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Douglas Barbour wrote: > > Robin > > in the usual way getting way off topic herein:. > > > >Mind you, how +do+ you untangle Kornbluth from Pohl? (And, for me [pace > >Kingsley Amis], K was better than P.) > > I was thinking of the short stories, which are his own (& recently > collected in one volume, His Share of Glory). > > > >Isn't Bester more 70s than sixties? > > The great short stories appeared from the 40s through to (a couple) the > early 70s; The Demolished Man (1953) & The Stars My Destination (Tifer, > Tiger!) (1956). He did return to SF in the late 70s I believe, but the > novels he wrote then simly didn't cut it with the early ones... > > > >And Sturgeon -- gimme Bradbury (help us) if you want to rot your teeth on > >saccharine. > > Can't agree: Sturgeon is the better writer (read Delany on his style), & > although he could be a bit sentimental, he also took on topics Bradbury > would never touch; at his best, he was far more adult... > > > >Let's hear it for cyberpunk. > > Ah well: yes, I love it & the best writing that has flowered by many of > those so identified since.... But I was merely pointing to the writers I > consider among the best of that earlier time (& Bester was a major > influence on the cyberpunks)... > > Doug > I wonder if anyone else has read Aniara, a book-length science fiction epic by Harry Martinson, a Swedish poet who shared the Nobel Prize (with another Scandinavian, I think) in the early 70s? Poem was written, again I don't quite recall, in the early 60s and was made into a superb opera - one of the first to incorporate electronics - by Karl-Birger Blomdahl. Story Line Press here in US has rereleased Aniara. It's an excellent poem (you have to get past nearly impossible translation of Swedish slang, and the dated cybernetics). Title character is a computer piloting a ship full of refugees from a polluted, destroyed Earth. Ship goes off course and Aniara sings incredible aria over death of humanity - you can imagine what Blomdahl does w/ this in the opera. Despite the awkwardnesses, vastly superior to F. Turner's sci-fi-with-swordplay epics.