January is Vintage Science Fiction month, so I’ve been reading and listening to a lot of older works lately. One of the joys of older works is that they tend to be on the shorter side, so even if I end up not liking them, they’re very rarely a slog to finish. The longest book I’ve read so far didn’t even reach three hundred pages. This is a doubly good thing, as I seem to have run into some real bad luck with the books I’ve read so far. Only a few were actively unenjoyable, but nothing yet has really grabbed me.

Owing to the shortness of the books, I’ve got quite a backlog of reviews to get through. One thing I don’t want to do is get stuck in a mire of negativity, so rather than drawing out some less-than-brilliant reviews over the course of the next two weeks, I’m going to get them out of the way in one mega-post. So, with a little hesitation, let’s talk about some books that I didn’t enjoy.

The Black Cloud, by Fred Hoyle

I like Hard SF, and I’m not averse to an infodump or two, but this book was dry even by my charitable standards. Hoyle has the scientific background to make it work on a plausible level, but the fictional narrative just isn’t there. Just as there are meetings that could have been emails, this is a novel that could have been an essay. Sadly, this marks the second book about a cloud of a peculiar colour that has left me disappointed in January.

Solaris, by Stanislaw Lem

Quick note here that I listened to the newer translation, and that Alessandro Juliani is a fantastic narrator. The first half of this book is very good, but after that it starts to wander off-track. The problem is that there are two stories going on here. There’s a tense base-under-siege thriller rife with paranoia and doubt, and then there’s a big cosmic idea about how human science is not sufficient to explain the universe. I like the idea of that, but I don’t like the way it fizzles out towards the end, leaving nothing resolved.

The Rival Rigelians, by Mack Reynolds

In theory, the idea of humans establishing thousands of small colonies and then linking them together once they’re more established is a good one. I do love some empire-building in my fiction. Unfortunately, Reynolds’ vision of these colonies is as simple as copying historical cultures and pasting them onto new worlds. Thus we have a rather dull story about Aztecs and the Medici in competition to join the galactic community. This was a major disappointment after how much I enjoyed my previous experience with Mack Reynolds

Planetary Agent X, by Mack Reynolds

Clearly a fix-up of two short stories, the first half of this story is utterly unremarkable, and already fading from my memory. The latter half is an improvement, but still bears a problem. It’s the story of a Mafia run planet, a murderer on the run, and the race to apprehend him. It’s a perfectly functional thriller. The problem is that it could work just as well were it a straight crime novel. Nothing about the story screams science fiction. It’s not terrible, I just expected more.

The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. LeGuin

Far be it from me to question the reputation of one of sci-fi’s household names, but between this and The Lathe of Heaven, I don’t understand the appeal. I’ll admit, a feminist SF novel was always going to be a hard sell for me, but LeGuin at least avoids being preachy. The Hainish universe has some interesting aspects, and LeGuin can write an excellent sentence, but the core narrative is just nowhere. The best parts of the book are when LeGuin turns away from the main story to share a folk tale or two, and I’d honestly have preferred a full book of these tales. As an aside, my copy of the book is blurbed by Michael Moorcock, and I’m quickly coming to see his praise as a warning that something won’t be to my tastes.

To Your Scattered Bodies Go, by Philip Jose Farmer

In hindsight, a book about all the dead people of history waking up naked in the afterlife wasn’t going to be to my tastes. But it was in the Audible Plus catalogue, and a Hugo Award winner, so I had to give it a try. I should have trusted my instincts. This is a garbled mess of a novel that outstays its welcome despite its brevity. Lowlights include; a reborn Herman Goring, nonsensical timelines, anti-Semitism, lesser-known historical celebrities, and more dubious sexual encounters than you can shake a stick at. Don’t even get me started on the magic caveman.

Timescape, by Gregory Benford

Another award-winner, this one brings Vintage SF Month kicking and screaming into the year 1980. If you want to read about scientists, professors, endless meetings, and sordid private lives, then this is the book for you. Personally, I could have done without at least two those things. Like The Black Cloud, it’s an incredibly dry novel, and I’m starting to wonder if the ‘scientists writing about scientists’ branch of hard SF wasn’t a mistake all along. Not least because they all seem to write depressing tomes about the end of the world. I also have precisely no patience left for time-travel’s obsession with saving JFK. For the love of time, go save someone else for a change. An original idea never hurt an SF writer, so let’s stop treading the same old grassy knolls.

If you’ve read any of these books, and especially if you enjoyed them more than I did, let me know in the comments.