Dispatches from the Cold War

Asimov's SF 1982: A topless L. Ron Hubbard, a post-apocalyptic Postman, and telepathic lions make this issue a very mixed bag

November 1982: I’m in the first half of my sophomore year of high school, which would be the year I have Mrs. Suitor for English, where for the first time someone asks me to ghostwrite a paper for them (I decline). My membership in the Science Fiction Book Club is in full swing and each month I eagerly check the mail for my package of at least two books. I’ve finished the original Dune trilogy and moved on to Frank Herbert’s latest, God Emperor of Dune. In English class, we read A Canticle for Leibowitz, so science fiction seems welcome in the classroom.

Naturally, I do a book report on God Emperor of Dune. Mrs. Suitor dismisses it in class as something weird “about worm men” and so I never did something like that again.

Fables about nuclear apocalypse were fair game — the Cold War was colder than ever, after all — but everything else got you labeled as a nerd. Lesson taken.

Fortunately, while this experience did change my approach to self-selected book reports, it didn’t change my own p…