I’ve been spending a lot of time with audiobooks lately. Working alone has its benefits, and one of them is the ability to put on headphones and tune out the world. A lot of the books I’ve been listening to have been older works, and often on the shorter side. I’m saving up my nineteenth century listening for a longer article in the near future, but along the way I’ve picked up a lot of books from SF’s Golden Age (which I put at around 1950-1965). This is an era that birthed a lot of classics, but it also spawned a lot of books that were less than enthralling. Here are some brief thoughts on books that fell into the latter category.

The Day of the Triffids, by John Wyndham (1951)

The Outward Urge was almost enough to put me off Wyndham for life, but ultimately I was unable to resist the temptation of his most famous work. I’m familiar with the triffids, having seen both BBC adaptations, so the audiobook held few surprises. That being said, it was enjoyable enough, but I don’t think it worthy of all the praise it has garnered over the past seven decades. The triffids themselves often feel like an afterthought, while the frequent time jumps make it hard to track how long the apocalypse is taking. Some of the human-on-human tension holds up even today, but things like women’s enthusiastic support for breeding programmes feels more out of place. The Day of the Triffids is okay, even good, but it never reaches greatness.

The Black Star Passes, by John W. Campbell (1953)
Islands of Space, by John W. Campbell (1957)
Invaders from the Outside, by John W. Campbell (1961)

Campbell is bets known as the editor who catapulted the likes of Isaac Asimov to stardom, but he also wrote stories of his own. This trio of novels are fixed up from stories reach back to the thirties, and are exactly what you’d expect from the editor of Astounding. That is to say, the ideas are good, the execution ranges from the decent to the downright appalling. Large parts of this loose trilogy consist of characters monologuing at one another, going into insanely detailed explanations of scientific principles. these are super-science novels, where men (and it is only men) brave alien galaxies with the power of their brains. Despite how terrible the prose is, they remain fun, though it is probably for the best that they or on the shorter side.

The Time Traders, by Andre Norton (1958)
Galactic Derelict, by Andre Norton (1959)

Andre Norton is one of the best-known Golden Age authors I haven’t read, and sadly this pair of books has failed to encourage me. These books, particularly Galactic Derelict, feel like they’re aimed at a more juvenile audience, and I feel I’d have enjoyed them more if I’d read less science fiction. One aspect I did find interesting is not in the story itself, but the way it was told. The audio version I listened to was a rerelease from the 2000s, which included a few small edits. Namely, accounting for differences between the book’s future, and the real past. Thus the Soviets are renamed Russians, and the events of the book’s present are advanced by some fifty years. This revisionism is something I’ve seen in only a handful of places (Stephen King and Brandon Sanderson are among the more famous users of the revised edition technique) but it is something I do not care for. Books are better left as an artefact of their time than constantly revised and updated to better fit the present. This ‘Director’s Cut’ approach feels distasteful to me, almost tricking the reader into reading a falsified record of the author’s work.

The Star King, by Jack Vance (1964)

Capping off this whistle-stop tour of the Golden Age is Jack Vance. Equally famous in SF and fantasy circles, this is firmly the former. It’s got a solid revenge narrative and some interesting ideas, but Vance’s style is very much an acquired taste. One that I have not acquired, it is safe to say. The frenetic pace is at odds with Vance’s verbose prose, and character motivation remains obscure for much of the novel. All this leads to a slightly jumbled listening experience that I can’t really recommend.