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    North by 2000+
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    North by 2000+
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    North by 2000+
    Ebook294 pages4 hours

    North by 2000+

    By H.A. Hargreaves

    3.5/5

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    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    H.A. Hargreaves is one of Canada's remarkable, one might even say legendary, speculative fiction writers. He is a retired professor of English, formerly at the University of Alberta (Edmonton), and was twice nominated (1982 and 1983) for the Lifetime Contributions category in the Prix Auroras. His collection of short stories, North by 2000, in its time received wide critical acclaim from both peers and periodicals.

    Five Rivers is pleased to announce the rebirth of that remarkable collection of short stories by Hargreaves. This new edition, entitled North by 2000+, features not only all the quintessentially Canadian stories of the first edition, but five additional published short works, along with a foreword from the author, and an introduction by Dr. Robert Runte.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherFive Rivers Publishing
    Release dateDec 28, 2011
    ISBN9780986642395
    Unavailable
    North by 2000+
    Author

    H.A. Hargreaves

    H.A. Hargreaves is one of Canada's remarkable, one might even say legendary, speculative fiction writers. He is a retired professor of English, formerly at the University of Alberta (Edmonton), and was twice nominated (1982 and 1983) for the Lifetime Contributions category in the Prix Auroras. His collection of short stories, North by 2000, in its time received wide critical acclaim from both peers and periodicals.

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    Reviews for North by 2000+

    3.5/5

    23 ratings9 reviews

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    • 3/5
      This is the first ever Canadian science fiction that I've read. In spite of the 'age' of the stories they feel somewhat dated in cases but are overall still modern (if you ignore the title and make that for example 3000+ to be on the safe side). What I like is that a 'universe' is built and consistently used. Some of the stories were gripping where others plainly boring. The stories 'Dead to the world' and 'Tee Vee man' were really enjoyable. The extra chapter on the relation between canadian vs british / american science fiction was quite boring to me. Also as this is the first canadian science fiction I've read I'm not really sure that this is a prime example (and find comparisons to some of the american authors I've read from the same period (70's)).
    • 3/5
      Some interesting ideas, but the stories did not age well in many cases.
    • 4/5
      I received this novel from the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program.If you've never read Hargreaves' short stories and enjoy those by Clarke, Asimiov, Niven, etc., then do yourself a favor and read this book! For readers who are familiar with Hargreaves already, read it anyway: You may not have read the stories that weren't in the collection when it was originally published (1975)!The preface and afterword are both written by Dr. Robert Runté, who points out that this was the first collection of stories marked clearly as Canadian science fiction. For this USian reviewer, the stories aren't so Canadian that they couldn't be appreciated by non-Canadians, with the possible exception of an obviously northern environment for several stories (which could have even been set in the northern midwest plains of the USA for all I'd have guessed without benefit of the preface).The majority (possibly all?) of the stories take place in the same "future history," a time not too distant from that in which the author was writing or from our own time now. Like much science fiction, the stories are rooted in the times in which they were written and so, readers may find themselves amused by references to things that are already obsolete (or which are unlikely to come to pass, given the events of the last forty years or so). There are also some predictions which have already come to pass, and a few that still seem possible.As others have mentioned, the ordinary nature of the main characters is the most appealing aspect of each of Hargreaves' stories. These are not front-line scientists or soldiers, these aren't even "ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances." These characters are simply average people going about their daily lives. Sometimes those lives have an impact beyond their immediate environs; sometimes they don't and are simply "one in the crowd." Stand-outs among the stories include "Dead to the World" (probably the best known of Hargreaves' work), "Cainn," "More Things In Heaven and Earth," and "Tee Vee Man."
    • 4/5
      I looked at this book on the list and thought SF...and Canadian? And then remembered van Vogt, Pauline Gedge, Gordon Dickson. These stories fit right in there, an entertaining, thoughful read. Although they are clearly of an earlier style of SF, they are none the worse for that, and I found two stories reminding me in some ways of Arthur C. Clarke. The characters are practical and believable and one relates to them and their circumstances, not easy in a short story when often they are more of a moveable prop. In all, very enjoyable and re-readable.
    • 4/5
      When North by 2000: A Collection of Canadian Science Fiction was first published way back in 1975, it was the very first collection of short stories clearly marketed as Canadian Science Fiction. North by 2000+ is a reissue of the original book with a few more SF stories written by Hargreaves in the years following it's publication.The collection starts off strong with Dead To the World. For me the story has a Twilight Zone feel to it. Due to a computer glitch, the protagonist, Joe Schultz, is now...dead to the world. In the writer's future, where you need an ID card for every aspect of your life, from building security, to purchasing basic necessities, being dead can be quite a problem for someone who's still alive. Well written and quite satisfying, despite references to punch cards, which went the way of dinosaurs in the early days of the computer revolution.Many of the stories in this collection take place in a world where at least a portion of the US and Canada are now known as Americanada. In addition to the punch card reference, another item in Hargreaves' society of the future was the Autoteria. Sort of an automatic cafeteria. Here in the states, particularly where my Mom took me as a kid, they were known as Automats. We used to go to Horn and Hardarts in Center City Philadelphia, and as an 8 year old, I loved it. The fresh entrees, deserts, side items and such were all behind little windows. You'd enter whatever the cost of the item was in a coin slot and it would unlock the window for that item. In the stories of North by 2000+ you would use your AP (All Purpose) card.There's also the story of Cainn, about a juvenile delinquent and the man who serves time with him as a one on one, personal corrections officer, who's job it is to rehabilitate the prisoner. Interesting concept.Another story I really liked was, More Things In Heaven and Earth, which you might recognize from Shakespeare's Hamlet. Alan Hamilton, is a Senior Lecturer at University Television Central, who teaches a very popular course on the Bard's work while a team of dedicated actors called The Unit act out scenes, all televised to classrooms around the country. Of course, there are complications, including a crew from the magazine Look at Life, coming to do a story on the process. Get it? LOOK at LIFE. If you were around in the 70's, I'm sure you got the references.All in all, I never did get a feeling for the "Canadian Science Fiction" angle. For the most part the stories ran from average to great Science Fiction and that's good enough for me. I'm glad the stories were left as written and not updated for a new audience. I enjoyed the time capsule feeling of seeing what a mid-seventies writer saw for the time we live in now.North by 2000+ from 5 Rivers Publishing was published in March of 2012 is available in paperback and a variety of e-book formats.
    • 3/5
      There are four possible audiences for this collection.Fans of Hargreaves or admirers of North by 2000 will want this book. It adds four stories to that earlier volume to make it a complete collection of Hargreaves’ science fiction.Students of Canadian science fiction will definitely want it. As editor Runté notes, North by 2000, published in 1975, was the first collection of science fiction stories to be explicitly marketed as belonging to a Canadian. In his very useful and interesting afterword, Runté talks about the themes and their implications which set Canadian science fiction apart from that of the British or American variety. Like so many Canadian science fiction writers, Hargreaves was an immigrant – from the Bronx, specifically. He lived and taught literature at a Canadian college and eventually became a Canadian citizen. While Hargreaves submitted stories to the American magazine Analog, its editor, John W. Campbell, never accepted any. All the stories of the original volume were published in British publications, and some of the additional ones first saw light in non-genre Canadian magazines. Runté shows how the Canadian preoccupation with the polar world, national disaster (even if only of the political sort), and alienated outsiders plays out in specific Hargreaves’ stories, stories whose protagonists are often “victims, or losers with occasional wins”.If you like to read old science fiction, however technologically dated, for insights into the time it was written (here 1963-2011), you’ll probably like this collection. Most share a common world, a future Americanada (which, as Runté notes, could be construed as a national political disaster for a Canadian) administered by vast computer banks, a universal welfare state where people carry their resumes and bank information on AP punch cards aka All Purpose Cards, where penal systems have been greatly modified (including, in one instance, mandatory hockey lessons), people live in Efficiency Living Spaces with fold up furniture, pipelines cross the wilderness and cities are being built in the Arctic waste. Yes, these stories are from that era in science fiction when vast national and international projects were dreamed, central planning and administration was the vogue, and the psychological sciences were thought to be able to solve old and new problems.However, whether the fourth audience, the general science fiction reader looking just for entertainment, will like this book is more problematic. By my judgment, only about half the stories fit that requirement.Let’s look at those first.“Dead to the World” is a humorous story about a man who is declared dead because of an extremely unlikely computer error. The robots of this world – and the humans who uncuriously and unfailingly don’t break out of their administrative routines – take his furniture, cart him off to the morgue when he goes to the hospital, won’t arrest him for vagrancy, and deny him meals at the “autoteria”. Darkly humorous, this Canadian finds a change in mental attitude is necessary for his survival.“Protected Environment” is a straight-out, suspenseful man against nature tale. Its hero, identified only as the Roughneck, is sent out to fix damage in an oil pipeline’s insulation. The story can also be read as a play on Jack London’s classic “Building a Fire”.“Cainn” is one of those penal system of the future stories where all the intrigues and rebellions and plans of the prisoner, here one 15 year old Jason Berkley, have already been anticipated by the wardens and calculated into their plans for his rehabilitation.“More Things in Heaven and Earth” gets its prediction of remote learning right in spirit – if not in facilitating technology but is way too optimistic in its idea of how popular Shakespeare will become. The actual plot involves a lecturer and a cadre of tv producers and actors who demonstrate various interpretations of Shakespeare’s bare words. The tv program is threatened by sabotage conscious and unconscious, in the latter case from an telepathic student. The main interest for me was literature professor Hargreaves’ comments on particular Shakespeare works.“2020 Vision” is a dark story from 1980 which imagines a very unpleasant set of years for Canada from 2015 to 2050, the year of its setting. Its repairman hero, also working, as a former political science student, on a history of the time, may be a man stuck in the past.“In His Moccasins” is a follow up to “Cainn” and imagines another manifestation of Americanada’s juvenile justice system.And now for the just ok stories.“Tangled Web” has for a protagonist one of the minor characters from “Dead to the World”, a minister assigned to be the spiritual advisor of a “Closed Environment”, a domed city in the Arctic. It’s more about socially engineering bureaucracies than hardware. Its hero must work not only with a multi-faith community but the UN and Americanada.“Tee Vee Man”, the earliest story (1963) here, has a repairman working in space on a tv relay satellite to avoid a political revolution in some unnamed African country.“’Fore’-Eight-Sixteen” is a future sports story – the invention of a form of golf with jetpacks and rocket powered balls and hi-tech drivers.“Infinite Variation” has a missionary to an alien world wondering if he may be unpleasantly called upon to play the part of a particular character in a new rendition of the story of Christ.“Venerian Vector-Transit Tales” is a goofy short-short written as the description of a pulpy science fiction book club selection – for aliens.
    • 3/5
      As a student of Canadian Studies, and a former English Literature student, I am delighted to see a Canadian classic reprinted, and appreciate the Introduction and Afterword by Robert Runté. As a once avid reader of science fiction, I enjoyed Hargreaves' stories, largely because they reminded me of much older short stories by Clarke, Asimov, and Niven. With respect to the art and the genre, when it was younger it could get away with being less sophisticated, and a single intriguing aspect of future life was enough to sustain a story. Many of the stories take place in the same future history, a pleasant linking device. Like most science fiction, some of the terminology or products mentioned are now obsolete, and the stories are best enjoyed by a reader who will not be distracted by references such as the need to sync video camera tubes. There are also predictions that have not come to pass, such as the merger of Look and Life magazines, or even the continued importance of those magazines.The most appealing aspect of the stories is the ordinary nature of the characters. These are not heroes on distant planets or ground breaking scientists - they are teachers, parole officers, pipeline workers, and lowly technicians just doing their job. The last is the hero of "Tee Vee Man." No one actually realizes how important his job is, and the story brought to mind lines from Elton John's "Rocket Man:" "It's just my job, five days a week." Runté and others suggest that this humbleness of character, as well as the role of the northern environment in some stories, marks this collection as distinctly Canadian. Certainly the references to living in Americanada do (and whether or not that has come to pass is open to debate), but I'm inclined to think that Hargreaves is a good writer who just happens to be Canadian. Lem and Blish are others who wrote science fiction with ordinary people, though in more fantastic tales. This collection would not appeal to everyone, but definitely worth a read for fans of the genre who appreciate its older work, and fans of Canadian literature.
    • 4/5
      I have to admit, I still don't have much of a feel for how to review books, but I love receiving books from Early Reviewers, so I'll give it my best shot. I guess I can start by listing some of my favourite stories from this collection. I really enjoyed the first story, "Dead to the World", which moved along very quickly and had a great twist of an ending. The second story, "Tangled Web", felt a little slower at the beginning but really picked up speed about halfway through, weaving a tale of bureaucracy that is so complicated even a Vogon would be jealous. "Cainn" was perhaps my favourite story in the collection; along with "In His Moccasins", it paints a vision of a prison/justice system that is simultaneously fascinating and terrifying."More Things in Heaven and Earth" was a very enjoyable story, even though I am not familiar with the Shakespeare works that so much of the story is set around. Likewise, I really loved "Fore – Eight – Sixteen", even though I have no interest whatsoever in golf. I think it must take a very special kind of writer to make stories like these so engaging. "2020 Vision" is a very brief glimpse into a post apocalyptic world that I'd love to read more about.I liked the fact that most of the stories in this collection are set in the same imagined world; it really helps to tie the stories together and make them feel greater than the sum of their parts.Finally, the afterword by Robert Runté (who also wrote the introduction) is very informative, as it really helps to tie everything together and really define what it means for the collection to be defined as "Canadian science fiction", as opposed to science fiction that is merely written by a Canadian. When (not if) I read these stories again, I will see many of them in a different, more fulfilling light thanks to the afterword.
    • 2/5
      This was intriguing, being promoted as “Canadian Science Fiction” specifically opposed to that of the USA, or some other country. My first thought was, just like the Canadians to try to make something they’ve done special, and not at all like that of the “southern technocrats” who they ape whenever convenient. So now, the disclaimer, that having grown up with and among Canadians, generally I like them. I believe them to be kind, lovely people, if somewhat self-effacing, a great many of whom seem preoccupied with not being a part of the United States of America. The short science fiction stories in the book have a Canadian portrayal of the circumstances surrounding the characters and their development. It makes reading the stories interesting on a secondary, sociological level, as opposed to the stories as science fiction. In fact, there are a couple of stories that probably would not work if cast with USA or other nationalities as main characters. Not the greatest of science fiction, in my opinion, nothing wowed me, but always interesting from the portrayal of the characters, their acceptance of government, fait, and generally the circumstances of the stories which affirmed my experience with my Canadian friends’ world view