Reviews for Proceedings

The average rating for Proceedings based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2021-03-14 00:00:00 Tony Lim 3.5 stars, rounded up This was published in 1967, so a lot of the outdated applies in the usual ways (casual sexism, horrifying terms for various disabilities, nearly all white dudes, etc.).  I liked the stories around those things, though.  Balanced Ecology, by James H. Schmitz, was the one I found most pure fun to read, and is only coincidentally the lone story that both contains even a single female character and manages not to be weird about it. It's highly original and a little reminiscent of Heinlein's juveniles in its sense of adventure.  You know that feeling you get when you're reading something and it's really clear that a character is being lionized specifically because it's the author's idealized vision of themselves (raises quizzical eyebrow in Hemingway's direction)?  That is so pervasive throughout "Repent, Harlequin, said the Ticktock Man" that I couldn't believe it took me nearly the whole to story to realize how much Harlequin sounds like Harlan. (rolls eyes) I know. This story, aside from competing with The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth for most melodramatic title, mostly convinced me that I'm glad I never met the author. He is, I can say with certainty, the sort who would say "wake up, sheeple!" on the internet earnestly and without irony.  I read somewhere that Zelazny wanted to call The Doors of His Face [...] instead The Leviathan of Venus, which would have made a ton more sense and would have been thematically congruent with the story, which is in the style of an old pulp. His other in the collection, He Who Shapes, is darker and very interesting, even while the characterization of all of the women (a sum total of four, 1 in the former story, 3 in the latter) leaves, ah, something to be desired. It's psychologically complex and is worth a reread. The Saliva Tree was quite good and I can see how it tied with He Who Shapes.  Gordon Dickson's Computers Don't Argue was cute and prescient.  Becalmed in Hell by Larry Niven was good and, in my opinion, ought to have won over Ellison's story.  The short, absurdist The Drowned Giant, by J. G. Ballard, was only mildly neat for this reader.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-02-17 00:00:00 Ernest Carson As with any collection, some of the short stories are great and others are not so great. But worth a read.