Forgotten Science Fiction Classic - 'MERCURY': The Hidden "Sequel" to 'ICE' by ANNA KAVAN #sf

I read Ice early last year based on your video at the time. I don't know if I would say that I 'liked' it, but it was definitely a compelling read and the hallucinatory quality of the writing was amazing.

Ice has been on my radar for sometime as has the castle . As always inspiring Steve you never cease to make me want to read new and old books . Took your advice ordered Martin macinnes gathering evidence . Now will have a look for ice.

Just happen to have 'Ice' coming in the mail. Looking forward to a challenging new wave read.

Linda Thorson fan, aye? Don't bloody blame you!

Managed to find a copy of Mercury online. Looking fwd to it. Cheers.

If Burroughs did meet Kavan, it'll be in Miles' biography
WSB - A Life

We love tapping your knowledge.. Salute.

Last year I read The Wind from Nowhere and Ice for the first time within a month of each other. There is so much in common with Ballard in there! I consider Ice the perfect unsanctioned fifth entry in the Disaster "Trilogy".

Incredible video. I just love the width of your literary knowledge. The only guy I can trust when talking about prose by SF writers.

Crikey, I feel like I've been living under a rock every time I watch an episode of Outlaw Bookseller, when new authors (new to me) are mentioned. Kavan? Jeesh. I'm still trying to get my hands on some Aldiss, Priest, Ballard and Beckett! Amazing perspective, Stephen, I cannot stress enough how intimidating that is, but also how much it's appreciated. Cheers.

Ice is on my TBR and now Mercury is too. Thanks as always for the insights and recommendations.

really enjoy your channel, stephen. i found a copy of frontera in a used bookstore last weekend and had to pick it up based on your recommendation. i recall seeing or reading about ice many years ago but never got around to reading it. thanks for putting it and mercury on my radar. cheers

I have a hardcopy of Ice on my shelf and I know I'm going to love it when I get around to reading it soon... and then am going to be disappointed that I can't get my hands on this one (unless I want to pay hundreds). Hope they come out with new prints!

I discovered Anna Kavan, & her novel Ice, in Brian Aldiss' Billion Year Spree
Apart from a few excerpts of her work in the Aldiss book - which were enthralling - I've never read anything by her - but going by those excerpts, she appears to be one of those authors who really should be read - even her non-SF works invoke interest...

Enjoyed Ice, really liked Ice Palace.
I didn't know Kavan wrote other books. 👀 Will check out Mercury after rereading Ice.

Mishima has been hit or miss for me, favourite so far is Temple of the Golden Pavilion and Spring Snow tied.

It's never out of place to be reminded about Anna Kavan. I've only got about four of her books in Peter Owen first editions, all of them interesting, but Ice is the cream. I went to ABE after watching your video, Steve, there's not much available there, but someone has a first edition of Ice for a mere £2500, so you'd better hop over there quickly. It would be interesting to find some of her Helen Ferguson books, but I never have.

Thanks for the deep dive. I am sold now on Ice. Sounds like we owe Owen a big thanks and gratitude

Just something out of deep mid-wicket and unrelated to this video -

I'd love to see a review of Edward E. Smith's classic Lensman Series

Thank you for highlighting Kavan, Stephen.
Two of her seminal works - Eagle's Nest and A Bright Green Field are out of print, and cost a fortune.

At the launch of Kavan's Machines in the Head anthology I asked Antonia Owen if these books could be done as print-on-demand; she was going to look into it. If you know her could you remind her?

For sheer quality of writing Julia and the Bazooka is her best, and for imagination Sleep Has His House.

I hope you are feeling better, and thank you for your infectious enthusiasm - you really get it across!

Thank you, Stephen, for giving a shout to Anna Kavan, one of our greatest yet little-known visionaries.

Having discovered Asylum Piece at twelve, I've subsequently read everything of Anna's I could get my hands on.

For sheer consistecy of prose quality Julia & The Bazooka excels - I've bought at leat five copies for friends, all now Kavanite converts.

Sleep Has His house is her poetic assemblage of material which in lesser hands would have been tedious Freudian tracts.

Her essay on the infantile regression to Victoriana after the war is as pertinent now as it was then.

The Visit is a most perfectly-realised short story, in which Kavan evinces the very priciples she cautioned Virginia Woolf about ignoring, regarding the vitally- different depths of perspective and illumination between the short story and the novel..

I am especially glad that a blokey bloke like yourself is broad-minded enough to expound on the nuances of an essentially feminine writer, thereby trouncing so much of the trite, shallow and generalising critiques which sacrifice the considered, artstic and simply artistic discrenment which you are able to bring to bear on such material as almost all of Kavan's œvre deserves on the assinine altars of identity politics and that decronstruction pioneered by the most unholy of trinities : Foucault, Lacan and Derrida.

A large wedge of your expertly-aimed Welsh welly is exactly what's needed now, and which I can assure you is most appreciated.

As Edna O'Brien once responded to the accusation that her then - current novel, The High Road ( in retrospect one of her best ) ' had no plot ' :

'Fuck the plot. Energy is all'
- which you, my friend, posses in spades.