Monday, June 2, 2014

Astounding Days

Astounding Days by Arthur C Clarke is subtitled "A Science Fictional Autobiography", and is done in the form of reviewing the various years in which Astounding (back before it was Analog) was published, through John W Campbell's editorship, and reminisces about the stories in the issue or about people the issue reminds him of.  He also discusses some amount of what he was doing in his mundane or writing lives at the same time. He keeps looping back to some of the same stories and being non-linear in time. It's an incredibly off-beat way to do an autobiography, but does serve the purpose of providing a list of interesting stories to go back and read. The Clarke stories are easy, since I've got the Tor volume of all Clarke's short fiction and most of his novels on the shelf. But I've just grabbed a volume of Stanley Weinbaum's short stories based on Clarke's comments.

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