Classic SF with Andy Johnson

@andyjohnson.xyz

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Exploring classic science fiction, with a focus on the 1950s to the 1990s. Weekly articles and podcast at andyjohnson.xyz

Castor Troy's box from John Woo's Face/Off (1997), containing two gold-plated pistols, a pack of Chiclets, cash in a gold money clip, and a lot of drugs
1955 cover by William Gross for The Inheritors by William Golding
Paperback edition of Children of Time (2015) by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Gollancz "Michael Moorcock Collection" edition of The Dancers at the End of Time omnibus by Michael Moorcock. The novels were originally published between 1972 and 1976
Fiasco is a challenging and at times frustrating novel to read. Lem’s style is freighted with technical language taken from biology, astrophysics, computer science, and game theory. His characters frequently use Latin phrases, which are never explained - an approach which seems both unlikely and a little pretentious. The novel’s relatively dry prose recalls Arthur C. Clarke and the later work of Liu Cixin. Perhaps even more so than with those writers, Lem’s characters are scarcely worthy of the term. These figures are instead mouthpieces for various philosophical perspectives. The papal delegate Father Arago presents the theological point of view; the Japanese physicist Nakamura exhibits a sort of Zen equanimity, and the practical, no-nonsense pilot Harrach rapidly becomes an advocate for indiscriminate use of force.
1963 Penguin edition of A Case of Conscience (1958) by James Blish, using detail from the painting L'oeil du silence (The Eye of Silence) by Max Ernst (1944).
Cover art for Stanislaw Lem's Fiasco (1986), by artist John Alfred Dorn III
1978 cover art for Alien Embassy by Dean Ellis
Only a few advanced technologies are used: computer-controlled ocean vessels, solar panels for electricity generation, and implanted “contracapsules” to keep the population in check. Aircraft are very rare, and even the notion of long-distance travel is frowned upon. Lila Makindi is a young woman living on the coast of Tanzania. After undergoing rigorous testing, she is recruited to join “Bardo” - the Space Communications Administration operated by the world government. Her selection and training takes her first to semi-abandoned Miami, and later to Lhasa, high in the mountains of Tibet. Lila is to become a “pilot”, exploiting her natural talent to undergo a form of astral travel to worlds orbiting distant stars. Lila and her colleagues are inducted into the strange world of Bardo, and into its rigid sexual, reproductive, and spiritual strictures.
Cover art for the 1954 UK edition of Fury (1947); art by Ley Kenyon
Jim Burns' cover art for Greg Bear's novel Eon (1985). Various disc-shaped spacecraft fly towards a vast, pyramidal structure inside an immense, seemingly infinite macrostructure.
The 1954 edition of Fury (1947) by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore in front of a rendering of Venus
2019 Gollancz Golden Age Masterworks edition of Fury (1947) by Henry Kuttner (and C. L. Moore, uncredited)
A copy of Manic Street Preachers: Song by Song on top of an envelope, with a blue pen next to it
Fireworks by the sea in Palermo during the feast of Madonna della Mercede, September 2023
Cover for the 1976 Ballantine edition of The Shockwave Rider, art by Murray Tinkelman
The Legend edition of Eon (1985) and the Gollancz VGSF edition of its sequel Eternity (1988), both by Greg Bear.
Recent Picador edition of Child of God (1973) by Cormac McCarthy
Andy visible between audience members, talking about Manic Street Preachers
The 1985 edition of Brian Aldiss' Space, Time and Nathaniel (1957), with quite lovely cover art by Vincent di Fate. In deep space, a spacecraft travels near a large space station with two pinkish planets visible.
Manic Street Preachers Song by Song (£), Wed 11 Mar, Curio Bookshop. 344 songs in a single book launch. Everything must go!
Paperback copy of Surface Detail (2010) by Iain M. Banks
Kallocain (1940) was written by the Swedish poet and novelist Karin Boye (1900 - 1941). Her only work of science fiction, it is a gloomy dystopia influenced by her visits to both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Hailed by one contemporary critic as “a significant and lasting work of art”, it would be Boye’s last, as she died a year after its publication in the spring of 1941. Like Murray Constantine’s Swastika Night (1937) before it, Kallocain is a landmark in the history of dystopian fiction by women. It follows Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We (1920) and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) in the great chain of 20th century dystopian novels. Profoundly shaped by its specific political and historical context, it is a statement by a troubled writer on the necessity of life and hope in the face of pervasive terror.
The monks in the novel practice a sort of corrupted form of Catholicism, shaped by the nuclear disaster of the Flame Deluge. Their community is steeped in Latin scripture, but has its own saints, rites, and rituals. In the surprisingly funny “Fiat Homo”, Miller exploits this for some dark humour, in one instance articulating the logic of nuclear deterrence in the language of the Bible: “Only because the enemies have such a thing have we devised this for thee, in order that they may know that thou hast it also, and fear to strike. See to it, m’Lord, that thou fearest them as much as they shall now fear thee, that none may unleash this dread thing which we have wrought.” Miller’s own faith and deep knowledge of Catholicism is evident throughout the novel. The book displays a deep respect for the religious vocation and for the longevity and patience of Christian institutions - the only ones able to survive the catastrophe.
A copy of Science (Fiction), the first art book by Philippe "Manchu" Bouchet (2002). Published in France by Delcourt, it has an introduction by Gérard Klein. The text is largely in both French and English.
A poster reading: Curio presents Book launch Manic Street Preachers: Song by Song With author Andy Johnson Curio Books and Culture March 11 at 7pm
NEARLY 70,000 WORDS OVER 300 SONGS 15 ALBUM ESSAYS 1 WEEK TO GO Plus the cover of Manic Street Preachers: Song by Song
Cover of the 1965 Bantam edition of A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959) by Walter M. Miller Jr. Cover artist unknown. Note that the novel is already described as "the famous science fiction classic".
Black and white magazine interior illustration of a person holding a long rifle, impaled by a slim, barbed spear - apparently floating in space?
GENERATION TERRORISTS RELEASED 10 FEBRUARY 1992 "ONE OF THE MOST SPECTACULARLY OVER-AMBITIOUS DEBUT ALBUMS EVER MADE" Plus the covers of Generation Terrorists and Manic Street Preachers: Song by Song on a pink leopard print background
In the 1970s, some scientists believed that global cooling was on its way. Ice and Iron works with this scenario. In the novel, Canada was essentially destroyed by encroaching ice before Highsmith was even born, and the situation in Siberia is said to be even more dire. Anna Kavan’s novel Ice (1967) employed a similar premise before the 1970s vogue for global cooling, but used it to surreal effect. By contrast, Tucker’s depiction of glaciation is quite meticulously researched. The strange objects and bodies arriving in Highsmith’s time are interestingly and explicitly described as Fortean phenomena. In the same way that many SF novels are efforts to resolve the Fermi paradox, Ice and Iron is a fictional explanation for classic events researched by Charles Fort, like various documented cases of “rain of animals”.
Nearly 70,000 words - over 300 songs - 15 album essays - 3 weeks to go! Plus, the cover of Manic Street Preachers: Song by Song in front of an image of a bookshop interior
Gollancz paperback edition of New Model Army (2010) by Adam Roberts
Cover for the first edition of Ice and Iron (1974) by Wilson Tucker, art by Laszlo Kubinyi. Published by Doubleday
John Sladek’s first science fiction novel, The Reproductive System (1968), is a comic inferno of self-replicating machines running amok. For his second trick, the UK-based American writer doubled down. The Müller-Fokker Effect (1970) is a radical intensification of Sladek’s approach, a manic satire bursting at the seams with more, more, more of everything: crazed characters, strange technologies, witty wordplay, and bizarre happenings - all in more settings, viewed from more warped perspectives. In Sladek’s madcap near-future plot, several individuals and factions scramble to acquire and use a set of four tapes containing the fractured personality of corporate drone Bob Shairp. These tapes are put to various uses, from animating a robot duplicate of a fanatical evangelical preacher to powering a dangerously dysfunctional U.S. Army logistics system.
MANIC STREET PREACHERS: SONG BY SONG By Andy Johnson Out February 28 February 2026 Preorder now
A copy of the 1977 Arrow edition of Ice and Iron (1974) by Wilson Tucker. In the cover art by Peter Elson, a man in red arctic gear waves down a futuristic yellow aircraft at a facility in a frozen environment
Cover art by Bill Botten for the 1970 first edition of The Müller-Fokker Effect by John Sladek
Paperback copy of the Gollancz SF Gateway omnibus of Jack Vance's novels Big Planet (1957) and The Blue World (1966), plus The Dragon Masters and Other Stories
Paperback copy of the 2023 Orbit edition of Matter (2008) by Iain M. Banks
n a sense, Last Letters From Hav is an extended exercise in pure worldbuilding, in that it is largely plotless and evokes a strong sense of place. Crucially, though, Morris ensures that Hav is as packed with contradictions as real places are. The characters that Morris meets have strong senses of what Hav is, make forceful claims about “the real Hav”, and yet these perspectives often clash. The city is not as orderly and planned as fictional ones can often seem and Morris’ fictional alter ego is all too aware that she is only scratching the surface. There is a strangely living, unknowable quality to Hav, like a tempting mirage.
The 1985 US edition first edition of Last Letters From Hav (1985) by Jan Morris, published by Random House. Cover artist unknown.
A hardcover first edition copy of the novel Millennium People (2003) by J. G. Ballard
"Anderson's best writing is concentrated in these sections and his treatment of Archie is humane and sympathetic. At one point, the farmhand reflects memorably on how enhanced intelligence has affected animals: “...the other beasts had lived in a harmony, driven by their instincts through the great rhythm of the world, with no more intelligence than was needed for survival. They were mute but did not know it; no ghosts haunted them, of longing or loneliness or puzzled wonder. Only now they had been thrown into that abstract immensity for which they had never been intended, and it was overbalancing them. Instinct, stronger than in man, revolted at the strangeness, and a brain untuned to communication could not even express what was wrong.” In a novel of breakneck shifts, always juking, here Anderson pauses for a time and addresses quite movingly something of what intelligence is, and where its limitations lie."
Full cover art for the 1954 Ballantine edition of Brain Wave, the first book edition. Cover art by Richard Powers.
1978 UK edition of The Cold Cash War (1977) by Robert Asprin. A warrior wears a high-tech version of medieval armour. Cover art by Tim White
Copy of This Is How You Lose the Time War (2019) by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
A UK first edition hardcover copy of Last Letters From Hav (1985) by Jan Morris. A train passes through a huge labyrinth, with hazy mountains in the background
The 1965 UK edition of Brain Wave (1954) by Poul Anderson with cover art by Jeff Jacks. A bright pink background encloses a box containing an ape, a dragon (?), a man, and various spacecraft
The 2011 Armchair Fiction edition of West of the Sun (1953) by Edgar Pangborn. The artwork depicts the red-skinned "pygmy" people, a flying carnivore, and two humans in one of their "lifeboats". Cover artist unknown.
Paperback copy of The Voices of Time (1984) by J. G. Ballard, published by Everyman Fiction. Cover art by Grizelda Holderness. Not to be confused with Ballard's debut collection of the same title (1962), which has somewhat different contents.
Cover for the VGSF edition of Strength of Stones (1981), with cover art by John Harris
The novel opens in the failing town of Millford, Utah, and in the similarly failing Wompler toy company. This ineptly run family business is hobbled by the obsolescence of its one product, a copyright-infringing walking doll based on the likeness of a half-forgotten ‘30s starlet. The Womplers get the bright idea to “get some money from the govermint”, and soon they are feasting at the infinite money trough of the military-industrial complex. Millford becomes the site of Project 32, a “top-sneakret” operation run with an iron fist by the reclusive Professor Smilax. Staffed by a ragtag band of scientific eccentrics and dropouts, Project 32 soon creates a litter of semi-intelligent, self-replicating machines: the Reproductive System of the title.
Four bookmarks depicting planets on a starfield, promoting Classic SF with Andy Johnson - "exploring classic science fiction, with a focus on the 1950s to the 1990s".
The Zohran Mamdani slogan meme: ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS (Except Europa) ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE
The first US edition of The Reproductive System by John Sladek, using the title Mechasm. Art by Leo and Diane Dillon