I thought it would be fun to look at old book reviews of the two books I just read and reviewed. I’ll start with The Fittest, which I liked, and then go to Ruler of the World, which I didn’t. Follow the links if you want to read my reviews.
The Fittest
Astounding Science Fiction (December 1955)
by P. Schuyler Miller
Miller made the same connections I did to The Day of the Triffids and Brain Wave. However, Miller tells too much of what happens. The scenes of when Don’s brother and sister are killed are quite shocking, and they come late in the novel. Plus, a good portion of the story is Don trying to get to his older sister’s place in England, and Don doesn’t even know if she’s still alive. This destroys a lot of the mystery in the middle of the book. The book does leave you with odd memories, and the scene where the mice are terrorizing Gloria stayed with me, too. However, it’s at the very beginning of the story.
Miller likes the book, but he’s not very specific about how much. He merely says it’s a good book. If I were reading this review in 1955, I probably would have ignored this book. In the same review, Miller covers an Ace paperback reprint of McIntosh’s One in 300. He’s more telling about this book, saying, “It’s a very good book and I’m beginning to wish I had rated it higher in the International Award poll.” That kind of tidbit makes me take notice.
How much of the story should a reviewer reveal to get a potential book buyer to buy? Miller doesn’t really explain the core threat. Animals with increased intelligence are killing humans and destroying civilization.
Authentic Science Fiction (August 1955)
This unnamed review calls The Fittest a masterpiece and recommends it most highly. Authentic was a British publication, and McIntosh was Scottish. This reviewer doesn’t give many details about the story, but does cite the core conflict.
Fantastic Universe (October 1955)
by Hans Stefan Santesson
Santesson is rather emphatic in warning readers that this is an adult novel, that it’s serious, and not like most gosh-wow science fiction. I would agree with that, especially for 1955. British science fiction from the 1950s and 1960s seemed more like literary novels than American science fiction.
However, Santesson gives no details about the story. Do book review readers need them? Or does just saying: “This is a sober portrait of men and women, stripped of the veneer of the last generations, fighting for their survival as a race.” is good enough of a recommendation?
Galaxy (November 1955)
by Floyd C. Gale
So far, Gale has written the most concise and enticing summary of the core conflict that we’ve read yet. Gale is selling the book right up front. For a review, the size of a long cover blurb, Gale does a great job. He reviews eight books in six pages; we can’t expect too many details.
Science Fiction Stories (January 1956)
by Damon Knight
Damon Knight, in both fanzines, genzines, and books, was notorious for slicing and dicing books in his reviews. Knight is particularly nasty here. If I had read only this review, I would not have read the book. Luckily, I didn’t, because I liked this novel. I think Knight is completely unfair. I wonder if he hated it because it wasn’t like the kind of science fiction published in Galaxy. Knight is out of step with the other reviewers.
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (January 1956)
by Anthony Boucher
Boucher’s review is quite succinct, and one I agree with. The story is warmly readable and intimate, but it’s not as good as The Day of the Triffids. Triffids is still in print, still widely read and recommended, and The Fittest and J. T. McIntosh are forgotten.
Imagination (June 1956)
by Henry Bott
Bott is quite positive about The Fittest, but he gets the core conflict wrong. Not all animals are uplifted, just mice, rats, cats, dogs, and horses.
None of these reviewers comment on the details of civilization’s collapse and what the characters do to survive. The Fittest isn’t as thought-out as Earth Abides, but it covers many of the issues that post-apocalyptic novels need to cover. The core conflict is with the animals. However, a good deal of the novel is about dealing with death and grief, and forming new relationships. Don Paget’s wife dies at the very beginning of the novel, and for the rest of the story, Don is concerned with picking a new mate. Because life is now different, making relationships is different. That’s a strong thread of the novel, and one that reviewers missed.
Ruler of the World
The next book is the one I found disappointing. I should have stopped reading it.
It’s telling that I could find no prozine reviews of Ruler of the World. ISFDB.org lists reviews in three fanzines. I could only track down one.
Paperback Parlour #3
by Philip Stephensen-Payne
This review uses the English title for Ruler of the World, published by Corgi.
Stephensen-Payne liked it way more than I did, using phrases like “pleasantly amusing tale” and “immensely engaging.” And the few details he gives about the story are misleading.
Just because I didn’t like the story doesn’t mean that other people will dislike it too. We now have two opinions. I guess there’s a chance that more people could have liked it. But without other reviews I won’t know.
After being thoroughly disappointed with Ruler of the World, one of J. T. McIntosh’s later works, I decided to try one of his earliest novels. One from his prime. I chose The Fittest when I read that it was about animals with enhanced intelligence. It was his fourth published novel, from 1955. I love science fiction tales set just as civilization is collapsing. I have a strong affinity with Robinsonades, which are closely related to post-apocalyptic fiction. I especially love the cozy ones, about a small group of people struggling to survive.
My gold standard for judging such stories is Earth Abides by George R. Stewart and the television series Survivors (BBC 1975-1977). If these are 5-star efforts, then The Fittest is only a 3-star work; however, I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. It was a quick page-turner that I finished in less than 24 hours. The Fittest touched upon many of the essential elements of both Earth Abides and Survivors, but not as deeply.
The setup for The Fittest also puts it into another sub-genre of science fiction, one about uplifted animals. The story begins with a young woman being killed by mice and a cat. Over time, we learned that the intelligence of mice, rats, cats, dogs, and horses was increased in scientific experiments. Not enough for them to talk or think like humans, but enough to give them a greater ability to thrive and compete. Eventually, they could breed true, escape the laboratory, and spread across the world. For some reason, these uplifted animals saw humans as competition, with each species working to kill humans when they could. The uplifted horses were quickly eliminated because of their long gestation period, but the smaller animals bred faster than we could exterminate them. Over time, mice, rats, cats, and dogs found savvy ways to destroy our crops, infrastructure, and technology. They were simple methods, like chewing through wires, hoses, wooden structures, and so on, but effective in bringing down our civilization.
I have to assume that J. T. McIntosh was inspired by Sirius (1944) by Olaf Stapledon, Earth Abides (1949), The Day of the Triffids (1951) by John Wyndham, and Brain Wave (1954) by Poul Anderson. Sirius was an uplifted dog, but it could talk. Triffids were plants with more intelligence. And Brain Wave imagined all life on Earth with increased intelligence. Earth Abides and The Day of the Triffids dealt with small communities forming after civilization collapses.
Stories about humanity recovering from apocalyptic events were common in the 1950s and 1960s. Often they were inspired by the Cold War, pandemics, or environmental catastrophes. In 1956, John Christopher imagined a virus killing variously related grasses in The Death of Grass. I thought Wyndham was quite creative when he invented triffids. I give McIntosh credit for speculating about how increased intelligence in animals might threaten our apex position.
However, for me, how individuals cope in an apocalypse is the key rubric to score post-apocalyptic novels. I’m afraid Don Paget from The Fittest is no Isherwood Williams from Earth Abides. However, the characterization in The Fittest is closer to the characterization in the television series Survivors. Both stories are set in rural England, so that wins points with me.
Read my essay, “What Would You Do If You Were Among the Last Humans on Earth?” I think books about survivors of an apocalypse challenge readers to imagine themselves in a similar situation. Most post-apocalyptic novels deal with human vs. human conflicts, and The Fittest does cover this. But McIntosh creates a unique kind of horror when he pictures us fighting intelligent mice, rats, cats, and dogs. It’s not as scary as The Quiet Place, but if you think about what McIntosh imagines, it’s pretty scary.
Mice are particularly threatening to women. At the beginning of the book, three mice terrorize Gloria simply by stalking her. McIntosh points out that women hate the thought of mice touching them. While Gloria is terrorized by the mice, a cat attacks her. It’s not strong enough to kill her, but its vicious scratches scare Gloria into trying to flee out a window, and she dies from a fall.
Rats attack in waves of hundreds. Dogs attack in packs of dozens. Their movements suggest they have developed intelligent cooperative strategies. Not that they can talk or communicate ideas, but that they learn together. All four species learn that humans depend on technology to survive, so they begin sabotaging us in crude but effective ways. These modest increases in intelligence make The Fittest far more realistic.
The real story here is how humans react. Paralleling this story is Don’s relationship with Ginette and other women. It’s hard to choose a life partner during an apocalypse. Don is still swayed by good looks, but he realizes that having a personality with survival traits is the new measure of hotness.
I’m torn between rating this book 3 or 4 stars on Goodreads. My desire to keep reading was definitely 4 stars, but because of memories of more famous books, I think I should only give it 3 stars. My main criterion for rating a book 4 stars is having the feeling I’ll eventually want to reread it. I don’t think I will. I’ve read Earth Abides three times, and will probably read it again someday. That’s because the characters have depth, and the book puts me into philosophical contemplations. Earth Abides is almost twice as long as The Fittest.
It’s a shame McIntosh didn’t put more into The Fittest. Science fiction writers have always cranked out books to get quick paychecks. Earth Abides has always stayed in print. That’s not true for The Fittest. Still, I’m fascinated by the forgotten Scottish science fiction writer. I’ve now read three novels by him, two of which I liked.
Countless books have been published about survivors of apocalypses. Few stay in print. Earth Abides abides. That’s also a kind of survival of the fittest.
I’m ashamed to admit that I wasted my time reading this book. Let’s hope I can find something insightful to say about the experience. I confess I have a lifelong addiction to fiction. Even though years of studying consciousness, philosophy, and spirituality have shown me wiser pursuits for my time on Earth, I still prefer to escape into fiction. I should at least read the highest quality fiction, books I could justify in some way, but I seldom do. Why?
When I say I’m addicted to fiction, I mainly mean novels, movies, and television. At 74, I regret spending so much time mass-consuming fiction. Sometimes I wish I could give up fiction completely. Other times, I dream of becoming disciplined and only reading and watching the very best fiction. Despite my best efforts, my reading habits are like a pinball machine, where I careen around the board, bouncing off great books and bad books with little control.
Unfortunately, I’m fascinated by all aspects of literary science fiction. Oddly, I’m somewhat indifferent to movie and TV science fiction. I justify reading crappy science fiction by rationalizing that I’m researching the genre’s history. I have a theory about that. Everyone specializes. I’ve got 65 years of experience reading science fiction, and I can’t walk away from that. I’m too old to become a newbie in another area.
Laser Books was Harlequin Books’ foray into publishing science fiction from 1975 to 1977. Harlequin used its famous formula for publishing crappy romance novels to sell science fiction. They churned out 57 titles, all with similarly styled Kelly Freas covers. The books were short, and they published mostly first or second novels by new authors, and in the case of J. T. McIntosh, a work from his decline years. A bunch of these Laser Books showed up at my Friends of the Library bookstore. I bought Ruler of the World by J. T. McIntosh to try one out. I picked it because I had read McIntosh’s One in Three Hundred, and liked it.
I’m going to write a lot of words about a book I don’t recommend you read, and it’s doubtful you’ll ever see it at a used bookstore. Although if you’re willing to waste $9, you can pick up a used copy online. Many of his novels are available for the Kindle, and many of those you can read for free if you’re a Kindle Unlimited subscriber. However, Ruler of the World isn’t one of them.
I must admit, I’m intrigued by Scottish writer J. T. McIntosh. He had three hardback SF novels published in the early 1950s by Doubleday. Personally, I consider the 1950s to be the true Golden Age of Science Fiction. Wikipedia lists 24 novels by McIntosh, many from the 1950s, but it also says his later work is mediocre and was published by third-rate paperback publishers.
I have several ways to rationalize reading mediocre books, but are they valid? Of course, we’re living in a time when people lament that young people don’t read books, as if reading books were a virtue, but I worry that I read so much that I’ve made it a vice.
Just before I read Ruler of the World, I read Whistler by Ann Patchett. That novel is excellent. It’s quite compelling and beautiful. As soon as I started the McIntosh novel, I knew it was crap. So, why did I keep reading? I can give you two conscious reasons. One, I’ve been having fun looking for good science fiction among forgotten books. Since I had tremendous success with Dark World by Daniel F. Galouye, I was trying another.
And second, McIntosh offered a mystery. In his story, humans have colonized the galaxy, and Earth is a mostly forgotten planet. Ram Burrell, a thief and rogue, hears about Earth and decides to go there. Even more intriguing is that Earth limits galactic visitors to 500 at a time. And those visitors are restricted to seven tourist destinations: Malta, Cuba, Shetland, Hawaii, the Sahara, Russia, and Tibet. Weirdly, when tourists arrive at the Sahara, they are given the choice to visit Bagdad, Babylon, Lake Chad, and Timbuktu, all within easy driving distance. We know that’s impossible. Tourists are also told that they are forbidden to interact with normal Earth people. That’s a mildly intriguing setup.
Ram Burrell is a repellent protagonist. He punches innocent people, throws waiters out of windows, and expects every woman he desires to have sex with him. McIntosh implies that Burrell is so alluring to women that they comply even when they really don’t want to. He partners with the one woman able to refuse his advances, Roberta Murdock. Ram is 44, and Roberta is 22. That’s kind of skeezy too. At one point, Ram and Roberta are on the run, Roberta has been knocked unconscious, and two married women offer to help. When Ram gets one of the women alone, he makes a pass at her; she initially refuses, but then gives in. Later, when her husband goes to get the police, Roberta asks Ram why he risked their escape to have sex with a woman who was sheltering them. Ram says he hadn’t had sex in a while and needed it.
To give McIntosh another chance, I’m reading The Fittest from 1953. The novel parallels Ruler of the World, where the protagonist is an alpha male who partners with a 22-year-old girl. This time the guy is under 30. I think McIntosh was 28 when the novel was published, and 50 when Ruler was published. Is his protagonist a stand-in for himself? And the girl character, his idealized woman?
I wondered what McIntosh was intending for his character. Did he want Ram Burrell to be like James Bond? Later, when I read that Laser Books was owned by Harlequin, I wondered if they demanded a certain amount of sex. I’ve read that some forms of romance novels feature sex where women are “taken.” But then I read Harlequin’s rules for science fiction, which included a ban on explicit sex. Whenever Burrell stops to have sex, we’re told, not shown. And what’s the point of having so many scenes where Roberta avoids Ram’s advances? Is that another romance trope?
I bring all this up to explain possible justifications for reading old, forgotten books. What is this one saying about the gender roles of 1975? Or the fantasy expectations of men? Even though McIntosh portrays future men and women as unfettered by 1975 morality, his heroine, Roberta, seems to be holding out for marriage. Isn’t that weird? I assume modern female readers will despise this novel.
Wikipedia’s report on Laser Books isn’t flattering. Evidently, they were written to specification, and the editors often rewrote them or hired other writers to rewrite them. Piers Anthony even had a co-writer forced on him who got shared credit. Also, readers and reviewers disliked these books. So why am I reading one? I sort of feel like one of those women Burrell seduces – I really didn’t want to read this book, but I read it, anyway.
I’m also reminded of another book, A World Appears by Michael Pollan. I finished it just before Whistler. In the last chapter, Pollan describes meditating for days while living in a kind of cave. The whole point of this exercise is to experience quiet, abandon the mental chatter, and reach a state of pure existence where he sweeps the floor and chops wood. To a Zen Buddhist, our thoughts keep us from honestly interacting with reality. I’m afraid I feed my internal chatter books like shoveling coal into an old steam engine.
Ever since ChatGPT came out, I’ve realized that part of my brain works like a large language model (LLM). I continuously consume text to train my inner LLM. But as we’ve seen with AI, many produce poor output because they were trained on unreliable text.
If a subset of our minds is like LLMs, unconsciously generating thoughts, then we should do everything we can to control what it trains on. Or, if we allow it to train on bad content, we should annotate and explain it, so it won’t spew out later.
Consuming fiction, whether great or crappy, only adds to our mental chatter. Most of us are addicted to fiction. Now we can come up with reasons, even good reasons, why we substitute reality with fiction. Can we ever justify consuming bad fiction? After Whistler, which was extremely high-quality fiction, consuming Ruler of the World provided a revealing contrast. Like Burrell needing sex, I believe our minds crave fiction because we don’t want to face reality.
Many advocates of reading want young people to read books to become more empathetic. As we’ve learned from AI training on the internet, they become racist, mean-spirited, and hateful. Young men reading Ruler of the World are not going to develop any empathy for women. I know Republicans are hell-bent on removing DEI initiatives from society. How are readers training their internal LLMs going to know what is good and bad about characters if society doesn’t give them guidelines? I’m not sure just reading modern woke novels will do the trick.
There is no indication within Ruler of the World that Ram Burrell is a complete asshole. Ram is a grab them by the pussy kind of guy, who believes making money any way you can get away with is the goal. I think this is a terrible novel, but I’m not sure it wouldn’t be popular with today’s young men on the radical right.
This morning I watched an interesting YouTube video. It’s titled “The Book That Predicted the Destruction of Society – Analyzing The Catcher in the Rye.”
Hilary Layne, the channel’s host, divides her discussion into “observing books” and “dystopian books.” I like that distinction.
Observing books differ from dystopian stories. Books like 1984 and Brave New World are offering warnings about what current society could become if left uncorrected. Observing books offer no warnings; they are the bare-faced truth about what was happening in their times, and to a like-minded reader, they come across like keenly prescient insights into the specific ills plaguing their times and future times. A lot of the time, a very well-written observing book will accidentally stumble upon precisely the issues that could go on to create the broken society of the future that its writer could not have foreseen.
As an aside, this is why observation is the most powerful tool of any writer. The way I look at it, observing books are kind of the first wave. Society begins to fall ill, and then these sharp-eyed souls, these keenly observant creative types, can’t help but write stories in which their characters are also observing these hairline fractures in the weight-bearing beams of civilization and culture. Later, and sometimes even concurrently, other novelists who have made similar observations—sometimes even bolstered by those of the observing books—will write their dystopian warnings.
Of course, there are always the other books, and then there are even the escapist books like fantasy or romance. But certain points in history produce the right circumstances to give us exactly the right authors to write that era’s observing books. Observing books and the dystopian books of a given era work together to help a society both observe its own ills and also metabolize and adjust to the new normal, for good or ill. For this reason, the very best of these types of books become a source of profound comfort, contrary to what might seem logical, largely because they allow an isolated reader to feel that he or she isn’t insane or alone. Moments in history when massive changes occur in society are often met with very quiet waves of profound pain by people who can see what the world is becoming. These books become lifelines to these types of people.
Ruler of the World neither observes nor warns. It does speculate, one of the virtues of science fiction, but it does so poorly. Harlequin intended these books for male readers. Anyone under forty will not remember how many books and magazines were specifically aimed at men. Here’s another YouTube video I watched yesterday, “Did Men Stop Reading Fiction or Did Fiction Change Too Much for Men?”
This is a fascinating video. The host makes his case by comparing bestsellers from 1986 to 2026. He says anecdotal evidence suggests men have stopped reading fiction. Of course, I hear that young people have stopped reading. The host suggests several reasons why men have stopped reading, but I don’t think he covered all the possibilities. And I think people, both men and women, began giving up on reading much earlier than 1986.
Before the 1950s, hundreds of fiction-only magazines were sold on newsstands. Nearly every general-purpose magazine, either aimed at women or men, ran a couple of short stories. Television was the beginning of the shift. The internet, video games, social media, and all the rest came later. Every grocery store, drug store, and even convenience store had one or two twirling racks of paperbacks.
We can think of all of that reading as merely entertainment or training for the reader’s internal LLMs.
Where I go to mine for forgotten classics is this era. Laser Books came in at the tail end. Americans used to have an insatiable habit for reading. And a lot of it was gender specific. I don’t see the kinds of books and magazines I used to see aimed at men. And sure, a lot of that reading was bad fiction. Not just poorly written, but sexist, unwoke, and politically incorrect by today’s standards. Popular fiction today is different. And it’s mostly suitable for women. But does that mean men shouldn’t read it?
I have to wonder if I read a lot of old bad science fiction because it was designed for the males of my generation. However, I don’t crave old science fiction for its sexist outlook. Old science fiction had a different attitude about the future than what current science fiction writers have now.
Another Bibliophile Reads seems to suggest that we should bring back books for men. But what if those books men liked in the past were too much like Ruler of the World? Is that what conservatives want? If reading trains our internal LLMs, is that what we want young readers to consume?
To properly criticize a book, don’t we need to consider the book’s impact on the reader’s LLM? Isn’t that why conservatives want to ban books? Isn’t wokeness the liberals’ approach to banning books? And aren’t literary criticism and book-banning methods efforts to control human LLM training? Once you accept our thoughts come from the content our minds are trained on, then literary criticism takes on a new dimension.
I know I’ve brought up too many topics for one essay, but I’ve given myself several insights to think about. I believe I made reading a bad book worthwhile.
Dark Universe by Daniel F. Galouye is one of those science fiction books you should read without knowing anything about the story. I listened to the Audible.com edition, and Richard Dawkins blathered too much about the story in his introduction. If you get the audio, skip the introduction until after you’ve finished the book.
Dark Universe was nominated for the Hugo Award in 1962. It lost to Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein. I can’t believe I’ve gone 65 years without discovering this great science fiction novel; it’s a real classic. I think I need to go read the other nominees from 1962.
There are certain science fiction novels you should read cold – don’t even read the blurbs on the book. Writers paint a unique world by letting readers see it through the perspective of their protagonist. Dark Universe and Of Men and Monsters by William Tenn are great examples. It’s great fun to guess what’s happening scene by scene.
I have read one other novel by Galouye, Lords of the Psychon, but I have no memory of it, even though I wrote a fairly long review. Geez, getting old and feeble-minded is a pain in the ass. I wonder how long I’ll remember Dark Universe? I think it will stick with me because it was so unique and clever.
For the time being, I hope to remember to read more of Galouye and keep an eye out for these books.
Recently, on the YouTube channel Pulpmortem, I viewed Jake’s video “9 So Bad, they’re Good Science Fiction Books you’ve probably never heard of.” Jake, evidently, is a connoisseur of bad science fiction, and the nine novels he reviewed indeed sound dreadful. Since Jake claims that bad books still can be fun to read, I gave The Red Planet by Russ Winterbotham a try. It was a quick, fun read that wasn’t badly written, but was essentially a minor, forgotten work.
I picked The Red Planet because it was free to Kindle Unlimited subscribers. It’s only $1.99 if you’re not a subscriber. This novel is also available for free on Project Gutenberg.
There are hundreds of better science fiction novels for $1.99 on Amazon, so why should anyone read it? Shouldn’t we always seek out the best possible novel to read? Why read a crappy book when you could be reading something great?
Well, readers don’t think that way. Even though we’re warned never to judge a book by its cover, how often have you bought one just because the cover was so cool looking? How many people have a secret fondness for watching old episodes of Perry Mason instead of streaming the trendiest show on Apple TV? People tend to develop a fondness for a particular type of story and storytelling. They don’t prejudge its quality.
But the question is: Should we seek out books (and movies and TV shows) that popular culture has forgotten? Regarding science fiction, I can think of a few reasons.
We’re searching for forgotten gems.
We like the author.
We like the period.
We like studying the evolution of the genre.
We enjoy playing genre historian.
The Red Planet is about the first manned mission to Mars. The crew consists of five men and one woman. The driving conflict of the plot is that all five men want the woman sexually, and the woman, Gail Loring, wants to be left alone and treated as an equal, an astronaut, not a woman. This is quite progressive for 1962, since The Feminine Mystique wasn’t published until 1963.
Concurrent with the plot conflict is mutiny and murder. Dr. Sparten, the crew commander and rocket scientist, wants all the fame for being the first man on Mars. He also plans to be the man who ends up with Gail Loring. Sparten is Machiavellian and psychopathic. The other four men are dedicated astronauts, but they can’t stop thinking about Gail. After reading The Red Planet, I couldn’t help but wonder about the Artemis 2 mission and the sexual tensions on the International and Chinese space stations.
Even though The Red Planet was probably written in 1961 and published in August 1962, it’s not completely dated. Although it is dated regarding Mars, because the third conflict in the story regards Martians.
Russell Robert Winterbotham (August 1, 1904 – June 9, 1971) published books in several genres, comics, comic strips, and big little books, all the while working at a newspaper. Sixteen of his stories are reprinted at Project Gutenberg. Winterbotham was reasonably prolific and mostly forgotten.
Whenever I stumble upon an old science fiction story by a forgotten writer, I get curious about them. I snoop the internet for any clues about what they were like. I found this short biographical piece written by Russ in 1956, for the apazine Pooka #2. He ended the piece with:
I have no idea now much I’ve written. I expect I hold rights on about 50 to 100 short stories, but there were many many more that I sold outright and reserved nothing and I have no record of these. During my peak, I remember one year in thich I produced two million words. Usually I wrote about a million words a year, counting my newspaper and comic strip work, Now I write less than a quarter of a million and very little of it, except comics, is fiction, I’m pecking away at a novel which should be finished before 1960. Then I hope to die with my boots on. Later, if I can help it, than 1960.
I authored some historical strips last fall, dealing with frontier characters, “Daniel Boone,” “Kit Carson,” and “Wild Bill Hickok,” These brought more fan mail, including letters from descendants of Boone and Carson, than anything I ever wrote.
My family never reads my stories because they share the opinion of a vast number of others, that they are not literature. But I like my work, I’m my greatest fan. And I’ll keep writing them, by God, as long as I live,
Fanencylopedia 3 quotes Winterbotham just before he died: “The science fiction market doesn’t seem to demand my talents, whatever they are, and I need the rest.”
The old cliche is that writers write for immortality. Sadly, most are quickly forgotten. One reason I like reading old forgotten novels is to wonder about why and how they were written. For a guy born in 1904, The Red Planet is an interesting read.
Winterbotham was around 58 when he was writing that novel. He’s obviously keeping up with science and science fiction. His story features NASA. His astronauts use a Saturn rocket to get to orbit, where the Mars rocket waits. Unfortunately, he has his astronauts get onto the Saturn with a cherry picker. A cherry picker was on hand for Alan Shepard in case of an emergency exit. The Saturn 1 rocket made its maiden flight in October 1961, and it was unmanned, so Winterbotham probably didn’t know the Saturn was too big for that method.
I have a thing for Pre-NASA science fiction, and have written about it several times. The Red Planet is on the cusp of this era. Winterbotham uses NASA in his story, but imagines Mars inhabited by intelligent beings. Even though we know this isn’t true, I’m still fond of stories that feature Martians.
Science fiction changed after the Space Race began. Robert A. Heinlein, who was the leading science fiction writer of the 1950s, made an abrupt change in direction in 1961 with Stranger in a Strange Land. Before that, Heinlein was a head cheerleader for space exploration. Once NASA got going, Heinlein began thinking about new territory for the genre. I don’t know why science fiction historians don’t consider Stranger in a Strange Land as early New Wave. Cause it’s certainly not Old Wave. Heinlein was Old Wave politically, but Stranger was definitely an experiment in fiction on many levels. There are many reasons why Stranger has lost popularity, and one of them is that fans quickly turned against New Wave SF.
Frank Herbert took science fiction on a new wave, too, with Dune, around the same time. Herbert anticipated the long SF novel, with many sequels that explored complex world development, characters, and plotlines. The kind that is popular today.
Winterbotham was trying to be new, too, with feminism. Gail Loring is an interesting character in 1962 science fiction. But then, so were Heinlein’s female characters. Just because Heinlein wasn’t enlightened by 21st-century attitudes didn’t mean he wasn’t changing, too.
Look at the other top novels from 1962. I’d certainly recommend reading these better SF novels before The Red Planet.
But I’m not sure if The Red Planet is a significantly lesser read than these other SF novels from 1962.
I haven’t read Jake’s other eight SF books that he reviews. They are much harder to find. I’d probably have to spend $5-20 to acquire copies used, and I’m not going to do that right now. It’s a shame all old science fiction isn’t available as cheap ebooks or put into the public domain.
On the surface, Peter Watts’ novel Blindsight is a space adventure about first contact, but it’s mostly a series of lectures on the nature of consciousness. Watts works to convince the reader that space-faring intelligent aliens can exist without conscious self-awareness. The aliens in Blindsight are far scarier than the xenomorph creatures in the Alien movie franchise. Blindsight is science fiction horror.
It’s much easier to accept Watts’ main premise in 2026 than in 2006 when Blindsight was first published. Billions of people now converse with intelligent chatbots that have no conscious self-awareness. At least we hope they don’t. Reading Blindsight in the 2020s should make us more paranoid about AI.
Peter Watts is known for writing hard science fiction. He received a Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia, from the Department of Zoology and Resource Ecology. Writers of hard science fiction have an opportunity to present a hypothesis and test it in a novel. How seriously we should take these hypotheses depends on many factors. It’s not real science, but in some cases, both the writer and readers want to accept the fictional hypothesis as being provable scientifically in the future.
Watts makes a case that self-aware consciousness is a fluke of evolution. That intelligence could evolve more efficiently without it. Watts presents a convincing case in Blindsight, but should we believe him? With all hard science fiction, we must ask ourselves: Is this plausible or just good storytelling? Most science fiction writers don’t try as hard as Peter Watts in Blindsight, so it’s easy to just say, “Wow, that’s cool,” and let their work go unexamined. Watts presents so much interesting evidence (infodumps) that I feel demands evaluation.
I’ve tried several times over the years to read Blindsight. I never could stick with it. Blindsight just didn’t grab me, and learning that it featured a vampire completely turned me off. Recently, a reader left a comment on my post “Why Do We Read Science Fiction?” recommending Blindsight because it featured “creatures with very advanced intelligence but no self-awareness.” I’ve been doing a lot of reading on consciousness, so this did grab me.
Again, I struggled to get into the story. Several times, I considered quitting. The novel often presented ideas that got me thinking, but Watt’s style just wasn’t working. It’s probably a case of that old breakup line, “It’s not you, it’s me.”
Since we’re going to talk about the nature of consciousness, I should admit that I’m 74, and I often struggle with 21st-century science fiction. The SF books my mind was trained on came from the 1950s. They were often fewer than 200 pages, told in a linear plot, and had likable characters whom I could identify with. Blindsight is 384 pages, told in a convoluted plot, and there isn’t a single likeable character in the whole story. Fantasizing about being on the crew of the Theseus would be like wanting to be on the crew of the Nostromo? The entire time I was reading Blindsight, I thought about Alien. There are many similarities and parallels between the two stories, and their endings have much in common.
More than that, 1950s science fiction portrayed an overall positive philosophy regarding space exploration. Blindsight is a horror novel about the possible dangers we might find in outer space. Back in the 1940s, John W. Campbell, Jr., allowed Robert A. Heinlein and a few other writers to present stories with aliens so overwhelmingly terrifying that they put humanity on the level of a cargo cult. Heinlein even had Lazarus Long and companions run home to Earth after encountering one alien species. In the 1950s, Campbell and Heinlein switched gears and promoted humans as the badasses of the galaxy. Reading Blindsight makes me think humans need to stay on Earth and hide.
I accept that Blindsight is a masterpiece of 21st-century science fiction, and I even admire the story. I’m already thinking I should reread it because I’m sure I missed quite a bit of what Watts was trying to accomplish. However, there are many ideas raised in this novel that I want to discuss and even argue over. So this isn’t a review. If you haven’t read it, you might want to go read it before continuing. Blindsight has inspired many positive reviews on YouTube.
I should also mention that I almost didn’t finish Blindsight this time either. I was about a third of the way into the story and found the characters and plot confusing. So I read its Wikipedia entry. Even though it gave away the entire plot, it helped me enjoy the rest of the novel. I believe my problems were due to another difference between 20th-century SF and 21st-century SF. Science fiction has become more baroque in its complexity and storytelling techniques.
This YouTube video by the Feral Historian gives away the entire story. It’s not a review, but a synopsis of the story’s philosophical speculation. It’s strikingly eloquent, and I’m envious of his writing and speaking style. (By the way, the Feral Historian uses video clips from a short film based on Blindsight.)
I believe Peter Watts wants his readers to take his science-fiction speculations seriously because of his infodumps and Socratic dialogues. The infodumps cover a wide range of studies and theories about consciousness. I often wondered why Watts just didn’t skip the story and present his ideas as a collection of popular science essays.
There are two hierarchies for disseminating scientific ideas.
Genuine Science
Science (peer reviewed)
Mentors
Popular Science Books
School Science
Science Documentaries
Popular Science Articles
Science Fiction?
Pretend to Plausible Science
Science Fiction
Pseudoscience
Social Media
Crackpots
Comic Books
Watts bases his main hypothesis on the Chinese Room thought experiment first proposed by John Searle in 1980. The link is to a Wikipedia entry that I highly recommend reading to fully understand Blindsight. Searle proposed the Chinese Room thought experiment to refute the idea that if a computer could do everything a human could, it would also be self-aware and conscious.
When the crew of Theseus finally tracks down the alien spaceship, they are surprised by this message:
RORSCHACH TO VESSEL APPROACHING 116°AZ–23°DEC REL. HELLO THESEUS. RORSCHACH TO VESSEL APPROACHING 116°AZ–23°DEC REL. HELLO THESEUS. RORSCHACH TO VESSEL APPROACHI …
She’d decoded the damn thing. Already. She was even answering it:
Theseus to Rorschach. Hello Rorschach.
HELLO THESEUS. WELCOME TO THE NEIGHBORHOOD.
After quite a bit of back-and-forth communication between the two ships, Szpindel suggests that the aliens don’t actually understand English, but are using the technique suggested in the Chinese room thought experiment. If Watts had written Blindsight in 2026, would he have suggested the aliens understood English because they were a large language model (LLM)? Anyone with much experience communicating with ChatGPT would make the assumption.
Many current AI researchers are hellbent on creating a conscious, self-aware AI. If humans are biological machines that evolved to have self-awareness, then AI researchers believe it’s possible to build self-aware machines. Searle proposed the Chinese room thought experiment as proof that it’s possible to create a machine that appears self-aware but isn’t. Philosophers and computer scientists eventually concluded that the Chinese room thought experiment wasn’t conclusive.
Anyone who meditates or studies the science of the mind knows that intelligence and awareness are two separate aspects of our being. Throughout his novel, Watts hammers home to his readers that humans are not what we think we are. Just consider the title of the novel, Blindsight. Read the Wikipedia entry. Throughout the novel, Watts chronicles conditions where our senses fool us. At times, I wonder if Watts had been reading too many Oliver Sacks essays.
Watts suggests that conscious self-awareness may be an illusion, and suggests that many humans are no more than zombies.
At some point in the story, I believe readers should be asking: Is Watts wrong? If we combine LLMs with robots and those mechanical beings learn to interact with reality, will conscious self-awareness spring up? Will robotic consciousness be just as soulful as human consciousness? The scientific study of minds doesn’t leave room for the soul, although many religious researchers would like to find it. Christians will have to decide if robots and aliens have souls. Watts suggests that nobody has souls, that immensely intelligent beings could exist without consciousness, and that even those who do claim to have conscious self-awareness might be delusional.
Blindsight is an incredibly bleak book. But then it’s a horror novel. Several factors in Blindsight make me distrust any idea Watts proposes. The main one is resurrecting vampires. In the fictional world of Blindsight, vampires did exist, but became extinct. They are resurrected to learn about their longevity and ability to hibernate. The crew of the Theseus is enhanced by these genetic discoveries, allowing them to survive the long voyage to the edge of the solar system. I’m sorry, but this is comic book-level science.
The crew is supposed to be transhuman, or posthumans. Science fiction often imagines posthumans with longevity, immortality, and psychic abilities. I find such speculation to be weak, boring, and trite. Those ideas seem to have been swiped from Greek mythology. I thought the film Gattaca did a good job of imagining posthumans being humans with genetic modifications. Many science fiction writers like to imagine posthumans with all kinds of body modifications. That also seems rather comic-booky to me.
Watts offers several possibilities, but none of them were developed with much conviction or detail. The main one is Jukka Sarasti, a vampire. Vampires are genetically resurrected from their extinction in the Pleistocene. Probably inspired by Jurassic Park, but much like how current-day Colossal Biosciences wants to bring back the Woolly Mammoth.
The whole time I was reading Blindsight, I thought of that old saw: if a gun is introduced in the first act, it must be used by the final act. In my mind, I kept thinking: if a vampire is introduced at the beginning of a story, it’s got to kill before the story is over. That anticipating messed up Blindsight for me. Watts, in the very end, does fire off his vampire. However, it undermines the seriousness of his original hypothesis. I must admit I have a great prejudice against vampires. I thought vampires were perfect in Dracula, Bram Stoker’s famous novel, and their continued use has been all downhill since then.
The Gang of Four is merely a body with multiple personalities. I saw no advantage to this. I’ve had enough of this idea after seeing The Three Faces of Eve and reading the book.
Siri Keeton is our protagonist. He had had half his brain removed in childhood, which created a unique perspective for studying consciousness. Watts portrays him as the ship’s “synthesist.” I never felt Siri had any significant insights. Watts seems to use Siri to think out ideas to help move the story along.
However, I’m not going to ding Watts for these criticisms. Many modern science fiction stories try to jam in as many ideas as possible. It makes for an epic science fiction impact. For an old fart like me, it’s just tiring, but I do understand that younger, more energetic minds feed on this kind of science fiction speed.
We still need to decide on the novel’s main hypothesis. Can advanced intelligence exist without self-aware consciousness? The internet is full of stories about the initiative that Openclaw agents are taking. Watts didn’t know about LLMs and agentic AI, but both are convincing evidence for his case.
We only know of one species in the universe that we consider conscious and self-aware. The concept of the soul has existed for thousands of years, complicating this discussion. We have to assume there might be an infinite number of kinds of consciousness. It’s almost impossible to imagine anything that’s not like us. But then Einstein imagined relativity, proving the human mind can conceive of something vastly different.
Humanity is now spending hundreds of billions of dollars developing AI. Far more than we spent on the space race of the 1960s. More than likely, we can create robots that can function independently in this reality and become far more intelligent than we are. But will we ever know if they have self-aware consciousness like ours? Throughout Blindsight, Watts asks if we’re as self-aware as we think we are.
I’m not sure if Peter Watts ever asks if vastly intelligent beings without conscious self-awareness feel they do have it? Maybe the creatures on Rorschach experience existence no different than us. Maybe both the concept of the soul and conscious self-awareness are illusions.
Personally, I think my sense of awareness is one thing, and my fast and slow thinking abilities are two other mechanisms in my brain. That my sense of umwelt comes from an integration of sensory inputs, a sensorium. And that my thoughts come from another biological mechanism that works much like an LLM. Why shouldn’t it? LLMs are based on neural networks.
Because of a TIA, I know my awareness can exist without my thoughts. I also know that my awareness can disappear, and my biological LLM can generate dreams with all kinds of weird logic and intelligence. Watts mentions in the novel that sleepwalkers can drive cars or pursue various other activities without waking up.
The reason Blindsight makes such an impact on readers is not because of scary aliens but because it makes us think about our own minds, and that can be very scary.
By the way, the part of my being that watched me write this can’t explain how the part of my being thought it up.
I didn’t discover the concept of time travel until September 25, 1965, when the 1960 film version of The Time Machine was shown on NBC Saturday Night at the Movies. That was two months before I turned 14. It blew my mind. The next day at Cutler Ridge Junior High, kids excitedly talked about the movie. Sometime after that, I read the H. G. Wells novella, but I’m not sure when.
I consider The Time Machine by H. G. Wells the most science fictional of all science fiction stories. Not only did it introduce me to the concept of a time machine, but it also introduced me to social evolution, Homo sapiens evolving into different species, the extinction of humankind, the end of the Earth, and the death of the Sun. That’s epic for a 13-year-old in 1965.
I’m pretty sure I’d never have imagined time travel on my own. I think if I had learned about astronomy before discovering science fiction, I could have thought, “Wouldn’t it be neat to go to the Moon or Mars?” on my own. But time travel was a much bigger conceptual breakthrough, one I don’t think I would have made.
Now, I had been a watcher of The Twilight Zone since 1959, when it premiered, and it often played with time. This video lists ten episodes involving some form of time travel.
The episode I remember best is from April 7, 1961, “A Hundred Yards Over the Rim,” where a man from a 19th-century wagon train walks over a hill into the 20th century. Most of the episodes were fantasies about people thrown through time. There was one episode where Buster Keaton had a helmet that let him time-travel, but I don’t remember seeing it as a kid. (Here’s another list that covers 13 episodes featuring some form of time travel.)
On January 13, 1964, I saw “Controlled Experiment” on The Outer Limits. It was the series sole comic episode about two Martians studying humans. They had a machine that could roll back time and replay it. That might be my first inkling of time travel. But I didn’t make the jump to using a machine to travel in time.
How often do we imagine original ideas? Readers and writers sometimes claim that one writer stole an idea from another, but is that fair? Don’t all writers use concepts built up from a long line of previous writers? Like Newton standing on the shoulders of giants. Was the time machine original with H. G. Wells? His ideas about evolution and cosmology came from the popular science of his day. There’s probably no way to document the evolution of the idea of time travel.
I believe that science fiction is a conceptual tool for generating ideas through literary evolution. For every far-out idea you encounter in science fiction, there’s a long history of previous stories that helped evolve that idea. I’d love to have a book, database, or website that creates taxonomic ranks of all science fiction concepts and shows how each evolved over time.
We like to think that science fiction has infinite possibilities, but I have a hunch that it’s finite. If we studied science fiction and developed a classification system for SF story ideas, we’d discover its limitations.
Take time travel. There’s only so much you can do with the concept. I’m currently rewatching the old TV series, The Time Tunnel, from the 1966/1967 television season. The same season that Star Trek premiered. The Time Tunnel, like Quantum Leap, allowed its protagonists to jump around in time. But in both treatments, you quickly realize how limiting time travel is as a plot device. Most time travel stories end up being about their destinations, not the concept itself. H. G. Wells milked the idea for most of its worth in The Time Machine.
Time travel stories generally produce historical or romance fiction.
Robert A. Heinlein knew this, so he published “—All You Zombies—” in 1959, a fantastic satire on the concept. Heinlein pushed time travel to its limits. Just look at this plot diagram.
Another brilliant example of imagining the nature of time is “Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang. Wikipedia quotes Chiang as having several sources of inspiration. I interpreted the story to mean that the heptapods perceive time all at once, and Louise’s learning their language affected her awareness of time. This reminded me of Heinlein’s first story, “Life Line,” where the protagonist invents a machine to see a person’s life as one long being, letting him know when it ends. Great science fiction about time has to constantly push the envelope, but like these two stories, is any idea a singular, isolated event in time?
Most science fiction is set in the future. That makes most science fiction essentially a time travel story. History is a well-established academic pursuit. That’s why time travel to the past, like stories by Connie Willis, is really a kind of historical fiction. And stories about going to the future allow writers to speculate and extrapolate. But most writers do that by just setting their stories in the future.
Today, science fiction that uses time travel often uses the concept to play with entertaining plot ideas. Most of what I really admired about The Time Machine, Olaf Stapledon explored in Last and First Men and Star Maker. Wells invented the time machine as a gimmick, a plot gimmick. And if you think about it, a time machine is always a plot gimmick. Just watch all those episodes of The Twilight Zone.
The mind-blowing parts of Wells’ story explore the evolution of humanity, the fate of the Earth, the solar system, and the galaxy. This is the real meat and potatoes of science fiction.
Why did so many Baby Boomers embrace science fiction back in the 1950s and 1960s? We were all playing Cowboys and Indians, wearing cowboy hats and shooting our cap pistols at each other, and watching westerns all the time on TV. Then we switched to space helmets and ray guns, and changed the channel to watch old 50s Sci-Fi flicks, The Jetsons, My Favorite Martian, and Lost in Space.
I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know about space and space travel. Nor can I remember my first exposure to rockets. My guess is it was from television. I remember my 4th-grade class listening to Alan Shepard’s 15-minute Mercury flight on Freedom 7 over the classroom’s PA system. That was May 5, 1961 (65 years ago). I assume I had seen movies or television shows with spaceships before that, but I have no memory. I watched The Twilight Zone before then, so it might have been on that show.
It seems like dinosaurs, spaceships, and robots have always been part of my conscious mind. Maybe Carl Jung was right about the collective unconscious. I knew about space travel before I learned about astronomy. And that doesn’t make sense, does it? How could I know about traveling in space before I knew what space was?
I do know that by 1962, I was reading Tom Swift, Jr. books. But I was also reading nonfiction books about NASA. We lived on base at Homestead Air Force Base, and I used the base library. The Moon and Mars were frequently mentioned in NASA’s goals, but this was before I started reading astronomy books. My young mind must have been told about the solar system in elementary school.
Concurrent with my discovery of science fiction in the mid-sixties were the flights of Project Mercury and Project Gemini. I slowly came to believe that science fiction was preparing me for the future. That was my rationale for reading science fiction. In reality, science fiction was my coping mechanism for a stressful childhood. By the time I learned what the term “science fiction” meant in 1964, I had attended at least seven different schools in four different states. The constant moving, as well as my parents’ marital problems and alcoholism, should have made my life miserable. But I loved those years because I loved science fiction.
During childhood and teen years, even into college, I really believed reading science fiction prepared readers for the future. Then, around 1975, I realized the futures I expected weren’t going to unfold, and reading science fiction was only entertainment. I gave up science fiction, got a real job, got married, and finished college. Then, in 1985, I returned to science fiction. I then treated it like an English major studying literary history. It was no longer about the future, but storytelling.
Any well-told story about any time or place, real or imaginary, can capture a reader’s attention. So the question becomes: Why do we read science fiction? It gets weird when you think about it. Why did we want to leave Earth? No sane person would want to live on the Moon or Mars, and you have to be tripping if you think Titan is a wonderful destination. Anything further is no more realistic than Oz or Narnia.
The question “Why am I reading science fiction?” struck me particularly hard recently, while reading stories by Christopher Anvil in The Trouble With Aliens. Christopher Anvil is a mostly forgotten science fiction writer who regularly sold short science fiction to John W. Campbell, Jr. for Astounding and Analog.
I’m enjoying the stories, but just barely. They just pass muster. I do enjoy them, but I’m enjoying them at the level of watching anything on television when you’re bored, and the show is just good enough not to change the channel. Anvil’s stories feel like I’m resonating with the archetypes of science fiction in my unconscious mind.
I keep asking myself: why don’t I read something better, something more rewarding, something that is cutting-edge? The stories are military science fiction, a sub-genre that I normally find boring. Reviewers don’t have much positive to say about Anvil, but they often praise him for his satire. Satire implies a target. Is the military Anvil’s target, or military science fiction? Anvil’s stories remind me a bit of Eric Frank Russell and Harry Harrison.
But are these stories really satire? Satire is usually driven by absurdity, and I don’t think Anvil believes his science fiction situations are absurd. I get the feeling Anvil is just trying to keep up with the other Astounding/Analog writers churning out what Campbell wants to buy and readers want to read.
Anvil’s stories epitomize how I once saw science fiction.
Anvil’s stories are entertaining enough that I look forward to returning to my audiobook. His stories aren’t great, but they are pleasant. I wonder if I’m using them to cope with getting old, like how I used science fiction to cope with adolescence?
I feel his stories touch what’s very basic about science fiction. If I could understand that, maybe I could understand why I started reading science fiction as a kid.
Anvil’s stories also remind me of Project Hail Mary, the bestselling novel by Andy Weir, which is also currently a hit movie. Weir’s appeal is that his stories are about solving problems, and that’s what Anvil focuses on too. However, Anvil’s prose is functional, but far from Weir’s level of entertaining.
I have to wonder if such escapist science fiction doesn’t function like dreaming at night. They might be a diversion for our consciousness when we want to turn off reality, and maybe symbolically play out some kind of existential purpose.
Baen Books has collected Anvil’s stories in several volumes, which they sometimes label the Complete Christopher Anvil. They are available in audiobook, which is my preferred format for consuming old science fiction.
John W. Campbell, Jr. frequently published Anvil stories, but he seldom made them the cover story. Anvil published two novels, according to ISFDB.org, although many of his short stories were republished as a few fix-up paperback novels. Overall, Anvil appears to have published over a hundred stories, and much of that work has been collected in eight volumes by Baen Books.
Back in the 1950s, science fiction imprinted on my mind, and I’ve been following it around like a little duckling ever since.
I’m trying to take a vacation from science fiction, but I can never escape its gravity. The pull of science fiction is as powerful as the “addictive drug” in “Mind Partner”. As much as I want to read something besides science fiction, I can’t stay away for long. However, to tempt me off the wagon, I need a science fiction story that’s different. Anvil blends a film noir detective encountering a cosmic horror invader. Unfortunately, Anvil is no Raymond Chandler or H. P. Lovecraft.
Finding a different kind of science fiction story is mighty hard for me, especially after reading thousands of science fiction stories. The other night, I pulled out a handful of Galaxy Magazines and started reading the August 1960 issue. (Follow that link and read the story before I spoil my analysis.)
“Mind Partner” was the first story I tried, and I hit pay dirt right away. It’s not a great story, but it is different. I checked ISFDB.org to see its reprint history and discovered “Mind Partner” achieved modest recognition. It was published in four editions of Galaxy, in four different countries, and it was selected for The Great SF Stories #22 (1960) edited by Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg. Greenberg also included “Mind Partner” in the anthology Neglected Visions (1979) that he edited with Barry Malzberg and Joseph Orlander. Their goal was to rescue forgotten stories they thought should be remembered.
Imagine you are a science fiction writer in 1960 and you want to sell a story to H. L. Gold, the editor of Galaxy Magazine. You know his slush pile is full of crappy science fiction that’s recycling ideas that have been around for decades. Could you come up with a new idea?
Here is what Greenberg and Orlander say about Christopher Anvil in the introduction to “Mind Partner” in Neglected Visions. At best, I feel they are condemning him with faint praise. But this is also one of the reasons why this story intrigues me. If you’re a mediocre writer who cranks out formulaic work, how do you break out?
Years later, Greenberg was more emphatic about “Mind Partner” in The Great SF Stories 22 (1960):
Although Christopher Anvil is a mostly forgotten science fiction writer, Baen Books has been reprinting his work in ebook and audiobook editions, which are sometimes labeled “Complete Christopher Anvil” on Audible.com. Seven volumes are listed, and “Mind Partner” is included in Book 4, The Trouble with Aliens. (That audiobook is included in my Spotify subscription, so I might give it a try.)
I didn’t know all this on my first reading. I found “Mind Partner” intriguing but confusing. The story reminded me vaguely of The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick.
Jim Calder is offered $10,000 to $99,999 if he can pull off an undercover police operation. We don’t know if Jim is a detective or a cop. Details later in the story suggest he might be a detective, but he could be a volunteer from the police force.
A new drug is in town. People go in the front door of a mansion, and the next day, they leave by the back door addicted to a mysterious substance. The police have raided two previous buildings and locations, but have never caught the dealers. However, between 800 and 1,200 addicts are left behind living near those two locations. The police learn nothing directly from the addicts. All they know is they go in the front and out the back door the next day. Then they all rent a room near the drug house.
The police investigator, Walters, asks Calder to visit the mansion once and then come back to him.
So far, not that unique, at least to readers of mystery magazines. It sounds like something Philip Marlowe would investigate. And like Marlowe and Sam Spade in early film noir movies, the investigator gets knocked out and wakes up mentally altered.
As a writer, what can this drug do that’s completely different? At this point in the story, I asked myself, “What would Philip K. Dick do?” As I got into the story, I wondered if Christopher Anvil had been reading about LSD in 1960.
Then, as I read a little more, I realized that “Mind Partner” could be considered one of the earliest examples of a time-loop story. A day didn’t repeat like in Groundhog Day (1993), but Jim Calder lives his life over and over like inReplay by Ken Grimwood. We also see something similar in the episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation titled “The Inner Light.”
I consider the history of science fiction to be like one giant LLM (large language model). Writers consume science fiction and regenerate ideas. Did Anvil read about a character in a time loop before he wrote this story?
At this point in my reading, I remembered an intense experience I had over fifty years ago. I fell asleep in the afternoon after smoking some pot. I woke up and went into the kitchen. When I came back to the bedroom, I saw a monkey sitting in the window. I was hit by instant blackness. I woke up and thought, “What a weird dream.” I again went into the kitchen to get a Coke, and when I returned to the living room, I saw a chair I’d never seen before. Blam! I was hit with blackness again. I did this several more times. Each time I’d get up and walk around my apartment. It felt absolutely real. I felt absolutely awake. I started struggling during the blackouts. Somehow, I knew I wanted to wake up.
Then I woke up one more time. I went downstairs to sit outside on the steps. I kept waiting for the blackness. It never came.
Here’s where I explored in detail what happened. You really should go read it. I wonder if you have the reading skills to figure out what happened in one reading. I didn’t. I’m also curious how many SF readers are familiar with the obscure story?
The story got complicated, and I lost track of what Anvil was doing. I finished it and had several vague ideas about what Anvil might have intended. I even asked Gemini, Google’s AI, if it knew the story. It did. By the way, I was surprised by this. Months ago, I was asking AIs if they knew specific science fiction stories, and they’d say yes. But when questioned, I realized they had gotten what they knew from Wikipedia or blog reviews. This time, Gemini knew the story in detail and was quizzing me about it.
I decided I need to reread the story. Gemini asked if I saw the ambiguity of the ending, and I said I did. Then it asked what I thought about several scenes. The plot is more complicated than The Big Sleep. Unfortunately, Anvil lacks Chandler’s way with words.
Jim Calder goes to the drug house and talks with a mysterious, dark-haired lady named Cynthia. She tells him the first three visits will cost $1,000 each. The next three will be double that price. The price will double again after every three visits. Jim is drugged the first time.
When he awakens the next day, he reports back to Walters. Walters is so impressed with his intel that he pays Calder the full $99,999. Calder uses that money to start his own detective agency. The agency eventually grows to twenty-seven hired men. Jim also marries and has three children. His youngest son even goes into the detective business with him. Finally, he dies an old man.
Jim wakes up back in the drug house. He leaves, goes to Walters, and again gets paid the full amount. This time, he becomes a painter. Lives to be an old man. Dies.
Jim Calder lives six complete lives. Sometimes, he’s paid the minimum, $10,000, and doesn’t do well afterwards. He remembers each life in detail. The memories become painful. A burden.
After the sixth life, he complains to Cynthia that he wants to forget. She admits that’s why the price of the drug keeps doubling. What they’ve really hooked him on is the drug to forget.
Jim again goes back to Walters. They make an elaborate plan for him to break into the mansion. And they go into the details of the various lives, looking for clues. One clue is that sometimes shutters at the mansion are broken, and sometimes they aren’t.
Jim and Walters discuss the nature of the hallucinations and come up with various theories. Two of which deal with the distortion of time and how humans have learned to overcome their physical limitations. We can’t run as fast as cheetahs or fly like birds, but we can build cars and jet planes.
And what is time? A hummingbird thinks people are standing still. A powerful AI thinks a trillion times faster than we do. Jim and Walters wonder if they are dealing with a being from another dimension, one where time is much different. What if dreams and hallucinations happen at speeds far faster than reality?
Here’s the thing. Jim breaks into the mansion and finds an alien creature. The alien explains how all of the apparent events are happening. It has evolved the power to create detailed delusions in other beings. Its delusions alter humans’ awareness of time. Like humans using technology to extend their abilities, the alien uses mental abilities to overcome its limitations.
The range of the alien’s power is about four hundred feet. That’s why the drug addicts choose to live nearby; they need to stay close to the alien to tune into its power to forget. It’s also why the shutters appear broken sometimes, and other times are intact. Jim and Walters use remote TV cameras to check the alien’s power.
The alien agrees to be captured in exchange for its needs being met.
The end.
But really? Did Jim ever get back to Walters?
If he did, and the ending we are told is real, should we still believe everything? Could the alien have manipulated the police into providing a better living arrangement for its survival?
Christopher Anvil could have stretched this story into a novel. Just imagine what experiments humans would ask of the alien, and what the alien could trick us into giving it.
If Jim never got back to Walters, that could be another interesting novel.
After gorging on science fiction short stories for several years, I’ve finally got my fill of science fiction. At 74, aging is catching up with me. I was reading 52 books a year, and regularly posting on two blogs: Auxiliary Memory and this one, Classics of Science Fiction. My reading has slowed to about a fourth of what it was, and so has my blogging.
I’ve decided to post all my essays to Auxiliary Memory and put Classics of Science Fiction on hold. If I happen to write about science fiction, I’ll post it there. I’d rather look somewhat productive on one blog, rather than unproductive on two.
Also, I hunger for different kinds of reading. We’re now living science fiction. Reading about what’s going on now seems further out than speculation about the future. With AI, robots, space travel, climate change, astronomy, renewable energy, and so many other fields, it feels like we’re approaching a perfect storm of change.
One video I recently watched suggested that the amount of change humanity experienced in the 250-year history of the United States is enough to kill a person from future shock. If George Washington time-traveled to 2026, they speculated he would die of future shock. The guy also speculated that to generate that much future shock by bringing someone from before 1776 to 1776 would require going back 13,000 years. I have no idea how they calculated that, but it sounds right from all my history book reading. I believe society is breaking down now because the amount of future shock one person experiences in a lifetime is approaching what Washington would have felt.
I’m switching from science fiction to nonfiction to comprehend that future shock. Here are the books I’ve bought and plan to review at Auxiliary Memory. It will take me some time. Like I said, I’m slowing down.
I Am A Strange Loop by Douglas Hofstadter
Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson
Worldviews: An Introduction to the History of Philosophy of Science by Richard DeWitt
Why the World Doesn’t Make Sense by Steven Hagen
Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain by Antonio Damasio
A World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness by Michael Pollan
Improbable Destinies: Fate, Chance, and the Future of Evolution by Jonathan B. Losos
Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software by Steven Johnson
Being You: A New Science of Consciousness by Anil Seth
Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief by Jordan B. Peterson
The Molecule of More: How a Single Chemical in Your Brain Drives Love, Sex, and Creativity–And Will Determine the Fate of the Human Race by Daniel Z. Lieberman and Michael E. Long
Sensation: The New Science of Physical Intelligence by Thalma Lobel
An Immense World by Ed Yong (reread)
Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain by David Eagleman
Ways of Seeing by John Berger
Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know by Adam Grant
The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture by Jerome H. Barlow, Leda Cosmides, and John Tooby
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman (reread)
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig (3rd reading)
The Gang of Three: Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle by Neel Burton
The Idea Machine by Joel J. Miller
Thinking in Systems: A Primer by Donella H. Meadows
Your Brain Is a Time Machine: The Neuroscience and Physics of Time by Dean Buonomano
This is far more ambitious than I’m capable of right now, but I’m going to try.
Classics of Science Fiction 