Coming of age on a hollowed-out asteroid

The critic Algis Budrys said of this novel, "one feels a real shock as one realizes that Panshin after all has never been a girl growing up aboard a hollowed-out planetoid". He was praising Rite of Passage, Alexei Panshin's 1968 novel which went on to win the Nebula Award for Best Novel while up against tough competition.

A part of the first series of Ace Science Fiction Specials edited by Terry Carr, Rite of Passage is both a powerful coming of age story in a science fiction setting, and a challenging allegory for the world economic system.

Get in touch with a text message!

For more classic SF reviews and discussion, visit andyjohnson.xyz. To get free weekly classic SF updates, sign up here.

A tall tale of impossible products, mutants, and parallel Earths

Clifford D. Simak explores the parallel worlds theme to intriguing, energetic effect in his 1953 novel Ring Around the Sun. In this tall tale, originally serialised in Galaxy magazine, a young writer discovers that he has the power to visit many alternate versions of the Earth, each unsullied by human hands.

One of these worlds is already in use, however, to make seemingly impossible products that threaten to topple the world economy. The protagonist must discover the secrets about himself, and protect our world from devastating retaliation by the big business interests that depend on scarcity.

Get in touch with a text message!

For more classic SF reviews and discussion, visit andyjohnson.xyz. To get free weekly classic SF updates, sign up here.

Entropic tales from the end of time

It is a bit of a truism to say that people are entranced by imagining the end of the world. But what about the end of time? In this immensely distant scenario, entropy has had its way with the universe, life has withered away, and all change and incident has ceased. A true entropic scenario leaves little room for story-telling, and so SF writers tend to cheat, finding ways to keep some eccentric humans alive at the end of time.

Cinnabar is a 1976 collection of linked stories by the US author Edward Bryant. Set in the last city on a ruined Earth, it is a showcase for Bryant's speculations about the deep future of humankind, and for his New Wave writing style. What does Cinnabar have to say about a world seemingly without a future, and a city run by a suicidal AI?

Get in touch with a text message!

For more classic SF reviews and discussion, visit andyjohnson.xyz. To get free weekly classic SF updates, sign up here.