People are always asking where they should start reading particular authors. This series of posts working their way through the alphabet as represented by my bookshelves, is an attempt to answer those questions. The popular “A” list can be found here, and the full alphabetical index is here. Please comment to add any B writers that I may have missed, and of course to argue with my choices.
I’m linking to my posts on the books where I have made such posts.
My B shelf begins with a disturbingly large number of copies of
Destinies, a paperback SF magazine edited by Jim Baen in my own personal golden age of the late seventies and early eighties. How I loved it and waited eagerly for new copies to arrive in the bookshop! There doesn’t seem much point recommending it now—but if you happen to see copies lying around it’s still worth picking up for the Spider Robinson reviews (lacerating books most people have now forgotten) the Pournelle essays on space futures and technology, the stories from new exciting authors like Orson Scott Card and established favourites like Anderson, Le Guin, Pohl, and Sheckley. Start randomly, but if I had to pick one it’s the copy dated Fall 1980, with part of Heinlein’s