It can be hard to sense the zeitgeist of an era while you are experiencing it, the spirit of decade you are living through, for example. But from a distance, looking back, you can notice trends, assumptions, modes of expression. I just finished a couple of paperbacks, one from the 1950s (though published in 1964) and one from the 1970s. Ten years apart, and yet the distinctions are clear.
Sturgeon in Orbit is a thin collection of Theodore Sturgeon short stories. Reading it reminded me of some of the aspects of science fiction from that era that I appreciated and some that I did not care for. I liked that the stories tended to be premised on an idea, and the story involved considering the application or logical result of that idea. I’m less enthused by the fact that (or so I believe) it was in the fifties that the ideas of sci-fi began to trend less toward the technological and more toward the sociological (a transition from the Campbellian approach, I suppose.) And with few exceptions (e.g. Robert Heinlein) most of the writers of the era or more-or-less coalesced around that promised proto-Camelot apotheosis of wise, compassionate, far-seeing technocratic government objectively guided by science. I can grasp the appeal without succumbing to it: Almost fancifully idealistic in hindsight, yet it offered a numinous polestar for the militantly secular sci-fi authors, substituting for religion. The stories were hit and miss, though none truly bad. My favorite was the shortest, which would have provided the basis for a mid-tier Twilight Zone episode.
The Expendables: The Venom of Argus is the fourth and last of Edmund Cooper’s (writing as Richard Avery) The Expendables series. I have reviewed the previous three before: here; here; and here. It is more of the same, though perhaps even scantier on plot; more setup with a shortened denouement. Still, it delivers unapologetic 1970s men’s fiction. It pulls no punches and is not recommended for readers suffering whatever ailment causes the mental hypersensitivity that currently prevails. As Sturgeon in Orbit is in some ways emblematic of the idealistic 60s, Venom embodies the cynical 70s; Cooper writing of the racial and sexual issues of the decade with a directness and absence of euphemism that has (for both the better and the worse, mostly the worse) since disappeared. With Venom, The Expendables goes out on a particularly uncomfortable, but certainly memorable, note. I got a couple of hours of entertainment out of it.
If you want a few hours of entertainment, may I suggest Semi-Autos and Sorcery, available in print, digital, and audio formats.