#fredricbrown — Public Fediverse posts

Updates: Recent Science Fiction Purchases No. CCCXLVII (Edgar Pangborn, Rudy Rucker, Sally Miller Gearhart, and a SF anthology)

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

The first purchases of 2026!

1. A Mirror For Observers, Edgar Pangborn (1954)

• Richard Powers’ cover for the 1985 edition

From the back cover: “We would call them Martians, though they refer to themselves as Salvayans. Refugees from their dying planet, they arrived on our world almost 30,000 years ago to make new lives for themselves. From their vast underground cities, hidden from discovery, the Salvayans have ben observing us with care and concern, waiting for the day when humans will be ready to meet them. The Salvayans are not many, but they are long-lived and patient….

…Most of them, that is. for some have already tired of waiting. They call themselves Abdicators, setting themselves apart from the more passive Observers; they’d like to rid the Earth once and for all of the greedy, petty race that populates its surface. And with a little help from the Abdicators, perhaps the humans will destroy themselves.

In the small town of Latimer, Massachusetts, dwells a 12-year-old boy named Angelo Pontevicchio. Angelo is no ordinary human child, though he often wishes he would be. The handicap of his polioed leg and his unassuming gentleness are more than compensated for by his soaring mind. To Namir the Abdicator, Angelo is the human tool he needs. Angelo’s genius, his read-to-mold-personality, give him the potential of a Ghandi–or a Hitler. For Namir, it is but a matter of careful manipulation…

Learning of Namir’s plans, the Observers send in their own agent, poet-historian Elmis. Alone in the field, disguised as a mild, middle-aged ex-school teacher, Elmis must reach Angelo and somehow counteract the influence of the renegade Namir, whose resources and determination will stop at nothing–including murder. Elmis’ weapons: only the power of love and truth… and an ancient bronze mirror from the last civilization of Crete, a mirror that can show what one really is–or could be.

Following Elmis, Namir and Angelo over nine years–years in which the boy will be drawn into corruption, violence and, ultimately, a Nazi-like cult that threatens to fulfill Namir’s sinister wishes for human catastrophe–A Mirror for Observers showcases the captivating talents of of one of the SF’s most brilliant, most human and most innovative writers.”

Initial Thoughts: I love Pangborn. This is actually a second copy as my 1st edition paperback crumbled as I attempted to read it.

2. The 57th Franz Kafka, Rudy Rucker (1983)

• Uncredited cover for the 1st edition

From the back cover: “Mathematical philosopher, former unground cartoonist, aruthor of three wild sf novels and two works of mathematical non-fiction, great-great-great-grandson of G. W. F. Hegel and father of three, Rudolf von Bitter Rucker has a mind and a wit all of his own. Come enter his bizarre and delightful world in this collection of fact, fancy, and mangled history.”

Contents: “The 57th Franz Kafka” (1982),  “Schrödinger’s Cat” (1981), “A New Golden Age” (1981), “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” (1983), “Sufferin’ Succotash” (1983), “Faraway Eyes” (1980), “Hyperspherical Space and Beyond” (1980), “The Indian Rope Trick Explained” (1983), “A New Experiment with Time” (1982), “The Man Who Age Himself” (1982), “The Facts of Life” (1983), “Tales of Houdini” (1981), “Buzz” (1981), “The Last Einstein-Rosen Bridge” (1983), “Pac-Man” (1982), “Pi in the Sky” (1983), “Inertia” (1983), “Message Found in a Copy of Flatland” (1983), “The Jack Kerouac Disembodied School of Poetics” (1982).

Initial Thoughts: Rudy Rucker remains a complete unknown to me. I’ve read a few reviews here and there and picked up a copy of Software (1982) (which remains unread). I’ve heard good things about White Light (1980) in particular.

3. Wanderground: Stories of the Hill Women, Sally Miller Gearhart (1978)

• Jim Hanlon’s cover for the 1984 edition

From the back cover: No summary provided. See my quote from SF Encyclopedia below.

Initial Thoughts: According to SF Encyclopedia, Gearhart’s first sf book, one of the most extreme of those that envisage men and women as effectively different races, is The Wanderground: Stories of the Hill Women (coll of linked stories 1978). It is set in the outlaw, all-women, Utopian hill communities of a future when men are restricted to the Cities and dependent on Technology, while women (in a somewhat New Age manner) have developed Psi Powers through harmony with Nature. Even the Gentles, men no longer driven by violence, know that “maleness touched women only with the accumulated hatred of centuries.” She’s an author I’ve frequently encounter in scholarship of feminist SF but hadn’t picked up a copy, until now.

4. Science-Fiction Carnival, ed. Fredric Brown and Mack Reynolds (1953)

• Uncredited cover for the 1957 edition

From the back cover: “….in science fiction carnival you’ll find out how a screenwriter traded personalities with Ivan the Terrible in THE EGO MACHINE.

What happens when thinking machines can give the answers to any question in A LOGIC NAMED JOE.

When a hillbilly finds a Martian is easier to handle than a “revenoer” in THE MARTIANS AND THE COYS.

How a glorified slot machine solved the problem of interplanetary travel in THE COSMIC JACKPOT.

What Jeremiah Jupiter, “mad scientist” deluxe, thought in THE WHEEL OF TIME.

And six other yarns of the fabulous future collected for your enjoyment.”

Contents: Robert Arthur’s “The Wheel of Time” (1950), Murray Leinster’s “A Logic Named Joe” (1946), Larry T. Shaw’s “Simworthy’s Circus” (1950), H. B. Fyfe’s “The Well-Oiled Machine” (1950), Clive Jackson’s “The Swordsmen of Varnis” (1950), Fredric Brown’s “Paradox Lost” (1943), Eric Frank Russell’s “Muten” (1948), Mack Reynolds’ “The Martians and the Coys” (1951), Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore’s “The Ego Machine” (1952), George O. Smith’s “The Cosmic Jackpot” (1948), Nelson S. Bond’s “The Abduction of Abner Greer” (1941).

Initial Thoughts: Sometimes I cast my eyes on anthologies as a way to finally read SF authors that have escaped my focus. In this instance, I haven’t read anything by Robert Arthur, H. B. Fyfe, Larry T. Shaw, George O. Smith, or Nelson S. Bond.

For book reviews consult the INDEX

For cover art posts consult the INDEX

For TV and film reviews consult the INDEX

#1950s #1970s #1980s #CLMoore #EdgarPangborn #FredricBrown #HenryKuttner #MackReynold #MurrayLeinster #paperbacks #RudyRucker #SallyMillerGearhart #sciFi #scienceFiction #technology

Updates: Recent Science Fiction Purchases No. CCCXLVII (Edgar Pangborn, Rudy Rucker, Sally Miller Gearhart, and a SF anthology)

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

The first purchases of 2026!

1. A Mirror For Observers, Edgar Pangborn (1954)

• Richard Powers’ cover for the 1985 edition

From the back cover: “We would call them Martians, though they refer to themselves as Salvayans. Refugees from their dying planet, they arrived on our world almost 30,000 years ago to make new lives for themselves. From their vast underground cities, hidden from discovery, the Salvayans have ben observing us with care and concern, waiting for the day when humans will be ready to meet them. The Salvayans are not many, but they are long-lived and patient….

…Most of them, that is. for some have already tired of waiting. They call themselves Abdicators, setting themselves apart from the more passive Observers; they’d like to rid the Earth once and for all of the greedy, petty race that populates its surface. And with a little help from the Abdicators, perhaps the humans will destroy themselves.

In the small town of Latimer, Massachusetts, dwells a 12-year-old boy named Angelo Pontevicchio. Angelo is no ordinary human child, though he often wishes he would be. The handicap of his polioed leg and his unassuming gentleness are more than compensated for by his soaring mind. To Namir the Abdicator, Angelo is the human tool he needs. Angelo’s genius, his read-to-mold-personality, give him the potential of a Ghandi–or a Hitler. For Namir, it is but a matter of careful manipulation…

Learning of Namir’s plans, the Observers send in their own agent, poet-historian Elmis. Alone in the field, disguised as a mild, middle-aged ex-school teacher, Elmis must reach Angelo and somehow counteract the influence of the renegade Namir, whose resources and determination will stop at nothing–including murder. Elmis’ weapons: only the power of love and truth… and an ancient bronze mirror from the last civilization of Crete, a mirror that can show what one really is–or could be.

Following Elmis, Namir and Angelo over nine years–years in which the boy will be drawn into corruption, violence and, ultimately, a Nazi-like cult that threatens to fulfill Namir’s sinister wishes for human catastrophe–A Mirror for Observers showcases the captivating talents of of one of the SF’s most brilliant, most human and most innovative writers.”

Initial Thoughts: I love Pangborn. This is actually a second copy as my 1st edition paperback crumbled as I attempted to read it.

2. The 57th Franz Kafka, Rudy Rucker (1983)

• Uncredited cover for the 1st edition

From the back cover: “Mathematical philosopher, former unground cartoonist, aruthor of three wild sf novels and two works of mathematical non-fiction, great-great-great-grandson of G. W. F. Hegel and father of three, Rudolf von Bitter Rucker has a mind and a wit all of his own. Come enter his bizarre and delightful world in this collection of fact, fancy, and mangled history.”

Contents: “The 57th Franz Kafka” (1982),  “Schrödinger’s Cat” (1981), “A New Golden Age” (1981), “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” (1983), “Sufferin’ Succotash” (1983), “Faraway Eyes” (1980), “Hyperspherical Space and Beyond” (1980), “The Indian Rope Trick Explained” (1983), “A New Experiment with Time” (1982), “The Man Who Age Himself” (1982), “The Facts of Life” (1983), “Tales of Houdini” (1981), “Buzz” (1981), “The Last Einstein-Rosen Bridge” (1983), “Pac-Man” (1982), “Pi in the Sky” (1983), “Inertia” (1983), “Message Found in a Copy of Flatland” (1983), “The Jack Kerouac Disembodied School of Poetics” (1982).

Initial Thoughts: Rudy Rucker remains a complete unknown to me. I’ve read a few reviews here and there and picked up a copy of Software (1982) (which remains unread). I’ve heard good things about White Light (1980) in particular.

3. Wanderground: Stories of the Hill Women, Sally Miller Gearhart (1978)

• Jim Hanlon’s cover for the 1984 edition

From the back cover: No summary provided. See my quote from SF Encyclopedia below.

Initial Thoughts: According to SF Encyclopedia, Gearhart’s first sf book, one of the most extreme of those that envisage men and women as effectively different races, is The Wanderground: Stories of the Hill Women (coll of linked stories 1978). It is set in the outlaw, all-women, Utopian hill communities of a future when men are restricted to the Cities and dependent on Technology, while women (in a somewhat New Age manner) have developed Psi Powers through harmony with Nature. Even the Gentles, men no longer driven by violence, know that “maleness touched women only with the accumulated hatred of centuries.” She’s an author I’ve frequently encounter in scholarship of feminist SF but hadn’t picked up a copy, until now.

4. Science-Fiction Carnival, ed. Fredric Brown and Mack Reynolds (1953)

• Uncredited cover for the 1957 edition

From the back cover: “….in science fiction carnival you’ll find out how a screenwriter traded personalities with Ivan the Terrible in THE EGO MACHINE.

What happens when thinking machines can give the answers to any question in A LOGIC NAMED JOE.

When a hillbilly finds a Martian is easier to handle than a “revenoer” in THE MARTIANS AND THE COYS.

How a glorified slot machine solved the problem of interplanetary travel in THE COSMIC JACKPOT.

What Jeremiah Jupiter, “mad scientist” deluxe, thought in THE WHEEL OF TIME.

And six other yarns of the fabulous future collected for your enjoyment.”

Contents: Robert Arthur’s “The Wheel of Time” (1950), Murray Leinster’s “A Logic Named Joe” (1946), Larry T. Shaw’s “Simworthy’s Circus” (1950), H. B. Fyfe’s “The Well-Oiled Machine” (1950), Clive Jackson’s “The Swordsmen of Varnis” (1950), Fredric Brown’s “Paradox Lost” (1943), Eric Frank Russell’s “Muten” (1948), Mack Reynolds’ “The Martians and the Coys” (1951), Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore’s “The Ego Machine” (1952), George O. Smith’s “The Cosmic Jackpot” (1948), Nelson S. Bond’s “The Abduction of Abner Greer” (1941).

Initial Thoughts: Sometimes I cast my eyes on anthologies as a way to finally read SF authors that have escaped my focus. In this instance, I haven’t read anything by Robert Arthur, H. B. Fyfe, Larry T. Shaw, George O. Smith, or Nelson S. Bond.

For book reviews consult the INDEX

For cover art posts consult the INDEX

For TV and film reviews consult the INDEX

#1950s #1970s #1980s #CLMoore #EdgarPangborn #FredricBrown #HenryKuttner #MackReynold #MurrayLeinster #paperbacks #RudyRucker #SallyMillerGearhart #sciFi #scienceFiction #technology

Titelbild von Terra Sonderband 6, Moewig Verlag, September 1958.
"Das andere Universum" von Fredric Brown (What Mad Universe)
Übersetzt von Rainer Eisfeld
Artist: Karl Stephan
(AmeS)

#scifi
#sciencefiction
#TerraSonderband #FredricBrown #KarlStephan

Titelbild von Terra Sonderband 6, Moewig Verlag, September 1958.
"Das andere Universum" von Fredric Brown (What Mad Universe)
Übersetzt von Rainer Eisfeld
Artist: Karl Stephan
(AmeS)

#scifi
#sciencefiction
#TerraSonderband #FredricBrown #KarlStephan

Titelbild von Terra Sonderband 6, Moewig Verlag, September 1958.
"Das andere Universum" von Fredric Brown (What Mad Universe)
Übersetzt von Rainer Eisfeld
Artist: Karl Stephan
(AmeS)

#scifi
#sciencefiction
#TerraSonderband #FredricBrown #KarlStephan

Magazine Review: Galaxy Science Fiction, ed. H. L. Gold (November 1950) (Brown, Asimov, Boucher, Leiber, Knight, Simak)

Preliminary Note: I plan on reading all 116 issues of the influential, and iconic, SF magazine Galaxy under H. L. Gold’s editorship (October 1950-October 1961) in chronological order. How long this project will take or how seriously/systematically I will take it remain complete unknowns.

See my inaugural post in this series for my reasoning behind selecting Galaxy under H. L. Gold.

Previously: the October 1950 issue.

Up Next: the December 1950 issue.

Let’s get to the stories. We have the first Galaxy masterpiece!

• Don Sibley’s cover for Galaxy Science Fiction, ed. H. L. Gold (November 1950)

You can read the entire issue here.

Fredric Brown’s “Honeymoon in Hell” (1950), 3/5 (Average): The year is 1962. The Cold War heats up. The race for a permanent presence on the Moon takes center stage. Each side “had landed a few men” and claimed it as their own (4). Each side races to construct a space station in orbit to facilitate the construction of a permanent base on the moon. But there’s another worrying world-wide trend–a massive gender imbalance in new births! Not enough boys! Riots. Cults. What’s the plan?

Capt. Raymond F. Carmody, retired from the space service (at age 27) after a successful flight to the Moon, steps into the ring. Resisting an administrative role in the service, he’d chosen a new career: cybernetics, “the science of electronic calculating machines” (9). In his new position, he had access to a powerful computer called Junior, built in 1958, tasked with issues of national security. Alone with the machine, he feeds Junior the data. Junior doesn’t have an answer. But Junior does offer a rare extrapolation that Carmody will be married on the morrow.

And a meeting with the President reveals the nature of the plan to birth a male child on the moon to avoid whatever on Earth is causing the problem! He’ll be legally married before they head to the moon and divorced if the pairing doesn’t work out. The catch? His wife will be Russian and their honeymoon will be Hell Crater.1 The “lucky” woman? Anna Borisovna is also a pilot of “experimental rockets on short-range flights” (16). Alcohol included as “icebreaker” for a “happy honeymoon” (19). The twelve day stay will be “plenty of time to get off before the Lunar night” (18) (Brown certainly intends the pun). And then the story morphs, abruptly, into a first contact story. Or does it?

This is an odd story. At its core it’s about a man and a woman (and mortal enemies) who go to the moon to have sex. But it’s the 50s. They need to be married! And all the references to the act are double entendres. As the ridiculousness fades, Brown settles on a rather enlightened position considering the Cold War terror of the moment–détente with the Soviets, politics and all, remains possible (under some circumstances). The story implies that Carmody falls head-over-heels for Anna due to the similarities of their careers and status as intellectual equals despite their divergent politics. Don Sibley’s issue cover shows her abilities under stressful circumstances. Carmody’s even willing to head to the Soviet Union to be with her! Love trumps all message aside, I am not convinced by the reading experience. Brown relays the strange events that transpire on Mars, and almost all of Carmody and Anna’s interactions, after they occur. It weakens the effect.

Somewhat recommended.

Isaac Asimov’s “Misbegotten Missionary” (variant title: “Green Patches”) (1950), 3/5 (Average): “Misbegotten Missionary” begins from the perspective of an alien entity that slipped onboard a human ship after its barrier faltered for a moment. The alien utterly believes that it is a superior “unified organism” (34) over the “life fragments” that populate the ship (34). Fanatical in its mindset, the shape-shifting alien wants to convert the entire vessel to its ways–without their consent. Slowly the nature of its own world, the purpose of the human vessel, and the fate of a past voyage become clear.

While not a miserable entry in his canon, I am starting to dread the Asimov stories in Galaxy and struggle to write coherently about them. And there’s a serialized novel on the horizon that I haven’t read yet and thus cannot skip– The Stars, Like Dust (1951). While far superior to “Darwinian Pool Room” (1950), “Misbegotten Missionary” defeats its initial success with a laborious exposition of what happened before. I appreciated the Asimov’s attempt to convey alienness of the entity’s perspective. Maybe if you’re interested in the evolution of Asimov’s attempts to write about entire planets as alien consciousness this is worth tracking down.

I reviewed this in 2021 and completely forgot. I was even more cruel in the earlier review!

Anthony Boucher’s “Transfer Point” (1950), 3/5 (Average): Three survivors retreat beneath the Earth’s surface after two apocalyptic events–the release of a new element (agnoton) and an attack by mysterious “yellow bands” (are they light-like? It’s not entirely clear. It’s pulpy on purpose). The scientist Kirth-Labbery constructed the self-sufficient retreat due to his allergies (!). His daughter Lavra spends her time eating fruit grown in the hydroponics bay. And Vyrko, a self-described intellectual poet, observes and writes about the end of the world, pines after his lost love, and reads historical pulp science fiction –including Damon Knight’s “Not with a Bang” (1950) and Robert A. Heinlein’s “By His Bootstraps” (1941). He notices that only one author seems to predict correctly what will happen. And also strange narrative parallels with himself…

I’m a sucker for metafictional science fiction that contains references and quotations from other authors both real and invented. Boucher’s “Transfer Point” serves as a recursive commentary on the nature of genre and its favorite tropes (last man and woman as Adam and Eve, time travel, etc.). Behind the tale’s ultra-pulpy exterior and sappy silliness, Boucher jabs (gently and with a smile) at science fiction’s Campbellian delusion of future prediction. Despite its moments, Boucher can’t approach the heights of Richard Matheson’s “Patterns of Survival” (1955), a far more complex commentary on the power of science fiction.

Somewhat recommended.

Fritz Leiber’s “Coming Attraction” (1950), 5/5 (Masterpiece): I reviewed this story in 2013. I’ve decided to reread it and modify my earlier review.

In Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.’s influential The Vital Center: The Politics of Freedom (1949), a blueprint of the “new liberal self-image,” he describes the post-WWII period as an “age of anxiety” in which “Western man” is “tense, uncertain, adrift.”2 Channeling this sentiment, branded as an “American brand of misery” (83), Leiber imagines an America transformed after a limited nuclear war with the Soviet Union.

The physical landscape mirrors the psychological scars of New York’s inhabitants. “H-Bomb scars” tunnel faces (78). The Empire State Building thrusts out of “Inferno like a mangled finger” (77). In a disturbed attempt to maintain control, a new “puritanical morality” (80) replete with “anti-sex songs” (78) and required masks to cover female faces takes hold. A sinister media landscape manifests the corruption within. Billboards promote “hysterical slogans” in which “the very letters of the advertiser’s alphabet have begin to crawl with sex” (78). New TV gadgets facilitate touch and pseudo-connection (80). Perverse new forms of TV entertainment, in particular male wrestlers pitted against masked women, transfix all audiences.

Wysten Turner, the British narrator, gets caught up in the disturbing changes that have swept the US. He rescues a masked woman from a car driven by youths replete with hooks designed to snag the dresses of passing women.  She embodies loneliness and despair. And he wants to help. Soon he finds himself unable to identify the new erotic and violent rituals of control and release. The games layer on themselves. Our narrator, also manipulated, flees in shame when the bizarre tableau’s true nature is unmasked.

Leiber doles out fascinating and punchy commentary on the anxieties of the modern world. A disturbed, erotic, creepy, and hyper-violent exploration of that reflexive Cold War tendency to equate the inability to control and triumph abroad as caused by internal crisis within society as a whole. A brilliant satire of late 40s/early 50s American Cold War culture.

Highly recommended.

Damon Knight’s “To Serve Man” (1950), 3.5/5 (Good): I reviewed this story in 2023. I decided not to reread it. I’ve reproduced the review below.

The Kanamit, pig-like humanoid aliens, arrive on Earth with a promise to assist humanity that appears to have zero caveats. Their similarity to a human food animal creates a disquieting horror: “when a think with the countenance of a fiend comes from the stars and offers a gift, you are disinclined to accept” (91). The Kanama proclaim that they want “to bring you the peace and plenty which we ourselves enjoy, and which we have in the past brought to other races throughout the galaxy” (92). They introduce fantastic power sources, anti-nuclear explosion shields, and technology to exponentially enhance agricultural productivity. Soon there are no “more standing armies, no more shortages, and no unemployment” (98). But no one can decode their language. And when someone finally figures it out, it will be too late.

I don’t completely understand why “To Serve Man” is one of Knight’s best-known short fictions. It won the 2001 Retro Hugo Award for Best Short Story. I would have voted for Fritz Leiber’s “Coming Attraction” (1950) from the list of nominees! That said, “To Serve Man” is an effective twist-ending story that plays with our expectations but doesn’t have the reflective or incisive impact of Knight’s best — for example “The Enemy” (1958), “You’re Another” (1955), or even “Time Enough” (1960) in Far Out (1961). I’m probably in the minority in this view. 

Somewhat recommended.

Clifford D. Simak’s Time Quarry (variant title: Time and Again) (1950). Serialized over three issues. I will post an individual review after I complete the serialization.

Notes

1. Brown adheres to the theory that the Moon is covered with deep dust. He claims that Hell Crater is a bit more solid than other points. Arthur C. Clarke’s A Fall of Moondust (1961) is another example. ↩︎
2. See Ch. 1 of K. A. Courdileone’s Manhood and American Political Culture in the Cold War (2005) for a discussion of Schlesinger. ↩︎

For book reviews consult the INDEX

For cover art posts consult the INDEX

For TV and film reviews consult the INDEX

Magazine Review: Galaxy Science Fiction, ed. H. L. Gold (November 1950) (Brown, Asimov, Boucher, Leiber, Knight, Simak)

Preliminary Note: I plan on reading all 116 issues of the influential, and iconic, SF magazine Galaxy under H. L. Gold’s editorship (October 1950-October 1961) in chronological order. How long this project will take or how seriously/systematically I will take it remain complete unknowns.

See my inaugural post in this series for my reasoning behind selecting Galaxy under H. L. Gold.

Previously: the October 1950 issue.

Up Next: the December 1950 issue.

Let’s get to the stories. We have the first Galaxy masterpiece!

• Don Sibley’s cover for Galaxy Science Fiction, ed. H. L. Gold (November 1950)

You can read the entire issue here.

Fredric Brown’s “Honeymoon in Hell” (1950), 3/5 (Average): The year is 1962. The Cold War heats up. The race for a permanent presence on the Moon takes center stage. Each side “had landed a few men” and claimed it as their own (4). Each side races to construct a space station in orbit to facilitate the construction of a permanent base on the moon. But there’s another worrying world-wide trend–a massive gender imbalance in new births! Not enough boys! Riots. Cults. What’s the plan?

Capt. Raymond F. Carmody, retired from the space service (at age 27) after a successful flight to the Moon, steps into the ring. Resisting an administrative role in the service, he’d chosen a new career: cybernetics, “the science of electronic calculating machines” (9). In his new position, he had access to a powerful computer called Junior, built in 1958, tasked with issues of national security. Alone with the machine, he feeds Junior the data. Junior doesn’t have an answer. But Junior does offer a rare extrapolation that Carmody will be married on the morrow.

And a meeting with the President reveals the nature of the plan to birth a male child on the moon to avoid whatever on Earth is causing the problem! He’ll be legally married before they head to the moon and divorced if the pairing doesn’t work out. The catch? His wife will be Russian and their honeymoon will be Hell Crater.1 The “lucky” woman? Anna Borisovna is also a pilot of “experimental rockets on short-range flights” (16). Alcohol included as “icebreaker” for a “happy honeymoon” (19). The twelve day stay will be “plenty of time to get off before the Lunar night” (18) (Brown certainly intends the pun). And then the story morphs, abruptly, into a first contact story. Or does it?

This is an odd story. At its core it’s about a man and a woman (and mortal enemies) who go to the moon to have sex. But it’s the 50s. They need to be married! And all the references to the act are double entendres. As the ridiculousness fades, Brown settles on a rather enlightened position considering the Cold War terror of the moment–détente with the Soviets, politics and all, remains possible (under some circumstances). The story implies that Carmody falls head-over-heels for Anna due to the similarities of their careers and status as intellectual equals despite their divergent politics. Don Sibley’s issue cover shows her abilities under stressful circumstances. Carmody’s even willing to head to the Soviet Union to be with her! Love trumps all message aside, I am not convinced by the reading experience. Brown relays the strange events that transpire on Mars, and almost all of Carmody and Anna’s interactions, after they occur. It weakens the effect.

Somewhat recommended.

Isaac Asimov’s “Misbegotten Missionary” (variant title: “Green Patches”) (1950), 3/5 (Average): “Misbegotten Missionary” begins from the perspective of an alien entity that slipped onboard a human ship after its barrier faltered for a moment. The alien utterly believes that it is a superior “unified organism” (34) over the “life fragments” that populate the ship (34). Fanatical in its mindset, the shape-shifting alien wants to convert the entire vessel to its ways–without their consent. Slowly the nature of its own world, the purpose of the human vessel, and the fate of a past voyage become clear.

While not a miserable entry in his canon, I am starting to dread the Asimov stories in Galaxy and struggle to write coherently about them. And there’s a serialized novel on the horizon that I haven’t read yet and thus cannot skip– The Stars, Like Dust (1951). While far superior to “Darwinian Pool Room” (1950), “Misbegotten Missionary” defeats its initial success with a laborious exposition of what happened before. I appreciated the Asimov’s attempt to convey alienness of the entity’s perspective. Maybe if you’re interested in the evolution of Asimov’s attempts to write about entire planets as alien consciousness this is worth tracking down.

I reviewed this in 2021 and completely forgot. I was even more cruel in the earlier review!

Anthony Boucher’s “Transfer Point” (1950), 3/5 (Average): Three survivors retreat beneath the Earth’s surface after two apocalyptic events–the release of a new element (agnoton) and an attack by mysterious “yellow bands” (are they light-like? It’s not entirely clear. It’s pulpy on purpose). The scientist Kirth-Labbery constructed the self-sufficient retreat due to his allergies (!). His daughter Lavra spends her time eating fruit grown in the hydroponics bay. And Vyrko, a self-described intellectual poet, observes and writes about the end of the world, pines after his lost love, and reads historical pulp science fiction –including Damon Knight’s “Not with a Bang” (1950) and Robert A. Heinlein’s “By His Bootstraps” (1941). He notices that only one author seems to predict correctly what will happen. And also strange narrative parallels with himself…

I’m a sucker for metafictional science fiction that contains references and quotations from other authors both real and invented. Boucher’s “Transfer Point” serves as a recursive commentary on the nature of genre and its favorite tropes (last man and woman as Adam and Eve, time travel, etc.). Behind the tale’s ultra-pulpy exterior and sappy silliness, Boucher jabs (gently and with a smile) at science fiction’s Campbellian delusion of future prediction. Despite its moments, Boucher can’t approach the heights of Richard Matheson’s “Patterns of Survival” (1955), a far more complex commentary on the power of science fiction.

Somewhat recommended.

Fritz Leiber’s “Coming Attraction” (1950), 5/5 (Masterpiece): I reviewed this story in 2013. I’ve decided to reread it and modify my earlier review.

In Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.’s influential The Vital Center: The Politics of Freedom (1949), a blueprint of the “new liberal self-image,” he describes the post-WWII period as an “age of anxiety” in which “Western man” is “tense, uncertain, adrift.”2 Channeling this sentiment, branded as an “American brand of misery” (83), Leiber imagines an America transformed after a limited nuclear war with the Soviet Union.

The physical landscape mirrors the psychological scars of New York’s inhabitants. “H-Bomb scars” tunnel faces (78). The Empire State Building thrusts out of “Inferno like a mangled finger” (77). In a disturbed attempt to maintain control, a new “puritanical morality” (80) replete with “anti-sex songs” (78) and required masks to cover female faces takes hold. A sinister media landscape manifests the corruption within. Billboards promote “hysterical slogans” in which “the very letters of the advertiser’s alphabet have begin to crawl with sex” (78). New TV gadgets facilitate touch and pseudo-connection (80). Perverse new forms of TV entertainment, in particular male wrestlers pitted against masked women, transfix all audiences.

Wysten Turner, the British narrator, gets caught up in the disturbing changes that have swept the US. He rescues a masked woman from a car driven by youths replete with hooks designed to snag the dresses of passing women.  She embodies loneliness and despair. And he wants to help. Soon he finds himself unable to identify the new erotic and violent rituals of control and release. The games layer on themselves. Our narrator, also manipulated, flees in shame when the bizarre tableau’s true nature is unmasked.

Leiber doles out fascinating and punchy commentary on the anxieties of the modern world. A disturbed, erotic, creepy, and hyper-violent exploration of that reflexive Cold War tendency to equate the inability to control and triumph abroad as caused by internal crisis within society as a whole. A brilliant satire of late 40s/early 50s American Cold War culture.

Highly recommended.

Damon Knight’s “To Serve Man” (1950), 3.5/5 (Good): I reviewed this story in 2023. I decided not to reread it. I’ve reproduced the review below.

The Kanamit, pig-like humanoid aliens, arrive on Earth with a promise to assist humanity that appears to have zero caveats. Their similarity to a human food animal creates a disquieting horror: “when a think with the countenance of a fiend comes from the stars and offers a gift, you are disinclined to accept” (91). The Kanama proclaim that they want “to bring you the peace and plenty which we ourselves enjoy, and which we have in the past brought to other races throughout the galaxy” (92). They introduce fantastic power sources, anti-nuclear explosion shields, and technology to exponentially enhance agricultural productivity. Soon there are no “more standing armies, no more shortages, and no unemployment” (98). But no one can decode their language. And when someone finally figures it out, it will be too late.

I don’t completely understand why “To Serve Man” is one of Knight’s best-known short fictions. It won the 2001 Retro Hugo Award for Best Short Story. I would have voted for Fritz Leiber’s “Coming Attraction” (1950) from the list of nominees! That said, “To Serve Man” is an effective twist-ending story that plays with our expectations but doesn’t have the reflective or incisive impact of Knight’s best — for example “The Enemy” (1958), “You’re Another” (1955), or even “Time Enough” (1960) in Far Out (1961). I’m probably in the minority in this view. 

Somewhat recommended.

Clifford D. Simak’s Time Quarry (variant title: Time and Again) (1950). Serialized over three issues. I will post an individual review after I complete the serialization.

Notes

1. Brown adheres to the theory that the Moon is covered with deep dust. He claims that Hell Crater is a bit more solid than other points. Arthur C. Clarke’s A Fall of Moondust (1961) is another example. ↩︎
2. See Ch. 1 of K. A. Courdileone’s Manhood and American Political Culture in the Cold War (2005) for a discussion of Schlesinger. ↩︎

For book reviews consult the INDEX

For cover art posts consult the INDEX

For TV and film reviews consult the INDEX

Magazine Review: Galaxy Science Fiction, ed. H. L. Gold (November 1950) (Brown, Asimov, Boucher, Leiber, Knight, Simak)

Preliminary Note: I plan on reading all 116 issues of the influential, and iconic, SF magazine Galaxy under H. L. Gold’s editorship (October 1950-October 1961) in chronological order. How long this project will take or how seriously/systematically I will take it remain complete unknowns.

See my inaugural post in this series for my reasoning behind selecting Galaxy under H. L. Gold.

Previously: the October 1950 issue.

Up Next: the December 1950 issue.

Let’s get to the stories. We have the first Galaxy masterpiece!

• Don Sibley’s cover for Galaxy Science Fiction, ed. H. L. Gold (November 1950)

You can read the entire issue here.

Fredric Brown’s “Honeymoon in Hell” (1950), 3/5 (Average): The year is 1962. The Cold War heats up. The race for a permanent presence on the Moon takes center stage. Each side “had landed a few men” and claimed it as their own (4). Each side races to construct a space station in orbit to facilitate the construction of a permanent base on the moon. But there’s another worrying world-wide trend–a massive gender imbalance in new births! Not enough boys! Riots. Cults. What’s the plan?

Capt. Raymond F. Carmody, retired from the space service (at age 27) after a successful flight to the Moon, steps into the ring. Resisting an administrative role in the service, he’d chosen a new career: cybernetics, “the science of electronic calculating machines” (9). In his new position, he had access to a powerful computer called Junior, built in 1958, tasked with issues of national security. Alone with the machine, he feeds Junior the data. Junior doesn’t have an answer. But Junior does offer a rare extrapolation that Carmody will be married on the morrow.

And a meeting with the President reveals the nature of the plan to birth a male child on the moon to avoid whatever on Earth is causing the problem! He’ll be legally married before they head to the moon and divorced if the pairing doesn’t work out. The catch? His wife will be Russian and their honeymoon will be Hell Crater.1 The “lucky” woman? Anna Borisovna is also a pilot of “experimental rockets on short-range flights” (16). Alcohol included as “icebreaker” for a “happy honeymoon” (19). The twelve day stay will be “plenty of time to get off before the Lunar night” (18) (Brown certainly intends the pun). And then the story morphs, abruptly, into a first contact story. Or does it?

This is an odd story. At its core it’s about a man and a woman (and mortal enemies) who go to the moon to have sex. But it’s the 50s. They need to be married! And all the references to the act are double entendres. As the ridiculousness fades, Brown settles on a rather enlightened position considering the Cold War terror of the moment–détente with the Soviets, politics and all, remains possible (under some circumstances). The story implies that Carmody falls head-over-heels for Anna due to the similarities of their careers and status as intellectual equals despite their divergent politics. Don Sibley’s issue cover shows her abilities under stressful circumstances. Carmody’s even willing to head to the Soviet Union to be with her! Love trumps all message aside, I am not convinced by the reading experience. Brown relays the strange events that transpire on Mars, and almost all of Carmody and Anna’s interactions, after they occur. It weakens the effect.

Somewhat recommended.

Isaac Asimov’s “Misbegotten Missionary” (variant title: “Green Patches”) (1950), 3/5 (Average): “Misbegotten Missionary” begins from the perspective of an alien entity that slipped onboard a human ship after its barrier faltered for a moment. The alien utterly believes that it is a superior “unified organism” (34) over the “life fragments” that populate the ship (34). Fanatical in its mindset, the shape-shifting alien wants to convert the entire vessel to its ways–without their consent. Slowly the nature of its own world, the purpose of the human vessel, and the fate of a past voyage become clear.

While not a miserable entry in his canon, I am starting to dread the Asimov stories in Galaxy and struggle to write coherently about them. And there’s a serialized novel on the horizon that I haven’t read yet and thus cannot skip– The Stars, Like Dust (1951). While far superior to “Darwinian Pool Room” (1950), “Misbegotten Missionary” defeats its initial success with a laborious exposition of what happened before. I appreciated the Asimov’s attempt to convey alienness of the entity’s perspective. Maybe if you’re interested in the evolution of Asimov’s attempts to write about entire planets as alien consciousness this is worth tracking down.

I reviewed this in 2021 and completely forgot. I was even more cruel in the earlier review!

Anthony Boucher’s “Transfer Point” (1950), 3/5 (Average): Three survivors retreat beneath the Earth’s surface after two apocalyptic events–the release of a new element (agnoton) and an attack by mysterious “yellow bands” (are they light-like? It’s not entirely clear. It’s pulpy on purpose). The scientist Kirth-Labbery constructed the self-sufficient retreat due to his allergies (!). His daughter Lavra spends her time eating fruit grown in the hydroponics bay. And Vyrko, a self-described intellectual poet, observes and writes about the end of the world, pines after his lost love, and reads historical pulp science fiction –including Damon Knight’s “Not with a Bang” (1950) and Robert A. Heinlein’s “By His Bootstraps” (1941). He notices that only one author seems to predict correctly what will happen. And also strange narrative parallels with himself…

I’m a sucker for metafictional science fiction that contains references and quotations from other authors both real and invented. Boucher’s “Transfer Point” serves as a recursive commentary on the nature of genre and its favorite tropes (last man and woman as Adam and Eve, time travel, etc.). Behind the tale’s ultra-pulpy exterior and sappy silliness, Boucher jabs (gently and with a smile) at science fiction’s Campbellian delusion of future prediction. Despite its moments, Boucher can’t approach the heights of Richard Matheson’s “Patterns of Survival” (1955), a far more complex commentary on the power of science fiction.

Somewhat recommended.

Fritz Leiber’s “Coming Attraction” (1950), 5/5 (Masterpiece): I reviewed this story in 2013. I’ve decided to reread it and modify my earlier review.

In Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.’s influential The Vital Center: The Politics of Freedom (1949), a blueprint of the “new liberal self-image,” he describes the post-WWII period as an “age of anxiety” in which “Western man” is “tense, uncertain, adrift.”2 Channeling this sentiment, branded as an “American brand of misery” (83), Leiber imagines an America transformed after a limited nuclear war with the Soviet Union.

The physical landscape mirrors the psychological scars of New York’s inhabitants. “H-Bomb scars” tunnel faces (78). The Empire State Building thrusts out of “Inferno like a mangled finger” (77). In a disturbed attempt to maintain control, a new “puritanical morality” (80) replete with “anti-sex songs” (78) and required masks to cover female faces takes hold. A sinister media landscape manifests the corruption within. Billboards promote “hysterical slogans” in which “the very letters of the advertiser’s alphabet have begin to crawl with sex” (78). New TV gadgets facilitate touch and pseudo-connection (80). Perverse new forms of TV entertainment, in particular male wrestlers pitted against masked women, transfix all audiences.

Wysten Turner, the British narrator, gets caught up in the disturbing changes that have swept the US. He rescues a masked woman from a car driven by youths replete with hooks designed to snag the dresses of passing women.  She embodies loneliness and despair. And he wants to help. Soon he finds himself unable to identify the new erotic and violent rituals of control and release. The games layer on themselves. Our narrator, also manipulated, flees in shame when the bizarre tableau’s true nature is unmasked.

Leiber doles out fascinating and punchy commentary on the anxieties of the modern world. A disturbed, erotic, creepy, and hyper-violent exploration of that reflexive Cold War tendency to equate the inability to control and triumph abroad as caused by internal crisis within society as a whole. A brilliant satire of late 40s/early 50s American Cold War culture.

Highly recommended.

Damon Knight’s “To Serve Man” (1950), 3.5/5 (Good): I reviewed this story in 2023. I decided not to reread it. I’ve reproduced the review below.

The Kanamit, pig-like humanoid aliens, arrive on Earth with a promise to assist humanity that appears to have zero caveats. Their similarity to a human food animal creates a disquieting horror: “when a think with the countenance of a fiend comes from the stars and offers a gift, you are disinclined to accept” (91). The Kanama proclaim that they want “to bring you the peace and plenty which we ourselves enjoy, and which we have in the past brought to other races throughout the galaxy” (92). They introduce fantastic power sources, anti-nuclear explosion shields, and technology to exponentially enhance agricultural productivity. Soon there are no “more standing armies, no more shortages, and no unemployment” (98). But no one can decode their language. And when someone finally figures it out, it will be too late.

I don’t completely understand why “To Serve Man” is one of Knight’s best-known short fictions. It won the 2001 Retro Hugo Award for Best Short Story. I would have voted for Fritz Leiber’s “Coming Attraction” (1950) from the list of nominees! That said, “To Serve Man” is an effective twist-ending story that plays with our expectations but doesn’t have the reflective or incisive impact of Knight’s best — for example “The Enemy” (1958), “You’re Another” (1955), or even “Time Enough” (1960) in Far Out (1961). I’m probably in the minority in this view. 

Somewhat recommended.

Clifford D. Simak’s Time Quarry (variant title: Time and Again) (1950). Serialized over three issues. I will post an individual review after I complete the serialization.

Notes

1. Brown adheres to the theory that the Moon is covered with deep dust. He claims that Hell Crater is a bit more solid than other points. Arthur C. Clarke’s A Fall of Moondust (1961) is another example. ↩︎
2. See Ch. 1 of K. A. Courdileone’s Manhood and American Political Culture in the Cold War (2005) for a discussion of Schlesinger. ↩︎

For book reviews consult the INDEX

For cover art posts consult the INDEX

For TV and film reviews consult the INDEX

Magazine Review: Galaxy Science Fiction, ed. H. L. Gold (November 1950) (Brown, Asimov, Boucher, Leiber, Knight, Simak)

Preliminary Note: I plan on reading all 116 issues of the influential, and iconic, SF magazine Galaxy under H. L. Gold’s editorship (October 1950-October 1961) in chronological order. How long this project will take or how seriously/systematically I will take it remain complete unknowns.

See my inaugural post in this series for my reasoning behind selecting Galaxy under H. L. Gold.

Previously: the October 1950 issue.

Up Next: the December 1950 issue.

Let’s get to the stories. We have the first Galaxy masterpiece!

• Don Sibley’s cover for Galaxy Science Fiction, ed. H. L. Gold (November 1950)

You can read the entire issue here.

Fredric Brown’s “Honeymoon in Hell” (1950), 3/5 (Average): The year is 1962. The Cold War heats up. The race for a permanent presence on the Moon takes center stage. Each side “had landed a few men” and claimed it as their own (4). Each side races to construct a space station in orbit to facilitate the construction of a permanent base on the moon. But there’s another worrying world-wide trend–a massive gender imbalance in new births! Not enough boys! Riots. Cults. What’s the plan?

Capt. Raymond F. Carmody, retired from the space service (at age 27) after a successful flight to the Moon, steps into the ring. Resisting an administrative role in the service, he’d chosen a new career: cybernetics, “the science of electronic calculating machines” (9). In his new position, he had access to a powerful computer called Junior, built in 1958, tasked with issues of national security. Alone with the machine, he feeds Junior the data. Junior doesn’t have an answer. But Junior does offer a rare extrapolation that Carmody will be married on the morrow.

And a meeting with the President reveals the nature of the plan to birth a male child on the moon to avoid whatever on Earth is causing the problem! He’ll be legally married before they head to the moon and divorced if the pairing doesn’t work out. The catch? His wife will be Russian and their honeymoon will be Hell Crater.1 The “lucky” woman? Anna Borisovna is also a pilot of “experimental rockets on short-range flights” (16). Alcohol included as “icebreaker” for a “happy honeymoon” (19). The twelve day stay will be “plenty of time to get off before the Lunar night” (18) (Brown certainly intends the pun). And then the story morphs, abruptly, into a first contact story. Or does it?

This is an odd story. At its core it’s about a man and a woman (and mortal enemies) who go to the moon to have sex. But it’s the 50s. They need to be married! And all the references to the act are double entendres. As the ridiculousness fades, Brown settles on a rather enlightened position considering the Cold War terror of the moment–détente with the Soviets, politics and all, remains possible (under some circumstances). The story implies that Carmody falls head-over-heels for Anna due to the similarities of their careers and status as intellectual equals despite their divergent politics. Don Sibley’s issue cover shows her abilities under stressful circumstances. Carmody’s even willing to head to the Soviet Union to be with her! Love trumps all message aside, I am not convinced by the reading experience. Brown relays the strange events that transpire on Mars, and almost all of Carmody and Anna’s interactions, after they occur. It weakens the effect.

Somewhat recommended.

Isaac Asimov’s “Misbegotten Missionary” (variant title: “Green Patches”) (1950), 3/5 (Average): “Misbegotten Missionary” begins from the perspective of an alien entity that slipped onboard a human ship after its barrier faltered for a moment. The alien utterly believes that it is a superior “unified organism” (34) over the “life fragments” that populate the ship (34). Fanatical in its mindset, the shape-shifting alien wants to convert the entire vessel to its ways–without their consent. Slowly the nature of its own world, the purpose of the human vessel, and the fate of a past voyage become clear.

While not a miserable entry in his canon, I am starting to dread the Asimov stories in Galaxy and struggle to write coherently about them. And there’s a serialized novel on the horizon that I haven’t read yet and thus cannot skip– The Stars, Like Dust (1951). While far superior to “Darwinian Pool Room” (1950), “Misbegotten Missionary” defeats its initial success with a laborious exposition of what happened before. I appreciated the Asimov’s attempt to convey alienness of the entity’s perspective. Maybe if you’re interested in the evolution of Asimov’s attempts to write about entire planets as alien consciousness this is worth tracking down.

I reviewed this in 2021 and completely forgot. I was even more cruel in the earlier review!

Anthony Boucher’s “Transfer Point” (1950), 3/5 (Average): Three survivors retreat beneath the Earth’s surface after two apocalyptic events–the release of a new element (agnoton) and an attack by mysterious “yellow bands” (are they light-like? It’s not entirely clear. It’s pulpy on purpose). The scientist Kirth-Labbery constructed the self-sufficient retreat due to his allergies (!). His daughter Lavra spends her time eating fruit grown in the hydroponics bay. And Vyrko, a self-described intellectual poet, observes and writes about the end of the world, pines after his lost love, and reads historical pulp science fiction –including Damon Knight’s “Not with a Bang” (1950) and Robert A. Heinlein’s “By His Bootstraps” (1941). He notices that only one author seems to predict correctly what will happen. And also strange narrative parallels with himself…

I’m a sucker for metafictional science fiction that contains references and quotations from other authors both real and invented. Boucher’s “Transfer Point” serves as a recursive commentary on the nature of genre and its favorite tropes (last man and woman as Adam and Eve, time travel, etc.). Behind the tale’s ultra-pulpy exterior and sappy silliness, Boucher jabs (gently and with a smile) at science fiction’s Campbellian delusion of future prediction. Despite its moments, Boucher can’t approach the heights of Richard Matheson’s “Patterns of Survival” (1955), a far more complex commentary on the power of science fiction.

Somewhat recommended.

Fritz Leiber’s “Coming Attraction” (1950), 5/5 (Masterpiece): I reviewed this story in 2013. I’ve decided to reread it and modify my earlier review.

In Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.’s influential The Vital Center: The Politics of Freedom (1949), a blueprint of the “new liberal self-image,” he describes the post-WWII period as an “age of anxiety” in which “Western man” is “tense, uncertain, adrift.”2 Channeling this sentiment, branded as an “American brand of misery” (83), Leiber imagines an America transformed after a limited nuclear war with the Soviet Union.

The physical landscape mirrors the psychological scars of New York’s inhabitants. “H-Bomb scars” tunnel faces (78). The Empire State Building thrusts out of “Inferno like a mangled finger” (77). In a disturbed attempt to maintain control, a new “puritanical morality” (80) replete with “anti-sex songs” (78) and required masks to cover female faces takes hold. A sinister media landscape manifests the corruption within. Billboards promote “hysterical slogans” in which “the very letters of the advertiser’s alphabet have begin to crawl with sex” (78). New TV gadgets facilitate touch and pseudo-connection (80). Perverse new forms of TV entertainment, in particular male wrestlers pitted against masked women, transfix all audiences.

Wysten Turner, the British narrator, gets caught up in the disturbing changes that have swept the US. He rescues a masked woman from a car driven by youths replete with hooks designed to snag the dresses of passing women.  She embodies loneliness and despair. And he wants to help. Soon he finds himself unable to identify the new erotic and violent rituals of control and release. The games layer on themselves. Our narrator, also manipulated, flees in shame when the bizarre tableau’s true nature is unmasked.

Leiber doles out fascinating and punchy commentary on the anxieties of the modern world. A disturbed, erotic, creepy, and hyper-violent exploration of that reflexive Cold War tendency to equate the inability to control and triumph abroad as caused by internal crisis within society as a whole. A brilliant satire of late 40s/early 50s American Cold War culture.

Highly recommended.

Damon Knight’s “To Serve Man” (1950), 3.5/5 (Good): I reviewed this story in 2023. I decided not to reread it. I’ve reproduced the review below.

The Kanamit, pig-like humanoid aliens, arrive on Earth with a promise to assist humanity that appears to have zero caveats. Their similarity to a human food animal creates a disquieting horror: “when a think with the countenance of a fiend comes from the stars and offers a gift, you are disinclined to accept” (91). The Kanama proclaim that they want “to bring you the peace and plenty which we ourselves enjoy, and which we have in the past brought to other races throughout the galaxy” (92). They introduce fantastic power sources, anti-nuclear explosion shields, and technology to exponentially enhance agricultural productivity. Soon there are no “more standing armies, no more shortages, and no unemployment” (98). But no one can decode their language. And when someone finally figures it out, it will be too late.

I don’t completely understand why “To Serve Man” is one of Knight’s best-known short fictions. It won the 2001 Retro Hugo Award for Best Short Story. I would have voted for Fritz Leiber’s “Coming Attraction” (1950) from the list of nominees! That said, “To Serve Man” is an effective twist-ending story that plays with our expectations but doesn’t have the reflective or incisive impact of Knight’s best — for example “The Enemy” (1958), “You’re Another” (1955), or even “Time Enough” (1960) in Far Out (1961). I’m probably in the minority in this view. 

Somewhat recommended.

Clifford D. Simak’s Time Quarry (variant title: Time and Again) (1950). Serialized over three issues. I will post an individual review after I complete the serialization.

Notes

1. Brown adheres to the theory that the Moon is covered with deep dust. He claims that Hell Crater is a bit more solid than other points. Arthur C. Clarke’s A Fall of Moondust (1961) is another example. ↩︎
2. See Ch. 1 of K. A. Courdileone’s Manhood and American Political Culture in the Cold War (2005) for a discussion of Schlesinger. ↩︎

For book reviews consult the INDEX

For cover art posts consult the INDEX

For TV and film reviews consult the INDEX

Magazine Review: Galaxy Science Fiction, ed. H. L. Gold (November 1950) (Brown, Asimov, Boucher, Leiber, Knight, Simak)

Preliminary Note: I plan on reading all 116 issues of the influential, and iconic, SF magazine Galaxy under H. L. Gold’s editorship (October 1950-October 1961) in chronological order. How long this project will take or how seriously/systematically I will take it remain complete unknowns.

See my inaugural post in this series for my reasoning behind selecting Galaxy under H. L. Gold.

Previously: the October 1950 issue.

Up Next: the December 1950 issue.

Let’s get to the stories. We have the first Galaxy masterpiece!

• Don Sibley’s cover for Galaxy Science Fiction, ed. H. L. Gold (November 1950)

You can read the entire issue here.

Fredric Brown’s “Honeymoon in Hell” (1950), 3/5 (Average): The year is 1962. The Cold War heats up. The race for a permanent presence on the Moon takes center stage. Each side “had landed a few men” and claimed it as their own (4). Each side races to construct a space station in orbit to facilitate the construction of a permanent base on the moon. But there’s another worrying world-wide trend–a massive gender imbalance in new births! Not enough boys! Riots. Cults. What’s the plan?

Capt. Raymond F. Carmody, retired from the space service (at age 27) after a successful flight to the Moon, steps into the ring. Resisting an administrative role in the service, he’d chosen a new career: cybernetics, “the science of electronic calculating machines” (9). In his new position, he had access to a powerful computer called Junior, built in 1958, tasked with issues of national security. Alone with the machine, he feeds Junior the data. Junior doesn’t have an answer. But Junior does offer a rare extrapolation that Carmody will be married on the morrow.

And a meeting with the President reveals the nature of the plan to birth a male child on the moon to avoid whatever on Earth is causing the problem! He’ll be legally married before they head to the moon and divorced if the pairing doesn’t work out. The catch? His wife will be Russian and their honeymoon will be Hell Crater.1 The “lucky” woman? Anna Borisovna is also a pilot of “experimental rockets on short-range flights” (16). Alcohol included as “icebreaker” for a “happy honeymoon” (19). The twelve day stay will be “plenty of time to get off before the Lunar night” (18) (Brown certainly intends the pun). And then the story morphs, abruptly, into a first contact story. Or does it?

This is an odd story. At its core it’s about a man and a woman (and mortal enemies) who go to the moon to have sex. But it’s the 50s. They need to be married! And all the references to the act are double entendres. As the ridiculousness fades, Brown settles on a rather enlightened position considering the Cold War terror of the moment–détente with the Soviets, politics and all, remains possible (under some circumstances). The story implies that Carmody falls head-over-heels for Anna due to the similarities of their careers and status as intellectual equals despite their divergent politics. Don Sibley’s issue cover shows her abilities under stressful circumstances. Carmody’s even willing to head to the Soviet Union to be with her! Love trumps all message aside, I am not convinced by the reading experience. Brown relays the strange events that transpire on Mars, and almost all of Carmody and Anna’s interactions, after they occur. It weakens the effect.

Somewhat recommended.

Isaac Asimov’s “Misbegotten Missionary” (variant title: “Green Patches”) (1950), 3/5 (Average): “Misbegotten Missionary” begins from the perspective of an alien entity that slipped onboard a human ship after its barrier faltered for a moment. The alien utterly believes that it is a superior “unified organism” (34) over the “life fragments” that populate the ship (34). Fanatical in its mindset, the shape-shifting alien wants to convert the entire vessel to its ways–without their consent. Slowly the nature of its own world, the purpose of the human vessel, and the fate of a past voyage become clear.

While not a miserable entry in his canon, I am starting to dread the Asimov stories in Galaxy and struggle to write coherently about them. And there’s a serialized novel on the horizon that I haven’t read yet and thus cannot skip– The Stars, Like Dust (1951). While far superior to “Darwinian Pool Room” (1950), “Misbegotten Missionary” defeats its initial success with a laborious exposition of what happened before. I appreciated the Asimov’s attempt to convey alienness of the entity’s perspective. Maybe if you’re interested in the evolution of Asimov’s attempts to write about entire planets as alien consciousness this is worth tracking down.

I reviewed this in 2021 and completely forgot. I was even more cruel in the earlier review!

Anthony Boucher’s “Transfer Point” (1950), 3/5 (Average): Three survivors retreat beneath the Earth’s surface after two apocalyptic events–the release of a new element (agnoton) and an attack by mysterious “yellow bands” (are they light-like? It’s not entirely clear. It’s pulpy on purpose). The scientist Kirth-Labbery constructed the self-sufficient retreat due to his allergies (!). His daughter Lavra spends her time eating fruit grown in the hydroponics bay. And Vyrko, a self-described intellectual poet, observes and writes about the end of the world, pines after his lost love, and reads historical pulp science fiction –including Damon Knight’s “Not with a Bang” (1950) and Robert A. Heinlein’s “By His Bootstraps” (1941). He notices that only one author seems to predict correctly what will happen. And also strange narrative parallels with himself…

I’m a sucker for metafictional science fiction that contains references and quotations from other authors both real and invented. Boucher’s “Transfer Point” serves as a recursive commentary on the nature of genre and its favorite tropes (last man and woman as Adam and Eve, time travel, etc.). Behind the tale’s ultra-pulpy exterior and sappy silliness, Boucher jabs (gently and with a smile) at science fiction’s Campbellian delusion of future prediction. Despite its moments, Boucher can’t approach the heights of Richard Matheson’s “Patterns of Survival” (1955), a far more complex commentary on the power of science fiction.

Somewhat recommended.

Fritz Leiber’s “Coming Attraction” (1950), 5/5 (Masterpiece): I reviewed this story in 2013. I’ve decided to reread it and modify my earlier review.

In Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.’s influential The Vital Center: The Politics of Freedom (1949), a blueprint of the “new liberal self-image,” he describes the post-WWII period as an “age of anxiety” in which “Western man” is “tense, uncertain, adrift.”2 Channeling this sentiment, branded as an “American brand of misery” (83), Leiber imagines an America transformed after a limited nuclear war with the Soviet Union.

The physical landscape mirrors the psychological scars of New York’s inhabitants. “H-Bomb scars” tunnel faces (78). The Empire State Building thrusts out of “Inferno like a mangled finger” (77). In a disturbed attempt to maintain control, a new “puritanical morality” (80) replete with “anti-sex songs” (78) and required masks to cover female faces takes hold. A sinister media landscape manifests the corruption within. Billboards promote “hysterical slogans” in which “the very letters of the advertiser’s alphabet have begin to crawl with sex” (78). New TV gadgets facilitate touch and pseudo-connection (80). Perverse new forms of TV entertainment, in particular male wrestlers pitted against masked women, transfix all audiences.

Wysten Turner, the British narrator, gets caught up in the disturbing changes that have swept the US. He rescues a masked woman from a car driven by youths replete with hooks designed to snag the dresses of passing women.  She embodies loneliness and despair. And he wants to help. Soon he finds himself unable to identify the new erotic and violent rituals of control and release. The games layer on themselves. Our narrator, also manipulated, flees in shame when the bizarre tableau’s true nature is unmasked.

Leiber doles out fascinating and punchy commentary on the anxieties of the modern world. A disturbed, erotic, creepy, and hyper-violent exploration of that reflexive Cold War tendency to equate the inability to control and triumph abroad as caused by internal crisis within society as a whole. A brilliant satire of late 40s/early 50s American Cold War culture.

Highly recommended.

Damon Knight’s “To Serve Man” (1950), 3.5/5 (Good): I reviewed this story in 2023. I decided not to reread it. I’ve reproduced the review below.

The Kanamit, pig-like humanoid aliens, arrive on Earth with a promise to assist humanity that appears to have zero caveats. Their similarity to a human food animal creates a disquieting horror: “when a think with the countenance of a fiend comes from the stars and offers a gift, you are disinclined to accept” (91). The Kanama proclaim that they want “to bring you the peace and plenty which we ourselves enjoy, and which we have in the past brought to other races throughout the galaxy” (92). They introduce fantastic power sources, anti-nuclear explosion shields, and technology to exponentially enhance agricultural productivity. Soon there are no “more standing armies, no more shortages, and no unemployment” (98). But no one can decode their language. And when someone finally figures it out, it will be too late.

I don’t completely understand why “To Serve Man” is one of Knight’s best-known short fictions. It won the 2001 Retro Hugo Award for Best Short Story. I would have voted for Fritz Leiber’s “Coming Attraction” (1950) from the list of nominees! That said, “To Serve Man” is an effective twist-ending story that plays with our expectations but doesn’t have the reflective or incisive impact of Knight’s best — for example “The Enemy” (1958), “You’re Another” (1955), or even “Time Enough” (1960) in Far Out (1961). I’m probably in the minority in this view. 

Somewhat recommended.

Clifford D. Simak’s Time Quarry (variant title: Time and Again) (1950). Serialized over three issues. I will post an individual review after I complete the serialization.

Notes

1. Brown adheres to the theory that the Moon is covered with deep dust. He claims that Hell Crater is a bit more solid than other points. Arthur C. Clarke’s A Fall of Moondust (1961) is another example. ↩︎
2. See Ch. 1 of K. A. Courdileone’s Manhood and American Political Culture in the Cold War (2005) for a discussion of Schlesinger. ↩︎

For book reviews consult the INDEX

For cover art posts consult the INDEX

For TV and film reviews consult the INDEX

#vendredilecture avec un peu de retard !
j'entame ce recueil qui attendait sur mes étagères depuis un bon moment. De Fredric Brown, j'avais adoré La nuit du Jabberwock, et suis bien curieuse. Pour les moment des nouvelles courtes, efficaces, parfois drôles et certaines déchirantes. Il est fort !
Traduit par Jean Sendy, révisé par Thomas Day
#fantomesetfarfafouilles #fredricbrown #sfff #littérature #mastolivre #mastobook

Fredric Brown’s The Far Cry was published in 1951. A man is digging up evidence on a Lonely Hearts murder eight years earlier. A psychological crime novel, but focusing on the psychology of the amateur detective rather than the killer. Not bad.

My review: https://vintagepopfictions.blogspot.com/2023/12/fredric-browns-far-cry.html

#vintagecrime #noir #noirfiction #crimefiction #vintagethriller #vintagethrillers #vintagemystery #vintagemysteries #FredricBrown

#UnoLibri
#UnoFantascienza
#ScienceFiction
#FredricBrown

Gioco di specchi (Hall of Mirrors), 1953

Per sfilarsi dai precedenti, F.Brown ci regala un "viaggio nel tempo(?)" da un punto di vista totalmente diverso.
Il finale è inaspettato & sorprendente, senza i classici paradossi; ma pone un problema etico.
Non si trova "da solo" in italiano, solo in raccolte; lascio la versione inglese:

https://reader.bookfusion.com/books/69858-hall-of-mirrors
https://silently-aloud.blogspot.com/2019/09/gli-imperdibili-cosmolinea-b-2-di.html

#UnoLibri
#UnoFantascienza
#ScienceFiction
#FredricBrown

La ricerca (Search), 1954

Concludiamo per il momento l'excursus su Brown dando una sbirciatina al piano superiore rispetto al racconto precedente (Millennio).
Anche in questo caso ritorna la capacità di chi bazzica nella #Fantascienza in merito a precorrere i tempi, infatti il sotteso della storia è un concetto esplicitato dalla Chiesa Cattolica solo in tempi recenti.

#UnoLibri
#UnoFantascienza
#ScienceFiction
#FredricBrown
#IsaacAsimov

Millennio (Millennium), 1955

Come dicevo prima, Brown condivide con Asimov almeno un'altra caratteristica: racconti non proprio di #Fantascienza, comunque con lo stile inconfondibile dell'autore.
Sul tema "presunte potenze infernali", per le quali Asimov ci ha dato Azazel, ecco una storia che rappresenta anche una riflessione di teologia cristiana.
Qui sotto il collegamento per approfondire Azazel

https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azazel_(antologia)

#UnoLibri
#UnoFantascienza
#ScienceFiction
#FredricBrown

La risposta (The Answer), 1954

F.Brown ha scritto numerosi racconti brevi di #Fantascienza; è famoso sopratutto per "Sentinella", testo spesso inserito nelle letture scolastiche, da non confondere con "La sentinella" di A.C.Clarke, "seme" della saga "2001".

Qui vediamo una tesi apocalittica sulle I.A., prima che esistessero 😉

https://www.poesieracconti.it/racconti/a/fredric-brown/la-risposta

December, 1950. Edited by Damon Knight.
🎨 Paul Calle

#PaulCalle #DamonKnight #MackReynolds #FredricBrown #GrahamGreene #PhilipWylie #JackVance #CMKornbluth #ScienceFiction #Fantasy #SF #SFF @sciencefiction @fantasy

December, 1950. Edited by Damon Knight.
🎨 Paul Calle

#PaulCalle #DamonKnight #MackReynolds #FredricBrown #GrahamGreene #PhilipWylie #JackVance #CMKornbluth #ScienceFiction #Fantasy #SF #SFF @sciencefiction @fantasy

December, 1950. Edited by Damon Knight.
🎨 Paul Calle

#PaulCalle #DamonKnight #MackReynolds #FredricBrown #GrahamGreene #PhilipWylie #JackVance #CMKornbluth #ScienceFiction #Fantasy #SF #SFF @sciencefiction @fantasy

December, 1950. Edited by Damon Knight.
🎨 Paul Calle

#PaulCalle #DamonKnight #MackReynolds #FredricBrown #GrahamGreene #PhilipWylie #JackVance #CMKornbluth #ScienceFiction #Fantasy #SF #SFF @sciencefiction @fantasy

December, 1950. Edited by Damon Knight.
🎨 Paul Calle

#PaulCalle #DamonKnight #MackReynolds #FredricBrown #GrahamGreene #PhilipWylie #JackVance #CMKornbluth #ScienceFiction #Fantasy #SF #SFF @sciencefiction @fantasy

If you want to read the most prescient story when it comes to late-stage #SurveillanceCapitalism, read #FredricBrown’s #MartiansGoHome.

(No, not the Randy Quaid movie.)

If you want to read the most prescient story when it comes to late-stage #SurveillanceCapitalism, read #FredricBrown’s #MartiansGoHome.

(No, not the Randy Quaid movie.)

If you want to read the most prescient story when it comes to late-stage #SurveillanceCapitalism, read #FredricBrown’s #MartiansGoHome.

(No, not the Randy Quaid movie.)

If you want to read the most prescient story when it comes to late-stage #SurveillanceCapitalism, read #FredricBrown’s #MartiansGoHome.

(No, not the Randy Quaid movie.)

For the two people here on Mastodon who may be familiar with Fredric Brown: Do yourself a favour and check out Lawrence Block's latest novel, THE BURGLAR WHO MET FREDRIC BROWN, which is a wonderful homage to Brown and cleverly inspired by WHAT MAD UNIVERSE. (And saying much more would just ruin the fun.)

#FredricBrown #CrimeFiction

The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970), Dario Argento's debut feature. Not much gore but incredibly stylish.

The opening sequence may be the best in the history of cinema.

Based on Fredric Brown’s novel The Screaming Mimi, and the twists at the end are delightfully devious.

My review: https://princeplanetmovies.blogspot.com/2022/08/the-bird-with-crystal-plumage-1970.html

#DarioArgento #giallo #giallos #FilmMastodon #cultmovies #eurohorror #FredricBrown

Fredric Brown: Nightmare in Yellow

Great example of super short crime fiction by one of the masters of that kind of style.

#fredricbrown #crimefiction #shortstory

http://www.rinablijdorp.nl/texts/literatuurproject/Nightmare%20in%20Yellow.pdf

I love old style paperbacks and yes I have bought (and judged!) books by their cover.

One of my favourite authors is Cornell Woolrich, probably one of the most enigmatic classic crime authors. With a series of books all carrying "black" in its title, he literally defined Noir.

Also love the crime fiction of Fredric Brown who is nowadays mainly known for his Science Fiction (that I like but not obsess about that much).

#noir #filmnoir #crimefiction #CornellWoolrich #FredricBrown #PulpFiction

Il Come Eravamo del Come Saremo – Isole nello Spazio 3
La Fantascienza come poesia per immagini, puntata numero 23

Testo suggerito: Fredric Brown, Il vagabondo dello spazio

di Mauro
https://www.labottegadelbarbieri.org/il-come-eravamo-del-come-saremo-isole-nello-spazio-3/
#bottegadelbarbieri #labottegadelbarbieri
#Articoli #Difuturicen'ètanti #Fantascienzacomepoesia #FredricBrown #IlComeEravamodelComeSaremo #IlVagabondodelloSpazio #immaginifantascienza #MauroAntonioMiglieruolo