posted
Today at the video store I was renting Firefly ( ::grumbles about the videostore renting each of the four discs in the set seperately:: ) when a woman came in and asked if they had the movie Paycheck. Now I've been interested in seeing Paycheck, but I never got around to it, and I couldn't really remember when it was in the theatres so it seemed plausible that it might be out in the videostore now. I mentioned that I'd probably get a copy of paycheck too if they had it, that it seemed like good sci-fi.
The woman (who looks like she's in her 50s or 60s) looks at me incredulously. "It's science fiction?" She asked.
"Yeah," I said. "Though it really just starts off with a sci-fi premise and builds from there."
We talked for a few minutes, and I picked up that she didn't really like deep/intense sci fi. Just good movies that might have a little sci fi in it.
Anyway, she told me that a good Sci Fi author is someone named William Tenn.
I did some research, and apparently he's a pretty well renowned Sci Fi author using the pen name William Tenn. He usually writes shorter works, has only written one novel, but has been a guest of honor at the nebula awards, worldcon, etc. He seems fairly big.
Has anyone read any of his stuff? Is it any good? Apparently he writes satirical sci-fi. I don't really like satire all that much. But I'm interested enough that if it's highly recommended, I might take a look at some of his stories.
posted
My favorite science fiction anthology is called the Science Fiction Century. I read it over and over again. It includes short bios of each of the authors, and one of them is William Tenn. I don't remember much about him (I don't have the book with me), but I do remember that his story was one of my favorites in the whole book.
I even used it as one of the bases for a paper I wrote in a law school seminar on Law and Literature. It (the story) was set in a future society that develops a new crime-deterrent system. It allows people to serve (severely reduced) prison sentences prior to actually committing crime. The sentences are spent doing highly dangerous work preparing other worlds for human colonization, and survival is not likely. After the sentence has been served, the lucky few are given a document that entitles them to commit the crime for which they served the time. The two main characters are the first and only to successfully serve a seven-year sentence for murder.
If the rest of his stuff is anything like this, I highly recommend it.
posted
I just checked. The Tenn story I read is called Time in Advance, which also appears to be the title of the collection in which the story originally appeared (ca. 1958?).
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posted
He's great! I might not've come across him except that once I was traveling and didn't have much to read and came across a SF anthology, and his two stories in the anthology really stood out...
He does have a satirical style, but it's a very human-friendly satirical style. And it's not dated -- I've read stories from the '50s and '60s that are still very fresh...
I'll post more in a bit, after I go retrieve some of his books from our library.
posted
OK, got a couple of his books out... his collected works were published recently, as Immodest Proposals (vol.1) and Here Comes Civilization (vol. 2)
The novel he wrote was Of Men and Monsters. It's a gentle satire/adventure about a future in which huge, gigantic, square-cube-law-defying aliens take over Earth and humans live like mice/cockroaches in the aliens' dwellings. It's included in vol 2.
Short stories... some of my faves from vol. 1 =
"The Liberation of Earth" -- aliens fight over possession of Earth. This is a must.
"Eastward Ho!" -- post-apocalypse America -- Native Americans are ruling and crowding out the white folks who're struggling on their reservations...
not as memorable, but still interesting: "The Lemon-Green Spaghetti-Loud Dynamite-Dribble Day" (NYC water supply gets dosed with LSD...)
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