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“The Golem” by Avram Davidson

“The Golem” by Avram Davidson is story #8 of 52 from the anthology The World Treasury of Science Fiction edited by David G. Hartwell (1989) that my short story club is group reading. Stories are discussed on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. “The Golem” was first published in the March 1955 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

You can read or listen to “The Golem” online here.

Avram Davidson (1923-1993) uses his own childhood pop culture references to get us to visualize the setting “The Golem” at the beginning of this 1955 story:

Anyone who attended the movies in the twenties or the early thirties has seen that street a thousand times. Past these bungalows with their half-double roofs, Edmund Lowe walked arm-in-arm with Leatrice Joy, and Harold Lloyd was chased by Chinamen waving hatchets. Under these squamous palm trees Laurel kicked Hardy and Woolsey beat Wheeler upon the head with a codfish. Across these pocket-handkerchief-sized lawns, the juveniles of the Our Gang comedies pursued one another and were pursued by angry fat men in golf knickers. On this same street—or perhaps on some other one of five hundred streets exactly like it. 

And he does the same thing at the end:

Presently the sound of the lawnmower whirred through the quiet air in the street just like the street where Jackie Cooper shed huge tears on Wallace Beery’s shirt and Chester Conklin rolled his eyes at Marie Dressler.

I assume that Davidson was nostalgic for the films he saw as a kid in the 1920s and 1930s but how many readers today will know them? I was familiar with all those names and images, but his story keyed in another era for me, the late 1950s and The Twilight Zone. I visualized Mr. and Mrs. Gumbeiner, an old Jewish couple sitting on their porch with their uninvited Golem guest as one of the comic episodes of that classic TV show.

The tone of the story reminded me of Ray Bradbury, Charles Beaumont, and Richard Matheson, so in 1955, Avram Davidson was ahead of his times — by four years.

Of course, in 2023 we’re starting to get worried about AI and real robots while science fiction readers are still enchanted by stories about friendly androids, cute robots, or sexy sexbots. So I assume modern readers could still be enchanted by this quaint old-fashion story. It’s the kind of Jewish comedy schtick that was once very popular, but I wonder if modern readers concerned with cultural correctness might consider it a stereotype? Essentially, “The Golem” is a time capsule of history, that mixes 1955 science fiction with Jewish folklore while asking us to remember old Hollywood films that kids loved twenty and thirty years earlier.

It’s interesting that David Hartwell included “The Golem” in The World Treasury of Science Fiction. How many stories in that anthology are there because of Hartwell’s own nostalgia? Other editors have loved this story too, just look at the long list of reprints it’s gotten over the last several decades.

However, even though I enjoyed this little blast from the past, I have to wonder if its storytelling hasn’t become too quaint for modern readers. Right after reading it, I started listening to “The Affinity Charm” by Jennifer Egan, the first story in her fix-novel The Candy House. The setting for that story is an apartment where people have gathered after a lecture to discuss what everyone thought. Egan presents a diverse group of intellectuals all arguing from different academic perspectives. To these modern sophisticates, “The Golem” would be an overly simplistic tale they’d quickly dismiss. I wonder if even uneducated young people today would be too sophisticated intellectually to enjoy this story?

I only considered “The Golem” mildly entertaining, mostly for its nostalgia. But then I can remember 1955. How will people born after 1985 or 1995 see it? Hartwell’s anthology came out in 1989, and I’m starting to wonder from its first eight stories if it isn’t already a relic of the past?

James Wallace Harris, 5/22/23

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“On the Inside Track” by Karl Michael Armer

“On the Inside Track” by Karl Michael Armer is story #7 of 52 from the anthology The World Treasury of Science Fiction edited by David G. Hartwell (1989) that my short story club is group reading. Stories are discussed on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. “On the Inside Track” was first published in the original anthology, Tales From the Planet Earth in 1986, edited by Frederik Pohl and Elizabeth Anne Hull. As far as I can tell from ISFDB.org, those are its only publications.

“On the Inside Track” is by a German writer, Karl Michael Armer, and it’s set in Europe, but it seems like a typical American science fiction story. It’s also a good story, one that I’ll want to reread in the future. Actually, I might want to read all the stories in Tales From the Planet Earth after reading the review it got in The New York Times.

One reason I liked “On the Inside Track” is its protagonist, Robert Förster is 70 years old, and I’m 71. Förster is well-to-do and unhappy. I’m happy but not well-to-do, but we both share quite a lot of observations and reactions about being old. Förster’s life is interrupted when an alien, Sassacan, moves into Förster’s mind. In this story, aliens conduct interstellar travel by mind projection. Sassacan visits Earth to conduct business negotiations with other aliens who are occupying other human bodies.

Förster doesn’t mind being used because it’s a diversion from being bored and lonely. In fact, he gets to like the company. This story reminds me of Sheckley’s novel, Mindswap but without the humor. “On the Inside Track” is pleasant, but slightly predictable. I guessed two of its surprises, but that didn’t mar the reading experience.

However, I’ve got to ask a question: Is World SF really any different than American science fiction? World SF is set in other countries, and sometimes it even references cultural differences or tries to exploit local myths and beliefs, but mostly science fiction is science fiction. “On the Inside Track” makes a decent addition to the anthology but I didn’t think about Germany while I was reading it. Förster’s desire to be commanding is alien to me, but I don’t think that as a German trait, but as an alpha male trait of a person wanting to be successful.

I guess I need to wait and see if Hartwell finds a story from another country that feels truly alien to me. Alien in the sense that it’s completely foreign, and not space alien.

James Wallace Harris, 5/20/23

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“Mockingbird” by Walter Tevis

If you’re an old movie fan, either from being old or just because you love old movies, you might know Walter Tevis from his first novel, The Hustler (1959). It was made into a stunning Paul Newman movie. Jeez, that’s a helluva start for a young novelist. Wait, that happened to Larry McMurtry too. (Note to self, see how many young novelists were made famous by Paul Newman, it might be worth a blog.) Tevis’ last novel, The Color of Money (1984) was also made into a movie starring Paul Newman. I’m sure the first and last thing is unique.

Tevis was forgotten for a while until David Bowie made his second novel, The Man Who Fell to Earth (1963), into a weird quirky flick in 1976. Don’t rush out and watch that movie though, they ruined the book, but do read the novel, it’s quiet and lovely and should resonate with your soul. (You can watch the film afterward to see what Bowie does in the role, and there is another film version and a Showtime TV series to check out too.)

Most young people today will know of Walter Tevis if they read the credits or reviews of Queen’s Gambit (1983), the hit series on Netflix. The TV show is excellent but the book is better. All this media exposure has made Tevis (1928-1984) a minor forgotten writer with some fame.

You might have figured out by now that I’m a fan of Walter Tevis. That’s even more true now that I just finished his 1980 novel Mockingbird. What a strange trip it was. I thought it a perfect novel for the 2020s because it is about artificial intelligence and the decline of the human race and our civilization. Mockingbird is set in the 25th century but I don’t think it will take us that long.

I don’t want to give any spoilers to this novel because it‘s the kind of story that you should just unfold slowly as you read. But I do need to say enough to get you to read Mockingbird. Mockingbird has over two thousand customer ratings on Amazon with a 4.5 average.

For most of the novel Tevis tightrope walks between existentialism and nihilism and has a brush with Christianity. I will tell you the ending made me happy because of how Tevis ties up the story and his philosophical speculations. Tevis doesn’t stick to any one philosophy. He appears to be extrapolating on the decline and corruption of liberal thought but what he projects for conservatives isn’t any better. Walter Tevis was one of those tortured souls that tried mightily to figure out reality in his fiction.

The story opens with Robert Spofforth, a robot who looks like a black man but has an artificial brain. Later in the novel, Spofforth is described as the most beautiful object humans ever created. Bob is a level 9 robot, the most advanced of his kind, but the only unit of this model that hasn’t destroyed himself. He has been programmed so he can’t commit suicide. Currently, he is the Dean of New York University, but he might be the most intelligent and most powerful being left on the planet.

Spofforth hires Paul Bentley to come to New York because he’s the only human being he can find that can read. Bentley’s narrative is the main part of the novel. Paul then meets Mary Lou, an iconoclast living among the sheep, and teaches her to read. But Bob didn’t hire Paul to teach people to read but to translate the intertitles in silent films. Bob doesn’t want humans to learn to read again.

The human population has shrunk from billions to just a few million. Robots care for all their needs, but very poorly because robots are also a declining species. Humans routinely consume drugs, have a lot of casual sex, and pursue inner development.

There are elements in Mockingbird that will remind you of Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four, with a slight hint of The Road. And if you’ve read The Long Tomorrow by Leigh Brackett, Mockingbird reminded me of it too. And there’s a little bit of Cool Hand Luke in the story. (Another Paul Newman connection).

And if that’s not enough to get you to read Mockingbird there’s a cat named Biff. I’m off to read The Steps of the Sun (1983) but it hasn’t gotten kind reviews. I also bought The King is Dead (2023) which reprints his 1981 collection Far from Home and adds many unpublished works.

James Wallace Harris, 5/20/23

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“The Man Who Lost the Sea” by Theodore Sturgeon – 3rd Reading

“The Man Who Lost the Sea” by Theodore Sturgeon is story #6 of 52 from the anthology The World Treasury of Science Fiction edited by David G. Hartwell (1989) that my short story club is group reading. Stories are discussed on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. “The Man Who Lost the Sea” was first published in the October 1959 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

My third reading of “The Man Who Lost the Sea” left my eyes stinging with tears, just like they had for the second reading. Nearly everything I felt while reading the story for the third time I had said in my second review. My first review was all about trying to get everyone to read the story.

I found Sturgeon’s prose while reading “The Man Who Lost the Sea” this time far more vivid than the first two times, and I look forward to reading it again in the future. A couple weeks ago I watched a YouTube video by a guy reviewing classic litature (Joyce, Proust, Pynchon). He said his professor had taught him to really get to know a book required reading it ten times.

I have a self-imposed rule when reading anthologies. Whenever I’m reading a new anthology and it has stories in it that I’ve read before, I reread them — even if they were in the last anthology I just finished. Even if I didn’t like them. Sometimes a story I didn’t like on my first reading, or the second, becomes a favorite.

“The Man Who Lost the Sea” is the kind of story that I use for my 5-star ratings. Those are stories I want to read and reread over my entire lifetime. I’ve probably read “The Man Who Lost the Sea” more than three times because I can’t remember everything I read years or decades ago. I’ve just read and reviewed it three times in a little over two years for this blog. The great thing about doing this blog is documenting my memory, it’s highly unreliable, and getting more so.

Memory is one of my favorite subjects and themes, and “The Man Who Lost the Sea” is also about memory and memories.

James Wallace Harris, 5/17/23

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“Triceratops” by Kono Tensei

“Triceratops” by Kono Tensei is story #5 of 52 from the anthology The World Treasury of Science Fiction edited by David G. Hartwell (1989) that my short story club is group reading. Stories are discussed on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. “Triceratops” was first published in the August 1982 issue of Omni.

On one level, “Triceratops” isn’t much of a story. Nice enough. Sort of a bland version of Bradbury. A dad and his son are out biking and they see something out of the ordinary. Eventually, they learn it’s a triceratops, and conclude they alone, for some reason that’s not clear, can see into another dimension. Father and son bond over secretly watching a Cretaceous landscape superimposed over their Japanese subdivision.

David Hartwell’s aim is to showcase science fiction from around the world in this anthology, but hopefully, this story isn’t representative of the best SF from Japan or the world. And I’d hate to think Hartwell picked it because he characterizes Japan as a country of big monster fans.

It’s a challenge to find an essay hook for this story. I think I’ll use a video I watched from the Outlaw Bookseller (Steven E. Andrews) this morning on conceptual breakthroughs in science fiction. Andrews begins by talking about the first lines of classic science fiction stories.

The ones we remember have great first lines that announce a paradigm shift. His first example was from Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” The second was from Christopher Priest’s The Inverted World, “I had reached the age of six hundred and fifty miles.”

Unfortunately, Tensei begins his story with “The father and son were returning from cycling.” That’s a rather mundane first sentence. Tensei waits for quite a few paragraphs before bringing on his paradigm shift.

Andrews then goes on to say the best SF stories have a conceptual breakthrough that comes near the end that inspires a sense of wonder. “Triceratops” does depend on a conceptual breakthrough, but it’s in the middle. The father and son decide if they think that the Cretaceous can intersect dimensionally with the present then they can see the two together. The logic of “if you believe it to be true it will be true” isn’t much of a conceptual breakthrough, although the film version of The Wizard of Oz pulled it off nicely.

This is the first story I would have left out of this anthology. Unfortunately, it was the first example of world SF. Not a good start.

I recommend watching the whole video, Top 10 Science Fiction Conceptual Breakthrough Stories: The Elements of Science Fiction Part 1. I should use it as a foundation for evaluating the stories in The World Treasury of Science Fiction. However, it might be aiming too high for the average science fiction story — or should every science fiction story aim to hit one out of the park?

James Wallace Harris, 5/15/23

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“Chronopolis” by J. G. Ballard

“Chronopolis” by J. G. Ballard is story #4 of 52 from the anthology The World Treasury of Science Fiction edited by David G. Hartwell (1989) that my short story club is group reading. Stories are discussed on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. “Chronopolis” was first published in the June 1960 issue of New Worlds.

“Chronopolis” is set in the future where society has outlawed keeping time. Ballard imagined a future where our high-tech global civilization collapsed from the complexity of overpopulation. In this new world, the population is much smaller having giving up the rat race.

The story begins in a holding cell. Conrad Newman is awaiting trial for as of yet unspecified crimes. Newman is obsessed with making his south-facing jail cell window into a sundial so he can accurately keep the time while everyone else is unconcerned about when things will happen. Gradually we learn that this society operates without a schedule, and clocks are illegal. They allow timers, which people use to cook eggs, time a math class, or how long they should sleep, but not clocks that force schedules onto life’s activities.

Ballard has come up with a nifty idea. You don’t know if this new world he described is better or worse for not knowing the time, but Conrad Newman is a renegade who secretly embraces keeping time, allowing him to outcompete other people. Newman’s world is the opposite of Harlan Ellison’s “‘Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman.” Conrad Newman is the polar opposite of Everett C. Marm. It’s funny, but we root for each character in their separate stories.

I got to say, I really liked this story a lot even though when you think about it, there’s not much to it. On the one hand, it’s the old fashion kind of science fiction that’s based on a neat idea. On the other hand, it feels different from the other science fiction of 1960 or before. J. G. Ballard is considered one of the pathfinders of the New Wave movement in science fiction in the mid-1960s. “Chronopolis” isn’t really New Wave yet. Probably why it feels different is it’s British science fiction, and British science fiction always felt more grown-up to me.

I’ve only read a couple novels by Ballard, and maybe a dozen short stories, but they’ve all impressed me as being “heavy” in the old hippie sense of the word. I assume that was another way of saying weighty. I recently read “The Terminal Beach” by Ballard and was equally impressed, and it felt equally heavy. Years ago, I bought The Complete Short Stories of J. G. Ballard on audiobook. It’s 55 hours long. I also have it on the Kindle. Whenever one of his stories comes up on the discussion group I like listening to them. They feel mature and atmospheric. I also like reading them because I’m impressed with Ballard’s prose. Each time I read one of his stories, I tell myself I need to listen to the entire 55-hour audiobook and I really want to get into Ballard’s work.

The other day at the Friends of the Library used bookstore I found Applied Ballardianism by Simon Sellars. I couldn’t tell if it was a novel, memoir, monograph, or what, but I bought it. This is how it’s described at Amazon: 

An existential odyssey weaving together lived experience and theoretical insight, this startling autobiographical hyperfiction surveys and dissects a world where everything connects and global technological delirium is the norm.

The mediascapes of late capitalism reconfigure erotic responses and trigger primal aggression; under constant surveillance, we occupy simulations of ourselves, private estates on a hyperconnected globe; fictions reprogram reality, memories are rewritten by the future…

Fleeing the excesses of 1990s cyberculture, a young researcher sets out to systematically analyse the obsessively reiterated themes of a writer who prophesied the disorienting future we now inhabit. The story of his failure is as disturbingly psychotropic as those of his magus—J.G. Ballard, prophet of the post-postmodern, voluptuary of the car crash, surgeon of the pathological virtualities pulsing beneath the surface of reality.

Plagued by obsessive fears, defeated by the tedium of academia, yet still certain that everything connects to Ballard, his academic thesis collapses into a series of delirious travelogues, deranged speculations and tormented meditations on time, memory, and loss. Abandoning literary interpretation and renouncing all scholarly distance, he finally accepts the deep assignment that has run throughout his entire life, and embarks on a rogue fieldwork project: Applied Ballardianism, a new discipline and a new ideal for living. Only the darkest impulses, the most morbid obsessions, and the most apocalyptic paranoia can uncover the technological mutations of inner space.

An existential odyssey inextricably weaving together lived experience and theoretical insight, this startling autobiographical hyperfiction surveys and dissects a world where everything connects and global technological delirium is the norm—a world become unmistakably Ballardian.

Some of that description faintly feels like “Chronopolis” but it’s an early story for Ballard, that hints at things to come. Also, by serendipity, I came across this YouTube video by the Outlaw Bookseller on the New Wave. Ballard figures heavily in it. Warning though, this video is one hour and twelve minutes long.

“Chronopolis” is another story that’s pushing me into the world of J. G. Ballard. One of these days, and hopefully soon, I’ll start gorging on Ballard’s books.

James Wallace Harris, 5/12/23

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“Special Flight” by John Berryman

“Special Flight” by John Berryman is story #3 of 52 from the anthology The World Treasury of Science Fiction edited by David G. Hartwell (1989) that my short story club is group reading. Stories are discussed on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.

Editors assembled anthologies to reprint and promote stories they believe people should read — stories they feel should be kept alive. I have to wonder why Hartwell selected “Special Flight” because to most modern readers, or even readers in 1989, the story is a clunker. Kingsley Amis and Robert Conquest selected “Special Flight” for their anthology Spectrum in 1961, but other than those two anthologies no other editors have wanted to save this story from oblivion.

John Berryman, according to ISFDB, only published 21 science fiction stories, and some of them were occasionally reprinted. However, John Berryman is not a name I remember. He is a forgotten author. So why read his story in 2023? I’ve never read “Special Flight” before, or even heard of it, but it’s an impressive science fiction for 1939 if you think about it in a certain way. “Special Flight” was first published in the May 1939 issue of Astounding, just months before the July issue that many consider the first issue of the Golden Age of Science Fiction. Then why didn’t Hartwell choose one of the more famous stories from that year?

Reading “Special Flight” brings up a long queue of questions. The sole quality that makes this story impressive is it tries to scientifically imagine routine space flight in 1939 in a realistic manner. So, do I recommend you track it down and read it? Not really, because it gets the science all wrong. However, if you happened to have an academic bent and like to study science fiction as a subject, then “Special Flight” is an interesting read.

If you’ve ever wondered how people in 1939 imagined space flight actually working, and not just being silly Buck Rogers stuff, “Special Flight” can provide some answers. Berryman was trying to imagine a near future where we mined the Moon for minerals and rocketships were much like merchant ships or cargo aircraft. “Special Flight” reminds me of what Heinlein was trying to do in the 1950s and it also reminds me of the original Star Trek.

Shouldn’t we forgive “Special Flight” for its mistakes if it was solid scientific speculation in 1939? Jules Verne got nothing right scientifically in Journey to the Center of the Earth but it’s still a well-loved story today. Why? Because the storytelling is fun. Then what about the storytelling in “Special Flight?” It’s not bad but it’s not great either. It’s about the level of a science fiction B-movie from 1953. Remember all those old black-and-white movies where the big danger of space flight was meteors? That’s what happens in “Special Flight”

“Special Flight” is action-packed. It’s about an emergency rocket flight to the Moon to save the lives of over a hundred miners. Everything possible that could go wrong does, including a giant tank of milk busting and flowing all over the rocket ship. Berryman spends a lot of his wordage on math and navigation and not that much on characterization. The crew is often knocked around like Captain Kirk and his crew — remember how the actors threw themselves around on the sets of Star Trek? In other words, the action is cheesy. But on the other hand, the focus is on getting to the Moon, and quite a lot of detail that Berryman imagined feels realistic. For instance, Berryman imagines that spaceflight causes tiny blood clots in the brain that produces a list of effects that can make operating a spaceship difficult. He talks about the three-body problem, something I didn’t know about until I read the Cixin Liu book. He imagines an automatic pilot and system that controls chemical rockets to maneuver in space while atomic rockets provide the main thrust using water as fuel. He talks about orbital velocities, g-forces, and take-off speeds. Stuff that just wasn’t in science fiction in the 1930s.

If you like to chart how science fiction evolved or are curious about how people before WWII imagined realistic space travel, then read “Special Flight.” If you’re used to modern well-told science fiction stories, you’ll probably want to skip it.

By the way, here’s an illustration from the cover of Cosmic Stories (July 1941) that imagines being in space in a rather realistic way for the time. I do like picturing how people imagined space travel before NASA. That’s why I enjoyed “Special Flight.”

James Wallace Harris, 5/11/23

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“Forgetfulness” by John W. Campbell

“Forgetfulness” by John W. Campbell, Jr. is story #2 of 52 from the anthology The World Treasury of Science Fiction edited by David G. Hartwell (1989) that my short story club is group reading.

Instead of counting all the titles and authors of science fiction books I’ve read, I’m starting to tally all the far-out concepts science fiction has given me. In “Forgetfulness” John W. Campbell took one of my favorite concepts, walking in ancient dead alien cities, which was probably an old SF concept even in 1937, and gave it a couple twists. It’s going to be impossible to talk about this story without giving spoilers so think of this essay as an analysis of SF concepts and not a review. You can read the story online here, or buy it in a $2.99 Kindle edition of Campbell’s collection Cloak of Aeshir. However, I don’t recommend buying unless you’re a big fan of John W. Campbell.

“Forgetfulness” begins with a spaceship landing on the planet Rhth, one of nine planets in the system. The main point-of-view character is Ron Thule, an astronomer, from the planet Pareeth. They have traveled for six years, in a spaceship 2,500 feet long and 400 feet in diameter, covering 3.5 light-years, traveling at nearly the speed of light. These people from Pareeth are looking for a world to colonize, and are disappointed that Rhth is already inhabited. They hope to settle in the remains of a majestic city that was built by spacing-faring race millions of years ago and discover its secrets.

Try and pronounce Rhth. If nine planets weren’t a giveaway, the name Rhth should be. There they meet Seun, a very tall, graceful human-shaped being, clothed in a golden outfit, with a beautiful colored cape. All the people of Rhth wear gold suits and colored capes and live in opalescent domes twenty to thirty feet in diameter situated under giant green trees near the dead city. The buildings of that titanic city are three thousand feet high, but the winds have filled the streets with five hundred feet of dirt.

Seun has told Ron Thule and the commander of the Pareeth mission, Shor Nun, that the builders of the city had once visited their world. And that their world, Pareeth, once orbited the same sun as Rhth, but had been torn away by a rogue star. This hints that maybe the builders had conducted a kind of panspermia across the galaxy. As the story progresses the achievements of the builders become greater and greater. However, the people of Pareeth eventually discover secrets that can shatter their minds and their hopes.

Most of us find a great sense of wonder reading about the rediscovery of lost cities. So, it’s not a remarkable feat of creativity for a science fiction writer to imagine humans finding long-dead alien cities. Still, it’s one that sets off a powerful sense of wonder and has been used time and again in science fiction.

Campbell puts a twist on this concept, by having aliens discover a city from a long-dead civilization of mankind. John W. Campbell has a reputation that claims he wanted humans to be the galactic crown of creation, and this story supports that. In his earlier story, “Twilight” he had a human time traveler discover a far future deserted human civilization. That gave him a chance to imagine the engineering marvels of what we could achieve someday. In “Forgetfulness” he has aliens discover dead human civilization, but this time, Campbell imagined an even more impressive future for us built by super-science. You should read both stories to see just how hopeful Campbell was for the human race.

Both “Twilight” and “Forgetfulness” could be considered Dying Earth stories, although H. G. Wells in “The Time Machine,” William Hope Hodgson in The Night Land, and Olaf Stapledon in Last and First Men, took that idea, even much further.

Unfortunately, “Forgetfulness” is hard to read. Part of that is due to a dated writing style, but also because Campbell didn’t really have much of a story to tell. They came, they discovered wonders, they were frightened, they were disappointed. There’s no drama or revealed emotions. “Forgetfulness” was reprinted in the classic 1946 anthology Adventures in Time and Space but has been mostly forgotten since. Damon Knight remembered it in his 1966 anthology Cities of Wonder, and Brian Aldiss and Harrison brought it back again in 1973 for The Astounding-Analog Reader. Both are very minor anthologies. The second contained just seven stories from Astounding covering 1937-1941, a rather odd collection.

It’s interesting that a story about remembering has been forgotten. The big concept in “Forgetfulness” is visiting the remains of an astonishing civilization millions of years after its citizens have gone. Campbell puts his own twist on it by having that civilization be a future version of ours. However, there’s another important concept he wanted to get across, and that’s how we forget the past. Shor Nun and Ron Thule can’t understand why Seun doesn’t understand how the city works. But then Campbell reminds us we couldn’t explain the technology of cavemen, or from other periods of human civilization. Remember all the discussions about how did the Egyptians build the pyramids? Well, it turns out Seun has even newer technologies that are even further advanced than the builders and they have merely forgotten earlier primitive technology.

I have to wonder if Arthur C. Clarke’s story “Rescue Party” wasn’t inspired by “Forgetfulness” and “Twilight.” Or that the screenwriters for Forbidden Planet hadn’t read “Forgetfulness” too. Or were their ideas independently invented?

That’s the thing about science fiction. Concepts keep getting reused. Are they forgotten and then reinvented? Or does science fiction evolve over time as concepts merge and mutate? Will some young writer in the 2020s come up with a story about a far-future space race discovering a future Earth and finding the ruins of what our civilization will become? How will this writer imagine the pinnacle of our success? Campbell wanted to believe that humanity will evolve until it has god-like powers. That idea has shown up in science fiction over and over again. But do we still believe that? Right now the peak of our civilization might end this century.

James Wallace Harris, 5/9/23

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Science Fiction Book Reviewers on YouTube

I have become fascinated by science fiction book reviewers on YouTube. Most are young, and what’s particularly fascinating to me is how they are reading old books to learn the history of science fiction. That’s something I’ve been curious about for years, how do younger people feel about older science fiction. Of course, some of them bring a woke perspective, but I don’t mind, I often accept their criticism. On the other hand, some of the woken lack compassion for what it meant to grow up in the past.

Most of these book reviewers don’t review new books. I’m used to those book reviewers in science fiction magazines reviewing the books that are just coming out or will be soon. So I assume these YouTube reviewers aren’t getting ARCs or review copies. Some of these reviewers seem to be making money off their YouTube channel, maybe enough to make a living. Or that’s the hope. My favorite reviewer is Bookpilled, and he admits his YouTube channels are the way he makes his living. That might be changing since he’s about to become a world traveler. Not all of his videos review books. He makes money by buying used SF and reselling it online, and some videos are showing what’s up for sale.

Bookpilled is my favorite because reviews books intelligently, and with a lot of insight. I don’t know his real name, but I think it’s Matt. He actually gets me to read books. The link above is to his main site, but here is his last favorites video:

The next channel I like is Fit 2B Read. I liked this particular review because it made me want to read/reread all five books. I wish these reviewers would use their own names. I like how Fit 2B Read sought out forgotten classics. That’s what I’m doing myself. The guy is very camera ready and his show is either scripted or he’s very good at talking off the cuff. One of the main problems with watching YouTube videos is they waste the viewer’s time by either giving us information unrelated to the video or by slowly meandering around a topic or just never getting to the point.

I probably shouldn’t say this, but some YouTubers just don’t speak well enough or look good enough to watch. Fit 2B Read does a good job of being a talking head. He doesn’t get too close to the camera. He speaks fast, but not too fast. And he’s coherent. Like many of these YouTubers, he cranks out the content, finding different reasons for creating a topic to film. This doesn’t always work, but I know that YouTubers have to constantly produce new content or they’ll lose viewers. YouTube has some kind of statistical science for promoting videos, and that puts YouTubers who want to build their channel and make money on the rat race treadmill. Fit 2B Read does make some slick-looking videos.

And talk about a slick production, I’m quite impressed with The Library Ladder. His production is eye-catching, he has a radio announcer voice and a camera-ready mug. But what really wows me about this guy is his collection. I assume he’s wealthy because he often shows books that are rare collectibles. The video of his that makes me drool is the one on Gnome Press.

One of the strangest reviewers is the one for Media Death Cult. His stage name is Moid Moidelhoff, but I don’t know if that’s a real name. Moid is quite a character. In many of his videos, he’s wearing a gun. Moid goes all out for his channel. He’s even started interviewing famous writers. Here’s his review of two lesser-known Philip K. Dick novels. (He hopes to review them all.)

Next up is the Secret Sauce of Storycraft. I was impressed with her take on The Sparrow but today I watched an earlier video, Classic SciFi Sampler, and she disappointed me with how many mistakes she made and how often she admitted she didn’t know something and didn’t want to look it up. That was an older video and I think she evolved quite a lot. Right now I’m forgiving of her mistakes because she seems young and fairly new to science fiction. But what I like is how she’s working to catch up.

I thought the premise of the video below was a great idea. She wanted her users to know what kind of books she disliked because if she only reviewed books she liked they wouldn’t completely understand her as a reviewer. Unfortunately, she only gives a litany of her emotional reactions to the 8 books, and no useful details as to why. The reason why I liked her review of The Sparrow is she worked out a framework of ideas to judge the book and that gave me something to think about. The woman who does Secret Sauce of Storycraft does know how to make a video, speaks well on camera, is camera ready, and stays on topic. I’m expecting her to improve. She needs to give us more details about the book and I hope she comes up with more analytical thinking about the themes in books like she did for The Sparrow.

The Shades of Orange, by a young woman named Rachel, also shows potential. She gives a bit more detail about the books than the reviewer on The Secret Sauce of Storycraft. I’m showing this video because she rereads Shadow & Claw by Gene Wolfe, a book my friend Mike is reading, and one I’ve been thinking about reading. She starts with some new releases. I want to see more of that. I’m completely out of touch with newer science fiction.

I wish these reviewers would give more details about the books and less about their impressions. I do not like spoilers, so I know it’s hard to present a book without ruining the story for people like me. I liked how she said that Shadow & Claw was about a regressed society which she didn’t learn right away in her first reading, but made a big difference in enjoying the book in her second reading. That’s a good detail and it’s not a big enough spoiler.

The Outlaw Bookseller often creates videos on topics I’m most anxious to watch but I have trouble watching them. My problem is he doesn’t get down to business quick enough, or he digresses, but when he is on target, he’s often the most knowledgeable about the genre of the reviewers mentioned here. And he covers the books and topics I’m most interested in. For example, I recently wanted to read a D. G. Compton novel. The Outlook Bookseller does give the level of detail I want, but he sometimes tells too much about the story. The details he does give are a description of what happens in the book. That’s great if they aren’t spoilers, but I also want analysis. The Outlaw Bookseller does give me most of what I want from a review, but I have to admit the presentation doesn’t work well for me. The reviewer has the details I want but gives them too fast, and in a kind of stream of conscious way that’s hard to hang onto cognitively. I think I would do better reading his reviews. I’m sticking with this channel, trying to adapt to the presentation, because this guy knows his stuff.

My guess is these YouTube book reviewers (BookTube?) have a greater potential of promoting and selling books than bloggers and magazine reviewers. I’d like to find reviewers who focus on new books, so if you know of any, give me a link in the comments.

James Wallace Harris, 5/6/23

Posted on by jameswharris · 16 Comments

“Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut

“Harrison Bergeron” is a political satire set in the year 2081. Kurt Vonnegut imagines everyone is not only equal under the law but handicapped to be made equal in all ways. Stronger people are weighed down, talented people are made less talented, and intelligent people have to wear earplugs that make various kinds of noises to distract them from thinking deeply. In this rather short story, George and Hazel Bergeron are watching a ballet on television. They have forgotten their 14-year-old son Harrison has been arrested for being too handsome, too smart, and too strong. During the course of the TV show, their son appears on the ballet stage having escaped to start a rebellion. (You can read it here, or read a detailed synopsis on Wikipedia.)

“Harrison Bergeron” is not a subtle satire, instead it goes for the absurd. It’s a very likable story. Vonnegut tells it in simple language with vivid details. You immediately agree with him that this dystopian world is wrong. This short story has become quite famous, having been adapted to the screen four times. National Review, the conservative magazine founded by William F. Buckley even reprinted the story. The National Review keeps using “Harrison Bergeron” – here’s it being used again in 2015 against economic inequality in “Inching Towards ‘Harrison Bergeron.’“

Usually, satire attacks something, and I have to wonder what Vonnegut was attacking. While reading it I thought maybe he was protesting laws designed to create equal opportunity. Then when I read about National Review and that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia quoted the story in PGA Tour, Inc. v. Martin then I began to wonder even more. And it’s referenced in academic papers, including a 2013 one about transgender athletes. I thought Vonnegut was liberal. Wikipedia did say he wasn’t against his story being used in a Kansas court situation, he didn’t agree with their interpretation.

So why have conservatives embraced “Harrison Bergeron” so thoroughly? Are they using its satire the way Vonnegut intended? A site called What So Proudly We Hail promotes the story with a very pointed introduction:

Central to the American creed is the principle of equality, beginning with the notion that all human beings possess certain fundamental rights and equal standing before the law. Our concern for equality has expanded over the past half century to focus also on inequalities in opportunities, wealth, achievement, and social condition. What good is an equal right to pursue happiness if one lacks the native gifts or the social means to exercise it successfully? In this satirical story (1961), set in a future time in which “everybody was finally equal . . . every which way,” Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (1922–2007) challenges our devotion to equality and invites us to consider the costs of pursuing it too zealously. Although the story is not explicitly about racial, ethnic, or gender equality, the questions it provokes about the kind of equality we should want, and the costs of pursuing it, are relevant also to campaigns to eliminate inequalities among racial and ethnic groups or between the sexes. Does the society portrayed here represent a fulfillment of the ideal of equality in the Declaration of Independence, or rather a perversion of the principle? Does opposing invidious distinctions, envy, and feelings of inferiority require reducing all to the lowest common denominator, and is this the true path to “social justice”? Would homogeneity attained by artificially raising up the low, producing a nation of Harrisons rather than a nation of Hazels—a prospect offered by biotechnological “enhancement”—be any more attractive?

The story does resonate with conservative thinking and even more so today. Are there other ways to read it? On the surface, the bad guys in the story are the government and laws that try to make everyone equal in every way. However, was that what Vonnegut was protesting. Was he all fired up and wrote this story the way the conservatives have used it?

I have no idea, but I do wonder about something. Vonnegut’s story is silly, absurd, and far from real. Vonnegut was often silly and absurd. I wonder if he just didn’t get the idea of a government taking the idea that everyone should be equal, and imagining how they could go about making it happen. It was published in a science fiction magazine. If Vonnegut was serious about his satire, why didn’t he publish it in a serious magazine? And back then, bizarre speculation on social change was common in SF stories.

The story came out in 1961, well before the liberal sixties. Eisenhower was probably president when he wrote it. A similar idea about making everyone equal had been used in the 1959 novel, The Sirens of Titan. In the 1950s the main political push to make people equal was providing equal education to African Americans. And that effort was to make people better educated, not dumber. My guess is “Harrison Bergeron” is based on a silly idea that came to Vonnegut and he wrote a story to illustrate it. Conservatives have just run with it.

What’s also interesting is Hazel, the wife, has no handicapping applied to her. She’s average. Was Vonnegut saying something about women? 1961 was also before the Second Wave of feminism in the 1960s. Was he being liberal to make the Handicapper General of the United States, a woman? She had the funny name Diana Moon Glampers? Was this a dig at women?

I don’t think I’ve read “Harrison Bergeron” before. Its basic idea is so memorable that I can’t believe I’d forget it. I could have since it’s been around since the October 1961 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. It’s also been reprinted quite often and I could have read it and thought it so absurd as to be completely minor, and did forget it. “Harrison Bergeron” has 9 citations in The Classics of Science Fiction Short Stories v. 2. I just read it because our short story club has just started reading The Treasury of World Science Fiction edited by David G. Hartwell. That anthology is a monster of over one thousand pages of classic science fiction where Hartwell also introduces science fiction from around the world.

Despite its fame, I still think “Harrison Bergeron” is a silly story. I’d only rate it ***+ in my system – three stars mean well-written, and a + means I liked it a lot. Four stars would mean it’s a story I’ll want to reread now and then, and I don’t feel that.

I’m going to try and review as many of the stories as possible from The Treasury of World Science Fiction. I haven’t given up on my Heinlein project, but after gorging on his work for months, I’ve been taking a break. I’ve wanted to get into a science fiction novel I never read but I’m still on a short story kick.

James Wallace Harris, 5/6/23