“The Assistant Self” was first published in Fantastic Universe Science Fiction, March 1956. You can read it on Archive.org. It is story #6 of 22 for The Best SF Stories of 1956 group read. Even though “The Assistant Self” was a finalist for the Hugo Award, it’s never been reprinted.

I was somewhat intrigued when reading “The Assistant Self” but I wouldn’t call it a good science fiction story. I would call it fun pulp fiction with a wild plot. Fantastic Universe was a lesser market, and F. L. Wallace was never much of a writer, with just one novel and a couple dozen short stories listed in ISFDB, most of which is available at Project Gutenberg.

“The Assistant Self” follows Hal Talbot, a guy with an empathy index off the charts through a murder mystery. Even though he always knows how to please his boss, Talbot seldom can keep a job for more than two years. The story starts just after he loses his current job, and his girlfriend Laura dumps him. Talbot is approached by a man Evan Soleri, the Vice President in charge of Research at the TRANSPORTATION Corporation, a company working to develop a rocket engine that can reach most of light speed. Soleri has an exceptionally beautiful secretary, Randy Farrell, who works rather closely with Soleri, and knows all the secrets of the company.

On Talbot’s first day at work, a saboteur throws a bomb into their meeting, and Soleri is killed. Because Talbot is so empathetic, he’d come to work wearing exactly what Soleri had been wearing, and they had the same build. When Talbot regains consciousness, he’s in the hospital with burns and bandages. Randy thinks he’s Soleri. He decides to pretend to be Soleri and find Soleri’s killer. We’re asked to believe Talbot can pull this off, and that’s very hard to do. Talbot must also fool the rocket engine designer Fred Frescura, who Soleri worked closely for years. Wallace tries to get us to believe in the power of empathy.

“The Assistant Self” was readable, moved along at a good pace, and I wanted to know what happened, but I can understand why it’s never been reprinted. I can’t believe people nominated it for the Hugo Award. My friend Mike has been reading these 1956 SF stories with me and emailed me his reaction:

F. L. Wallace uses empathy as an awkward deus ex machina in the unremarkable whodunit "The Assistant Self." The journeyman prose is pedestrian and sometimes odd: "He lunched frugally, and tried to control his agitation." Did he eat an inexpensive lunch or did he eat a small lunch? And why do we need to know?


The characters are from Central Casting:


Hal Talbot, the troubled protagonist "...who couldn't even hold down a simple lousy job." His empathy is "...a dreadful handicap."


Evan Soleri, the concerned vice-president of TRANSPORTATION who is trying to figure out "What official or worker is trying to sabotage us?"


Fred Frescura, the mad scientist at TRANSPORTATION.


Randy Farrell, Soleri's beautiful secretary (who is secretly a psychologist). She provides our love interest.


The story has a Saturday afternoon matinee feel. It would be difficult to conjure up any metaphorical frameworks that would lend substance to this forgettable story.

I think I enjoyed the story more than Mike, but I would never recommend anyone to read it. After finishing “The Assistant Self” I started poking around in other March 1956 issues of science fiction magazines and found two Robert F. Young stories to read. They weren’t very good either, but I remember reading Young’s stories in the magazines in the 1960s. I enjoyed them enough to read his stories when I saw one. That’s the thing about reading science fiction magazines, most of the stories just aren’t that good, but if you’re not too picky, they can be mildly amusing. I have a feeling Wallace might have been good at writing decent and somewhat fun stories.

The April, 1957 issue of Science Fiction News reported there was 168 issues of science fiction and fantasy magazines published in 1956, in the United States and Great Britain. That’s a lot of short stories. If we figure 7 stories per 168 issues gives us 1,176 stories. I picked 22 for our group read as the best SF of 1956. And many of those stories are like “The Assistant Self,” — not really worth remembering or recommending.

Still, there appears to be market for old bad science fiction, and Armchair Fiction has reprinted Wallace’s one novel, packaging it as a faux Ace Double with an Algis Budrys novel. I got to say, I’m tempted, but not at $12.95.

James Wallace Harris, 12/8/23

10 thoughts on ““The Assistant Self” by F. L. Wallace”

  2. F. L. Wallace wrote one story that is still remembered today — “Big Ancestor”. It’s not bad, but doesn’t really move the dial on his reputation. “End As a World” got a Hugo nomination, too — I haven’t read that one. And I haven’t read “The Assistant Self” yet either.

    And I’ve never seen that Algis Budrys novella! I will have to track down that issue of Amazing. I like Budrys a lot, though much of his ’50s work was negligible, and I don’t have high hopes for “If These Be Gods”, as he never chose to reprint it.

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  3. This is not a very good story. I like some things about it, but it’s way too far-fetched and hard to believe even for science fiction of that era. As has been observed by Jim, the characters are pretty stock. I did finish because I wanted to see what happened, but that’s it. I’ll never read the “The Assistant Self” again. I still can’t believe it got a Hugo finalist/whatever status.

    I read F. L. Wallace’s “End as a World” short story recently, when I was doing bonus reading for the 1955 read. I might have been generous, but I had that as a “Very good” story with a nice twist ending. “End of the World” is not great, but it is better than “The Assistant Self” although much less ambitious.

    As it appears that both “End as a World” and “The Assistant Self” had Hugo nominations/finalist status, clearly F. L. Wallace was either popular or the stories resonated in some way with the probably much smaller pool of people involved in coming up with the finalists. I could be wrong, but I don’t think there is much known about how the finalists were identified then, so it could have been just a couple of people who were fans of his. I find this all hard to believe from my end of the 60 plus years since then, but I was not there.

    On his novel “Address: Centauri”, I have complex feelings. I read it from the public library back probably in middle school. I liked it a lot at that age. Time went on, and I could not remember the name of the novel. I encountered the paperback version with the great Wally Wood cover, bought it partly for the cover, and still own it. I don’t think it’s a great novel, but I remember liking the whole “humans left to die on a very inhospitable world by aliens, who manage to survive and pay the aliens back” theme when I was at that age. I doubt I’ll ever reread it again, but I still love the cover.

    I have read his 1953 “Student Body” novelette. Another in the “Good” rating for me, so not great, but more interesting in some ways. This was reprinted in the “Big Book of Science Fiction: The Ultimate Collection” by the VanderMeers, and it has the most reprints at SFADB for any works by F. L. Wallace. Due to the BBOSF reprint, I’m guessing it is the most remembered of his works today.

    Also of interest is his “Delay in Transit”, which SFADB notes is reprinted in both “Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories: 14 (1952)”,Isaac Asimov & Martin H. Greenberg editors, DAW 1986, and “Neglected Visions”, Barry N. Malzberg, Martin H. Greenberg & Joseph D. Olander editors, Doubleday 1979. While neither of these reprints is a guarantee it’s a good story, I will read this and find out.

    I don’t think I’ve read “Big Ancestor”, so I’ll give that a try soon. Thanks for mentioning it.

    I rather suspect if I read both “Delay in Transit” and “Big Ancestor”, I might not need to read any more F. L. Wallace, but I could be wrong.

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    1. Are you sure you have the right book? My dim recollection, and the less dim blurbs on that book, aren’t about people dumped by aliens on a nasty planet, but about incurably disabled people fleeing an Earth where everyone else was physically perfect. The plot you describe sounds like Tom Godwin’s THE SURVIVORS a/k/a SPACE PRISON.

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      1. John, you are absolutely right! That is what happens when my somewhat aging brain does not look things up to confirm. The rear cover blub for my pb copy of “Address: Centauri” says,

        “….Who will be the first interstellar explorers – and make the first alien contact?
        On a tiny asteroid between Mars and Jupiter, a handful of people seek the honor. They are ‘the Accidentals.’ They are the pathetic, crippled and deformed humans, half or quarter men and women, fractional organisms masquerading as people. To many they are just ‘circus freaks’, but to themselves they are still members of the human race. Their plan is sound. The galaxy has long since been conquered and now the distant stars await the probing of Earthmen. Yet the stars are very very far away and the exploratory trips will be very very long. Ordinary men would find the voyages nearly unbearable. The Accidentals, though, are not ordinary men. The medical skills which have kept them alive have given them incredible endurance. They are incredibly tough, nearly immortal. They are the ones who could be the star flung explorers.
        From that begins one of the strangest flights to the Stars that mankind will ever see.”

        I also see that this story was based on the 1952 novella “Accidental Flight” in Galaxy. I don’ think I’ve ever read that versions, and I might have to start there on a reread.

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  5. I’ve read some of F. L. Wallace’s oeuvre, but not yet ‘The Assistant Self’. Wallace wrote one bone fide classic, ‘Delay in Transit’ (1952), which also made it into the 14th volume of Issac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories.

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