Richard Cowper (2) (1926–2002)

Gabi says, of title story:
"The short story that affected me when I was 13 or 14 was "Out there where the big ships go" by Richard Cowper. There was a sentence there that - as simple as it was - changed how I looked at things."
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I can tell which sentence she means. Cowper is philosophical. Well-read, well-educated, and with a large vocabulary, too. This are not typical SF stories. Reduced to summaries, they're not amazing, but dressed up in Cowper's ethereal & surreal stylings, they are worth reading. As the back blurb says, this is "science fantasy." Well, tbh, I'm not sure about the last one, as it's not my thing,* and so I dnf'd that 64 p. novella.

Mostly they show potential. I will consider more by Cowper.

*If you must know, it was some weird mishmash of Celestine Prophecy, Burroughs, Lovecraft, and Shangri-La. I read the last page and it really seemed as if I missed nothing by not slogging through the middle. Again, that's just me... I know some of you are fans of those kinds of stories.… (more)

Readable post-apocalypse (sort-of) novel of humans living underground, but not up to Cowper's other work. The first half is admirably disorienting as it throws the reader directly into this curious culture of Roamers (humans), Partners (dogs most likely), Factors (robots), and Plants (crucial but only explained peripherally very late in the book). There's a surprising level of focus on sex for an SF book of the 1970s, but that's about the only novelty. Otherwise the story is the usual "no one goes there, no one must go there, oh there our hero goes." The big letdown in he second half, where instead of "you figure it out" everything is explained in detail. There's even a point where one character unnecessarily explains the title.

OK but no need to seek out.… (more)

Richard Cowper is a British writer of science fantasy and science fiction. I read two of his novels from the science fiction book club in the 1970's.

Cowper's books are set in the British Isles. The preface for this post-apocalyptic tale tells me it was published by a researcher from St Malcolm's College, Oxford, June, 3798 (based on works circa 3300 AD). We soon learn that the story itself is set just before the fourth millennium and we approach New Year's 3000 with some trepidation. When 2000 arrived it was the "Drowning". Global warming had melted the icecaps and the world drowned. Here we are a thousand years later. What will happen at the dawn of the new millennium and what does a white bird have to do with it?

My copy of the book contains two stories originally published separately. The book opens with a 60+ page novella prologue titled: "Piper At The Gates of Dawn". How could this possibly not be a good, fun tale? Well, after reading it "fun" is not the right word at all. This is however a fantastic tale that could almost be set in the middle ages, but is instead set in the future after the catastrophic event of the Drowning. Place names still have the same place names as we go on the journey with the tale-teller and the piper. Some editions of the book apparently don't include the prologue, which would be a shame. Piper was first published in the March 1976 edition of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. It should have won all kinds of awards it was nominated in but only just had the nominations.

The short novel "The Road to Corlay" was published two years later. It can be read by itself but is much richer having read Piper. Without the introductory story I think I would not have been able to appreciate 'The Road to Corlay' nearly as much. The second story begins April 12, 3018. This story builds on the climactic events from the year 3000 in the first book. However, in the second chapter of the book we suddenly are in the past in 1986, before the Drowning, and we quickly can see how these two parts of the story are linked. I won't spoil the story but I'll leave a clue that is revealed early on. William Hurt in the film "Altered States". The part of the story set in the year 1986 is the weaker of the two by far and the characters in this time are much less interesting than the ones in the future.

I was caught up in both stories and enjoyed them quite a bit.

There are two additional books in the series which I plan to read.… (more)

https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3658188.html

A short sf novel from 1974 about a middle-aged lecturer in an unsatisfactory marriage who distarcts himself by science fiction and flirting with a student. You can get it here. Both activities suddenly get more serious as the world that he is writing about turns out to be real and distant, and intruding on Earth, and the student starts to flirt back. The story ends with restoration of the status quo rather than any change to the frame of reference. It's about halfway between Kingsley Amis and Douglas Adams, and I was so struck by a certain similarity of tone with Hitch-hiker that I wrote and asked Christopher Priest, who knew both Cowper (John Middleton Murry Jr) and Adams personally, if he thought that one had partly inspired the other. (He said no.)… (more)