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“Weihnachtabend” by Keith Roberts

If not read carefully, “Weihnachtabend” by Keith Roberts will come across as just another alternate history about Hitler winning WWII. “Weihnachtabend” is more subtle, it’s an alternate history where England and German never fought, but made an alliance, and eventually ruled over Europe together. They called their alliance the Two Empires, graphically symbolizing it with the Lion, and the Eagle.

I have read many books and watched many movies and television shows set in England in the mid-20th century. And one historical event that has come up often is when Neville Chamberlain signed the Munich Agreement in 1938. Roberts imagines what if peace between Germany and England had played out, and, if the English fascists had come to power. In the alternate history timeline of this story the Munich Agreement is The Cologne settlement.

Roberts writes beautifully, painting with impressionistic details rather than flatly telling us what happened.

“Weihnachtabend” by Keith Roberts is story #44 of 52 from The World Treasury of Science Fiction edited by David G. Hartwell (1989), an anthology my short story club is group reading. Stories are discussed on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. “Weihnachtabend” was first published in New Worlds Quarterly 4 (1972) edited by Michael Moorcock. You can read it here. “Weihnachtabend” is also in The Grain Kings, which collects seven of Keith Roberts stories. It’s currently available for $1.99 at Amazon for the Kindle edition.

I highly recommend reading “Weihnachtabend” before reading my essay for two reasons. First, this story is a masterpiece of alternate history and is well-worth reading. Second, it’s a test of reading ability. The story is not hard to read, but instead of just telling what’s happening, Keith Roberts gives us pieces to put a mental jigsaw puzzle together. The story is dense with clues and implications about history and people.

“Weihnachtabend” tested my reading ability, and I didn’t do very well on my first reading. The title means Christmas Eve — I had to look that up. I read the story slowly, trying my best to understand it, but it wasn’t until afterwards that all the subtle aspects were revealed when I read Paul Kincaid’s review. I was further enlightened by Joachim Boaz’s review.

Clarity came with my second reading, and even then, I’m not sure I saw everything Roberts intended. I’m learning in old age that fiction needs two readings before you begin to understand it. It’s a shame that knowledge has come so late in life. No matter how hard I try to become a better reader, and I’ve been trying my whole life, the only thing I keep learning is how bad my reading ability still is and how much more I need to learn.

Keith Roberts’ fiction is a great test for understanding what you read. I’ve read his fix-up novel Pavane and a couple other stories. His prose is dense with layers and depth. Roberts also has a great imagination and creates beautifully visual scenes. If only someone would film his stories.

“Weihnachtabend” opens as Richard Mainwaring and Diane Hunter approach Wilton Great House while riding in a chauffeured Mercedes. Right from the beginning Roberts presents the constant presence of paranoia. Richard notices that the communication channel between the back of the car and the chauffeur is always open, and the chauffeur is listening. Before they get to the country house — I picture it as a manor house of the aristocracy, they come to a wall with watchtowers and pillboxes, and guards with machine guns. The guards speak German.

Richard gives his identity card which says: “Die rechte Hand des Gesandten.” We learn that Richard is the right-hand man of the messenger, and we’re eventually told his title is “Personal Assistant to the British Minister of Liaison.” The identity card also tells the guard Miss Hunter is from his department. (I’ve completely forgotten my high school German, so I had to depend on Google to translate. Knowledge of most of the German phrases in the story aren’t needed to understand the story, but not all.)

Diane is extremely nervous, but then so is Richard. Why is he nervous if he’s a top dog in the ruling political party? Diane is a beautiful blonde who Richard had known long ago. She belongs to someone he knew, a man named James, but for this trip, she is with him.

As the story progresses, we learn we’re in England, but it’s years after the period we know as WWII. England and Germany rule Europe. They fear America. But for some reason, the alliance is dominated by Germany, and the English leadership speak German. There is unrest in England and elsewhere, but the leadership maintains order much like the authoritarian rule in Nineteen Eighty-Four. At the top is King Edward VIII and a Fuehrer named Ziegler (I think. It’s confusing about what happened to Hitler, or who is the Fuehrer. Hess is deputy Fuehrer.) We know it’s decades later because they have large screen televisions, and rollneck shirts. I assume this means a turtleneck which was trendy in the 1960s, and around the time Roberts wrote the story.

Roberts doesn’t have a specific message in this story. He just paints a tableau. Richard, in the end, has something to say to the reader, but what he says, we’ve known all along from our history.

What makes the story compelling to read is figuring out what is happening to Richard. At first, it’s just a Christmas Eve party for extraordinarily rich people. Richard is given a Lamborghini by his boss. There is a description of a brutal hunt, and a bizarre Christmas tradition for children. Richard and Diane have sex, and we feel they are old lovers who are finally going to get together. Then Diane disappears and Richard becomes unhinged, eventually confronting his boss with a Lüger.

As I’ve said, the story has many layers. Like in Philip K. Dick’s novel, The Man in the High Castle, there’s a meaningful-to-the-story book like The Grasshopper Lies Heavy. However, instead of being from another timeline, Toward Humanity is from Richard’s own timeline. The writer’s name is Geissler, and his book is banned. Richard finds this dangerous volume planted in his room. It’s published by the Freedom Front. Richard doesn’t know if his party is testing him or if the opposition is trying to recruit him.

And Richard wonders why he’s so lucky to suddenly acquire a beautiful blonde. Is she who she says she is, or is she a plant from his party to test him, or an agent of the Freedom Front? Blondes are a reward to good party men, easily bought and traded. When Richard’s blonde goes missing everyone wants to pretend, she never existed.

Along the way, we are given clues about this world with quotes from Toward Humanity. Here are three quotes:

The Cologne settlement, though seeming to offer hope of security to Jews already domiciled in Britain, in fact paved the way for campaigns of intimidation and extortion similar to those already undertaken in history, notably by King John. The comparison is not unapt; for the English bourgeoisie, anxious to construct a rationale, discovered many unassailable precedents. A true Sign of the Times, almost certainly, was the resurgence of interest in the novels of Sir Walter Scott. By 1942 the lesson had been learned on both sides; and the Star of David was a common sight on the streets of most British cities.

---

In 1940, her Expeditionary Force shattered, her allies quiescent or defeated, the island truly stood alone. Her proletariat, bedeviled by bad leadership, weakened by a gigantic depression, was effectively without a voice. Her aristocracy, like their Junker counterparts, embraced coldly what could no longer be ignored; while after the Whitehall Putsch the Cabinet was reduced to the status of an Executive Council …

 
---

Against immeasurable force, we must pit cunning; against immeasurable evil, faith and a high resolve. In the war we wage, the stakes are high; the dignity of man, the freedom of the spirit, the survival of humanity. Already in that war, many of us have died; many more, undoubtedly, will lay down their lives. But always, beyond them, there will be others; and still more. We shall go on, as we must go on, till this thing is wiped from the earth. Meanwhile, we must take fresh heart. Every blow, now, is a blow for freedom. In France, Belgium, Finland, Poland, Russia, the forces of the Two Empires confront each other uneasily. Greed, jealousy, mutual distrust; these are the enemies, and they work from within. This, the Empires know full well. And, knowing, for the first time in their existence, fear …

We doubt Richard is persuaded by this political rhetoric. The ending of the story is quite dramatic. The final scene also reminds me of the final message of Nineteen Eighty-Four. I must wonder if Keith Roberts was commenting on the current political climate in England of 1972 when and where he wrote “Weihnachtabend.”

I know in 2023 there is much distrust of government everywhere. Was Robert’s paranoia any different than an average citizen? Who really controls us?

James Wallace Harris, 8/16/23

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“Poor Superman” by Fritz Leiber

“Poor Superman” by Fritz Leiber is story #34 of 52 from The World Treasury of Science Fiction edited by David G. Hartwell (1989), an anthology my short story club is group reading. Stories are discussed on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. “Poor Superman” was initially titled “Appointment in Tomorrow” and published in Galaxy Science Fiction (July 1951). It was reprinted and retitled in the 1952 anthology hardback Tomorrow the Stars edited by Robert A. Heinlein. You can read the story online at Project Gutenberg. You can listen to a radio show adaption of “Appointment in Tomorrow” from X Minus One. You can find ebook editions here to download.

I will refer to the story as “Poor Superman” instead of its original title “Appointment in Tomorrow.”

I read “Poor Superman” years ago when I read The Best Science Fiction Stories: 1952 edited by Everett F. Bleiler and T. E. Dikty. I didn’t remember anything from then when I read it again yesterday, on Friday. After that second reading, I had a vague feeling of reading it before and thinking it a so-so story. But this time I thought there was more there, but found the story confusing to read. I started thinking about it. Then today, Saturday, I read it again, and it all clicked. I would have said on my first reading I would have given the story 3 stars. On the second reading, I realized it was approaching 4 stars. On my third reading, it’s a 5-star story. I believe I needed to know what was in the story before I could understand reading each line of the story. Now it works word by word, line by line.

Fritz Leiber’s story, “Coming Attraction” is one of my all-time favorite science fiction short stories. It appeared a year earlier than “Poor Superman” in Galaxy. David Hartwell in his introduction suggests that they are both set in the same fictional post-WWIII universe, but I thought “Poor Supermen” only hinted at a few of the ideas from the earlier story.

Unfortunately, where “Coming Attraction” was dazzling, vivid, and dramatic on first reading, “Poor Superman” was talky, full of infodumps, and somewhat confusing on first reading. My second reading was really like another first reading. However, on this second reading, I sensed it was a far more ambitious story. “Coming Attraction” is about a British man meeting a woman in New York City in post-atomic war WWIII. It’s about a personal conflict between two men and a woman. “Poor Superman” involves a power struggle at the top of society between the Thinkers, who currently influence the party in the Whitehouse, and scientists who wish to unmask the frauds the Thinkers are perpetrating to maintain that political power.

It took a third reading to get who was who, all the implications, and to understand the reasons for all the infodumps. “Poor Superman” is an attack on science fiction, science fiction fans, as well as other kinds of believers, including religious, political, and philosophical. It’s more than cynical, it’s harshly realistic. You might think that Lieber supports science and scientists, but he’s brutal on them too.

Now “Poor Superman” needs a lot of setting up to really appreciate. It helps to know what was going on at Astounding Science Fiction magazine, where the editor John W. Campbell, and many of his writers were promoting the pseudo-science Dianetics. Many science fiction writers and readers from the 1940s believed that mankind was about to discover vast psychic powers that would change the world. Leiber doubts this.

Here’s how Leiber described his post-WWIII America of this story:

It was America approaching the end of the Twentieth Century. America of juke-box burlesque and your local radiation hospital. America of the mask-fad for women and Mystic Christianity. America of the off-the-bosom dress and the New Blue Laws. America of the Endless War and the loyalty detector. America of marvelous Maizie and the monthly rocket to Mars. America of the Thinkers and (a few remembered) the Institute. "Knock on titanium," "Whadya do for black-outs," "Please, lover, don't think when I'm around," America, as combat-shocked and crippled as the rest of the bomb-shattered planet.

In the real world of 1951, the cold war was heating up, now with two superpowers with atomic bombs, both of which were racing to develop a thermonuclear weapon. The United States was consumed by anti-communist fervor, with the HUAC witchhunts well underway. Americans were paranoid and frightened — grasping at religion, the occult, UFOs, ESP, faith healing, science fiction, and other forms of quackery. Many science fiction stories during these years were written about civil wars fought by the faithful against scientists. Heinlein was predicting his “Crazy Years” stories in his Future History series. Andre Norton would soon publish The Stars Are Ours! about scientists being hunted down after a theocracy takes over America. Leigh Brackett would publish The Long Tomorrow in 1955, about America reverting to an Amish-like society.

I wish Leiber hadn’t named his Dianetics-driven characters Thinkers. It’s too easy to confuse them with the Scientists, whom most people think of as big thinkers. I wished he had called them the Psychics, Mentalists, or something closer to what they represented. It’s a shame he couldn’t have called them The Scientologists – I don’t think they were using that name yet in 1951, but that label perfectly describes his characters. What would you think about reading “Poor Superman” today if he had written a story about Scientists versus Scientologists?

In “Poor Superman” the Thinkers believe they are developing powerful mental abilities. Americans believe that Thinkers are superior, and they influence political power. The Thinkers maintain the public belief in their superiority by claiming to have a giant two-floor-sized supercomputer that can answer all questions, and by faking space missions to Mars where they claim spiritually advanced Martians with ESP powers are teaching them their secrets which they will soon give to everyone.

This is a great setup for a story. The Galaxy editors introduced it with two questions: “Is it possible to have a world without moral values? Or does lack of morality become a moral value, also?” Think about those two questions. They are perfect for asking ourselves in 2023. It’s possible to substitute Donald Trump and his MAGA followers for the Thinkers in “Poor Superman.” If you do, it might make you admire “Poor Superman” more. And anyone reading or rereading Stranger in a Strange Land should get to know “Poor Superman” first.

The trouble is, I found “Poor Superman” confusing to read at first. Of course, this might be entirely my fault. There were too many weird made-up names that I couldn’t keep up with. I kept forgetting which character belong to which group. And there were times I just didn’t get the scene. It wasn’t until my third reading that “Poor Superman” became crystal clear like “Coming Attraction.”

An example of confusion from Friday’s reading is when they give questions to the supercomputer, Maize.

From a new Whitehouse, the President and his general staff observe while the daily questions are submitted to Maize, in what I assume is broadcast to Americans too. Instead of typing the questions, the questions are entered by taping. My guess is Leiber meant to imply writing in the future is done on spools of magnetic tape. But that’s only a guess. Then we are told:

Meanwhile the question tape, like a New Year's streamer tossed out a high window into the night, sped on its dark way along spinning rollers. Curling with an intricate aimlessness curiously like that of such a streamer, it tantalized the silvery fingers of a thousand relays, saucily evaded the glances of ten thousand electric eyes, impishly darted down a narrow black alleyway of memory banks, and, reaching the center of the cube, suddenly emerged into a small room where a suave fat man in shorts sat drinking beer.

He flipped the tape over to him with practiced finger, eyeing it as a stockbroker might have studied a ticker tape. He read the first question, closed his eyes and frowned for five seconds. Then with the staccato self-confidence of a hack writer, he began to tape out the answer.

For many minutes the only sounds were the rustle of the paper ribbon and the click of the taper, except for the seconds the fat man took to close his eyes, or to drink or pour beer. Once, too, he lifted a phone, asked a concise question, waited half a minute, listened to an answer, then went back to the grind.

Until he came to Section Five, Question Four. That time he did his thinking with his eyes open.

The question was: "Does Maizie stand for Maelzel?"

He sat for a while slowly scratching his thigh. His loose, persuasive lips tightened, without closing, into the shape of a snarl.

Suddenly he began to tape again.

"Maizie does not stand for Maelzel. Maizie stands for amazing, humorously given the form of a girl's name. Section Six, Answer One: The mid-term election viewcasts should be spaced as follows...."

But his lips didn't lose the shape of a snarl.

What I didn’t realize on my first reading today was the fat man in shorts was answering the questions for Maize. It’s obvious when I reread it, but it wasn’t on first reading. I thought he was a computer operator that retyped the questions into the computer. What we learn from this is the Thinkers are faking they have a supercomputer.

We also learn they are faking missions to Mars. An astronaut and his cat go up and just orbit the Earth while biding time. He pretends to have gone to Mars.

A scorecard of the characters:

  • Jorj Helmuth – Thinker (40 years old, with a body of 20, and a mind of 60)
  • President of the U.S. and staff – unnamed
  • Maizie – supercomputer AI (faked)
  • Morton Opperly – wise old physicist
  • Williard Farquar – young ambitious physicist
  • Jan Tregarron – fat man in loud shorts who is the mastermind of the Thinkers
  • Miss Arkady “Caddy” Simms – seductress, spy, femme fatale

In a conversation between Morton Opperly and Williard Farquar, we learn something about the conflict between Thinkers and Scientists:

"But what are we to do?" Farquar demanded. "Surrender the world to charlatans without a struggle?"

Opperly mused for a while. "I don't know what the world needs now. Everyone knows Newton as the great scientist. Few remember that he spent half his life muddling with alchemy, looking for the philosopher's stone. Which Newton did the world need then?"

"Now you are justifying the Thinkers!"

"No, I leave that to history."

"And history consists of the actions of men," Farquar concluded. "I intend to act. The Thinkers are vulnerable, their power fantastically precarious. What's it based on? A few lucky guesses. Faith-healing. Some science hocus-pocus, on the level of those juke-box burlesque acts between the strips. Dubious mental comfort given to a few nerve-torn neurotics in the Inner Cabinet—and their wives. The fact that the Thinkers' clever stage-managing won the President a doubtful election. The erroneous belief that the Soviets pulled out of Iraq and Iran because of the Thinkers' Mind Bomb threat. A brain-machine that's just a cover for Jan Tregarron's guesswork. Oh, yes, and that hogwash of 'Martian wisdom.' All of it mere bluff! A few pushes at the right times and points are all that are needed—and the Thinkers know it! I'll bet they're terrified already, and will be more so when they find that we're gunning for them. Eventually they'll be making overtures to us, turning to us for help. You wait and see."

"I am thinking again of Hitler," Opperly interposed quietly. "On his first half dozen big steps, he had nothing but bluff. His generals were against him. They knew they were in a cardboard fort. Yet he won every battle, until the last. Moreover," he pressed on, cutting Farquar short, "the power of the Thinkers isn't based on what they've got, but on what the world hasn't got—peace, honor, a good conscience...."

But what appeals to me, is Fritz Leiber’s take on science fiction and science fiction fans. Over the past couple of years, as I’ve been reading, and rereading 1950s science fiction, I keep getting hints that some science fiction writers were developing cynical attitudes towards the genre. At one point, Jorj Helmuth thinks to himself:

He switched out all the lights and slumped forward, blinking his eyes and trying to swallow the lump in his throat. In the dark his memory went seeping back, back, to the day when his math teacher had told him, very superciliously, that the marvelous fantasies he loved to read and hoarded by his bed weren't real science at all, but just a kind of lurid pretense. He had so wanted to be a scientist, and the teacher's contempt had cast a damper on his ambition.

Then in a desperate speech to Jan Tregarron, Jorj Helmuth explains why he created the Thinkers:

"Our basic idea was that the time had come to apply science to the life of man on a large scale, to live rationally and realistically. The only things holding the world back from this all-important step were the ignorance, superstition, and inertia of the average man, and the stuffiness and lack of enterprise of the academic scientists— their worship of facts, even when facts were clearly dangerous." 

"Yet we knew that in their deepest hearts the average man and the professionals were both on our side. They wanted the new world visualized by science. They wanted the simplifications and conveniences, the glorious adventures of the human mind and body. They wanted the trips to Mars and into the depths of the human psyche, they wanted the robots and the thinking machines. All they lacked was the nerve to take the first big step— and that was what we supplied."

You can see L. Ron Hubbard here. You can see John W. Campell. And maybe even some Robert A. Heinlein.

There’s a reason why the story was retitled “Poor Superman.” And there’s a good reason why H. L. Gold didn’t want to use that title. Any science fiction fan would understand what it meant in 1951.

I need to read “Poor Superman” again. The ending is not ambiguous, but I wonder if it shouldn’t be. Poor Superman turns out to be Jorj Helmuth because Caddy puts the gun in Jan Tregarron’s hand. But if we weren’t told that one bit of information, and we only knew Caddy had the gun, who would have been Poor Superman? Jan or Jorg? Jan acts like a Nazi, and they thought of themselves as supermen too.

This is a great story. It just took three readings to discover that. I wonder what more readings will reveal. I need to read more stories by Fritz Leiber, especially more of his work from the 1950s.

James Wallace Harris, 7/22/23

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“The Public Hating” by Steve Allen”

“The Public Hating” by Steve Allen is story #33 of 52 from The World Treasury of Science Fiction edited by David G. Hartwell (1989), an anthology my short story club is group reading. Stories are discussed on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. “The Public Hating” was first published in Bluebook (January 1955). It was reprinted in Judith Merril’s first annual anthology, S-F: The Year’s Greatest Science-Fiction and Fantasy.

Again, we have a non-SF writer writing an excellent work of science fiction. I was also surprised that “The Public Hating” was so well-written and succinct. I never thought of Steve Allen as a writer. I know he was the creator and first host of The Tonight Show back in 1953. I’ve seen film clips of Steve Allen for years but never really knew who he was. I read his Wikipedia entry and was amazed. Besides all the television shows he created, he composed more than 8,500 songs and published more than 50 books. The guy was a whirlwind of productivity. The Wikipedia piece makes me want to watch his old TV shows. Steve Allen’s shows from the 1950s set up much of what we came to watch later.

The Bluebook intro says “The Public Hating” is Steve Allen’s first short story. Fiction Mag Index lists only a handful of short stories by Allen but does list “The Public Hating” first. Wikipedia shows that most of his books were nonfiction, and fiction writing wasn’t common with Allen.

My guess is because Steve Allen was such a great comedian and a great writer of comic material that he was also a great mimic. “The Public Hating” reads very much like something Ray Bradbury would have written. Allen was well-known for his political views, a famous liberal, and a skeptic, so writing a short story about public hating just after many of the famous HUAC hearings is obvious.

“The Public Hating” is typical science fiction for the 1950s, something that could have been published in Galaxy or F&SF. The structure of the story is dramatic but with a certain amount of infodumping. Like much science fiction of that time, it depends on explaining a made-up scientific concept — that groups of people can project an extrasensory force. People are executed in stadiums by having large crowds think about the exact punishment. Allen imagines in 1955 that in a future set in 1978 that large crowds can focus their hate.

I read “The Public Hating” thinking it was still a story of our times. It strangely resonates with a Carl Sagan quote I read today, from The Demon-Haunted World.

“I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time – when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.”

I believe “The Public Hating” is more than satire. I believe it was a warning. That Allen like Sagan feared the world was reverting backward into the superstitious times of the Inquisition. I believe what the Trump years have taught us is that we’re always been there.

James Wallace Harris, 7/20/23

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“The Muse” by Antony Burgess

“The Muse” by Ray Anthony Burgess is story #32 of 52 from The World Treasury of Science Fiction edited by David G. Hartwell (1989), an anthology my short story club is group reading. Stories are discussed on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. “The Muse” was first published in The Hudson Review (Spring 1968), a literary journal. It was reprinted in Best SF: 1969 edited by Harry Harrison and Brian Aldiss.

“The Muse” is an honest-to-God science fiction story written by a literary writer. Not only that but Anthony Burgess speculates like a true science fiction writer. Burgess comes up with his own unique form of time travel. It’s a variation of the many-worlds theory, but it’s uniquely his. I was quite impressed.

In David Hartwell’s introduction, he describes Anthony Burgess’s short exploration of science fiction early in his career before giving up on the genre.

A scholar named Paley, we assume from our Earth, travels across space to a system called B303, which orbits another Earth, one very much like ours, except in their evolutionary development, they have only evolved until the time of Shakespeare. Paley is one of those people who really want to know who wrote Shakespeare.

Unfortunately, for Paley, this Earth isn’t quite like ours, and humans have a few extra eyes that give their world a nightmare quality to people from our world.

From reading “The Muse” I could sense that Burgess understood the potential of writing science fiction. And he knew he had to tell his story as if his theoretical world really existed. No pussyfooting around. No smirking and winking at the audience. No, “Look at me MA! I’m being so fucking clever.” No “I’m smarter than you, with a better education from a goddamn Ivy League school.”

Burgess looked at science fiction, saw the rules of the game, and played by those rules. He got down to our level of maturity and babbled in our lingo. I’m impressed.

I was also impressed that he went on to write mostly books that weren’t science fiction. Science fiction is a black hole for most writers. They fall in and can’t get out. Science fiction has tremendous limitations. I believe writers destroy their potential if they only write science fiction.

While you read “The Muse” pay attention to what it does, and what it can’t do. Like in the story, science fiction would be one alternate Earth, but there are an infinite number of alternate Earths where there are other things more interesting than science fiction.

James Wallace Harris, 7/18/23

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“Zero Hour” by Ray Bradbury

“Zero Hour” by Ray Bradbury is story #30 of 52 from The World Treasury of Science Fiction edited by David G. Hartwell (1989), an anthology my short story club is group reading. Stories are discussed on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. “Zero Hour” was first published in Planet Stories (Fall 1947). The most famous place to read it is in Bradbury’s classic, The Illustrated Man.

I thought as I was reading “Zero Hour” this morning, “Hey, here’s a Bradbury story I haven’t read before!” Yesterday, I bought Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales for $1.99 for the Kindle edition so I’d have his stories on my phone. That worked out well since I decided to read “Zero Hour” at 5:30am this morning while I was still in my sleeping chair. I love having a library that’s always with me.

But when I checked ISFDB.org I realized I’ve read it at least two times before. I read The Illustrated Man in 1969 when the movie version came out. I might have read it again when I bought The Illustrated Man on audio. And I read it when I read The Great SF Stories 9 (1947). Two definite times, maybe a third.

So, why didn’t I remember reading it this morning? It’s a wonderful story. “Zero Hour” has a very similar ending to “The Veldt” which is also in The Illustrated Man, and that’s a story I always remember. Maybe “The Veldt” just hogged those neurons allocated to Bradbury.

“Zero Hour” is about a little girl, Mink, under 10, who her mother thinks has an imaginary friend — a Martian. The story is told from the point of view of the mother, Mrs. Morris, watching Mink and her friends play outside. Mrs. Morris interviews Mink about the game when Mink comes in for lunch. It’s called “Invasion.” Mrs. Morris learns from Mink that only kids under 10 can play because older kids are too critical. Bradbury has often written about the enchanting time of childhood when believing was real.

I don’t want to say any more, because I don’t want to spoil your enjoyment of reading this wonderful little story.

I’ve always admired Ray Bradbury, especially when I was young. However, I never considered him a regular science fiction writer. He was always a horse of a different color. Bradbury’s sense of science is on the magic side of the spectrum. Ray Bradbury is closer to L. Frank Baum than Robert A. Heinlein. Bradbury seemed old even when he was young.

Ray Bradbury was born nostalgic. Mentally, he seemed to live in the 1930s or earlier. Even though he became famous for writing about rockets and space travel, it was from a nostalgic perspective, and not from being futuristic.

“Zero Hour” is a beautiful story about childhood and motherhood. It may have Martians invading Earth, it may have children who kill their parents, and it may have futuristic gadgets, but it’s really a view of Norman Rockwell’s America in the 1930s. Buck Rogers shaped his future, not Heinlein. Sure, “Zero Hour” has the twisted humorous horror of Charles Adams and Gahan Wilson, but essentially it’s a story about being a child of wonder.

My guess is I didn’t remember “Zero Hour” because Bradbury was prolific and many of his stories were similar in theme, so they blur together. However, after reading “Zero Hour” I wanted to read the other 99 Bradbury stories in that collection.

James Wallace Harris, 7/13/23

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“The Hurkle is a Happy Beast” by Theodore Sturgeon

“The Hurkle is a Happy Beast” by Theodore Sturgeon is story #29 of 52 from The World Treasury of Science Fiction edited by David G. Hartwell (1989), an anthology my short story club is group reading. Stories are discussed on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. “The Hurkle is a Happy Beast” appeared in the very first issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (Fall 1949) when it had the title The Magazine of Fantasy.

“The Hurkle is a Happy Beast” is a cute story about a creature from another dimension thrown onto Earth. The Hurkle is blue, has six legs, and is kitten-like. It follows a theme of things discovered by humans in the present that come from other times and dimensions, however, it’s not up to the classics of this theme like “Mimsy Were the Borogoves,” “The Twonky,” or “The Little Black Bag.”

Even though “The Hurkle is a Happy Beast” is a slight effort by Sturgeon, it has been often reprinted. However, our discussion group wondered why Hartwell selected a second story by Sturgeon for The World Treasury of Science Fiction. It definitely wasn’t one of Sturgeon’s better efforts.

This listing from CSFQuery shows Sturgeon’s most recognized short stories. If Sturgeon deserved two stories in this monumental anthology, I would have picked “Thunder and Roses” or “A Saucer of Loneliness” because their lengths were close to “The Hurkle is a Happy Beast.” But why give Sturgeon two stories. Wasn’t there a better option from 1949?

Well, not exactly. However, my guess is Hartwell wanted to lighten things up by using Hurkle. To me, the obvious substitute for a cute science fiction story with an animal would be “Bears Discover Fire” by Terry Bisson, unfortunately, it came out the year after Hartwell’s anthology. Another possibility is “The Ugly Chickens” by Howard Waldrop, it came out in 1980, so it was available. Or maybe “The Star Mouse” by Fredric Brown?

“The Hurkle is a Happy Beast” is not a bad story. It’s cute enough, but it’s lightweight. This got me thinking about being a science fiction writer in 1949 and having to crank out short stories to make a living. Imagine sitting at a typewriter and knowing your survival depends on your writing a story that will impress editors and readers. I doubt Theodore Sturgeon was thinking he needed to hit one out of the park for future editors of retrospective anthologies. He just needed to sell a story to earn a penny or two a word. There were damn few science fiction writers who lived solely off selling fiction. Sturgeon may have been one since he was so prolific.

In 1949 Sturgeon sold ten short stories according to ISFDB:

  • “Farewell to Eden” – Invasion From Mars edited by Orson Welles (anthology)
  • “Messenger” – Thrilling Wonder Stories (February 1949)
  • “The Martian and the Moron” – Weird Tales (March 1949)
  • “Prodigy” – Astounding Science Fiction (April 1949)
  • “Die, Maestro, Die!” – Dime Detective (May 1949)
  • “Scars” – Zane Grey’s Western Magazine (May 1949)
  • “Minority Report” – Astounding Science Fiction (June 1949)
  • “One Foot and the Grave” – Weird Tales (September 1949)
  • “The Hurkle is a Happy Beast” – The Magazine of Fantasy (Fall 1949)
  • “What Dead Men Tell” – Astounding Science Fiction (November 1949)

Is it really fair to judge “The Hurkle is a Happy Beast” at all? We think because a story is in Hartwell’s anthology it must be one of the best SF short stories from around the world from the 20th century. But should we think that?

After our reading group has plowed through many of these gigantic SF anthologies I’m starting to wonder about their value and their goals. The Big Book of Science Fiction turns out to be a very accurate title, and by that consideration, an honest one. My problem, and for my fellow group members, I believe, is the phrase “World Treasury” gives us great expectations.

“The Hurkle is a Happy Beast” is a pleasant enough story. I would have been fine reading it in any magazine in 1949. Even though Bleiler & Dikty and later Asimov & Greenberg picked it for their annual best-of-the-year anthologies, which I’ve both read, I don’t think Sturgeon’s story was even at that level. If I had read it in a theme anthology about cute alien creatures it might have been acceptable. It was in two of those, The Science Fiction Bestiary edited by Robert Silverberg, and Zoo 2000 edited by Jane Yolen.

If you follow the links to those two anthologies you’ll find lists of not-so-famous stories. Evidently, this theme isn’t a gold mine for classic SF stories. My favorite alien pet is Willis from Heinlein’s Red Planet. Heinlein and Norton often added cute aliens to their young adult books.

Just for grins, here are some of the covers for Sturgeon’s 1949 publications.

James Wallace Harris, 7/11/23

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“The Lens” by Annemarie van Ewyck

“The Lens” by Annemarie van Ewyck is story #28 of 52 from The World Treasury of Science Fiction edited by David G. Hartwell (1989), an anthology my short story club is group reading. Stories are discussed on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. “The Lens” first appeared in Dutch in De beste sf-verhalen van de King Kong award 1977, deel 1 (Dec. 1977/Jan. 1978). In 1986 it was reprinted in English in The Penguin World Omnibus of Science Fiction edited by Brian W. Aldiss and Sam J. Lundwall.

Annemarie van Ewyck was Annemarie Pauline van Ewijck (1943-2017). She only has three short stories listed in ISFDB and was mainly an editor and columnist. The periodical above where the story first appeared looks like a fanzine to me.

Once again, I find it interesting that my take on a story is different from Hartwell’s. More and more, I’m realizing that The World Treasury of Science Fiction (1989) seems like a precursor to The Big Book of Science Fiction (2016) and that I’m out of touch with both editors. I might just be out of touch with the genre in general. However, with “The Lens” I believe it’s a perfect story for this anthology, and it’s my kind of science fiction.

Here’s Hartwell’s intro:

I thought “The Lens” was quite a nice story, especially effective for being so short, but I didn’t think “The Lens” reflected the mood, tone, or concerns of 1950s science fiction. I don’t know if that era can be generalized, and I wonder if there really is a general style to post-Anglo-American post-New Wave works. “The Lens” doesn’t feel like Bradbury, Zelazny, or Sturgeon to me at all but it does remind me of James Tiptree, Jr., but also Ursula K. Le Guin.

In other words, “The Lens” reminds me of 1970s science fiction written by women, which it is, but can we generalize on that? Is there a common denominator? I don’t think so, other than a female character in an alien society feeling the shock of otherness after undergoing an alien rite. But isn’t that theme also explored by Jack Vance in “The Moon Moth” or Downward To the Earth by Robert Silverberg?

As the years go by, I’m less inclined to believe there was much of a New Wave in science fiction, despite the efforts of Michael Moorcock, Judith Merril, and J. G. Ballard. Yes, there were some experimental efforts, like the kind we saw in New Worlds, England Swings, and Dangerous Visions, but that kind of experimentation had been going on in the literary world for a long time. I believe by the 1960s and 1970s the genre was just getting more diverse writers, and better writers in general, writers who were willing to try different ways to tell a story. By then writing programs were flourishing everywhere.

I also know people get tired of me bellyaching about some stories in these anthologies not being science fiction. That’s not because of how they were written, or by who. I believe science fiction represents a state of mind, and “The Lens” is definitely science fiction, and fits within that state of mind.

The first-person narrator, Dame Ditja, a diplomat, is returning from Earth to Mertcha after visiting their dying mother. We know things are very different when we learn her mother died at age 286. I liked how Dame Ditja described her relationship with their mother and their interaction with the other passengers on the ship. She is returning to the city of Tiel where she is the Head of Cultural Liason.

On Mertcha, the aliens have three arms and three legs, and their architecture and philosophy reflect that difference. Dame Ditja has decided to request a permanent assignment to Mertcha, which she now thinks of as home. She expected to be met at the spaceport by Mik, a local who is her driver and friend, however, a substitute driver meets her instead. That driver thinks she is an ordinary tourist and takes her to a holy place that is a main tourist attraction for people from Earth.

At the Holy Place of Tiel, Dame Ditja has a transcendental experience, one of ecstasy, one that is usually experienced by certain believers in this alien culture. While having this experience, Dame Ditja realizes that radical monks of this faith have trapped some tourists from Earth to hold hostage, and Dame Ditja comes out of her trance and carefully, but forcefully, frees them in a diplomatic coup.

This achievement gets her offered more prestige assignments, and Dame Ditja changes her mind and plans to leave, even though all through the story she wanted to stay.

The ending is strange. Because of the incident at the Holy Place of Thiel, Dame Ditja no longer feels like Mertcha is her home, and thus feels compelled to leave. It appears Dame Ditja wants to die, and she feels she can only die in a place she considers home. I’m not sure why she wants to die or is ready to die, but I wonder if it’s because people live too long in this fictional future?

After reading this story twice I feel it’s closest in style and tone to some stories I’ve read by Brian W. Aldiss. On the first reading, I would have rated this story ***+ but on my second reading, I feel it’s a **** story.

James Wallace Harris, 6/8/23

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“The Dead Past” by Isaac Asimov

“The Dead Past” by Isaac Asimov is story #27 of 52 from The World Treasury of Science Fiction edited by David G. Hartwell (1989), an anthology my short story club is group reading. Stories are discussed on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. “The Dead Past” first appeared in Astounding Science Fiction (April 1956). I can find no ebook or audiobook edition of this story.

Normally, I don’t link to the Internet Archive because I worry it’s going to be taken down. But for “The Dead Past” you can read it here in a scan of the April 1956 Astounding.

Let’s imagine that “The Dead Past” is a robot Isaac Asimov built. This robot has a specific function, to trigger certain ideas and emotions in readers. I believe we can understand this story in terms of the motors and gears Asimov used to design his robot.

  1. The first motor is Arnold Potterley, Ph.D., a Professor of Ancient History. Arnold is obsessed with ancient Carthage. He desperately wants to use a time viewer to prove that specific history about Pre-Roman Carthage is untrue, and were lies created by their enemies the Greeks and Romans.
  2. The second motor is academic control, as viewed through The Department of Chronoscopy, which has the power to view the past using the science of neutrinics, an area of physics created by a man named Sterbinski.
  3. The third motor is Jonas Foster, a new instructor in the physics department.
  4. The first gear system is a dystopian society that rigidly controls all academic research. Asimov used this feature to satirize the real-life academic bureaucracy that he had to deal with. Arnold fights against this bureaucracy to get access to the time viewer to do his research. Jonas becomes intrigued with why the bureaucracy suppresses the time viewer. The two men’s motives mess to work together secretly to build their own time viewer.
  5. The fourth motor is Caroline Potterley, Arnold’s wife. She is obsessed with the death of their child, Laurel, who died twenty years earlier at age 3. She wants the time viewer to see Laurel again.
  6. The second gear system is the mystery of Laurel’s death. Arnold is afraid that if Caroline could see the event he might be blamed. I believe Asimov added this system to his machine because he wanted an emotional component.
  7. The fifth motor is Ralph Nimmo, a popular science writer.
  8. The third gear system links Ralph and Jonas and allows Asimov to express views on science writers, as well as enable the building of a home time viewer.
  9. The sixth motor is Thaddeus Araman, Department Head of the Division of Chronoscopy. He is in charge of suppressing the technology of time viewing for a very specific reason.
  10. The last gear is between Arnold, Caroline, Jonas, and Thaddeus. The first three want to view the past, and the last wants to stop them. The why is the revelation of the story.

“The Dead Past” is one of Asimov’s better stories, even a favorite to some. I liked it quite a lot but found it clunky. The driving force behind Arnold is to prove ancient Carthage didn’t practice child sacrifice, and the driving force behind Caroline is to see her dead child again. Jonas is so intrigued by a possible conspiracy theory that he throws over his budding career in physics. I thought all three of these fictional motives were melodramatic. They do work, adding complexity and emotion to a rather dry final idea, but it’s a shame that Asimov didn’t come up with a more sophisticated emotional linkage.

I think Asimov would have shown more finesse if he had foreshadowed the ending. There is a cross-link between Arnold’s and Caroline’s desire to see the past, but neither predicts the real reason why Thaddeus wants to suppress the time viewer. This might be simplistic on my part, but if Arnold, Caroline, and Jonas each had a reason to use the time viewer, and one of their reasons should have foreshadowed the real reason why Thaddeus thought the time viewer was so dangerous. I believe the story would have been tighter if Jonas has wanted to use the time viewer to uncover the conspiracy, and Caroline wanted to use it to spy on Arnold and Jonas.

I don’t think Asimov was a very mature person. From what I’ve read about him, and from reading his stories, he comes across as a rather clever child prodigy who as an adult had trouble comprehending human relationships. This is often reflected in his stories. His fiction focuses on ideas, and his characters are constructed to present those ideas. In “The Dead Past,” Asimov tries harder than usual to present adult emotions, but they come across as contrived. Still, “The Dead Past” is a good example of Asimov trying to overcome his weakness. I give him credit for that.

Two or three years ago I read or reread all of Asimov’s robot stories. They were all hampered by this problem. I could always see how Asimov added human emotion to his stories. When I was young, that effort worked unseen, but as I got older, the stories succeeded in their ideas but felt clunky in their efforts to deal with genuine humans and relationships. In fact, I was sometimes horrified by some of Asimov’s emotional conclusions – but that’s for another essay.

“The Dead Past” is a nicely worked-out science fiction story. Asimov adds psychological depth to a neatly complex plot. Unfortunately, he uses B-movie creativity for creating the psychological drivers of this story.

Finally, regarding “The Dead Past,” I want to make a protest, or maybe a lament. This is my third reading of the story, and this time I wanted to read “The Dead Past” with my eyes, and then listen to it again from an audiobook. But I could find no audiobook edition. Nor could I find an ebook edition. This annoyed and depressed me. “The Dead Past” is one of Asimov’s best works of short fiction. You can find it in print in The Complete Stories, Volume 1. There are US and UK versions on Amazon, but they don’t have the same number of pages, so I don’t know which to recommend. However, used copies of the US edition are quite common and much cheaper.

I now prefer consuming fiction via ebooks and audiobooks. I hate that Asimov’s short fiction, as well as other science fiction writers’ short fiction, is either not available or is no longer available in these formats. A friend eventually found an epub version for me to read, and that visually easier-to-read format made reading the story far more enjoyable.

I recently noticed that all English language versions of Brian W. Aldiss audiobooks have been pulled from Audible. Classic old science fiction is slowly disappearing. There’s still plenty to buy and read, but it’s disappearing at the edges. I hate that.

James Wallace Harris, 7/6/23

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“The Spiral” by Italo Calvino

“The Spiral” by Italo Calvino is story #26 of 52 from The World Treasury of Science Fiction edited by David G. Hartwell (1989), an anthology my short story club is group reading. Stories are discussed on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. “The Spiral” first appeared in Le Cosmicomiche, a collection of the author’s stories first published in Italy in 1965. It was later translated and published in English in 1968 as Cosmicomics.

Calvino is growing on me. In fact, after reading “The Spiral” I decided to buy Cosmicomics. I went to Amazon and Audible and listened to the introduction to The Complete Cosmicomics. I was so intrigued that I bought the ebook for $2.99 and the audiobook for an additional $7.49. That volume contains Cosmicomics (12 stories), Time and the Hunter (11 stories), 4 stories from Numbers in the Dark and Other Stories, and 7 newly translated stories, 34 in all.

“The Spiral” continues with the character from “A Sign in Space,” Qfwfq, who reminds me of YHWH. I don’t know if Calvino intended that or not, but these stories feel like another Bible that describes the evolution of matter and life through a coevolving self-awareness. I recently read An Immense World by Ed Yong, a book about umwelt in humans and animals, including mollusks. These two books have great synergy.

Cosmicomics stories are about science. I think it’s especially important to read Martin McLaughlin’s introduction to The Complete Cosmicomics. It’s too long to quote in its entirety, but I believe this should get you interested to maybe spring for the $2.99 Kindle edition.

With “The Spiral” I feel Calvino is trying to write a scientific description of reality using a philosophical conceit. Like McLaughlin said, Calvino thinks realistic fiction was exhausted, so he came up with this new approach.

Qfwfq is like God or Gaia, or one of an infinity of pantheistic gods who is describing the evolution of the universe and life. Although Calvino’s goal is to describe science, it also feels spiritual.

When I was young I couldn’t conceive of God or a beginning. I concluded that reality has always existed. It’s infinite in all directions and dimensions. Nothing can’t exist. Reality is the unfolding of all possible forms of non-existence.

You can listen to “The Spiral” here:

https://youtu.be/gpgr5ctwJN0

James Wallace Harris, 7/4/23

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“A Sign in Space” by Italo Calvino

“A Sign in Space” by Italo Calvino is story #25 of 52 from The World Treasury of Science Fiction edited by David G. Hartwell (1989), an anthology my short story club is group reading. Stories are discussed on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. “A Sign in Space” first appeared in Le Cosmicomiche, a collection of the author’s stories first published in Italy in 1965. It was later translated and published in English in 1968 as Cosmicomics.

“A Sign in Space” is not science fiction. I won’t go into my rant again about how I dislike science fiction editors poaching literary works and calling them science fiction. I assume they do it to inflate the reputation of our genre, but I don’t want our genre to gain recognition for the wrong reasons. If Italo Calvino was really considered a science fiction author his success and fame would not have happened.

Be that as it may, let’s discuss “A Sign in Space” as a literary story. As soon as I started reading it I heard the voice of Mel Brooks doing his 2000 Year Old Man routine. Is it possible that Calvino could have heard this 1960 record? Great discoveries are often made at similar times around the world.

I did find a couple audio readings of the story, but none of the readers read it like Mel Brooks. I was disappointed. But here’s a nice narration.

This is a creative work that’s reasonably entertaining. It’s meant to be humorous and clever, but that really depends on the reading and delivery. That’s why I ached to hear Mel Brooks do it as a comedy routine. I did think it was too long.

I imagined the narrator being God when he was a youngster, just figuring things out. Did God create all of reality, or just Earth and its vicinity? Imagine being a conscious being that could ride around the Milky Way as it spun like a record. Imagine that being not having a language and needing to develop one. Making a sign could be the very beginning of the process. There are interesting philosophical points in this story.

Another thing I thought about while reading “A Sign in Space” was wondering how an observer could track the rotation of our galaxy? We see the Earth orbiting the sun through the changing background of the constellations throughout the year. The celestial sphere seems fixed to us when we realize we are moving. Would there be a larger sky outside our galaxy that would seem fixed too?

Just because a writer tells a fantastic story about outer space doesn’t mean we can pin a sign on their back that says SCIENCE FICTION WRITER. Marketing fiction as science fiction is a publishing technique to get certain kinds of stories to certain kinds of readers. It’s often bad for writers. And it’s unfair to writers who have developed a reputation outside of our genre. Some science fiction writers have learned that being labeled a science fiction writer has hurt their career potential. But it doesn’t help them or the genre to go around tagging certain famous writers as science fiction writers.

I wish David Hartwell could have found a genuine science-fiction story from Italy.

James Wallace Harris, 7/1/23