Building Yesterday’s Future–For Everyone
Published in 1962, Hothouse by Brian Aldiss has elicited some pretty strong opinions in its time. Love it or hate it, the book presents a fascinating (although highly improbable) future Earth in which humanity is a trivial lifeform among many (and certainly less interesting than most) and where everything is food!
H. Beam Piper’s popular and beloved Little Fuzzy, published in 1962, still has a lot to say about how we measure the intelligence of the animals we share our planet with, while it also takes us on a rollicking good adventure.
Zenna Henderson’s first six stories featuring the People—immigrant aliens who’ve escaped the destruction of the home planet and come to the American Southwest—were published as a fix-up, Pilgrimage, in 1961. Through these curiously gifted aliens Henderson explored themes of difference and belonging that still have relevance today.