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Sep. 11th, 2007 02:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
johnny9fingersYou know when you stumble upon something and you think it might be interesting?
Well...I've been trawling through my library cataloging in a sporadic fashion typical of the cavalier attitude I have to just about everything in life - which acts as a fitting contrast to my puritan austerity (but what is a person who is not a bundle of contradictions?). Anyway, on this archeological journey through my literary past I chanced upon the ghetto of my Sci-Fi collection.
As part of this process I found myself looking up the Wikipedia entry to Alexei Panshin:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexei_Panshin
I wanted to know if Mr Panshin was American, or of American-Russian stock, but that is just as an aside. (I have a genealogical cast of mind, and such things please me - Ah! the familial taxonomies of humans....)
However, I was pointed at Starwell; The Thurb Revolution; and Masque World. Which I ordered via ABE books. They've been out of print since '79 or so.
'Masque World' arrived this morning, and though I knew I shouldn't, because it's the third in the series, I took a peek. Just the first six to ten pages or so.
Does anyone out there read Sci-Fi?
'Cause, if you do, this has got to be read. Panshin is....very good indeed, and funny.
'Rites of Passage' (not funny) won all the important Sci-Fi awards, and rightly so. Then he adopted an early critical position on Heinlein (amongst others) and thereafter his career seemed blighted. This may be a self-won position or he may have had assistance. Who cares?
He's really good, and should have written more.
These are worth reading, I deem.
Well...I've been trawling through my library cataloging in a sporadic fashion typical of the cavalier attitude I have to just about everything in life - which acts as a fitting contrast to my puritan austerity (but what is a person who is not a bundle of contradictions?). Anyway, on this archeological journey through my literary past I chanced upon the ghetto of my Sci-Fi collection.
As part of this process I found myself looking up the Wikipedia entry to Alexei Panshin:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexei_Panshin
I wanted to know if Mr Panshin was American, or of American-Russian stock, but that is just as an aside. (I have a genealogical cast of mind, and such things please me - Ah! the familial taxonomies of humans....)
However, I was pointed at Starwell; The Thurb Revolution; and Masque World. Which I ordered via ABE books. They've been out of print since '79 or so.
'Masque World' arrived this morning, and though I knew I shouldn't, because it's the third in the series, I took a peek. Just the first six to ten pages or so.
Does anyone out there read Sci-Fi?
'Cause, if you do, this has got to be read. Panshin is....very good indeed, and funny.
'Rites of Passage' (not funny) won all the important Sci-Fi awards, and rightly so. Then he adopted an early critical position on Heinlein (amongst others) and thereafter his career seemed blighted. This may be a self-won position or he may have had assistance. Who cares?
He's really good, and should have written more.
These are worth reading, I deem.
