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“Inconstant Moon” by Larry Niven

“Inconstant Moon” by Larry Niven is story #23 of 52 from The World Treasury of Science Fiction edited by David G. Hartwell (1989), an anthology my short story club is group reading. Stories are discussed on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. “Inconstant Moon” first appeared in Niven’s 1971 collection, All the Myriad Ways. Currently, the story is available in N-Space, a retrospective collection of Niven’s work from 1990. If you want an ebook version of the story, it’s included in Masterpieces: The Best Science Fiction of the Century edited by Orson Scott Card.

Outer Limits dramatized the story – watch it on YouTube.

“Inconstant Moon” is one of those science fiction stories where the main idea sticks with you even if you don’t remember the plot or characters. “Inconstant Moon” won the Hugo for Best Short Story in 1972, and is the kind of classic SF tale I expected to see in an anthology that remembers the best science fiction of the 20th century.

Stan and his girlfriend Leslie realize something epic is happening when the Moon becomes much brighter than normal. “Inconstant Moon” is an astronomical science fiction story like “Nightfall.” I don’t know if I should tell you anymore, I wouldn’t want to spoil the fun.

“Inconstant Moon” is the kind of short story that inspires readers to ask themselves what they would do in a similar situation.

<<<Beyond Here Lie Spoilers>>>

Most science fiction is geared toward young people with romantic minds who want to fantasize about being action heroes, while “Inconstant Moon” is aimed at adults who take more wistful prosaic paths. The protagonists aren’t young or heroic, and their actions are quite ordinary and mundane. The setting is only slightly in the future from 1971, after the Apollo 19 landing. Niven didn’t know that sadly, Apollo landings would end with 17 in 1972. He even has Stan talking about getting to handle a moon rock, which I don’t know if NASA ever allowed either.

Stan goes out on his balcony one night and the Moon is several times brighter than normal. He starts wondering why and eventually concludes the Sun has gone nova. This is my third time reading this story, but I remember when I read it the first time being quite surprised that people would still be alive after such an event. Until I read “Inconstant Moon” the first time, I imagined if the Sun went nova it would instantly vaporize the Earth.

Niven gives us a more thought-out scenario. Earth is 8.5 light-minutes away from the Sun, and Jupiter is 44.2 minutes. Niven imagines the Earth itself being a barrier that protects people on the side away from the Sun, and that a shockwave travel at the speed of sound would circle the Earth. Stan rushes over to see his girlfriend, hoping to have a few good hours before the end of the world. He doesn’t tell Leslie his theory, but eventually, Stan realizes she came up with it on her own too.

I would love to see an episode of PBS’s NOVA analyze the same situation.

Stan and Leslie assume the shock wave is hours away, and it will kill them before California faces the sun. They go out for ice cream and drinks after having sex. I felt “Inconstant Moon” had an adult vibe not because of the sex, but because of the mental processes Stan and Leslie go through. My guess is young characters and readers, would think and act differently. This age-difference reaction can be seen in “The Last Day” by Richard Matheson (Amazing Stories, Apr-May 1953). Read it here.

Ultimately, Stan figures out the Sun didn’t go nova, and that it must have been a very large solar flare. It means they might live, and that changes the course of the evening.

It’s a shame we don’t get more science fiction that makes us think like this story. Some stories inspire arguments like, “The Cold Equations” by Tom Godwin, but Niven’s story makes readers think about physics and astronomy. Isaac Asimov used to write about how science fiction fans of his generation would tell their parents they were learning science from science fiction. That seldom happens, if ever. But with this story, Niven sets up a scientific situation that makes us think about science rather than science fiction.

Does anyone know what would likely happen to the Earth if the Sun went nova or there was an extremely large flare?

James Wallace Harris, 6/27/23

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Resonating With Malzberg

The writer I feel the most philosophically in tune with at the moment is Barry N. Malzberg, especially while reading his 2018 collection of columns from Baen’s Universe (2007-2010) and Galaxy’s Edge (2010-2017) titled The Bend at the End of the Road. I woke up this morning thinking I would write an essay titled “The Skeptics of Science Fiction” about science fiction writers who have come to doubt their genre, or “Why I Read Science Fiction in My Seventies” about how I no longer read science fiction to enjoy the story but to study each story as part of a science fiction history.

Malzberg’s essays do both, and I might still write those essays even though I feel Malzberg has already blazed those trails thoroughly. I have not finished the over forty essays in the collection, but I’ve read enough to sense a common feeling that I think Malzberg and I share about science fiction. I’m going to try and describe that feeling. Malzberg is 12 years older than I am, far more knowledgeable about science fiction, and further down the road of experience.

What I say won’t be what Malzberg says, but I think we’re in the same club. There’s enough resonance that I must wonder if we aren’t in essential agreement. I am not paraphrasing his book, but I’m going to describe how I feel which I believe is how he might feel using different words. Which may be how you feel and convince you to buy his book.

Our reality does not come with a prescribed meaning or purpose. We are all existentialists who must create our own meaning in life. When I was twelve I rejected the religion that was being forced on me and embraced science fiction instead. It wasn’t conscious on my part, and only understandable in hindsight but it’s understandable for the times, 1963. Science fiction, if you understand how I read it makes a good substitution for religion. I thought science fiction was a roadmap to reality and it became my mentor and guidance counselor.

Over the decades I realized this was silly, but I never could shed my love of science fiction. It was my chosen compass and I couldn’t stop using it to guide me even though I eventually became an atheist of my chosen religion. Science fiction promised transcendence and I never forgot that hope. I am like the characters in Hermann Hesse’s Journey to the East who have fallen off the path of enlightenment but achingly and vaguely remember it, and who keep searching to find it again.

Now that I’m older and rereading the science fiction from the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, the works that shaped my soul, I’ve discovered how I was programmed and have been deprogramming myself. However, I just can’t let my love of those works go. I no longer admire them for what they meant to me when I was young but find meaning in understanding them as a subject of literary scholarship.

Malzberg goes back again and again to examine old science fiction stories that we both read, admired, or disliked. He keeps finding new personal revelations in that effort, and that’s where I’m at too. I often share his insights in stories I’ve reread and am intrigued by the insights in the stories I haven’t, but now plan to.

An important part of the equation is aging. Malzberg and I revere old science fiction and feel modern science fiction has lost its way. But young readers have become the new faithful and reject old science fiction, the old faith. I grew up at a time when science fiction was the bible stories preaching the gospel of the final frontier. The reality of space travel and science fiction parted from each other decades ago. And what science fiction has become is something I can’t believe in.

So Malzberg, and I, and I imagine many others from our generations, have become scholars of science fiction. We’re non-believers like Bart D. Ehrman who specializes in Biblical studies. On one hand, we enjoy the storytelling techniques of a bygone era and we like to understand the stories in their historical context. On the other hand, we are self-psychoanalyzing our own youth and development.

We used to believe we were part of an important movement, but now realize it was very tiny. And that our movement was taken over by the entertainment industry and made into a new opium of the masses.

We all want to believe what we love to read. We all want to believe we have something in common with authors whose fiction and nonfiction we think we agree with. We can never know what something meant in their writing, but human nature makes us want to find people like ourselves. For a while, science fiction gave some of its fans hope of transcendence and a shared belief system. Like most beliefs in this reality, it was mostly illusions, if not all.

I don’t think I could ever write a proper review of The Bend at the End of the Road because Malzberg covers too many topics that I’d want to discuss in detail. I could probably write at least one essay, if not several from reading each of his essays.

James Wallace Harris, 6/24/23

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“Captain Nemo’s Last Adventure” by Josef Nesvadba

“Captain Nemo’s Last Adventure” by Josef Nesvadba is story #22 of 52 from The World Treasury of Science Fiction edited by David G. Hartwell (1989), an anthology my short story club is group reading. Stories are discussed on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. “Captain Nemo’s Last Adventure” first appeared in Nesvadba’s 1960 collection, Einsteinův Mozek. It was translated into English for the 1973 anthology edited by Franz Rottensteiner, View From Another Shore, and it was selected in 1974 for Best SF: 1973 edited by Harry Harrison and Brian Aldiss. (Follow the link to the story title to see where it’s been anthologized if you want to find a copy to read. However, The Treasury of World Science Fiction is widely available in used copies and is probably the cheapest way to get this story, along with 51 others.)

David G. Hartwell had so much to say about “Captain Nemo’s Last Adventure” in his introduction that I thought I’d just reprint it here.

I don’t know if I agree with Hartwell when he says “Captain Nemo’s Last Adventure” is a satire on stories from John W. Campbell’s era, or that Nesvadba uses the tropes and conventions of 1940s science fiction. I’m not even sure “Captain Nemo’s Last Adventure” is even an ironic work of criticism. I’m not saying it’s not, but I want to propose an alternate theory.

What if science fiction evolved separately in Czechoslovakia? And what if its evolution sometimes paralleled American pulp science fiction? Evidently, “Captain Nemo’s Last Adventure” was written after Sputnik but before Gargarin’s famous ride. Would Josef Nesvadba have access to old American pulps or even 1950s anthologies that reprinted them?

The prose of “Captain Nemo’s Last Adventure” doesn’t come across like the prose in pulp fiction. Like many of the foreign language science fiction stories we’ve been reading, it’s mostly told and not shown. However, it is longer, and that lets it become a fuller story than the shorter works we’ve read. I wonder if Nesvadba wasn’t inspired by Soviet science fiction or the Polish Stanislaw Lem?

“Captain Nemo’s Last Adventure” is about the super-heroic Leonard Feather and chronicles his feats of always needing to save the day, and eventually the Earth. Yes, we could compare him to Kimball Kinnison and the Lensman series. But Feather could just as easily be compared to Homer’s Ulysses.

I do think Nesvadba was making fun of spacemen, and the kind of macho men who need to always be on an adventure. Feather is a womanizer who makes his wife unhappy, as well as his mistresses, and he can’t understand why his son isn’t like him. Nesvadba is satirizing a certain kind of man that has existed in all genres of literature.

Nesvadba also appears to be attacking the call of the high frontier, robotics, and the never-ending quest to conquer and engineer. When Captain Feather, aka, Captain Nemo meets another intelligent race, he can’t understand what they are after. When he returns to Earth and is forced to stay put, Feather begins to see the need for philosophy and art.

There are parallels to American science fiction in this story. Heinlein, Campbell, Hamilton, and others all wrote stories about meeting super-advanced aliens back in the 1940s. The robots in “Captain Nemo’s Last Adventure” remind me of Jack Williamson’s The Humanoids. This story even reminds me just slightly of Robert Sheckley in the 1950s.

But, Captain Feather and his crew mostly remind me of Space Chantey by R. A. Lafferty, which is a science fiction parody modeled on Homer. My guess is that Nesvadba’s story was really inspired by Lem’s The Star Diaries, which came out in the 1950s?

Still, “Captain Nemo’s Last Adventure” is a good tale. It’s not told dramatically, which disappoints me, but its length allowed it to cover a number of interesting science-fictional topics that were enjoyable to me.

James Wallace Harris, 6/23/23

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“The Phantom of Kansas” by John Varley

“The Phantom of Kansas” by John Varley is story #21 of 52 from The World Treasury of Science Fiction edited by David G. Hartwell (1989), an anthology my short story club is group reading. Stories are discussed on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. “The Phantom of Kansas” first appeared in Galaxy Science Fiction (February 1976). It is currently available in The John Varley Reader: Thirty Years of Short Fiction. That collection is available on paper, as an ebook, and as an audiobook (18 stories — 26 hours and 36 minutes).

A science fiction writer is like an artist with a blank canvas, they can paint anything they can see or imagine. When you look at composing science fiction that way, you have to wonder why some authors put more on their canvas and others less, and where the images come from. With, “The Phantom of Kansas” John Varley decided to lay out his canvas with a series of related science-fictional scenes.

The setting is the Moon — after aliens have taken over the Earth and pushed humans out across the solar system — part of Varley’s Eight Worlds series. Now this image is enough to fill a whole canvas but is merely a small object in the background in this painting. Varley wisely chose not to do an elaborate alien invasion mural, those were old and tired even back in 1976. We are told it’s November 342, so I assume humanity restarted the clock when our home world was snatched away from us. This aspect of the painting does intrigue me, and I wish I could see that section of the canvas expanded.

The plot is a murder mystery. The protagonist, a woman named Fox, has just been revived in a clone body and learns she’s been murdered three times before. So she’s actually Fox 4. Because some murderers in this future like to permanently kill people, they must kill the person and destroy the memory cube that backs up their personality. This murderer has failed three times, why? Fox is told she should expect to be murdered again unless the police can find the murderer first. She doesn’t want to become Fox 5. This is a solid subject for a painting and I would have been satisfied if it was the subject of the whole canvas. However, I wouldn’t have been that impressed, not like I am with the additional imagery Varley squeezes in.

For Varley, this unique murder mystery wasn’t enough to dominate his canvas. We see Fox is an artist who engineers weather dramas. This requires quite a bit of world-building on Varley’s part. Humans who live on the Moon mainly live underground, but they crave being out in nature like humans did on Earth. So giant artificial environments are created that replicate various natural settings from old Earth. Varley calls disneylands. Fox is working on a giant storm symphony that spawns several tornadoes for a disneyland that’s a replica of the Kansas prairie.

The Kansas disneyland is a hollowed-out cylinder twenty kilometers beneath Clavius. It’s two-hundred and fifty kilometers in diameter, and five kilometers high. That’s a huge feat of super-science engineering.

Now this is interesting. Those pesky aliens got rid of humans and all our artifacts on Earth so they could enjoy nature. The human refugees in space long for the wonders of Mother Nature. What should we feel about that revealed in the painting? Back in 1976 when I was young I was dying to go into space, but now in 2023 and I’m old, you couldn’t pay me to go there. Mother nature is the place to be.

But Varley isn’t finished with adding subjects with his brush. He paints another character onto his canvas that vividly stands out, the Central Computer. Varley portrays the computer as it, which I like. Gender is a biological trait. And like Mike in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, this computer is a quite charming and appealing image.

And there is one other aspect that reminds me of Heinlein. People can change gender. Fox has been a he in the past. And, at first, I thought this was just another added detail in Varley’s scene, but it turns out to be an essential plot element.

I’ve seen “The Phantom of Kansas” before, decades ago, and it impressed me then, except that it depends on one of my least favorite scenarios in science fiction, brain downloading and uploading. And I like that theme even less this time. However, it’s needed for the plot, so I begrudgingly accepted it.

In my judgment of art, science fiction scenes are somewhat realistic paintings, inspired by what we see in reality, whereas fantasy scenes are modern art, paintings inspired by inner visions. I liked this painting better this time because I viewed the painting as a fantasy. It’s a clever image of a murder mystery derived from an interesting series of what-if mental conjectures.

Ultimately, the painting, “The Phantom of Kansas” is elegantly symmetrical. Like any good mystery, all the clues were there, even if they were highly contrived.

James Wallace Harris, 6/22/23

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“Ghost V” by Robert Sheckley

“Ghost V” by Robert Sheckley is story #20 of 52 from The World Treasury of Science Fiction edited by David G. Hartwell (1989), an anthology my short story club is group reading. Stories are discussed on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. “Ghost V” first appeared in Galaxy Science Fiction (October 1954).

Back around 1968, when I was in high school, I had two friends that also read science fiction – Jim Connell and George Kirschner. We’d often sit around and talk about the science fiction we read over our short lifetimes. Mostly, we couldn’t remember titles or authors but always remembered a unique idea within the story. I remember George excitedly telling Connell and me about “Ghost V” back then. I’ve read it since, but probably in the 1970s. I never remembered the story title or details. Just the trick ending.

So when I started reading “Ghost V” again today I remembered nothing about it. As soon as I started reading it I thought, “Hey, this could be that story George had told us about over half a century ago!” And my hunch was right. I remembered the idea that Sheckley used as the punch line of his story. It has always been memorable, and I’ve even told other people about it a few times because it’s a charming little idea with a neat kind of connection to reality.

Now, the question I have is: should I tell the ending here? I never know how much I should say about a story when writing about them. I really want to discuss stories, not review them. To do the same thing that Connell, George, and I did way back when — talk about the most exciting and memorable ideas. I want to just bullshit about the idea or ideas that make a particular story great for me.

“Ghost V” isn’t very long. You could go read it here. It’s part of a series of nine stories Robert Sheckley wrote about the AAA Ace Planet Decontamination Service. “Ghost V” is essentially a joke. It’s about two guys, Richard Gregor, and Frank Arnold who exterminate problem creatures on newly discovered planets. Think Ghostbusters. Gregor and Arnold don’t believe in ghosts or other supernatural beings, but they are hired to get rid of supernatural threats on Ghost V.

Sheckley sets up the story when Mr. Ferngraum comes to visit their office to hire Gregor and Arnold. Ferngraum is a planet flipper, buying planets cheap, and selling them for a profit. He tells Gregor and Arnold how he invested more than his usual amount in a quality planet that he hoped to make a killing with, unfortunately, the first two expeditions to the planet were mysteriously wiped out, killing colonists in the most hideous ways. If they can’t help him he’ll go bankrupt.

By the way, you have to understand the mood of the story. Think of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. For me, I recalled Sheckley’s novel, Dimension of Miracles which features a minor character we know of as God, who did a cut-rate contracting job creating Earth. The level of humor is not very sophisticated in “Ghost V,” young people might put it on the level of the current TV show Ghosts.

“Ghost V” is silly and completely unscientific, but unlike some of the stories in The World Treasury of Science Fiction, it’s told in a way that I believe the setup while reading it. That’s the difference between “Ghost V” and the stories in the anthology like “The Chaste Planet” and “Tale of a Computer Who Fought a Dragon,” which I’ve criticized for not using the kind of storytelling techniques I prefer. If those stories had been told the way Sheckley told “Ghost V,” I probably would have liked them.

Sheckley tells his tall tale realistically, with a straight face. His storytelling technique is no different from the way Hemingway writes about real-life bullfighting or deep-sea fishing.

Gregor goes off to Ghost V knowing that colonists in two previous expeditions were slaughtered by some kind of horrible scientifically undetectable monsters. Sheckley aims to scare us too. Arnold stays home to be Gregor’s research consultant.

Gregor lands with no problem and sets up living in the quarters of an earlier expedition, the ones who had been sun worshippers. (I assume we’re to read nudists.) That night, after he turns off the light and goes to bed, he sees his clothes come to life in the shadowy dark and menacingly approach him. He blasts them to pieces. Gregor then turns on the light and radios his partner. Arnold claims to have a theory, but Gregor remains frightened.

The second monster Gregor meets is a Purple Striped Grabber. The Grabber wants to eat Gregory with chocolate sauce. The Grabber also informs Gregor that he can only eat him on the first of the month, which is the following day, and asks Gregor for a favor. The monster wants Gregor to eat apples before he comes back because that will make him taste sweeter. The monster leaves and Gregor calls Arnold again. Arnold says this new report confirms his theory. Ghost V monsters are our childhood fears made real. That there must be something in the environment that messes with our brains.

The next day, when the Grabber returns Gregory remembers a monster like it from his childhood, recalling it could be stopped with a magic word. After frantically dredging up several magic words while the Grabber is trying to eat him, Gregor hits on the right one and is saved. (Hey, Gregor was the name of the character in Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis.”)

The next monster is the Shadow. Eventually, Gregor kills it with a water pistol.

Arnold arrives and they discuss the situation clarifying the solution, but the next monster that shows up, the Grumbler, seems to be invincible. Gregor and Arnold quickly take off for Earth thinking they’re escaping the Grumbler but once in space realize the Ghost V atmosphere at gotten into their ship. It must contain a hallucinogenic drug, one that will make them kill themselves. Their only hope is to hide from the Grumbler until the ship’s atmosphere is recycled.

When all hope is lost, they remember one solution that could destroy all childhood fears, and it saves them.

That solution is what I remembered from all these decades. I remembered nothing else about the story, so when I retold it, my summary of the story was always made up, except for the solution.

Should I tell you?

Or do you want to guess?

James Wallace Harris, 6/20/23

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“The Green Hills of Earth” by Robert A. Heinlein

“The Green Hills of Earth” by Robert A. Heinlein is story #19 of 52 from The World Treasury of Science Fiction edited by David G. Hartwell (1989), an anthology my short story club is group reading. Stories are discussed on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. “The Green Hills of Earth” first appeared in The Saturday Evening Post, on February 8, 1947.

I don’t know how many times I’ve read “The Green Hills of Earth.” I believe every time before I ignored most of the story, responding and remembering the final part. Heinlein does a great deal of wordy tap dancing before he gets down to a rather simple story. This time I realized that all typewriting soft-shoeing is the real gold in the story, and the final emotional part that I’ve always remembered is pyrite that tricked my eye.

With this reading, I was bowled over by the high concentration of imaginative details in “The Green Hills of Earth.” Heinlein sets up a whole interplanetary space-faring society, alluding to the Harriman’s corporation which is chronicled in later stories. There are politics and laws – the Tri-Planet Treaty and The Space Precautionary Act. There are Venusians and Martians, which aren’t detailed, but I imagined in passing, that is fleshed out in later stories like Red Planet and other juveniles, Stranger in a Strange Land, and Double Star. Heinlein throws in rockets, their makes, and models. And more interestingly, Heinlein alludes to languages that don’t yet exist, and how they relate to our current languages. Plus he talks about pop culture, music, and poetry. He does all this in a faux academic style with hints of satire on how future history and sociology work.

Heinlein also sets up the solar system that’s been explored enough to allow for commercial trade. Heinlein’s spacemen are working-class men who seemed modeled on 1940s commercial shipping and merchant marines and are nothing like NASA’s astronauts. Heinlein had high hopes for the final frontier. Just read through these four paragraphs to see how Heinlein embeds details into his story.

I’d say the first two-thirds of “The Green Hills of Earth” is a kind of prologue that sets up one dramatic scene. Heinlein is experimenting with his writing, going beyond normal pulp fiction. When I think about it, science fiction went through several new waves that caused mutations in SF writing techniques. This story was published in a slick magazine, The Saturday Evening Post, something revolutionary for the genre and Heinlein. The term science fiction wasn’t widely known in 1947. It was just coming into vogue in the general public outside of fandom. Heinlein’s stories for the slicks were breakthroughs, helping the general public move away from thinking of science fiction as Saturday serials “Buck Rogers stuff.”

And we can’t ignore the poetry. This story is full of verse and is about a poet who has become mythic. I’m not big on poetry, so I’ve tended to skim over it in the past. I tried harder this time to read Heinlein’s lines of poetry. I have no idea if Heinlein’s verse is any good, but I did study it enough this reading to realize he put a lot of work into writing it. In “The Green Hills of Earth” Heinlein says about Rhysling, his Blind Singer of the Spaceways, “It mellowed his approach, changed his doggerel to verse, and sometimes to poetry.” I can’t tell verse from poetry, so I don’t know if Heinlein’s verse transcends into poetry.

I did notice Heinlein used some phrasing I thought was bumpy – “calm and couth” – and rhyming dearth with girth. Couth, dearth, and girth seem like archaic words now but might have been fine in the 1940s. Even still, “As they rove around the girth” doesn’t quite seem to work as an image or sound right coupled with “Of our lovely mother planet.” I would have thought, “As we rove around the girth / Of our lovely Earth” would sound better. However, he was saving the word “Earth” for the last line, “Of the cool green hills of Earth.” Of course, this was in a section where Rhysling was working out his song.

Like I said, I’m terrible with poetry, but I like the image Heinlein’s going for here. I’d try to work it as “Let sweet fresh breezes thrill me / As they blow round the Earth / From the planet that calls me / To green hills of my berth.” Can I get away with that pun and double meaning in the end? I know, I’m just as bad as Heinlein. My point here is reading and writing poetry is hard, so I’ve got to give Heinlein a lot of credit for trying.

Heinlein had a habit of killing characters to generate emotion in his readers. In this story, the actual bit of storytelling at the end has Rhysling sacrificing his life to save the ship. That’s rather maudlin and melodramatic, and even cheesy, but I think Heinlein gets away with it because it’s a fitting ending for an old spaceman. Did we want Rhysling to die in a nursing home?

Last year I started a project of reading and reviewing all of Heinlein’s stories in the order they were written. “The Green Hills of Earth” jumps five years ahead of where I left off. I need to get back to that project. But I can say “The Green Hills of Earth” appears to be a quantum leap in Heinlein’s writing skills. I was still writing about his stories written before WWII, and evidently, working for the war effort somehow matured Heinlein’s writing. This story is more sophisticated in its storytelling ambition.

I wish I had the energy and drive to write a comprehensive analysis of “The Green Hills of Earth.” There’s so much going on in this story I could write pages and pages. Looking at the fragment of Rhysling’s poem, “The Grand Canal” makes me wonder if it inspired Roger Zelazny and his story “A Rose for Ecclesiastes” – wasn’t Gallinger writing a madrigal too. Look at Heinlein’s poem. Doesn’t it at least remind you of Ray Bradbury and Planet Stories too?

I could go paragraph by paragraph and find many things to say for each, but that would take too long for a blog post. I imagine each paragraph will remind you of all the science fiction you’ve read too. If you don’t own The Past Through Tomorrow or The Green Hills of Earth, you should be able to find “The Green Hills of Earth” in one of many anthologies.

James Wallace Harris, 6/17/23

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“Tale of the Computer That Fought a Dragon” by Stanislaw Lem

“Tale of the Computer That Fought a Dragon” by Stanislaw Lem is story #18 of 52 from The World Treasury of Science Fiction edited by David G. Hartwell (1989), an anthology my short story club is group reading. Stories are discussed on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. “Tale of the Computer That Fought a Dragon” has a long complicated publication history that I’ll let y’all read at ISFDB.org. It’s part of a series called Robot Fables. But from what I can tell was first published as “Bajka o maszynie cyfrowej, co ze smokiem walczyła” in Zycie literackie (August 1963). It was first translated into English for Other Worlds, Other Seas: Science-Fiction Stories from Socialist Countries edited by Darko Suvin (1970).

“Tale of the Computer That Fought a Dragon” is a very short story that comes across like a fable, and feels like it’s supposed by told by an oral storyteller. I’m afraid I dislike stories that sound like fables. Not because Lem’s tale is bad or uninteresting, but because such stories feel like a quick summary of a novel to me. I feel cheated. Such stories tell what happens instead of dramatizing the plot and developing the characters. A real short story is not a condensed novel. For some reason, many of these translated SF stories are told in this fable-like style. I wonder if that style isn’t normal in other countries because they never had pulp fiction? And thus, never developed the style of short story writing I like?

Basically, “Tale of the Computer That Fought a Dragon” is about a king who computerizes everything and then is threatened by an all-powerful computer. The solution to the king’s problem is silly and childish, much like some of the solutions Captain Kirk used against cybernetic foes in Star Trek. (It also reminds me of a solution Heinlein used against one foe in Glory Road, a fantasy novel.)

Stanislaw Lem has a great reputation, and his stories are widely reprinted. But I’ve yet to read one of his stories which makes me want to read more of them. I believe I read Solaris decades ago, and think I admired it. Need to give it another read.

This brings up an interesting problem. What if storytelling techniques are different from country to country? Are they reflected in the translation? Or, is the fable-feeling structure something that comes out of translation?

I guess it might reveal one of my biases or limitations. Other members of the short story club like these types of stories. They do sound clever, but cleverness can often draw attention away from the story. If you read “Tale of the Computer That Fought a Dragon” how do you visualize it? I visualize it as a Wizard of Id drawing.

Lem wrote a lot of these short satires. I assume, he liked cranking out ideas, but not novels. There’s enough plot content in “Tale of the Computer That Fought a Dragon” to structure a whole novel.

“Tale of the Computer That Fought a Dragon” is obviously a satire, attacking both computerizing everything, but also attacking leaders who feel the need to exert power to inflate their egos. That might have been politically subversive in 1963 in the USSR. It might also explain the childlike fable quality — a politically safer to write.

I wonder what Russians might dare to write about Putin today? Read “Tale of the Computer That Fought a Dragon” and substitute Putin every time you see the word king. It kind of works.

James Wallace Harris, 6/14/23

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“Two Dooms” by C. M. Kornbluth

“Two Dooms” by C. M. Kornbluth is story #17 of 52 from The World Treasury of Science Fiction edited by David G. Hartwell (1989), an anthology my short story club is group reading. Stories are discussed on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. “Two Dooms” was first published in Venture Science Fiction (July 1958). “Two Dooms” was a posthumously published story since Kornbluth had died earlier that year in March. (By the way, “Two Dooms” is available in The Best of C. M. Kornbluth which is selling today at Amazon for 99 cents for the Kindle edition.)

I finally struck gold. I read these old anthologies hoping to find great science fiction stories I’ve missed, and “Two Dooms” is one such work. I can’t believe I missed it. My memory is faulty, so I could have read it. Decades ago I owned A Mile Beyond the Moon, Kornbluth’s collection that first put the story in book form. I’ve also owned, The Best of C. M. Kornbluth for decades, as well as both the hardback and audiobook of His Share of the Glory: The Complete Short Science Fiction of C. M. Kornbluth, and three anthologies in which “Two Dooms” has been anthologized. Kornbluth is one of those authors I’ve always meant to dive into and read all their stories but never have. “Two Dooms” makes me regret that.

The best way I can describe “Two Dooms” that will make you read it is to say: “Two Dooms” is probably the story that inspired Philip K. Dick to write The Man in the High Castle. I have no way of knowing if PKD read “Two Dooms” but it really feels like it. I’m not saying Dick copied Kornbluth, but like many science fiction stories, many writers read about a juicy idea and want to use it too, but in their own way.

And it’s not just that Dick’s novel and Kornbluth’s novella are alternative histories where Germany and Japan win WWII and occupy the United States — several writers have explored that idea, it’s that each writer chose a mystical philosophy to flavor their story. PKD uses the I Ching and Kornbluth uses Hopi Indians and psychedelic medicine. Both authors gave a low-level view of the occupation. Both authors were concerned with the little people at ground level rather than the big historical perspective. But finally, I think the stories feel similar because both writers were tortured souls.

Kornbluth’s POV character is Dr. Edward Royland, a young physicist working at Los Alamos, New Mexico on the Manhattan Project during WWII. It’s early on, and they aren’t even sure they can build a bomb. Royland isn’t happy with his job, especially working in the miserable heat. One day after work he drives into the desert to meet his friend Charles Miller Nahataspe, a Hopi Indian shaman. This part of the story reminds me tremendously of Carlos Castanada’s books. Kornbluth gives us a fair amount of information about how the Hopi see reality differently from us and even claims the Theory of Relativity is something Hopi understand as children because they have no concept of time like we do. I wonder what books Kornbluth read that inspired him to write this part?

Nahataspe gives Royland some dried, blacken mushrooms. He tells Royland because he doesn’t see reality clearly, they will be safe to experience — that Royland’s cloudy vision of reality will protect him. But Nahataspe was wrong, Royland’s vision isn’t cloudy, and the magic mushrooms take him into the future where the Axis powers rule America.

It’s interesting to compare Kornbluth’s and Dick’s methods of getting their characters into an alternate history. Kornbluth uses the old-fashion literary technique of putting his character to sleep and having them wake up in a new world. Dick begins his story in the alternate history, and one of the amusing aspects of his method, is his characters speculate about our reality.

In olden times, the first-person account was considered the gold standard of believability. That’s why so many old novels have a frame where we learn how the story came about. Modern storytelling has dropped the frame. But with “The Two Dooms” Kornbluth needs Royland to go and come back, and using mystical Native American magic works well as a frame.

Both stories tell what living under Germans and Japanese would be like, and that’s where the two stories differ. While under Japanese rule, Royland spends his time with Chinese peasants, but when he’s on the other side, he spends time with higher-ranking Germans. Kornbluth stereotypes his nationalistic characterizations, but it’s not done in a simple way. I did feel that Kornbluth did quite a lot of research on this story, especially the parts about Los Alamos and the Hopi Native Americans. Since I recently read a nonfiction book about the Manhattan Project, I thought Kornbluth captured some interesting historical details.

I especially like when Kornbluth described a roomful of women as the computer department and Royland wished he had an analog differentiator. All through “Two Dooms” Kornbluth mentions details that entertained me. For example, when Royland leaves his office at the end of the day, Kornbluth says, “Mechanically he locked his desk drawers and his files, turned his window lock, and set out his waster-paper basket in the corridor.” It’s the detail of the waste-paper basket and window that impressed me. Royland’s work is top secret, so it’s logical he would lock his files. But if everything is locked up, how can custodians empty the trash? And it’s 103 degrees at 5:45, so we know the windows are open, and it would be important to lock them too.

Here’s the scene where Royland first enters Nahataspe hut. Notice all the little details Kornbluth sticks in here. Also, notice the humor.

I’ve really got to read more Kornbluth. I’ve been thinking that since I watched Bookpilled’s review of The Best of C. M. Kornbluth. It impressed me that a young guy in his thirties found so much to admire in a mostly forgotten science fiction writer that died over sixty years ago. (Also reviewed are Hothouse, Blood Music, and Nova.)

James Wallace Harris, 6/13/23

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What Did Alfred Bester Think of Science Fiction?

I’ve recently reviewed two short stories by Alfred Bester lately where I wondered if Bester didn’t reveal an undercurrent of disdain for the science fiction genre within his brilliant science fiction. Those two stories were “The Men Who Murdered Mohammed” and “5,271,009.” But I also discovered an essay I wrote a few years ago that I’ve completely forgotten, “Blows Against The Empire: Alfred Bester’s 1953 Critique of Science Fiction.” This essay might duplicate what I said before, but I’m using new evidence.

Whenever I read a science fiction story by Alfred Bester I sense a sneer behind his dazzling storytelling. Almost like God chuckling at us behind his creation. Is that just me?

I went off to find out more about Bester and discovered what I needed in a forgotten volume on my shelf, Redemolished. It’s a collection of unreprinted short stories and essays. One essay that stood out for me was, “A Diatribe Against Science Fiction,” which reprints most of Bester’s February 1961 “Books” column from The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. (Redemolished says May 1961, but it’s wrong.) (The link above is to the collection on Amazon, and the Kindle edition is fairly cheap. I recommend it to fans of Bester.)

I’m going to post scans of pages from F&SF (and hope I won’t get into any copyright trouble) because I believe Bester’s real feelings about science fiction comes through in them. It’s less than four pages.

Ignore the first paragraph about Merril’s book, although it does point to some classic science fiction short stories that Bester admires, ones I admire too.

Notice that Bester puts the blame on science fiction writers. He does say that most writers, amateur or professional, can write, but that’s not the problem. And for my point, I’m not really concerned about Bester attacking writers. I’m suggesting you pay attention to his tone. It’s the same tone that comes through in his fiction — I think.

Note the line, “Many practicing science fiction authors reveal themselves in their works as very small people, disinterested in reality, inexperienced in life, incapable of relating science fiction to human beings, and withdrawing from the complexities of living into their make-believe worlds.” Ouch. Reminds me of that Saturday Night Live skit where William Shatner tells the Trekkies to get a life.

Now Bester does make criticisms of writing that I agree with but again, that’s not my point here. I’m trying to gather evidence for how Bester felt when writing his stories. Bester’s stories are extremely clever, so I can’t help but feel that Bester felt he was a giant among the pygmies.

Note the dig where Bester says good writers begin their stories where mediocre writers end their stories, but science fiction writers end their stories where bad writers begin. This could be valid criticism but it’s also pretty dang harsh. Few writers come close to ever writing something as good as “Fondly Fahrenheit.” Who knows, maybe Bester is trying to give new writers some tough love — that he wants to help them out. But his next two paragraphs are equally harsh, even telling potential writers to stop writing science fiction.

Bester then goes into describing science fiction as a genre for writers to be iconoclasts – “It is one field of fiction where no cows are sacred, and where all idols can be broken. It stimulates, entertains, and educates by daring to question the unquestionable, poke fun at the sacred, condemn the accepted, and advocate the unthinkable.”

Wow, is that what Bester thinks he’s doing? His stories are bitter satires. And here’s where I often detect an attack on the genre. Satire has to have an object to attack, and sometimes I think Bester is attacking science fiction. Evidently, even our genre can’t be a sacred cow.

Is he just attacking science fiction writers? Or is it also the readers?

Bester says, “We’re not merely shooting off our mouth when we say that it is the authors who are killing science fiction. We know how and why science fiction is written today, and are prepared to state a few hard truths. Outside of the exceptions mentioned above, science fiction is written by empty people who have failed as human beings.” Damn, now that’s one helluva of a zinger.

But then we get to this attack on science fiction writers – and readers.

Finally, we finish up with an ending that reminds me that Bester left the genre not long after this, and wrote and edited Holiday from 1963 to 1971 when it folded. He then returned to write science fiction. However, the novels written after this, never gain the fame of The Demolished Man and The Stars My Destination.

There are several more essays in Redemolished where Bester attacks science fiction. One, “The Perfect Composite Science Fiction Author” claims to praise seven science fiction writers, but damn, if that’s praise, I’m not sure any of those writers would want it. It’s in the March 1961 issue of F&SF, in case you have a copy.

I plan to read all of Redemolished, and Bester’s two collections I own, Starlight, an old SFBC omnibus that reprints two early paperback collections, and Virtual Unrealities, which is currently in print. However, that will take some time.

James Wallace Harris, 6/11/23

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“Pairpuppets” by Manuel van Loggem

“Pairpuppets” by Manuel van Loggem is story #16 of 52 from The World Treasury of Science Fiction edited by David G. Hartwell (1989), an anthology my short story club is group reading. Stories are discussed on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. “Pairpuppets” was first published in Dutch in Morgen #5 (December 1972) and first translated into English for The Best from the Rest of the World: European Science Fiction (1976), edited by Donald A. Wollheim.

“Pairpuppets” is about a young man, Eric, who is getting bored sexually with his current girlfriend, Tina. Eric lives in a future utopia/dystopia where every citizen’s sexual partner is selected by computers with the goal of fulfilling their sexual needs. The plot of this story follows Eric in his search for a new sexually satisfying partner.

Even though the goal of this society is utopian, aiming to make all its citizens happy, humans easily become dissatisfied. So we can also view this society as a dystopia. Basically, one person’s utopia is another person’s dystopia.

I thought “Pairpuppets” was okay as a story, but the storytelling came across as a dry parable. The ending was predictable but realistic. However, I did like the level of detail Loggen used to explain Eric’s plight. Obviously, the author wanted to say a lot about sexual desire and brings up a good many related issues. The story gives us much to think about and would make a great discussion story for a high school literature class (if they allowed discussions of sex (but aren’t we becoming dystopian in that area?)).

I’ve also been thinking about why stories like “Pairpuppets” disappoint me. The biggest problem is I’ve read too much science fiction and I compare every new story I read against the memory of all my favorite science fiction short stories. It’s extremely hard for any new story to compete with my Lifetime Top 100 Science Fiction Short Stories.

Then there is the much smaller problem of pet peeves. “Pairpuppets” is about sexbots, one of my least favorite science fiction themes. Of course, if I had read “Pairpuppets” in 1972 when it first came out (and could read Dutch) it might have been a more entertaining idea. That brings up a third problem with reading SF anthologies — they contain old stories, and thus old ideas.

Now, David Hartwell, had a lifetime of science fiction reading behind him when he selected “Pairpuppets” for this anthology in 1989, so both of my issues weren’t a problem for him. That means, like this story, The World Treasury of Science Fiction is a utopia for Hartwell, but sometimes dystopian for me. The word treasury in the title implies the anthology is where a treasure of science fiction is stored. And like the old saying, “One man’s treasure is another man’s trash.”

“Pairpuppets” is far from trash to me, but it just doesn’t light up my reading soul. Good but no cigar.

Another problem with these translated stories, is they are often on the short side. Shorter short stories often feel condensed, and that hurts their impact, except maybe for intellectuals who love cleverness over other virtues. Cleverness works well at short lengths — just think of Saturday Night Live. (By the way, SNL bores me since I left my twenties.)

I prefer short stories that dramatically reveal the emotional development of a character in a specific situation, ending with an epiphany. If Loggen had written this story with more drama, spending twice as many words, showing us Eric’s development rather than telling us, I might have liked “Pairpuppets” quite a lot more.

I believe “Pairpuppets” would be fine in anthologies that didn’t aim so high, like a theme anthology about sex in science fiction, or an anthology of foreign science fiction that didn’t claim it was the best. I have to assume editors working in English are limited to what foreign stories they can acquire that have been translated into English. And I don’t assume translators always pick the best of the best. My guess is they might pick stories their translation skills can handle. Finally, we don’t know if “Pairpuppets” wasn’t a much better story in its original Dutch.

I haven’t read that many translated stories, and the ones I have, like War and Peace, and Anna Karenina are considered to be among the world’s greatest novels. And when I read those two novels I did study their histories of being translated and tried to find the best translation to read. Also, anyone who reads The Bible knows there are way too many translations to compare, and the problems involved.

Every time I read an anthology or collection of translated science fiction short stories I’ve been disappointed. I don’t know if I’m just hitting a language barrier, or if the stories just aren’t as good as I hope they would be, or maybe they weren’t the best to begin with.

Also, think about this. “Pairpuppets” is how I think of Dutch science fiction now, even though it’s just one story from 1972. Let’s assume it’s a fantastic story in Dutch. But what will people from Holland think of American science fiction if the only story they’ve ever read is “Bears Discover Fire” — even if it has a perfect translation?

James Wallace Harris, 6/10/23