Baird Searles

12 Quotations from Baird Searles

catastrophe adj. 1979 B. Searles et al. Reader's Guide to Science Fiction 200 One of the qualities that the world destroyers brought to their catastrophe s-f, and this applies particularly to Wyndham, was a kind of non-melodramatic verismo, a typically British common sense approach which made for an enormously realistic feel to the horrible situations conjured up.
coreward adj. 1991 B. Searles On Books in Asimov’s Science Fiction Mar. 186/1 The story begins with the murder of an alien diplomat from the Coreward Alliance.
disaster adj. 1979 B. Searles et al. Reader's Guide to Science Fiction 12 J.G. Ballard stands oddly and enigmatically apart from the mainstream of science fiction. Although his early work, particularly his first four novels, continued an especially British theme (the ‘disaster’ novel), they had the quality of being internalized; most s-f tends to be militantly externalized.
Force n. 1977 B. Searles Films in Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction Oct. 63/2 When I’m wearing my Star Wars T-shirt, every few blocks I am greeted with ‘May the force be with you’ from total strangers.
Hamiltonian adj. 1979 B. Searles Films: Lion, Witch, and Buck Rogers in Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction Aug. 76 As of late, we seemed to have been going backwards. The general idea of a science fiction movie now is Star Wars; there is no other variety (notice how little noticed or publicized Quintet was as science fiction). And Star Wars is epitomally 1930s, Hamiltonian s/f. (That's Edmond, not Alexander.)
mind-control v. 1990 B. Searles On Books in Asimov’s Science Fiction Mar. 184/2 Each has a servant…who has been mind-controlled for so long that s/he is virtually an extension of the User’s will.
planet-hopping n. 1987 B. Searles On Books in Asimov’s Science Fiction 188/2 Seven Worlds is a good combination of adventure, puzzle-solving, and planet-hopping.
planet-hopping adj. 1990 B. Searles On Books in Asimov’s Science Fiction July 179/2 His life has been devoted to creating his own—er, spaceship is not quite the word. It’s more of a planet-hopping estate, fashioned from a comet.
pleasure planet n. 1987 B. Searles On Books in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction May 188/1 The teaching method of the pleasure planet of Midia, for instance, is plain old pleasure/pain conditioning, and the results are a population of seducer/hustlers.
space vessel n. 1992 B. Searles On Books in Asimov’s Science Fiction 173/1 Here are spaceships galore, abristle with turrets, antennae, and all those things that extrude from space vessels these days.
space yacht n. 1985 B. Searles On Books in Asimov’s Science Fiction Jan. 183/1 All this takes place in a slightly mad galaxy of space yachts and matter transmission.
time track n. 1992 B. Searles On Books in Asimov’s Science Fiction Feb. 169/2 The matter transmitters lead to alternate time tracks, opening up even more territory for our lost adventurers to keep track of (as it were).