Birthday Reviews: Anderson, de Camp, Pohl

Nine months after the cold days of February, three Grand Masters were born on consecutive days (and several other authors were born during this week that, but for time and space, I could have covered—and may some year soon). They give us tales of an interstellar war, an immortal neanderthal, and a very odd couple.

Poul Anderson (1926-11-25/2001-07-31)

“Time Lag” (F&SF, January 1961)

This may not be among Anderson’s best stories (at one point, a character thinks “a short, dry lecture might soothe” another) but I like it and it’s the one I wanted to re-read this time.

Elva the Vaynamoan is returning home from having been out doing leader-like things in her stable, non-sexist, free, open, healthy, low-population society which preserves the environment of her colonial planet and respects the semi-intelligent natives thereof when a spaceship enters the atmosphere for the first time in centuries. Of course, it turns out that these are invaders from a society that is antithetical to hers in essentially every way and they destroy Elva’s home, kill her husband, and capture her, but fail to shock the Vaynamoans into immediate surrender. The leader of the expedition, Golyev the Chertkoi, takes her back home with him as he readies a second expedition, to be followed by a third intended to finally bring Vaynamo to subjection even though it will take quite some time due to interstellar travel and even longer for the two worlds due to time dilation and the twin paradox. This leads to a pyrotechnic climax in which we learn more about Elva and the Vaynamoans. The story’s full volume is not as simplistic as I’ve boiled it down to and produces an exciting and involving experience.

L. Sprague de Camp (1907-11-27/2000-11-06)

“The Gnarly Man” (Unknown, June 1939)

An anthropologist happens to go to a sideshow where she meets what’s presented as “Ungo-Bungo the ferocious ape-man” but whom she recognizes as (im)possibly something else: a neanderthal. She manages to talk with him and introduce him to some of her fellow scientists, who take varying views of him, while we learn that he was struck by lightning fifty thousand years ago and hasn’t aged since. He’s gone from time and place in various guises and occupations, most recently being Clarence Aloysius Gaffney, sideshow actor. Problems arise when he tries to get some poorly mended broken bones treated and finds a doctor who seems willing to help him, but actually has other ideas.

This reads almost like a sequel to Lester del Rey’s “The Day Is Done” (published a month earlier) if the neanderthal in it thought he was the last one, not knowing that one of his kind had become immortal. On the other hand, it’s almost like a rejoinder in which the pitiable misfit is replaced by an admirable one. It could be more strongly plotted (only having enough to produce some tension and hang the main notion of a modern-day neanderthal on) but it mostly works with good old-fashioned story-telling, with that intriguing central notion, an effective tone and mood, and some nice phrases.

Frederik Pohl (1919-11-26/2013-09-02)

“Day Million” (Rogue, February/March 1966)

Many of today’s readers might be interested in and surprised by this story’s take on non-binary omnisexuality which transcends most of today’s “cutting-edge” but, really, this tale of the love of “Don” and “Dora” is a tour de force of future shock which uses sparkling prose and intense conviction to convey both how far we’ve come and how far we may go. Its six pages are the distilled quintessence of science fiction, itself.

Birthday Reviews: Ballard, Foster, Jones, Swanwick

This week, I have a double shot of musical plants and one posthumous fantasy which all, in different ways, feature a man and a woman, as well as a warning about war which features the human and the inhuman. (Things came up, but apologies for the belated Ballard and for leaving only a few minutes for Jones.)

J. G. Ballard (1930-11-15/2009-04-19)

“Prima Belladonna” (Science Fantasy, December 1956)

I first read this and another Ballard story in Judith Merril’s Best of the Best many (many) years ago. They made quite an impression on me and yet it took me until relatively recently to get any Ballard books and I still haven’t read them. Anyway…

This is the tale of a sort of summer romance in the future in which people are in Recess(ion) and lazing the days away. Our narrator is a relatively industrious seller of musical plants (choro-florist) who meets an exotic golden-skinned woman with insect eyes. Its narrative approach combines the British SF authors’ fascination with vegetation and an almost Heinleinian casualness with the furniture of the future. Its prose style consists mostly of straightforward sentences composed of simple words combined in turn with some polysyllabic Latinate inventions. Together, these elements create a dreamy realism of faintly musical prose suited to the story.

That said, it is, as Hawthorne might say, very “symbolical of something” but isn’t actually particularly science fictional. Extract the science fiction and, as long as different metaphors for the psychosexual dynamics of the prima belladonna and the man who glances off her are substituted, the story doesn’t fall apart. But it is a good piece of writing, either way.

Alan Dean Foster (1946-11-18)

“Ye Who Would Sing” (Galileo, December 1976)

American Alan Dean Foster also writes a tale of musical vegetation but his orchestral orchard is quite detailed and made to seem literal and true while at the same time showing, as Congreve said, that “music has charms to soothe a savage breast.”

John Caitland is returning from an elliptically expressed job (presumably of assassination) when he’s caught in a storm and crash-lands in a remote hidden valley. The valley’s sole inhabitant is the research botanist Katie Naley who nurses him back to health. He finds that the valley is full of the last surviving Chimer trees which are worth uncountable millions after having been harvested into presumed extinction due to both their musical appeal and their inability to reproduce off-world. He greedily bides his time, learning and healing, but also changing in ways he doesn’t understand.

This is almost diametrically opposite from Ballard’s impressionist post-romanticism, with music being a classical balm in a highly structured tale in which the plot and concrete complex ecology bear much of the weight and provide much of the interest while the style is usually workmanlike but sometimes descends to saying things like “An aroma redolent of fresh bread and steaming meats impinged on his smelling apparatus.” But it is a compelling science fiction story, either way.

Raymond F. Jones (1915-11-17/1994-01-24)

“A Stone and a Spear” (Galaxy, December 1950)

After WWII, scientists continue to work on superweapons for the next war– not just of the atomic variety, but biological weapons and others. This prompts Dr. Curtis Johnson to think of the saying about not knowing what weapons WWIII would be fought with but knowing that WWIV would be fought with stones and spears. He’s on his way to try to bring Dr. Hamon Dell back to his war work after Dell had mysteriously abandoned it to become a farmer. When Johnson gets there, he encounters a strangely changed Dell who is dying in great pain and reveals part of the mystery which leads Johnson to meet with other men to learn more of the mystery which may change Johnson’s life… if it doesn’t end it.

Much like Haldeman’s Forever Peace, I don’t actually like this story in ways because I despise Rousseau’s notion of “forcing people to be free” and I also don’t like blaming science for the world’s ills. Still, it is a tense and exciting tale which raises interesting issues with no simple resolutions.

When one of the men talking to Johnson says, “Certain cells of the brain are responsible for specific characteristics. Ways of altering these cells were found” and talks about how this could be used to introduce “wholesale insanity” in “entire populations” and when they talk of countries being “committed to inhuman warfare” so that “each brutality prepares the way for the next” it seems timely. The irony is that, in my opinion, that’s just what the story seems to ultimately advocate – an inhuman peace more brutal than war.

Michael Swanwick (1950-11-18)

“Radio Waves” (Omni, Winter 1995)

Opening with “I was walking the telephone wires upside down, the sky underfoot cold and flat with a few hard bright stars sparsely scattered about it,” this posthumous technofantasy of electronic aeolian harps quickly develops a ghostly milieu with its own rules and logic, introduces us to Cobb (the tattered and mild shreds of a bad man in life), the Corpsegrinder (his nemesis), and the remains of a woman he initially knows only as Charlie’s Widow. Fighting against the impulse towards and revulsion from joining the cosmic background radiation as well as the soul-stealing Corpsegrinder, he actually finds his relationship with Charlie’s Widow to be perhaps the most significant thing.

I love posthumous fantasies in general and the freshness and power and sheer imagination of this one make it one of the best. I’m not sure how well it would fare today as we don’t seem to be capable of forgiving much these days but it’s an excellent story.

Book Haul #9

I went to a couple of used bookstores awhile ago but never got around to posting the haul. It’s mostly science fiction/fantasy and dictionaries (okay, so I’m weird).

The big ticket item (ten whole bucks!) is the one that’s probably impossible to make out in either picture: the blue book near the end is a signed 1950 Prime Press first (and only) edition of George O. Smith’s Nomad, serialized in Astounding in 1944-45. I don’t know if the signature is genuine (though it’s a nice bonus if it is) and it obviously doesn’t have a dust-jacket so the cover is a little dingy and the spine is cocked so it’s might not even be worth ten bucks except to me, but the text block is in basically perfect condition and (a) I just wanted the novel regardless and (b) its being a Prime Press book which could join a couple of other hardcovers I have from that era made it irresistible. I was also very happy to find A. Merritt’s only collection, The Fox Woman and Other Stories ($4) which also nearly completes the late ’70s Avon uniform reissues of his work. I’d previously read and enjoyed Harry Harrison’s Deathworld ($3), so it’s nice to get a copy of my own. And I’d previously owned and enjoyed C. M. Kornbluth’s The Explorers ($1), so it’s nice to get that back.

The other eleven books cost a total of two dollars at a quarter or dime apiece. I already had a pair of Malorys and the first three Rice vampire books (the only ones I liked as far as I read, which was the first five, I think) but the Malory is a different edition and a single volume of Rice is nice and takes up less room on the shelves.

The dictionaries are the largest group after the SF/F. I’m really happy to have found the very long Shorter OED, even if it is a Johnny Cash edition of 1944/1956/1964 (edition/latest revision with addenda/latest printing with corrections) and, even if it did cost me a dime, I’m ecstatic to get it for so little. I also didn’t have the ninth edition of the Collegiate, or any New World dictionary, or the Penguin dictionary of literary terms, which dwarfs my others put together.

Finally, for odds and ends, I got two anthologies of poetry/fiction/drama (though To Read Literature has one of the most asinine, counter-productive messages “To the Student” that I’ve ever read), a collection of poetry and essays I actually got more for the essays than the poems (though I may enjoy both or neither), and (mostly restoring a couple of paperbacks I didn’t have anymore) an oddly appealing hardcover of seven Shaw plays.

Birthday Reviews: Baxter, Bova, Harrow, Nagata, Vonnegut

This week’s large birthday gang (which could have been still larger) brings us a couple of big-canvas super-science tales, a quietly hard SF tale much closer to home, a social satire, and a powerful ghost story of the recent past.

An unusual thing about this week’s gang is that the majority are still able to celebrate their birthdays. And apologies to Linda Nagata and her fans for being a little late with hers.

Stephen Baxter (1957-11-13)

“Something for Nothing” (Interzone #23, Spring 1988)

A nameless narrator, Harris the astronaut, and George the physicist are aboard a nuclear pulse rocket and have just caught up to the alien craft they’ve been chasing since it zipped nearby (shades of ‘Oumuamua). When they discover that the alien designers may have been attempting to send their DNA-equivalent to the site of the Big Bang/Big Crunch on a multi-billion year journey, the materialistic astronaut who wants to cut up the ship for fun and profit and the idealistic physicist who wants to respect the aliens’ intentions have a terminal disagreement. This evokes big thoughts, wide space, and deep time mediated by small interpersonal conflict rather than overwrought romanticism and stands closer to the front than the back in the long line of “guys in space solve a problem with a clever twist” and smaller line of tales such as Asimov’s “The Billiard Ball” on “unusual ways to kill a man.”

Ben Bova (1932-11-08/2020-11-29)

“To Touch a Star” (The Universe, 1987)

Aleyn has been betrayed by his best friend Selwyn and exiled from his world, time, and one true love, Noura. His exile takes the form of a one-man mission to study a star a thousand years’ journey away from our own star which has become unstable and will destroy civilization in a few thousand years. When he arrives, he learns that “that’s no star. It’s a Dyson sphere!” Actually, it’s a two hundred million year-old Dyson sphere which, when he gets inside, he learns barely contains an old, angry, unstable star… and an ancient and powerful guardian who refuses to let him leave as his ship’s heat shield begins to fail.

This, alas, suffers a little from overwrought romanticism or at least a misplaced devotion to its characters (on- and off-stage) and their issues but it’s not too badly done in that regard. Also, I have no idea how they could be looking for a specific sort of star and mistake a Dyson sphere for it, yet have just that sort of star in that Dyson sphere. But, other than that, it’s pretty well done in that regard. The discovery, adventure, and goshwowsensawunda is all present to a high degree and its emphasis on the will to survive for the individual and the species is excellent.

(P. S.: This shares the setting of “The Last Decision” but is perfectly self-sufficient.)

Alix E. Harrow (1989-11-09)

“A Whisper in the Weld” (Shimmer #22, November 2014)

Adapted from a review on my old site from 2015-05-22

I was so impressed with “The Animal Women” (which turns out to be Harrow’s second story) that I went looking for more and found her first. It shows what an opening line hook is.

Isa died in a sudden suffocation of boiling blood and iron cinder in her mouth; she returned to herself wearing a blue cotton dress stained with fresh tobacco.

We proceed to learn about the Bell family, which had moved from Kentucky to Maryland during WWII: how husband Leslie went off to fight and has been reported killed; how Isa came to build ships and die under a furnace in the story’s present of 1944; how the orphans Vesta and Effie (Persephone) strive to stay together; how Isa, as a wonderfully conceived ghost, is caught in an interplay of metaphysical forces urging her to go and personal “mule-headedness” enabling her to stay. She doesn’t want to see her children abandoned and she really doesn’t want Vesta to go to work in her place.

This has all the excellent writing, deft characterization, tangibility of time and place, and other virtues of “The Animal Women” and minimizes the one major problem of that tale. While there is a white bossman at the shipyards who is probably not a very great guy and serves as a magnet for Isa’s frustration, symbolizing the war machine and the society that isn’t always kind to its members, this is more a function of his position than his personality. The conflict is more between desires and facts and, while Isa may not fight all facts, she fights as much as she can.

I still think the two stories demonstrate a problem with, for example, the villains being too flawed and the heroes not flawed enough and the social motifs sometimes detracting from both the individuality and universality of the characters which are otherwise excellent, but Harrow is definitely a writer to watch.

Linda Nagata (1960-11-07)

“Codename: Delphi” (Lightspeed #47, April 2014)

Adapted from a review on my old site from 2015-06-09.

A woman is in a control center in a future military, physically safe but mentally responsible for the lives of many people in her charge who are emphatically not physically safe. This simply covers one of her shifts and, while the story allows the character to occasionally have a second to grab a sip of water from a nearby bottle or the like, neither story nor character deviate from their mission for more than those seconds in the cracks between wall-to-wall tension.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (1922-11-11/2007-04-11)

“Harrison Bergeron” (F&SF, October 1961)

Liberty, equality, fraternity! But what if liberty and equality are antithetical? In a world in which a Handicapper-General makes sure that any beautiful people are made ugly, any strong people are made weak, any skilled people are made incompetent, so that all will be equal, what place is there for a handsome giant and a beautiful ballerina? And if they try to make a place, what sort of place would that be?

An interesting, concise tale (which may have inspired Ellison’s variant, “‘Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman”) that offers no easy answers.

Birthday Reviews: Barrett, Dickson, Ewers, Haldane

This week’s birthday gang brings us a bittersweet comedy, a bitterersweet drama, a Halloween horror, and a mob-ridden monetary melodrama.

Neal Barrett, Jr. (1929-11-03/2014-01-12)

“Perpetuity Blues” (IAsfm, May 1987)

This is the tale of “Maggie McKenna from Marble Creek” and a hilarious tale it is, but also an affecting one that can be read as very sad and, yet, ultimately perhaps upbeat even so. Maggie’s a small-town Texas girl whose father has disappeared and whose mother has died when she ends up with her lecherous uncle and an aunt who’s primary advice is to for God’s sake never sit on anyone’s lap. Maggie deals with many people, some good and some bad, both early in her life and on her big move to New York to become a playwright. The most important early encounter is with Oral Blue, a albino-looking man who claims to be an alien and who dresses and lives in blue. How he and her stories entangle is profound and also very funny, as he talks about being attacked by “Mormon terrorists” on one occasion and then by Vikings on another, whom he describes as “worse than Mormons.” Later, her most important influences are the truckers who get her to New York (one of whom has a library where all the books are written by various people named “John”) and, when she arrives, she declares, “Lordy, it looks near as real as a movie.”

This sort of makes me think of Tom Robbins turned up to 11. One of the most effective elements is how it takes a narrative tone that has room for ironic/comic distance on the one hand and for Maggie’s subjectivity at the same time, as when we get a flash as through a microscope when we learn that Maggie “liked to wander over limestone hills where every rock you picked up was the shell of something tiny that had lived.” It’s a very engaging, funny, and layered story with a superb “voice.”

Gordon R. Dickson (1923-11-01/2001-01-31)

“Dolphin’s Way” (Analog, June 1964)

A scientist is trying to communicate with dolphins while fearing the budgetary ax will fall when a strangely attractive reporter arrives and begins asking him questions. Over the course of the story, we get his theories about tests aliens might have for humanity and how we might communicate with dolphins and then witness his pyrhhic victory. This is an excellent tale about linguistics, the Fermi Question, the nature of “humanity” and the cosmos. There is a problem with some gaps in the reporter’s knowledge, it seems to me, but this is about the only blemish on a story that does a great job of packing a lot of ideas into a very short and intelligent space and is also strangely vivid and concrete, perhaps due to its focus on clarity and essentials, allowing the details of place and sensation to achieve more than those in most stories do. This is also a good story to enrich the perspectives of those who see Campbell and/or Dickson stories in simple, monolithic terms.

Hanns Heinz Ewers (1871-11-03/1943-06-12)

“The Spider” (Die Besessenen, 1908)

Happy Halloween! (And with minutes to spare.) This tale of a medical student renting a room in which three people have hanged themselves on consecutive Fridays is steeped in sex and death (or eros and thanatos, if you want to get fancy and Freudian) and combines a third-person omniscient presentation of the student’s diary, giving the best of both narrative worlds while the student suffers the worst of both psychosexual worlds. While I question its “psychological” underpinnings, it’s a creative and skilled dramatization of them and, while I can’t get into it without spoilers, it makes an odd antithesis to the preceding story. (Also, the little dash of number-play that I think I see is a twistedly amusing element.)

J. B. S. Haldane (1892-11-05/1964-12-01)

“The Gold-Makers” (The Inequality of Man, 1932)

The following is adapted from my review of Great Science Fiction by Scientists.

Several scientists have written SF stories. Many are surprisingly melodramatic and, in some cases, even more surprisingly effective. J.B.S. Haldane’s “The Gold-Makers” is a strong example, dealing with a complicated noir mob-like plot turning on the financial implications of being able to create gold, with some parties trying to achieve this and others trying to suppress it. This is wrapped in an “I’m publishing this true story as fiction” wrapper, which is entertaining.

Birthday Reviews: Brown, McConnell

Late yet again, but still right on the day (in some time zones) for McConnell and in time in all time zones for Brown.

Fredric Brown (1906-10-29/1972-03-11)

• “Imagine” (F&SF, May 1955)
• “Recessional” (Dude, March 1960)
• “Nightmare in Yellow” (Dude, May 1961)
• “Earthmen Bearing Gifts” (Galaxy, June 1960)
• “Jaycee” (Nightmares and Geezenstacks, 1961)
• “Answer” (Angels and Spaceships, 1954)
• “Rebound” (Nightmares and Geezenstacks, 1961)
• “Abominable” (Dude, March 1960)
• “Not Yet the End” (Captain Future, Winter 1941)
• “Experiment” (Galaxy, February 1954)
• “The Short Happy Lives of Eustace Weaver (I, II, and III)” (Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, June 1961)
• “Reconciliation” (Angels and Spaceships, 1954)
• “Pattern” (Angels and Spaceships, 1954)
• “The End” (Nightmares and Geezenstacks, 1961)

Fredric Brown has written excellent long stories, on up to novel length, but there are probably few people who have written more, better, shorter stories. That is to say, he wrote a lot of excellent short-shorts. Even when they’re not perfect, there’s usually something either interesting, funny, or thought-provoking to them that makes them worthwhile and, it seems, the darker they get, the better.

“Imagine” is an unusually sunny piece which argues that reality, looked at properly, is at least as amazing as fantasy or science fiction. “Not Yet the End” shows the perils of sampling errors when aliens come to Earth looking for slaves, while “Earthmen Bearing Gifts” shows how Martians overestimating humanity (or underestimating our capacity for erroneous estimations) can lead to disastrous consequences. Some tackle theological issues: “Answer” turns Asimov’s “The Last Question” on its head with a bitter twist while “Jaycee” shows, with blasphemous verve, an unforeseen side-effect of compensating for a deficiency of males in the population. Conversely, “Abominable” adjusts a legend’s implicit sexism in a comical mode that might offend chauvinists and feminists alike. To borrow from the great Murray Leinster’s title Twists in Time, several of Brown’s short-shorts involve time travel with twists, especially when the travelers push things too far. “Experiment” is perhaps the most audacious of these but, at the same time, not entirely satisfying, and “The End” is clever and comical piece but sort of a one-shot. “The Short Happy Lives of Eustace Weaver” (originally published as “Of Time and Eustace Weaver”) is a more detailed and character-based tale of a ne’er-do-well trying to get something for nothing which is quite ingenious until the traditional ending.

Above all those, four stick out (and one goes with a couple of them in varying ways).

“Pattern” may be one of the more perfect twist short-shorts with its two calm protagonists contemplating the imaginatively conceived aliens who seem to go about their business on the earth while the majority of humans panic. The quiet economy of the set-up and twist is superb. And “Recessional” may be the most striking in this batch of stories as the subjective view of a chess game takes on cosmic proportions in a few words on a universe beyond good and evil.

“Nightmare in Yellow” has no speculative element but to omit such a masterpiece of a dark and twisted twist because of that would be a… crime. The only flaw, as in some of the best puns, is a slightly manufactured premise but this tale of an embezzler’s plan to take the money, run, and knock off his wife as a bonus, is brilliant. “Reconciliation,” a lesser (but still rewarding) tale, relates to this in showing a reverse relationship in which the hate is open and the ending is changed as more pressing matters intervene. And it makes me think of how trapped people can become in seeing relatively small things as greater than they are and missing the bigger picture. Which brings in “Rebound,” the tale of a petty and ridiculous man who happens to figure out how to wield inordinate power and plans to become a huge dictator until (as I fervently hope really happens) his solipsistic viciousness “rebounds.”

James McConnell (1925-10-26/1990-04-09)

“Learning Theory” (If, December 1957)

The following is adapted from my review of Great Science Fiction by Scientists.

Some stories involve entities coming to wrong conclusions based on insufficient evidence. One of the best of these is the excellent “Learning Theory” by James (V.) McConnell. It focuses on confirmation bias and turns the table on a psychologist by having him get abducted by aliens and put through his paces in accordance with their pet theories, so to speak. Very clever and with a sound critique of a scientific problem.

Birthday Reviews: Hamilton, Le Guin

Late again, but still in time to wish our birthday twins a happy birthday in the beyond. (They were both born on the same day, have feathers on their covers, and bring us idealistic tales in which one divinely-tinged creature’s suffering makes pleasure possible for others.) Plus, there’s a special birthday demento–er, memento at the end of this post.

Edmond Hamilton (1904-10-21/1977-02-01)

“Exile” (Super Science Stories, May 1943)

This brief tale is almost impossible to review because of its twist ending and its structure, which is simply the after-dinner conversation of four science fiction writers turning immediately to the fantastic tale of one of them, after another mentions the notion of being glad he never ended up in any of the worlds of his imagination. The details in this, such as the comment on knowledge versus belief or how the discussion of the two worlds is simultaneously simple, yet remarkably detailed and coherent, are effective and the tension between idealism and realism, the nature of fiction and reality, is actually quite powerful. Reading this story is akin to taking a step in a puddle and suddenly finding yourself fully underwater.

(For a Halloween bonus, I’ve also previously mentioned another piece by Edmond Hamilton in an old review of Weird Tales.)

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-10-21/2018-01-22)

“The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” (New Dimensions 3, 1973)

Every time I read this story, I’m surprised at how it initially seems annoying as the narrator intrusively hypothesizes what the nature of the utopia in the story might be and then I’m surprised again at how powerful it becomes as the price for this utopia and the conflict within each person who does or does not accept the bargain is shown. If one person’s torment could produce utopia for all others, what then? In a way, the tale is a reductio ad absurdum in that a more realistic scenario might be “If we were Utilitarians who sought to maximize the greatest good for the greatest number, this implies that some number will not receive the greatest good. And what then?” But, by concentrating it to its utmost, perhaps it is a reduction to a core reality? And either way, what would you do? (And the cynic or masochist or Christian (a motley crew?) could note one of the options the story doesn’t address, which brings up the Dostoevsky Le Guin says she’s forgotten: If one had the opportunity to endure misery for the sake of providing a utopia for the human race, shouldn’t they do it? And if it could be voluntary, shouldn’t the human race honor that choice?)

Either way, this concretized thought experiment is obviously deficient in many of the usual storytelling virtues (which is not unusual in SF but for which SF is usually condemned while this story is praised) but it is a powerful and thought-provoking piece.

(Incidentally, I’d recommend reading this in its original collection, as the author’s note before the story is also excellent. I’ve never forgotten “‘Where do you get your ideas from, Ms Le Guin?’ From forgetting Dostoyevsky and reading road signs backwards, naturally. Where else?”)

Bela Lugosi (1882-10-20/1956-08-16)

“Bela Lugosi’s Dead” (Bauhaus, 1979)

Birthday Reviews: Morrison, Schmitz, Wilde, Wodehouse

Picking up where I left off a couple of years ago, here are reviews of stories selected from people born in the coming week of October 10-16 (or what would have been the coming week if I weren’t a few days late). The stories include a cake baking contest, a bank robbery aftermath, and a contrasting pair of fractured fairy tales.

(There is one birthday that falls in the missed days that I feel like mentioning even if no short fiction goes with it: Happy Birthday and Halloween to Mr. Edward D. Wood, Jr. (1924-10-10/1978-12-10)!)

William Morrison (1906-10-13/1980-06-02)

“The Model of a Judge” (Galaxy, October 1953)

There aren’t many SF stories about judging a cake-baking contest but this is one, involving as it does a wolf-like native inhabitant of a moon which humans have colonized who has been conditioned away from his carnivorous ways and modified into a semblance of humanity, but who still retains his amazingly discriminating taste and more. As the judge overhears seemingly scattered conversation amongst the bakers and then tastes their wares, he reflects on his past, his present, the people who have made him what he is, and then comes to his interesting decision. This is an unusual, well-constructed, efficient, thought-provoking tale.

James H. Schmitz (1911-10-15/1981-04-18)

“An Incident on Route 12” (If, January 1962)

James H. Schmitz is best known for his strong female characters, ranging from mature scienstists to cute little witches who exist in far-flung times and spaces but this little gem features a tough bank robber on the way to make his escape when he encounters car trouble. The horror he inflicts on a good Samaritan is nothing to the horror to come. A really short, hardboiled, powerful masterpiece.

Oscar Wilde (1854-10-16/1900-11-30)

“The Nightingale and the Rose” (The Happy Prince and Other Tales, 1888)

Best known for his witty plays and powerful novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Wilde also wrote poetry and short fiction. In this, a Student of the philosophy that he’s read in books wants to dance with a girl who has said she would if he gave her a red rose, but he has no rose. A nightingale hears his lament, decides he’s a true lover, and undergoes an astonishing ordeal to help him. This tale makes me think of things like “philosophy will clip an angel’s wings” and “love is blind” and so on, but the point is that it’s quite a striking and cynical “fairy tale.”

P. G. Wodehouse (1881-10-15/1975-02-14)

“Sir Agravaine” (Collier’s, June 29, 1912)

Perhaps it’s best to let Wodehouse sum up his own story:

Some time ago, when spending a delightful week-end at the ancestral castle of my dear old friend, the Duke of Weatherstonhope (pronounced Wop), I came across an old black letter MS. It is on this that the story which follows is based.

I have found it necessary to touch the thing up a little here and there, for writers in those days were weak in construction. Their idea of telling a story was to take a long breath and start droning away without any stops or dialogue till the thing was over.

I have also condensed the title. In the original it ran, “‘How it came about that ye good Knight Sir Agravaine ye Dolorous of ye Table Round did fare forth to succor a damsel in distress and after divers journeyings and perils by flood and by field did win her for his bride and right happily did they twain live ever afterwards,’ by Ambrose ye monk.”

It was a pretty snappy title for those times, but we have such a high standard in titles nowadays that I have felt compelled to omit a few yards of it. We may now proceed to the story.

And so it goes that the weak and homely knight and the plain maiden find out what is above strength and beauty and all else. I don’t know that this is his best and, despite threats of dragons and other fanciful things, really only the theme makes this a speculative story but, still, it’s entertaining and amusing, especially (for some reason) regarding the sort of indigestion someone like Agravaine could cause a dragon.

Book Haul #7

This haul is a bit different. You can play “Where’s Waldo & Magic, Inc.?” (which is to say, “Where’s the SF?”) with this one (not to mention “Where’s the Non-Anthology?”). Stray note: the six anthologies contain 579 stories (obviously with plenty of overlap in the litfic anthologies, but still… it’s a lot of stories).

Front:

Spine:

 

Bibliography: Groff Conklin

I wasn’t intending to do this, especially so close to the last one, but here’s another bibliography/checklist, this time of an editor of anthologies rather than an author of novels and collections. (While he wrote some and edited a few non-speculative anthologies prior to turning to science fiction, this includes only the speculative anthologies beginning with 1946.)

The format is ‘Title (Publication year-month Publisher Format (hc=hardcover/tp=trade paperback/pb=mass-market paperback) Co-editor, story-count/page-count); any significant variants…’ Not all elements will be present for all editions. Note that books with identical contents but differing page counts (presumably due to being reset) are ignored but, if they have some other reason to be listed, are listed with the page counts separated with a bar: ‘page-count|other page count’. Variant listings include only the elements which are different from the first edition. For instance, the 1963 edition of The Best of Science Fiction is still a Crown hardcover and the 1980 Bonanza/Crown edition is still a hardcover with the original story and page counts. Variants are ‘cut’ (missing stories), ‘split’ (one large book published in smaller books, ‘vt’ (variant title), ‘va’ (variant attribution), or some combination.

Sources: ISFDB, Anthopology 101 by Bud Webster, my books. ISFDB, Webster, and other sources have complete story listings but this is intended to be a book checklist which can provide a concise but somewhat detailed overview of his work, help people avoid cuts or duplicates under other names, point people to the big and the little, particular publishers, etc.

Phase I

In this period, Conklin did mostly large anthologies in hardcover, mostly for Crown, Vanguard, and Permabooks.

• The Best of Science Fiction (1946-02 Crown hc, 40/785); cut 1963 23/440 (also cuts Campbell’s intro, though it preserves Conklin’s); vt The Golden Age of Science Fiction (1980 Bonanza/Crown).
• A Treasury of Science Fiction (1948-03 Crown hc, 30/517); cut 1957-07 Berkley pb, 8/186|192.
• The Science Fiction Galaxy (1950-02 Permabooks hc, 12/242).
• Big Book of Science Fiction (1950-08 Crown hc, 32/545); cut 1957-04 Berkley pb, 10/187|176; vt The Classic Book of Science Fiction (1978 Bonanza/Crown).
• Possible Worlds of Science Fiction (1951-04 Vanguard hc, 22/372); cut 1952-06 Grayson & Grayson (UK), 13/254; cut 1955-07 Berkley pb, 10/189.
• In the Grip of Terror (1951 Permabooks pb, 22/364).
• Invaders of Earth (1952-03 Vanguard hc, 22/333); cut 1953 Weidenfeld & Nicolson (UK) 14/256; cut 1955-07 Pocket pb, 15/257; cut split vt Invaders of Earth (1962 Digit (UK) pb, 8/160)/Enemies in Space (1962 Digit (UK) pb, 6/159). The Digits contain all the Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
• Omnibus of Science Fiction (1952-11 Crown hc, 43/562); cut split vt Strange Travels in Science Fiction (1954-01 Grayson & Grayson (UK); 13/256)/Strange Adventures in Science Fiction (1954-06 Grayson & Grayson (UK), 9/238); cut vt Science Fiction Omnibus (1956-08 Berkley pb 11/187|190).
• Science Fiction Adventures in Dimension (1953-03 Vanguard hc, 23/354); cut vt Adventures in Dimension (1955 Grayson & Grayson (UK), 13/240); cut 1965-03 Berkley pb, 12/174.
• The Supernatural Reader (1953-04 Lippincott hc, 27/349) with Lucy Conklin; cut 1958 World (UK) pb, 19/252; va 1962 Collier pb, /352 credited to Groff Conklin only.
• Crossroads in Time (1953-11 Permabooks pb, 18/312).
• 6 Great Short Novels of Science Fiction (1954-01 Dell pb, 6/384).
• Science-Fiction Thinking Machines (1954-05 Vanguard hc, 22/367); cut vt Selections from Science-Fiction Thinking Machines (1955-08 Bantam pb, 12/183|201).
• Science Fiction Terror Tales (1955-01 Gnome hc, 15/262).
• Science Fiction Adventures in Mutation (1955 Vanguard hc, 20/316); cut vt Selected Stories from Science-Fiction Adventures in Mutation (1965-06 Berkley pb, 14/174).
• Operation Future (1955-07 Permabooks pb, 19/356).

Phase II

The two years between the last book of Phase I and the first of Phase II marks the longest gap between books of his entire career. From here on, he did mostly relatively smaller paperbacks, mostly for Pyramid, Fawcett, and Collier (and no more with Crown, Vanguard, or Permabooks).

• The Graveyard Reader (1958 Ballantine pb, 12/156)
• Br-r-r-! (1959 Avon pb, 10/192)
• 4 for the Future (1959-08 Pyramid pb, 4/160)
• 13 Great Stories of Science Fiction (1960-05 Fawcett pb, 13/192)
• Six Great Short Science Fiction Novels (1960-11 Dell pb, 6/350)
• Twisted (1962-05 Belmont pb, 15/189); cut 1963 Horwitz (UK) pb, 10/130.
• Worlds of When (1962-05 Pyramid pb, 5/159)
• Great Science Fiction by Scientists (1962-06 Collier pb, 16/313)
• Fifty Short Science Fiction Tales (1963-02 Collier pb, 50/287) with Isaac Asimov. Also includes a poem by Poul Anderson and six haiku by Karen Anderson.
• Great Science Fiction About Doctors (1963-04 Collier pb, 18/412) with Noah D. Fabricant, M.D.
• Great Stories of Space Travel (1963-07 Tempo pb, 11/256)
• 17 X Infinity (1963-08 Dell pb, 17/272). Also includes a poem by Rudyard Kipling.
• 12 Great Classics of Science Fiction (1963-12 Fawcett pb, 12/192)
• Dimension 4 (1964-02 Pyramid pb, 4/159)
• Five-Odd (1964-08 Pyramid pb, 5/188); vt Possible Tomorrows (1972-06 Sidgwick & Jackson (UK) hc).
• Great Detective Stories About Doctors (1965-01 Collier pb, 17/288) with Noah D. Fabricant, M.D.
• 5 Unearthly Visions (1965 Fawcett pb, 5/175)
• Giants Unleashed (1965 Grosset & Dunlap hc, 12/248); vt Minds Unleashed (1970-10 Tempo pb). Conklin’s introduction is dropped from the variant title.
• 13 Above the Night (1965-10 Dell pb, 13/286)
• Another Part of the Galaxy (1966 Fawcett pb, 6/224)
• Seven Come Infinity (1966 Fawcett pb, 7/288)
• Science Fiction Oddities (1966-11 Berkley pb, 19/256); split vt Science Fiction Oddities (1969-06 Rapp & Whiting (UK) hc, 9/156)/Science Fiction Oddities: Second Series (1969-06 Rapp & Whiting (UK) hc, 10/160)
• Elsewhere and Elsewhen (1968-05 Berkley pb, 9/253); split vt Science Fiction Elsewhen (1970-07 Rapp & Whiting (UK) hc, 5/152)/Science Fiction Elsewhere (1970-07 Rapp & Whiting (UK) hc, 4/166)
• Seven Trips Through Time and Space (1968 Fawcett pb, 7/256)

Note: ISFDB quotes Tuck as saying Conklin “sub-edited” Human and Other Beings (1963 Collier pb, 16/319) which is a title in the Collier Science Fiction series of which Conklin is credited as the general editor. Webster also lists it among Conklin’s works. But if this were true, it would make this book the only example of such a thing in all of Conklin’s SF anthologies and crediting only Allen DeGraeff (a pseudonym of Albert Paul Blaustein according to OCLC (via ISFDB) and Webster) would have hurt the sales of the book, so Conklin’s anonymity in this makes little sense to me without definite proof. For what it’s worth (because I don’t know what the usual batting average is), of the 15 authors in this anthology, Banks, Brackett (!), Elliott, and Wilson (with two stories) appear in none of the books I list above.