The A.V. Club - Box Of Paperbacks Book Club

Books: Box Of Paperbacks Book Club:More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon (1953)

Fri, 08 May 2009 12:16:00 -0500

(Not long ago—okay, it’s going on two years now, but whatever—A.V. Club editor Keith Phipps purchased a large box containing more than 75 vintage science-fiction, crime, and adventure paperbacks. He is reading all of them. This is book number 61.) What’s next? That’s the question at the core of a lot (though not all) of science fiction. And though there’s no talking about the future without really talking about the here and now, a genuine interest in and concern for the future of humanity pervades the genre. Why did this forward projection develop ...

Books: Box Of Paperbacks Book Club:Starswarm by Brian Aldiss (1964)

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 16:40:00 -0500

Not long ago, A.V. Club editor Keith Phipps purchased a large box containing over 75 vintage science fiction, crime, and adventure paperbacks. He is reading all of them. This is book number 60. “A great part of the wonder of this new universe was that it had no God in it.” —Brian Aldiss on writing science fiction In prepping for this piece, I reread a fascinating profile of Brian Aldiss in The Guardian written to coincide with the release of A.I., which was taken from an Aldiss short story. (I read it the first time back when we ...

Books: Box Of Paperbacks Book Club:The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells (1897)

Fri, 27 Mar 2009 14:31:00 -0500

Not long ago, A.V. Club editor Keith Phipps purchased a large box containing over 75 vintage science fiction, crime, and adventure paperbacks. He is reading all of them. This is book number 59. “[Gyges] eventually found that turning the bezel inwards made him invisible and turning it outwards made him visible. As soon as he realized this, he arranged to be one of the delegates to the king; once he was inside the palace, he seduced the king’s wife and with her help assaulted and killed the king, and so took possession of the throne. Suppose there were ...

Books: Box Of Paperbacks Book Club:First Lensman (1950), by E.E. “Doc” Smith

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 14:14:00 -0500

Not long ago, A.V. Club editor Keith Phipps purchased a large box containing over 75 vintage science fiction, crime, and adventure paperbacks. He is reading all of them. This is book number 58. I was drawn to this box of paperbacks of mine in part because I noticed it contained all of Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels, a series I’d been meaning to read for a while. After giving it a good look, I noticed it also contained most of another series: E.E. “Doc” Smith’s Lensman books. (Or, as the cover of the book at ...

Books: Box Of Paperbacks Book Club:The Mad King (1914), by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 12:56:00 -0600

(Not long ago, A.V. Club editor Keith Phipps purchased a large box containing over 75 vintage science fiction, crime, and adventure paperbacks. He is reading all of them. This is book number 57.) All fiction expects readers to engage in at least a little suspension of disbelief. Some requires readers to send belief off to summer camp for an extended stay. If Edgar Rice Burroughs had had his ability to craft absurd coincidences removed when creating The Mad King—there’s a procedure for that, right?—he wouldn’t have been able to write word one. Well maybe word ...

Books: Box Of Paperbacks Book Club:A Life For The Stars (1962)

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 19:24:00 -0600

(Not long ago, A.V. Club editor Keith Phipps purchased a large box containing over 75 vintage science fiction, crime, and adventure paperbacks. He is reading all of them. This is book number 56.) Apart from his adaptations of classic Star Trek episodes published under generic titles like Star Trek 7 and Star Trek 11—books that filled the paperback spinners at my local library growing up—James Blish is best known for two series of his own invention: The “pantropy” stories, and the Cities In Flight cycle. I covered, probably too briefly, the pantropy stories in an early Box ...

Books: Box Of Paperbacks Book Club:The Avengers #5: "The Afrit Affair" by Keith Laumer (1968)

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 12:50:00 -0600

(Not long ago, A.V. Club editor Keith Phipps purchased a large box containing over 75 vintage science fiction, crime, and adventure paperbacks. He is reading all of them. This is book number 55.) There's really only one way to start this column, especially since there's a good chance a lot of you reading this column have never seen it. It's with this clip: That's the opening credits to the British spy series The Avengers at the height of its powers. The Avengers ran from 1961 to 1969 and kept the same star, Patrick Macnee, at ...

Books: Box Of Paperbacks Book Club:Box Of Paperbacks: Flesh

Wed, 24 Dec 2008 10:15:00 -0600

The Box Of Paperbacks Book Club: Flesh by Philip José Farmer (1960) (Not long ago, A.V. Club editor Keith Phipps purchased a large box containing over 75 vintage science fiction, crime, and adventure paperbacks. He is reading all of them. This is book number 53.) If you ever get a chance, be sure to read the opening chapter of Philip José Farmer's Flesh. A long, grippingly written setpiece, it imagines Washington D.C. a few centuries on from a cataclysm in which old ways have reasserted themselves in a new setting. Humans have developed a violent, sexually uninhibited ...

Books: Box Of Paperbacks Book Club:Box Of Paperbacks: A William F. Temple Ace Double

Wed, 10 Dec 2008 14:42:06 -0600

The Box Of Paperbacks Book Club: The Three Suns Of Amara / Battle On Venus by William F. Temple (1962 / 1963) (Not long ago, A.V. Club editor Keith Phipps purchased a large box containing over 75 vintage science fiction, crime, and adventure paperbacks. He is reading all of them. This is book number 52.) Here's a word to learn and treasure: "Dos-à-dos." It's French for "back-to-back" and, for our purpose, it refers to two books published between the same covers. (It also has other applications, and is related to "dosado" or "dosido," a dance move in which the ...

Books: Box Of Paperbacks Book Club:Box Of Paperbacks: Cleopatra

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 17:38:29 -0600

The Box Of Paperbacks Book Club: Cleopatra by H. Rider Haggard (1899) (Not long ago, A.V. Club editor Keith Phipps purchased a large box containing over 75 vintage science fiction, crime, and adventure paperbacks. He is reading all of them. This is book number 51.) Egypt is, of course, a real place, part of the continent of Africa, (if you're Sarah Palin and need such things explained to you.) But in fiction it practically belongs to another world. For Western writers, Ancient Egypt lends itself to the double exoticism of time and place. It's a culture linked ...

Books: Box Of Paperbacks Book Club:Box Of Paperbacks: Neutron Star

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 10:51:40 -0500

The Box Of Paperbacks Book Club: Neutron Star by Larry Niven (1967) (Not long ago, A.V. Club editor Keith Phipps purchased a large box containing over 75 vintage science fiction, crime, and adventure paperbacks. He is reading all of them. This is book number 50.) Neutron Star is the second collection of Larry Niven short stories I've covered in this project and I entered into it with neither anticipation nor dread. When I wrote about The Shape Of Space last December, I noted that Niven wrote hard science fiction–"as hard as it comes"–and dealt in characters ...

Books: Box Of Paperbacks Book Club:Box Of Paperbacks: 3 To The Highest Power

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 21:10:58 -0500

The Box Of Paperbacks Book Club: 3 To The Highest Power by Ray Bradbury, Theodore Sturgeon, and Chad Oliver (1968) (Not long ago, A.V. Club editor Keith Phipps purchased a large box containing over 75 vintage science fiction, crime, and adventure paperbacks. He is reading all of them. This is book number 49.) The cover of this compilation of three "novelets," to use the collection's own terminology, reminds me of an old concert bill with a superstar headliner, a cultish support act, and a forgotten opener. It's like the 1968 science fiction of a poster trumpeting "The ...

Books: Box Of Paperbacks Book Club:Box Of Paperbacks: Thunderball

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 17:07:49 -0500

The Box Of Paperbacks Book Club: Thunderball by Ian Fleming (Not long ago, A.V. Club editor Keith Phipps purchased a large box containing over 75 vintage science fiction, crime, and adventure paperbacks. He is reading all of them. This is book number 48.) Post foreword number one: Sorry it's been so long between posts. I'll try not to let that happen again. I've been trying to keep to a three-weeks-on/one-week-off schedule but that fell by the wayside. There are projects in the works that have been eating into the time I usually use for Box ...

Books: Box Of Paperbacks Book Club:Box Of Paperbacks: Slan

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 15:25:20 -0500

The Box Of Paperbacks Book Club: Slan by A.E. van Vogt (1940) (Not long ago, A.V. Club editor Keith Phipps purchased a large box containing over 75 vintage science fiction, crime, and adventure paperbacks. He is reading all of them. This is book number 47.) You are reading The A.V. Club a (hopefully wonderful and smart) site dedicated to providing its skeptically enthusiastic take on the pop culture-saturated universe in which we live. That's our agenda. Right? Or could it be that The A.V. Club, like so many publications you read, is actually one of ...

Books: Box Of Paperbacks Book Club:Box Of Paperbacks: The Man From Planet X #1: The She-Beast

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 13:01:53 -0500

The Box Of Paperbacks Book Club: The Man Form Planet X #1: by Hunter Adams (1975) (Not long ago, A.V. Club editor Keith Phipps purchased a large box containing over 75 vintage science fiction, crime, and adventure paperbacks. He is reading all of them. This is book number 46.) [Warning: The prose that follows is NSFW.] "Oh, Man!" the back cover copy of this book screams. I felt like saying the same thing, but for different reasons. Are dirty books supposed to make the readers feel dirty? Let's be clear: I don't mean "dirty" as in "titillated ...

Books: Box Of Paperbacks Book Club:Box Of Paperbacks: Vanishing Ladies

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 14:32:42 -0500

The Box Of Paperbacks Book Club: Vanishing Ladies by Ed McBain (and/or Richard Marsten and Evan Hunter) (1957) (Not long ago, A.V. Club editor Keith Phipps purchased a large box containing over 75 vintage science fiction, crime, and adventure paperbacks. He is reading all of them. This is book number 45.) The book's from 1957. The cover's from 1976. The style, by an uncredited artist, is late-pulp but it's the hair that really announces the years between. There's little chance that a straight-arrow cop like Vanishing Ladies' protagonist Detective Philip Colby would be wearing ...

Books: Box Of Paperbacks Book Club:Box Of Paperbacks: Lord Of Thunder by Andre Norton

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 22:23:03 -0500

The Box Of Paperbacks Book Club: Lord Of Thunder by Andre Norton (1962) My disappointment with Andre Norton's Lord Of Thunder began with the discovery that the cover image was not proportionally true to the content, but it didn't end there. Sadly, this is not about a man who can summon lightning while standing in front of a space-plane perched on the nose of a gigantic, owl-eyed cat as an eagle soars before a swirling vortex of a backdrop. All those elements do factor into the book, but, in the more expected sizes and never in such a ...

Books: Box Of Paperbacks Book Club:Box Of Paperbacks: The Mouse On Wall Street

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 10:43:58 -0500

The Box Of Paperbacks Book Club: The Mouse On Wall Street by Leonard Wibberley (1969) (Not long ago, A.V. Club editor Keith Phipps purchased a large box containing over 75 vintage science fiction, crime, and adventure paperbacks. He is reading all of them. This is book number 42.) When we last visited The Duchy Of Grand Fenwick in The Mouse That Roared, the tiny country had accidentally bested the world by declaring war on the U.S. in an attempt to enjoy the benefits traditionally bestowed by America on its bested enemies. In the process, Grand Fenwick inadvertently obtained ...

Books: Box Of Paperbacks Book Club:Box Of Paperbacks: Goldfinger

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 15:02:29 -0500

The Box Of Paperbacks Book Club: Goldfnger by Ian Fleming (1959) (Not long ago, A.V. Club editor Keith Phipps purchased a large box containing over 75 vintage science fiction, crime, and adventure paperbacks. He is reading all of them. This is book number 42.) In writing about Ian Fleming's James Bond novels I've tried to avoid talking too much about the film series. The bulk of Fleming's novels preceded the films and had an audience all their own, even if it would take the movies to make Bond into an international icon. Separating the two hasn ...

Books: Box Of Paperbacks Book Club:Box Of Paperbacks: Space Opera

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 12:41:42 -0500

The Box Of Paperbacks Book Club: Space Opera by Jack Vance (1965) (Not long ago, A.V. Club editor Keith Phipps purchased a large box containing over 75 vintage science fiction, crime, and adventure paperbacks. He is reading all of them. This is book number 41.) I'm not one of those people who goes around Wikipedia dropping "citation needed" warnings on every assertion without a footnote, but sometimes I sympathize. The entry for this week's book, Space Opera by Jack Vance, contains this note: "[Vance] has stated that the title was not his choice: he was commissioned to ...