"A normal, routine flight".

It is difficult to think of a science fiction author who has had more of an impact on the real world than Sir Arthur C. Clarke. His early work with radar during WWII, his proposal of the geosynchronous communications satellite, his television appearances as a commentator, the movie adaptations of his work, and of course his countless stories, essays, novels and books, all combine to make him a cultural icon. 

 A large portion of Clarke's work occupies a sort of near-future niche: the Space Odyssey books, A Fall of Moondust, The Fountains of Paradise, The Hammer Of God, the Rama novels, and, to a lesser extent, Imperial Earth. Clarke has never attempted to create a unified history of the future, as have authors like Larry Niven, Robert A. Heinlein, or a host of other. However, the future as Clarke portrays it in those books demonstrates a logical, consistent, considered evaluation of how life in space might actually be lived.  

2001 is a perfect example of this: Heywood Floyd's trip to the Moon is, as it says in the narrative, "a normal, routine flight". That being said, let's look at Mr. Floyd's trip. 

He boards a booster-assisted spaceplane that takes him to Space Station One, where he transfers to a zero-g shuttle that takes him to the Moon. The boosters for the spaceplane are independent craft that fly back to Florida to be refueled and used again. 

Interestingly enough, in the course of the trip Floyd logs on with his Newspad and downloads a selection of current papers to read, clicking on thumbnail-sized images to select the pages he wants. Because Clarke is English, it is of course unlikely that Heywood would be looking at porn, but other than that it's pretty close to what most people do now with their laptops when they travel - not a bad guess for 1968. But I digress...

The craft used in 2001 are designed to occupy specific niches, and as such are completely different in their designs. The spaceplane is essentially the current Space Shuttle, but with better seating, stewardesses, and apparently less of a re-entry problem. The suggestion is that it's like an orbital 747, designed to operate for the most part within the atmosphere, but capable of limited vacuum operation. 

The zero-g shuttle is completely different. Other than the fact that it's laterally symmetrical (presumably for convenience of accelerating along its centre of gravity) it has all the aerodynamic qualities of a brick, because it will never feel the touch of air - it's purely a vacuum craft. And, like the spaceplane, it's a multi-use craft designed to perform the Earth-Moon circuit over and over again. 

The space station itself is a much more developed entity than the current ISS, although, like the ISS, it's a work in progress, as demonstrated by the bare skeleton that's visible. The station is rotating in order to use centrifugal force to create the illusion of gravity, cited in the novel as equal to the Moon's (1/6 of Earth's). As a sidebar, Clarke describes the lounge area of the station as having "a restaurant, post office...barber shop, drug store, movie theater, and a souvenir shop", making it sound pretty much like an airport concourse, as opposed to the movie version:

Any further comment would be superfluous. 

 In my previous posting, I cited some of the advantages of space stations, and I find it odd that the American space program has never made a serious effort to establish and maintain a permanent facility in orbit. I'm aware of the various difficulties involved in getting things up there, but on that basis shouldn't they be trying to make sure that everything that goes into near-Earth space stays there? 

 My younger readers - if there are any (readers, that is) - will not remember the Chicken Little experience of waiting to see where Skylab was going to impact when it lost orbital stability. Shouldn't it still be up there as part of the current Space Station, like building a home around the original log cabin? 

If I were in a position of authority at NASA, I'd be tempted to ignore the issues involved in manned missions to the Moon or Mars for some time, and just concentrate on developing an infrastructure based around three space stations: Earth, Moon, and Mars. I'd then establish a repeatable, reusable and reliable system of travel between the stations - in other words, a normal, routine flight.

- Sid

Happy New Year, but.

And on far-off Earth, Dr. Carlisle Perera had as yet told no one of how he had awakened from a restless sleep with the message from his subconscious echoing in his brain:

The Ramans do everything in threes.

Arthur C. Clarke, Rendezvous with Rama

Here we sit, poised on the edge of another new year.  Horrifyingly, the coming year may mark the last new year that our parochial little planet is allowed to celebrate. Astrophysicist Craig Kasnov, who is part of the SETI* group, has announced the discovery of three large "objects" that are headed for Earth at a high rate of speed, with an estimated arrival date of December 2012.  Now, to be fair to Mr. Kasnov, he's not quoted as actually saying that these are spaceships, but when you identify something as an unidentified flying object....

The prospect of an invasion involving a trio of gigantic starships rings all sorts of bells in the science fiction community.  Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous With Rama deals with an oddly similar situation to the one described above:  the discovery of a mysterious object approaching at high speed, the revelation that said object is artificial, and the ensuing reaction by humanity.  In the case of Rama, the enigmatic worldlet described by Clarke, an expedition is dispatched to explore this 50 kilometer long visitor to our solar system.

Rama is discovered to be hollow, a silent, uninhabited cylindrical world, but as it nears the Sun Rama comes to life in a limited manner, quite literally turning on the lights, and producing a variety of  biological robots.  And then, strangely, Rama activates its engines and leaves the solar system after apparently refueling from the Sun. 

Rendezvous With Rama is a very typical Clarke novel in its portrayal of humans interacting with mysterious alien artifacts - the Monolith in 2001 is a similar example.  I suspect that Clarke didn't originally plan a sequel, but as with more than one aging science fiction author, several followup novels were written "with" a younger writer.  These frankly inferior sequels reveal that the builders of Rama do, in fact, do everything in threes - which includes building massive intersolar spacecraft.

For fans of pop culture rather than science fiction, the current discovery ties in all too conveniently with the oft-referenced end-of-the-world-in-2012 as per the Mayan calendar, and as such it's bound to get a certain amount of press.  However, that same press seems to offer contradictory accounts regarding the alien spaceships: for example, in one version they're approaching the southern hemisphere and won't be visible from the northern hemisphere, but in another version they were discovered by an Alaska-based search system.  Size seems to vary as well, with one reference to the objects as being in the "tens of kilometers" and another article confidently saying that they are in excess of 240 kilometers in length.

Presumably SETI is making every possible effort to contact the alien fleet in an attempt to establish peaceful communications - after all, if their mandate is to search for extra-terrestrial intelligence, they must have some idea of what to do after finding it.  On the other hand, we only have two years. Should we not be dedicating every second of the next 23 months to stocking Earth's arsenals in preparation for a possible invasion?  Come on, fellow Terrans, let's not forget the lesson taught by Independence Day.

But when it comes right down to it, I have to side with geek goddess Felicia Day on this one, as per her Twitter account:

I saw the pix; those are smudges/reflections/image defects on the pix. We're being invaded by bad emulsion!

Happy New Year, everyone.  One more step into the future...

 - Sid

* Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence.

Three thousand tubes of what?

I'm currently reading Arthur C. Clarke's Prelude to Space, written in 1947 and set in 1978, which describes a first mission to the Moon. Clarke points out in his introduction to the 1977 reprinting of the novel that, "On July 20, 1969, all the countless science-fiction stories of the first landing on the Moon become frozen in time, like flies in amber. We can look back on them now with a new perspective...for we know how it was really done and can judge the accuracy of the prediction."

Clarke's description of the mission varies considerably from the final result, but not so much that the novel has the anachronistic feel of Jules Verne or H.G. Wells. (Actually, I find that Wells holds up much better than Verne over time, but that's another topic.) However, the part that really jumped out at me, sixty years in Clarke's future, was the following conversation after a tour of the ship's cockpit:

"It's a bit overwhelming, but not so very much worse than a transcontinental jet's cockpit."

"It is if you know what goes on behind all those panels," said Matthews grimly. "Arnold Clinton - that's the electronics king - once told me that there are three thousand tubes in the computing and control circuits alone. And there must be a good many hundreds on the communications side."

Three thousand vacuum tubes? I almost laughed out loud - relying on a system like that to go to the Moon would be like having someone say that a battleship would only be able to sail if none of the light bulbs on board burned out. Now, admittedly, when Clarke was writing the book, state-of-the-art computing was represented by ENIAC, which had close to 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighed 27 tons. The next time that you have a problem with your computer, remember the gentleman in the image at the left of this paragraph, who is troubleshooting a problem in ENIAC by looking for a dead tube - see, Vista's not that bad after all, is it.

Coincidentally, the needs of the Apollo program for a more reliable system for use in the Apollo Guidance Computer led to concentrated research into the development of the integrated circuitry that replaced the vacuum tube and which is now used in virtually every piece of electronics in existence. Sadly, the AGC crashed five times - only in the computer sense, fortunately - during the landing approach to the Moon by the Eagle module.

- Sid

Sigh-fy.

Judge not this race by empty remains
Do you judge God by his creatures when they are dead?
For now, the lizard's shed its tail
This is the end of man's long union with earth.

Genesis, Watcher Of The Skies

Thanks to the magic of PVR, I've just finished watching the three-part Syfy adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke's novel Childhood's End. Although I'm disappointed by their interpretation of this 1953 SF classic, I can appreciate what they were attempting to do with their changes to the story.  Unfortunately, I'm not convinced that they succeeded.

For the most part, Clarke's writing concentrates on carefully thought out and logical stories dealing with space exploration or science, such as The Fountains of Paradise, A Fall of Moondust, or Rendezvous with Rama.  Sometimes he combines this focus on hard science with an element of metaphysical mysticism - 2001: A Space Odyssey and its ambiguous conclusion would be a good example.

Childhood's End is a bit of a departure for Clarke, in that it deals less with science and more with spirituality.  The story begins with the arrival of gigantic menacing starships that take up strategic positions over all of Earth's major cities à la Independence Day.  However, these visitors are not invaders.  Calling themselves the Overlords, their spokesperson Karellen announces that they are there to take control over human affairs on a global basis, and to channel Mankind's energies into positive pursuits - no more wars, no more crime, no more violence against each other or the innocent creatures with whom humanity shares the planet.

The Overlords graphically demonstrate their ability to enforce their control through episodes like making everyone at a Spanish bullfight feel the picador's spear as it enters the body of the bull, or by blotting out all sunlight over South Africa.

Over time, resistance to their rule comes to an end as the world begins to realize how much better life has become.  However, in spite of all entreaties and demands, the Overlords refuse to reveal their physical appearances until after fifty years on Earth, at which time Karellen takes his first public steps onto the surface.  This first appearance clearly explains the reasons for their long concealment,* but the delay has allowed the people of Earth to become more enlightened and accepting, and the moment of crisis passes.

At this point, humanity has entered a golden age of enlightenment and leisure. But there are always those who are restless, who are unable to ignore the mysteries of the universe.  One of these people is Jan Rodricks, a young man who is fixated on the origins of the Overlords.  By concealing himself in a full-sized model of a whale, Rodricks is able to make his way to the homeworld of the Overlords, albeit by paying a time-debt of 80 years.

Upon his return, he finds humanity as he remembers it to be gone, its children having evolved into a new form of life shortly after his departure. The climax of the novel deals with the transition of this new version of humanity into its final state.*

Syfy's adaptation of this tale of evolutionary apotheosis seems to have lost an awful lot in translation. It's a bit like someone read the book while drunk, and then described the plot to the screenwriters a week later.  The sequence of events is altered, characters are added or removed, people keep their names but change drastically otherwise, or lose their names and sort of stay the same.**

It's possible that they were attempting to humanize the story - as a writer, Clarke is not always at his best when dealing with the subtleties of relationships - but to me, the changes added nothing to the original, although I was intrigued by the religious elements that they introduced into the plot.

However, when all was said and done, I was more confused than anything else, either in spite of or because of my knowledge of the book.  Although I think that the strength of the original concept helped to make the adaptation work, ultimately there were just too many holes and inconsistencies.

The next question is: do I want to see what Syfy is doing with - or to - the Expanse series? Perhaps - but I may well be happier just letting sleeping adaptations lie.

- Sid

* Dorothy, I know you already know the story, but I'm still doing my best to avoid spoilers for the rest of the world.

** Why on earth - no pun intended - would they feel the need to change Jan Rodricks to Milo Rodricks? Or change one of the final fathers of humanity from George to Jake, and from a set designer to a golf course architect?  Not to mention making an American farmer the sole direct contact with the Overlords rather than the secretary general of the United Nations - although they did at least keep his name the same.

Farewell - and fare well.

"I want to be remembered most as a writer -- one who entertained readers, and, hopefully, stretched their imagination as well."

- Arthur C. Clarke

In many ways, today marks the end of an era. Sir Arthur C. Clarke died in his home in Sri Lanka at the age of 90.

For his 90th birthday on December 16th, 2007, Clarke released a nine minute video* on YouTube, in which he appeared cheerful and energetic, if a trifle laboured in speech. I think that his closing comments from that video make a fitting epitaph for one of the great figures of science fiction.

I find that another English writer -- who, coincidentally, also spent most of his life in the East -- has expressed it very well. So let me end with these words of Rudyard Kipling:

If I have given you delight
by aught that I have done.
Let me lie quiet in that night
which shall be yours anon;

And for the little, little span
the dead are borne in mind,
seek not to question other than,
the books I leave behind.

- Sid

* By the way, I have to be fair and say that to anyone who is not a hard core SF geek - yes, I mean you, Laurie - you may wish to skip the video.

Florida 4: Tourist Trap.

Although I do most of my travel reading on my iPhone, I always pack some paper books to fill in those gaps when the airline may request that I not use my electronic devices, or in case of battery exhaustion on flights without recharge sockets.  Because the highlight of my Florida trip is a visit to the Kennedy Space Centre at Cocoa Beach, I thought it would be appropriate to bring thematically suitable reading material:  The Right Stuff, by Tom Wolfe, and A Fall of Moondust, by Arthur C. Clarke.

I've started my reading with A Fall of Moondust, which is a conveniently short read at 215 pages.* I chose this novel for a very simple reason:  it tells the tale of an accident involving tourists - tourists on the Moon.

The cruiser Selene offers a unique experience for lunar visitors: a boat excursion on a world without water.  Except it's not really a boat, and the Sea of Thirst is aptly named -  it's not made up of water, but of moondust, a powder so fine as to be almost liquid.

As the latest group of tourists embark on their tour of this unusual ocean, a moonquake opens a sinkhole in the dust beneath the cruiser and swallows it, marooning the 22 passengers and crew of two beneath a blanket of metallic powder that blocks all radio communication and diffuses its heat signature.

The book alternates between the trials faced by the trapped travellers and the efforts by their rescuers to locate the ship, discover its fate, and then invent some way of reaching the people on board before lack of oxygen renders their efforts irrelevant.  As it turns out, there are more subtle perils to threaten the lives of the buried sightseers...

To be honest, Clarke is not at his best working with romantic subplots and personal drama, and as a result that part of the story never quite rings true. However, that's not really what interests him.  The key to the story is the battle between the ingenuity of the rescuers and their relentless opponents:  vacuum, the dust, and time.

The most astonishing thing about Clarke's tiny perfect tale of disaster and rescue is that no one dies.  I strongly suspect that in a movie adaptation, the irritating spinster reporter would be lucky to make it to the end of the first act, let alone be the first one out of the boat when they open the escape hatch.

- Sid

* It's interesting to compare the length of SF and fantasy novels from the 50s, 60s and 70s with the current offerings, there's been a definite upward slope in terms of page counts.  I remember when The Lord of the Rings was viewed as epic not only in concept but in length, with 481,103 words in the story  - not including the appendices - and now we have things like The Wheel of Time series, which clocks in at almost ten times the length at 4,410,036 words.

Stuff for Noobs: 13-25.

This is the second half of a list created as an alternative response to a WIRED article entitled The 23 Best Sci-Fi Books and Movies to Give to a Noob - here are numbers 13-25 on my version of the starter list. (Numbers 1-12 here.)

13. Farscape
The WIRED list suggested Firefly, but I'm going to go with Farscape.  Farscape has great aliens (courtesy of Henson Associates - these are not your father's Muppets, as the Oldsmobile commercials used to say) the scripts are just as clever and good (okay, all you Joss Whedon fans, just SIT DOWN) and the main characters are interesting and intriguing. Four seasons - and a pretty good follow-up movie, The Peacekeeper Wars* - to choose from.

14. Downbelow Station, by C.J. Cherryh
This 1982 Hugo Award-winning novel** is a taut dramatic political story of conflict and resolution. Orbital stations, giant warships, alien primitives, dueling empires, betrayal, tragedy, redemption, love. Questions?

15. Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card
This award-winning novel*** describes the training of Andrew Wiggin, known as Ender, to be a strategist and a commanding officer in an almost hopeless war against an alien menace which has only been defeated once in battle. The training is psychologically brutal and designed to break Ender if he show any sign of weakness or inadequacy - he may well be humanity's last chance to avoid extinction.

Ender is six. 

16. The Lathe of Heaven, by Ursula K. LeGuin
I really wanted to have a LeGuin novel in here.  The WIRED list suggests The Left Hand of Darkness, but I thought I'd go with a less challenging read. The Lathe of Heaven is the tale of one George Orr, who has a very simple problem:  his dreams can change reality.

17. The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman
The Forever War describes the realities of fighting across interstellar distances.  Published in 1974, just as America's intervention in Southeast Asia was coming to an end, this book is an intense condemnation of the ultimate futility of waging war.   Haldeman served as a combat engineer in Vietnam and received a Purple Heart, which gives his work a strong basis in experience and reality.  Students looking for a bonus mark can compare this novel with Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers, written in 1959, which glorifies exactly the same sort of situations that Haldeman disdains in The Forever War.

18. The Expanse series, by James S. A. Corey
The original three books: Leviathan Wakes, Caliban's War, Abaddon's Gate.  Good solid writing, strong characters, well thought out plot.  Also a Syfy series, but don't let that score against the books. The Syfy promo describes it as Game of Thrones in outer space - which it isn't. If anything on this list was going to have that title, it's number 14, Downbelow Station.

19. 2001: A Space Odyssey, by Arthur C. Clarke
Another tough call  - book or movie?

The novel was written in conjunction with the production of the movie version, and there's a certain chicken-and-egg aspect to the development of both, but the story as told in the book is certainly more approachable.  Clarke is one of the pillars of classic science fiction, and there were a lot of representative choices - but let's face it, 2001 has to be the best known.  Although, I don't know if the same can be said about the plot: enigmatic alien powers mold the development of humanity at its origin - and then they wait.****

20. Daybreak: 2250 AD, by Andre Norton
Andre Norton was one of the mainstays of my early introduction to science fiction.  My mother was a large fan of Norton's work, and both my sister and I have followed in her footsteps. (My sister more than me, to be honest.)  Norton's writing is quietly brilliant, her style understated but eloquent, and there's never an ill-chosen word.  I could recommend a dozen of her books without having to think, but let's go with Daybreak 2250 AD, written in 1952 - a good standalone example of her work.

21. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, by Robert A. Heinlein
Robert A. Heinlein was one of the Big Three of science fiction when I was growing up - the other two being Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov. Written in 1966, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is not Heinlein's best known novel - that prize would have to go to his 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange Land.  However, Stranger in a Strange Land is, well...a bit strange, and it's not the novel that I'd suggest to a noob as their first Heinlein read.

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress tells the story of Luna's fight for independence.  Established as a penal colony, the Moon has become a major supplier of grain to Earth, but the convicts and their descendants labour under an increasingly onerous yoke. I've always considered this book to be Heinlein's best, and a good introduction to his writing that would allow a curious reader to proceed in either chronological direction for his other work.

22. Blade Runner
Another keeper from the original WIRED listing, but a bit of an unusual one. Blade Runner is the story of Rick Deckard, played by Harrison Ford, who is tasked with hunting down a group of rogue androids. It's an oddly beautiful movie  - you'd expect anything directed by Ridley Scott to look good, but Blade Runner is full of almost surreal images and sequences.  Rutger Hauer, who plays android Roy Batty, delivers what may well be the best adlibbed speech in cinema history.

Blade Runner is based on a science fiction novel titled Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick, but the movie is only loose connected to Dick's slightly paranoid 1968 novel.  Regardless, the film went on to develop a life of its own, and the relative quality of the various cuts has been a hotly debated topic over the years since the 1982 commercial release of the original version.  The different cuts result in widely varying conclusions to the movie, so the curious viewer can actual pick and choose the ending they prefer. I have the feeling that there are seven or eight extant versions of this film.

23. In the Courts of the Crimson Kings, by S. M. Stirling
One of the most fun periods in science fiction is what I think of as the Planet Stories days, taken from the magazine of the same name that was published between 1939 and 1955. In the Planet Stories era, all the inner planets are habitable (for a given value of habitable) - Mercury is a searing rocky wasteland, Venus a primordial Jurassic jungle, and Mars is a dying planet, inhabited by the equally moribund remnants of an advanced society.

In the Courts of the Crimson Kings, written in 2008, is a cheerful homage to those innocent days. It's actually the second book set in an alternate reality where there is life on those other worlds, but it stands perfectly well all on its own, and it's a superb balancing act that combines an original view of a dying Mars with a wonderful evocation of Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter of Mars books, the Mars of Ray Bradbury, and the swashbuckling Martian stories of Leigh Brackett.

24. Captain America: The First Avenger
I'd like our noob to see a comic book movie.  Something like Guardians of the Galaxy is far more obviously science fiction than Steve Roger's transformation from 98 pound weakling to supersoldier, but the first Captain America movie is a more accessible entrée into the genre - and probably a better film. I'll admit that Iron Man was a very close alternative choice, but all that sort of second-guessing will appear in the Runners Up posting.

25. The War of the Worlds, by H. G. Wells
To conclude the list, let's go with the man who originates the genre of science fiction as we know it today: Herbert George Wells.  I wavered a bit on this one, The Time Traveller was a near second, but time has given The War of the Worlds a sort of charming Victorian steampunk aura. It's also a telling reversal of the manner in which British Imperialism dealt with less technologically advanced societies, and, usefully, a quick read - at this point my noob is going to be a bit worn out. 

And that's my 25 items. I've spread it out over almost the entire history of the genre,and tried to mix in film, television and the written word.  If any noobs do end up reading this posting and its predecessor, good luck!  I hope you enjoy at least some of the suggestions I've made.

And now, on to my next list, Teen Stars from the 80s: How Do They Look Today?

- Sid

* A GREAT title, in my opinion.

**  To be completely accurate, published in 1981, won the award in 1982.

*** Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1985, Hugo for Best Novel in 1986.  Why are the Hugos a year out of sync?

**** This may be a little too mysterious, but I'm going to let the existing reputation of the story carry the weight of this one.

A Walk In The Dark.

Very unreasonably, his intelligence told him, he began to think how horrible it would be if anything happened now, so near the end of the journey. He kept the worst of his fears at bay for a while, hoping desperately that the lights of the city would soon reappear.

Arthur C. Clarke, A Walk in the Dark, Thrilling Wonder Stories, August 1950

I'm currently in the middle of a five-day visit to Palm Desert with my girlfriend Karli and her squad in order to celebrate her birthday.  Sadly, as sometimes happens during this sort of trip, I woke up at 3:00 AM feeling a bit under the weather - the result of a little too much alcohol* and a few too many nachos.

Fortunately, experience has taught me a very simple cure for the times when I feel like this: go for a long walk, preferably in cold weather.  So I quietly climbed out of bed, dressed, made my way down the hallway, and crept out the front door into the chilly desert night.

An hour long tour of El Paseo Drive left me feeling much better, and I decided it was time to go back to bed before Karli started to worry.

However, Palm Desert is one of those towns which doesn't really see a lot of pedestrians, and as such the city fathers haven't invested too much of their budget in street lighting.  It's rare that any city street is completely black, but once off the main thoroughfares of Palm Desert, it was certainly dark enough to make it difficult to navigate.

As I made my way down the unlit street to the rental home, I was unfortunately reminded of a short story by Arthur C. Clarke in which a lone traveller is attempting to make his way on foot through the night to the planet's spaceport, only to have his flashlight stop working.  Forced to proceed in pitch black conditions, he is unable to stop thinking about the stories that the colonists had told him regarding a mysterious creature that prowls the region around the colony - a creature unseen by human eyes, but whose presence is hinted at by evidence such as rocks scarred as if by the sharpening of gigantic claws or talons.

He finally reaches a point where he can see the lights of the port, with just a small detour back into the night before he reaches his destination.  Relieved, and a little embarrassed by his fears, he confidently walks down in the dark valley that will take him out of the light.

Only to hear the rattle of monstrous claws in the darkness ahead of him.

Trust me, these are the moments when I wish I had less of a memory for science fiction plot lines.

- Sid

* It doesn't take a lot of alcohol for this to happen to me - or to most of my siblings.  Apparently it has something to do with liver functions and our ability to metabolize alcohol.

"Twas the night before Christmas."

In spite of its religious origins, Christmas has ended up as the ultimate fantasy holiday, an odd blend of wish fulfillment, time travel and good will. Santa Claus somehow fills innumerable stockings overnight - but how? Tachyon reindeer? Teleportation technology? Cloning? Sorry, no, none of those options are ever mentioned, which indicates that the tradition of Saint Nick defies scientific explanation. NORAD's annual announcements about Santa's progress around the globe just seem wrong, somehow - one would expect that Kris Kringle's exploits are taking place on a plane removed from that of radar and tracking satellites.

The holiday season occupies an interesting role in the SF/fantasy canon, with several prominent examples to demonstrate the extremes. An often overlooked (or miscategorized) example is Dicken's A Christmas Carol, a ghost story mixed with time travel that sets the standard for the concept, as witnessed by the countless adaptations and reworkings of the character of Scrooge and his Christmas Eve experience. Doctor Who pays tribute to Dickens' contribution in the episode "The Unquiet Dead", which coincidentally takes place on Christmas Eve, 1869. And, given C. S. Lewis' almost militant Christianity, it's always surprised me a little that Father Christmas makes an appearance in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, although to be fair the history of the original Saint Nicholas is a deeply Christian one.

The oddest entry in the canon would have to be Harlan Ellison's short story, "Santa Claus versus S.P.I.D.E.R", which portrays Santa Claus as a James Bond-influenced superspy whose red suit makes him into a walking armoury. The second oddest may be Clive Barker's "The Yattering and Jack", wherein a demon reanimates the Christmas turkey as it sizzles in the oven. (Anyone planning to cook a turkey tomorrow, imagine if the damn thing battered its way out of the oven and attacked you.) H. P. Lovecraft's "The Festival", a quietly horrifying description of "traditional" holiday celebrations, runs a close third.

Terry Pratchett gives us one of the best long-form tributes to the season in Hogfather, which deals with the Discworld version of Santa Claus. It's easy to take Pratchett's pork-dispensing character as a simple parody, but, as with all of Pratchett's creations, the underlying elements that he references provide a fascinating perspective on the evolution of mythic figures.

However, when I started this posting, one work came immediately to mind as the most memorable seasonal piece: Arthur C. Clarke's short story, "The Star", an uncharacteristically somber piece for Clarke. A Jesuit scientist, part of an expedition to the Phoenix Nebula, discovers that the supernova which produced the nebula destroyed a civilization not unlike our own. His other discovery shakes his faith:

There can be no reasonal doubt: the ancient mystery is solved at last. Yet, oh God, there were so many stars you could have used. What was the need to give these people to the fire, that the symbol of their passing might shine above Bethlehem?

- Sid

Space Station One (NASA, zero.)

A few minutes later, he caught his first glimpse of Space Station One, only a few miles away. The sunlight glinted and sparkled from the polished metal surfaces of the slowly revolving, three-hundred-yard diameter disk. Not far away, drifting in the same orbit, was a swept-back Titov-V spaceplane, and close to that an almost spherical Aries-1B, the workhorse of space, with the four stubby legs of its lunar-landing shock absorbers jutting from one side.

- Arthur C. Clarke, 2001: A Space Odyssey

Having finished ranting about the exchange rate as it applies to the book publishing community, back to the topic at hand: efficient strategies for the exploration of space.

In the process of researching this post, I read what I can only describe as "misguided" position statements from NASA and the US Government. ("Damn fool" is probably a better modifier than "misguided", but let's be polite.) NASA's long term plan sounds positive on the face of things: more missions to the Moon, and an eventual mission to Mars - all well and good. Sadly, the manner in which they plan to achieve these goals is, by their own admission, "Apollo on steroids".

Credit where credit is due: the Apollo missions were successful, albeit, as Terry Pratchett would say, for a given value of "successful". Yes, they successfully put a man on the Moon. If their goal had been to kill a mosquito, their equivalent response would have been to put said mosquito on a concrete wall and ram it with a car: true, the mosquito is dead, but the method relies heavily upon brute force and is not repeatable, at least not with the same car. (And after a few mosquitos, the bill for cars starts to add up, and people start asking why you're killing the mosquito in the first place, but let's not overwork the metaphor.)

Now, let's look at space exploration not from the point of view of counting coup over other countries, which was the real bottom line of the Apollo missions, but as a logical process.

The flaw in the NASA approach as used in the Apollo missions is that it was an approach designed to win a race, and as such was structured to achieve its goal quickly - which was sensible, that's how races are won. What it was not structured for was efficiency or repeatability: every time a group of astronauts did the round trip, when they were finished there was nothing usable left of their rocket, shuttle or lander - to make another trip it was necessary to build another complete spaceship.

In designing an efficient space program, the first step has to be the creation of a logical division based on functionality. The requirements for a ship that needs to get from ground level to vacuum and zero gravity are entirely different than the requirements for a ship that needs to travel from point to point in vacuum and zero or near-zero gravity. And, logically, the requirements for a ship to make extended exploratory trips are different from both of those.

Ah, but if you posit three different types of ships, how do you go about making the transition from one to another? At this point, the fourth "need" takes us to the key to an efficient space program: the space station.

A space station (or several space stations) makes the whole process of space exploration so much simpler. It provides a convenient environment for transferring from one type of ship to another, as well as providing a work platform to build and repair the ships that only operate in vacuum. An orbital platform becomes a fuel depot, an emergency shelter, a repair garage, a ship hangar, a communications relay, a research lab, an observatory, and a just plain shirtsleeve refuge in the midst of a hostile environment. Science fiction is full of space stations, which perform all of those functions and more, because they're just so damn handy for so many reasons.

Looking at my library, I'm spoiled for choices of fictional examples of achievable space travel, but in the next post we'll see how things are viewed by the man whom I think of as the real authority in this area, the man who has arguably spent more time thinking about how space travel would really work than anyone else: Sir Arthur C. Clarke.

- Sid

FREE SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY!! (Now that I have your attention...)

Short fiction has always been the backbone of science fiction and fantasy, providing both an ongoing entry point for new authors and a sandbox for established writers to play in - not to mention writers such as Harlan Ellison whose careers were almost entirely based around their short story output.* 

As such, I have found that one of my favourite parts of the monthly Reactor newsletter has been their short story offerings, which have been consistently readable and have introduced me to some new authors, such as Lavie Tidhar and A. T. Greenblatt.

As the year comes to an end, Reactor has released an eBook edition of their best stories from 2024:

https://reactormag.com/download-some-of-the-best-from-reactor-2024-edition/ 

You can also download bundles of their fiction by months, or read any of the stories individually online:

https://reactormag.com/all-of-reactors-short-fiction-in-2024/

And it's all free, very hard to beat free.

Enjoy!

- Sid

* Science fiction and fantasy writers tend to be tagged by their best known novel, regardless of their other output - you know, that part in the review where it says, "Arthur C. Clarke, author of 2001..."  For Ellison, although he did produce some long form work, his signature piece is probably his 1967 short story I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, or possibly A Boy and His Dog. (Maybe The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World?)

"This time for sure!"

Many are my names in many countries, he said. Mithrandir among the Elves, Tharkûn to the Dwarves, Olórin I was in my youth in the West that is forgotten, in the South Incánus, in the North Gandalf; to the East I go not.

Faramir quoting Gandalf, The Two Towers

There's a longstanding tradition of pubs and bars in science fiction and fantasy:  Arthur C. Clarke's White Hart, deCamp and Pratt's Gavagan's Bar, Spider Robinson and Callahan's Crosstime Saloon, the Vulgar Unicorn, Munden's, The Mended Drum (and The Busted Drum), The Prancing Pony, Chalmun's Cantina, and so on.  For a long time the village tavern was a ubiquitous starting point for Dungeons and Dragons adventures, to the point where it's now a fantasy cliché to start a quest in a pub.

The Storm Crow Tavern, which opened here in Vancouver last month, is in some ways a tribute to this tradition, as well as simply offering a geek/nerd alternative to sports bars and night clubs.  The bar describes itself as "An Olde Medievalle Taverne with rayguns", so obviously I've been curious to see what they have to offer.

I've mentioned my first unsuccessful attempt at visiting The Storm Crow, but, fool me once - this time I check their Twitter™ and Facebook™ pages to make sure that they're open for business. Reassured by both, once again I put on an appropriate Doctor Who t-shirt, and head off to 1305 Commercial Drive.  No problems this time - the doors are unlocked, and I head inside and find myself a seat in the corner. Based on my previous comments about wanting to find a bar that would show Star Wars in lieu of the Stanley Cup, I'm amused to see that I've shown up exactly in time for the start of A New Hope.

The decor is a mix of longsword and laser: in addition to the battle axes and shields, there's an array of ray guns and blasters underneath a Boba Fett helmet and a Cyberman mask*, and the tattered war banners are balanced by a selection of Colonial and Dalek propaganda posters. There's also a comprehensive library of vintage 1980s Choose Your Own Adventure books.

The lager on tap is a locally brewed Howe Sound product, which I order with a bit of caution, having had a couple of dubious experiences with their brewing. The menu isn't very elaborate, but all the meals are six dollars, which is intriguing.  I order the prime rib sandwich with fries - it shows up quickly, it's a good size for the price, and it's quite tasty, although next time I'll ask for well done fries, I prefer mine more on the crispy side.

The bar's wireless password is "mithrandir", and to my amusement the waitress pronounces it like a foreign word and slowly and carefully spells it for me even though I'm already typing it in. I suspect that she hasn't been hired based on her genre background, which, when you think about it, may not be a bad thing.  Logically you want waitresses who can reliably sort out beverage orders for a table of eight rather than list all of Gandalf's pseudonyms.

The place is empty when I arrive, but then very few bars are busy at 3:00 on Thursday afternoon. As time goes on, people begin to trickle in. Notable guests are a woman in steampunk attire, another patron wearing a Sith Inside t-shirt, and a table of confused German tourists who are suffering from the mistaken belief that the banners and battle axes are evidence of a Teutonic bar. Interestingly, as the place starts to fill up, a lot of the clientele are female. Female geeks have become a solid part of the community, and I think it's a positive sign that the bar has a high female ratio.

Because I have a lengthy bus trip home, I pay a visit to the little orc's room on the way out - literally, the men's room being distinguished by a World of Warcraft Orc action figure on the door, and the ladies' by a female Wood Elf.

Overall, I quite liked The Storm Crow, and will certainly go back to help support it as opportunity allows. I realize that my midafternoon weekday visit wasn't really a fair evaluation of a bar like this, in that, as with any social environment, it will be defined by its patrons. I suspect that on a busy night, when the gaming table is in use and the place is full of customers, the atmosphere is brilliant.

Ultimately, all of the bits and pieces of decoration are just window dressing, and I think that the reason for the sudden popularity of the bar is purely conceptual - the decor is almost irrelevant, it's the idea of announcing to the geek community that they have a place to go which will be responsible for the bar's success.

 - Sid

* By the way, Autocorrect on the iPad obviously needs some more work - it didn't recognize either one of these terms when I was taking notes on site.


October 1st update:  attempted another visit at lunch today in the company of co-worker and fellow geek Donovan, only to find out that they were closed again.  Checked Facebook™ and discovered that apparently they'll be closed on Mondays going forward.  This gives them a score of 1/3 so far, which is not great.

Guys, I like your pub, but honestly, two words:  POSTED HOURS.

Recommended Reading.

Last night, the Evil Dr. Smith and I went out for dinner with my friend Alan and his new female companion Karli.  Alan is in the process of moving to Vancouver from Toronto, and has shown the foresight to line up an apartment and a girlfriend in a single visit.

Given that Alan is not a great fan of literature himself, I was pleased to discover that Karli is a reader. (She's also extremely good looking and apparently quite smart - I hope Alan's apartment is as nice.) As part of our conversation, we were discussing the trials and tribulations of long-distance moving, and I mentioned that my move to the West Coast was a little more expensive than Laurie's due to factors like my extensive library. When pressed, I confessed to my long term addiction to science fiction and fantasy.

As sometimes happens when people find out that I'm a geek, I was asked what science fiction novel I’d recommend - Karli had already explained that her literary interests are not tagged to a particular genre. 

I initially went with Dune, by Frank Herbert, which is a superb novel in spite of unfortunate adaptations to both movie and miniseries, but settled on Larry Niven’s Ringworld instead.

We finished dinner, we paid the bill, we shook hands and hugged and so forth, and went on our separate ways.  When I finally got home, I made a cup of tea, came into my study, sat down, stared at my books, and brooded for a while. 

Ringworld is not a bad recommendation when put on the spot over dinner. It deals with aliens, space travel, extended life, teleportation booths, and a plethora of other familiar SF tropes.  The massive scale of the Ringworld itself illustrates the sense of wonder and imagination which typifies the best of hard SF, and the adventures that Louis Wu and his motley crew experience there are thought-provoking, exciting, and entertaining.  It’s a clever book, and I think it’s easily accessible for non-fans.

All that being said, I feel that I’ve slighted any number of equally valid candidates for recommended reading: Ursula K. LeGuin’s The Left Hand of Darkness, The Dispossessed, or perhaps The Lathe of Heaven; The Lord of Light, by Roger Zelazny*, (maybe The Dream Master); Downbelow Station, by C. J. Cherryh; Babel-17, or Nova, by Samuel R. Delany, Lord Valentine’s Castle, by Robert Silverberg; Robert A. Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress; The Centauri Device, by M. John Harrison; Altered Carbon, by Richard Morgan, Hyperion, by Dan Simmons; Neuromancer, by William Gibson - and I'll stop there with ten authors.

Other science fiction fans (including my sister) will read this list and immediately voice their objections.

"What about Stranger in a Strange Land?"

"There’s no Clarke!"

"There’s no Asimov!"

"Where's Douglas Adams!  Or Piers Anthony!"

"Peter Hamilton's really good!"

"What about Lovecraft?"

"How could you skip Harlan Ellison?"

And they would be completely correct - the books listed above are in no way intended to explore the complete range of science fiction, and I could double those names in two minutes.

Then what does that list represent? 

The authors I’ve listed above are the ones that captured me with their imagination, style and skill, in books that I've returned to again and again over the years.  It's a bit sloped toward the 80s, when I was really hitting my stride as a fan, but includes older and new fiction as well.  Some of them are not as high profile - I suspect that M. John Harrison is a new name to some fans reading this - and the books I've listed aren't always the best known for those authors.  But they are all exceptional examples of writing talent, regardless of their genre, and I would unhesitatingly recommend all of them in a heartbeat.

And, in conclusion, I have to apologize.  I've always said that I didn't want to do lists here, everyone does lists, and now I've done one.  In my defense, I held out for almost eight years, so I don't feel I've betrayed my principles by too much.

- Sid

* Both these authors are equally at home with fantasy or science fiction, but Karli’s original question was for a science fiction recommendation, so I’m restricting myself to SF.  Although, really, with Roger Zelazny it's sometimes hard to tell.

The Permanent Floating Riot Club.

Well, it seems that there are people who like riots. 

Larry Niven, Flash Crowd

One of the most difficult things for a science fiction author to do is to extrapolate all the possible end results of an innovation in technology.  As an example, a good science fiction writer in 1930 might have successfully anticipated the eventual mass acceptance of the motorcar, and probably seen the inevitable need for freeways and gas stations that would result. An extra-ordinary 30s SF author would have also projected traffic jams, parking tickets, gas wars, road rage, and six-dollar-an-hour parking meters.

Science fiction and fantasy author Larry Niven has always been very good at exactly that sort of if-this-goes-on extrapolation.  Niven's semi-organized Known Space future includes, among other things, the invention of the teleportation booth, and Niven beautifully explores the various effects that such an invention would have on our culture. This exploration includes the disturbing phenomenon of the "flash crowd", which in his stories is portrayed as something far too close to what Vancouver experienced last Wednesday after the Canucks lost Game 7 of the playoffs.

Niven's stories have the advantage of instantaneous travel - people are able to be on the scene of a disturbance literally within seconds, ergo the title Flash Crowd for his first story dealing with this problem.  In Flash Crowd, a roving wireless cameraman reports a disturbance, which instantly makes its way to network distribution, leading to a instantaneous influx of viewers who happen to be curious, angry, or just plain bored enough to jump into the centre of a riot.

What Niven doesn't anticipate in his flash crowd scenario is the Internet - in other words, social media.*  When you think about it, between cell phones, texting, Facebook, blogs, and YouTube, how hard would it be to assemble a group of, say, five hundred people in relatively short order?  We don't have the advantages and disadvantages of teleportation booths, but the added ease with which news of an event can be disseminated makes up for the lack of being able to get there in fractions of a second.  (And apparently this is exactly what happened after the trouble started here:  people invited their friends to head downtown and join in the fun.)

More interestingly, Niven also anticipates a more disturbing aspect of riots:  the fact that some people like them.  In The Last Days of the Permanent Floating Riot Club, a followup to the original 1983 story, Niven described a group of criminals who specialize in taking advantage of flash crowds and the opportunities offered therein for theft and looting.  Disturbingly, Vancouver seems to have played host twice now to the Canadian equivalent:  black-masked anarchists, last seen causing trouble at an Olympics protest parade last February**.

However, if Niven fails to anticipate the Internet, he also fails to anticipate the other side of human nature.  The Facebook-organized volunteers who spent Thursday morning cleaning up Granville Street never make an appearance in any of his flash crowd scenarios, but let's be fair, "The Permanent Floating Kindness Club" doesn't have the same impact as a title for a story.

- Sid

* As with the Spanish Inquisition, no one expected the Internet, although I'm willing to perjure myself on that after a little research.  Maybe Arthur C. Clarke - there's a bit in 2001 which is pretty close.

** I have to be fair here.  Reports vary as to whether the instigators of the post-playoff rioting were part of the same group that caused the problems at the Olympic protest.  I suspect that the great majority of the rioters last week were just drunken idiots - but I also suspect that they may have been joiners rather than initiators.

And why are they throwing them at Russia?

Sooner or later, it was bound to happen. On 30 June 1908, Moscow escaped destruction by three hours and four thousand kilometres - a margin invisibly small by the standards of the universe. Again, on 12 February 1947, yet another Russian city had a still narrower escape, when the second great meteorite of the twentieth century detonated less than four hundred kilometres from Vladivostok, with an explosion rivalling that of the newly invented uranium bomb.

In those days, there was nothing that men could do to protect themselves against the last random shots in the cosmic bombardment that had once scarred the face of the Moon. The meteorites of 1908 and 1947 had struck uninhabited wilderness; but by the end of the twenty-​first century, there was no region left on Earth that could be safely used for celestial target practice. The human race had spread from pole to pole. And so, inevitably...

At 09.46 GMT on the morning of 11 September, in the exceptionally beautiful summer of the year 2077, most of the inhabitants of Europe saw a dazzling fireball appear in the eastern sky. Within seconds it was brighter than the sun, and as it moved across the heavens - at first in utter silence - it left behind it a churning column of dust and smoke.

Somewhere above Austria it began to disintegrate, producing a series of concussions so violent that more than a million people had their hearing permanently damaged. They were the lucky ones.

Moving at fifty kilometres a second, a thousand tons of rock and metal impacted on the plains of northern Italy, destroying in a few flaming moments the labour of centuries. The cities of Padua and Verona were wiped from the face of the earth; and the last glories of Venice sank for ever beneath the sea as the waters of the Adriatic came thundering landwards after the hammer-​blow from space.

Six hundred thousand people died, and the total damage was more than a trillion dollars. But the loss to art, to history, to science - to the whole human race, for the rest of time - was beyond all computation. It was as if a great war had been fought and lost in a single morning; and few could draw much pleasure from the fact that, as the dust of destruction slowly settled, for months the whole world witnessed the most splendid dawns and sunsets since Krakatoa.

After the initial shock, mankind reacted with a determination and a unity that no earlier age could have shown. Such a disaster, it was realized, might not occur again for a thousand years - but it might occur tomorrow. And the next time, the consequences could be even worse.

Very well; there would be no next time.

A hundred years earlier a much poorer world, with far feebler resources, had squandered its wealth attempting to destroy weapons launched, suicidally, by mankind against itself. The effort had never been successful, but the skills acquired then had not been forgotten. Now they could be used for a far nobler purpose, and on an infinitely vaster stage. No meteorite large enough to cause catastrophe would ever again be allowed to breach the defences of Earth.

So began Project SPACEGUARD. Fifty years later - and in a way that none of its designers could ever have anticipated - it justified its existence.

Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke

At approximately 9:20 on Friday, a meteoroid exploded over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk.  Estimates as to the object's exact size and weight vary - NASA's estimate is 17 meters in diameter and a weight of about ten metric tonnes.  Windows shattered,  buildings were damaged, and over a thousand people were injured, over one hundred of whom required hospitalization.

Coincidentally, the Chelyabinsk explosion took place sixteen hours before asteroid DA2012, 50 meters in diameter and 190,000 metric tonnes in weight, came within 27,000 kilometers of Earth, the closest recorded passage of an object of that size.  

I don't know who's tossing these things at us, but I have to think that eventually they're going to throw a strike.

- Sid

 

The New Fan.

(Contributed by Dorothy Hatto)

 
The other day I was talking to one of my friends who is into science fiction and was amazed to discover that she had never heard of Andre Norton, one of the founders of modern science fiction/fantasy.*

Now, my friend is going to Australia, and she takes books rather than her tablet to read. They weigh less in carry on and it's easier to read half a page or so if you have to wait. She suggested that I lend her one of my books to take along.

My brother Sid might be the only one to really empathize with the decision of which book to choose.  Andre Norton or Alice Mary Norton was writing science/fantasy books before it was popular for women to be in the genre. (Ergo the "Andre" of her name.) She wrote under a few other pseudonyms, all male - I don’t think she ever used her actual name in print, although I may be wrong about that.

She was born in 1912, started writing science fiction in the 1940s, and died in 2005, still collaborating with other writers.

So, which book do you choose out of the 300 or so titles that she wrote and co-wrote?

I took a couple of days to think about it and finally chose the same book that I think I read first. My mother owned Daybreak 2250 A.D. as an Ace double and I believe it was the first Andre Norton story I ever read. My current copy was printed in the 1970s and was 50 cents at the time. I have replaced it twice** and also inherited my mother's Ace Double for my collection.

I will have to wait till my friend gets back to see if she liked it, but she does like Anne McCaffrey books and their styles are similar. 

- Dorothy

* Along with H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Robert Silverberg, Hugo Gernsbach, Arthur C. Clarke, and a few I have probably forgotten.

** I always like to get the used copies as the story has changed a bit every time it was published.

Postscript
I completely agree with Dorothy: anyone with a serious interest in science fiction or fantasy should be aware of Ms. Norton's contributions to the two genres.  Andre Norton was one of those rare authors whose mastery of tone and vocabulary was complete and flawless.  Her writing style was formal and dignified, and matched itself perfectly to the stories which she crafted with such consummate skill.

Hmmmm...but which one to lend to a first time reader? Daybreak 2250 A.D., with its outcast post-apocalyptic hero (and his cat) is certainly a good choice in terms of a characteristic novel.  I might have gone with The Time Traders, or Witch World, or Year of the Unicorn (which starts a whole series of connected novels).  The Beast Master?  Star Rangers? Sargasso of Space?  The Crossroads of Time? As my sister suggests, a difficult choice due to the uniform excellence of Andre Norton's writing.

Thanks very much for the posting, Dorothy!

- Sid

Golden Years.

 "I first read science fiction in the old British Chum annual when I was about 12 years old."

A. E. Van Vogt, The Weinberg Interview

From a scholarly perspective, the Golden Age of Science Fiction is considered to run from 1938 to 1946, at least in the United States, and at least according to Wikipedia.

However, there's an alternate position. Reactor Mag (née tor.com) recently reminded us that many years ago, SF fan Peter Scott Graham commented that "The golden age of science fiction is 12."  (Alternate versions cite 13, but still.)*  It feels like one of those facile statements that would look good on a t-shirt, but it's easy to see the point that Mr. Graham was making.

Glibness aside, let's for a moment take it as a definitive measurement, in terms of what novels came out in 1973, when I was 12?  To be fair to all parties, we'll let the clock run to the end of 1974, since my birthday is in September.

A little research reveals a surprisingly prestigious lineup. 

1973 saw the publication of the following classic novels, featuring some of the most famous science fiction authors, almost all of which have a place in my little library at home:

• The Man Who Folded Himself, by David Gerrold
• Bloodhype, by Alan Dean Foster
• Crash, by J. G. Ballard
• Hiero's Journey, by Sterling E. Lanier
• The People of the Wind, by Poul Anderson
• Protector, by Larry Niven
• Rendezvous With Rama, by Arthur C. Clarke (which won the Hugo Award for Best Novel)
  
• Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers, by Harry Harrison
• Time Enough for Love, by Robert A. Heinlein
• To Die in Italbar, by Roger Zelazny
• Sky Pirates of Callisto, by Terry Carr
• And a trio of Antares/Scorpio novels: The Suns of Scorpio, Swordships of Scorpio, and Warrior of Scorpio, by Kenneth Bulmer writing as Alan Burt Akers

1974 does just as well in terms of classics and well-known names:

• The Centauri Device, by M. John Harrison**
• Dhalgren, by Samuel R. Delaney
• The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. Le Guin (Hugo for Best Novel) ***
  
• The Fall of Chronopolis, by Barrington J. Bayley
  
• The Godwhale, by T. J. Bass
  
• The Land Leviathan, by Michael Moorcock
• Icerigger, by Alan Dean Foster
• The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman
• Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, by Philip K. Dick
• The Last Canadian, by William C. Heine
  
• The Mote in God's Eye, by Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven
  
• Inverted World, by Christopher Priest
  
• A Song for Lya, by George R. R. Martin
  
• And three more by Alan Burt Akers/Bulmer: Prince of Scorpio, Manhounds of Antares, and Arena of Antares****

It's a bit surprising to see that each of these lists covers a single year, it's such a wide-ranging selection of authors and styles.  Some of my favourite books are represented here, which certainly feels like proof of concept for the whole "golden-age-is-12" hypothesis - and, a bit sadly, it all makes me aware of the fact that it's been 50 years since I was 12, which puts me squarely in the silver age, at least in terms of hair colour.

- Sid

* There's a surprising amount of debate regarding this simple statement, which has been attributed to several people and several dates over the years.  Short answer, very probably Peter Scott Graham, and somewhat probably around 1960.

** Not well known, but definitely one of my top ten favourite books, along with his 1971 novel, The Pastel City.

*** And, AND, she also won best short story for The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas in 1973, another classic entry for the Golden Age score card.

**** If anyone is surprised to see six of these novels over a two year period, you probably haven't read any of them. They're enthusiastic pastiches of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Mars series that have an entertaining creative life of their own - they're probably not for everyone, but I have fond memories of discovering the series.  Honestly, I suspect that Kenneth Bulmer could knock one of them off in two or three months without breaking a sweat.