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Salient. Official Newspaper of the Victoria University Students' Association. Vol 41 No. 7. April 10 1978

Search for New Ideas

Search for New Ideas

One of the constantly amazing things about being a frequent SF reader is the variety of new ideas that can be found in new stories. SF writers are always finding some new idea and introducing it in their stories.

Philip Jose Farmer burst onto the scene in 1952 with The Lovers, a story of sex and aliens. His later work in that direction is collected in Strange Relations. His World of the Tiers series (yet to be finished) deals with an immortal society and their constructed universes, petty squabbles and cultures. The Gate of Time involves alternate time universes. He deals more profoundly with the resurrection of mankind for an experiment in his River-world tetralogy (third volume recently published overseas). To further excercise his talents he is official biographer of Tarzan (and his book Lord Tyger is along similar lines), Doc Savage and he has recently published two stories of Opar in the time before Tarzan arrived. The adventure of the Peerless Peer tells of a humourous encouter between Sherlock Holmes and Tarzan. The Wind Whales of Ishmael tells the sequal to Moby Dick.

SF writers come from a variety of backgrounds to give their contribution to the genre. Some were professional writers from the start — Moorcock and Brunner both began in their teens and haven't slowed since. Others have backgrounds in science and engineering — Asimov has a Ph.D. in biochemistry, Jerry Pournelle was involved with NASA for a long while. Currently even wider fields are contributing. Samuel Delany is the editor of a poetry magazine, Mark Adlard is an executive for a UK steel company, Theodore Sturgeon trained to be a trapeze artist, etc. From all these backgrounds comes the cream of SF. Every writer makes a contribution to the reader, and the genre as a whole.