#alexei panshin

[the25centpaperback]

Rite of Passage by Alexei Panshin, cover by Diane and Leo Dillon (1969)

[sophia-sol]

The Thurb Revolution, by Alexei Panshin

This is a science fiction novel from the 1960's, featuring a cast of odd characters wandering their way through interactions with each other In Space. It's mildly sexist in that 1960's way, it's hard to keep track of all the characters, and honestly I'm still not sure what the plot was -- but I still mostly enjoyed the process of reading the book.

I just really enjoyed the writing style! I wish I could articulate what it's doing that I like so much. The prose is pretty pared-down yet expressive, and it does things via odd juxtapositions of ideas and events. It's fun and engaging and it made me want to pick it apart to figure out just what it was doing!

So like….I don't think I particularly enjoyed this book as a book, but I'm still going to hang on to my cheap second-hand copy and maybe refer back to it in the future.

[basicallyanotherwitchesthing]

Alexei Panshin - Rite of Passage - SFBC - 1970

[chroniclesofamber]

Sign of the Unicorn — Turning Point in an Emotional Landscape

Turning point in the narrative

‘Vialle’s insightfulness may exist primarily to help Corwin understand himself, but she possesses a degree of agency that is not the rule among other female inhabitants of Amber. Although many female characters play prominent roles throughout the first five novels of the series, it would be difficult to argue that many are ever at parity with the male characters. Corwin’s various sisters are as ruthlessly enmeshed in the quest for power as are his brothers, but it is the brothers whose actions propel the story, and none of the sisters is a serious candidate for the throne. The women outside the royal family are, variously, forces of supernatural opposition, sounding boards for Corwin, or seductresses — in the case of Dara, all three.

Still, Vialle’s compassionate perception provides a crucial turning point in the narrative. Thereafter, and for the remainder of the series, Corwin’s goal is neither power nor vengeance but repair and preservation: stopping the dark forces of Chaos, stabilizing his family, and making Amber whole again.

This shift in Corwin’s priorities caught the attention of Alexei and Cory Panshin. In their F&SF review of Sign of the Unicorn, after condemning Zelazny’s recent work as consisting of “one bad novel after another,” the Panshins dismissed the first two Amber novels . . . But they saw Unicorn as a return to form, praising the “redemption” of the sequence with Bill, hailing the revelation of the true Amber as a rejection of solipsism, and going so far as to declare the novel “Zelazny’s best book since Lord of Light. Zelazny is back! Hooray! Hooray!” That two of the leading critics of the day would, on finding merit in a new Zelazny novel, erupt in cheers — language not far removed from [Jo] Walton’s teenage sf fan, who “squealed out loud” when she discovered the new Amber novel in a bookstore and swore she “would rather have Sign of the Unicorn than all the boys in the Valleys” — demonstrates that Zelazny still mattered as much to the readers who used to love him as he mattered to those who still did.

“An Emotional Archetype”

The focus on Corwin, however, raises an interesting question: What about Amber? Throughout the series, almost as striking as the overpowering presence of Corwin is the absence of the city. As Gary K. Wolfe points out, we know “little about Amber itself,” a place that “often seems to have no population other than its royal family . . . no streets, no economy, no network of social organization.” For Wolfe, the fact Zelazny presents Amber not as a constructed environment  but as “an emotional archetype” is fully in keeping with fantasy literature’s ability to “sustain our interest in impossible worlds simply by making these worlds emotionally meaningful to us.”

In this context, it is striking that much of the sense of physical setting we do have in these novels is not the world of Amber, much less its infrastructure, but the corridors between Amber and elsewhere: the shadow worlds through which Corwin periodically hellrides, early on to pursue his quest for power and vengeance, later to preserve Amber itself. These are the passages where, even in the exposition-laden later novels, Zelazny allows himself to get lost in language, as in this description, from The Courts of Chaos, of Corwin’s journey to the Courts (all ellipses are in the original):

            Turning, pacing . . . Red now the ferns, wider and lower . . . Beyond, a great plain, pinking into evening . . . Forward, over pale grasses . . . The smell of fresh earth . . . Mountains or dark clouds far ahead . . . A rush of stars from my left . . . A quick spray of moisture . . . A blue moon leaps into the sky . . . Flickerings among the dark masses . . . Memories and a rumbling noise . . . Stormsmell and rushing air . . . (503)

That which in a different kind of book would have been mere “carpentry scenes” — transitional sections whose function is solely to move the action from point A to point B — Zelazny writes with the poetic fragmentation that was often a signature of his earlier work. To apply Wolfe’s concept, what matters is emotional meaningfulness — not how the cities function but how the journeys between cities feel.’

— Cox, F. Brett, “A Series of Different Endeavors 1972-1979”, Roger Zelazny: Modern Masters of Science Fiction, 98-99, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2021

[nem0c]

Vietnam War - Galaxy Science Fiction Magazine, June 1968

Sourced from: http://natsmusic.net/articles_galaxy_magazine_viet_nam_war.htm

Transcript Below

We the undersigned believe the United States must remain in Vietnam to fulfill its responsibilities to the people of that country.

Karen K. Anderson, Poul Anderson, Harry Bates, Lloyd Biggle Jr., J. F. Bone, Leigh Brackett, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Mario Brand, R. Bretnor, Frederic Brown, Doris Pitkin Buck, William R. Burkett Jr., Elinor Busby, F. M. Busby, John W. Campbell, Louis Charbonneau, Hal Clement, Compton Crook, Hank Davis, L. Sprague de Camp, Charles V. de Vet, William B. Ellern, Richard H. Eney, T. R. Fehrenbach, R. C. FitzPatrick, Daniel F. Galouye, Raymond Z. Gallun, Robert M. Green Jr., Frances T. Hall, Edmond Hamilton, Robert A. Heinlein, Joe L. Hensley, Paul G. Herkart, Dean C. Ing, Jay Kay Klein, David A. Kyle, R. A. Lafferty, Robert J. Leman, C. C. MacApp, Robert Mason, D. M. Melton, Norman Metcalf, P. Schuyler Miller, Sam Moskowitz, John Myers Myers, Larry Niven, Alan Nourse, Stuart Palmer, Gerald W. Page, Rachel Cosgrove Payes, Lawrence A. Perkins, Jerry E. Pournelle, Joe Poyer, E. Hoffmann Price, George W. Price, Alva Rogers, Fred Saberhagen, George O. Smith, W. E. Sprague, G. Harry Stine (Lee Correy), Dwight V. Swain, Thomas Burnett Swann, Albert Teichner, Theodore L. Thomas, Rena M. Vale, Jack Vance, Harl Vincent, Don Walsh Jr., Robert Moore Williams, Jack Williamson, Rosco E. Wright, Karl Würf.

We oppose the participation of the United States in the war in Vietnam.

Forrest J. Ackerman, Isaac Asimov, Peter S. Beagle, Jerome Bixby, James Blish, Anthony Boucher, Lyle G. Boyd, Ray Bradbury, Jonathan Brand, Stuart J. Byrne, Terry Carr, Carroll J. Clem, Ed M. Clinton, Theodore R. Cogswell, Arthur Jean Cox, Allan Danzig, Jon DeCles, Miriam Allen deFord, Samuel R. Delany, Lester del Rey, Philip K. Dick, Thomas M. Disch, Sonya Dorman, Larry Eisenberg, Harlan Ellison, Carol Emshwiller, Philip José Farmer, David E. Fisher, Ron Goulart, Joseph Green, Jim Harmon, Harry Harrison, H. H. Hollis, J. Hunter Holly, James D. Houston, Edward Jesby, Leo P. Kelley, Daniel Keyes, Virginia Kidd, Damon Knight, Allen Lang, March Laumer, Ursula K. LeGuin, Fritz Leiber, Irwin Lewis, A. M. Lightner, Robert A. W. Lowndes, Katherine MacLean, Barry Malzberg, Robert E. Margroff, Anne Marple, Ardrey Marshall, Bruce McAllister, Judith Merril, Robert P. Mills, Howard L. Morris, Kris Neville, Alexei Panshin, Emil Petaja, J. R. Pierce, Arthur Porges, Mack Reynolds, Gene Roddenberry, Joanna Russ, James Sallis, William Sambrot, Hans Stefan Santesson, J. W. Schutz, Robin Scott, Larry T. Shaw, John Shepley, T. L. Sherred, Robert Silverberg, Henry Slesar, Jerry Sohl, Norman Spinrad, Margaret St. Clair, Jacob Transue, Thurlow Weed, Kate Wilhelm, Richard Wilson, Donald A. Wollheim.

[scriptwriters-network]

No tale tells all.

- Alexei Panshin

[infactforgetthepark]

[Free eBook] The Best of Cordwainer Smith by Cordwainer Smith [Vintage Classic Science Fiction]

The Best of Cordwainer Smith by the late Cordwainer Smith, the sfnal writing pseudonym of scholar Paul Linebarger, edited by J. J. Pierce, is a collection of vintage science fiction stories, free for a limited time courtesy of publisher Phoenix Pick Press.

This is their featured Free Ebook of the Month offer for March and was originally published in 1975 by Ballantine Books as part of their Ballantine's Classic Library of Science Fiction line. A bonus freebie from February is also still offered, the fantasy Earth Magic by Alexei & Cory Panshin, as well as a tie-in discount to another Smith novel.

The collection contains a selection of Smith's short stories and novelettes from the 1950s and 1960s in his Instrumentality of Mankind future setting where humanity has colonized a number of other planets, plus two essays by editor Pierce about the author and the Instrumentality universe. Several stories have been much-translated, and one of the novelettes was nominated for the Retro Hugo Award which recognizes early sfnal work from before the awards' creation.

Offered DRM-free worldwide through the month of March and probably until April 3rd (the offer usually rotates on the first Tuesday of each month), available directly from the publisher.

Free for a limited time through March directly @ the publisher's special promo page (DRM-free ePub & Mobi bundle available worldwide in return for your valid email address; follow the instructions on the page to reset the suggested cart price to $0.00 during checkout)

There's also a discounted tie-in offer for $2.99 of a reprint of Cordwainer Smith's 1975 novel Norstrilia, a dystopian planetary adventure in the Instrumentality of Mankind universe, originally published by Ballantine Books (now a Penguin Random House imprint). This has previously been offered free and also in a number of other tie-in sales, so you might already have a copy.

Description Cordwainer Smith was one of the original visionaries to think of humanity in terms of thousands of years in the future, spread out across the universe. This brilliant collection, often cited as the first of its kind, explores fundamental questions about ourselves and our treatment of the universe (and other beings) around us and ultimately what it means to be human.

In “Scanners Live in Vain” we meet Martel, a human altered to be part machine—a scanner—to be able withstand the trauma space travel has on the body. Despite the stigma placed on him and his kind, he is able to regrasp his humanity to save another.

In “The Dead Lady of Clown Town” we get to know the underpeople—animals genetically altered to exist in human form, to better serve their human owners—and meet D’Joan, a dog-woman who will make readers question who is more human: the animals who simply want to be recognized as having the same right to life, or the people who created them to be inferior.

In “The Ballad of Lost C’mell” the notion of love being the most important equalizer there is—as first raised in “The Dead Lady of Clown Town”—is put into action when an underperson, C’mell, falls in love with Lord Jestocost. Who is to say her love for him is not as valid as any true-born human? She might be of cat descent, but she is all woman!

And in “A Planet Named Shayol” it is an underperson of bull descent, and beings so mutilated and deformed from their original human condition to be now considered demons of a hellish land, who retain and display the most humanity when Mankind commits the most inhumane action of all.

[naughtybooks]

Free US & UK Promo Codes Upon Request

YOU NEVER HEARD OF HER ― BUT YOU SHOULD HAVE!

Her name is Frances Deegan. She wrote 21 stories and 35 articles under her own name for the science fiction pulps between 1944 and 1952, when few other women were selling to them at all. Yet you won't find her listed in any book about science fiction. Not The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, A Reader's Guide to Science Fiction, Pamela Sergeant's Women of Wonder, Roger C. Schlobin's comprehensive listing of women science fiction authors, Urania's Daughters, Alexei and Cory Panshin's The World Beyond the Hill, or David Hartwell's Dark Descent. In fact, in the years since her death, Frances Deegan has become the forgotten woman of the golden age of pulp science fiction, and none of her stories have ever been reprinted. 

The only place you will find Frances Deegan's name is buried among the plethora of male authors in the table-of-contents listings for old sf magazines. Yet at a time when only a handful of women were writing or reading science fiction, Frances Deegan was one of the field's most popular authors, if the letter columns of the period are to be believed. And that popularity was deserved, as this first-ever collection of her stories shows. And what stories they are! Set against backgrounds that are often rustic ("The Radiant Rock"), peopled with characters who are decidedly not urban ("The Wizard of Blue Gap"), and frequently humorous, with comic touches in even the most straightforward scientific puzzle story ("The Third Bolt"), they blazed new trails for science fiction when first written and still stand out as vigorous, idiosyncratic work even today, a half century after they were written. 

It is hoped that this collection will introduce the work of this forgotten woman to new generations and help, in some measure, to rescue the name and reputation of Frances Deegan from obscurity.

LISTEN TO A SAMPLE - https://amzn.to/3GY2edD

[vtgscifi]

Alexei Panshin RITE OF PASSAGE 1980 80s Vtg Alexei Panshin Book 80s Vtg Sci Fi

[nodynasty4us]

Alexei Panshin (1940 - 2022)

Alexei Panshin wrote a book-length study of Robert Heinlein's works, called Heinlein in Dimension. Then after being so immersed in Heinlein, he wrote his own science fiction novel, Rite of Passage.

I read Rite of Passage in my early teens and was very impressed by it. It has all the ideas and plots and optimism about humanity expanding through the universe that Heinlein had, but it is less bombastic and the characters are more approachable. Panshin still seemed in touch with what it is like to be young.

One line has always stuck with me -- "There are no spear carriers." One character says this to another while explaining how real life is different from myths and epics. Nobody plays a supporting role--each person is the main character in their own story. Others have taught this lesson before, of course, but Panshin's book happened to be in the right time and place for me to hear it from him. And for that I am grateful.

And that’s why I include Rite of Passage on my list of favorite Heinlein novels.

[70sscifiart]

Uncredited 1975 cover art to “Rite of Passage,” by Alexei Panshin

[authorissitohbi]

1975 cover art to “Rite of Passage,” by Alexei Panshin, uncredited.

[writerdavidkubicek]

Ten Must-Read Science Fiction Novels

Ten Must-Read Science Fiction Novels

by David Kubicek It seems like everyone and his brother are doing “best” lists of novels, so I decided to get in on the act. Here is my list of ten must-read science fiction novels.  I haven’t read every science fiction novel that has ever been written, but of the ones I have read, these are my favorites. Perhaps someday I’ll do my list of the next ten and later the ten after that until I, this…

[bookgleanings]

Brains are no good if you don’t use them.

Rite of Passage by Alexei Panshin

Help support this blog by shopping at Amazon through our affiliate link: https://amzn.to/2ZSLnGM

It won’t cost you any more, and we’ll get a tiny token of treasure.

Thank you.

[vintagescifibookcovers]

Rite of Passage by Alexei Panshin

1968

[the25centpaperback]

Star Well by Alexei Panshin, cover by Kelly Freas (1968)