Friday, January 20, 2012

Forgotten Books: Somewhere a Voice -- Eric Frank Russell

When I was but a sprite of a lad, one of my favorite SF writers was Eric Frank Russell. I was particularly fond of a novel called Wasp, worth of a forgotten books mention, itself. But I've said all this before. What I didn't say is that I first discovered Russell because of his short fiction. I believe that the first story of his I read was "Dear Devil," which appeared in some anthology or other and which is included in this collection, along with six other stories.

There's also a short intro by Russell, which I thought was interesting and amusing. It gives a fair idea of Russell's writing style (though the irritant that I mentioned in the review linked above, Russell's avoidance of the word "said," is all to evident in the stories themselves). You can see from the "Acknowledgments" that the stories come from four magazines with which you're probably passingly familiar. Russell was an interesting and entertaining writer, far too good to be forgotten. If you've never read his work, this book would be a good place to start.

4 comments:

George said...

I'm an admirer of WASP, too! NESFA collected the best of Eric Frank Russell in MAJOR INGREDIENTS (still in-print).

James Reasoner said...

His award-winning story "Allamagoosa" is really funny. I like everything I've read by him, which is not enough.

Anonymous said...

Russell is a big favorite of mine, as you may recall from reviews I did in The Perp. I have that NESFA collection and have read it twice. Like you, I have my favorites, mostly stories I first read in Astounding.

D.A. Trappert said...

Wasp is probably my all time favorite book. It is hysterically funny as well as being exciting. I have always wanted to be James Mowry. Although it takes place on a distant planet, the bad guys are actually modeled after wartime Japanese.