pre-"2001" space travel psychodramas - SLUGS IN SPACE and donald malcolm

haha re spinrad: when i first went to germany, aged 11, to visit a friend (whose dad wz in nato) i bought a copy of THE IRON DREAM at the airport -- ie the counterhistory novel which imagines that hitler went to ameirca after wwi and became an SF writer: THE IRON DREAM bein the novel he wd have written...

anyway it is all swastikas and hitler moustaches on the v.lurid cover and i TOTALLY DID NOT THINK THIS THRU unti i wz approaching customs at the hamburg end of the flight and massively got the ph34r i wd be deported for reading literature likely to deprave and subvert, or similar -- or at the very least be sarcastically commented at

but i wz 11 obv and they didn't even bother looking in my bag

I used to feel a little weird at the age of 16 reading that book on the subway. You had reason to be fearful, Mark, The Black Box told me a little while ago that the book was banned in Germany for eight years and after its unbanning its cover could not be displayed.

Never knew or forgot that Spinrad went to my high school. He seems to be doing historical fiction now. I have come across lots of recently-translated-into-Spanish copies his latest, Mexica.

Happy Sluglord Singularity!

Here is the original thread: threadment for rolling discussion of Slug of Time
Seems that Zirn is still unguarded and Jon Westerley is still dead.

🪐🚀👽

I’ve been a huge fan of theirs since day one and not just because of their retrofuturistic fealty to TEH REDD BRANE.

See also: old s.f. story about people who let their brains run free, and kept their bodies in a shed?

And: a brief history of the giant disembodied brain

Third cortex different from the rest: disembodied brains as cover art