Sci Fi round-up

If you are fortunate enough to have a good used bookstore nearby, you may find a section of mass-market sci-fi paperbacks, which in the 60s and 70s seem to have listed at 75 cents or so and often featured tacky or even lurid covers (see below). At Feldman's Books in Menlo Park they now go for around 2 bucks a pop, but that's still a bargain for a good read, no? I recently picked up two by D.G. Compton, whose The Continuous Catherine Mortenhoe I liked a great deal, along with one by Robert Silverberg, whose quite good Dying Inside I read nearly ten years ago now. Each of these is worth discovering for 2 dollars, or the cost of a trip to your local library.

Synthajoy
Farewell Earth's Bliss
D.G. Compton
Assuming that Compton was responsible for titling his own books, he was amazingly bad at it, given how good he was as a writer. Title aside, Synthajoy is the real gem here, a paranoid, deeply psychological, and quite modernistic novel, narrated by Thea Cadence, who has been committed to a mental hospital for having murdered (apparently) her husband. The circumstances of the crime revolve around her husband's invention of a kind of virtual reality process for transferring emotional experiences. Thea's "treatment" involves just such a process, aimed at inducing "contrition," according to her nurse, or "guilt," as Thea sees it. The narrative moves backward and forward in time, as Thea attempts to make sense of events and maintain her dignity and agency. First published in 1968, Synthajoy presents what now looks like a plausible near-future dystopia, and another of Compton's riveting and complex female characters.

Farewell Earth's Bliss is a more conventional novel, following a group of new arrivals to a desolate penal colony on Mars. Left to fend for themselves under bleak conditions, the community has evolved a kind of puritanical authoritarianism, whether out of necessity or atavism. Bigotry of various kinds– sexism, racism, homophobia, and religious intolerance– come with the territory (as they do back on good old planet Earth come to think of it– bliss for whom?). The choice facing each member of the ensemble cast is simple: Get along, or take that last chilly walk out into the freezing, airless desert.

Tower of Glass
Robert Silverberg
The androids in Tower of Glass are of the type that is biologically indistinguishable from humans, though produced in vats rather than wombs. Designed to serve humans as slaves, they come in three different castes, but whatever the caste, large numbers of them practice a secret religion that worships their corporate creator-inventor, Simeon Krug, as the incarnation of God. Krug, meanwhile, has undertaken a massive project to build an enormous sort of radio tower, intending to communicate with an alien civilization, whose signals have recently been received on earth. Krug is a familiar type, as is his hubris, and before long you will spot the climax to the plot coming down 5th Avenue, if you haven't guessed it already. Nonetheless, the characters are well drawn, and some of the set pieces are quite convincing and exciting. Worth your 16 bits.

Infinite Detail
Tim Maughan
Laura gave this one to me for Christmas, and it comes with the recommendations of Cory Doctorow and Jeff Vandermeer. How bad could it be? Oh, pretty bad.