Comments on: A J

By: Paul De Vinny

Paul De Vinny — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 00:30:34 +0000

Does anyone have any John W. Campbell meets Algis Budrys stories? Just doing some reserch on Campbell and was wondering if such a “collision” took place.

By: paul de vinny

paul de vinny — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 23:19:38 +0000

I saw photo of Algis Budrys holding an airplane in his garage and was somehow struck by it. I read here’s a “hands-on” creative person — there’s more to him than writing science fiction. I JUST GOT that impression. (Will follow it up.)

By: Anton Sherwood

Anton Sherwood — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 22:15:20 +0000

Weekly salary? The only employers that ever gave me weekly paychecks were temp agencies.

By: Major Wootton

Major Wootton — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 00:27:45 +0000

I should fill that out about the Sublime just a little. It’s the sense of awe or terror evoked by darkness, vastness, the impression of immense power, by great height or, even more, great depth, by suddenness, by the thought of severe pain, by loud noises, etc. Burke was writing in a pre-sf age and yet he could have been writing something intended to inspire everyone from Lovecraft to Pohl. I have a hypothesis that mainstream fiction has largely forgone such material. Many readers, however, have a recurrent attraction to the Sublime, which may show up early in life, and that tends to draw them to some sf. I wonder how many people who read modern horror, with its endless accounts of carnage, really like that stuff, but read it because it provides the sense of Sublime as evoked by the elements mentioned above aside from the pain one. SF often provides Sublime material without wallowing in gore. Broadhead’s sufferings were of the soul…

By: Major Wootton

Major Wootton — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 21:23:51 +0000

PS Your own novel Gateway racks up Sublime points! Were you acquainted with Burke when you wrote it? Someone could write a whole paper on how the Sublime is the key to what makes that novel work!

By: Major Wootton

Major Wootton — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 21:21:08 +0000

Who? and Rogue Moon are wonderful books, and so thank you for this profile of an author I don’t hear about often. Who? should be filmed in black and white as a really good noirish picture, with nothing in the story, characters or setting being changed. Rogue Moon is an outstanding example of how science fiction supplies us with the fascination of the Sublime. Meaning no pretentiousness, I’m thinking of the eighteenth-century author Edmund Burke’s treatise on the beautiful and the sublime. You can go through the checklist of things that Burke says evoke the sense of the sublime, such as darkness, vastness, etc. and see them in many of the best works in the sf genre. I also believe that the evocation of the sublime is one of the reasons people read things like “Heart of Darkness.” They think they are reading it for Conrad’s take on colonialism, racism, etc. But I think that sense of the sublime has a lot to do with the story’s appeal. Budrys really nails it in Rogue Moon.