TV Comic Annual 1968
(TV Publications, 1967)
An abysmally written Adam Adamant short story, plus 90 pages of lame comics. Two simplistic, murkily illustrated four-page Doctor Who strips feature an overly tall Second Doctor defeating (with mammoths) Trods and (with rocks) Daleks, having first pre-invented the Goodies’ flying trandem!
Blake’s 7, Series 2
(BBC, 1979)
Series 2 benefits from the influx of new writers—Chris Boucher, Allan Prior, Robert Holmes—developing a sharper edge and becoming, paradoxically, more cohesive than when Terry Nation scripted every episode. The Liberator crew move obdurately (if fractiously) towards a death-or-glory showdown.
Have You Forgotten Yet? Between the Two World Wars
by Alan Delgado (David & Charles, 1973)
Written fifty years ago and looking back a further fifty, Delgado’s aide-mémoire of the English interwar period encompasses politics and society; libraries and publishing; music, radio, dance, film and theatre; technology; leisure, sport; and news media. Faded b&w photographs provide nostalgic testimony.
Petunia
by Roger Duvoisin (Alfred A. Knopf, 1950; Picture Lions, 1973)
Pride and mishap collide in this picture book of a farmyard goose who discovers a book and thinks that owning it is enough to make her wise! Good fodder but the two-page spreads alternate between black-and-white and colour, leaving an unfinished impression.
Keep Your Shape
by Robert Sheckley
Galaxy Science Fiction (November, 1953); UK No. 13 (April 1954), pp. 4-20.
Humorous SF invasion short story with philosophical undertones. Sheckley posits a race of shapechangers whose oppressive caste system limits each individual to a prescribed set of forms. Confronted with Earth’s biological diversity, the disgruntled lower echelons exhibit a tendency to go native!
The Z Murders
by J. Jefferson Farjeon (Collins Crime Club, 1932)
audiobook read by Tim Bentinck (Soundings, 2020)
A bit of a hot mess. Detective Inspector James does very little while tally-ho protagonist Richard Temperley goes all in on blind-faith instalove, his romantic interest acting inexplicably until the sinister, shadowy villains get together at the end for an expository powwow.
Lirios: A Tale of the Quintana Roo
by James Tiptree, Jr.
Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine (September 28, 1981), pp. 140-167.
Dreamy fantasy novelette set in a post(mid?)-apocalyptic imagining of the Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico. Tiptree Jr’s languorous, lyrical style and the story within a story make for pleasant enough reading, though the ocean tale is actually quite slight when stripped of cultural exoticism.
Enid Blyton’s Secret Seven Annual: Well Done, Secret Seven
(Purnell, 1979)
Blyton’s novel, reworked and competently re-illustrated with half the chapters in (b&w) comic-book form, interspersed with games and activities. The artwork is inconsistent in depicting character ages, and overcluttered—especially when squeezing seven (or occasionally a miscounted eight!) children into treehouse scenes.
The Lyran Case
by Bill Pronzini & Barry N. Malzberg, Analog (March 1980), pp. 110-114.
Flash fiction mystery that establishes a SF scenario (shape-changing alien terrorist attempting to smuggle a bomb through customs), lays its clues in very short order and then twists the ending, only to tack on a blow-by-blow explanation for the hard of understanding.
The Time Dissolver
by Jerry Sohl (Avon, 1957; reprinted Sphere, 1967)
An amnesiac ex-scientist investigates his own memory loss. Sohl favours gentle SF intrigue in pursuing his premise, working in a low-key human element rather than driving forward with the psychological breakdown/conspiracy thrills of, say, Eric Frank Russell’s “With a Strange Device” (1964).