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Reading Science Fiction in the Seventies is Different From Reading Science Fiction in My Seventies

I imprinted on science fiction in the early 1960s. At that time, I considered science fiction to be PR for the space program. I fell in love with science fiction concurrently with Project Mercury and Project Gemini. I mostly read books by Robert A. Heinlein for the first few years, so colonizing the solar system seemed like humanity’s true purpose to me.

In 1968, I discovered Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick on the new book shelf at the Coconut Grove Library in Miami, Florida. His science fiction wasn’t about promoting space exploration. By then I had discovered the counter-culture, and PKD made a different kind of sense.

I started college in 1969, but in the fall of 1970, I dropped out because the university I was attending required ROTC, which I was willing to take, but the ROTC insisted I cut my hair, which I wasn’t willing to do. In 1971 I switched to a two-year technical school to study computers.

I was uncertain about my future and the future in general. My indecision led to reading 479 science fiction paperbacks in 1971 and 1972. That was another kind of education. I made friends at the local science fiction club and started publishing fanzines and going to cons. However, by the end of 1975, I was tired of science fiction and gafiated from fandom.

I just finished reading Eye in the Sky, an early novel by Philip K. Dick that was first published in 1957 as a cheap ACE paperback. It was vaguely familiar, and when that happens I assume it’s because it was one of those SF novels I read back in 1971-1972. Back then I consumed SF paperbacks like a stoner eating a bag of chocolate chip cookies. Each book was a momentary distraction from my confused life of not wanting to grow up. Each book provided escapism until I finished it and started the next one.

I spend more time thinking about what I read at seventy-three. Also, my world is very different than it was fifty years ago. In some ways, I’m no different, I’m still trying to figure out what I’m supposed to do with my life, but it is different because the perspective of the future at 23 and 73 is drastically different. I’ve thought a lot more about Eye in the Sky this time.

In the 1970s, I judged science fiction on how well it speculated on the near future, especially regarding space exploration and technology. I thought Philip K. Dick was so poor at this that I didn’t consider him a real science fiction writer. I classified him with Ray Bradbury and Kurt Vonnegut.

In the 2020s, I value Philip K. Dick for insights I never could have imagined back in the 1970s. Eye in the Sky asks us to imagine reality being shaped by subjectivity. In the story, eight people are involved in an accident. When they come to, the world is similar, but religion works instead of science. Eventually, they discover that the world is controlled by the thoughts of one of the eight. When the person controlling reality dies, they find themselves in another world but shaped by the mental perspective of another member of the eight.

This setup gives Dick a chance to explore the idea of subjective reality. What amazed me in this reading, is Dick covers all the themes in this early novel that he would later explore in all his other novels. I’ve always divided PKD’s books into three periods. The 1950s and early 1960s, the 1960s, and the 1970s novels. For example, Dick’s Valis novels of the 1970s explore Gnosticism. Well, Dick might not have known about Gnosticism in 1957, but Eye in the Sky reflects its ideas. Eye in the Sky also anticipates his paranoid reality-bending novels of the 1960s.

On the whole, I enjoyed Eye in the Sky, but it’s not without flaws. The story seems to promise eight stories about eight different realities because of the eight characters involved, but we only get to visit four realities. PKD skipped out on the four perspectives I wanted to see the most. We’re shown the realities of Arthur Sylvester, Joan Reiss, Edith Pritchet, and Charlie McFeyffe.

Our protagonist is Jack Hamilton. We never get his take on reality. But since he’s the main character should we assume the overall story is told from his perspective? It would have been fun to see how his subjective perspective differed from the external reality. I also wanted to see Marsha Hamilton’s reality, Jack’s wife. And most of all, I wanted to see Bill Laws’s reality because he’s African American and a Ph.D. student in physics. Black characters were rare in 1950s science fiction. And it would have been interesting to see David Pritchett’s reality since he was a young teen.

The reason why Eye in the Sky is so much better in my seventies is I see that reality is fought over by many different subjective perspectives in the 2020s. We were just as politically polarized back in the 1970s, but I was young and less aware of how other people thought. Back then I thought everyone was basically the same but with slightly different ideas about reality. Now, I realize that the umwelt of everyone is quite different.

Both then and now, I believe there is an external reality. I’m not one of those woo-woo people who think reality is unreal. I could be wrong, but I’m betting on an external reality and people are crazy. I really don’t want reality to be crazy. I do believe our view of reality is subjective. That we can never perceive the fullness of the external order.

Philip K. Dick in Eye in the Sky imagines reality is mutable, shaped by minds. I hope this doesn’t give anything away, but the eight characters do return to the reality they were in before the accident. Is that PKD affirming my idea that we live in an external reality that is universal? PKD wrote over forty more novels and over a hundred short stories that keep suggesting otherwise. At the end of his life, Dick seemed to believe in a gnostic view of reality, where we lived in a reality created by an evil god, and there’s a higher reality beyond this one, maybe ruled by a kinder diety.

Strangely, in my seventies, I find stories by Philip K. Dick to be comfort reads. His stories are compelling, told with prose that has the right mixture of dialog and detail for a pleasant reading pace. I find it interesting how his characters bash around in reality, struggling to find meaning.

Back in 1970 when I dropped out of the university, my father had died that May, the draft was looming over me, and my mother was nagging me to go to work if I wasn’t going to go to school. I was living in a new city and had no friends. Each science fiction book I read was an escape into a different reality.

Of course, reading science fiction in my seventies might be about trying to escape another reality, of getting old and dying.

Looking back I wonder what life would have been like if I hadn’t gotten addicted to science fiction. I could have cut my hair, finished a four-year degree in physics and astronomy (my childhood fantasy), and joined the Air Force as an officer (my father’s fantasy). Or I could have kept my hair and focused on computers and gotten a job at a Unix site with other long-haired computer geeks. Instead, I read science fiction and fantasized about going to Mars, which was just as crazy as the folks in Eye in the Sky.

Of course, thinking about what could have been, or could be, leads to the madness of PKD.

James Wallace Harris, 1/5/25

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Are the Classics the Stories We Don’t Forget?

I’ve been writing about science fiction short stories from 1957 for the past two months, but I realized today I’ve already forgotten most of them. I can’t tell if that memory loss is due to aging or forgettable stories. No science fiction story from 1957 made it to The Classics of Science Fiction Short Stories list. To get on that list a short story needs eight recommendations that we call citations. Here are the 1957 SF stories in our citation database, a total of 43. For our Facebook group discussion we read 23:

The most remembered story by our system was “Call Me Joe” by Poul Anderson. It had six citations. Next was “Omnilingual” by H. Beam Piper with four citations. I remember both of those stories very well because I’ve read them multiple times over the decades. “Call Me Joe” was included in the Science Fiction Hall of Fame volumes, which helps it to be remembered. “Omnilingual” is much less famous, as is its author, H. Beam Piper.

My favorite, and most remembered SF story from 1957 is “The Menace from Earth” by Robert A. Heinlein. Heinlein is famous, and that helps his stories to be remembered. I love and remember this story because I love Heinlein’s juveniles, the twelve YA novels he published in the 1940s and 1950s with Charles Scribner’s Sons. I feel “The Menace from Earth” is the only Heinlein juvenile short story. However, “The Menace from Earth” has not been popular with our group. It only has three citations in CSFquery. If you look at the list of Heinlein’s stories, and sort the list on citations, you’ll see “The Menace from Earth” isn’t one of Heinlein’s most remembered stories.

Dave Hook took a deep dive in 1957 and liked quite a few short stories. He read 102 stories, of which he rated 51 great or superlative. I wasn’t that generous. I wouldn’t call any of these stories great, and I would only use the description superlative for less than a dozen science fiction short stories ever published, such as “Flowers for Algernon,” “Fondly Fahrenheit,” or “Light of Other Days.”

“Omnilingual,” “Call Me Joe,” and “The Menace from Earth” are only very good stories in my opinion, but they are among my all-time favorites.

Besides the three I’ve already mentioned, I think I’ll only remember two others in the future, “The Language of Love” by Robert Sheckley and “Time Waits for Winthrop” by William Tenn, and I thought they were merely good because of their ideas. I say I’ll remember them because I’ve already remembered them for fifty years.

I liked “Small World” by William F. Nolan and “Game Preserve” by Rog Philips because they were gritty and dark. Both of which I read before, but I hadn’t remembered, and I think I’ll soon forget again.

I enjoyed reading all these 1957 stories as I read them. Sadly, most of them just aren’t that memorable.

James Wallace Harris, 4/30/24

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“Time Waits for Winthrop” by William Tenn

Group Read 72: The Best Science Fiction Stories of 1957

“Time Waits for Winthrop” by William Tenn #16 of 20 (Read)

Virgil Finlay usually created drawings and paintings that featured beautiful or fantastic subjects, but the interior illustration for “Time Waits for Winthrop” is hideous to see. But then, the 25th-century future William Tenn describes is supposed to be hideous to people from the 20th century, and the title character’s personality is downright hideous too, so Finlay does an excellent job preparing us for the story.

“Time Waits for Winthrop” is a plodding piece of fiction that speculates about the future in ways that make it worth reading, but just barely. That same statement could be made about much of science fiction. It’s a shame that “Time Waits for Winthrop” wasn’t better told because it could have been a genre classic.

The setup for “Time Waits for Winthrop” involves five people from 1958 swapped with five people from 2458 for two weeks. Tenn’s science fictional hypothesis is the future will be so different to us that we’ll find it repulsive. Tenn then plots the story around a clock driven conflict. At the appointed hour of return, all five people from both groups must return to the time travel depo to make the exchange possible. The kicker is Winthrop who loves the 25th century and doesn’t want to return to the 20th century. And the 25th century has one cardinal rule, you can’t make anyone do anything they don’t want to.

This means Dave Pollock, Mrs. Brucks, Mary Ann Carthington, and Oliver T. Meed will be stuck in the future that unnerves them, and the time travelers from the future will be stranded in the past.

“Time Wait for Winthrop” is a rather long story, a novella, and the plot involves the four 20th century people who desparately want to go home each trying to convince Winthrop or someone else to make Winthrop want to return to the 20th century. This gives Willian Tenn a chance to describe the 25th century. Sure, it’s pure speculation from the vantage of 1957, but I thought Tenn imagined some neat possibilities.

The first time I read this story over fifty years ago, I was under twenty, and I didn’t tune into what Tenn was trying to do in his story. I thought “Time Waits for Winthrop” was a somewhat funny potboiler. For my 2024 reading, I saw the story in a completely different light. In my first reading “Time Waits for Winthrop” came across as lame Sheckley. In this reading, “Time Waits for Winthrop” came across as Heinlein trying to be funny.

Winthrop and Mrs. Brucks were the old folks of the five 20th century travelers, and the group of four who wanted to return picked Mrs. Brucks to visit Winthrop and appeal to his moral decency. The other three thought since she was about the same age as Winthrop he would understand her best. Mrs. Brucks was a grandmother of two, and mother of six, and kind and genteel. Everything Winthrop was not.

Winthrop is the only person from the past who embraces all the new ways. It’s a rather wild future where clothes and floors appear to be alive and inanimate objects respond to human needs. You’ll need to read the story to get all the gosh-wow details. Winthrop relishes the opportunities offered and takes advantage of them all. He feels his companions from the past are rigid and scared. After Mrs. Brucks polite pleas, he still refuses. Winthrop says he’s obviously better off as a person in the future than he was in the past. Mrs. Brucks fails in her mission.

Next, Mr. Oliver T. Mead then agrees to plead their case with Mr. Storku, The Chief of Protocol for the State Department. This is where the story took off for me. Mead must track down Storku, but he’s at Shriek Field. In the future, humans are very well adjusted but that’s because they regularly visit Shriek Field or Panic Stadium to experience psychological release and transcendence. This 2024 reading now reminds me of many of the New Age therapies from the 1970s. I didn’t know of their existence the first time I read this story around 1969. Were such techniques already emerging in the 1950s?

Mr. Meads experience at Shriek Field is so prophetic that I decided to reprint those pages. How did Tenn guess this in 1957?

Doesn’t that sound like Primal Scream therapy? I believe Tenn also anticipates therapies like Erhard Seminars Training (EST) and other similar New Age personal development programs. This section of the story goes on for several more pages, and I felt begins the real purpose of the story.

Mr. Mead gets nowhere too.

Next up, the group decides Mary Ann Carthington, a pretty young woman, should try to convince Edgar Rapp from the Temporal Embassy to help them make Winthrop go back. She ultimately locates Rapp, but he’s in a microscopic world battling tiny cellular creatures. This section allows Tenn to explain what individual freedom means in the future. It was here that I was sure I knew what the ending would be, but I was wrong. This is the most fantastic part of the story, because Edgar Rapp can shrink himself down to thirty-five microns. This section reminded me of “Surface Tension” by James Blish, and Fantastic Voyage by Isaac Asimov.

I’ve tried to read “Time Waits for Winthrop” one or two times between 1969 and 2024, and in each case, I thought the story was over long and dragged. I again thought that this reading, but I liked the story a whole lot more this time and was more forgiving. If that trend continues, one day I might actually love “Time Waits for Winthrop.”

The story is episodic. It’s a shame that it wasn’t fleshed out into a short novel and told with more realistic drama that tied the sections together better. Tenn is mainly known for writing short stories, but I absolutely loved his novel Of Men and Monsters, see my review, and heed my warning. Don’t read anything about the book or even the blurbs on the cover, because the book is so much more fun coming to it cold. But my point, that novel is also episodic, but it has a well-integrated plot with lots of drama.

All too often, science fiction writers hacked out their stories. Probably most are just tweaked first drafts. “Time Waits for Winthrop” feels like Tenn sat down one day and came out with the setup, then for four days in a row used four characters to describe a different aspect of an imagined future, then on the last day produced a quick solution to the plot. Now, I might be unfairly damning Tenn because I didn’t experience everything Tenn intended. There’s a whole lot to “Time Waits for Winthrop,” especially when you consider the last section.

Dave Pollock is a young guy who is a science teacher in the 20th century. The group gives him the unpleasant task of consulting the Oracle Machine about their problem. Pollock finds that distasteful because he feels it’s beneath his scientific mind to consult anything with the trappings of primitive religion. I’m guessing Tenn imagined the Oracle Machine as a kind of AI. Tenn even mentions chess in his story and predicts that machines will outplay humans in the future. He also predicts that humans will continue to enjoy playing chess and will even work together with machines to play. And this is what has happened, just sixty years into the future, not five hundred.

Again, the Dave Pollock section gives Tenn another platform to speculate about the future. And like the other three sections, speculation about the future also means commentary on the present. “Time Waits for Winthrop” is a wonderful contrivance for William Tenn to express himself on many topics. Each time he stops to philosophically tap dance, the plot freezes and the story’s momentum slows to a crawl. However, if readers enjoy the philosophical tap dancing, then they might forget the plot is about how to get back to the 20th century.

James Wallace Harris, 4/21/24

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“Small World” by William F. Nolan

Group Read 72: The Best Science Fiction Stories of 1957

“Small World” by William F. Nolan #15 of 20 (Read, Listen)

I’ve always loved post-apocalyptic novels about the last man on Earth, or at least, the last few people on Earth. I’m not saying I want everyone else to die, but if flying saucers hauled y’all all away, I wouldn’t complain. Ever since I was a kid, the thought of being the only kid in a deserted city was a fun fantasy for fueling daydreaming. The idea that I could roam around and survive by plundering anything I needed from abandoned stores and houses was deliciously appealing. I bet Henry Bemis implanted this idea in me via the 1959 episode of The Twilight Zone, when I was eight.

William F. Nolan imagines a man named Lewis Stillman left alone in Los Angeles after aliens invade in the August 1957 issue of Fantastic Universe. I remember when I first read this story I was genuinely surprised by the ending. If you don’t want me to spoil it, follow your chosen link above before reading any more of this essay.

In 1967 Harlan Ellison edited Dangerous Visions because he claimed science fiction writers couldn’t get certain kinds of science fiction stories published. I call bullshit on that idea. I think his hypothesis was wrong. Nolan produces a nice little gritty dangerous vision in “Small World” in 1957. Of course, he had to write a few thousand words of character development and setting to entertain us before he could pop the surprise.

Stillman hides out in the storm drains of Los Angeles avoiding the invaders. He only comes out at night, and has collected a nice arsenal of weapons, but he survives by going unnoticed. There have been several movies that used those famous storm drains, so I imagined scenes from Them as I read the story.

One night Stillman fondly recalls a three-volume set of medical textbooks that belonged to his father. Stillman had gone to medical school in southern California but had dropped out to become a laborer and work with his hands. Sitting alone in his hideaway, he remembered seeing those books at a used bookstore and decided he wanted to see them again. That night he arms himself and heads out. He finds the books, but they find him.

He was attacked not by aliens, but by children. The aliens had killed everyone over the age of six, so they cities were swarming with feral children. Picture Lord of the Flies. And the children would kill any surviving adult they could find. All along, Nolan had us believing Stillman was hiding from little green men, but he was really hiding from hordes of rugrats.

In the end Stillman starts shooting the tykes to get away. I pictured him blowing away Jerry Mathers, and little Billy Mumy and Angela Cartwright, as well as Jay North. Of course, I would have been the right age too in 1957 if I had lived in LA. Eventually, the children overwhelm Stillman and I assume he was torn apart. But he must have killed a pile of youngsters before they got him.

I wonder why Nolan wrote this story. It’s sick if you think about it, especially since I read it the first time after Sandy Hook. Was he just trying to gross us out? Or did Nolan secretly hate kids? Lord of the Flies came out in 1954, and that could have inspired him. The 1950s was full of public fear regarding juvenile delinquents, so maybe the story was symbolic. And the age group also applied to the early Baby Boomers, so maybe Nolan was trying to be prophetic.

Yes, Ellison was wrong. Science fiction writers often got dangerous visions published. Two of my favorites were “Lot” by Ward Moore, and “The Last Day” by Richard Matheson, both from 1954.

Also from 1954 was “The Good Life” by Jerome Bixby. Maybe it inspired “Small World.” I’ve always found that story too creepy, maybe Nolan was providing us psychological release for that story.

James Wallace Harris, 4/13/24

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“The Men Return” by Jack Vance

Group Read 72: The Best Science Fiction Stories of 1957

“The Men Return” by Jack Vance #12 of 20 (Read, Listen)

My initial reaction to “The Men Return” was “WTF! Far Out!” It’s not a great SF story, but Vance does produce a different idea.

I’ve often wondered why SF/F writers don’t imagine more far out possibilities when writing fantasy and science fiction because those genres allow for imagining anything. Well, Jack Vance does just that in “The Men Return.” We are told early in the story:

This reminds me of Poul Anderson’s Brain Wave, where our solar system moves into an area of the galaxy with different energy fields and all animal life on Earth becomes five times smarter. It also triggered the memory of Vernor Vinge’s A Fire Upon the Deep and its sequels that features the idea of Zones of Thought, where there are four different regions in the Milky way, each with a different kind of physics. Finally, “The Men Return” made me remember Hothouse by Brian W. Aldiss, and its far future beings.

And until just before the end of “The Men Return,” I thought the story could have been another of Vance’s Dying Earth tales, one closer to the end of humans. It also fits into the Dying Earth theme. Amazon is selling the Kindle edition of The Jack Vance Treasury for $4.99. It collects “The Men Return” and many classic Vance stories, including “Liane the Wayfarer” a classic story from The Dying Earth.

I read “The Men Return” today, and then listened to it, and I’m still not sure what’s happening. There are two groups of beings that talk, but each considers the other group a source of food. The Organisms are named Alpha and Beta. While the Relicts are Finn, our main point-of-view character, two females, Gisa and Reak, and two ancient males, Boad and Tagart. Both groups constantly search for food in a surreal landscape where physics and gravity don’t seem to be working. I might need to read this story several times before I get what Jack Vance was painting in this picture.

From the story I can’t tell if the two groups are simply different tribes of humans, or if in the far future, humans have evolved into two separate species, or if one of the groups is aliens. The artwork suggests one group is different looking than the other group. I assume the Organisms are either aliens or mutants.

Larry T. Shaw, the editor of Infinity Science Fiction presents “The Men Return” with a new designation, the Infinity + symbol.

Infinity Science Fiction was published from November 1955 through November 1958, and even though it was a second-string SF magazine, it published quite a lot of good science fiction from major names in the genre. The classic SF story, “The Star” by Arthur C. Clarke was published in its first issue.

Shaw’s Infinite + designation reminds me of F. Orlin Tremaine, Astounding Science Fiction second editor, Thought Variant designation for special stories. Asimov wrote “Nightfall” as an imagined Thought Variant story. John W. Campbell later tried to do the same thing with his NOVA designated stories.

Here are the comments Shaw received on “The Men Return” from the October issue.

Finally, here’s the cover from the July 1957 issue of Infinity Science Fiction where “The Men Return” appears.

James W. Harris 4/6/24

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“Profession” by Isaac Asimov

Group Read 72: The Best Science Fiction Stories of 1957

“Profession” by Isaac Asimov #11 of 20 (Read, Listen)

“Profession” isn’t one of Asimov’s well-known stories. It’s not a Foundation or Robot story. The setting is Earth. “Profession” is an SF idea story, and unfortunately, not a particularly exciting one. The idea of writing knowledge directly to the brain is interesting, but how and why it’s used in “Profession” isn’t believable.

Asimov usually wrote idea stories. He seldom developed stories with drama or humor or even satire. I seldom felt anything for most of his characters. “Profession” is about George Platen who wants to become a computer programmer and be sent to another planet. He lives in the future where Earth has colonized many star systems, and they need professionally trained people. Earth has developed a way to educate people by writing directly to the brain, and they export people with extremely specific technical skills. Evidently, Earth has a monopoly on this brain writing technology.

The problem is, one person in 10,000 have a brain that can’t be written to, and they are sent to special institutions where they are told to read and study whatever they want. George is one of these people and is crushed that he can’t achieve his professional dream.

Unfortunately, “Profession” is a short novella, much too long for the solution Asimov eventually gives us. I won’t spoil it though, but I will say Asimov has to stack the deck to pull it off. It’s an unsatisfying ending because the original plot logic is now seen as faulty. In this future, the only education people get is by mind writing. No one wants to put years of studying into any subject because they hate it when they can’t learn instantly.

In other words, Asimov assumes humans will act differently in the future and I don’t think they will, and that spoils his whole premise for the story.

I don’t even remember why I put this story on the list. It did not have even one citation of CSFquery. I just checked and I added “Profession” because Rich Horton picked it in his Hugo nominations for 1957. He even says, “My vote in this category goes to Asimov’s ‘Profession,’ really a quite strong novella.” Just goes to show you how people’s reading reactions are different.

Of the possibilities Rich lists, I would have picked “The Lineman” by Walter M. Miller, Jr. It has some modern-day political correctness problems, but it’s exciting and dramatic. “The Lineman” is about construction crews on the Moon being distracted by a rocket full of prostitutes. You can read it here. Here’s all the novellas that Rich was considered for 1957:

  • “Profession”, by Isaac Asimov (Astounding, July)
  • “The Night of Light”, by Philip José Farmer (F&SF, June) 
  • “The Last Canticle”, by Walter M. Miller, Jr. (F&SF, February) 
  • “The Lineman”, by Walter M. Miller, Jr. (F&SF, August) 
  • “Lone Star Planet”, by H. Beam Piper and John J. McGuire (Fantastic Universe, March)
  • “Get Out of my Sky”, by James Blish (Astounding, January, and February)
  • “Nuisance Value”, by Eric Frank Russell (Astounding, January)

For sheer storytelling, I like all those other writers far better than Asimov. When I was young, Asimov was very appealing because of his ideas, but I never realized how unexciting his stories were back then. He does create interesting setups, but his characters are just chess pieces he moves around to act out an idea. And now that I’m older, I realize most of those ideas weren’t particularly good. Very few of Asimov’s stories had any kind of emotional punch. The one that I remember that does is “The Ugly Little Boy.” It has quite a punch. I also felt some sympathy for the characters in The Naked Sun, but that’s because I read it when I was going through an agoraphobic phase due to a heart arrythmia.

“Profession” does have some neat ideas, but they are tortured to create its plot.

The thing I like best about “Profession” is the Kelly Freas cover. If you loved “Profession” please say so in a comment. Or comment if you agree with me.

James Wallace Harris, 4/5/24

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“The Education of Tigress Macardle” by C. M. Kornbluth

Group Read 72: The Best Science Fiction Stories of 1957

“The Education of Tigress Macardle” by C. M. Kornbluth #10 of 20 (Read, Listen)

C. M. Kornbluth came out with four short stories in 1957 – “MS. Found in a Chinese Fortune Cookie,” “The Education of Tigress Macardle,” “The Slave,” and “The Last Man Left in the Bar.” None of them stood out as an obvious favorite among readers, with each story having its fans. Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg couldn’t decide between “The Education of Tigress Macardle” and “The Last Man Left in the Bar” so they published both in The Great SF Stories 19 (1957). Kornbluth died in early 1958, at age 34, so these were the last of his short stories that Kornbluth got to see in print.

I picked “The Education of Tigress Macardle” for the best of 1957 because it had two citations in CSFquery, and the others only had one. However, I’ve had people tell me they preferred either “The Last Man Left in the Bar” or “MS. Found in a Chinese Fortune Cookie.” After reading all three, I feel CSFquery was right, but what do you all think? Follow the links to read the two other stories. I don’t have a link to “The Slave” but it was a novella promoted as a short novel.

Kornbluth was famous for his sharp satire. His brutal wit stabs at several topics in “The Education of Tigress Macardle.” The bit that amused me the most was a throwaway paragraph about the Civil War Book-of-the-Week Club. I chuckled at Mightier than the Sword: A Study of Pens and Pencils in the Army of the Potomac, 1863-1865. There really is a seemingly endless amount published about the Civil War.

“The Education of Tigress Macardle” begins by informing its readers that in the future, a popular personality was elected President, and he got the 28th Amendment passed that made him King Purvis I. (I hope that’s not prophetic.) King Purvis inspired a guy name Gerald Wang to play at Dr. Fu Manchu and unfold a sneak attack on the United States. We learn all of this because the story is told from the year 2756 A.D. in a class at Columbia University called Chronoscope History Seminar 201. The students of this class watch what happens to George and Diana “the Tigress” Macardle on a chronoscope.

You must read between the lines to pick up all the well-hidden sexual innuendo, and if you miss what little there is, the story might lose a lot of its charm. Kornbluth is aiming at humor, but I’m not sure how many of his jokes I get. George thought he had achieved bachelor nirvana when the Tigress would have sex with him on his bear skin rug in his downtown bachelor pad. Then she whined that she wanted to get married. Then she whined she wanted to have a house in the suburbs. Evidently, George kept getting all the sex he wanted because he kept giving in. Then the Tigress whined to have a baby.

Now here’s where the fun starts. King Purvis degreed that all Americans who wanted to have children must pass a Parental Qualifications Program (P.Q.P.). And Dr. Wang devises a doozy of a potential parent exam that secretly works at his plan to take over America. Parents are given a robotic toddler to take care of for three months. If it’s black box records proper care George and the Tigress will get a permit to breed.

You can imagine the fun Kornbluth provides with this setup. You might not guess the surprise ending. I didn’t.

Another reason I preferred “The Education of Tigress Macardle” over the other two Kornbluth short stories, is because the story is more to the point and clearer. I’m not saying it’s perfectly clear. Kornbluth writing style includes a constant flourish of asides. His prose is baroque with allusions that he hopes will make us smile or admire his wit.

But those filigrees also make it hard to read Kornbluth. Kornbluth relies heavily on things from the future, or beings from other dimensions, or observers from the future. They’re usually a gimmick, a foundation, a diving board, for him to riff with his clever wordiness. Usually, his stories are fun, but seldom have much impact. He has twenty-four stories in CSFquery, but most of them don’t have many citations. I wonder if Kornbluth would have been a good standup comedian. It helps to hear his stories read by a narrator that does voices.

Personally, I believe “The Education of Tigress Macardle” would have been a far superior story if Kornbluth would have hacked off the sections with King Purvis, Gerald Wang, and students from the future. He should have focused entirely on George and the Tigress and spent all his energy making the story subtle, funny, and insightful. The setup with the tryout toddler is great by itself. And he should have worked on the characterizations of George and the Tigress. In 1957 the Playboy bachelor and the emerging liberated woman were ripe for satire.

James Wallace Harris, 4/2/24

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“The Fly” by George Langelaan

Group Read 72: The Best Science Fiction Stories of 1957

“The Fly” by George Langelaan #09 of 20 (Read, Listen)

“The Fly” by George Langelaan is far more famous as a horror movie than as a science fiction story, but it’s a novelette about a mishap with a matter transmitter, obviously putting it into the territory of science fiction. Judith Merril did include it in her collection of the best SF of 1957, but it’s mostly remembered in horror story anthologies.

I rewatched the original 1958 version of The Fly about a year ago, so it was reasonably fresh in my mind. While reading “The Fly” today I was surprised how well the film stuck to Langelaan’s original story. The film grossed reviewers out back in 1958, but since then it’s become somewhat of a classic. Back in the day, me and my school friends talked quite a lot about the movie version. I’m surprised the original story doesn’t get more recognition.

“The Fly” explores two common science fictional ideas, the matter transmitter, and the mad scientist. I thought the story was well told, but it seemed a bit archaic in its storytelling style. That might be because it’s a translation from the French. I often feel translated stories sound like they are from 19th century Europe. But then, that might be due to most of the translated stories I’ve read were from 19th century Europe. “The Fly” also feels a bit like Edgar Allan Poe to me too. Then again, it might reflect a storytelling style favored by non-English speaking writers. I don’t know since I use no other language but English.

I’m not going to repeat the plot of the story because it’s so famous, and if you haven’t read it, I don’t want to spoil it. Even the concept of a matter transmitter comes up late in the tale. Like many 19th century stories, “The Fly” takes a roundabout way to get to the point. It’s told after the action has happened. I have a theory about that. I believe old timey writers liked to tell stories with an “as heard by” structure. We used to believe that eyewitnesses were the gold standard of implying validity. Francois, tells the story about Helene, his sister-in-law, confessing she murdered his brother. The tale takes a winding path before it gets to the science fictional element.

Matter transmitters were made famous by Star Trek and its transporter. That show has dealt with transmitter mishaps too. But my all-time favorite matter transmitter story is Rogue Moon by Algis Budrys. It works out several fascinating aspects to the concept. Some of those aspects were later made famous in “Think Like a Dinosaur” by James Patrick Kelly. But there is one other story I’d like to mention, that’s a variation of the matter transmitter idea. In “The Four Sided Triangle” by William F. Temple, which uses a matter transmitter as a matter duplicator — an unintended side-effect to avoid in some matter transmitter stories. “The Four Sided Triangle” is a neat little love story that was made into a decent film.

André Delambre in “The Fly” is also a splendid example of a mad scientist in a science fiction. Like many Sci-Fi mad scientists, he works alone and invents something that should require all the resources of creating fusion power. Mad scientists and lone inventors now belong in the realm of fantasy, but there’s something heartwarming about mad scientists to folks who used to wear propeller beanies. I believe that appeal is why we had Doc Brown in Back to the Future. (The mad scientist is a popular idea in children’s stories still.)

In 2019, “The Fly” was reprinted in Promethean Horrors: Classic Tales of Mad Science. I thought that an apt title for anthologizing this story. Unfortunately, the table of contents was disappointing. I was expecting a big anthology full of mad scientist stories. That’s a shame because I would have bought a large retrospective anthology that highlighted the evolution of the mad scientist in science fiction.

I kept thinking about the classics of mad scientist stories and went looking for anthologies that might collect them. I found two.

I went ahead and took a chance on The Mad Scientist Megapack since it was only ninety-nine cents. The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination edited by John Joseph Adams is more money, $11.99 for the Kindle edition. However, there’s an audiobook version, and I might get that. I was disappointed that neither volume collected “The Fly.” If ever there was a mad scientist in science fiction, André Delambre is one. There is one story I know well in the table of contents to The Mad Scientist Megapack, “The Man Who Evolved” by Edmond Hamilton. I hope all the others I haven’t read are in that vein.

James Wallace Harris, 3/30/24

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“Let’s Be Frank” by Brian W. Aldiss

Group Read 72: The Best Science Fiction Stories of 1957

“Let’s Be Frank” by Brian W. Aldiss #08 of 20 (Read)

Fantasy and science fiction are two genres where writers can imagine anything, but strangely we seldom see stories with first-of-their-kind concepts. As The Bible says, there’s nothing new under the sun. However, I think Brian Aldiss has produced a unique idea in “Let’s Be Frank.” If I’m wrong, I’d love to read other takes on this concept.

I’m never sure how much of a story I should give away. “Let’s Be Frank” isn’t an all-time top short story, or even a best of the year story. There’s a reason writing teachers advise their students “Show don’t tell.” Aldiss tells this story. There’s no tension, no drama, no mystery. Aldiss produced his idea and explained how the billions of people on Earth end up with two conscious minds. Maybe that’s enough of a tease to get you to read the story. (Follow the link above.)

It’s a shame that Aldiss didn’t spend more time with his idea and created a version of the story that showed us what it was like to be a consciousness with multiple bodies. You might think I’m talking about a hive mind, but I don’t think I am. “Let’s Be Frank” does suggest a clever kind of telepathy. Can you imagine being in two bodies at once, one in England and one in Spain, with four legs, four arms, four eyes, and two heads?

If ChatGPT was conscious, it might experience something like this. Imagine being in a million bodies having a million conversations simultaneously? ChatGPT does that.

“Let’s Be Frank” isn’t a memorable short story either. Our group is working to identify the best science fiction stories of 1957. I don’t think “Let’s Be Frank” is one. But it is neat. The act of looking for exceptional stories makes me think about what makes a standout work of short fiction. I haven’t read all twenty we’re going to discuss, but I do know that “Call Me Joe” by Poul Anderson, “Omnilingual” by H. Beam Piper, and “The Menace from Earth” by Robert A. Heinlein are the great science fiction stories of 1957. They are the ones to read, reread, and remember.

Yet, what makes those stories great? What’s missing from “Let’s Be Frank” that’s in those stories? Each of those stories have original ideas too, especially Heinlein’s human powered flying on the Moon. They do have drama and characterization. I’m not sure Aldiss could have dramatized “Let’s Be Frank,” but if he could, it would have made all the difference in the world.

James Wallace Harris, 3/28/24

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“The Cage” by A. Bertram Chandler

Group Read 72: The Best Science Fiction Stories of 1957

“The Cage” by A. Bertram Chandler #07 of 20 (Read, Listen)

“The Cage” is a fun story, although I’m not sure I would have included it in a best-of-the-year anthology. It’s a puzzle story. Bertram Chandler had a theoretical problem he wanted to present fictionally. How does one intelligent species recognize another intelligent species? It’s a reasonable question, but how do you propose it in a story?

Chandler had to spend most of the short story setting up the problem. If humans arrived on another planet, we’d assume any intelligent alien species would recognize our abilities. Chandler needed to put humans into a situation where our abilities wouldn’t seem obvious at all.

Chandler begins his story by having the interstellar liner Lode Star go off course and land on a young planet with just primitive life forms. The ship must be abandoned when its reactor goes into a runaway chain reaction, and it eventually blows up leaving no trace of the spaceship.

On this planet it mainly rains. The planet’s ecology has evolved some trees and plants, a froglike creature, and lots of fungi. Some fungi provide healthy food for the humans, but other forms of the fungi eat all their clothes and metals, so the castaways end up buck-naked. They can’t even start a fire because of the constant rain.

That’s when another spaceship lands and captures the humans in nets and takes them to another planet. The humans are put into something like a zoo. Finally, the story gets to the problem: How do they let the aliens know they are an advanced intelligent space faring species?

I’ll let you read the story and find out for yourself. But puzzle stories are intended to inspire readers to think of their own solutions.

I thought the aliens would eventually recognize the humans speak a complex language. But I also assume the humans could have made sign language gestures. Their cage had the same environment as the rainy planet, so they couldn’t make a fire, or build anything.

Puzzle stories are rare in science fiction, at least memorable ones. I can’t recall any others at this moment. I vaguely remember a story where a spaceship couldn’t see outside. I think the crew were trying figure out if they were in orbit around a planet.

I asked Copilot to list science fiction stories that proposed a problem. None of the stories it offered are what I was thinking of as a SF problem story. AIs are impressive right now, but they don’t seem to understand science fiction. I guess I’m assuming Copilot is unintelligent because it’s unaware of science fiction plots. But then, Copilot might not recognize me as an intelligent being either.

When you read thousands of science fiction stories you realize just how hard it is to produce an outstanding story. “The Cage” is decent enough. I would have been satisfied if I had read it in the June 1957 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Personally, if I were an editor, I wouldn’t have selected it for any kind of anthology, but it’s been widely anthologized.

I keep waiting for us to discover another SF story with the impact of “Fondly Fahrenheit” or “Coming Attraction” or “Flowers for Algernon.”

James Wallace Harris, 3/26/24