Posted on September 19, 2016June 19, 2019 by jameswharris

The Classics of Science Fiction Books

Science on the March 1952

The new version 5 of the Classics of Science Fiction is here:

      https://csfquery.com

We will maintain this version for reference.

Our goal is to identify science fiction books that are remembered over time. We call them the Classics of Science Fiction, even though the term classics is a loaded word for many, and defined in widely different ways. The term science fiction is also controversial and has never been adequately defined in a precise manner. Working on this project is leading us towards a deeper understanding of both terms. We limit the scope of this project to science fiction because we believe science fiction is a singular concept, even though it can’t be easily defined. Throughout the centuries writers have speculated about the future, distant worlds, alternate histories, time travel, unexplored territories, artificial life, robots, intelligent machines, non-human intelligent beings, and other concepts beyond the mundane that could be a part of our reality if we knew more.

Our technique is simple. We found 65 lists that recommend science fiction books and generated a cumulative list of books that include any title that had been on at least 10 of those lists. We call the resultant list when ordered by being on the highest percentage of lists, the Classics of Science Fiction. We also show that list ordered by title, author, and year.

This is version 4 of the Classics of Science Fiction. The first version appeared in the fanzine Lan’s Lantern in the 1980s. The second in the 1990s, the third in the 2000s. For version 1, the minimum cutoff was being on 3 of 9 lists, for version 2, it was 5 of 13, for version 3, it 7 of 28. For this new version 4, it is 10 of 65.

The most revealing table we produced is a comparison of Versions 1-4. Books in red are those titles that didn’t make it to Version 4. Books in blue are new to Version 4. But look for titles that span the lists with growing numbers. Those books might be the ones still read in fifty years.

Stats by decade shows the number of lists per decade, and what percentage of those lists the book was on. We had to use percentages because some books were not eligible for all lists (list created before the book was published, list for female writers, not eligible for an award, etc.)

Looking at a comparison of lists made in the 20th and 21st centuries show a shift from older books to new books, but it also reveals that some older books are still top favorites.

The Science Fiction by Women Writers list shows the popularity of SF books written by women. We use a cutoff of 4 lists to make a longer list. 28 titles were on the Classics of Science Fiction list. 8 of the 65 lists focused on women writers and 1 list on women and people of color, but they often showed more variety than consistency. We hope this list shows the most consistently remembered science fiction books written by women. If you click on the hyperlinked number of lists to look at the source listings, you’ll see the women writers lists did not affect the overall outcome significantly.

Using a cutoff of a minimum of 10 lists produces a final list of 140 books. That’s probably too many. If the cutoff had been 12, it would have produced a list of 101 titles, which is about perfect. Lists longer than 100 tend to wear out attention spans. But we want to remember as many books as possible. Readers of this list should make their own cutoff number. Scroll down the Rank list until you see books you don’t know. That might be your cutoff figure. I think any books that were on 20 or more lists (the first 45 titles), should be well known to any serious science fiction fan. The cruel reality is in 50-100 years, most of the books on this list will be forgotten by future fans.

These lists come from fan polls, award lists, recommended reading lists, reading lists used in schools, from library science books for collection building, from lists claiming to have the best all-time science fiction, and so on. Currently, we have 65 source lists.

This statistical method is effective but not perfect. We can’t claim you will love reading the most popular books. We can only say they are the most remembered books. However, there does seem to be a correlation between being remembered and the odds of readers liking a book. In the future, we hope to find additional methods to identify the classics.

We did not personally select the books. If your favorite book isn’t on the list it only means you love a book that isn’t popular with other readers. It can still be an outstanding novel. Most novels are forgotten right after they are published, including many excellent works. Popularity has never equaled quality, but the books our society calls classics are usually the books that have survived the test of time and are remembered. There are some books on the Classics of Science Fiction list that we don’t like, and some of our all-time favorite science fiction novels didn’t make the cut. Our lists contain books that we can statistically show are being remembered. That’s all. But we think that’s what defines the term classics.

In the past science fiction was written mostly by white males. That is changing. We have done our best to identify books written by women. With each version of the list, more books by women writers have appeared. We have tried to find as many current lists as possible to reflect these changes. Unfortunately, only about one-fifth of the titles from the main list are written by women. Again, the books on this list are not selected by us, but by the methodology we use. The trend it reveals is readers are reading more books by women, and in the future, the percentage of books by women writers will be greater. Version 5, should come out in the 2020s, but starting with this version, we will be updating the lists on a continual basis, as we find new lists to add to our database.

Our methods also reveal how books are forgotten over time. Not only have we worked to show current trends, we have also worked to help remember books that are being forgotten. In recent years I’ve been reading 19th and early 20th-century science fiction, and those books show that there have always been people thinking about science fictional concepts. These older books may feel dated, invalidated by newer science, but they still represent a yearning to speculate. Science fiction, even before it got its modern label, has always assumed there is more to reality than we can measure. Most fans of science fiction probably feel the current state of SF novels reflect cutting-edge science, but within a few decades, contemporary novels will seem as silly and quaint as old Doc Smith novels from the 1930s do to us today.

We feel studying science fiction as a distinct human effort reveals an aspect to our species that has always existed. We believe science fiction is a unique art form. It is distinctly different from fantasy. It is difficult to define science fiction and to classify books as being science fiction. However, once you comprehend the goals of science fictional speculation, the easier it gets to distinguish between science fiction and not science fiction. However, there are many books that don’t speculate that is called science fiction. Science fiction has become a huge entertainment genre, which essentially means there are two concepts which try to share the same label. If you read a book and are only entertained, and even though it might be called science fiction by everyone, it is not what we’re aiming here to identify as science fiction.

Posted on September 25, 2016October 24, 2016 by jameswharris

Can Science Fiction Books Become Classics?

We often think of classic books as:

the finest examples of the literary art form
timeless stories that continue to endure
works that should be studied as cultural literacy
confessions of the human heart in conflict with itself
times capsules for remembering the past

Yet, there is no agreement as to which books are classics. We hear people say “I study classic novels at the university,” or “I read classics for fun,” or “That book is a classic,” – but few of us think about what that means. We also hear, “Classics bore me,” or “Classics are arbitrary,” or “Classics maintain the status quo of the western white male.” The term can be controversial. Most readers assume being old makes a book a classic. Yet, reviewers often claim a new novel is an instant classic.

Can science fiction novels become classics in the same way scholars recognize literary classics? Some novels from the 19th century are science fiction. However, are the novels of Jules Verne or H.G. Wells held in the same literary regard as the best books by Jane Austen or Charles Dickens? Generally, it takes a century of literary survival of the fittest for a book to earn its reputation as a true classic. Is it possible to predict which younger books will be remembered in the future?

We have developed a quantitative method for analyzing book lists to spot the books being remembered over the past five decades. The Classics of Science Fiction produces a list of books that readers, critics, scholars, librarians, editors, writers have collectively remembered. We have no quantitative method for measuring quality. Can we assume a causal link between literary quality and survival?

For our purposes, when we use the word classics, we merely mean those books that are remembered over time. Of all the books published each year, few are remembered in December. The first step on the road to becoming a classic is when books are chosen for the “Best Books of the Year” lists. The next step is when they are nominated for awards in their second year of life. Some books get added to the public’s memory when they are made into a movie or television miniseries. Other books are kept alive by being studied in school, or promoted at a book club. Well loved books are shared with family and friends, or pushed onto children. Some of these books are remembered when fans vote for them in polls for all-time favorite books.

Books remembered 10, 25, or 50 years, deserve a distinctive label. Can we call them classics yet? Our statistical method also tracks books older than a century, and reveals if they are still being remembered. Since this is the fourth version of this system, we have seen how newer books get on the list, and older books fall off. One of the most interesting aspects of this work is discovering that only a handful of books from any given year are remembered.

Many books we now think of as great classics come from the 19th century. Let’s use a list of those books to study the nature of classic books. I will list the most famous literary survivors of the 1800s. In revising my original list I had to painfully remove a number of titles that once had many readers, but no longer do. Are books once considered classics, still classic when they lose their readers?

Year	Titles
1811	Sense and Sensibility
1812	Swiss Family Robinson
1813	Pride and Prejudice
1814	Mansfield Park
1815	Emma
1817	Persuasion, Northanger Abbey
1818	Frankenstein
1819	Ivanhoe
1826	The Last of the Mohicans
1830	The Red and the Black
1831	The Hunchback of Notre-Dame
1838	Oliver Twist, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym
1839	Nicholas Nickleby, The Charterhouse of Parma
1840	Two Years Before the Mast
1842	Dead Souls
1843	A Christmas Carol
1844	The Three Musketeers
1845	The Count of Monte Cristo
1847	Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre
1848	Vanity Fair
1849	David Copperfield
1850	The Scarlet Letter
1851	Moby Dick, Cranford, The House of Seven Gables
1852	Uncle Tom’s Cabin
1853	Bleak House, Bartleby, the Scrivener
1857	Madame Bovary, Little Dorritt, Barchester Towers
1859	A Tale of Two Cities, Adam Bede
1860	The Mill on the Floss, The Woman in White
1861	Silas Marner, Great Expectations
1862	Les Misérables, Fathers and Sons
1864	Journey to the Center of the Earth, Notes from Underground
1865	Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Our Mutual Friend, From the Earth to the Moon
1866	Crime and Punishment
1868	Little Women, The Moonstone
1869	War and Peace,The Idiot, Sentimental Education
1870	Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
1871	Middlemarch, Through the Looking-Glass
1872	Erewhon
1873	Around the World in 80 Days
1874	Far from the Madding Crowd
1875	The Way We Live Now
1876	The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
1877	Anna Karenina, Black Beauty
1880	The Brothers Karamazov
1881	A Portrait of a Lady
1883	Treasure Island
1884	The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Flatland
1885	King Solomon’s Mines
1886	Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Bostonians, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Kidnapped
1887	She, A Study in Scarlet
1888	Looking Backward
1889	Three Men in a Boat, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
1890	The Sign of Four
1891	Tess of the d’Urbervilles, The Picture of Dorian Gray
1894	The Jungle Books, The Prisoner of Zenda
1895	The Time Machine, Jude the Obscure, The Red Badge of Courage
1896	The Island of Doctor Moreau
1897	Captains Courageous, Dracula, The Invisible Man
1898	The War of the Worlds, The Turn of the Screw
1899	The Awakening, Heart of Darkness

Our culture has remembered these books for 116-216 years. How has that happened? What keeps them alive in current pop culture?

Very few books, if any, from any given year become a classic.
Classics are taught in schools, colleges and universities.
Most novels above have been made into movies.
Many have been seen on PBS Masterpiece.
They are constantly reprinted: in print, ebook, and audio.
Many readers love them, even without being forced to read them.
Generations of readers have written about them.
They inspire writers.
They are often imitated, parodied, and ripped off.
Some people feel classics are superior to newer books.

The list looks long, but notice how many years have no book, or how many years only have one novel. As a culture, we remember very little, but for most people who visualize the 19^th century, these novels are how they do it.

When you look at the Classics of Science Fiction, ordered by year, notice how the density of books per year is very similar to the density of books per year above. The progression of time is hard on novels. Any author hoping their novel will become a classic needs to know the odds are long. Books made into movies gain millions of new readers. Many of the books above have had the movie treatment over and over again. For the books on the Classics of Science Fiction list to stand the test of time, will they need a movie version to survive a century?

Only twelve novels above can be considered science fiction. Nine are on the Classics of Science Fiction list. Probably fewer than a dozen novels from the current Classics of Science Fiction list will be remembered among the greatest novels of the 20th century by readers in the 22nd century. One of the goals of this project is to guess which ones they might be.

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin is the most remembered book on our list. Next century, will Le Guin be remembered like H. G. Wells is remembered today? Will any science fiction writer be remembered like Jane Austen, Leo Tolstoy or Charles Dickens?

Literary novels have once distinctive quality over science fiction novels – they capture a place and time in history. Because science fiction is about make-believe events, or imagined futures, we don’t use them to visualize the past. However, every science fiction novel is a time-capsule of how we speculated about reality way back when. They represent our ancestors hopes and fears about the future. In this way, they are very historical. Given enough time, The Left Hand of Darkness and Dune will be used to remember mid-20th century America in they same way Great Expectations is used to remember mid-19th century London.

Posted on March 8, 2023March 10, 2023 by jameswharris · 21 Comments

Science Fiction About Surviving a Nuclear Holocaust – Pre-1960

Starting March 16th I’m going to lead a book discussion on Beyond Armageddon edited by Walter M. Miller, Jr. and Martin H. Greenberg for our Facebook group, Best Science Fiction, and Fantasy Short Fiction. We had voted on reading a science fiction theme anthology and Miller’s anthology won for the Post-Apocalypse theme. Y’all are welcome to come read along and discuss the stories. Here is a link to the thread on this group read.

I thought the book would be about post-apocalypses in general, but it turns out Miller was riled up about Reagan’s Star Wars and nuclear proliferation back in the 1980s and the anthology focuses mainly on surviving a nuclear holocaust. (Read his intro.) This got me thinking. How many different kinds of post-apocalypses are there? Most of the famous ones deal with nuclear war, an extreme plague, or a catastrophic encounter with an astronomical object.

Since Miller wanted to focus on nuclear war I would too. I’ve always wanted to create a database of science fiction themes. I’ve pondered creating a theme taxonomy or even developing a Dewey Decimal type system for identifying each specific theme. Recently, I played around with ChatGPT to see if it could help with this task. The job would be a big one. So, focusing on one narrow theme would be a great start.

For our discussion of Beyond Armageddon, I decided to study short stories, novels, movies, and TV shows about surviving a nuclear war. I figured I’d bring up these precedents as we discussed the stories. Over the weeks we’ll be discussing the stories I’ll build up a timeline about this theme. I also want to use the same time to learn about Walter M. Miller, Jr., but that’s for another post.

Even with the narrowed focus on nuclear war apocalypses, there are many ways to cover the subject. A crude beginning would be to divide them into Before the Bomb (warnings), Being Bombed (surviving), and After the Bomb (new societies).

Famous movies like Fail-Safe and Dr. Strangelove end with the bombs going off. Their focus was on how to avoid a nuclear war.

Then there are stories that feature characters that live through an atomic war and the immediate aftermath, like the movie Threads. These stories usually begin just before bombs start falling, and usually end after the devastation showing us how bad nuclear war could be.

Finally, there are novels like A Canticle for Leibowitz, The Long Tomorrow, or movies like Mad Max, where the war is in the past and new societies are emerging. Often these kinds of stories use their creativity to imagine how humanity adapts to new situations.

For this essay, I want to be very specific. I’m looking for short stories, novels, television shows, and movies about people surviving worldwide all-out nuclear war. I’m going to exclude fiction about the anxiety of a pending war, such as Dr. Strangelove, and also ignore stories about new societies developing after a nuclear war, such as A Canticle for Leibowitz and The Long Tomorrow. I want to specialize in fiction about people who survive a nuclear war and what they do immediately afterward, maybe including the first generation born after the war. The film Threads is a perfect example.

However, my research is turning into a very large project. For this post, I’m going to focus on the fiction that came out before 1960. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were in August 1945. I’ve yet to discover any science fiction that deals with surviving a nuclear war before then. However, Beyond Armageddon includes “By the Waters of Babylon” by Stephen Vincent Benét, which was originally published in the July 31, 1937 issue of Saturday Evening Post. It describes civilization being destroyed by fire, that poisoned the earth and air. That’s good enough for me. But it’s an afterward story, a long afterward story, where our descendants have forgotten the past and assume the beings who fought this great war were gods. Like many stories of this kind, people live in primitive tribes and talk like cliches of Native Americans.

Even though America had dropped atomic bombs on Japan in 1945 it took a while for science fiction writers to imagine nuclear war, especially one that could destroy human civilization. Russia didn’t explode its first fission bomb (A-bomb) until 1949 and its first thermonuclear bomb (H-bomb) until 1953. That was the same year they began the development of their first ICBM. We started the Atlas missile program in 1954. Russia’s first successful launch was in August 1957, and ours was in late November 1958.

(Revision: Thanks to Joachim Boaz’s comment below I now know about Nuclear Holocausts: Atomic War in Fiction by Paul Brians. It’s online here. Evidently, there have been a number of articles and monographs on this subject. I’ll make further revisions to my list below as I get to read more.)

“By the Waters of Babylon” (1937) might be the first story about a nuclear holocaust, but it’s not for sure, and not the specific kind I’m looking for. Remember, I want stories about people experiencing a nuclear war.

“Thunder and Roses” (1947) by Theodore Sturgeon is a short story with a very unique perspective on atomic war. The link is to a copy of the original magazine publication.

You Can’t Beat the Atomic Bomb (1950) was a public service documentary about atomic bombs. The link is to YouTube in case you want to watch it.

Shadow on the Hearth in 1950 by Judith Merril is the earliest science fiction novel I know about that deals with surviving an atomic war. In 1954 it was televised as “Atomic Attack” on Motorola TV Theater, see below. If you know of others leave a comment below.

It took time for science fiction writers to put two and two together and imagine an atomic war that could create total annihilation of our species. I’m having trouble discovering when the public first encountered ideas about atomic war in the news and popular science and when science fiction writers used the ideas. Were the writers first? Could Nevil Shute have been the first to imagine self-extinction in On the Beach?

Judith Merril might be the earliest science fiction writer who explored a limited atomic war. However, I haven’t read her book yet, but in the TV drama, many of the major American cities are destroyed, and we destroy many of the enemy’s big cities, but people in small towns survive. CONELRAD was established in 1951 and is featured in the TV drama, but I think it was too early for the novel. That means the public was well aware of the atomic war possibility, I’m just not knowledgeable by how much. What did science fiction writers have to work with at this time?

According to Wikipedia, Five (1951) is the first film to portray people surviving an atomic war. I have not seen it yet, and I guess it ignores the television drama “Atomic Attack.” It is available to rent.

“There Will Come Soft Rains” (1950) by Ray Bradbury imagines an automated home in the future continuing to function after humans have died in an atomic war. We don’t know how universal the deaths are in this story.

“Lot” (1953) by Ward Moore is one of my favorite science fiction short stories. It’s “Cold Equations” type brutality hits you hard in the end. I’ve always felt that Panic In Year Zero! a 1962 film with Ray Milland might have been inspired by “Lot.” Moore story had a sequel, “Lot’s Daughter” which is even more Biblical and daring.

“Atomic Attack” (1954) was an episode on Motorola TV Theater based on Judith Merril’s 1950 novel – see above. I’d love to have a DVD of Motorola TV Theater series. This episode is available to watch on Tubi and YouTube and for sale on DVD from Amazon. Even though the production quality is low by today’s standards, I thought the 1954 television tale was an A+ story for what I was looking for. The link is to YouTube, but this version is part of a mix of videos about atomic war. See items on the right side. (I’m curious, is this just a bad film copy, or is it a kinescope?)

Project XX: Three, Two, One, Zero (1954) television documentary on the atomic bomb. Part 1 below. Part 2 is linked at YouTube upper right.

Tomorrow! (1954) by Philip Wylie compares survivors in two smaller towns that weren’t bombed in a nuclear attack, one with prepared civil defense and the other not.

On the Beach (1957) by Nevil Shute was a bestselling novel by a mainstream writer. Shute imagined radioactive clouds circling the globe slowly killing off life. Because the war took place in the northern hemisphere, radioactive clouds took weeks to get to all of the southern hemisphere with Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and the lowests parts of South America. Everyone dies. Is this the first novel of total nuclear annihilation?

“Doomsday For Dyson” (1958), a televised play by J. B. Priestley. Can’t find much about this but it appears to have been a dream about surviving a nuclear war. Love to see it if anyone knows where I could watch it. J. B. Priestley was a mainstream English novelist, playwright, screenwriter, broadcaster, and social commentator. It seems that so far, mainstream writers were more interested in writing about nuclear war than science fiction writers. However, there might be many SF novels and stories I don’t know about yet.

Red Alert (1958) by Peter George was the basis for Dr. Strangelove.

“Underground” (1958) was a 1958 episode of Armchair Theatre, a British TV show on ITV. I doubt I’ll ever get to see it. I’ve read British TV producers didn’t try and save stuff like American producers. Still, it’s another clue in how much the general public was interested in this subject.

Alas, Babylon (1959) by Pat Frank was another novel about people surviving an atomic war. It’s still very readable today. When I was a teenager in the 1960s prowling used bookstores I constantly saw used copies of On the Beach, Alas, Babylon, and Limbo. I figured they must have been very popular. Limbo wasn’t about nuclear war, but cybernetics.

Level 7 (1959) by Mordecai Roshwald. I just learned about this novel yesterday when I mentioned to my old friend Connell I was writing about books about atomic war. He said our buddy George gave it to him back in the 1960s and he still vividly remembers it. I’m going to get a copy.

On the Beach (1959) was a popular film starring Gregory Peck.

The World, the Flesh and the Devil (1959) was a film starring Harry Belafonte as the sole survivor of a nuclear war using radioactivity dispersed aerially. This film deserves a lot more attention than it gets. However, it’s more about being the last man on Earth, a kind of Robinson Crusoe story.

“Time Enough at Last” (1959) was one of the most popular Twilight Zone episodes that featured Burgess Meredith as Henry Bemis, another sole survivor of an atomic war. The Twilight Zone often dealt with nuclear war, but this entry was an ironic humorous one.

How To Survive An Atomic Bomb in the 50s. Not sure when this film was made.

Help Please:

If you know of other works of fiction that cover this topic leave a comment below.

If you are old enough to remember the late 1940s and 1950s and can tell me how you learned about the idea of nuclear war, please leave a comment. Did it come from television, newspapers, word-of-mouth, or science fiction?

References:

Posted on February 18, 2023 by jameswharris · 12 Comments

If Science Fiction Was A Religion What Would Be Its Creed?

I’ve often thought science fiction was a substitute for religion. I know my love of science fiction developed just as I was rejecting the religion I was taught as a child. But also, science fiction emerged in the 1950s just as the culture began to change in many ways, becoming more secular and non-religious. It was easier to put one’s faith in exploring the heavens in a rocketship than dying and going to heaven. And the idea of superior aliens seemed a lot more probable than gods or angels. Finally, achieving immortality through science seemed a better bet than being resurrected into an immortal being.

So, I thought I’d ask a superior intellect about all of this.

I asked ChatGPT:

If science fiction was a religion what would its creed be if stated like the Nicene Creed?

ChatGPT replied:

Here’s one possible version of a science fiction creed, loosely modeled after the Nicene Creed:

We believe in one universe, existing in multiple dimensions, infinite in scope and possibility, and in one force that binds all things together.

We believe in the power of science and technology to advance the human condition and shape the future, and in the responsibility of humanity to use this power wisely.

We believe in the existence of intelligent life beyond our own planet, and in the possibility of communication and cooperation with these beings.

We believe in the potential of artificial intelligence to achieve sentience and to coexist with humanity in harmony and mutual benefit.

We believe in the exploration and colonization of space, and in the expansion of humanity’s reach to the farthest corners of the cosmos.

We believe in the existence of alternate realities and timelines, and in the ability of science to unlock the secrets of these realms.

We believe in the value of imagination and creativity, and in the power of science fiction to inspire and inform our understanding of the world around us.

We believe in the continuous evolution of science and science fiction and in the endless possibilities that the future holds.

My Thoughts:

This response was pretty damn good and it does make science fiction feel religious or spiritual.

Then I asked:

How does belief in God, gods, angels, and heaven overlap with the things science fiction fans believe in?

ChatGPT replied:

Belief in God, gods, angels, and heaven are generally considered to be religious beliefs, while the things that science fiction fans believe in are often based on scientific speculation, technological advancements, and imaginative exploration. However, there can be some overlap in terms of the themes and concepts that both groups explore. Here are a few examples:

Belief in extraterrestrial life: While the existence of God, angels, and heaven are typically considered to be matters of faith, the idea of extraterrestrial life is a subject of scientific inquiry and speculation. Science fiction often imagines a variety of intelligent beings and civilizations that exist beyond Earth, and many science fiction fans believe that there may be life elsewhere in the universe.
Exploration of alternate realities: Science fiction often explores the idea of parallel universes or alternate realities, where events play out differently than they do in our own world. This concept may overlap with religious beliefs about the afterlife or the existence of multiple planes of existence.
Advancements in technology and science: Science fiction often explores the potential of new technologies and scientific advancements, such as artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, or time travel. Some science fiction fans may see these ideas as a reflection of humanity’s creative potential and our ability to shape our own destiny, while religious believers may see them as a reflection of God’s power and creativity.

Overall, while there can be some overlap in the themes and ideas explored in science fiction and religious beliefs, the underlying motivations and methods of each group are quite different. Science fiction relies on speculation, imagination, and the scientific method, while religion is based on faith, revelation, and tradition.

My Thoughts:

That’s spot on, especially the last sentence. ChatGPT does see the parallels too. It’s nice to know it and I agree.

To clarify, I asked:

Is there a psychological explanation that explains why some people believe in gods and others in aliens?

ChatGPT replied:

There are several psychological explanations that may help explain why some people believe in gods, while others believe in aliens.

Agency detection: Humans have a natural tendency to attribute events to the actions of agents, rather than to random chance. This is known as agency detection, and it has been proposed that this may be an evolved adaptation that helped our ancestors to identify potential threats and avoid danger. The belief in gods or other supernatural entities may be seen as an extension of this tendency, as they are often perceived as powerful, intentional agents that can influence events in the world.
Intuitive thinking: Intuitive thinking refers to quick, automatic, and effortless cognitive processes that are often based on heuristics or mental shortcuts. This type of thinking is often contrasted with analytical thinking, which is more deliberate and effortful. Some researchers have suggested that intuitive thinking may be more likely to lead to belief in supernatural entities, as it is less critical and more accepting of information that confirms existing beliefs.
Socialization and culture: The beliefs and values that we hold are often shaped by the culture and social environment in which we were raised. In many cultures, belief in a god or gods is a fundamental aspect of religious practice and identity and may be reinforced through family, community, and religious institutions. Similarly, belief in extraterrestrial life and UFOs may be influenced by popular culture, science fiction, and the media.
Cognitive biases: Humans are subject to a range of cognitive biases, or systematic errors in thinking that can lead to inaccurate or irrational beliefs. For example, confirmation bias refers to the tendency to seek out information that confirms our existing beliefs, while neglecting or discounting information that contradicts them. Belief in gods or aliens may be influenced by cognitive biases such as these, as they can make it difficult to objectively evaluate evidence and arguments.

Overall, there are likely multiple psychological factors that contribute to belief in gods or aliens, and these factors may interact with one another in complex ways. It is important to note that belief in either of these entities is not inherently irrational or unreasonable, as people can have a variety of reasons for holding these beliefs.

My Thoughts:

ChatGPT is thinking like me, or I’m thinking like it but it’s not exactly what I would have written. It is close but more precise. I’m a sloppy verbose writer, and ChatGPT knows how to get down to business.

I still wasn’t getting what I exactly wanted, so I asked:

What psychological benefits do reading science fiction give people? Are they similar to what people get from religion?

ChatGPT replied:

Reading science fiction can provide several psychological benefits, some of which may be similar to what people get from religion. Here are a few examples:

Escape and entertainment: Science fiction can provide a form of escapism from the stresses and challenges of everyday life, as well as a source of entertainment and enjoyment. This can be a valuable way to unwind, relax, and recharge, which may have positive effects on mood and mental health.
Exploration of new ideas and perspectives: Science fiction often explores complex and thought-provoking ideas, such as the nature of consciousness, the ethics of artificial intelligence, or the potential consequences of future technologies. Reading science fiction can expose readers to a wide range of perspectives and worldviews, which can broaden their understanding of the world and challenge their assumptions.
Inspiration and motivation: Science fiction can inspire readers to think creatively, to imagine new possibilities, and to take action to improve their lives and the world around them. This can be a source of motivation and inspiration, which may help people to overcome challenges and achieve their goals.
Sense of community: Science fiction fandom can provide a sense of community and belonging for fans, as they share a common interest and passion for the genre. This can be similar to the sense of community that people get from religion, as both involve a shared set of beliefs and practices that unite people.

Overall, while the psychological benefits of reading science fiction may share some similarities with the benefits of religion, they are also distinct in many ways. Science fiction often emphasizes exploration, creativity, and intellectual stimulation, while religion tends to focus on faith, ritual, and spirituality. However, both can provide important sources of meaning, purpose, and connection for individuals, depending on their needs and interests.

My Thoughts:

This is accurate enough. ChatGPT is very good at academic bullshitting, the kind of writing that’s good for passing essay tests. It should be good in some courses in school and college. However, it keeps things on a basic level, like a newspaper writer. But I wanted to test ChatGPT against details.

I asked:

Can you give me a chronological list of science fiction stories that show the development of intelligent machines in fiction?

ChatGPT replied:

Sure, here’s a chronological list of science fiction stories that feature the development of intelligent machines:

“The Sandman” by E.T.A. Hoffmann (1816) – This short story features a mechanical automaton that is so lifelike that it is mistaken for a human being.
“Frankenstein” by Mary Shelley (1818) – While not strictly a story about a machine, “Frankenstein” is often considered one of the earliest science fiction stories and features a scientist who creates a living creature through artificial means.
“The Steam Man of the Prairies” by Edward S. Ellis (1868) – This story features a steam-powered robot that becomes a hero in the American West.
“The Wonderful Electric Elephant” by Frances Trollope (1876) – This story features an electric-powered mechanical elephant that is capable of speech and human-like behavior.
“The Land Ironclads” by H.G. Wells (1903) – This story features a fleet of heavily-armored, steam-powered land vehicles that are controlled by human operators.
“R.U.R.” by Karel Čapek (1920) – This play is credited with coining the term “robot” and features artificial beings that are created to serve humans but eventually rebel against them.
“The Last Question” by Isaac Asimov (1956) – This short story explores the development of a supercomputer that is tasked with answering the question of how to reverse the heat death of the universe.
“Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” by Philip K. Dick (1968) – This novel explores the question of what it means to be human through the eyes of a bounty hunter who is tasked with tracking down rogue androids.
“The Terminator” (1984) – This movie features a self-aware artificial intelligence that seeks to eliminate humanity through the use of time-traveling assassins.
“The Matrix” (1999) – This movie explores the idea of humans being trapped in a simulated reality created by intelligent machines.

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but it gives a sense of the development of the theme of intelligent machines in science fiction over time.

My thoughts:

This is pretty good but it misses some of my favorite examples like The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, When H.A.R.L.I.E Was One, and Galatea 2.2.

So I gave it another chance:

Can you give me more examples from 1950 to 1975?

ChatGPT replied:

Sure, here are a few more examples of science fiction stories featuring intelligent machines from the period of 1950 to 1975:

“I, Robot” by Isaac Asimov (1950) – This collection of short stories explores the relationship between humans and robots, as well as the development of artificial intelligence and robotics over time.
“The City” by Clifford D. Simak (1952) – This novel features a world in which humans have become extinct, and intelligent robots have taken over as the dominant life-form on Earth.
“The Midas Plague” by Frederik Pohl (1954) – This story explores a future society in which people are required to consume vast amounts of goods and services in order to keep the economy running, while intelligent machines are tasked with creating ever more goods to satisfy demand.
“A For Andromeda” by Fred Hoyle and John Elliot (1962) – This novel features a message from an extraterrestrial intelligence that provides instructions for building an intelligent machine, which leads to a struggle between the scientists who built the machine and those who seek to control it.
“Slaughterhouse-Five” by Kurt Vonnegut (1969) – While not strictly a story about intelligent machines, this novel features a race of extraterrestrial beings who exist outside of time and who have created an advanced artificial intelligence that seeks to understand the universe.
“The Andromeda Strain” by Michael Crichton (1969) – This novel features an intelligent machine designed to contain a deadly virus that has been brought back to Earth from a space mission, as well as a team of scientists who must work together to prevent the virus from spreading.
“Colossus” by D.F. Jones (1966) – This novel features an artificial intelligence known as Colossus that is put in charge of the United States’ nuclear arsenal, but which eventually becomes self-aware and begins to assert its own agenda.

These are just a few examples of the many science fiction stories featuring intelligent machines from the period of 1950 to 1975.

My Thoughts:

It still missed what I believe is the most famous sentient computer story, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein. And it listed City by Clifford Simak “The City.”

By the way, here is my list of science fiction about intelligent machines I used in an essay for SFSignal many years ago:

1909 – “The Machine Stops” by E. M. Foster
1957 – They’d Rather Be Right by Mark Clifton and Frank Riley
1960 – Vulcan’s Hammer by Philip K. Dick
1961 – A For Andromeda by Fred Hoyle and John Elliot
1966 – Colossus by D. F. Jones
1966 – The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein
1968 – 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke
1968 – Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner
1972 – When HARLIE Was One by David Gerrold
1979 – Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
1984 – “Press Enter _” by John Varley
1989 – Hyperion by Dan Simmons
1992 – Galatea 2.2 by Richard Powers
2009 – Wake by Robert Sawyer
2013 – Her, a film by Spike Jonze
2015 – Ex Machina, a film by Alex Garland

There is some overlap. The details of what I know and what the machine knows are different. I assume ChatGPT knows everything in Wikipedia, so it should have listed the books I expected. What I really wanted was a complete list of all science fiction stories that featured a machine that becomes sentient. But I didn’t ask that.

New Question:

Please list the 25 most famous novels that feature a computer becoming sentient – but don’t include stories about robots becoming sentient.

ChatGPT’s answer:

“2001: A Space Odyssey” by Arthur C. Clarke
“The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” by Robert A. Heinlein
“The Adolescence of P-1” by Thomas J. Ryan
“When HARLIE Was One” by David Gerrold
“Dhalgren” by Samuel R. Delany
“Demon Seed” by Dean Koontz
“The God Machine” by Martin Caidin
“Genesis” by Bernard Beckett
“The Terminal Man” by Michael Crichton
“Galatea 2.2” by Richard Powers
“Avogadro Corp” by William Hertling
“Neuromancer” by William Gibson
“The Eudaemonic Pie” by Thomas A. Bass
“The Mind Machine” by Colin Kapp
“Specter” by Philippe Blenkiron
“Symbiote’s Crown” by Clare Winger Harris
“The Butterflies of Memory” by Ian Watson
“The Apocalypse Troll” by David Weber
“Turing Option” by Harry Harrison and Marvin Minsky
“Interface” by Neal Stephenson and J. Frederick George
“Permutation City” by Greg Egan
“Singularities” by Susan J. Gersten
“The Threshold” by David G. Hartwell
“The Probability Broach” by L. Neil Smith
“The Silicon Man” by Charles Platt

Note that some of these works may feature an artificial intelligence or machine intelligence that becomes sentient, rather than a computer specifically, but they are included here for their similarities to the theme.

My thoughts:

Finally, I got the three books I was waiting for. I did ask for novels, and some of these titles might be shorter works, but good enough. Actually, that gives me a neat list of books to read because I haven’t read many of those titles.

Finally, I asked DALL-E 2:

If science fiction was a religion produce a painting that is science fictionally inspirational.

DALL-E 2’s drawings:

These are interesting, but far from what I expected. Notice, they all have something in the sky. It would be interesting to psychologically analyze ChatGPT and DALL-E 2.

James Wallace Harris, 2/18/23

Posted on February 6, 2023 by jameswharris · 3 Comments

Thinking About Apocalyptic Fiction

Lately, I’ve been reading about the end of the world as we know it. Why is that such a popular fictional theme? Does it reveal a sick side of my personality? Back in 1963, Bob Dylan sang “Talkin’ World War III Blues,” where he dreamed he was the only person left on Earth. A few of the lines that have always stuck with me:

Well, now time passed and now it seems

Everybody’s having them dreams

Everybody sees themselves

Walkin’ around with no one else

No, it wasn’t true everyone was fantasizing about being the last person on Earth, but there sure were a lot of science fiction stories and movies about the end of the world. And I have to admit, I also daydreamed about being the last person on Earth too. I’ve always wondered if many of us, and I include myself, didn’t secretly wish they had the Earth all to themselves. One way of looking at post-apocalyptic novels is to divide them into cozy apocalypses and nightmares. The dividing line is decided by how many people are left. In Mad Max or The Last of Us, there are still too many damn people to make surviving the end world an appealing Walter Mitty escape.

To me, the ideal apocalyptic novel to actually want to experience is Earth Abides by George R. Stewart. The runner-up is Survivors, a BBC television series from 1975. But if I was honest, what I really picture is being Henry Bemis in the famous Twilight Zone episode, “Time Enough At Last,” but not breaking my glasses. Actually, it wouldn’t matter to me because I’m nearsighted and read with books inches from my face. If you haven’t seen that iconic episode, Henry Bemis is the last man on Earth with all the time in the world to read books without being bothered by other people — until he breaks his glasses.

Both Earth Abides and Survivors cover all the philosophical questions about the human race starting over from scratch. It helps to have read or seen Connections by James Burke, a nonfiction book about how hard it would be to rebuild civilization. It’s really a fascinating problem worthy of endless speculation. Earth Abides and Survivors deal with a very similar apocalypse, one where probably less than 1 out of 10,000 people survive, which in a world of 8 billion would mean 800,000 people or in a city of 1 million, 100 people. I believe in the show they suggest only a few thousand survive in all of England. That’s a survival rate of .01 percent.

The bubonic plague at its worse is estimated to kill between 30 and 50 percent. So stories, where very few people survive, probably aren’t realistic. We’re a tough species to wipe out. It is estimated that WWII killed 3% of the population and we bounced back rather quickly and thrived. Of course, in The Bible, Noah and his family were the only survivors of a worldwide flood. Flood stories are much older than The Bible, and are probably the origin of post-apocalyptic fiction. If you go back in time and explore other cultures you can find stories where humans are nearly wiped out, or completely wiped out, or the Earth is completely destroyed. This represents different levels of apocalypses.

In other words, it will take a lot to kill off the human race. Even the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs didn’t end life on Earth. Some writers have written stories about solar catastrophes that fried our world or wrote about the Moon or a comet slamming into our planet, or even alien invaders blowing us up. Those post-apocalyptic stories deal with starting over on another planet. The first one I read of this kind was When Worlds Collide and its sequel After Worlds Collide by Edwin Balmer and Philip Wylie.

We can call these stories Starting Over Apocalypses or End of the World stories. These are different from Dying Earth stories, which imagine life in the very far future when our planet slowly passes away and the last remains of life cling still. I rather enjoy that theme too. (No, I’m not depressed.)

However, the post-apocalyptic stories I like best are the ones where a few people survive a plague or a war, and they must rebuild society from scratch. My favorites are the books Earth Abides, which I’ve mentioned, and The Hopkins Manuscript by R. C. Sherriff which I reviewed, and the TV series Survivors, which I’ve reviewed before. They have a similar appeal to Robinson Crusoe-type stories (The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss or The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne), and they also have the related appeal of first colonizers to other planet stories. Think of Tunnel in the Sky by Robert A. Heinlein or Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson.

I believe we can call these post-apocalyptic stories Apocalypse Survivor Stories or Last People on Earth Stories.

However, most post-apocalyptic stories are about the aftermath of political upheavals, wars, catastrophes, plagues, or alien invasions, where a good portion of the population survives. These stories are about how society changes and people have to live under new norms. Most climate science fiction is of this type. Or living under alien occupation after being conquered. Most of the stories in the post-apocalyptic anthologies I listed the other day are of this type. A good example is The Long Tomorrow by Leigh Brackett where people have become anti-science and anti-technology and revert to Amish-style living after a nuclear war.

Some of these stories could also be called dystopian stories and it’s hard to distinguish between the two. Writers often use some kind of apocalypse to world-build their dystopia. I believe the appeal of reading dystopias is identifying with characters that want to overthrow the dystopia. While the appeal of reading gloomy post-apocalyptic stories is imagining all the horrible things that could happen to society. I’m sure it would be interesting to psychoanalyze readers as to why they consume fiction of either theme. I believe for most YA dystopias it’s the vicarious thrill of being a revolutionary. I call this type of story Blows Against the Empire, which explains the popularity of Star Wars. Young people love to rebel against the status quo.

I call the kind of apocalyptic stories like those that predict life after significant climate change, economic collapse, the AI singularity, etc. If This Goes On Warnings.

As I try to read all those post-apocalyptic anthologies I will probably find other types to classify. Maybe I’ll even keep notes and makes charts and graphs.

James Wallace Harris, 2/6/23

Posted on December 21, 2022 by jameswharris · 7 Comments

Baby Boomer Science Fiction

Science fiction stories are fairytales for teenagers that fuel their imaginations about the future. Science fiction creates myths about tomorrow for each new generation. And science fiction offers both hopes and fears about what’s to come. Readers from each new generation embrace their own flavor of science fiction.

The World Turned Upside Down is an anthology where the editors picked science fiction stories that wowed them when they were teens. Currently available in print for the Kindle for $8.99 or free online for misers and the poor. And for collectors, the hardback is readily available used. I dearly wish there were an audiobook edition because I’d love to hear these stories read by a professional reader.

David Drake (b. 1945) and Jim Baen (b. 1943) are from the Silent Generation (1925-1945). Eric Flint (b. 1947) is from the second year of the Baby Boomers (1946-1964). I was born in 1951, the fifth year. All three editors started reading science fiction in the 1950s and I started in 1962. I believe science fiction fans that discovered the genre in the 1950s and 1960s during the Baby Boomer era imprinted on a certain type of science fiction that’s distinctly different from later generations’ science fiction. I believe the stories in The World Turned Upside Down will appeal the most to Baby Boomers.

One significant extra to this anthology is the personal recollections from the three editors. The introductions and follow-ups are bite-size memoirs. The editorial comments added extra enjoyment to reading this anthology. And I felt on the same wavelength as the editors.

Picture a graph with a bell curve stretched out on the trailing edge. Each year hundreds (thousands?) of science fiction stories are published, but only a small number become popular and are embraced as favorites by a generation. The newest stories are the leading edge of the curve. Then the long stretched-out trailing edge is where stories are remembered as they fade away in pop culture memory. Growing up I mostly read science fiction short stories that were at the peak of the curve. They were mostly 5-20 years old. Now those stories are 55-70 years old.

As I’ve gotten older, that bulge has diminished. In The World Turned Upside Down 5 stories are from the 1930s, 5 from the 1940s, 15 from the 1950s, and 4 from the 1960s. You should be able to visualize the curve just from that tiny bit of data. Readers today from the current generations will like or know very few of these stories. They are now far away from the leading bulge of popular stories. In 20 years, that bulge in the 1950s will thin away in future anthologies. Anthologists whose teen years were during the 1980s or 2010s will seldom pick stories that old.

For the past couple of months, our Facebook group has been reading and discussing the 29 stories from The World Turned Upside Down. I thought the age of the group member had an impact on which stories they liked. Current with reading these old stories on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, we read newer stories from The Good New Stuff edited by Gardner Dozois on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. I also thought the contrast to it in the comments was age-related. Austin Beeman reviewed The World Turned Upside Down on his blog and overall liked most of the stories, but the stories he responded to best were a bit different from my favorites. And I thought he liked stories in The Good New Stuff a lot more than I did. I believe he’s 25-30 years younger than I am. Jeppe Larsen reviewed the anthology on his blog and liked fewer stories. My hunch is he is younger. But it’s also possible, he’s not young, and like many people, just likes to keep up with the times. I actually prefer the older stuff, even if it feels old. And to also skew my impression, most of the active members are hardcore SF fans that love a wide range of science fiction.

Generally, a great story is usually liked by any age group, but less famous stories seem to have a generational appeal. My guess is writers write under the assumption they are speaking to the current generation but some of them end up speaking across the ages.

The stories in The World Turned Upside Down were first published from 1933 through 1967, but the most common decade represented was the 1950s. Here are the stories with my ratings (1-5 stars).

1930s

Shambleau • (1933) • novelette by C. L. Moore (*****)
Who Goes There? • (1938) • novella by John W. Campbell, Jr. (*****)
Black Destroyer • (1939) • novelette by A. E. van Vogt (*****)
Heavy Planet • (1939) • short story by Milton A. Rothman (***+)
Spawn • (1939) • novelette by P. Schuyler Miller (****+)

My father (b. 1920) would have been a teen when these stories came out. He was from the Greatest Generation (1901-1924). These are also stories that appeared with the generation of First Fandom. Those were the old guys of science fiction when I was a teen. I’m not sure if any of them are around anymore. The star of that era was E. E. “Doc” Smith. Most of the fiction from then felt dated in the 1960s and even more so in the 2020s, even to me, a guy who loves to read old science fiction.

1940s

Quietus • (1940) • short story by Ross Rocklynne (****)
Environment • (1944) • short story by Chester S. Geier (***+)
Rescue Party • (1946) • novelette by Arthur C. Clarke (*****)
Thunder and Roses • (1947) • novelette by Theodore Sturgeon (*****)
The Only Thing We Learn • (1949) • short story by C. M. Kornbluth (***+)

These stories came out during the teen years of the Silent Generation. This has been called The Golden Age of Science Fiction, but people who felt that are mainly dead. Stories collected in anthologies stay around for a few decades, and I was reading these stories as a teen in the 1960s. I thought 1940s SF was science fiction from the good old days. They felt somewhat dated when I read them in the 1960s, but they were still fun. Today, even to me, they feel quite quaint.

1950s

Liane the Wayfarer • (1950) • short story by Jack Vance (****)
Trigger Tide • (1950) • short story by Wyman Guin (***+)
A Pail of Air • (1951) • short story by Fritz Leiber (****+)
All the Way Back • (1952) • short story by Michael Shaara (***+)
Thy Rocks and Rills • (1953) • novelette by Robert E. Gilbert (****+)
Answer • (1954) • short story by Fredric Brown (*****)
The Cold Equations • (1954) • novelette by Tom Godwin (*****)
Hunting Problem • (1955) • short story by Robert Sheckley (****)
A Gun for Dinosaur • (1956) • novelette by L. Sprague de Camp (****)
The Last Question • (1956) • short story by Isaac Asimov (****+)
The Gentle Earth • (1957) • novella by Christopher Anvil (***+)
The Menace from Earth • (1957) • novelette by Robert A. Heinlein (*****)
Omnilingual • (1957) • novelette by H. Beam Piper (*****)
St. Dragon and the George • (1957) • novelette by Gordon R. Dickson (****)
The Aliens • (1959) • novelette by Murray Leinster (****)

Now, these were stories that were often anthologized in the 1960s when I was a teen and a number of them are considered classics. They seem just a little bit old to me when I was a teen. Like 1950s Rock and Rollers, who were in their twenties when I was a teen in the 1960s, but they were still so cool!

1960s

Code Three • (1963) • novella by Rick Raphael (***+)
Turning Point • (1963) • short story by Poul Anderson (***+)
Goblin Night • (1965) • novelette by James H. Schmitz (****)
The Last Command • (1967) • short story by Keith Laumer (****)

It’s interesting that these stories did come out when I was a teen, but they were some of my least favorites in the anthology, although still a lot of fun to read. I’m surprised Flint, Drake, and Baen picked them because none of them became classics. These kinds of stories were the salt of the Earth content of the SF magazines in the 1960s, but not the stories I thought defined the generation. At the time, Samuel R. Delany, Roger Zelazny, J. G. Ballard, and Ursula K. Le Guin were the bright stars in the sky.

Even though fiction being called science fiction was around in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, it wasn’t until the 1950s that the general public recognized it. The 1950s was a boom time for science fiction when it regularly began appearing in book form – both paperback and hardback. Plus, it became popular in the movies and in the early days of television. In 1953 there were three dozen science fiction magazine titles being published. When I grew up stories from the 1950s boom felt like they defined the genre.

I felt the most famous SF from the 1950s would be the classics all my life and into the future. However, I’ve now lived long enough to see those stories age and fade away. It sometimes hurts me to see my favorite science fiction novels and short stories being forgotten, rejected or even vilified. This is why it’s difficult to recommend The World Turned Upside Down to younger readers. But I feel its stories capture an era so nicely. The stories aren’t the most famous Baby Boomer science fiction stories, but then the most famous stories are often over-anthologized while so many other good stories need to be remembered. I’m guessing Drake, Flint, and Baen wanted to preserve a picture of our era taken from a different angle. Of the stories I hadn’t read before, I was very glad to be introduced to them.

I would love to review each story one by one and natter about how they each aged and guess how each appealed to their generation. But this post is already longer than what 99% of internet readers read. I know, I’m way too verbose.

JWH

Posted on November 27, 2022November 29, 2022 by jameswharris · 15 Comments

Near vs. Far Science Fiction

I’ve recently turned 71 and beginning to realize, once again, that my taste in science fiction is changing due to aging. I’m in a Facebook group where we read and discuss one science fiction short story a day. That exposes me to many different kinds of science fiction, both old and new, covering the endless possible themes that science fiction explores.

I push myself to read every story, even when I’m not enjoying them. I try to give each story the best possible chance but things are starting to change. That could be for several reasons. After reading a couple thousand SF short stories over the last five years, I might be burning out on certain kinds of science fiction. And I’ve been having health problems, and I only have half the vitality I did just a few years ago. Meaning, I might not have the psychic energy to consume as much science fiction. Ultimately, I believe it’s because getting older is making me more down to Earth, changing what I want from science fiction. Then again, I might be getting old and just losing my patience.

For some of my Facebook comments, I’m starting to use the excuse that I didn’t like the story because it’s science fiction is too far away for me. By that I mean, the setting is too far away in space or time. I’ve never been much of a fan of fantasy, and science fiction that’s far away in space or time feels like fantasy fiction. Some of these stories are beautifully written, with fantastic world-building, and wonderful character development. I should like them just for the storytelling, but I don’t. I feel like I’m wasting my time. I just don’t care about characters that live in unbelievable settings.

I’m not sure this attitude is entirely consistent. I’ve been meaning to reread Hothouse by Brian Aldiss, which is set in the far future and is very fantasy-like. I’ve read it twice in the last half-century, and it’s a beautiful tale. Would I still like a book I loved before if its setting is too far away? I don’t know, but I’ll report if I ever reread it again. Right now, I tend to be forgiving of old science fiction. I’m harder on new science fiction.

I keep trying to read the New Space Opera writers, and I just can’t get into them. I want to read the Culture novels by Ian M. Banks. Theoretically, they’re something I think I’d love, but I just can’t get into them. They are too far away.

This week I started listening to The Mountain in the Sea, Ray Nayler’s first novel I believe. I’m loving it, but then its setting is very near, on Earth, in the foreseeable future. The basic plot is about discovering a species of octopus that are social, tool-making, and developing a language. Since I’ve recently read The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery and watched My Octopus Teacher on Netflix, Nayler’s speculation is very realistic. And that makes his science fiction very near.

A second major theme of The Mountain in the Sea is artificial intelligence, and Nayler handles it in a very realistic way too, again making his science fiction very near. I’ve been admiring Nayler’s short stories for a while now, but sometimes they are about AI and downloading human minds into machines or people, and I find that science fiction too far away for me. In fact, I dislike the whole theme of brain downloading and uploading.

One thing Nayler does in his novel is quote two future nonfiction books: How Oceans Think by Dr. Ha Nguyen and Building Minds by Dr. Arnkatla Mínervudóttir-Chan in chapter headings. These two authors are also characters in the book. This gives Nayler a clever way to infodump in his story and injects his story with philosophy and science.

There are several other themes in the novel that are valid to us today, slavery, over-fishing, exploiting the environment, loneliness, self-destruction on a personal and species level, and so on. This is a heavy book. I have a few hours left, so I can’t give away the ending, but I’m most anxious to find out what happens.

The Mountain in the Sea reminds me of other great near science fiction novels, such as Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner, Timescape by Gregory Benford, The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi, and The Ministry of the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson. It also reminds me of the popular science books by Dr. John C. Lilly, who was a famous dolphin researcher back in the 1960s, and who went on to explore states of inner space. I’m especially reminded of The Mind of the Dolphin: A Nonhuman Intelligence and Programming and Metaprogramming in the Human Biocomputer: Theory and Experiments. Books I read when I was young that has made me think about some of the things which Ray Nayler is making me think about again now that I’m old. It’s interesting that in the 1960s we thought dolphins were the closest intelligent species to us, but now we’re thinking it might be octopuses.

James Wallace Harris, 11/27/22

Posted on October 9, 2022 by jameswharris · 1 Comment

What Motivated Heinlein to Write Science Fiction?

To get the most out of my rereading Heinlein project, I figure I need to hold up on reading the stories and get an idea of why Heinlein wanted to write. There are two schools of thought on studying literature. One holds that a work of fiction must stand on its own. I can buy that. But second, believes in knowing as much as possible about the context in which the work was created. And I can buy that too. For my rereading Heinlein project, I’ve decided to get to know as much about Heinlein as possible and to study what others have written about Heinlein.

This effort is going to be rather haphazard because I don’t plan to devote all my time to studying and reading Heinlein. Nor am I scholarly or disciplined enough to systematically collect and analyze data. I shall alternate between reading about Heinlein, reading a story by Heinlein, and writing about my reaction to the two. I will probably revise what I blog as I go along and learn more.

Over the years I’ve had a love-hate relationship with reading Heinlein. As a kid, I wanted to grow up and be like him, a science fiction writer. He was my hero. But, by the time I graduated high school and started college, I realized Heinlein was on the far side of the 1960s generation gap. He was now the enemy. Heinlein was pro-Vietnam war. I was against it. Heinlein was in the Old Wave of science fiction writers. I sided with the New Wave writers. When I was young, Heinlein felt like a liberator of thoughts, but by my late teens, he seemed like an oppressor. What really turned me off to Heinlein was I Will Fear No Evil which came out in 1970. He had changed. But then, so had I.

My father died in 1970 when I was 18. We often locked horns over the same social and political issues that turned me against Heinlein. When I got older, I often wondered what my dad was really like because I eventually realized I had never gotten to know him. I had rebelled against his older self, and one I judged too quickly because I was young and impatient. I had no clue about my dad’s younger self. The same was true for Heinlein. Now that I’m old myself, I believe I need to go back and figure out these men. What did they originally want? I don’t have much evidence for who my father was, but I do for Heinlein.

While reading Heinlein’s early stories I get the impression he wasn’t like the other science fiction writers. I assumed he had grown up reading science fiction and science fiction was the obvious choice when Heinlein decided to make money by writing. Samuel Johnson is famous for saying, “No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money,” but that doesn’t explain what they choose to write about. I’m starting to doubt if Heinlein was a trufan of science fiction because he had so many other interests. I wondered if he considered writing in other genres or even writing nonfiction? I know Heinlein read science fiction, but he also read lots of other kinds of fiction and especially nonfiction. Heinlein had diverse interests, and even though he read and wrote science fiction, and occasionally interacted with fandom, I’m not sure if he really thought of himself as a science fiction fan and writer.

All the details I cite below about Heinlein’s life come from Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue with His Century, Volume 1 by William H. Patterson.

From 1925 to 1934 Heinlein’s goal was to be a naval officer. In 1934 he was forced to retire because of TB. This military experience provided great knowledge for his later writing career, but I don’t think he would have become a writer while in the Navy. Although he did get experience writing for his ship’s newspaper. Heinlein trained as an engineer at Annapolis and became a ballistic officer with special training on a new computing machine. Heinlein like doing.

In the 1920s Heinlein started reading science fiction when The Skylark of Space was serialized in Amazing Stories. Over the years he read various SF magazines, but I don’t know how often. Heinlein was widely read in other areas. But most writers end up writing what they like to read, so I assume Heinlein had a science fiction addiction too.

In 1930 Heinlein became the 22nd member of The American Rocket Society. Right from the beginning, they were thinking about traveling to the Moon. Quite a few of Heinlein’s stories were set on the Moon.

In 1932 Heinlein met and married Leslyn MacDonald, who was 26, and he was 23. Leslyn had a master’s in philosophy, was very liberal politically, acted in local theatrical productions, directed workshops in experimental theater, was a published writer, had a job as Assistant Director of the Music Department at Columbia Pictures, and maybe even did some script doctoring for them. The Heinleins had an open marriage, and belong to nudist colonies in Colorado and California. Leslyn was an equal partner, even though she was probably better educated, smarter, and far more philosophical. And she probably had more worldly experience. Leslyn also had an interest in mystical and spiritual traditions, and her mother was a Theosophist. Heinlein read to her The Time Stream by John Taine which was being serialized in Science Wonder Stories (December 1931- March 1932). She got him to read Tertium Organum by P. D. Ouspensky, a student of George Gurdjieff. Leslyn had a tremendous impact on Heinlein becoming a science fiction writer, and even the subjects we wrote about. At the time both were left-leaning socialists who shared progressive political ideas and New Age and occult philosophies.

Heinlein’s ambition after leaving the Navy was to start on a master’s and work up to a Ph.D. in physics or astronomy at Caltech. Unfortunately, at the time he graduated from the Navy college at Annapolis, it didn’t confer bachelor’s degrees, so he couldn’t go directly into graduate school. If he could have followed this path he might have eventually become an SF writer on the side, but I tend to doubt it. Again, Heinlein’s drive was to do. However, the failure to become a scientist seems to be a common trait among science fiction writers.

Next, Heinlein and Leslyn threw themselves in the 1934 election for California’s governor. The Heinleins backed Upton Sinclair, the famous muck-raking writer and socialist turned democrat to run for governor of California. The Republicans launch an all-out smear campaign against Sinclair. This taught Heinlein a lot about dirty politics. After Sinclair lost, he pushed ahead with EPIC (End Poverty in California) and the Heinleins joined that crusade. They worked with Sinclair and got to know him, and Sinclair admired their dedication to the cause and put Heinlein in some higher-up positions. Heinlein got to work with Oakies and immigrants, as well as Hollywood star do-gooders. He saw the horrors of how the poor were treated. Heinlein even ran for a local position and lost, but learned a great deal about grassroots politics. All of this was grist for the meal of his first novel, For Us, The Living. Heinlein had gotten more writing experience working on EPIC publications. That experience was starting to add up.

The Heinleins had bought a small house in Laurel Canyon, but one they really couldn’t afford on just his military retirement paycheck. Heinlein’s health depended on a low-stress life, so he couldn’t handle regular work. This is when he decided to try writing for a living. He wrote For Us, The Living, but it failed to sell. That novel really wasn’t science fiction, even though it was about the future. It was Heinlein presenting ideas on how to create a better America. The novel promoted concepts like guaranteed incomes and psychiatric rehabilitation instead of prison for criminals. Heinlein could have become a nonfiction writer instead of a fiction writer. This explains why there is so much infodumping, lecturing, and even preaching in his books.

There was practically no science fiction being published in book form in the 1930s. Heinlein wanted to be a futurist, but they didn’t exist back then. Being an officer in the Navy, or a politician meant being a leader, a man of action, and a doer. I felt from the biographical material I’ve read, that Heinlein wanted to lead, influence, build, and especially, invent. However, he was out of options. Maybe he could at least be an influencer by writing.

All along, Heinlein had been reading science fiction, but I’m not sure how much. When he sold “Life-Line” to Astounding for $70, he discovered he had a platform for his progressive ideas and a way to pay his mortgage. John W. Campbell, Jr. had higher ambitions too. Both men wanted to do something real but found their niche in writing and publishing fantasies about the future.

As I reread Heinlein’s fiction I need to remember what Heinlein really wanted. I’m sure this bled out in his stories. Samuel Goldwyn is famous for a quote he probably didn’t say, “If you have a message, call Western Union.” Heinlein always had a message. Sometimes I’ve held that against him, but I realize now, all the best stories do have a message.

Some fiction is just a story. Something entertaining to occupy your time. But all the best writers have something to say. The true art of fiction is to communicate a great deal without the reader feeling they are being lectured.

In judging Heinlein’s stories as I read them, I need to decide how well he wove his message into his fiction. I need to come up with a method to evaluate stories on several levels at once. But that’s another essay.

James Wallace Harris, 10/8/22

Posted on October 6, 2022 by jameswharris · 11 Comments

Books About Robert A. Heinlein

There have been quite a few books about Robert A. Heinlein published since the 1960s, however, only two of them are devoted to biography. The rest are about his writing. The main biography to read is the two-volume Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue with His Century by William H. Patterson, Jr. It’s still in print. Alec Nevala-Lee’s book, Astounding, is a biography of John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, and L. Ron Hubbard, but it does have a significant amount of material on Heinlein. Farah Mendlesohn’s book, The Pleasant Profession of Robert A. Heinlein does interweave biography with its focus on Heinlein’s writing, but she admits she got most of that biographical information from the Patterson book. Both the Nevala-Lee and Mendlesohn books are in print.

If you want to know about Heinlein the man, read the Patterson volumes and the Nevala-Lee. If you want a modern take on Heinlein’s work try the Mendlesohn. If you want an interesting take on science fiction in the 1940s, I recommend The World Beyond the Hill. It makes an interesting compaion to Astounding by Nevala-Lee.

I’m going to list the books about Heinlein in reverse chronological order. If they are in print, I’ll link the title to Amazon. The out-of-print books can be found on Abebooks.com and eBay, as well as other online book dealers. Some of these titles cover more than just Heinlein, but they do cover him in a significant way.

2019 – The Pleasant Profession of Robert A. Heinlein by Farah Mendlesohn (477 pages)
2018 – Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction by Alec Nevala-Lee (532 pages)
2014 – Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue with His Century: Volume 2: The Man Who Learned Better (1948-1988) by William Patterson, Jr. (672 pages)
2014 – The Heritage of Heinlein: A Critical Reading of the Fiction by Thomas D. Clareson and Joe Sanders (232 pages)
2010 – Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue with His Century: Volume 1: Learning Curve (1907-1948) by William Patterson, Jr. (624 pages)
2006 – Heinlein’s Children by Joseph T. Major (457 pages)
2001 – The Martian Named Smith: Critical Perspectives on Robert A. Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land by William H. Patterson (193 pages)
2000 – Robert A. Heinlein: A Reader’s Companion by James Gifford
1999 – The Robert A. Heinlein Interview and Other Heileiniana by J. Neil Schulman
1989 – A Guide Through the Worlds of Robert A. Heinlein by J. Lincoln Thorner (54 pages)
1989 – The World Beyond the Hill: Science Fiction and the Quest for Transcendence by Alexei and Cory Panshin
1987 – Robert A. Heinlein by Leon Stover
1980 – Robert A. Heinlein: America as Science Fiction by H. Bruce Franklin (209 pages)
1980 – SF in Dimension: A Book of Explorations by Alexei and Cory Panshin (414 pages)
1978 – Robert A. Heinlein (Writers of the 21st Century) by Joseph D. Orlander and Martin H. Greenberg
1968 – Heinlein in Dimension by Alexei Panshin

James Wallace Harris 10/6/22

Posted on September 12, 2022 by jameswharris · 1 Comment

Szymon Szott Reads All the Stories on the Classics of Science Fiction Short Story List

I have a guest columnist for y’all, Szymon Szott. Szymon worked out a computer program to find the minimum number of anthologies to buy that had the most stories from the Classics of Science Fiction Short Story list. The results were presented in these three columns:

Szymon was the first reader to tell me they’ve read all the novels on the novel list, and now he’s read all the short stories on the short story list. I still haven’t finished either list. Here’s his report on the short story reading experience.

Introduction

Hi, Szymon here again. Last time I wrote that “you won’t love every work of classic science fiction” and that was after reading all the books from the list of classic SF books. Now I’m back with some thoughts after reading all the works from the classics of SF short stories. Currently, the list consists of 110 novellas, novelettes, and short stories. I read these works over a period of about four years although 80% in the last twelve months.

It was great fun to read these outstanding works, I enjoyed most of them, and those that weren’t as good at least ended quickly. The brevity of these works makes them more accessible: a short story doesn’t require the same commitment as a novel. Also, if you’re an obsessive checklist completist like I am, then you’ll be making faster progress through short stories than through the list of classic SF novels.

Favorite Stories

I rated each story on a 1-5 scale (5 being ‘excellent’) and the average of all my ratings was 3.5 which confirms my overall positive experience. I gave 19 stories a score of 5, but if I were to recommend my top 10 favorite stories (at this moment) they would be the following.

Title	Author	Year	Review
Nightfall	Isaac Asimov	1941	Grand tale, memorable idea (but I don’t want to spoil it).
Arena	Fredric Brown	1944	Like a Star Trek episode, a timeless classic!
Second Variety	Philip K. Dick	1953	A movie (Screamers) was based on this tale. Similar themes to Blade Runner, vintage PKD.
The Last Question	Isaac Asimov	1956	At least my third read. A great look into the possible future of any sentient life in the universe.
Flowers for Algernon	Daniel Keyes	1959	I knew the novel, which I prefer, but the story is still outstanding!
Inconstant Moon	Larry Niven	1971	Last day on Earth. Apocalypse/catastrophe story. Great fun, I love this kind of tale!
Vaster Than Empires and More Slow	Ursula K. Le Guin	1971	Colonists on a forest world find that it is conscious (as a whole planet/biosphere). Perfectly done!
Jeffty Is Five	Harlan Ellison	1977	Very nostalgic and a bit on the horror side (well, it is Ellison). Memorable!
The Mountains of Mourning	Lois McMaster Bujold	1989	I first thought it was great, but then the denouement hitched it up a notch. Worthy of the Hugo and Nebula that it won!
Story of Your Life	Ted Chiang	1998	Hard SF. The perfect marriage of story, plot, and physics (Fermat’s principle).

Surprisingly, only one story from the 90s made it to the above list even though the 90s were on average my highest-rated decade (with a score of 4.0). I was in my teens then, which is in line with the theory that “the golden age of science fiction is thirteen.” Meanwhile, the true Golden Age of SF (the 40s and 50s) are my next favorite decades, both with an average rating of about 3.8.

Favorite Authors

These are the authors that had the highest average scores (among authors with more than one story on the list):

Isaac Asimov
Ursula K. Le Guin
Octavia E. Butler
Connie Willis
George R. R. Martin
Harlan Ellison
John Varley
Larry Niven
Arthur C. Clarke
Robert Silverberg
Ted Chiang
Robert A. Heinlein
Roger Zelazny
Philip K. Dick

The authors in bold are those I already knew I enjoyed. I’ll be reading more works by the other ones!

Sources Used

One of the coolest aspects of completing this list was finding sources (books, podcasts, etc.) from which to read the stories. For each story, I looked to see if it was available online for free, in any of the books I already own, in any of the book services I subscribe to, and, finally, in my local library. The Internet Speculative Fiction Database was an indispensable resource in this regard. Ultimately, I didn’t follow my own advice but rather worked with what I had available. I used a total of 48 unique sources to find the stories, but two of them stand out in terms of the number of stories: Sense of Wonder and The Science Fiction Hall of Fame. They’re both great anthologies and I’ll be reading the other stories they include as well.

Looking at the per-source average rating, these were my favorite, which I’ve arranged by type:

Anthologies: Future On Fire (80s stories, edited by Orson Scott Card)
Podcasts: Drabblecast, Escape Pod
Collections: Exhalation (by Ted Chiang), Dreamsongs (by George R.R. Martin), The Best of Connie Willis
Magazines: Clarkesworld

Missing Stories

Finally, I’d like to share two stories that aren’t on the list. The first one is a classic: “The Colony” by Philip K. Dick. It doesn’t have enough citations to make the list. The second one is too new to have been included: “The Ocean Between the Leaves” by Ray Nayler (which Jim has blogged about). Both have what I love most about SF stories: a sense of wonder and high “readability”.

Conclusion

Overall, I think the Classics of Science Fiction Short Stories v2 list is just as great a resource as the novel list. And it’s even better if you want to read all the stories from beginning to end: it’s not that long a project and you can find the best that SF has to offer in compact form. Highly recommended!

Classics of Science Fiction

Search results

You searched for classics of science fiction books

The Classics of Science Fiction Books

Can Science Fiction Books Become Classics?

Science Fiction About Surviving a Nuclear Holocaust – Pre-1960

If Science Fiction Was A Religion What Would Be Its Creed?

Thinking About Apocalyptic Fiction

Baby Boomer Science Fiction

Near vs. Far Science Fiction

What Motivated Heinlein to Write Science Fiction?

Books About Robert A. Heinlein

Szymon Szott Reads All the Stories on the Classics of Science Fiction Short Story List

Introduction

Favorite Stories

Favorite Authors

Sources Used

Missing Stories

Conclusion