What pre-1985 science fiction are you reading? + Update No. XXIX

What pre-1985 science fiction adventures have you started this summer? Any great reads? Disappointing ones? Intriguing discoveries? Here’s the April installment of this column. In a conversation on Blueksy (my primary social media after the fall of Twitter/X), someone asked for my history of science fiction recommendations including a few general surveys. I scoured my shelves and came up with an all-too-large pile (with some notable volumes I wanted to include but could not find) of favorite histories of science fiction. See photo above. I tried to include monographs that were not studies of single authors. As I am a historian by training and trade who holds on to some of my disciplinary ticks and hangups, I also included works by trained academics with two major exceptions 1) Mike Ashley’s multi-volume study of science fiction magazines (but no other recent works exist and they’re really good for the nuts and bolts of genre magazines) and 2) Alec Nevala-Lee’s approachable and…