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Welcome to StephenBarkley.com. This is where I post all the stuff I've been thinking, praying, speaking, and writing about. Thanks for reading.
Turn Left at Thursday © 1961 Ballantine 159 pages Turn Left At Thursday is a collection of three novelettes and three stories, although I’d call the “novelettes” short stories as well. The longest clocked in at 43 pages. These stories go beyond the usual golden age sci-fi fare. Rather than just setting adventure stories in [...]
The End of Eternity © 1955 Fawcett Crest (1971) 192 pages Reading 50 year old science fiction is an entertaining experience. Not only do you have to envision the future with the author, you have to view it through a dated lens. Asimov’s The End of Eternity is a great example of classic science fiction. [...]
The Outward Urge © 1959 Penguin 187 pages You can enjoy The Outward Urge on a couple different levels. On the surface, it’s a collection of short stories about humanity’s exploration of space. Dig a little deeper and a couple sub-themes stand out. These stories cover 200 years of the history of the Troon family [...]
Star Begotten © 1937 Mannor Books 173 pages Do you remember The War of the Worlds? This is a sequel, of sorts. In War, the Martians were defeated by their vulnerability to earth’s ecosystem. Star-Begotten explains plan B. What if, instead of invading earth, they used interplanetary rays to subtly change humans into their own [...]
The Case Against Tomorrow ©1957 Ballantine Second Printing 1965 152 pages There’s so much to love about golden-age science fiction like: detective stories with robots, martians with green skin, and dystopian views of the future that have proven true in ways the author didn’t quite foresee. This collection of Pohl’s short stories extrapolates the damning [...]
Martian Chronicles © 1958 Bantam (1980) 181 pages Ray Bradbury is lauded as one of the best science fiction writers of the 20th century. I’ve only read a couple of his books now (including the famous Fahrenheit 451), but I would have to agree. Put him and the dearly departed Asimov together in a room, [...]
Chocky (Puffin Books) © 1968 Penguin (1970) 154 pages Chocky’s a fine science fiction tale. In it, a boy named Matthew begins to have conversations with an imaginary friend—who turns out to be more than imaginary. The back cover states that the friend, “was far too intelligent and frightening” to spring from the mind of [...]
Neuromancer © 1984 Ace Books 271 pages I decided to brush up on my sci-fi history by reading this archetypal Hugo, Nebula, and Philip K. Dick award winning Cyberpunk novel. I’ve already read Pattern Recognition and Spook Country, so I knew a bit of what to expect. What I found was Gibson in his raw [...]
Watchmen © 1995 DC Comics 416 pages This was the first graphic novel I’ve read—and I’m hooked. This was a superhero story unlike anything I’ve read before. Most of the superheroes had no “super” in them at all. The cast was a mixed up group of people who used to get a kick out of [...]
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