This episode covers two quite different science fiction novels by two quite different writers, published more than a decade apart. What links them is their emphasis on religious themes. Let the Fire Fall by Kate Wilhelm was published in 1969, and is largely forgotten. Set in a near-contemporary world, it deals with alien visitation and a manipulative religious cult.

Strength of Stones is an early novel by Greg Bear, published in 1981. It has a far-future setting on a planet colonised by religious outcasts. How do these lesser known novels by prominent authors stack up today?

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Back in episode 111, I took a trip back to the 1950s, and looked at three books written collaboratively by Frederik Pohl and Cyril M. Kornbluth. The first two of these, The Space Merchants and Gladiator-at-Law, are major landmarks in the development of social science fiction.

In 1955, while that collaboration was ongoing, Frederik Pohl published another novel in partnership with a different author - Lester del Rey. That novel was Preferred Risk, another minor classic of social SF in which the world is dominated by a huge, monolithic insurance company.

This episod explores Preferred Risk, its unusual future world, and the controversial circumstances in which it was written and published.

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Originally published in 1960, Rogue Moon is an excellent novel by the Lithuanian-American author, critic, and editor Algis Budrys.

If you read classic science fiction and encounter contemporary reviews of those books, you are sure to have heard Budrys' name. He was a major critic of SF for many years. However he was also a highly capable writer of his own fiction, both at short story and novel length.

Rogue Moon is his best-known novel, a nominee for the 1961 Hugo Award which combines a lunar mystery with penetrating questions about human psychology and the philosophy of life, death, and struggle.

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