|
Adam
Roberts at Infinity Plus, February 2006: "It
is excellent stuff: a slim volume at 140 pages but so full of
ideas and wit as to appear much longer. [...] The allusive power
of comedy and the intellectual (and, often, emotional)
open-handedness of SF make, here, a powerful mix. Very highly
recommended indeed."
Edward James in Vector 122, October
1984: "the standard is as high as ever. [...] The humour, is,
of course, still there, in almost every story. Sladek is
the greatest humorist in SF, as has often been said, and it is
worth pondering why. He has that delight in the weirdnesses of the
English language which characterises all the best Anglo-American
comic writers, and, which comes to much the same thing, a great
feeling for the English language, which enables him to produce
marvellous parodies of SF writers such as those in The
Steam-Driven Boy. He has an imagination which can see the
ludicrous potential of any situation. He can turn out one-liners
as fine as any in the New Yorker school of humour (which
has been influential in so much so-called SF humour) (some of the
best come in the afterwords which follow each story). But what
gives his humour intensity and staying power is his vision of the
world and of human nature, which is just as black as that of Swift
or Voltaire (as we have seen from Sladek's own robot Candide,
Roderick). [...]
"Comic, yes; work of great artistry and even genius, no
doubt; and if you want to cheer yourself up afterwards, read some
P.G. Wodehouse." |
