Science Fiction 24 – Tom Reamy, Keith Roberts & Geoff Ryman

This entry covers two deceased authors and one still living.

Tom Reamy died at the early age of 42 before his first novel, Blind Voices, was even published. There was quite deal of hype about this novel when it was published, so naturally I got myself a copy. A great many years have passed since I read it, but I think my feeling at the time was that it didn’t quite live up to the hype. Reamy’s collected stories San Diego Lightfoot Sue was also published posthumously.

Pavane, by the late Keith Roberts, a British SF writer, is another thing altogether. It’s a wonderful book, in the alternate history sub genre, distinguished by beautiful writing. It is in the form of “a collection of linked stories set in an alternate world where Elizabeth I was assassinated and 20th century England remained technologically backward under the oppression of the Catholic Church”. It is a book I regularly revisit and is still in print in the SF Masterworks series. The SF Site reviewed Pavane in 2001. Also present in my collection is Roberts’ anthology Machines and Men.

Another acclaimed SF novel is The Child Garden by Geoff Ryman which is also available in SF Masterworks series published by Gollancz/Orion. An unusual and very original novel, there is a rave review of it on SF Site here.

Next – Schenck, Schmitz and Sheckley