culture in the mass media in all areas of cultural production in that period - I think SF is like rock music, a Modernist form that relied on revolution, innovation and evolution and there are parallels to be drawn in the histories of rock and SF in this period that are just one indicator of how Genre SF's growth from mere pulp escapism into an art form mirrored society. Sadly, as you say, there is less engagement with 'difficulty' in SF than there has ever been. It may be a lost battle, but I for one will never stop fighting.