Searching for hope in a post-technological future
Celebrated science fiction writer Clifford D. Simak’s novel A Heritage of Stars was originally published in 1977. In 2015 it became available in e-book format from Open Road Media, along with many other Simak works. Simak is a master sci-fi visionary whose career spanned over half a century. A Heritage of Stars displays the high level of speculative creativity and quality storytelling indicative of Simak’s body of work, but still it’s not one of his most successful efforts.
The story takes place about two thousand years in the future. Earth is now a post-apocalyptic world in which mankind has reverted to barbarism. About 1500 years prior to the events of the story, humanity began to feel an intense hatred toward the technology they had created and the problems it had fostered—massive unemployment, depleted natural resources, environmental pollution, and oppressive, ungainly social, economic, and political systems. In a fit of worldwide rage, humans rebelled against their technology and destroyed it, along with most of the recorded knowledge of their machines and how they functioned. Thus, mankind reverted back to a primitive existence of nomadic hunting, subsistence farming, and tribal warfare. One bastion of civilization still holds out—the former University of Minnesota, where a band of peaceful citizens mostly practices potato farming but still maintains a respect for literacy. Thomas Cushing, one of the university’s inhabitants, comes across a millennium-old history that mentions a Place of Going to the Stars, suspected to be a launching pad for interstellar travel. Restless and curious, Cushing decides to leave the safety of the university, head west, and seek out this mythical site.
The novel starts out as a pretty good post-apocalyptic wilderness adventure, reminiscent of Jack London’s The Scarlet Plague. The saga of a lone explorer striking out into an unknown and dangerous world is always a compelling one. As the novel proceeds, however, it begins to veer further and further into the realm of fantasy. Though Simak tackles hard science concepts, the plot begins to follow the familiar fantasy formula that’s been used in everything from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz to The Lord of the Rings. Cushing picks up a band of misfits, each of which has a special power, and together they make a pilgrimage to a lost city, encountering scary monsters along the way. A Heritage of Stars deals with a number of recurring Simak themes, including intelligent plants, robots struggling to find their place in the world, and mankind’s relationship to those robots. The way in which Simak treats these topics in this novel, however, feels less scientifically sound and more poetically imaginative. Even the very premise upon which the plot is built, the revolt against technology, seems too unrealistic the way he’s handled it here.
I recently read I Am Crying All Inside and Other Stories: The Complete Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak, Volume 1 and found it to be an excellent collection of short stories and novellas. Simak is truly a master of the short form narrative. This longer work, however, feels like a short story that’s been drawn out far too long. Even though it overstays its welcome, the ending feels half-baked, as if left open for a sequel that would never come. Despite my complaints, this is not a bad book. I was engaged by Cushing’s journey and eager to see its resolution. However, A Heritage of Stars is merely an OK book by a great author. Compared to Simak’s other works, it’s nothing special, but compared to 90% of the science fiction out there, it still holds up pretty well.
If you liked this review, please follow the link below to Amazon.com and give me a “helpful” vote. Thank you.
https://www.amazon.com/review/R2GLX9FUVYQSDK/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm
More clever than smart
Although far from a household name these days, Fantômas was all the rage 100 years ago, and he enjoyed popularity in books, movies, and comics for most of the 20th century. Created by French authors Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre, the character’s debut, simply title Fantômas, was published in 1911. Fantômas is a legendary criminal and a master of disguise. He seems to be patterned after Arsène Lupin, the gentleman thief created by Maurice Leblanc a few years earlier. However, Fantômas ups the ante in sheer sinisterness. Like his predecessor, Fantômas is an expert thief, but unlike Lupin, he is also a brutal murderer. He kills not only for personal gain, but also because he enjoys it. No one is sure what Fantômas looks like or what alias or persona he will assume next. In this first book, even his very existence is in doubt.
One true believer is Inspector Juve, a police detective tasked with solving a string of murders and thefts that may or may not have been committed by this mysterious villain. Inspector Juve has kept track of Fantômas’s exploits over the years, but never before has he gotten so close to capturing this elusive killer. Juve is the closest thing the novel has to a protagonist, but the authors jump around to different members of the ensemble cast in each chapter. In a typical murder mystery, the author provides his audience with clues, challenging the astute reader to figure out the puzzle. Allain and Souvestre, on the other hand, frustratingly conceal the clues from you as well. Because the reader doesn’t spend a lot of time with Juve, he’s always showing up armed with knowledge the reader couldn’t possibly have foreseen. A typical chapter in the book opens with a pair or more of unfamiliar characters. They engage in a protracted dialogue in which very little is revealed, then at the end of the chapter you find out one or two of them were so-and-so in disguise. There are three or four masters of disguise in the book—some good, some bad. Another oft-used tactic is to refer to a character simply as “a man” and then after 20 minutes of reading you find out that man was Juve or some other previously introduced character. Games such as these get annoying after a while, and the plot defies belief more times than is pardonable. It’s so easy to fool someone with a disguise in this book, you’d think they were wearing the laser-cut latex masks from Mission Impossible.
Despite all the confusion and obfuscation, the story ends up pretty much just how you would expect. When Juve points out the guilty party, it’s no shock. You’d think that after all the twists and turns Allain and Souvestre would want to wrap it up with a surprise ending, but no. Over the course of the book, the authors craft an intricate web of relationships between the disparate cast of characters, but the ultimate revelation of the guilty part is anticlimactic. The novel then ends with an incredibly convenient contrivance that leaves the door open for a sequel.
Given the international popularity of Fantômas, I expected more. Perhaps this sort of thing plays better on film, because I found the debut novel quite disappointing. It’s entertaining at first, but by the end I was glad to be done with it. Fantômas and I may cross paths again someday, but for now I think I’ll go back to Arsène Lupin.
If you liked this review, please follow the link below to Amazon.com and give me a “helpful” vote. Thank you.
http://www.amazon.com/review/R3G5ODDP2U6AYP/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm
To compute or not to compute?
Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine, published in 1958, is the third novel in the Danny Dunn series by Jay Williams and Raymond Abrashkin. Danny is an adolescent boy who lives with the scientist Professor Bullfinch, for whom Danny’s mother serves as housekeeper. In each book Danny and his sidekick Joe co-opt some invention of the Professor’s and use it to get in and out of trouble. This time the theme is computer science, as the boys get their hands on MINIAC, a computer that Bullfinch is developing for the government.
In the first chapter of this third installment, Williams and Abrashkin introduce the recurring character of Irene Miller, who has just moved into the house next door. Like Danny, she is scientifically minded and intelligent beyond her years. She and Danny make fast friends, much to the chagrin of Joe, who feels he’s losing his best friend. It was smart of the authors to introduce a female character, thus creating a role model for girls as Danny is for boys. Irene proves that anything boys can do girls can do too, and also serves as a voice of reason in response to some of Danny’s cockamamie schemes. Joe expresses his disgruntlement over Irene’s arrival with utterances like “Dames! Who needs ‘em! Nothing but trouble.” While everything works out OK in the end, of course, I hope my sons don’t take to spouting anti-feminist rhetoric in the slang terms of the ‘50s. My 8 year old found the term “dames” to be particularly hilarious.
While Professor Bullfinch is away, Danny comes up with the idea of using the computer to complete his homework and convinces his two companions to go along with his plan. The authors make it clear to young readers that the computer is not a magic box that solves all your problems for you. A computer can only do what people tell it to do. So Danny and his friends have to program the machine, loading it with information before they can extract the answers to their homework assignments. Contrary to Danny’s plans, he thus ends up doing more homework than he was doing before. When Danny’s teacher finds out that he’s using the computer, he has a debate with her about digital ethics. The computer, he insists, is just another tool, like a textbook or slide rule, and why shouldn’t he use what resources are available to him? His teacher, on the other hand, is afraid it will hinder his learning. The discussion of such issues, however elementary, are still relevant to today’s digitally saturated kids who may wonder why studying is even necessary when you can just Google everything.
These books were originally intended for junior high-age readers, but due to the antiquated technology and obvious moral lessons, these days that demographic will probably find them painfully corny. The books will, however, appeal to younger readers with an avid interest in science. I read them with my two boys, who both loved the first book, Danny Dunn and the Anti-Gravity Paint. They were split on this volume. My 6 year old lost interest halfway through, but my 8 year old was all-in until the very end. In my opinion, this is not one of Danny’s more exciting adventures, especially since computers have become so ubiquitous. Nevertheless, like all of the books in the series, it’s good, solid, entertaining fare for young readers.
If you liked this review, please follow the link below to Amazon.com and give me a “helpful” vote. Thank you.
http://www.amazon.com/review/R3A50F7CFA20PQ/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm
Searching for a reason to believe
Barabbas, a novel by Swedish author Pär Lagerkvist, was published in 1950. The following year Lagerkvist was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, due in no small part to the critical acclaim this book received. The novel is based on the biblical story of Barabbas, who is briefly mentioned in each of the four Gospels. In the time of Christ, it was customary to pardon one prisoner during the holiday of Passover. The Roman prefect, Pontius Pilate, gives the people of Jerusalem the choice of whom to set free. They choose Barabbas, a convicted thief and murderer, leaving Jesus of Nazareth to be crucified.
Lagerkvist’s novel begins with the crucifixion of Christ. Barabbas, a free man, witnesses the event, and can hardly believe his good fortune at having escaped the fate of the man who is dying before him. He knows little about Christ or his teachings, but he finds the man strangely fascinating. Barabbas is tormented by the nagging thought that he should have been the one to die. He undergoes a drastic personality change, no longer enjoying wine, women, and theft as he used to. He seeks out information on Christ, and makes attempts to learn about the Christian faith, but he is not welcomed among the Christians. In many ways Barabbas is incapable of faith or religion. This is not a simple repentant-man-turns-over-a-new-leaf story, but something far more complex.
Having seen the 1961 film adaptation starring Anthony Quinn and Jack Palance, I approached the novel with some pre-conceived notions. Overall, the film is faithful to the general tone and message of the book, but it augments Barabbas’s interior conflict with sword-and-sandal action scenes designed to entertain. In the movie, Barabbas is trained to be a gladiator, but nothing like that occurs in the book. The Jack Palance character doesn’t even exist in Lagerkvist’s novel, and he wouldn’t really belong in it. If adapted for film today, Barabbas would be an introspective art-house indie film rather than an epic blockbuster.
What makes the novel so powerful is the fact that it can be appreciated from either a religious or secular perspective. Devout Christians will likely gravitate toward the novel’s examination of faith and find meaning in its underlying morality. Irreligious readers, however, can approach the book as a historical novel. Lagerkvist’s Jerusalem of two millennia ago is a free market of competing gods and prophets. Everyone is looking for something or someone to believe in and a sense of belonging. Rumors of Christ’s divinity and news of his death spread not like wildfire but in fits and starts, through second-hand testimony and overheard whispering in the streets. This is a far cry from the glorified depictions of early Christianity in romantic novels like Lew Wallace’s Ben-Hur or Henryk Sienkiewicz’s Quo Vadis. Lagerkvist doesn’t even take a stand on whether Christ was the divine son of God or just a wise philosopher punished for his revolutionary teachings. He leaves that for the reader to decide, and chooses instead to focus on the faith of the followers. Despite its biblical setting, Barabbas is a modernist, psychological novel that explores the sort of existential themes one might find in a work by Albert Camus. Barabbas’s quest can be seen as analogous to modern man searching for meaning in an empty life.
Barabbas is a brief book that can probably be read in its entirety in under two hours. Nevertheless, it is a great work of literature, filled with stark, moving scenes that will likely stick with this reader for a long time to come.
If you liked this review, please follow the link below to Amazon.com and give me a “helpful” vote. Thank you.
https://www.amazon.com/review/R28ZKIRDY6DOJO/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm
Lanny Budd’s Spanish Civil War
Wide is the Gate, published in 1943, is the fourth novel in Upton Sinclair’s Lanny Budd series. In the second novel, Between Two Worlds, Lanny survived a scary encounter with Italian Fascism. In the third novel, Dragon’s Teeth, he came face-to-face with the Nazis. In this fourth book, both menaces are back and on the rise, while a new threat is added to the mix: Spanish dictator-to-be Francisco Franco and his right-wing Nationalists. Through the lens of Lanny’s leftist idealism, Sinclair examines the political turmoil taking place in Europe from 1934 to 1937 and illuminates crucial events leading up to the Second World War.
Lanny returns to Germany and once again meets with Adolph Hitler, with whom he rubbed elbows in the last novel. This time around, Lanny is surprised to find that his wife Irma is quite sympathetic to the Fuhrer’s politics. One of the great benefits of this series is that it enlightens us as to how such a madman ever could have come to power in the first place. It is easy for us now to look back on Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco as evil monsters, but the fact is they were supported by many, Americans included, who saw their Fascist movements as the magic bullet that would save the world from socialism. It’s a valuable lesson to bear in mind as we continue to see right-wing politicians play upon xenophobic fears to advance their agendas. Needless to say, Lanny and Irma don’t see eye to eye on many matters, and their difference of political opinion begins to wear on their relationship. Lanny starts keeping secrets from his wife as he offers his assistance to Trudi Schultz, a Jewish artist working for the resistance movement against the Nazis in Germany.
While the first half of the book is dominated by Lanny’s marital woes, the second half focuses largely on the Spanish Civil War. Lanny travels to Spain to purchase some paintings, and ends up getting caught in the crossfire between the Loyalist forces of the democratically elected leftist government and the Nationalist forces of Franco supported by Italy and Germany. Sinclair goes into a great deal of detail regarding the progression of the territorial struggle between the opposing armies. This historical context is combined with Lanny’s man-on-the-street perspective of the chaos of war—sometimes comic, sometimes tragic. As is typical of the series, the book culminates in a perilous mission for Lanny to undertake. Though exciting, the ending is a bit too similar to that of the previous novel, leaving the reader with the feeling that Wide is the Gate is somewhat of a watered-down version of Dragon’s Teeth.
Each volume in the Lanny Budd series has its share of disappointments, and this book is no exception. As usual, Sinclair spends hundreds of pages checking in with his gigantic ensemble cast before the plot gains any momentum. Once again, there are annoying digressions into the paranormal. Sinclair was fascinated by séances and the possibility of telepathy, so naturally his fictional hero must share this obsession, however inappropriate to the narrative at hand. Nevertheless, the shortcomings of each individual book are mitigated by the ambitiousness and epic scope of the series as a whole. The enormous cast of characters, meandering story, and intricate web of plot threads can be maddening at times, but after a while you just get sucked into Lanny’s world. The amount of historical detail Sinclair crams into every page is staggering, and his encyclopedic knowledge of world affairs is astonishing. If you’ve made it through the first three books, then you already know what I’m talking about and have probably decided to read on. Far be it from this Lanny Budd junkie to discourage you.
If you liked this review, please follow the link below to Amazon.com and give me a “helpful” vote. Thank you.
https://www.amazon.com/review/R2ZC3K72ANIT64/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm
Long-winded but worthwhile
George Eliot is best known for her novels of English country life, but this book set in Renaissance Florence just might be her magnum opus. Romola, Eliot’s fourth novel, was originally published in the pages of Cornhill Magazine from 1862 to 1863. The story opens in the year 1492. The title character, Romola de’ Bardi, is the daughter of a scholar who maintains a large library of classical texts. Romola assists her father, who is blind, with his studies, and in doing so has become an accomplished scholar in her own right. Tito Melema, a handsome young scholar from Greece, arrives in Florence after surviving a shipwreck. Romola’s father hires Tito to help him with his scholarly works, and soon a romance develops between the young man and woman. Tito is eager to establish himself as a figure of prominence in Florence, but events from his past come back to haunt him, threatening his newfound comfort. When Romola discovers too late that her husband is a man quite different from whom she thought he was, she struggles for independence from the confines of her marriage.
All this takes place against the backdrop of Florentine history, which at times Eliot lays on a little too thick. Just when you begin to get involved in the lives of the main characters, the author inserts another interminable barbershop conversation or tavern debate on politics. The supporting cast boasts some real historic personages, including Niccolò Machiavelli and Girolamo Savonarola. The latter dominates the latter half of the book as Eliot elevates him to protagonist status. Savonarola was a Dominican friar who championed a Christian reform movement that defied Pope Alexander VI. The religious battle between the pontiff and the heretic escalates into a political war, with the fate of Florence hanging in the balance. To some degree, all this social and political context influences the lives of the fictional characters, but Eliot overdoes it to the point of pedantry. It soon begins to feel like merely pointless, ostentatious flaunting of her encyclopedic knowledge of Florence and its history. The reader never cares about Savonarola the way he cares about the fictional characters, so the overwhelming presence of this heroic preacher whom Eliot so obviously admires becomes an unwelcome distraction from the better parts of the book.
When the narrative does follow Tito, Romola, or the ensemble supporting cast, however, the story is quite engaging. The Renaissance setting, archetypal characters, and classic themes of vengeance, loyalty, and integrity remind one of Victor Hugo’s great romantic works, in particular Notre-Dame de Paris (though Romola is not nearly as good). Yet in the authentically rendered psychology there’s an inkling of realism that foreshadows the naturalism of Emile Zola, as the characters are often slaves to their natures and driven by forces beyond their control.
Reading Romola was a long haul, and I was not completely enamored with it, but in the end I’m glad I read it and will take away from it memorable characters and scenes. I prefer Romola over the other books by Eliot that I have read—Silas Marner and The Mill on the Floss—perhaps because I just prefer Renaissance Italy to the Victorian English countryside. Eliot obviously enjoyed the departure from her typical milieu as well, as evidenced by the prodigious amount of research that must have gone into this at times overly erudite epic. Romola’s long-windedness may make it a difficult book to love, but its ambitiousness and intelligence make it an easy book to admire.
If you liked this review, please follow the link below to Amazon.com and give me a “helpful” vote. Thank you.
https://www.amazon.com/review/ROY03BCWZ7FHE/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm
A great source for “medium-old” books (and more)
As I’ve done once before and hope to do more of in the future, I'm devoting today’s post to one of my favorite publishers. Open Road Integrated Media was founded in 2009 by a former executive from HarperCollins. The company’s business model seems to be to buy up the electronic rights for previously published print books, both fiction and nonfiction, and rerelease them as e-books. It’s possible they may publish some first-run titles as well, as many of their authors are still alive and kicking. Their selection is wide, with over 10,000 titles now available, and their prices are always reasonable.
Open Road has a “daily deal” email blast called Early Bird Books, which I look forward to every day. If you haven't signed up for it, you should. Each day they offer about a half dozen different e-book titles for two or three bucks apiece. Buyer beware: the purpose behind such generosity is often to hook you on the first book in a series, as they have recently addicted me to Clifford D. Simak (see more on him below). Open Road publishes some e-book reprints of public domain classics, which they sell for 99 cents and often give away, but I prefer to just get those for free from Project Gutenberg. What I like about Open Road is that they offer what I would call “medium-old” books; that is, books that are too old to be considered current literature, yet too young to be copyright free.
Below is a list of a few of Open Road’s authors that I’ve sampled, often by taking advantage of their Early Bird Books deals. This is barely the tip of the iceberg as far as what they offer, however, so go browse their website.
Authors
Poul Anderson (1926-2001)
Anderson was named a Grand Master of science fiction, and he also wrote historical novels. In the latter category, I have purchased The Golden Horn, book one in the Last Viking Trilogy, but haven’t read it yet. Open Road sells e-books of 33 Anderson novels, including the sci-fi Harvest of Stars trilogy and the King of Ys series, set in ancient Rome and cowritten with his wife Karen Anderson.
Pearl S. Buck (1892-1973)
It was Pearl S. Buck who first turned me on to Open Road. After years of looking for her novels in used book stores, it was a relief to find her works available in e-book format, often offered for very low prices. Open Road sells 29 e-books of Buck’s best-known works, mostly her historical novels of China. Old Books by Dead Guys has reviewed eight Buck books: East Wind: West Wind (1930), The Good Earth (1931), Sons (1933), A House Divided (1935), Dragon Seed (1942), The Promise (1943), China Flight (1943), and The Living Reed (1963). All but China Flight are available from Open Road. I have another handful waiting to be read, including This Proud Heart (1938) and Peony (1948). I hope Open Road eventually expands this line to include Buck’s more obscure, farther afield works. Perhaps there are rights issues standing in the way, or maybe those less critically acclaimed works just haven’t been deemed worthy of resurrection.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
Several collections of Einstein’s writings are published by Open Road, including his landmark work The Theory of Relativity. Books like Essays in Science and Essays in Humanism cover the wide breadth of Einstein’s thought. His personal convictions and idealism are revealed in The World As I See It and Out of My Later Years. A while back I picked these up for free, but they usually go for about ten dollars each.
James Grady (1949 - )
Grady is the author of the Condor series of spy novels, beginning with Six Days of the Condor (1974), upon which the Robert Redford film Three Days of the Condor was based. Open Road has it, along with four other Grady books, including Condor.net (2011), a recent sequel.
James Hilton (1900-1954)
Open Road offers e-books of six of Hilton’s novels, including his best known works Lost Horizon (1933) and Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1934). The former is a pretty good novel about a secret utopia in the mountains of Tibet.
Halldór Laxness (1902-1998)
Icelandic author Halldór Laxness won the 1955 Nobel Prize in Literature. Open Road only publishes one Laxness e-book, The Atom Station (1948), which I did not care for. The English-language rights for most of Laxness’s novels are held by Vintage Books.
Fritz Leiber (1910-1992)
Leiber is a Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author of science fiction, fantasy, and horror novels. He was a pioneer of the sword and sorcery genre with his Lankhmar series of “Swords” novels (e.g. Swords in the Mist [1968], Swords against Wizardry [1968]), which I remember reading in junior high. The series chronicles the adventures of two sword-wielding heroes called Fafhrd and The Gray Mouser, the former being a giant barbarian and the latter a diminutive thief. These books are kind of like Robert E. Howard’s Conan series, but with a better sense of humor. Open Road offers the complete Lankhmar Series, as well as several of Leiber’s science fiction and horror novels, including The Big Time (1961).
Katherine Anne Porter (1890-1980)
I had previously read all of Porter’s short stories and essay in the volume of her works published by the Library of America (2008). However, her only novel, Ship of Fools (1962), was not included in that volume, and I was able to pick it up in e-book format from Open Road for a couple of bucks. I was not too crazy about the book, to tell the truth, but I’m glad I had an opportunity to read it on my Kindle for a low price.
Dorothy L. Sayers (1893-1957)
Sayers is best known as the creator of the fictional detective Lord Peter Wimsey, one of the best sleuths in British literature this side of Sherlock Holmes. I have read the first book in the series, Whose Body? (1923), and gave it a favorable review. Open Road has all 15 of Sayers’ books in the series, which includes both novels and short story collections.
William Shatner (1931- )
Hardly a classic author, but when Shat’s TekWar (1989) came up as a daily deal, how could I resist? Though I’m a fan of pulpy sci-fi, I found it so-so at best. However, if you’re so inclined, Open Road offers e-books of all nine volumes in the Tek series.
Clifford D. Simak (1904-1988)
Simak is one of the most respected and highly decorated science fiction authors of the 20th century, having won multiple awards for sci-fi as well as fantasy and horror (and he wrote westerns!). I have encountered a few of his stories over the years, but never really knew the extent of his prolific career until I read the collection I Am Crying All Inside and Other Stories: The Complete Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak, Volume One (2015). This series, published by Open Road, is projected to amount to 14 volumes (the first six are available now). If the first book is any indication, this will be an excellent series. Open Road also publishes e-books of about 20 Simak novels, including his best-known work, City (1952).
Upton Sinclair (1878-1968)
Open Road recently released e-book editions of Sinclair’s 11-volume Lanny Budd series. Previously, one had to hunt for used copies of these books or pay $50 for a hardcover edition. Now they can be dowloaded in seconds for about $10 each. I can’t thank Open Road enough for finally making these books accessible to a broader audience. Lanny Budd is a wealthy American, living in France, who gets involved in many of the most important historical events of the early 20th century, all told through the lens of Sinclair’s leftist views. (Imagine if Howard Zinn wrote spy novels.) Fans of this series include Albert Einstein, George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, and Mahatma Gandhi. So far I have reviewed the first three volumes—World’s End (1940), Between Two Worlds (1941), Dragon’s Teeth (1942)—and I’m currently working on book four, Wide Is the Gate (1943). Open Road also offers inexpensive e-books of several other Sinclair novels, including The Jungle (1906) and King Coal (1917).
Philip Wylie (1902-1971)
I’ve only read one book by sci-fi author Wylie, Gladiator (1930). The bad news is Open Road doesn’t publish it, but the good new is it’s in the public domain, so you can read it for free. Open Road does, however publish seven of Wylie’s sci-fi novels, including The Disappearance (1951), which I hope to get to soon.
On their website, Open Road boasts that they publish over 2,000 authors. Granted, that includes the authors of many public domain works that you can get elsewhere. Even so, they’ve still got a sizable stable of talent in the “medium-old” books category. If only all of my favorite early 20th-century authors were so easy to find, purchase, and download. Keep up the good work, Open Road!
