Crappy 1970s Paperbacks with Airbrushed Spacecraft on the Covers

Back in 2008 I embarked upon a slightly obsessive course of reviewing more or less every science-fiction novel I read, slowly branching out to incorporate comic books and things that you would only term science-fiction by a very loose definition. I posted these reviews as a thread first on one forum, then moving onto another, finally granting them their own blog and taking the opportunity to change the overarching title from Crappy 1970s Paperbacks with Airbrushed Spacecraft on the Covers to Pamphlets of Destiny.

It's now been five years, and I've collected all of this material dating to December 2012 into a chunky Lulu paperback in order to sell it to you. So that's 308 occasionally opinionated reviews of novels, short story collections, a couple of non-fiction titles, comic books, and one CD which I hated so much I just had to squeeze out that poison; and that's including thirty-six Philip K. Dick novels, twenty-two by Clifford D. Simak, fifteen by A.E. van Vogt and twelve from Michael Moorcock. The reviews vary from rambling autobiography and general examinations of my own navel to mini-essays and rants, and as a single body of work could probably be regarded as a biased history of science-fiction literature in no particular order if you felt so inclined.

Accordingly there are reviews and thoughts on a great many of the classics from Brian Aldiss, Isaac Asimov, Stephen Baxter, Arthur C. Clarke, William Gibson, Alan Moore, Jules Verne, and H.G. Wells; and arguably more literary classics such as Gulliver's Travels, Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, Frankenstein, Dracula, Plato's Republic, Cyrano de Bergerac's Comic History, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and The Histories of Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais; and William Burroughs, Jean-Paul Sartre and Will Self who didn't quite seem to fit but I wrote about them anyway; and not forgetting - deep breath - Poul Anderson, Neal Asher, Margaret Attwood, Iain M. Banks, Clive Barker, Greg Bear, Alfred Bester, James Blish, Ray Bradbury, Eric Brown, John Brunner, Simon Bucher-Jones, Algis Budrys, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Octavia Butler, Michael Chabon, Michael Crichton, August Derleth, David Louis Edelman, Joe Haldeman, Peter F. Hamilton, Harry Harrison, Robert Heinlein, Frank Herbert, Mark Hodder, Fred Hoyle, L. Ron Hubbard, Aldous Huxley, Ursula LeGuin, Fritz Leiber, Murray Leinster, C.S. Lewis, David Lindsay, H.P. Lovecraft, Katherine MacLean, Ken MacLeod, Richard Matheson, Anne McCaffrey, John Meaney, Lawrence Miles, Mark Millar, Frank Miller, Walter M. Miller Jr., Pat Mills, Grant Morrison, Jim Mortimore, Ray Nelson, Larry Niven, Daniel O'Mahony, Marc Platt, Terry Pratchett, Christopher Priest, Lester del Rey, Alastair Reynolds, Kim Stanley Robinson, Carl Sagan, Richard S. Shaver, Robert Silverberg, Dan Simmons, Clark Ashton Smith, E.E. 'Doc' Smith, John Smith, Olaf Stapledon, Jim Starlin, Brad Steiger, Bruce Sterling, Neal Stephenson, Dave Stone, Charles Stross, Theodore Sturgeon, Walter Tevis, E.C. Tubb, Vernor Vinge and Yevgeny Zamyatin to name but the ones of whom you will have heard...

It's expensive because that's the nature of print-on-demand vanity publishing I'm afraid, so it's hardly a casual purchase, but if you've read and enjoyed any of my reviews, it should keep you going for a good few weeks, or it can be used as a defensive weapon as one might use a house brick; and I've tarted up the crappy grammar of the material originally posted on the Faction Paradox forum. The faint of heart should probably be warned that I'm not a massive fan of steampunk (Mark Hodder excepted), Neil Gaiman, Doctor Who since 2005, or the short stories of Brian Aldiss, and I got a bit carried away in places, at least where those specific founts of unmitigated shite were concerned; also I personally thought Stephenie Meyer's Twilight pissed all over Bram Stoker's surprisingly tedious Dracula, a view which I am aware some may find irritating. Oh - and there are almost certainly sexual swearwords.

Buy Crappy 1970s Paperbacks with Airbrushed Spacecraft on the Covers here.