At least, I get the impression that Smallcreep’s Day is rather little known. It’s an SF novel from the 60s, by someone called Peter Currell Brown. A man works in a factory that makes - something. And one day, he decides to venture further than his designated work area, to find out what exactly the factory does, and what the pulley he makes is for. I don’t remember if he ever finds it out. It sticks in my head because it’s one of my father’s favourite books ever. When my brother lost it (shortly before giving it to me to re-read, damn him!) my father spent years searching for another copy (it being out of print). If, by the way, anyone knows where I can get an e-copy, I would be very grateful.
But that’s not the point of this thread. I was just wondering if anyone here had read Smallcreep’s Day, and if they had, what they thought of it. And I was wondering if anyone knows any other little known SF they can recommend. I’ve done the bigger names to death (Philip K Dick, Heinlein, the works), but I know there’s a whole world of SF out there I haven’t read, and I thought - who better than Dopers to recommend it?
Another I really loved (though I don’t know if it’s well known or not) is One, by David Karp. It’s like 1984, but from a more psychological angle. It didn’t feel derivative, either - it came at everything from a different angle.
So what say you, Dopers? Can you recommend any intelligent, interesting, little-known SF?
FYI, that Wikipedia article on Mike Rutherford’s album links to the Wikipedia article on the novel, which mentions that the book was reissued about three years ago. See the publisher’s site here. It mentions that an ebook version is coming “soon.”
OP, you can aslo buy it from these people. For as low as $14.14
Ha, that’s pretty much how I found it on Amazon. I went to the novels wiki page and then followed the link to the publisher site and then followed the link to Amazon and the third party sellers.
Ebook version would, in fact, be ideal for me. I’m moving around a bit at present, and trying to avoid accumulating too many things. It’s hard - somehow I just seem to…acquire books (“It’s only £2, and I probably can’t find it in the library…”), but I think I should be moving more and more to reading books on the Kindle.
Chronosequence by Hilbert Schenck. Schenck was looking to be the next big sf writer in the early 80s, but just fizzled out and published nothing since the early 90s. Too bad.
Monster by A. Lee Martinez – probably the best new humorous fantasy writer working today. Only Pratchett is better right now.
War with the Newts by Karel Capek. Capek is known for inventing the word “robot” in R.U.R., but this is much better.
Godstalk, by P. C. Hodgell. Densely written fantasy, dark and humorous (often at the same time), and full of engaging characters.
The sequel, Dark of the Moon, was the object of a years-long pre-internet quest for me. It’s a bit weaker than Godstalk, partly because its transitional nature doesn’t play to Hodgell’s strong setting construction as well, but still good. The quality picks back up with the next book in the series, Seeker’s Mask, and is still going strong.
Robert Stallman’s Beast trilogy: The Orphan, The Captive, and The Beast. More fantasy than SF perhaps. It’s about a werewolf growing up.
The main reason these books have been forgotten is Stallman died without ever writing anything more. (In fact, he was still revising the The Beast when he died.)
I bought Mike Rutherford’s Smallcreep’s Day when it came out (1980) and loved it immediately. Naturally this was on vinyl; only 1 side is based on the Smallcreep book. The other tracks are unrelated. There was a non-LP B-side from a single taken from the album that definitely was part of the Smallcreep Suite,called Compression. Not easy to track down, as I don’t believe that song ever made it to CD.
Now I had not read the book, so I hda no preconceived notion of the tale’s tone. In fact I had no idea it was science fiction, I thought it was a children’s story. Go figure.
You (the OP) may feel differently, since the story meant something to you.
