Joe Banks Book Recommendations & Book Mentions

Joe Banks

I went through a big Don DeLillo phase in my 20s, so was intrigued to see the adaptation of White Noise. A PoMo satire in 2022, it veers between tryingly quirksome to actually pretty funny. Fair to say that not everybody has agreed with Peter Bradshaw 1/2 https://t.co/kUuZZt1cZM

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Joe Banks

All the SF I read as a teen was new wave, and I never went through a 'golden age' phase. So the latest book in my slow tour of classic SF is The Naked Sun (1957) by Isaac Asimov, one of his robot/detective yarns. It's a decent page-turner, though not because of the robots... 1/4 https://t.co/jRnYqDftCZ

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Joe Banks

@mrsnodes @robinince @markopilkington Of the ones I've read recently, I would definitely say The Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K Dick, mind-bending but brilliantly imagined. But if you've never read Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination, then it don't get more classic than that...

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Joe Banks

My latest tour of classic SF, err, conquest: Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous With Rama (1973). I'd never read any ACC before, though knew he wrote 'hard' SF - but blimey, I wasn't prepared for quite how hard ;-) He has a prose style I can only describe as spectacularly mundane 1/4 https://t.co/hnbAZFtnFG

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Joe Banks

And I loved this from E.T.A. Hoffmann's 'The Sandman', which reminded me of Peter Hammill! "His constant theme was that every man who delusively imagined himself to be free was merely the plaything of the cruel sport of mysterious powers, and it was vain for man to resist them." https://t.co/40IqbehJQA

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Joe Banks

I think the one on the left is for the original serialisation of Ballard's The Drowned World? Makes the melting of the ice caps look rather attractive... ;-0 https://t.co/XjtjPuYpVF

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Joe Banks

I finally got to see the amazing Fantastic Planet last night on the big screen @thecastlecinema. As a kid, I remember it being on late night TV, but looking too weird to watch with my dad! Brilliant soundtrack and a wonderful imagining of an alien world https://t.co/1uYPckRQcn

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Joe Banks

The latest book in my slow tour of classic SF features highly in most best ever lists: The Space Merchants by Frederik Pohl & C.M. Kornbluth. I liked it and the writing is razor sharp, but it's more a satire on advertising and consumerism than hard SF (which is fine by me) 1/2 https://t.co/5xUc3wUDYl

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Joe Banks

I'm back on my slow tour of classic SF with Michael Moorcock's first Jerry Cornelius novel, The Final Programme (written in 1965, but not published until 1968). It's a strange, but oddly beguiling book that epitomises the anti-heroic thrust of much new wave SF... 1/4 https://t.co/zCF1ZN1sdz

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Joe Banks

@RachelVillavox Yes, that one's questionable, though WA emerged from a band that Martin Turner and Steve Upton had formed in Torquay. Oh, and obvs questionable re their classification as prog. I guess Muse from nearby Teignmouth should also be there...

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