#bookreviews2 — Public Fediverse posts

What pre-1985 science fiction are you reading? + Update No. XXVII

What pre-1985 science fiction are you reading or planning to read next month? Here’s the October installment of this column.

• A selection of read volumes from my shelves

If I’m feeling a bit unmotivated to write about science fiction, I always end up on Fanac or another online repository of fanzines/newspapers and dive into all the old historical fannish debates. I especially enjoy their reports on various conventions and the community (from accepting to reactionary) that emerges. For example, the details I uncovered about a lost Philip José Farmer speech titled “SF and the Kinsey Report at the 11th World Science Fiction Convention (Philcon 2) in Philadelphia (September 1953) and Pat M. Kuras and Rob Schmieder’s article “When It Changed: Lesbians, Gay Men, and Science Fiction Fandom” (1980) on the first Worldcon panel with an openly LGBTQ topic: “The Closed Open Mind: Homophobia in Science Fiction Fantasy Stories” moderated by Jerry Jacks, one of the “early openly gay fans.” I recently edited an article for academic publication on the role of conventions in forming feminist and political activism. Conventions sound like fascinating places, at least from my historically-minded vantage point and lens.

However, as visitors to the site probably know, I’ve never attended a science fiction specific con (I’ve attended Gencon twice as its in my current hometown and tons of academic conferences earlier in my career). For fear of revealing too much of my psychological profile (muahaha), I enjoy the self-created illusion of being an outsider. The scholar who writes from the shadows. I often tell myself “I’m a historian, not a fan.” Of course, both can be true… I know cons cover a vast variety of topics beyond contemporary science fiction (which does not interest me in the slightest, alas). There are frequently panels on all the topics, authors, and themes I enjoy. And of course, all the friendships with fans with similar interests… As meeting authors? Not my thing, sorry. Well-meaning readers of my website often attempt to invite me to participate on panels on historical topics. Thank you! Maybe at one point I will. I really should.

I’d love to know why you, lovely readers, enjoy attending cons.

Also, before we get to the photograph above and the curated birthdays, let me know what pre-1985 SF you’re currently reading or planning to read! 

The Photograph (with links to reviews and brief thoughts)

1. I suspect I’ve featured Langdon Jones’ wonderful collection The Eye of the Lens (1972) before. It’s an example of the exuberant (and successful) elements of the New Wave movement. “The Hall of the Machines” (1968) represents what I enjoy most lates 60s SF.
2. Algis Budrys’ Rogue Moon (1960). A good one! I wish I managed to write a full-length review.
3. Joanna Russ’ We Who Are About To…. (1976). Remains my favorite Russ novel.
4. John Christopher’s A Wrinkle in the Skin (variant title: The Ragged Edge) (1965). I preferred this post-apocalyptic nightmare to The Death of Grass (1956). The scene with the tanker stranded in the dried-out English Channel, top notch…

What am I writing about?

I recently restarted my series on translated SF short fiction—after a lull on my part–with Rachel S. Cordasco over at Speculative Fiction in Translation. We thoroughly enjoyed Izumi Suzuki’s “Terminal Boredom” (1984). Up next– a story from Germany!

Despite a slow writing month, I did manage to put together my first full-length review of Octavia E. Butler’s Clay’s Ark (1984). My favorite of her novels so far! There’s some solid early 80s SF out there.

What am I reading?

My reading of various forms of American leftist politics continues. Finished Mathew Hild’s Greenbackers, Knight of Labor, and Populist: Farmer-Labor Insurgency in the Late-Nineteenth-Century South (2007). There’s a larger incubatory SF-related writing project looming that will connect to late 19th century attempts to challenge Southern Democrats. Simultaneously, as I teach college-level American History courses I felt that that portion of my classes needed some work. Stay tuned!

Most of my reading has been related to the scholarship related to my unnamed writing project. However, I finally finished my Kim Stanley Robinson novel and should (I know, I promised the same thing a while back) have a review up soon(ish). A vampiric cloud of despair–generated by American politics, the challenges of my job, etc.–continues to consume my energy.

A Curated List of SF Birthdays from the Last Two Weeks [names link to The Internet Speculative Fiction Database for bibliographical info]

November 15th: William Hope Hodgson (1877-1918). I recently acquired a copy of The House on the Borderland (1908).

November 15th: J. G. Ballard (1930-2009). A favorite of mine.

November 16th: Candas Jane Dorsey (1952-). There’s a copy of Machine Sex and Other Stories (1988) judging me from the shelves.

• Diane and Leo Dillon’s cover for the 1971 1st edition

November 18th: Suzette Haden Elgin (1936-2015). I’ve reviewed At the Seventh Level (1972) and Furthest (1971).

November 18th: Margaret Atwood (1939-).

November 18th: Frederick Turner (1943).

November 18th: Alan Dean Foster (1946-).

November 18th: Graham Charnock (1946-). One of the British voices of the New Wave movement. I’ve only read “The Chinese Boxes” (1970).

• Mark Salwowski’s cover for the 1989 edition

November 18th: Michael Swanwick (1950-). I read my first Swanwick novel last year–In the Drift (1985).

November 19th: Wolfgang Jeschke (1936-2015). A Czech-born German SF author whom I really should read… I own his translated novel The Last Day of Creation (1981, trans. 1982).

November 20th: Molly Gloss (1944-). The Dazzle of the Day (1997) is supposed to be a really great take on the generation ship premise (outside of my date range, alas).

November 21st: Artist Vincent Di Fate (1945-).

• Ken Laidlaw’s cover for the 1977 edition

November 22nd: William Kotzwinkle (1938-). Doctor Rat (1976) still unsettles me.

November 23rd: Wilson Tucker (1914-2006). Huge fan of The Long Loud Silence (1952, rev. 1969) — one of the better nuclear-war themed 50s novels. I must get to more of his work in 2026…

November 24th: Editor T. O’Conor Sloane, Ph.D. (1851-1940). The editor of Amazing between 1929-1938.

November 24th: Spider Robinson (1948-).

November 25th: Amelia Reynolds Long (1904-1978). An earlier female SF pioneer, I’ve only read Long’s “Omega” (1932). Unfortunately, my dislike of 30s SF informs my comments — regardless, she’s a historically important figure.

November 25th: Poul Anderson (1926-2001). One of the authors of the first years of my website. I’ve covered eleven novels and twenty-six of his short stories. Most recently I featured “The Troublemakers” (1953) in my generation ship review series.

November 26th: Leonard Tushnet (1908-1973)

November 26th: Artist Victoria Poyser (1949-).

November 27th: L. Sprague de Camp (1907-2000).

November 27th: C. C. MacApp (1917-1971)

• Uncredited cover for the 1965 edition

November 27th: Dave Wallis (1917-1990). I thoroughly enjoyed his sole SF novel Only Lovers Left Alive (1964).

November 27th: Artist Josh Kirby (1928-2001). Perhaps best known for his Discworld covers, Kirby was a prolific contributor of art for a vast variety of authors.

November 28th: Richard R. Smith (1930-). A prolific contributor to the magazines in the 1950s, I’ve yet to read his work.

November 28th: Artist Walter Velez (1939-2018).

• MacGowan’s interior art for Gregory Benford’s “Nobody Lives Around There” in Vertex: The Magazine of Science Fiction (February 1974)

November 28th: Editor and author Donald J. Pfeil (1937-1989). Best known for editing Vertex (1973-1975).

November 29th: C. S. Lewis (1898-1963).

November 29th: Madeleine L’Engle (1918-2007). If you haven’t read about the L’Engle great cover mystery, you should!

November 29th: Kevin O’Donnell, Jr. (1950-2012).

November 29th: Artist Doug Beekman (1952-).

For book reviews consult the INDEX

For cover art posts consult the INDEX

For TV and film reviews consult the INDEX

#1950s #1960s #1970s #algisBudrys #avantGarde #bookReview #bookReviews2 #books #fiction #joannaRuss #johnChristopher #langdonJones #paperbacks #reading #sciFi #scienceFiction #writing

Updates: Recent Science Fiction Purchases No. CCCXLVI (Kim Stanley Robinson, Miriam Allen DeFord, Keith Laumer, and Jack Dann)

Which books/covers/authors intrigue you? Which have you read? Disliked? Enjoyed?

Finally acquired a new scanner!

1. The Memory of Whiteness, Kim Stanley Robinson (1985)

• Fred Gambino’s cover for the 1999 edition

From the back cover: “In the 33rd century humanity is scattered among the planets of the Solar System. Millions of lives depend on the revolutionary physics of Arthur Holywelkin; millions of hears are moved by the music created by the strange, eerie instrument he built in the last years of his life: the Orchestra. Johannes Wright is the Ninth–and youngest–Master of the Orchestra. But as he sets out on his first Grand Tour of the Solar System, unseen foes are at his heel, ready to reveal all but the meaning of their enmity. In confronting them, Wright must redefine the Universe–for himself and all humanity.”

Initial Thoughts: I should have a review of an early Kim Stanley Robinson novel up on the site soon. I have fond memories of reading Red Mars (1992) and Green Mars (1993)–and less fond memories of Blue Mars (1996)–as an older teen. The only Robinson work I’ve reviewed on the site is “Exploring Fossil Canyon” (1982). Unfortunately my cover of The Memory of Whiteness had a pernicious sticker that damaged the cover…

2. Greylorn, Keith Laumer (1968)

• Richard Powers’ cover for the 1st edition

From the back cover: “GREYLORN. Humanity’s last hope lay in one spaceship racing through the voids of the universe. The Red Tide had all but engulfed the Earth, and there was just enough time to find Omega, the planet that had long ago been colonized–and then had simply disappeared.

After four years in space, the ship felt the hand of calamity all at once. Its food stores were destroyed by a meteor crash. its crew was set to mutiny. And, worst of all, was the threatening alien ship, with its strange cargo of human bodies…”

Contents: “Greylorn” (1959), “The Night of the Trolls” (1963), “The Other Sky” (variant title: “The Further Sky”) (1964), and “The King of the City” (1961).

Initial Thoughts: I’ve only read Laumer’s (successful) attempt at a New Wave story — “In the Queue” (1970).

3. One Way and Other Stories, Miriam Allen deFord (2025).

• Uncredited cover for the 1st edition

From the back cover: “Miriam Allen deFord (1988-1975) was a feminist, a suffragette, birth control advocate, journalist, editor, winner of the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Award, and author of science fiction, mystery, and true crime. Now, at long last, a collection of her science fiction short stories are back in print with One Way and Other Stories.

Mystery writer, Fortean, anti-fascist, feminist of the first generation, and science fiction trailblazers for five decades, Miriam Allen deFord masterfully weaves all of her facets into her stories, bringing a macabre, fantastic tone to her tales: Bradbury meets Hitchcock. She was already the grand dame of science fiction when the genre reached its second peak with the magazine boom of the early ’50s. Her work thus paced and led the way for SF’s Silver Age.

Miriam Allen deFord somehow slips under the radar when luminaries are listed. With luck, this volume will remedy this oversight.

~Gideon Marcus, editor of Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women.“

Contents: “Not Snow, Nor Rain” (1959), “Oh, Rats!” (1961), “One Way” (1955), “The Margenes” (1956), “The Akkra Case” (1962), “Time Out for Redheads” (1955), “Where the Phyh Pebbles Go” (1963), and “The Eel” (1958).

Initial Thoughts: It’s always nice to see a lesser-known classic author getting a collection of stories in print. The indie press Space Cowboy Books also published Jaroslav Olša, Jr.’s Dreaming of Autonomous Vehicles: Miloslav (Miles) J. Breuer: Czech-American Writer and the Birth of Science Fiction  (2025), which I featured earlier this year. I’ve enjoyed some of deFord’s work in the past–in particular her earlier work. You can snag a copy of Other Stories here. They include small reproductions of the original interior art.

4. Junction, Jack Dann (1981)

• Uncredited cover for the 1st edition

From the back cover: “GO TO HELL. The hundred-eyed bird monster told Ned Wheeler that his foreordained quest must begin in Hell–which lay just beyond the borders of Junction, the tumultuous, bawdy, pious town that knew damnation as a daily experience and salvation as a distant hope.

ned’s odyssey took him to a place stranger than Junction, stranger than Hell–the bizarre, unbelievable, dangerous city called New York.

Its learned scientists told him of incredible things, like the laws of cause and effect and the fact that they had ceased to operate. It was as if the entire world were living in a chaotic dream–perhaps Ned Wheeler’s dream…”

Initial Thoughts: I recently reviewed, and enjoyed, Dann’s Nebula-nominated novella “Junction” (1973). This is the fix-up novel version that also includes the short story “The Islands of Time” (1977). I’m a bit worried. I felt like the original novella version could have been trimmed and tightened. Not sure how a novelization will add to the metaphysical kaleidoscope that was the original. We shall see!

For book reviews consult the INDEX

For cover art posts consult the INDEX

For TV and film reviews consult the INDEX

#1950s #1960s #1970s #1980s #bookReview #bookReviews2 #books #fiction #jackDann #keithLaumer #kimStanleyRobinson #miriamAllenDeford #paperbacks #sciFi #scienceFiction

Updates: Recent Science Fiction Purchases No. CCCXLVI (Kim Stanley Robinson, Miriam Allen DeFord, Keith Laumer, and Jack Dann)

Which books/covers/authors intrigue you? Which have you read? Disliked? Enjoyed?

Finally acquired a new scanner!

1. The Memory of Whiteness, Kim Stanley Robinson (1985)

• Fred Gambino’s cover for the 1999 edition

From the back cover: “In the 33rd century humanity is scattered among the planets of the Solar System. Millions of lives depend on the revolutionary physics of Arthur Holywelkin; millions of hears are moved by the music created by the strange, eerie instrument he built in the last years of his life: the Orchestra. Johannes Wright is the Ninth–and youngest–Master of the Orchestra. But as he sets out on his first Grand Tour of the Solar System, unseen foes are at his heel, ready to reveal all but the meaning of their enmity. In confronting them, Wright must redefine the Universe–for himself and all humanity.”

Initial Thoughts: I should have a review of an early Kim Stanley Robinson novel up on the site soon. I have fond memories of reading Red Mars (1992) and Green Mars (1993)–and less fond memories of Blue Mars (1996)–as an older teen. The only Robinson work I’ve reviewed on the site is “Exploring Fossil Canyon” (1982). Unfortunately my cover of The Memory of Whiteness had a pernicious sticker that damaged the cover…

2. Greylorn, Keith Laumer (1968)

• Richard Powers’ cover for the 1st edition

From the back cover: “GREYLORN. Humanity’s last hope lay in one spaceship racing through the voids of the universe. The Red Tide had all but engulfed the Earth, and there was just enough time to find Omega, the planet that had long ago been colonized–and then had simply disappeared.

After four years in space, the ship felt the hand of calamity all at once. Its food stores were destroyed by a meteor crash. its crew was set to mutiny. And, worst of all, was the threatening alien ship, with its strange cargo of human bodies…”

Contents: “Greylorn” (1959), “The Night of the Trolls” (1963), “The Other Sky” (variant title: “The Further Sky”) (1964), and “The King of the City” (1961).

Initial Thoughts: I’ve only read Laumer’s (successful) attempt at a New Wave story — “In the Queue” (1970).

3. One Way and Other Stories, Miriam Allen deFord (2025).

• Uncredited cover for the 1st edition

From the back cover: “Miriam Allen deFord (1988-1975) was a feminist, a suffragette, birth control advocate, journalist, editor, winner of the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Award, and author of science fiction, mystery, and true crime. Now, at long last, a collection of her science fiction short stories are back in print with One Way and Other Stories.

Mystery writer, Fortean, anti-fascist, feminist of the first generation, and science fiction trailblazers for five decades, Miriam Allen deFord masterfully weaves all of her facets into her stories, bringing a macabre, fantastic tone to her tales: Bradbury meets Hitchcock. She was already the grand dame of science fiction when the genre reached its second peak with the magazine boom of the early ’50s. Her work thus paced and led the way for SF’s Silver Age.

Miriam Allen deFord somehow slips under the radar when luminaries are listed. With luck, this volume will remedy this oversight.

~Gideon Marcus, editor of Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women.“

Contents: “Not Snow, Nor Rain” (1959), “Oh, Rats!” (1961), “One Way” (1955), “The Margenes” (1956), “The Akkra Case” (1962), “Time Out for Redheads” (1955), “Where the Phyh Pebbles Go” (1963), and “The Eel” (1958).

Initial Thoughts: It’s always nice to see a lesser-known classic author getting a collection of stories in print. The indie press Space Cowboy Books also published Jaroslav Olša, Jr.’s Dreaming of Autonomous Vehicles: Miloslav (Miles) J. Breuer: Czech-American Writer and the Birth of Science Fiction  (2025), which I featured earlier this year. I’ve enjoyed some of deFord’s work in the past–in particular her earlier work. You can snag a copy of Other Stories here. They include small reproductions of the original interior art.

4. Junction, Jack Dann (1981)

• Uncredited cover for the 1st edition

From the back cover: “GO TO HELL. The hundred-eyed bird monster told Ned Wheeler that his foreordained quest must begin in Hell–which lay just beyond the borders of Junction, the tumultuous, bawdy, pious town that knew damnation as a daily experience and salvation as a distant hope.

ned’s odyssey took him to a place stranger than Junction, stranger than Hell–the bizarre, unbelievable, dangerous city called New York.

Its learned scientists told him of incredible things, like the laws of cause and effect and the fact that they had ceased to operate. It was as if the entire world were living in a chaotic dream–perhaps Ned Wheeler’s dream…”

Initial Thoughts: I recently reviewed, and enjoyed, Dann’s Nebula-nominated novella “Junction” (1973). This is the fix-up novel version that also includes the short story “The Islands of Time” (1977). I’m a bit worried. I felt like the original novella version could have been trimmed and tightened. Not sure how a novelization will add to the metaphysical kaleidoscope that was the original. We shall see!

For book reviews consult the INDEX

For cover art posts consult the INDEX

For TV and film reviews consult the INDEX

#1950s #1960s #1970s #1980s #bookReview #bookReviews2 #books #fiction #jackDann #keithLaumer #kimStanleyRobinson #miriamAllenDeford #paperbacks #sciFi #scienceFiction

Updates: Recent Science Fiction Purchases No. CCCXLVI (Kim Stanley Robinson, Miriam Allen DeFord, Keith Laumer, and Jack Dann)

Which books/covers/authors intrigue you? Which have you read? Disliked? Enjoyed?

Finally acquired a new scanner!

1. The Memory of Whiteness, Kim Stanley Robinson (1985)

• Fred Gambino’s cover for the 1999 edition

From the back cover: “In the 33rd century humanity is scattered among the planets of the Solar System. Millions of lives depend on the revolutionary physics of Arthur Holywelkin; millions of hears are moved by the music created by the strange, eerie instrument he built in the last years of his life: the Orchestra. Johannes Wright is the Ninth–and youngest–Master of the Orchestra. But as he sets out on his first Grand Tour of the Solar System, unseen foes are at his heel, ready to reveal all but the meaning of their enmity. In confronting them, Wright must redefine the Universe–for himself and all humanity.”

Initial Thoughts: I should have a review of an early Kim Stanley Robinson novel up on the site soon. I have fond memories of reading Red Mars (1992) and Green Mars (1993)–and less fond memories of Blue Mars (1996)–as an older teen. The only Robinson work I’ve reviewed on the site is “Exploring Fossil Canyon” (1982). Unfortunately my cover of The Memory of Whiteness had a pernicious sticker that damaged the cover…

2. Greylorn, Keith Laumer (1968)

• Richard Powers’ cover for the 1st edition

From the back cover: “GREYLORN. Humanity’s last hope lay in one spaceship racing through the voids of the universe. The Red Tide had all but engulfed the Earth, and there was just enough time to find Omega, the planet that had long ago been colonized–and then had simply disappeared.

After four years in space, the ship felt the hand of calamity all at once. Its food stores were destroyed by a meteor crash. its crew was set to mutiny. And, worst of all, was the threatening alien ship, with its strange cargo of human bodies…”

Contents: “Greylorn” (1959), “The Night of the Trolls” (1963), “The Other Sky” (variant title: “The Further Sky”) (1964), and “The King of the City” (1961).

Initial Thoughts: I’ve only read Laumer’s (successful) attempt at a New Wave story — “In the Queue” (1970).

3. One Way and Other Stories, Miriam Allen deFord (2025).

• Uncredited cover for the 1st edition

From the back cover: “Miriam Allen deFord (1988-1975) was a feminist, a suffragette, birth control advocate, journalist, editor, winner of the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Award, and author of science fiction, mystery, and true crime. Now, at long last, a collection of her science fiction short stories are back in print with One Way and Other Stories.

Mystery writer, Fortean, anti-fascist, feminist of the first generation, and science fiction trailblazers for five decades, Miriam Allen deFord masterfully weaves all of her facets into her stories, bringing a macabre, fantastic tone to her tales: Bradbury meets Hitchcock. She was already the grand dame of science fiction when the genre reached its second peak with the magazine boom of the early ’50s. Her work thus paced and led the way for SF’s Silver Age.

Miriam Allen deFord somehow slips under the radar when luminaries are listed. With luck, this volume will remedy this oversight.

~Gideon Marcus, editor of Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women.“

Contents: “Not Snow, Nor Rain” (1959), “Oh, Rats!” (1961), “One Way” (1955), “The Margenes” (1956), “The Akkra Case” (1962), “Time Out for Redheads” (1955), “Where the Phyh Pebbles Go” (1963), and “The Eel” (1958).

Initial Thoughts: It’s always nice to see a lesser-known classic author getting a collection of stories in print. The indie press Space Cowboy Books also published Jaroslav Olša, Jr.’s Dreaming of Autonomous Vehicles: Miloslav (Miles) J. Breuer: Czech-American Writer and the Birth of Science Fiction  (2025), which I featured earlier this year. I’ve enjoyed some of deFord’s work in the past–in particular her earlier work. You can snag a copy of Other Stories here. They include small reproductions of the original interior art.

4. Junction, Jack Dann (1981)

• Uncredited cover for the 1st edition

From the back cover: “GO TO HELL. The hundred-eyed bird monster told Ned Wheeler that his foreordained quest must begin in Hell–which lay just beyond the borders of Junction, the tumultuous, bawdy, pious town that knew damnation as a daily experience and salvation as a distant hope.

ned’s odyssey took him to a place stranger than Junction, stranger than Hell–the bizarre, unbelievable, dangerous city called New York.

Its learned scientists told him of incredible things, like the laws of cause and effect and the fact that they had ceased to operate. It was as if the entire world were living in a chaotic dream–perhaps Ned Wheeler’s dream…”

Initial Thoughts: I recently reviewed, and enjoyed, Dann’s Nebula-nominated novella “Junction” (1973). This is the fix-up novel version that also includes the short story “The Islands of Time” (1977). I’m a bit worried. I felt like the original novella version could have been trimmed and tightened. Not sure how a novelization will add to the metaphysical kaleidoscope that was the original. We shall see!

For book reviews consult the INDEX

For cover art posts consult the INDEX

For TV and film reviews consult the INDEX

#1950s #1960s #1970s #1980s #bookReview #bookReviews2 #books #fiction #jackDann #keithLaumer #kimStanleyRobinson #miriamAllenDeford #paperbacks #sciFi #scienceFiction

Updates: Recent Science Fiction Purchases No. CCCXLVI (Kim Stanley Robinson, Miriam Allen DeFord, Keith Laumer, and Jack Dann)

Which books/covers/authors intrigue you? Which have you read? Disliked? Enjoyed?

Finally acquired a new scanner!

1. The Memory of Whiteness, Kim Stanley Robinson (1985)

• Fred Gambino’s cover for the 1999 edition

From the back cover: “In the 33rd century humanity is scattered among the planets of the Solar System. Millions of lives depend on the revolutionary physics of Arthur Holywelkin; millions of hears are moved by the music created by the strange, eerie instrument he built in the last years of his life: the Orchestra. Johannes Wright is the Ninth–and youngest–Master of the Orchestra. But as he sets out on his first Grand Tour of the Solar System, unseen foes are at his heel, ready to reveal all but the meaning of their enmity. In confronting them, Wright must redefine the Universe–for himself and all humanity.”

Initial Thoughts: I should have a review of an early Kim Stanley Robinson novel up on the site soon. I have fond memories of reading Red Mars (1992) and Green Mars (1993)–and less fond memories of Blue Mars (1996)–as an older teen. The only Robinson work I’ve reviewed on the site is “Exploring Fossil Canyon” (1982). Unfortunately my cover of The Memory of Whiteness had a pernicious sticker that damaged the cover…

2. Greylorn, Keith Laumer (1968)

• Richard Powers’ cover for the 1st edition

From the back cover: “GREYLORN. Humanity’s last hope lay in one spaceship racing through the voids of the universe. The Red Tide had all but engulfed the Earth, and there was just enough time to find Omega, the planet that had long ago been colonized–and then had simply disappeared.

After four years in space, the ship felt the hand of calamity all at once. Its food stores were destroyed by a meteor crash. its crew was set to mutiny. And, worst of all, was the threatening alien ship, with its strange cargo of human bodies…”

Contents: “Greylorn” (1959), “The Night of the Trolls” (1963), “The Other Sky” (variant title: “The Further Sky”) (1964), and “The King of the City” (1961).

Initial Thoughts: I’ve only read Laumer’s (successful) attempt at a New Wave story — “In the Queue” (1970).

3. One Way and Other Stories, Miriam Allen deFord (2025).

• Uncredited cover for the 1st edition

From the back cover: “Miriam Allen deFord (1988-1975) was a feminist, a suffragette, birth control advocate, journalist, editor, winner of the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Award, and author of science fiction, mystery, and true crime. Now, at long last, a collection of her science fiction short stories are back in print with One Way and Other Stories.

Mystery writer, Fortean, anti-fascist, feminist of the first generation, and science fiction trailblazers for five decades, Miriam Allen deFord masterfully weaves all of her facets into her stories, bringing a macabre, fantastic tone to her tales: Bradbury meets Hitchcock. She was already the grand dame of science fiction when the genre reached its second peak with the magazine boom of the early ’50s. Her work thus paced and led the way for SF’s Silver Age.

Miriam Allen deFord somehow slips under the radar when luminaries are listed. With luck, this volume will remedy this oversight.

~Gideon Marcus, editor of Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women.“

Contents: “Not Snow, Nor Rain” (1959), “Oh, Rats!” (1961), “One Way” (1955), “The Margenes” (1956), “The Akkra Case” (1962), “Time Out for Redheads” (1955), “Where the Phyh Pebbles Go” (1963), and “The Eel” (1958).

Initial Thoughts: It’s always nice to see a lesser-known classic author getting a collection of stories in print. The indie press Space Cowboy Books also published Jaroslav Olša, Jr.’s Dreaming of Autonomous Vehicles: Miloslav (Miles) J. Breuer: Czech-American Writer and the Birth of Science Fiction  (2025), which I featured earlier this year. I’ve enjoyed some of deFord’s work in the past–in particular her earlier work. You can snag a copy of Other Stories here. They include small reproductions of the original interior art.

4. Junction, Jack Dann (1981)

• Uncredited cover for the 1st edition

From the back cover: “GO TO HELL. The hundred-eyed bird monster told Ned Wheeler that his foreordained quest must begin in Hell–which lay just beyond the borders of Junction, the tumultuous, bawdy, pious town that knew damnation as a daily experience and salvation as a distant hope.

ned’s odyssey took him to a place stranger than Junction, stranger than Hell–the bizarre, unbelievable, dangerous city called New York.

Its learned scientists told him of incredible things, like the laws of cause and effect and the fact that they had ceased to operate. It was as if the entire world were living in a chaotic dream–perhaps Ned Wheeler’s dream…”

Initial Thoughts: I recently reviewed, and enjoyed, Dann’s Nebula-nominated novella “Junction” (1973). This is the fix-up novel version that also includes the short story “The Islands of Time” (1977). I’m a bit worried. I felt like the original novella version could have been trimmed and tightened. Not sure how a novelization will add to the metaphysical kaleidoscope that was the original. We shall see!

For book reviews consult the INDEX

For cover art posts consult the INDEX

For TV and film reviews consult the INDEX

#1950s #1960s #1970s #1980s #bookReview #bookReviews2 #books #fiction #jackDann #keithLaumer #kimStanleyRobinson #miriamAllenDeford #paperbacks #sciFi #scienceFiction

Book Review: Star Science Fiction Stories No. 3, ed. Frederik Pohl (1955)

• Richard Powers’ cover for the 1955 edition

3.5/5 (collated rating: Good)

Ballantine Books’ illustrious science fictional program started with a bang–Star Science Fiction Stories. According to Mike Ashley’s Transformations: The Story of Science-Fiction Magazines from 1950 to 1970 Frederik Pohl’s anthology series of original (mostly) stories was “intended as both a showcase of Ballantine’s authors and a lure to new writers.” Paying better rates than magazines, the Star series foreshadowed the explosion of original anthologies that would provide a sustained challenge to the eminence held in the 50s by the magazine.

I’ve selected the third volume of the six-volume series.1 It contains an illustrative cross-section of 50s science fiction. Philip K. Dick’s “Foster, You’re Dead” (1955), Richard Matheson’s “Dance of the Dead” (1955), and Jack Williamson’s “Guinevere for Everybody” (1955) are not to be missed.

Recommended.

Brief Plot Summaries/Analysis

“It’s Such a Beautiful Day” (1955), Isaac Asimov, 3.5/5 (Good): The anthology starts off with an effective Isaac Asimov satire of the suburban experience. The creation of suburbia in the 1950s (and subsequent mass white flight) generated increased commutes between home and urban work. The home became a bunker to protect the American family from any threat (fallout shelters, a community away from diversity and interaction with “the other,” etc.).2

Asimov speculates that new, almost instantaneous, transportation portals will isolate the family completely from the external world. A minor glitch in the transportation system instills a change in the young Richard Hanshaw, Jr. He isn’t as willing to trust the portal — and decides to trek to school by foot. His teacher calls mother in shock and suggests psychological treatment. An intriguing, and gentle, satire on American conceptions of normalcy, the new-fangled post-War emergence of psychology as a therapeutic practice, and the suburban experience.3

“The Strawberry Window” (1955), Ray Bradbury, 3/5 (Average): The story follows a family on Mars. The father, Will, spends his day constructing the settlement town. He’s possessed by the dream of Mars and humanity’s conquest of the stars: “It’s not just us come to Mars, it’s the race, the whole darn human race, depending on how we make out in our lifetime. This thing is so big I want to laugh, I’m so scared stiff of it” (31). His long-suffering wife Carrie yearns for the small sounds and big memories that anchor her to Earth. And so Will comes up with a compromise, an expensive compromise.

Ultimately, this is beautiful polish to a banal, almost jingoistic, defense of humanity’s supposed destiny to expand and conquer: “There’s nothing better than Man with a capital M in my book” (32). I am far more interested in the more subversive and quietly critical moments of Bradbury’s other Mars stories. This one is simplistic propaganda of conquest. Despite the enjoyable thematic core (the effects of leaving Earth) and polished telling, I’d classify “The Strawberry Window” amongst his most disappointing and forced. For superior Bradbury that I’ve covered, check out “The Highway” (1950) and “The Pedestrian” (1951).

“The Deep Range” (1955), Arthur C. Clarke, 3/5 (Average): One of the reasons I feel a special attraction to 50s SF is its interest in the working-class experience of the future. Of course, for the reader of the present futuristic trappings suggest a certain glorification of what would be a new form of the mundane daily grind. The heroic blue-collar stories in James Gunn’s fix-up Station in Space (1958) come to mind. In Clarke’s “The Deep Range” humanity farms the seas. Instead of terrestrial herds of sheep or cows, shepherds in submersibles with dolphin assistants protect herds of meat-yielding whales from predatory sharks.

An effective slice-of-working class experience set in an evocative locale. It’s an immersive little story that draws on Clarke’s own interest in scuba diving and underwater adventure. Regardless, I remain uninterested in returning to Clarke’s work in anything more than an anthologized tale here and there.

“Alien” (1955), Lester del Rey, 3/5 (Average): Due to an comically improbable collision at sea, Larry Cross and his alcoholic crewmate Al Simmonds find themselves stranded on an island with an alien which “could swim out of a sunken ship at the bottom of the sea” (51). Al Simmonds is injured and Cross must keep the man alive and figure out the alien’s intentions. A classic SF problem story in which man must figure out a modus operandi in a bizarre new scenario. It’s polished. It’s solid. It’s predictable.

“Foster, You’re Dead” (1955), Philip K. Dick, 5/5 (Masterpiece): Mike Foster spends his school days practicing survival skills–digging, making knives, weaving baskets–in case of a nuclear attack. The kids snicker at him as he walks past. They don’t own a fallout shelter at home. His father refuses to pay into the NATS (National Security fund). If a bomb hit, Mike wouldn’t even be granted access to the school shelter. He’s possessed by a deep, perpetual, encompassing trauma.4 His walk home is nightmarish. Mechanical newspaper machines shout excitedly about “war, death, amazing new weapons” (67). The public shelter beckons with its neon lights but he has no money in his pocket for entry. And the store with the new shelter model mocks with its advertisements: “a powered heating and refrigeration system” and “self-servicing air-purification network” with “three decontamination stages for food and water” (68). Reluctant to yet again confront his father about their lack of shelter, he gazes at the new model and talks to the salesmen. He imagines that every evening he’d sleep in its encapsulating embrace, womb-like.

One of the absolute best fallout shelter themed SF stories I’ve ever read. It’s a fascinating collision of crisp prose, commentary on the arms race, and an evisceration of the complicity of commercialism in Cold War terror. Joins William Tenn’s “Generation of Noah” (1951), Daniel Galouye’s Dark Universe (1961), Modecai Roshwald’s Level 7 (1959), and Fritz Leiber’s “The Moon Is Green” (1952) amongst the best on the theme.

“Whatever Happened to Corporal Cuckoo?” (1953), Gerald Kersh, 3.5/5 (Good): In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries surgical diagrams called “Wound Men” crop up in medical miscellanies in Europe. These illustrations–the human form hacked, slashed, smashed, cut, pierced, bloated–served as an annotated table of contents to guide the reader through various injuries and diseases. Kersh imagines a literary version of himself returning to New York City from WWII interacting with a fantastical manifestation of a Wound Man on board the Cunard White Star liner Queen Mary. Corporal Cuckoo, the “Wound Man” in question, regals the narrator (Kersh) with the history of his scarred and mutilated form that mysteriously heals from every injury.

The reader becomes immersed in a historical military narrative that begins in the early 16th century. There’s a bizarre sense of horror and fantastical displacement. Like some crushed and deformed specimen, Cuckoo becomes an encyclopedic, and culminative, glimpse of humanity’s relentless obsession with death and violence.

Interesting and memorable. I’ll keep on the lookout for more of Kersh’s SFF.

“Dance of the Dead” (1955), Richard Matheson, 4/5 (Good): My third favorite story in the anthology transplants the standard narrative of a young adult straying from the path set out by parents and small town community onto a break-neck road trip in a drug and alcohol drenched near-future. Len, Bud, Barbara, and Peggy race their car towards St. Louis. Bud tries to get Barb to take snuggle–“act of promiscuous love-play; usage evolved during W.W. III” (114)–and take drugs: “Have a jab, Bab” (115). In the kaleidoscope of the new and relentless peer pressure the lessons her mother taught her slowly erode. All her inhibitions come crashing down when the quartet see the transcendent nightmare that is the titular dance of the dead.

Manifesting the SPEED of the car, Matheson’s prose resonates with pulse and hum, snippets of song and signage, slang and youthful lust: “At a hundred miles an hour let me DREAM my DREAMS!” (115). It’s frantic. It’s zappy. It’s vibrant. Recommended for fans of the more linguistically experimental (and bleak) of 50s visions.

“Any More at Home Like You?” (1955), Chad Oliver, 2.75/5 (Below Average): Dangerously close to joke story territory (what I classify stories that rely on a silly last page twist designed to generate a chuckle), Oliver re-imagines the classic flying saucer story. A young “man” named Keith crashes his advanced spacecraft in the swanky Bel-Air neighborhood of LA. He seems friendly. Friendly residents take him in. He meets with politicians. He gives a canned speech at the UN. But what’s the secret behind his sudden appearance? Does he really represent a massive Galactic Civilization as he claims? When the pieces all fit together, there’s a gentle sense to it all mixed in with a little, rather silly, “snip” at humanity’s claims to galactic centrality.

If you’re new to Oliver, I recommend tracking downs his two generation ship short stories–“Stardust” (1952) and “The Wind Blows Free” (1957). This one was not for me.

“The Devil on Salvation Bluff” (1955), Jack Vance, 3.25/5 (Above Average): As my last Vance review came in 2021–The Languages of Pao (1958), I looked forward to this anthology as a way to return to his fiction. “The Devil on Salvation Bluff” imagines a religious colony (everyone calls each other “Brother” or “Sister”) on a planet named Glory without clear scientific or societal patterns. If anything, disorder, irregularity, and chaos is the pattern. Regardless, the community attempts to impose an almost monastic order on their lives. The colonists brings with them a massive clock, build communities in precise patterns, and carve up the landscape with linear canals and irrigation.

In classic missionary fashion, the colonists attempt to impose their religion and regularity on the humanoid inhabitants of Glory, nicknamed Flits, that spend their days indulging in their passions, seemingly random rituals, and goat herding. Using salt as a bribe, they momentarily convince the Flits to settle in a new village created by the colonists. After Brother Raymond and Sister Mary kidnap the chief of the Flits to identify the psychosis they think might underline their impulsive, random, and occasionally destructive actions, the true psychological truth of the planet emerges. Vance suggests that dogmatic religion must shift and change to adapt to the moment.

Fits in with an intriguing cluster of often brilliant 50s stories exploring the clash of Earth religion and the SFnal new–Ray Bradbury’s “The Man” (1949), Arthur C. Clarke’s “The Star” (1955), James Blish’s A Case of Conscience (novella 1953, novelized 1958), Walter M. Miller, Jr.’s A Canticle for Leibowitz (stories 1955-1957, novelized 1959), etc.

Somewhat recommended.

“Guinevere for Everybody” (1955), Jack Williamson, 4.5/5 (Very Good): An artificially created Guinevere stands “chained” in a “vending machine” tempting sleepy passengers in an airport with her plaintive calls (169). “You like me, huh?” she asks strangers as they pass (170). “Won’t you by me?” she cajoles (170). The implication is clear. The reason for her sudden appearance in train stations, and others of her model, far less so. Chimberley represents General Cybernetics, a company building “managerial computers” to replace human workers (171). Chimberley attempts the origins of “THE VITAL APPLIANCE!” with her all too human sex appeal, and disturbing tendency to spout advertisements for other products (170). He, little more than a cypher manifesting the displacement of the mechanical age, feels drawn to her as “his best friends were digital computers” (171). He discerns that she is a recent product created, produced, and distributed by one of these vast managerial computers. Giddy with excitement he sees her as “something human management would never have had the brains or the vision to accomplish” (172). He purchases her from the vending machine and sets off to find the producing facility. But a line has been crossed, and another.

This story bothered me (in a good way) far more than it should. Williamson integrates little comments about how the mechanical (think AI unleashed on the US government) ignores the human experience. And how Chimberley, alone, adrift, insular, feels fulfilled by a programmed device that is but a fragment of a capitalistic assault on the consumer. This disturbed satirical gem took me by surprise. I will be on the lookout for more 50s Williamson short stories.

Notes

1. Eight if we count the one-volume Star Science Fiction Magazine (1958) and Star Short Novels (1954). ↩︎
2. There is a ton of scholarship on both of these ideas that I have referenced in various reviews in the past. Here is a short list! Elaine Tyler May’s Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (1988, rev. 2017); Thomas Bishop’s Every Home a Fortress: Cold War Fatherhood and the Family Fallout Shelter (2020); Laura McEnaney’s Civil Defense Begins at Home: Militarization Meets Everyday Life in the Fifties (2000); and Robert A. Beauregard’s When America Became Suburban (2006). ↩︎
3. For “normalcy” see Anna G. Creadick’s Perfectly Average: The Pursuit of Normality in Postwar America (2010); For the growth of psychology as medical practice in the post-War moment see Ellen Herman’s The Romance of American Psychology: Political Culture in the Age of Experts (1995). ↩︎
4. I am reminded of studies of childhood trauma conducted on the students of Abo Elementary, New Mexico, a school built underground as a fallout shelter. ↩︎

For cover art posts consult the INDEX

For book reviews consult the INDEX

For TV and film reviews consult the INDEX

#1950s #arthurCClarke #avantGarde #bookReview #bookReviews2 #books #chadOliver #fiction #frederikPohl #geraldKesh #isaacAsimov #jackVance #jackWilliamson #lesterDelRey #philipKDick #rayBradbury #richardMatheson #sciFi #scienceFiction #writing

Book Review: Star Science Fiction Stories No. 3, ed. Frederik Pohl (1955)

• Richard Powers’ cover for the 1955 edition

3.5/5 (collated rating: Good)

Ballantine Books’ illustrious science fictional program started with a bang–Star Science Fiction Stories. According to Mike Ashley’s Transformations: The Story of Science-Fiction Magazines from 1950 to 1970 Frederik Pohl’s anthology series of original (mostly) stories was “intended as both a showcase of Ballantine’s authors and a lure to new writers.” Paying better rates than magazines, the Star series foreshadowed the explosion of original anthologies that would provide a sustained challenge to the eminence held in the 50s by the magazine.

I’ve selected the third volume of the six-volume series.1 It contains an illustrative cross-section of 50s science fiction. Philip K. Dick’s “Foster, You’re Dead” (1955), Richard Matheson’s “Dance of the Dead” (1955), and Jack Williamson’s “Guinevere for Everybody” (1955) are not to be missed.

Recommended.

Brief Plot Summaries/Analysis

“It’s Such a Beautiful Day” (1955), Isaac Asimov, 3.5/5 (Good): The anthology starts off with an effective Isaac Asimov satire of the suburban experience. The creation of suburbia in the 1950s (and subsequent mass white flight) generated increased commutes between home and urban work. The home became a bunker to protect the American family from any threat (fallout shelters, a community away from diversity and interaction with “the other,” etc.).2

Asimov speculates that new, almost instantaneous, transportation portals will isolate the family completely from the external world. A minor glitch in the transportation system instills a change in the young Richard Hanshaw, Jr. He isn’t as willing to trust the portal — and decides to trek to school by foot. His teacher calls mother in shock and suggests psychological treatment. An intriguing, and gentle, satire on American conceptions of normalcy, the new-fangled post-War emergence of psychology as a therapeutic practice, and the suburban experience.3

“The Strawberry Window” (1955), Ray Bradbury, 3/5 (Average): The story follows a family on Mars. The father, Will, spends his day constructing the settlement town. He’s possessed by the dream of Mars and humanity’s conquest of the stars: “It’s not just us come to Mars, it’s the race, the whole darn human race, depending on how we make out in our lifetime. This thing is so big I want to laugh, I’m so scared stiff of it” (31). His long-suffering wife Carrie yearns for the small sounds and big memories that anchor her to Earth. And so Will comes up with a compromise, an expensive compromise.

Ultimately, this is beautiful polish to a banal, almost jingoistic, defense of humanity’s supposed destiny to expand and conquer: “There’s nothing better than Man with a capital M in my book” (32). I am far more interested in the more subversive and quietly critical moments of Bradbury’s other Mars stories. This one is simplistic propaganda of conquest. Despite the enjoyable thematic core (the effects of leaving Earth) and polished telling, I’d classify “The Strawberry Window” amongst his most disappointing and forced. For superior Bradbury that I’ve covered, check out “The Highway” (1950) and “The Pedestrian” (1951).

“The Deep Range” (1955), Arthur C. Clarke, 3/5 (Average): One of the reasons I feel a special attraction to 50s SF is its interest in the working-class experience of the future. Of course, for the reader of the present futuristic trappings suggest a certain glorification of what would be a new form of the mundane daily grind. The heroic blue-collar stories in James Gunn’s fix-up Station in Space (1958) come to mind. In Clarke’s “The Deep Range” humanity farms the seas. Instead of terrestrial herds of sheep or cows, shepherds in submersibles with dolphin assistants protect herds of meat-yielding whales from predatory sharks.

An effective slice-of-working class experience set in an evocative locale. It’s an immersive little story that draws on Clarke’s own interest in scuba diving and underwater adventure. Regardless, I remain uninterested in returning to Clarke’s work in anything more than an anthologized tale here and there.

“Alien” (1955), Lester del Rey, 3/5 (Average): Due to an comically improbable collision at sea, Larry Cross and his alcoholic crewmate Al Simmonds find themselves stranded on an island with an alien which “could swim out of a sunken ship at the bottom of the sea” (51). Al Simmonds is injured and Cross must keep the man alive and figure out the alien’s intentions. A classic SF problem story in which man must figure out a modus operandi in a bizarre new scenario. It’s polished. It’s solid. It’s predictable.

“Foster, You’re Dead” (1955), Philip K. Dick, 5/5 (Masterpiece): Mike Foster spends his school days practicing survival skills–digging, making knives, weaving baskets–in case of a nuclear attack. The kids snicker at him as he walks past. They don’t own a fallout shelter at home. His father refuses to pay into the NATS (National Security fund). If a bomb hit, Mike wouldn’t even be granted access to the school shelter. He’s possessed by a deep, perpetual, encompassing trauma.4 His walk home is nightmarish. Mechanical newspaper machines shout excitedly about “war, death, amazing new weapons” (67). The public shelter beckons with its neon lights but he has no money in his pocket for entry. And the store with the new shelter model mocks with its advertisements: “a powered heating and refrigeration system” and “self-servicing air-purification network” with “three decontamination stages for food and water” (68). Reluctant to yet again confront his father about their lack of shelter, he gazes at the new model and talks to the salesmen. He imagines that every evening he’d sleep in its encapsulating embrace, womb-like.

One of the absolute best fallout shelter themed SF stories I’ve ever read. It’s a fascinating collision of crisp prose, commentary on the arms race, and an evisceration of the complicity of commercialism in Cold War terror. Joins William Tenn’s “Generation of Noah” (1951), Daniel Galouye’s Dark Universe (1961), Modecai Roshwald’s Level 7 (1959), and Fritz Leiber’s “The Moon Is Green” (1952) amongst the best on the theme.

“Whatever Happened to Corporal Cuckoo?” (1953), Gerald Kersh, 3.5/5 (Good): In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries surgical diagrams called “Wound Men” crop up in medical miscellanies in Europe. These illustrations–the human form hacked, slashed, smashed, cut, pierced, bloated–served as an annotated table of contents to guide the reader through various injuries and diseases. Kersh imagines a literary version of himself returning to New York City from WWII interacting with a fantastical manifestation of a Wound Man on board the Cunard White Star liner Queen Mary. Corporal Cuckoo, the “Wound Man” in question, regals the narrator (Kersh) with the history of his scarred and mutilated form that mysteriously heals from every injury.

The reader becomes immersed in a historical military narrative that begins in the early 16th century. There’s a bizarre sense of horror and fantastical displacement. Like some crushed and deformed specimen, Cuckoo becomes an encyclopedic, and culminative, glimpse of humanity’s relentless obsession with death and violence.

Interesting and memorable. I’ll keep on the lookout for more of Kersh’s SFF.

“Dance of the Dead” (1955), Richard Matheson, 4/5 (Good): My third favorite story in the anthology transplants the standard narrative of a young adult straying from the path set out by parents and small town community onto a break-neck road trip in a drug and alcohol drenched near-future. Len, Bud, Barbara, and Peggy race their car towards St. Louis. Bud tries to get Barb to take snuggle–“act of promiscuous love-play; usage evolved during W.W. III” (114)–and take drugs: “Have a jab, Bab” (115). In the kaleidoscope of the new and relentless peer pressure the lessons her mother taught her slowly erode. All her inhibitions come crashing down when the quartet see the transcendent nightmare that is the titular dance of the dead.

Manifesting the SPEED of the car, Matheson’s prose resonates with pulse and hum, snippets of song and signage, slang and youthful lust: “At a hundred miles an hour let me DREAM my DREAMS!” (115). It’s frantic. It’s zappy. It’s vibrant. Recommended for fans of the more linguistically experimental (and bleak) of 50s visions.

“Any More at Home Like You?” (1955), Chad Oliver, 2.75/5 (Below Average): Dangerously close to joke story territory (what I classify stories that rely on a silly last page twist designed to generate a chuckle), Oliver re-imagines the classic flying saucer story. A young “man” named Keith crashes his advanced spacecraft in the swanky Bel-Air neighborhood of LA. He seems friendly. Friendly residents take him in. He meets with politicians. He gives a canned speech at the UN. But what’s the secret behind his sudden appearance? Does he really represent a massive Galactic Civilization as he claims? When the pieces all fit together, there’s a gentle sense to it all mixed in with a little, rather silly, “snip” at humanity’s claims to galactic centrality.

If you’re new to Oliver, I recommend tracking downs his two generation ship short stories–“Stardust” (1952) and “The Wind Blows Free” (1957). This one was not for me.

“The Devil on Salvation Bluff” (1955), Jack Vance, 3.25/5 (Above Average): As my last Vance review came in 2021–The Languages of Pao (1958), I looked forward to this anthology as a way to return to his fiction. “The Devil on Salvation Bluff” imagines a religious colony (everyone calls each other “Brother” or “Sister”) on a planet named Glory without clear scientific or societal patterns. If anything, disorder, irregularity, and chaos is the pattern. Regardless, the community attempts to impose an almost monastic order on their lives. The colonists brings with them a massive clock, build communities in precise patterns, and carve up the landscape with linear canals and irrigation.

In classic missionary fashion, the colonists attempt to impose their religion and regularity on the humanoid inhabitants of Glory, nicknamed Flits, that spend their days indulging in their passions, seemingly random rituals, and goat herding. Using salt as a bribe, they momentarily convince the Flits to settle in a new village created by the colonists. After Brother Raymond and Sister Mary kidnap the chief of the Flits to identify the psychosis they think might underline their impulsive, random, and occasionally destructive actions, the true psychological truth of the planet emerges. Vance suggests that dogmatic religion must shift and change to adapt to the moment.

Fits in with an intriguing cluster of often brilliant 50s stories exploring the clash of Earth religion and the SFnal new–Ray Bradbury’s “The Man” (1949), Arthur C. Clarke’s “The Star” (1955), James Blish’s A Case of Conscience (novella 1953, novelized 1958), Walter M. Miller, Jr.’s A Canticle for Leibowitz (stories 1955-1957, novelized 1959), etc.

Somewhat recommended.

“Guinevere for Everybody” (1955), Jack Williamson, 4.5/5 (Very Good): An artificially created Guinevere stands “chained” in a “vending machine” tempting sleepy passengers in an airport with her plaintive calls (169). “You like me, huh?” she asks strangers as they pass (170). “Won’t you by me?” she cajoles (170). The implication is clear. The reason for her sudden appearance in train stations, and others of her model, far less so. Chimberley represents General Cybernetics, a company building “managerial computers” to replace human workers (171). Chimberley attempts the origins of “THE VITAL APPLIANCE!” with her all too human sex appeal, and disturbing tendency to spout advertisements for other products (170). He, little more than a cypher manifesting the displacement of the mechanical age, feels drawn to her as “his best friends were digital computers” (171). He discerns that she is a recent product created, produced, and distributed by one of these vast managerial computers. Giddy with excitement he sees her as “something human management would never have had the brains or the vision to accomplish” (172). He purchases her from the vending machine and sets off to find the producing facility. But a line has been crossed, and another.

This story bothered me (in a good way) far more than it should. Williamson integrates little comments about how the mechanical (think AI unleashed on the US government) ignores the human experience. And how Chimberley, alone, adrift, insular, feels fulfilled by a programmed device that is but a fragment of a capitalistic assault on the consumer. This disturbed satirical gem took me by surprise. I will be on the lookout for more 50s Williamson short stories.

Notes

1. Eight if we count the one-volume Star Science Fiction Magazine (1958) and Star Short Novels (1954). ↩︎
2. There is a ton of scholarship on both of these ideas that I have referenced in various reviews in the past. Here is a short list! Elaine Tyler May’s Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (1988, rev. 2017); Thomas Bishop’s Every Home a Fortress: Cold War Fatherhood and the Family Fallout Shelter (2020); Laura McEnaney’s Civil Defense Begins at Home: Militarization Meets Everyday Life in the Fifties (2000); and Robert A. Beauregard’s When America Became Suburban (2006). ↩︎
3. For “normalcy” see Anna G. Creadick’s Perfectly Average: The Pursuit of Normality in Postwar America (2010); For the growth of psychology as medical practice in the post-War moment see Ellen Herman’s The Romance of American Psychology: Political Culture in the Age of Experts (1995). ↩︎
4. I am reminded of studies of childhood trauma conducted on the students of Abo Elementary, New Mexico, a school built underground as a fallout shelter. ↩︎

For cover art posts consult the INDEX

For book reviews consult the INDEX

For TV and film reviews consult the INDEX

#1950s #arthurCClarke #avantGarde #bookReview #bookReviews2 #books #chadOliver #fiction #frederikPohl #geraldKesh #isaacAsimov #jackVance #jackWilliamson #lesterDelRey #philipKDick #rayBradbury #richardMatheson #sciFi #scienceFiction #writing

Book Review: Star Science Fiction Stories No. 3, ed. Frederik Pohl (1955)

• Richard Powers’ cover for the 1955 edition

3.5/5 (collated rating: Good)

Ballantine Books’ illustrious science fictional program started with a bang–Star Science Fiction Stories. According to Mike Ashley’s Transformations: The Story of Science-Fiction Magazines from 1950 to 1970 Frederik Pohl’s anthology series of original (mostly) stories was “intended as both a showcase of Ballantine’s authors and a lure to new writers.” Paying better rates than magazines, the Star series foreshadowed the explosion of original anthologies that would provide a sustained challenge to the eminence held in the 50s by the magazine.

I’ve selected the third volume of the six-volume series.1 It contains an illustrative cross-section of 50s science fiction. Philip K. Dick’s “Foster, You’re Dead” (1955), Richard Matheson’s “Dance of the Dead” (1955), and Jack Williamson’s “Guinevere for Everybody” (1955) are not to be missed.

Recommended.

Brief Plot Summaries/Analysis

“It’s Such a Beautiful Day” (1955), Isaac Asimov, 3.5/5 (Good): The anthology starts off with an effective Isaac Asimov satire of the suburban experience. The creation of suburbia in the 1950s (and subsequent mass white flight) generated increased commutes between home and urban work. The home became a bunker to protect the American family from any threat (fallout shelters, a community away from diversity and interaction with “the other,” etc.).2

Asimov speculates that new, almost instantaneous, transportation portals will isolate the family completely from the external world. A minor glitch in the transportation system instills a change in the young Richard Hanshaw, Jr. He isn’t as willing to trust the portal — and decides to trek to school by foot. His teacher calls mother in shock and suggests psychological treatment. An intriguing, and gentle, satire on American conceptions of normalcy, the new-fangled post-War emergence of psychology as a therapeutic practice, and the suburban experience.3

“The Strawberry Window” (1955), Ray Bradbury, 3/5 (Average): The story follows a family on Mars. The father, Will, spends his day constructing the settlement town. He’s possessed by the dream of Mars and humanity’s conquest of the stars: “It’s not just us come to Mars, it’s the race, the whole darn human race, depending on how we make out in our lifetime. This thing is so big I want to laugh, I’m so scared stiff of it” (31). His long-suffering wife Carrie yearns for the small sounds and big memories that anchor her to Earth. And so Will comes up with a compromise, an expensive compromise.

Ultimately, this is beautiful polish to a banal, almost jingoistic, defense of humanity’s supposed destiny to expand and conquer: “There’s nothing better than Man with a capital M in my book” (32). I am far more interested in the more subversive and quietly critical moments of Bradbury’s other Mars stories. This one is simplistic propaganda of conquest. Despite the enjoyable thematic core (the effects of leaving Earth) and polished telling, I’d classify “The Strawberry Window” amongst his most disappointing and forced. For superior Bradbury that I’ve covered, check out “The Highway” (1950) and “The Pedestrian” (1951).

“The Deep Range” (1955), Arthur C. Clarke, 3/5 (Average): One of the reasons I feel a special attraction to 50s SF is its interest in the working-class experience of the future. Of course, for the reader of the present futuristic trappings suggest a certain glorification of what would be a new form of the mundane daily grind. The heroic blue-collar stories in James Gunn’s fix-up Station in Space (1958) come to mind. In Clarke’s “The Deep Range” humanity farms the seas. Instead of terrestrial herds of sheep or cows, shepherds in submersibles with dolphin assistants protect herds of meat-yielding whales from predatory sharks.

An effective slice-of-working class experience set in an evocative locale. It’s an immersive little story that draws on Clarke’s own interest in scuba diving and underwater adventure. Regardless, I remain uninterested in returning to Clarke’s work in anything more than an anthologized tale here and there.

“Alien” (1955), Lester del Rey, 3/5 (Average): Due to an comically improbable collision at sea, Larry Cross and his alcoholic crewmate Al Simmonds find themselves stranded on an island with an alien which “could swim out of a sunken ship at the bottom of the sea” (51). Al Simmonds is injured and Cross must keep the man alive and figure out the alien’s intentions. A classic SF problem story in which man must figure out a modus operandi in a bizarre new scenario. It’s polished. It’s solid. It’s predictable.

“Foster, You’re Dead” (1955), Philip K. Dick, 5/5 (Masterpiece): Mike Foster spends his school days practicing survival skills–digging, making knives, weaving baskets–in case of a nuclear attack. The kids snicker at him as he walks past. They don’t own a fallout shelter at home. His father refuses to pay into the NATS (National Security fund). If a bomb hit, Mike wouldn’t even be granted access to the school shelter. He’s possessed by a deep, perpetual, encompassing trauma.4 His walk home is nightmarish. Mechanical newspaper machines shout excitedly about “war, death, amazing new weapons” (67). The public shelter beckons with its neon lights but he has no money in his pocket for entry. And the store with the new shelter model mocks with its advertisements: “a powered heating and refrigeration system” and “self-servicing air-purification network” with “three decontamination stages for food and water” (68). Reluctant to yet again confront his father about their lack of shelter, he gazes at the new model and talks to the salesmen. He imagines that every evening he’d sleep in its encapsulating embrace, womb-like.

One of the absolute best fallout shelter themed SF stories I’ve ever read. It’s a fascinating collision of crisp prose, commentary on the arms race, and an evisceration of the complicity of commercialism in Cold War terror. Joins William Tenn’s “Generation of Noah” (1951), Daniel Galouye’s Dark Universe (1961), Modecai Roshwald’s Level 7 (1959), and Fritz Leiber’s “The Moon Is Green” (1952) amongst the best on the theme.

“Whatever Happened to Corporal Cuckoo?” (1953), Gerald Kersh, 3.5/5 (Good): In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries surgical diagrams called “Wound Men” crop up in medical miscellanies in Europe. These illustrations–the human form hacked, slashed, smashed, cut, pierced, bloated–served as an annotated table of contents to guide the reader through various injuries and diseases. Kersh imagines a literary version of himself returning to New York City from WWII interacting with a fantastical manifestation of a Wound Man on board the Cunard White Star liner Queen Mary. Corporal Cuckoo, the “Wound Man” in question, regals the narrator (Kersh) with the history of his scarred and mutilated form that mysteriously heals from every injury.

The reader becomes immersed in a historical military narrative that begins in the early 16th century. There’s a bizarre sense of horror and fantastical displacement. Like some crushed and deformed specimen, Cuckoo becomes an encyclopedic, and culminative, glimpse of humanity’s relentless obsession with death and violence.

Interesting and memorable. I’ll keep on the lookout for more of Kersh’s SFF.

“Dance of the Dead” (1955), Richard Matheson, 4/5 (Good): My third favorite story in the anthology transplants the standard narrative of a young adult straying from the path set out by parents and small town community onto a break-neck road trip in a drug and alcohol drenched near-future. Len, Bud, Barbara, and Peggy race their car towards St. Louis. Bud tries to get Barb to take snuggle–“act of promiscuous love-play; usage evolved during W.W. III” (114)–and take drugs: “Have a jab, Bab” (115). In the kaleidoscope of the new and relentless peer pressure the lessons her mother taught her slowly erode. All her inhibitions come crashing down when the quartet see the transcendent nightmare that is the titular dance of the dead.

Manifesting the SPEED of the car, Matheson’s prose resonates with pulse and hum, snippets of song and signage, slang and youthful lust: “At a hundred miles an hour let me DREAM my DREAMS!” (115). It’s frantic. It’s zappy. It’s vibrant. Recommended for fans of the more linguistically experimental (and bleak) of 50s visions.

“Any More at Home Like You?” (1955), Chad Oliver, 2.75/5 (Below Average): Dangerously close to joke story territory (what I classify stories that rely on a silly last page twist designed to generate a chuckle), Oliver re-imagines the classic flying saucer story. A young “man” named Keith crashes his advanced spacecraft in the swanky Bel-Air neighborhood of LA. He seems friendly. Friendly residents take him in. He meets with politicians. He gives a canned speech at the UN. But what’s the secret behind his sudden appearance? Does he really represent a massive Galactic Civilization as he claims? When the pieces all fit together, there’s a gentle sense to it all mixed in with a little, rather silly, “snip” at humanity’s claims to galactic centrality.

If you’re new to Oliver, I recommend tracking downs his two generation ship short stories–“Stardust” (1952) and “The Wind Blows Free” (1957). This one was not for me.

“The Devil on Salvation Bluff” (1955), Jack Vance, 3.25/5 (Above Average): As my last Vance review came in 2021–The Languages of Pao (1958), I looked forward to this anthology as a way to return to his fiction. “The Devil on Salvation Bluff” imagines a religious colony (everyone calls each other “Brother” or “Sister”) on a planet named Glory without clear scientific or societal patterns. If anything, disorder, irregularity, and chaos is the pattern. Regardless, the community attempts to impose an almost monastic order on their lives. The colonists brings with them a massive clock, build communities in precise patterns, and carve up the landscape with linear canals and irrigation.

In classic missionary fashion, the colonists attempt to impose their religion and regularity on the humanoid inhabitants of Glory, nicknamed Flits, that spend their days indulging in their passions, seemingly random rituals, and goat herding. Using salt as a bribe, they momentarily convince the Flits to settle in a new village created by the colonists. After Brother Raymond and Sister Mary kidnap the chief of the Flits to identify the psychosis they think might underline their impulsive, random, and occasionally destructive actions, the true psychological truth of the planet emerges. Vance suggests that dogmatic religion must shift and change to adapt to the moment.

Fits in with an intriguing cluster of often brilliant 50s stories exploring the clash of Earth religion and the SFnal new–Ray Bradbury’s “The Man” (1949), Arthur C. Clarke’s “The Star” (1955), James Blish’s A Case of Conscience (novella 1953, novelized 1958), Walter M. Miller, Jr.’s A Canticle for Leibowitz (stories 1955-1957, novelized 1959), etc.

Somewhat recommended.

“Guinevere for Everybody” (1955), Jack Williamson, 4.5/5 (Very Good): An artificially created Guinevere stands “chained” in a “vending machine” tempting sleepy passengers in an airport with her plaintive calls (169). “You like me, huh?” she asks strangers as they pass (170). “Won’t you by me?” she cajoles (170). The implication is clear. The reason for her sudden appearance in train stations, and others of her model, far less so. Chimberley represents General Cybernetics, a company building “managerial computers” to replace human workers (171). Chimberley attempts the origins of “THE VITAL APPLIANCE!” with her all too human sex appeal, and disturbing tendency to spout advertisements for other products (170). He, little more than a cypher manifesting the displacement of the mechanical age, feels drawn to her as “his best friends were digital computers” (171). He discerns that she is a recent product created, produced, and distributed by one of these vast managerial computers. Giddy with excitement he sees her as “something human management would never have had the brains or the vision to accomplish” (172). He purchases her from the vending machine and sets off to find the producing facility. But a line has been crossed, and another.

This story bothered me (in a good way) far more than it should. Williamson integrates little comments about how the mechanical (think AI unleashed on the US government) ignores the human experience. And how Chimberley, alone, adrift, insular, feels fulfilled by a programmed device that is but a fragment of a capitalistic assault on the consumer. This disturbed satirical gem took me by surprise. I will be on the lookout for more 50s Williamson short stories.

Notes

1. Eight if we count the one-volume Star Science Fiction Magazine (1958) and Star Short Novels (1954). ↩︎
2. There is a ton of scholarship on both of these ideas that I have referenced in various reviews in the past. Here is a short list! Elaine Tyler May’s Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (1988, rev. 2017); Thomas Bishop’s Every Home a Fortress: Cold War Fatherhood and the Family Fallout Shelter (2020); Laura McEnaney’s Civil Defense Begins at Home: Militarization Meets Everyday Life in the Fifties (2000); and Robert A. Beauregard’s When America Became Suburban (2006). ↩︎
3. For “normalcy” see Anna G. Creadick’s Perfectly Average: The Pursuit of Normality in Postwar America (2010); For the growth of psychology as medical practice in the post-War moment see Ellen Herman’s The Romance of American Psychology: Political Culture in the Age of Experts (1995). ↩︎
4. I am reminded of studies of childhood trauma conducted on the students of Abo Elementary, New Mexico, a school built underground as a fallout shelter. ↩︎

For cover art posts consult the INDEX

For book reviews consult the INDEX

For TV and film reviews consult the INDEX

#1950s #arthurCClarke #avantGarde #bookReview #bookReviews2 #books #chadOliver #fiction #frederikPohl #geraldKesh #isaacAsimov #jackVance #jackWilliamson #lesterDelRey #philipKDick #rayBradbury #richardMatheson #sciFi #scienceFiction #writing

Book Review: Star Science Fiction Stories No. 3, ed. Frederik Pohl (1955)

• Richard Powers’ cover for the 1955 edition

3.5/5 (collated rating: Good)

Ballantine Books’ illustrious science fictional program started with a bang–Star Science Fiction Stories. According to Mike Ashley’s Transformations: The Story of Science-Fiction Magazines from 1950 to 1970 Frederik Pohl’s anthology series of original (mostly) stories was “intended as both a showcase of Ballantine’s authors and a lure to new writers.” Paying better rates than magazines, the Star series foreshadowed the explosion of original anthologies that would provide a sustained challenge to the eminence held in the 50s by the magazine.

I’ve selected the third volume of the six-volume series.1 It contains an illustrative cross-section of 50s science fiction. Philip K. Dick’s “Foster, You’re Dead” (1955), Richard Matheson’s “Dance of the Dead” (1955), and Jack Williamson’s “Guinevere for Everybody” (1955) are not to be missed.

Recommended.

Brief Plot Summaries/Analysis

“It’s Such a Beautiful Day” (1955), Isaac Asimov, 3.5/5 (Good): The anthology starts off with an effective Isaac Asimov satire of the suburban experience. The creation of suburbia in the 1950s (and subsequent mass white flight) generated increased commutes between home and urban work. The home became a bunker to protect the American family from any threat (fallout shelters, a community away from diversity and interaction with “the other,” etc.).2

Asimov speculates that new, almost instantaneous, transportation portals will isolate the family completely from the external world. A minor glitch in the transportation system instills a change in the young Richard Hanshaw, Jr. He isn’t as willing to trust the portal — and decides to trek to school by foot. His teacher calls mother in shock and suggests psychological treatment. An intriguing, and gentle, satire on American conceptions of normalcy, the new-fangled post-War emergence of psychology as a therapeutic practice, and the suburban experience.3

“The Strawberry Window” (1955), Ray Bradbury, 3/5 (Average): The story follows a family on Mars. The father, Will, spends his day constructing the settlement town. He’s possessed by the dream of Mars and humanity’s conquest of the stars: “It’s not just us come to Mars, it’s the race, the whole darn human race, depending on how we make out in our lifetime. This thing is so big I want to laugh, I’m so scared stiff of it” (31). His long-suffering wife Carrie yearns for the small sounds and big memories that anchor her to Earth. And so Will comes up with a compromise, an expensive compromise.

Ultimately, this is beautiful polish to a banal, almost jingoistic, defense of humanity’s supposed destiny to expand and conquer: “There’s nothing better than Man with a capital M in my book” (32). I am far more interested in the more subversive and quietly critical moments of Bradbury’s other Mars stories. This one is simplistic propaganda of conquest. Despite the enjoyable thematic core (the effects of leaving Earth) and polished telling, I’d classify “The Strawberry Window” amongst his most disappointing and forced. For superior Bradbury that I’ve covered, check out “The Highway” (1950) and “The Pedestrian” (1951).

“The Deep Range” (1955), Arthur C. Clarke, 3/5 (Average): One of the reasons I feel a special attraction to 50s SF is its interest in the working-class experience of the future. Of course, for the reader of the present futuristic trappings suggest a certain glorification of what would be a new form of the mundane daily grind. The heroic blue-collar stories in James Gunn’s fix-up Station in Space (1958) come to mind. In Clarke’s “The Deep Range” humanity farms the seas. Instead of terrestrial herds of sheep or cows, shepherds in submersibles with dolphin assistants protect herds of meat-yielding whales from predatory sharks.

An effective slice-of-working class experience set in an evocative locale. It’s an immersive little story that draws on Clarke’s own interest in scuba diving and underwater adventure. Regardless, I remain uninterested in returning to Clarke’s work in anything more than an anthologized tale here and there.

“Alien” (1955), Lester del Rey, 3/5 (Average): Due to an comically improbable collision at sea, Larry Cross and his alcoholic crewmate Al Simmonds find themselves stranded on an island with an alien which “could swim out of a sunken ship at the bottom of the sea” (51). Al Simmonds is injured and Cross must keep the man alive and figure out the alien’s intentions. A classic SF problem story in which man must figure out a modus operandi in a bizarre new scenario. It’s polished. It’s solid. It’s predictable.

“Foster, You’re Dead” (1955), Philip K. Dick, 5/5 (Masterpiece): Mike Foster spends his school days practicing survival skills–digging, making knives, weaving baskets–in case of a nuclear attack. The kids snicker at him as he walks past. They don’t own a fallout shelter at home. His father refuses to pay into the NATS (National Security fund). If a bomb hit, Mike wouldn’t even be granted access to the school shelter. He’s possessed by a deep, perpetual, encompassing trauma.4 His walk home is nightmarish. Mechanical newspaper machines shout excitedly about “war, death, amazing new weapons” (67). The public shelter beckons with its neon lights but he has no money in his pocket for entry. And the store with the new shelter model mocks with its advertisements: “a powered heating and refrigeration system” and “self-servicing air-purification network” with “three decontamination stages for food and water” (68). Reluctant to yet again confront his father about their lack of shelter, he gazes at the new model and talks to the salesmen. He imagines that every evening he’d sleep in its encapsulating embrace, womb-like.

One of the absolute best fallout shelter themed SF stories I’ve ever read. It’s a fascinating collision of crisp prose, commentary on the arms race, and an evisceration of the complicity of commercialism in Cold War terror. Joins William Tenn’s “Generation of Noah” (1951), Daniel Galouye’s Dark Universe (1961), Modecai Roshwald’s Level 7 (1959), and Fritz Leiber’s “The Moon Is Green” (1952) amongst the best on the theme.

“Whatever Happened to Corporal Cuckoo?” (1953), Gerald Kersh, 3.5/5 (Good): In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries surgical diagrams called “Wound Men” crop up in medical miscellanies in Europe. These illustrations–the human form hacked, slashed, smashed, cut, pierced, bloated–served as an annotated table of contents to guide the reader through various injuries and diseases. Kersh imagines a literary version of himself returning to New York City from WWII interacting with a fantastical manifestation of a Wound Man on board the Cunard White Star liner Queen Mary. Corporal Cuckoo, the “Wound Man” in question, regals the narrator (Kersh) with the history of his scarred and mutilated form that mysteriously heals from every injury.

The reader becomes immersed in a historical military narrative that begins in the early 16th century. There’s a bizarre sense of horror and fantastical displacement. Like some crushed and deformed specimen, Cuckoo becomes an encyclopedic, and culminative, glimpse of humanity’s relentless obsession with death and violence.

Interesting and memorable. I’ll keep on the lookout for more of Kersh’s SFF.

“Dance of the Dead” (1955), Richard Matheson, 4/5 (Good): My third favorite story in the anthology transplants the standard narrative of a young adult straying from the path set out by parents and small town community onto a break-neck road trip in a drug and alcohol drenched near-future. Len, Bud, Barbara, and Peggy race their car towards St. Louis. Bud tries to get Barb to take snuggle–“act of promiscuous love-play; usage evolved during W.W. III” (114)–and take drugs: “Have a jab, Bab” (115). In the kaleidoscope of the new and relentless peer pressure the lessons her mother taught her slowly erode. All her inhibitions come crashing down when the quartet see the transcendent nightmare that is the titular dance of the dead.

Manifesting the SPEED of the car, Matheson’s prose resonates with pulse and hum, snippets of song and signage, slang and youthful lust: “At a hundred miles an hour let me DREAM my DREAMS!” (115). It’s frantic. It’s zappy. It’s vibrant. Recommended for fans of the more linguistically experimental (and bleak) of 50s visions.

“Any More at Home Like You?” (1955), Chad Oliver, 2.75/5 (Below Average): Dangerously close to joke story territory (what I classify stories that rely on a silly last page twist designed to generate a chuckle), Oliver re-imagines the classic flying saucer story. A young “man” named Keith crashes his advanced spacecraft in the swanky Bel-Air neighborhood of LA. He seems friendly. Friendly residents take him in. He meets with politicians. He gives a canned speech at the UN. But what’s the secret behind his sudden appearance? Does he really represent a massive Galactic Civilization as he claims? When the pieces all fit together, there’s a gentle sense to it all mixed in with a little, rather silly, “snip” at humanity’s claims to galactic centrality.

If you’re new to Oliver, I recommend tracking downs his two generation ship short stories–“Stardust” (1952) and “The Wind Blows Free” (1957). This one was not for me.

“The Devil on Salvation Bluff” (1955), Jack Vance, 3.25/5 (Above Average): As my last Vance review came in 2021–The Languages of Pao (1958), I looked forward to this anthology as a way to return to his fiction. “The Devil on Salvation Bluff” imagines a religious colony (everyone calls each other “Brother” or “Sister”) on a planet named Glory without clear scientific or societal patterns. If anything, disorder, irregularity, and chaos is the pattern. Regardless, the community attempts to impose an almost monastic order on their lives. The colonists brings with them a massive clock, build communities in precise patterns, and carve up the landscape with linear canals and irrigation.

In classic missionary fashion, the colonists attempt to impose their religion and regularity on the humanoid inhabitants of Glory, nicknamed Flits, that spend their days indulging in their passions, seemingly random rituals, and goat herding. Using salt as a bribe, they momentarily convince the Flits to settle in a new village created by the colonists. After Brother Raymond and Sister Mary kidnap the chief of the Flits to identify the psychosis they think might underline their impulsive, random, and occasionally destructive actions, the true psychological truth of the planet emerges. Vance suggests that dogmatic religion must shift and change to adapt to the moment.

Fits in with an intriguing cluster of often brilliant 50s stories exploring the clash of Earth religion and the SFnal new–Ray Bradbury’s “The Man” (1949), Arthur C. Clarke’s “The Star” (1955), James Blish’s A Case of Conscience (novella 1953, novelized 1958), Walter M. Miller, Jr.’s A Canticle for Leibowitz (stories 1955-1957, novelized 1959), etc.

Somewhat recommended.

“Guinevere for Everybody” (1955), Jack Williamson, 4.5/5 (Very Good): An artificially created Guinevere stands “chained” in a “vending machine” tempting sleepy passengers in an airport with her plaintive calls (169). “You like me, huh?” she asks strangers as they pass (170). “Won’t you by me?” she cajoles (170). The implication is clear. The reason for her sudden appearance in train stations, and others of her model, far less so. Chimberley represents General Cybernetics, a company building “managerial computers” to replace human workers (171). Chimberley attempts the origins of “THE VITAL APPLIANCE!” with her all too human sex appeal, and disturbing tendency to spout advertisements for other products (170). He, little more than a cypher manifesting the displacement of the mechanical age, feels drawn to her as “his best friends were digital computers” (171). He discerns that she is a recent product created, produced, and distributed by one of these vast managerial computers. Giddy with excitement he sees her as “something human management would never have had the brains or the vision to accomplish” (172). He purchases her from the vending machine and sets off to find the producing facility. But a line has been crossed, and another.

This story bothered me (in a good way) far more than it should. Williamson integrates little comments about how the mechanical (think AI unleashed on the US government) ignores the human experience. And how Chimberley, alone, adrift, insular, feels fulfilled by a programmed device that is but a fragment of a capitalistic assault on the consumer. This disturbed satirical gem took me by surprise. I will be on the lookout for more 50s Williamson short stories.

Notes

1. Eight if we count the one-volume Star Science Fiction Magazine (1958) and Star Short Novels (1954). ↩︎
2. There is a ton of scholarship on both of these ideas that I have referenced in various reviews in the past. Here is a short list! Elaine Tyler May’s Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (1988, rev. 2017); Thomas Bishop’s Every Home a Fortress: Cold War Fatherhood and the Family Fallout Shelter (2020); Laura McEnaney’s Civil Defense Begins at Home: Militarization Meets Everyday Life in the Fifties (2000); and Robert A. Beauregard’s When America Became Suburban (2006). ↩︎
3. For “normalcy” see Anna G. Creadick’s Perfectly Average: The Pursuit of Normality in Postwar America (2010); For the growth of psychology as medical practice in the post-War moment see Ellen Herman’s The Romance of American Psychology: Political Culture in the Age of Experts (1995). ↩︎
4. I am reminded of studies of childhood trauma conducted on the students of Abo Elementary, New Mexico, a school built underground as a fallout shelter. ↩︎

For cover art posts consult the INDEX

For book reviews consult the INDEX

For TV and film reviews consult the INDEX

#1950s #arthurCClarke #avantGarde #bookReview #bookReviews2 #books #chadOliver #fiction #frederikPohl #geraldKesh #isaacAsimov #jackVance #jackWilliamson #lesterDelRey #philipKDick #rayBradbury #richardMatheson #sciFi #scienceFiction #writing

Book Review: Star Science Fiction Stories No. 3, ed. Frederik Pohl (1955)

• Richard Powers’ cover for the 1955 edition

3.5/5 (collated rating: Good)

Ballantine Books’ illustrious science fictional program started with a bang–Star Science Fiction Stories. According to Mike Ashley’s Transformations: The Story of Science-Fiction Magazines from 1950 to 1970 Frederik Pohl’s anthology series of original (mostly) stories was “intended as both a showcase of Ballantine’s authors and a lure to new writers.” Paying better rates than magazines, the Star series foreshadowed the explosion of original anthologies that would provide a sustained challenge to the eminence held in the 50s by the magazine.

I’ve selected the third volume of the six-volume series.1 It contains an illustrative cross-section of 50s science fiction. Philip K. Dick’s “Foster, You’re Dead” (1955), Richard Matheson’s “Dance of the Dead” (1955), and Jack Williamson’s “Guinevere for Everybody” (1955) are not to be missed.

Recommended.

Brief Plot Summaries/Analysis

“It’s Such a Beautiful Day” (1955), Isaac Asimov, 3.5/5 (Good): The anthology starts off with an effective Isaac Asimov satire of the suburban experience. The creation of suburbia in the 1950s (and subsequent mass white flight) generated increased commutes between home and urban work. The home became a bunker to protect the American family from any threat (fallout shelters, a community away from diversity and interaction with “the other,” etc.).2

Asimov speculates that new, almost instantaneous, transportation portals will isolate the family completely from the external world. A minor glitch in the transportation system instills a change in the young Richard Hanshaw, Jr. He isn’t as willing to trust the portal — and decides to trek to school by foot. His teacher calls mother in shock and suggests psychological treatment. An intriguing, and gentle, satire on American conceptions of normalcy, the new-fangled post-War emergence of psychology as a therapeutic practice, and the suburban experience.3

“The Strawberry Window” (1955), Ray Bradbury, 3/5 (Average): The story follows a family on Mars. The father, Will, spends his day constructing the settlement town. He’s possessed by the dream of Mars and humanity’s conquest of the stars: “It’s not just us come to Mars, it’s the race, the whole darn human race, depending on how we make out in our lifetime. This thing is so big I want to laugh, I’m so scared stiff of it” (31). His long-suffering wife Carrie yearns for the small sounds and big memories that anchor her to Earth. And so Will comes up with a compromise, an expensive compromise.

Ultimately, this is beautiful polish to a banal, almost jingoistic, defense of humanity’s supposed destiny to expand and conquer: “There’s nothing better than Man with a capital M in my book” (32). I am far more interested in the more subversive and quietly critical moments of Bradbury’s other Mars stories. This one is simplistic propaganda of conquest. Despite the enjoyable thematic core (the effects of leaving Earth) and polished telling, I’d classify “The Strawberry Window” amongst his most disappointing and forced. For superior Bradbury that I’ve covered, check out “The Highway” (1950) and “The Pedestrian” (1951).

“The Deep Range” (1955), Arthur C. Clarke, 3/5 (Average): One of the reasons I feel a special attraction to 50s SF is its interest in the working-class experience of the future. Of course, for the reader of the present futuristic trappings suggest a certain glorification of what would be a new form of the mundane daily grind. The heroic blue-collar stories in James Gunn’s fix-up Station in Space (1958) come to mind. In Clarke’s “The Deep Range” humanity farms the seas. Instead of terrestrial herds of sheep or cows, shepherds in submersibles with dolphin assistants protect herds of meat-yielding whales from predatory sharks.

An effective slice-of-working class experience set in an evocative locale. It’s an immersive little story that draws on Clarke’s own interest in scuba diving and underwater adventure. Regardless, I remain uninterested in returning to Clarke’s work in anything more than an anthologized tale here and there.

“Alien” (1955), Lester del Rey, 3/5 (Average): Due to an comically improbable collision at sea, Larry Cross and his alcoholic crewmate Al Simmonds find themselves stranded on an island with an alien which “could swim out of a sunken ship at the bottom of the sea” (51). Al Simmonds is injured and Cross must keep the man alive and figure out the alien’s intentions. A classic SF problem story in which man must figure out a modus operandi in a bizarre new scenario. It’s polished. It’s solid. It’s predictable.

“Foster, You’re Dead” (1955), Philip K. Dick, 5/5 (Masterpiece): Mike Foster spends his school days practicing survival skills–digging, making knives, weaving baskets–in case of a nuclear attack. The kids snicker at him as he walks past. They don’t own a fallout shelter at home. His father refuses to pay into the NATS (National Security fund). If a bomb hit, Mike wouldn’t even be granted access to the school shelter. He’s possessed by a deep, perpetual, encompassing trauma.4 His walk home is nightmarish. Mechanical newspaper machines shout excitedly about “war, death, amazing new weapons” (67). The public shelter beckons with its neon lights but he has no money in his pocket for entry. And the store with the new shelter model mocks with its advertisements: “a powered heating and refrigeration system” and “self-servicing air-purification network” with “three decontamination stages for food and water” (68). Reluctant to yet again confront his father about their lack of shelter, he gazes at the new model and talks to the salesmen. He imagines that every evening he’d sleep in its encapsulating embrace, womb-like.

One of the absolute best fallout shelter themed SF stories I’ve ever read. It’s a fascinating collision of crisp prose, commentary on the arms race, and an evisceration of the complicity of commercialism in Cold War terror. Joins William Tenn’s “Generation of Noah” (1951), Daniel Galouye’s Dark Universe (1961), Modecai Roshwald’s Level 7 (1959), and Fritz Leiber’s “The Moon Is Green” (1952) amongst the best on the theme.

“Whatever Happened to Corporal Cuckoo?” (1953), Gerald Kersh, 3.5/5 (Good): In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries surgical diagrams called “Wound Men” crop up in medical miscellanies in Europe. These illustrations–the human form hacked, slashed, smashed, cut, pierced, bloated–served as an annotated table of contents to guide the reader through various injuries and diseases. Kersh imagines a literary version of himself returning to New York City from WWII interacting with a fantastical manifestation of a Wound Man on board the Cunard White Star liner Queen Mary. Corporal Cuckoo, the “Wound Man” in question, regals the narrator (Kersh) with the history of his scarred and mutilated form that mysteriously heals from every injury.

The reader becomes immersed in a historical military narrative that begins in the early 16th century. There’s a bizarre sense of horror and fantastical displacement. Like some crushed and deformed specimen, Cuckoo becomes an encyclopedic, and culminative, glimpse of humanity’s relentless obsession with death and violence.

Interesting and memorable. I’ll keep on the lookout for more of Kersh’s SFF.

“Dance of the Dead” (1955), Richard Matheson, 4/5 (Good): My third favorite story in the anthology transplants the standard narrative of a young adult straying from the path set out by parents and small town community onto a break-neck road trip in a drug and alcohol drenched near-future. Len, Bud, Barbara, and Peggy race their car towards St. Louis. Bud tries to get Barb to take snuggle–“act of promiscuous love-play; usage evolved during W.W. III” (114)–and take drugs: “Have a jab, Bab” (115). In the kaleidoscope of the new and relentless peer pressure the lessons her mother taught her slowly erode. All her inhibitions come crashing down when the quartet see the transcendent nightmare that is the titular dance of the dead.

Manifesting the SPEED of the car, Matheson’s prose resonates with pulse and hum, snippets of song and signage, slang and youthful lust: “At a hundred miles an hour let me DREAM my DREAMS!” (115). It’s frantic. It’s zappy. It’s vibrant. Recommended for fans of the more linguistically experimental (and bleak) of 50s visions.

“Any More at Home Like You?” (1955), Chad Oliver, 2.75/5 (Below Average): Dangerously close to joke story territory (what I classify stories that rely on a silly last page twist designed to generate a chuckle), Oliver re-imagines the classic flying saucer story. A young “man” named Keith crashes his advanced spacecraft in the swanky Bel-Air neighborhood of LA. He seems friendly. Friendly residents take him in. He meets with politicians. He gives a canned speech at the UN. But what’s the secret behind his sudden appearance? Does he really represent a massive Galactic Civilization as he claims? When the pieces all fit together, there’s a gentle sense to it all mixed in with a little, rather silly, “snip” at humanity’s claims to galactic centrality.

If you’re new to Oliver, I recommend tracking downs his two generation ship short stories–“Stardust” (1952) and “The Wind Blows Free” (1957). This one was not for me.

“The Devil on Salvation Bluff” (1955), Jack Vance, 3.25/5 (Above Average): As my last Vance review came in 2021–The Languages of Pao (1958), I looked forward to this anthology as a way to return to his fiction. “The Devil on Salvation Bluff” imagines a religious colony (everyone calls each other “Brother” or “Sister”) on a planet named Glory without clear scientific or societal patterns. If anything, disorder, irregularity, and chaos is the pattern. Regardless, the community attempts to impose an almost monastic order on their lives. The colonists brings with them a massive clock, build communities in precise patterns, and carve up the landscape with linear canals and irrigation.

In classic missionary fashion, the colonists attempt to impose their religion and regularity on the humanoid inhabitants of Glory, nicknamed Flits, that spend their days indulging in their passions, seemingly random rituals, and goat herding. Using salt as a bribe, they momentarily convince the Flits to settle in a new village created by the colonists. After Brother Raymond and Sister Mary kidnap the chief of the Flits to identify the psychosis they think might underline their impulsive, random, and occasionally destructive actions, the true psychological truth of the planet emerges. Vance suggests that dogmatic religion must shift and change to adapt to the moment.

Fits in with an intriguing cluster of often brilliant 50s stories exploring the clash of Earth religion and the SFnal new–Ray Bradbury’s “The Man” (1949), Arthur C. Clarke’s “The Star” (1955), James Blish’s A Case of Conscience (novella 1953, novelized 1958), Walter M. Miller, Jr.’s A Canticle for Leibowitz (stories 1955-1957, novelized 1959), etc.

Somewhat recommended.

“Guinevere for Everybody” (1955), Jack Williamson, 4.5/5 (Very Good): An artificially created Guinevere stands “chained” in a “vending machine” tempting sleepy passengers in an airport with her plaintive calls (169). “You like me, huh?” she asks strangers as they pass (170). “Won’t you by me?” she cajoles (170). The implication is clear. The reason for her sudden appearance in train stations, and others of her model, far less so. Chimberley represents General Cybernetics, a company building “managerial computers” to replace human workers (171). Chimberley attempts the origins of “THE VITAL APPLIANCE!” with her all too human sex appeal, and disturbing tendency to spout advertisements for other products (170). He, little more than a cypher manifesting the displacement of the mechanical age, feels drawn to her as “his best friends were digital computers” (171). He discerns that she is a recent product created, produced, and distributed by one of these vast managerial computers. Giddy with excitement he sees her as “something human management would never have had the brains or the vision to accomplish” (172). He purchases her from the vending machine and sets off to find the producing facility. But a line has been crossed, and another.

This story bothered me (in a good way) far more than it should. Williamson integrates little comments about how the mechanical (think AI unleashed on the US government) ignores the human experience. And how Chimberley, alone, adrift, insular, feels fulfilled by a programmed device that is but a fragment of a capitalistic assault on the consumer. This disturbed satirical gem took me by surprise. I will be on the lookout for more 50s Williamson short stories.

Notes

1. Eight if we count the one-volume Star Science Fiction Magazine (1958) and Star Short Novels (1954). ↩︎
2. There is a ton of scholarship on both of these ideas that I have referenced in various reviews in the past. Here is a short list! Elaine Tyler May’s Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (1988, rev. 2017); Thomas Bishop’s Every Home a Fortress: Cold War Fatherhood and the Family Fallout Shelter (2020); Laura McEnaney’s Civil Defense Begins at Home: Militarization Meets Everyday Life in the Fifties (2000); and Robert A. Beauregard’s When America Became Suburban (2006). ↩︎
3. For “normalcy” see Anna G. Creadick’s Perfectly Average: The Pursuit of Normality in Postwar America (2010); For the growth of psychology as medical practice in the post-War moment see Ellen Herman’s The Romance of American Psychology: Political Culture in the Age of Experts (1995). ↩︎
4. I am reminded of studies of childhood trauma conducted on the students of Abo Elementary, New Mexico, a school built underground as a fallout shelter. ↩︎

For cover art posts consult the INDEX

For book reviews consult the INDEX

For TV and film reviews consult the INDEX

#1950s #arthurCClarke #avantGarde #bookReview #bookReviews2 #books #chadOliver #fiction #frederikPohl #geraldKesh #isaacAsimov #jackVance #jackWilliamson #lesterDelRey #philipKDick #rayBradbury #richardMatheson #sciFi #scienceFiction #writing

Short Book Reviews: Jack Vance’s The Languages of Pao (1958), Kit Reed’s Fort Privilege (1985), and John Shirley’s Transmaniacon (1979)

Note: My read but “waiting to be reviewed pile” is growing. Short rumination/tangents are a way to get through the stack before my memory and will fades. Stay tuned for more detailed and analytical reviews.

1. The Languages of Pao, Jack Vance (1958)

• Ric Binkley’s cover for the 1958 1st edition

3.25/5 (Vaguely Good)

Since I started my site in 2011, I’ve soured a bit on Jack Vance’s brand of planetary adventure in richly realized and exotic worlds. I doubt I’d currently rate novels like Showboat World (1975) or The Blue World (1966) as highly as I did back then. One of more appealing elements of having a single project for so long is my ability to track my evolving views on genre. That said, I’d classify Wyst: Alastor 1716 (1978) and The Languages of Pao (1958) amongst his most conceptually ambitious novels I’ve read so far and worth tracking down. For a full list consult my index. Note: I read but never reviewed Dying Earth (1950).

The inhabitants of Beran’s home planet of Pao are a “homogeneous people” who speak the same language, do not follow “religion or cult” (6), and exhibit no “great variations of feature or physique” (5). At its core The Languages of Pao suggests that language “is more than a means of communication, it is a system of thought” (45). The novel argues that language creates societal conduct rather than vice versa (46). Pao’s passive language promotes passivity. Popularly called linguistic relativity or the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, Vance posits that language “imposes a certain world-view upon the mind” (81). Learning new languages transforms perception and thought.

The story traces the coming of age of Beran, the new Panarch, after the assassination of his father. Due to the political ambitions of his uncle Bustamonte, Beran ends up in exile on Breakness where wizards, think post-human cyborgs devoted to learning and fierce theologies of individuality, train him in their language and way of life. He slowly comes to grips with his unique perspective as a Paonese trained by Breakness. Bustamonte, the usurper, and Palafox, Beran’s Breakness master, have their own plan for Pao. They will force certain groups of Paoese to learn new languages in order to cast of their passivity. Beran must both liberate his people and provide a new path forward.

I found the ideas in The Languages of Pao elevate the story above its banal plot and muddled action. Recommended for fans of early social SF.

• Gray Morrow’s cover for the 1966 edition

2. Transmaniacon, John Shirley (1979)

• Les Edwards’ cover for the 1st edition

3/5 (Average)

Last year I read and enjoyed John Shirley’s second SF novel City Come A-Walkin’ (1980). I praised the work as a “surreal and earthy paean to diverse urban community and punk rebellion” but pointed out that “Shirley struggles to pull the reader into the mechanism of the hackneyed political corruption plot.” Intrigued but not completely convinced, I immediately tracked down copies of Eclipse (1985), Three-Ring Psychus (1980), and his first SF novel Transmaniacon (1979). The plot follows the somewhat immoral/antiheroic professional irritant Ben Rackey in a decadent proto-cyberpunk far future as he attempts to steal The Exciter in order to destroy The Barrier, a defense mechanism erected to protect the US from nuclear, biological, and chemical warfare.

Transmaniacon (1979) feels like a first novel. The ambition is present. A swirling nightmare kaleidoscope of images flash by at breakneck speed. It’s bizarre. It’s violent. Information overload on steroids. Ideas are layered on ideas and then cast off never to reappear. As with City Come A-Walkin’ (1980) Shirley excels at INTENSITY and MOOD but I found this freshman SF novel too surface to dive into.

Recommended only for John Shirley completists. Check out Eclipse (1985) or City Come A-Walkin’ (1980) first if he’s new to you.

3. Fort Privilege, Kit Reed (1985)

• Frederik Porter’s cover for the 1st edition

3/5 (Average)

Kit Reed’s short fiction cuts and cauterizes. The themes she explores in short work forms a laundry list of Joachim Boaz favorites–paranoia, post-apocalyptic landscapes, youth gangs, dislocation, drugged cities, mechanical toys, sinister retirement communities, rural ritual, and the power of media. Check out my review of Reed’s collection Mister Da V. and Other Stories (1967) for a demonstration of her talents. Her novels have proved a bit more hit and miss. I enjoyed her antiwar fable Armed Camps (1969)–“all about characters constructing narratives and conjuring visions in order to keep the aphotic tides of societal disintegration at bay”–but I found Magic Time (1980), while an occasionally humorous metafictional romp through a theme park, middling at best. Fort Privilege (1985) ranks more among the latter in quality.

Fort Privilege, a satire of the upper classes, imagines a New York City completely transformed by white flight to the suburbs and extraordinary rates of crime. Only the ultra wealthy, able to conjure the funds to create oasis within their fortified mansions, remain in Manhattan, mostly oblivious to the world outside their choreographed lives. Bart feels a compulsion to return to the Parkhurst mansion, where he spent his earliest years before his parents fled from the city. But the New York he knows has mostly disappeared. The streets are crowded with abandoned cars. The buildings boarded up. But the Parkhurst still looms above it all. The Parkhurst’s residents are protected by Abel, a modern Lord of the Manor, who refuses to concede that world he remembers has long since disappeared. The story follows the inhabitants of Parkhurst who must confront the forces that seek to destroy the final abode of the ultrarich and conquer their own personal demons.

Regardless of a few missteps, Kit Reed deserves to win the Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award which aims “to honors underread science fiction and fantasy authors, with the intention of drawing renewed attention to the winners.” I’ll read another collection of her short fiction, perhaps Killer Mice (1976), next.

For book reviews consult the INDEX

For cover art posts consult the INDEX

For TV and film reviews consult the INDEX

#1950s #1970s #1980s #bookReviews2 #jackVance #kitReed #sciFi #scienceFiction #technology

Book Review: Bedlam Planet, John Brunner (1968)

(Jeff Jones’ cover for the 1968 edition)

3.25/5 (Vaguely Good)

To move past my variegated obsessions regarding William Kotzwinkle’s Doctor Rat (1976) (review + list of imaginary scientific articles), I decided to reread a lesser known John Brunner novel. I cannot pinpoint exactly when I first read Bedlam Plant (1968), other than before I started my site, but it holds up as a moody biological mystery with mythological undertones as colonists confront their deceptive new world.

This isn’t Stand on Zanzibar (1968), Shockwave Rider (1975), The Sheep Look Up (1972), or The Jagged Orbit (1969), but it left me wishing that Brunner applied his immersive near future SF skills to a vast, dark, far future tapestry. Brunner completists and fans of 1960s colonists on strange alien planet SF will not be disappointed—nor will you be blown away.

Far superior to the last John Brunner novel I read!

Analysis/Summary (*spoilers, as always*)

Dennis Malone is an explorer. He was one of the first four members of the expedition to the planet Asgard—“exposing themselves to the new planet to determine its habitability” (10). The men of the group, Dennis and Pyotr Tang-Lin, returned to Asgard with the colonization mission. Disaster strikes as Pyotr Tang-Lin crashes one of the three spaceships into the alien moon preventing Dennis from returning to Earth with any colonists who might be psychologically unsuitable for life on Asgard.

Dennis Malone is psychologically unsuitable for life on Asgard. Isolated and depressed, he spends his days bemoaning his fate. He is possessed by “the presence of the gashed terrible reproving moon” where Pyotr met his fate (5) wishing that he himself “had died on the alien moon” (12). An explorer at heart, he sinks into a morose state, characterized by Parvarti Chandra (one of the leaders of the colony) as a “martyr complex” (17).  He seeks any release from the tedium of establishing the colony. As the colonists are comprised from the specialists of Earth, Malone’s own area of expertise is unneeded.

When a biological disaster–in the form of a mysterious scurvy caused by an illness that modifies the gut’s bacteria–rampages through the colony, Malone might have a use after all! Tai Men, a Chinese medic and biologist, suggests the only answer to the dilemma might be to ingest plants grown in Asgard’s soil: “but when it came to risking the delicate balance of their very bodies on the assurance of someone whose data they could not fully understand, it was different” (31).

When Dennis sets off across Asgard’s landscape to carry out various banal tasks assigned by the colony’s scientists, he accidentally discovers there might be a way out. But by the time he returns to the colony, madness has already descended. Or has it?

Final Thoughts

John Brunner expands on the basic biological mystery besets colonists on alien planet in an intelligent (although not entirely successful) manner. Underpinning the lives of the various colonists, is a mythological substructure based on the cultural memory each diverse colonist brings from Earth. Brunner explores mythological memory and mythological action in various ways. Dennis Malone and Sigrid Kallela, one of the first four explorers who live on the planet, engage leave a “symbolic mark” on Asgard by a passionate/violent coupling (38). In addition, Parvarti wants the colony to “develop their own” festivals derived from the ones of Earth to create a new cultural memory (36). A memory derived from that of Earth but suitable for the new society…

The novel concludes with an excerpt from a much later historical text about the colonists suggests that they all played the role of the planet’s first Gods. This is both good and bad for Brunner’s characterizations and plot. At times the narrative–especially as each character undergoes a culturally unique transformation in terms of their mythological knowledge–reads like Brunner placed sections of the Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology in a blender. Rather than focusing on individual powerful images, the story occasionally reads as an information dump in the form of a New Wave-esque descent into the metaphysical. As each colonist stands in for the accompanying cultural heritage, the diverse cast (Indian, Arab, African-American, Swedish, Chinese, Japanese, Greek, etc.) take on more archetypal (a clichéd) characterizations. Regardless, Brunner should be applauded for the women leaders and scientists, races, and religions represented by the crew, flawed although the representations might be.

Bedlam Planet attempts to break free from the straight-forward humankind settles alien planet template by emphasizing the psychological effects of colonists unable to return to Earth. The novel feels rushed although well-intentioned. If only similar ideas surrounding far future colonization were explored in a more refined and immersive experience à la The Jagged Orbit (1969) or Stand on Zanzibar (1968).

For more book reviews consult the INDEX

(Mike Rose’s cover for the 1973 edition)

(Uncredited cover for the 1975 edition)

(Darrell K. Sweet’s cover for the 1982 edition)

#1960s #bookReviews2 #colonialism #colonization #johnBrunner #paperbacks #pulp #sciFi #scienceFiction #spaceships #technology

Guest Post: No Enemy But Time, Michael Bishop (1982)

(Vincent Di Fate’s cover for the 1983 edition)

The third installment of my Guest Post Series on Michael Bishop’s SF was written by Megan (twitter: @couchtomoon) over at the relatively new but completely worthwhile SF review site From Couch to the Moon.  She’s already put together a substantial list of delightful reviews.  Megan selected Bishop’s single most famous and Nebula award-winning novel, No Enemy But Time (1982)—and sadly, one of few books of his still in print.  Along with Transfigurations (1979), it was republished and selected for the Gollancz Masterwork [list].

No Enemy But Time (1982) — Michael Bishop

Coming out of Bishop’s 1982 Nebula award winning novel, No Enemy But Time, is like coming out of a time travel trance: the experience is jarring, hazy, and unwelcome. Bishop sweeps the reader into his world—humanity’s distant past—and paints a primitive African landscape dappled with hippos, hyenas, and volcanoes, but lush with the human experience. It’s a world where our ancestors, two million years removed, wear more flesh and charisma than our contemporaries. The reader befriends these charming hominids, shares in their struggles and triumphs, exalts in their communal efforts, only to be yanked back to the present where individuals misinterpret, neglect, and manipulate one another.

“All I am is a set of eyes, and the people I’m watching—they’re almost like people, but different, too—they can’t see me. They’re very hairy, but naked just under their hair” (Loc. 2568, Ch. 19).

(Uncredited cover for the 1983 Sphere edition)

Since infancy, Johnny Monegal has dreamed about the prehistoric past, a phenomenon he calls “spirit-traveling.” His dreams always lead him to the same time and place, Pleistocene era Africa, inspiring his curiosity about primitive humanity and influencing his informal expertise in paleoanthropology. But Johnny knows more about humanity’s past than he does his own, a black baby abandoned by a mute Spanish prostitute, and he later deserts his adoptive family, changes his name to Joshua Kampa, and flutters around Florida until a chance meeting with eminent paleoanthropologist Alistair Patrick Blair. Blair, and temporal physicist Woodrow Kaprow (Bishop has a thing for rhyming names), bring him to the African country of Zarakal, where he will test the technology that will unlock the past and allow his body to join him on his spirit travels.

Bishop’s love for the past is reflected in the romance between Joshua and Helen, a Homo habilis female who Joshua meets during his visit to the past. Helen is the member of a small troupe of habilines who grudgingly adopt Joshua as their resident outcast. Helen, a barren female of unusual height and with humanlike characteristics, shares Joshua’s outsider role, and they eventually mate and bond. Some readers may be disgusted by this pairing, and Bishop acknowledges this when Joshua states, “an old country boy like our Wyoming landlord Pete Grier would have seen more poetry in a farm boy’s hasty violation of an indifferent heifer than in my adult attraction to the willing Helen Habiline” (Loc. 2119, Ch. 16). But Helen, despite her hairy façade, is not an ape, and her advanced sapience and outsider status bridge the two million year gap. Helen and her habiline community represent the “innocent and beautiful” referenced in the Yeats poem from which the title is derived. (“The innocent and the beautiful/Have no enemy but time…” L. 3122, Ch. 22.)

As expected, common SF themes of violence and gender are explored in this novel about pre-human civilization. Typically maligned gender roles take on an innocent quality in the habilines’ primitive hunter-gatherer society, and Helen’s role, having no children to care for (although she yearns for this) and larger stature than most of the men, is stretched to benefit the hunt. But Bishop reminds us that the social boundaries we currently struggle to break were being formed in this early age, where “a big, strong, swift-footed, and cunning female was still a female” (Loc. 1586, Ch. 12) and “if you put on a child in this society, you were automatically dressed as a woman” (Loc. 4557, Ch. 28). And the violence, in which baby cheetahs and adopted Australopithecus children are clubbed to death, may be as dark and bloody as many modern movies and video games, but is never as gratuitous.

(John Jink’s cover for the 1989 edition)

But Bishop’s charm lies in his writing. Cool, placid, and precise, with a few snatches of dry humor that surprised a few laughs out of me. Images of habiline shaving cream fights and while the leader wears Fruit of the Looms (which gives new meaning to the phrases “wearing the pants” and “brief dethronement”) are funny, but the real humor lies within Bishop’s observations—never a punchline exactly, but built into the prose, and too corny or unwieldy to take out of context as a quote. This style fits well with the often jokey protagonist, who alternates first-person POV in the Stone Age with third-person POV in Joshua’s modern past. Joshua himself is an odd duck, an outsider in both the past and present, but with more empathy for his habiline companions. He wants to fit in with the “Minids,” whereas he makes little effort to fit in with modern-day Homo sapiens. His peculiar interactions with modern humans only emphasize his outsider status. In fact, I suspect his success with the “Minids” may be due to their limited language skills, which spares them from Joshua’s often inane babble.

Bishop’s wry humor goes beyond the silly imagery and quips that pepper his tale. He pranks his readers by setting up a traditional time travel paradox that, to my relief, he never delivers. He even withholds his anti-paradox time travel rules until the very end, just for the sake of the prank. Habilines with fire, Fruit of the Looms, and a few English words– not to mention sex with a Homo sapien– all have the potential to rock the foundation of human development at its core. And when the time traveler resembles his hominid community (short, dark, and initially speechless), with mysterious parental origins and vivid dreams (perhaps memories?) of humanity’s origins—even a casual SF reader can foresee the looming grandfather paradox. But when Helen births an albino female, and not a baby Joshua, the paradox is revealed as an illusion. And Bishop’s prank serves the rest of the story by fostering that illusion, casting doubt to Joshua’s entire story.

(Uncredited cover for the 2013 edition)

And that’s where the story should have ended. The illusion of time travel told by an unreliable protagonist fits well with the lingering tone of the story, but perhaps Bishop wanted to circumvent the hackneyed “it was all a dream” ending. Instead, Bishop switches gears and flips his resonating sociological study of human origins into a 007 thriller piece in which Josh’s halfbreed daughter catches the attentions of a slimy questionable crook with interests in future-travel. The last tenth of the novel is so out of character, I prefer to think that some idiot editor forced Bishop to axe his original ending (likely brilliant and moving) to wedge in this abrupt shift in tone, in order to dangle the possibility of a sequel. It’s just that terrible.

Or maybe it’s brilliant. Maybe Bishop designed his story to illustrate his interpretation of the chain of human evolution: slow and steady, difficult and harsh, but meaningful and communal, with the last tenth of our history rampaging toward the future in hollow, violent meaninglessness. Perhaps Bishop’s story structure is a reflection of his story’s message, in which he proclaims the end of evolution, likening our current social development to that of a tumor, a mutation rather than progress.

Because that last chapter was like a tumor in an otherwise perfect tale. It shocks the reader out of the powerful trance that Bishop fosters. It’s an unwelcome jolt from the cozy, warm slumber of spirit-travelling, and I was pissed when it happened. I want to go back.

Bishop succeeds where few speculative writers dare to tread. It’s common to imagine a future with endless possibilities, or to inject a documented past with dystopic tones. But to summon an unwritten past, and to gild our primitive ancestors with utopic optimism—it may not be very scientific, but it’s compelling and weighty. Bishop’s habilines hold a mirror to our supposed progress, causing the reader to reexamine their definition of “the good old days.”

~

Links to previous Michael Bishop Guest Posts [updated]

“Allegiances” (1975) (review by Peter S.)

A Little Knowledge (1977) (review by Heloise at Heloise Merlin’s Weblog)

Blooded on Arachne (1982) (selections) (review by Carl V. Anderson at Stainless Steel Droppings)

Brighten to Incandescence (2003) (review by MPorcius at MPorcius Fiction Log)

Brittle Innings (1994) (review by James Harris at Auxiliary Memory)

Catacomb Years (1979) (review by 2theD at Potpourri of Science Fiction Literature)

“Death and Designation Among the Asadi” (1973) (review by Jesse at Speculiction…)

“In Rubble, Pleading” (1974), “Death and Designation Among the Asadi” (1973), and “The White Otters of Childhood” (1973), (review by Admiral Ironbombs at Battered, Tattered, Yellowed & Creased)

No Enemy But Time (1982) (review by Megan at From Couch to Moon)

“The Quickening” (1981) (review by Max at Pechorin’s Journal)

~

Links to my three previously posted reviews of Bishop’s work

A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire (1975)

And Strange at Ecbatan the Trees (1976)

Stolen Faces (1977)

#1980s #bookReviews2 #experimental #michaelBishop #paperbacks #sciFi #scienceFiction #technology #timeTravel

Guest Post: “Death and Designation Among the Asadi,” Michael Bishop (1973)

The first installment in my Guest Post Series on The Science Fiction of Michael Bishop was written by Jesse over at the remarkable SF review site Speculiction… Not only is he incredibly prolific (and has a large back catalog of reviews to browse) but his reviews are also a joy to read.  If you are interested in both classic and contemporary SF, and the occasional post on Chinese poetry, make sure to check out his site.

Jesse has previously posted on his site about Bishop’s  “The Samurai in the Willows” (1976) and “Cri de Coeur” (1994).  Both reviews are worth reading.  

“Death and Designation Among the Asadi” (1973) is one of Michael Bishop’s more well known novellas that was nominated for both the Hugo and Nebula in 1974.  It was first published in the magazine Worlds of If January-February 1973, ed. Ejler Jakobsson.  If you are interested in finding a copy the story can be found in multiple later collections and forms the first part of his novel Transfigurations (1979) [listing here].

Enjoy!

~

“Death and Designation Among the Asadi,” Michael Bishop (1973)

The alien is perhaps the most recognized, if not the most used trope of science fiction.  World invaders (H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds), ethereal entities incomprehensible to humanity (Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris), mirrors to humanity (Ursula Le Guin’s The Word for World is Forest), cultural commentary on the Other (C.J. Cherryh’s Foreigner series), woman stealers (the cover of many a pulp magazine from the ‘30s), pinnacles of civilization (the Vulcan), and playgrounds for the imagination (any number of space operas would serve here), the extra-terrestrial has existed almost since the beginning of the genre, and in the time since has been portrayed in thousands of differing ways.  (To be honest, I would be curious what percentage of sci-fi has an alien of one sort or another present.  50%?  More?  Less?)  1973’s Death and Designation among the Asadi (1973) presents a Michael Bishop perspective of extra-terrestrials.  Though achieving a degree of viscerally alien only the most imaginative and insightful writers can hope for, the trope is utilized to express existential and cultural concerns of human proportion.

Death and Designation among the Asadi is the personal journals, research notes, and in situ voice recordings of the xenologist Egan Chaney, as compiled and presented by long time anthropologist and friend Thomas Benedict.  Chaney an eccentric personality, he has taken the mantle upon himself to live amongst the Asadi of BoskVeld in the hopes of furthering the knowledge gained by a predecessor.  The Asadi maned like male lions, Chaney thinks it best to enter the community with a shaved head thus to be viewed as a pariah, ignored by the mute, gray-skinned aliens.  The plan initially going off well, for months he is able to sit unmolested in their midst, making observations and drawing conclusions from their social behavior.  But not all is readily ascertainable.  An elderly Asadi appearing from the jungle with a winged homunculus perched on his shoulder one day, a mystery presents itself that begs resolution.  Trouble is, the learning process might be more than Chaney is capable of handling.

First appeared in the Worlds of If, January-February 1973 (cover: David A. Hardy)

One of the most realistically realized alien species in literature, the Asadi come vividly to life under Bishop’s facile pen.  A stylist aware of every letter, Chaney’s observations of Asadi behavior are unpacked one intriguing element at a time, the full weight—or as it were, mystery—of each given time to seep in before a new layer is exposed.  The impact at maximum, the reader is able to fully visualize Chaney’s experiences, the underlying uncertainty of the Asadi’s behavior palpable.  With the inclusion of the homunculus, not to mention a couple of other alien elements, the species become wholly separate from human affairs in setting, and yet, given peculiar physical similarities, perfectly capable of commenting upon them in primeval fashion.

Along with the life/death relationship Bishop, Death and Designation among the Asadi also delves into at least two more significant themes.  Isolation, socially and culturally, is one.  Though residing amongst a seemingly chaotic alien group, Chaney remains external, strong feelings of alienation the result.  Among the Asadi is a young male who Chaney comes to call the Bachelor.  Observing Chaney for as much as Chaney observes him, circumstances beyond the xenologists’ understanding contrive to isolate the Bachelor from his species, in turn relegating both of them to pariah status.  Though unable to communicate, the Bachelor thereafter becomes a significant parallel and juxtaposition to Chaney.  So affected by the unspoken relationship, in fact, Chaney’s decisions late in the story hinge upon it, his course of action rash from most perspectives but logical within the limits of the story.

Wrapped around isolation is Mircea Eliade’s concept of the Eternal Return.  Structure-wise, the first two-thirds of story peel back layer after layer of Asadi culture until a complete cycle is described.  The last third, however, begins a new cycle, one which answers some of Chaney (and the reader’s) most maddening questions, while simultaneously invoking a cycle of greater—and more mysterious—import.  The last page most certainly a return, Bishop encapsulates Eliade’s ideas perfectly in story, as well as at multiple levels within Asadi culture.

In the end, Death and Designation among the Asadi is as realistic a look at a truly alien group as is possible in literature.  The basic premise of the story (Asadi culture) detailed yet simple, Bishop relates an experience among an extra-terrestrial culture that operates at numerous levels.  From the personal confrontation of life and death to isolation—both cultural and societal, Bishop rounds off his wonderful creation by intertwining the concept of the Eternal Return at differing scales.  (Such a solid foundation of ideas, in fact, Bishop was able to expand the story to novel length, Transfigurations, published six years later, the result.)  Written with purpose from the first word onwards, the novella remains a fine balance of all things literary, and given the vivid evocativeness with which the Asadi are portrayed, it’s impossible for them not to leave an impression.

After all, there is a reason Joachim has chosen to spotlight Michael Bishop’s work…

~

Links to previous Michael Bishop Guest Posts [updated]

“Allegiances” (1975) (review by Peter S.)

A Little Knowledge (1977) (review by Heloise at Heloise Merlin’s Weblog)

Blooded on Arachne (1982) (selections) (review by Carl V. Anderson at Stainless Steel Droppings)

Brighten to Incandescence (2003) (review by MPorcius at MPorcius Fiction Log)

Brittle Innings (1994) (review by James Harris at Auxiliary Memory)

Catacomb Years (1979) (review by 2theD at Potpourri of Science Fiction Literature)

“Death and Designation Among the Asadi” (1973) (review by Jesse at Speculiction…)

“In Rubble, Pleading” (1974), “Death and Designation Among the Asadi” (1973), and “The White Otters of Childhood” (1973), (review by Admiral Ironbombs at Battered, Tattered, Yellowed & Creased)

No Enemy But Time (1982) (review by Megan at From Couch to Moon)

“The Quickening” (1981) (review by Max at Pechorin’s Journal)

~

Links to my three previously posted reviews of Bishop’s work

A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire (1975)

And Strange at Ecbatan the Trees (1976)

Stolen Faces (1977)

#aliens #bookReviews2 #experimental #michaelBishop #sciFi #scienceFiction #shortStories #spaceOpera #technology

Book Review: Strange Relations, Philip José Farmer (1960)

(Blanchard’s cover for the 1960 edition)

4/5 (collated rating: Good)

Blanchard’s abstract vaginal cover for the 1960 first edition of Philip José Farmer’s Strange Relations (1960) hints, just obliquely enough to avoid being explicit, at the collection’s radical and groundbreaking contents.  Nothing else existed like this from the 50s!  Having exploded onto the scene with the “transgressive” (SF encyclopedia) novella “The Lovers” (1952) (later expanded to novel length), Strange Relations (1960) collects a further five short works from the mid-50s and later on similar themes — theology, sex, xenobiology, Freud, and social satire.

Each work revolves around a particular Freudian scenario, a Freudian fantasy.  One can imagine that authors such as Barry N. Malzberg were profoundly influenced by Farmer’s meditations on humanity’s  “strange peccadilloes.”

Long time readers of my blog might know of my dislike of Farmer’s Hugo-winning To Your Scattered Bodies Go (1971) and the subsequent sequels which manage to add layers and layers of boredom.  I’ve also reviewed the painfully tedious Traitor to the Living (1973)…  So, it was with some trepidation that picked up Strange Relations.  My dislike has diminished and metafictional pastiches such as Lord Tyger (1970) are on my to acquire radar.  The Green Odyssey (1957) and Behind the Walls of Terra (1970), long relegated to a back corner of the to read pile are suddenly more appealing…

Highly recommended for the novelette “Mother” (1953) and its sequel short story “Daughter” (1954).  The hard-shelled, hilltop living, female-only womb aliens who fertilize themselves via roving mobile “male” objects whom they capture and thrust into their womb-spaces, described in the these two stories are downright fantastic.  The only one of the five that does not live up to its premise is “Son” (1954)–maternal /”female” ocean going robots who adopt and manipulate shipwrecked men should result in a more intriguing story!

Brief Plot Summary/Analysis

“Mother” (1953) (novelette) 4/5 (Good):  The second best story of the collection follows the emotional opera singer Eddie Fetts who has a mother complex and an unhealthy attachment to the nipple-shaped rubber top of his liquor thermos.  His mother, an accomplished pathologist, is a constant factor in his life, especially after Eddie’s wife left because they “couldn’t get together” (9).  Eddie and his mother crash land on an unusual planet where Farmer’s skill at describing unusual aliens manifests itself.  Eddie and his mother are captured, after being lured by a mating scent, and placed inside different immobile hilltop dwelling aliens.

He soon discovers that these aliens are all female, they impregnate themselves by capturing roving animal life like himself, and they feed their children inside the womb by producing a stew generated by captured animals and water syphoned via long tubes from the ground.  Eddie literally returns to the womb and discovers that he strangely likes it there and takes an active part nurturing the young.  Of course, the alien mother, Polyphema, gains great prestige having a talking male mobile.

“Daughter” (1954) (short story) 5/5 (Very Good):  The best of the collection and one of my favorites of the 50s.  The sequel to “Mother”, “Daughter” is narrated by one of the female children of Polyphema, the alien that captured Eddie.  This child, Little Hardhead, was Eddie’s favorite and the one who learned all Eddie knew about the outside world.  When she is evicted from Polyphema’s womb, she puts Eddie’s teaching to the test and constructs a multi-layered womb-shell from all different materials when she finds a suitable hill to implant herself (and gains the ridicule of the other children more quickly establish themselves and produce young).

And then the big bad wolf creature, another fantastically bizarre alien conjured by Farmer, who eats all the crops planted by the womb-aliens, and slowly synthesizes chemicals to pry through the layers of the hard womb-shell approaches the last of Polyphema and Eddie’s children.  Will Eddie’s teaching payoff when the mobile attacks!  Little Hardhead is ready.

“Father” (1955) (novella) 4/5 (Good):  “Father” is one of numerous stories in sequence that follow Father (not the father of the title) Carmody, a Catholic priest of the future, in a series of adventures on planets that challenge Catholic theology.  In this case, Carmody and the crew of the Gull crash land on the planet of Abatos, where so many vessels have never been seen before.  Abatos is an unusual jungle-like world (queue Farmer’s obsessions with Tarzan) filled with only female plants and animals.  The reason for this is revealed — a god-like being is offended by even the slightest of sins, animal and planet sex included.  So, in his omnipotence he generates a Garden of Eden environment according to his fervent strictures regarding every possible sin.  A debate emerges amongst the crew, do they bring the God-like creature back to Earth an utilize it as an instrument of the Church, or, is the God-like creature so utterly delusional and self-obsessed that it should be left to its own devices?  One of the more intriguing theological ruminations of the 50s, up there with James Blish’s A Case of Conscience (1958).

“Son” (1954) (short story) 3.5/5 (Good):  The fantastic premise devolves into a rather descriptive story that lacks the vibrancy of the others in the collection.  Jones, after his luxury liner blows up by the enemy, is miraculously rescued by a sentient robot submersible.  The robot takes Jones into the amniotic depths of the ocean where he is drugged, hypnotized, and manipulated into assisting “her” repairs.  Soon Jones realizes that Keet is more than simply programming—a maternal instinct exists.  But Jones, turns “out to be an American  with the good old American name of Jones” (137) sees through her deception and forces himself from her womb-like interior.  A second birth, another attempt to make things right….  A forced, violent, birth.

“My Sister’s Brother” (variant title: “Open to Me, My Sister”) (1960) (novella) 4/5 (Good): Nominated for the Short Fiction Hugo category in 1961.  Perhaps the most unusual story of the collection….  Lane, a member of the first explorers of Mars, is tasked with discovering where the rest of companions have disappeared.  He sets off across the Martian landscape and discovers unusual aliens who farm planets along long hollow tubes that stretch across the landscape.  Soon he gains entry to one of the tubes after he encounters a nubile female humanoid looking alien named Martia….

Unlike other SF stories of the era, Lane is unable to overcome his revulsion of the alien’s characteristics, and more specifically bizarre mating patterns.  He resorts to an act of brutal violence because, due to the hatred of her differences, “could not accept her love and still remain a man” (190).  This is a rather radical story for our manly man, who lusts after aliens but really wants them to be more human than alien (especially when they have sex), despite encountering a peaceful race can only react with violence when his sexual mores are challenged.

(Uncredited cover for the 1966 edition)

(Uncredited cover for the 1973 edition)

(V. Calabrase’s cover for the 1974 edition)

(David Palladini’s cover for the 1978 edition)

(George Underwood’s cover for the 1982 edition)

(Mark Salwowski’s cover for the 1985 edition)

(Clyde Caldwell’s grotesque cover (BAEN books, who else?) for the 2006 edition)

For more book reviews consult the INDEX

#1950s #1960s #avantGarde #bookReviews2 #paperbacks #philipJoseFarmer #pulp #sciFi #scienceFiction #shortStories #spaceOpera #spaceships #technology

Book Review: The Deep, John Crowley (1975)

(Richard Powers’ cover for the 1976 edition)

4.5/5 (Very Good)

The Deep (1975) was John Crowley’s first published novel and his first of three SF works from the 70s (The Deep, Beasts, Engine Summer).  He is best known for Engine Summer (1979) and his complex/literary fantasy — Little, Big (1981) and the Ægypt sequence (1987-2007).  In the two novels of his I’ve read (the other is Beasts), Crowley’s prose is characterized by an almost icy detachment, an adept construction of unusual images, and dialogue that says only what is needed.

The Deep deploys, in minimalistic fashion, the standard tropes of the fantasy genre mixed with distinctly SF elements: namely, an android visitor whose blood “was alive — it flowed  in tiny swirls ever, like oil in alcohol, but finer, blue within crimson” (1).  The world itself is fashioned like a game.  The players are arrayed across the surfaces of a pillar that rises upward and is surrounded by the eponymous chasm, the Deep.  The characters move across the landscape in the methodically-structured dance of a game — each action reeks of cyclical timelessness, endlessly played and replayed, played and replayed.  The being that fashions such choreographed destruction clutches the cosmic pillar — a re-imagined Yggdrasil — from below, wreathed in the deep, twined like the Norse serpent Nidhogg, the Hateful Striker.

Everyone besides the Visitor seems aware that their parts have been played again and again.  They are content to repeat the same empty yet impassioned motions.  They are content to strive for glory knowing  that once the balance is askew the Just will set them aright — with the Gun.

Brief Plot Summary/Analysis

The novel begins with the discovery of the android Visitor, who is “neither male nor female,” by two Endwives, who care for the wounded and the dead caused by the endless struggles between the Reds and the Blacks.  The society on the pillar is feudal in nature.  The Blacks and the Reds, called the Protectors, evoke old claims for the throne in continuous back-and-forth maneuvering for the ear of the king and even the throne itself.  The Just “protect” the common Folk by assassinating key players who are selected by lot by their sexless and mysterious leader, the Neither-nor.

The other power are the Grays who arbitrate the law, collate knowledge, and slowly uncover obscured carvings in their indomitable keep that illustrate the cyclical workings of the world: “crowned men with red tears running from their eyes held hands as children’s cutouts do, but each twisted in a different attitude […]  Behind and around them, gripping them like lovers, were black figures, obscure, demons or ghosts.  Each crown had burning within it a fire, and the grinning black things tore tongue and organs from this king and with them fed the fire burning in the crown of that one, tore that one’s body to feed the fire burning in this one’s crown, and so on around, demon and king, like a tortured circle dance” (30).

Soon the Visitor, who relearns speech from the Endwives, is discovered by Falcounred, a lesser noble who owes his allegiance to  Redhand.  The Visitor is exposed to the complex machinations of the Blacks and Reds — Crowley bases their conflict on events from the English War of the Roses.  The exact lineages, figures, battles — although discussed at length — are not the main movements of the plot.  Rather, the Visitor, as he experiences more of the world in the employ of the Reds, soon learns his origins and purpose.

Final Thoughts

I found the sculptured landscape — the plain called the Drumskin, where the battles are waged; the lip that surrounds the edge of the word; the circular lake surrounded by mountains whose single island contains the residence of the King; the increasing decay that inundates the landscape as one moves outward towards the edge; the deep abyss that surrounds the pillar; the movement of the stars — incredibly evocative.  The reader watches the action unfold below, like the hypnotized audience of a chess game.  But there is only one player… The Leviathan wrapped around the pillar.   The Visitor, initially ignorant of the world, is a cypher for the reader who slowly learns the workings of the board.

For fans of literary fantasy and SF.  Crowley’s early visions are not to be missed.  Perhaps not as intriguing or as complex as Beasts, The Deep will transfix the diligent reader.

(John Cayea’s cover for the 1975 edition)

(Joe Petagno’s cover for the 1977 edition)

(Yvonne Gilbert’s cover for the 1984 edition)

(Les Edwards’ cover for the 1987 edition)

(Eamon O’Donaghue’s cover for the 2013 edition)

For more reviews consult the INDEX

#1970s #avantGarde #bookReviews2 #experimental #fantasy #sciFi #scienceFiction #technology

Book Review: Total Eclipse, John Brunner (1974)

(John Cayea’s cover for the 1974 edition)

3/5 (Average)

Over the years I’ve deluded myself into becoming a John Brunner completest — around twenty-five of his novels line my shelves and I’ve read most of them over the years.  At his best he’s without question one of the great masters of the genre — Stand on Zanzibar (1968), The Sheep Look Up (1972), etc. are evidence of this.  However, in-between his social science fiction masterpieces are a plethora of unsatisfying attempts at traditionalist space opera.  In these works Brunner never fully leaves his pulp roots although he occasionally tries to inject a dose of hard science, (pseudo) intellectualism, and social commentary.

Total Eclipse (1974) fits this mold.  A group of scientists attempt to figure out the mystery of a highly advanced race which has apparently, died out. Character interactions are painfully silly along the “Oh heroic main character, you’re a genius let me jump into your bed” sort of lines.  The entire cast, despite the plethora of female scientists and racial diversity (Arabs, Africans, etc), are entirely interchangeable and bland.  After the mystery is solved Brunner desperately attempts to make the work have a relevant social message.  Also, apparently dissatisfied with his earlier cavalcade of undeviating naivete, melodrama, and endless faux-biological/linguistic/archaeological technobabble, Brunner tags on a dark ending out of touch with the rest of the work.  

For Brunner completests and fans of 70s Hard Science fiction only.

Brief Plot Summary (*some spoilers*)

In the  future, mankind has pulled together the necessary resources for a single space sparing vessel, the Stellaris.  The powers that be on Earth are increasingly beset by a populace against “wasting” money on space travel due to the crisises of growing overpopulation, pollution, etc.  As a result, it’s increasingly uncertain how much longer the space program will be funded.  Also, various conspiracy theories develop as to the real reasons for the Stellaris‘ treks into space.

Our paleolinguist main character Ian Macauly — cut from the nerdy, socially inept, scientist mold — is summoned by the group of scientists who have taken up residence on the planet Sigma Draconis III.  This planet was the home planet of a fascinating race of crab-like aliens which have long since disappeared.  The crab creatures communicated by manipulating electric fields, evolved incredibly fast (from primitivism to incredibly sophisticated technology in 3,000 years), appear to make mistakes only once before never repeating them, and left behind a vast assortment of intriguing, but hard to interpret, artifacts (including a moon with a massive telescope).  Ian is summoned to solve the alien language with the hope that answer for their disappearance will be solved.

Due to the conspiracies surrounding the program, a particularly egregious/paranoid South American official is assigned to interrogate all the occupants of the archaeological camp.  The first third of the book serves as an attempt to info dump the reader under the guise by means of the official’s interrogations.  Of course, Ian eventually makes him see the light and suddenly is considered a hero.  A female scientist fawns over him and desperately wants to get into his bed.  Of course, Ian’s anti-social nature provides a few giggles and laughs in between the “you’re a brilliant man tell me more of your brilliant theories and brilliant brilliance” pat yourself on the back moments.

The rest of the book follows Ian’s attempts to unravel the mystery of the crab creatures.  He eventually comes up with a plan to make crab suit (!) to simulate the creature’s movements, way of visualizing the world, and even the psychological impact of the creature’s evolving sexual stages.  This incredibly hokey contraption allows Ian approach a solution.  But, will the Stellaris even return or have the powers on Earth forgotten them.

(Chris Foss’ cover for the 1975 edition)

(Philippe Bouchet’s cover for the 1991 French edition)

For more reviews consult the INDEX

#1970s #bookReviews2 #british #hardScienceFiction #johnBrunner #sciFi #scienceFiction #spaceOpera #spaceships #technology

Book Review: Meeting at Infinity, John Brunner (1961)

A wonderful creepy cover by John Schoenherr

4/5 (Good)

Readers from the first days of my blog might recall my rather dismissive comment in my review of John Brunner’s abysmal Born under Mars (1967),

“I have still yet to find in Brunner’s early pulp(ish) novels any solid indication of his future brilliance that manifests itself so poignantly in his great novels of the late 60s and 70s (Stand on Zanzibar, Shockwave Rider, The Sheep Look Up, and to a lesser degree The Jagged Orbit).”

Well, I was wrong — Meeting at Infinity (1961) is a top notch effort which can be read both as a fast paced adventure story or a scathing attack on pure capitalism.  Likewise, John Brunner successfully turns the cliché of the noble primitive society–prevalent in so many works of the 50s and 60s–completely on its head (a theme he returns to in his masterpiece Stand on Zanzibar, 1969).

Plot Summary (rather minimal spoilers)

The Market looms above a city of twelve million still partially paralyzed by the devastation caused by the White Death. This horrific disease came was introduced through the indiscriminate use of the Tacket Principle.  This Principle allows passage between an infinity of parallel worlds (at various stages of development).  Because of the contamination brought from another parallel world, The Directors, a group of merchant princes, franchise out the use of the Tacket Principle to trusted individuals.  These merchant princes journey to various parallel worlds in search of technology and food (to import back to the home world)  The entire world survives ONLY by taking advantage of various peoples they encounter in parallel worlds.  The city itself is dominated by various factions who survive by collecting information for various merchant princes who are constantly fighting other merchant princes.

The plot follows a jumble of characters who slowly uncover information about the world of Akkilmar.  Akkilmar, a seemingly primitive peaceful altruistic society, supplies technology to Ahmed Lynken, the merchant prince who first “discovered” them.  The famous physician, Jome Kenard, purchased a piece of equipment from Ahmed Lynken (from Akkilmar) to treat a serious burn patient (Alyn Vage) who develops peculiar skills despite being completely bandaged.  I best not reveal the rest!

My Thoughts

John Brunner adeptly weaves the various narrative threads together (although initially they seem impossibly disparate).  I’m still not exactly sure of the point of the bizarre prologue.  By far the most interesting concept developed is the purely capitalistic state which utilizes colonialism in its most basic form in order to survive which is, subjected in turn to similar impulses under a drastically different guise.  Don’t expect well rounded characters.  But, there’s great action and the plot unfolds nicely!  There are also some harrowing images.  Tacket, the creator of the Tacket Principle, is completely vilified by the populace since his discovery resulted in the White Death.  Despite the fact that the limited use of his principle is the ONLY way which society is maintained, various cults have emerged in opposition to the merchant princes.  These cultists pound nails into the mouthes of wooden carvings of Tacket!

John Brunner, within the constraints of early 60s pulp science fiction, produces a remarkable (forgotten) little gem.

More Book Reviews

#bookReviews2 #capitalism #colonialism #johnBrunner #scienceFiction #technology

Book Review: Galactic Cluster, James Blish (1959) — collected short stories from 1953-59

3.25/5 (Good — collated rating)

James Blish, famous for his Hugo winning novel, A Case of Conscience, early Star Trek novelizations, and the Cities in Flight series also wrote some interesting short shorties.  This volume includes a selection of his work from the 1950s: ‘Tomb Tappers’, ‘King of the Hill’, ‘Common Time’, ‘A Work of Art’, ‘To Pay the Piper’, ‘Nor Iron Bars’, ‘Beep’, and ‘This Earth of Hours.‘

(4/5) ‘Tomb Tappers’ (1956) is a wonderful and haunting story set sometime during Cold War with a spine chilling twist.  McDonough, a member of the Air Intelligence arm of the CAP (Civil Air Patrol) has the unfortunate job of reading the minds of recently dead Russian pilots who crash during bombing runs over the United States.  A mysterious rocket/plane is found in a train tunnel somewhere in the Northwest USA and McDonough is sent to investigate….

(3/5) ‘King of the Hill’ (1955) is another tale set during the Cold War.  The culmination of the US government’s foreign policy is a weapons satellite which has the ability to drop atomic bombs at precise parts of the world at a moment’s notice.  However, in an effort to save cost, the lone officer in charge of the platform stays over his allotted time with grave consequences.  ‘King of the Hill’ is an interesting study of a man under stress but rather banal.

(3/5) ‘Common Time’ (1953) describes early attempts at faster-than-light interstellar travel.  Here, Blish explores a bizarre formulation of time dilation.  The main character Garrard slowly figures out that time around him is moving infinitesimally slow in comparison to his mind.  Also, his body functions are also infinitesimally slow…  As a result Garrard has to control his his emotions (since the glandular reactions last hours) and movements (which exert extreme force).  Blish is fantastic in ploting Garrard’s slow realization of his surroundings.  However, the story is weakened by a rather timid/silly introduction of aliens into a fascinating example of early hard science fiction.

(5/5) ‘A Work of Art’ (1956) is by far the best story in the collection.  Mind sculptors sculpt famous human minds on otherwise talentless individuals in an attempt to one-up each other.  The mentality and ability of the famous composer Strauss is sculpted on the mind of a musically ignorant individual.  The story is actually quite touching and sad as this new Strauss realizes his fate and the circumstances of his creation when he is unable to compose anything but a hollow shell of his previous works — likewise, the music produced is only well received since it shows the expertize of the mind sculptors.  This fascinating story reminded me of Philip K. Dick’s works which explore the mind, consciousness, and individuality.

(4/5) ‘To Pay the Piper’ (1956) is another gem.  I’ve always been a fan of sci-fi stories about humans retreating to fallout shelters and other underground installations because of various apocalyptic events.  This particularly disturbing take develops the problems that arrive when the survivors get wind the potentially of returning to the surface.  The most disturbing aspect is the continued hatred of the enemy despite the virtual annihilation of the two parties.

(3/5) ‘Nor Iron Bars’ (1956 and 1957) is one of the weaker stories in the collection.  Blish describes Earth’s continued attempts at faster-than-light interstellar travel.  Here, time dilation doesn’t occur, instead matter becomes expanded and more porous.  The most interested section is definitely Blish’s inclusion of interracial relations.  One of the passengers is a super famous white explorer whom all the other female characters fawn over.  We eventually learn that his fiance is a young African-American woman who is dieing.  Even the main characters have to question their own racial prejudices (which they thought they had expunged years before).  Other than that, the story is forgettable.

(2/5) ‘Beep’ (1954) is by far the worst of the the bunch.  The Service has developed a way to look into the future using an instantaneous interstellar communication device (here, once again, time dilation makes this possible).  A new recruit uncovers this secret and as a result is promoted.  Boring and just plain silly.

(2/5) ‘This Earth of Hours’ (1959) is another poor entry.  Interstellar travel is finally become a practicality and an unintelligent telepathic alien race in the core planets of the galaxy is discovered.  Blish tries to make this premise interesting by interjecting randomly some tidbits of the Matriarchy government on earth an its colonies created as a result of the ability to chose the sex of one’s children.  This story is forced and unexciting and its conclusion is anti-climatic.

More Book Reviews

#aliens #bookReviews2 #coldWar #jamesBlish #literature #scienceFiction #shortStories #space #spaceships