Classic SF with Andy Johnson

An unusual detour into contemporary SF, this episode is a look at the thoroughly strange The Book of Elsewhere (2024), a collaboration between Hollywood icon Keanu Reeves and British flag-bearer for the New Weird, China Miéville. The novel is a spinoff from Reeves' comic book series  BRSRKR , about an immortal warrior with 80,000 years of bloodshed behind him. For his part, Miéville called th...

The Count of Monte Cristo make not seem like the likeliest template for an SF novel, but Alfred Bester was able to take this 19th century French classic and turn it into the basis for his 1956 book The Stars My Destination . This frenetic, fast-paced adventure also begins with a kind of parody of the opening to Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities . It's a hectic, baroque tale of revenge, and o...

Connie Willis is known for her stocked awards cabinet and for her lengthy novels in the "Oxford Time Travel" series. But this major figure of US SF has not always been concerned with exploring the past, or with doorstop-sized tomes. Remake (1995) is one of her less discussed novels, short enough to sometimes be categorised instead as a novella. This is story set in what was then the near...

Time travel is, if scientists are to be believed, impossible. That has never stopped science fiction writers, who have made it one of their most frequently used and popular concepts. But if time travel is impossible, can it at least be made plausible? With his novel Timescape (1980), Gregory Benford sought to do just that. This believable SF epic draws on Benford's own professional experience...

Science fiction is famously difficult to define. In 1952, the writer and editor Damon Knight famously wrote that "science fiction is what we point to when we say it." But what if what we point to is just the surface, just an aesthetic, and what really matters is what is underneath? This episode is a brief exploration of what I see as the important gap between two linked, but different th...

This is an exploration of four short novels by a neglected female writer of SF who sought to subvert the genre from within. One happy development in recent years is the growing awareness of the contribution of women writers to the development of classic science fiction. Today, writers like Leigh Brackett, C. L. Moore, and Andre Norton are fairly well known in genre circles. Readers and explorers o...

Edmund Cooper is hardly a familiar name today, but he was once a significant presence on the British science fiction scene. For 23 years, he reviewed new SF books for The Sunday Times, and one of his short stories was adapted into the 1957 film The Invisible Boy   - which featured the second screen appearance of Robby the Robot, introduced in the more famous Forbidden Planet. More relevantly, Coop...

The generation starship is a classic concept in science fiction. Other stars are hugely far away, and our spacecraft are slow - why not condemn several generations of our descendants to live on board ship, in the hope of reaching a new world in hundreds of years' time? What could possibly go wrong? Brian Aldiss, who became a major figure in British SF, made his novel debut with a unique explo...

Back in episode 131, we looked at The Embedding , Ian Watson's startling debut novel published in 1973. Watson was soon to ascend to new heights, winning the BSFA Award for Best Novel for his second effort, 1975's The Jonah Kit . Like his debut, this is a kaleidoscopic, multi-threaded novel set in multiple countries and asking big questions about consciousness, intelligence, and the natu...

The backwoods of Wisconsin may not seem like the likeliest place for humanity's future in the stars to be decided, but only outside of a Clifford D. Simak story. Wisconsin was his preferred setting, particularly the woodsy Wisconsin of his youth. With his novel Way Station , he parlayed this nostalgic affection into the 1964 Hugo Award for Best Novel.  Get in touch with a text message! For mo...

Rather than looking at a specific work of classic SF, this episode takes a wider view. It's my personal introduction to five concepts which I think can help enhance your science fiction reading, to boost your understanding and appreciation. Most of these concepts are highly specific to SF, and represent aspects of what makes it a unique genre with its own particular traditions and effects. Ge...

Science fiction icon Philip K. Dick is such a well known figure now - over 40 years after his death - that it is possible to lose sight of the struggles he faced in his career. Back in the 1950s, he longed to break into the mainstream fiction market but was frustrated at every turn. His lifeline was Ace Books, for whom he produced a string of short novels. Time Out of Joint , which takes its title...

Science fiction has seen many audacious heroes who use their wit and guile to overthrow dictatorships, bring the truth to light, and save the world. While this kind of wish fulfilment has its place, so too do stories in which protagonists know only too well that they cannot change the status quo. Maureen F. McHugh made her name with a story of this type, with her 1992 debut novel China Mountain Zh...

A soulful sequel to The Soul of the Robot (1974) In episode 119, I took a look at The Soul of the Robot from 1974, the best-known novel by the little-known British SF author Barrington J. Bayley. As I continue to explore Bayley's strange, anarchic works, it is time to address his only sequel. Published in 1985, just before Bayley went on a long hiatus, The Rod of Light continues the adventure...

A clash of the deep past and the near future Featured in episode 107, Pat Murphy's 1986 novel The Falling Woman was one of my favourite reads of 2024. This episode covers her debut novel, The Shadow Hunter , originally published in 1982. While fairly obscure, it is every bit as good as The Falling Woman , and arguably deserves to be seen as a classic of the early 1980s. In this story of clash...

Confinement and culture shock in a hyper-urban world Recent projections suggest that the human population will peak somewhere around 2085; it could even occur, according to some models, as early as 2060. But what would society look like if it was governed by an obsessive push to increase population - to strain against every social and ecological obstacle? Originally published in 1971, The World In...

A personal struggle with cosmic consequences Some people are their own worst enemy - that's particularly true for John Breton. One night, he finds himself confronted with an identical, rival version of himself - who has crossed over from another timeline. Originally published in 1968, The Two-Timers is the second novel by Bob Shaw, a follow-up to his debut Night Walk which was covered in epis...

Coming of age on a hollowed-out asteroid The critic Algis Budrys said of this novel, "one feels a real shock as one realizes that Panshin after all has never been a girl growing up aboard a hollowed-out planetoid". He was praising Rite of Passage , Alexei Panshin's 1968 novel which went on to win the Nebula Award for Best Novel while up against tough competition. A part of the first...

A tall tale of impossible products, mutants, and parallel Earths Clifford D. Simak explores the parallel worlds theme to intriguing, energetic effect in his 1953 novel Ring Around the Sun . In this tall tale, originally serialised in Galaxy magazine, a young writer discovers that he has the power to visit many alternate versions of the Earth, each unsullied by human hands.  One of these worlds is...

Entropic tales from the end of time  It is a bit of a truism to say that people are entranced by imagining the end of the world. But what about the end of time? In this immensely distant scenario, entropy has had its way with the universe, life has withered away, and all change and incident has ceased. A true entropic scenario leaves little room for story-telling, and so SF writers tend to cheat,...

The Culture is run by Minds - AI constructs of immense computing power, some of the greatest intelligences in the galaxy. But no amount of intelligence can prevent you from making mistakes. The sixth novel in the Culture series by Iain M. Banks, Look to Windward was first published in 2000. It deals with effects of mistakes made by the Minds. As part of Banks' extended examination of the topi...

Answering listener questions about all things classic SF. Can you believe it, it's episode 150! To mark this milestone, this episode is a special Q&A. Questions and answers take a tour of Ursula K. Le Guin, J. G. Ballard,  Dune  (1965), book collecting, getting started with Philip K. Dick, the "cosy catastrophes" of John Wyndham, and more.  Get in touch with a text message! For...

A shocking collision of warped sexuality and twisted metal "I wanted to rub the human face in its own vomit - and force it to look in the mirror." With these words, J.G. Ballard described the aim of his 1973 novel Crash . A harrowing descent into a bizarre subculture of damaged outcasts whose sexual fetishes centre on the car crash, the novel is Ballard's disturbing diagnosis of the...

Flowers for Algernon is a science fiction classic which crossed over into the mainstream. Originally published in novel form in 1966, Daniel Keyes' only fully-fledged SF book not only won a Nebula, but was adapted to film, and frequently appeared on school curricula. It has even been called "arguably the most popular SF novel ever published".  Welcome to a landmark story of intellig...

A plea for human connection in a computerised world The reputation of John Brunner rests largely on his four "tract novels" published between 1968 and 1975. Complex and imposing, they are fictional explorations of issues and crises facing society in the latter part of the 20th century. Originally published in 1969, The Jagged Orbit is the second of these novels and Brunner's follow-...