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Deadly Serious Science Fiction

Out of the thousands of science fiction novels I’ve read, I thought Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner took itself the most seriously. It addressed world problems John Brunner thought threatened humanity in 1968. I read Stand on Zanzibar in 1969 and it made me dread the future he depicted of 2010. It wasn’t the most thrilling SF novel I’ve ever read, nor was it easy to read, but it was most impressive stylistically and made me think about the future more than any other science fiction novel. The Deluge by Stephen Markley now follows in the footsteps of Stand on Zanzibar. Both books describe futures we should want to avoid at all costs. They are deadly serious science fiction.

There aren’t that many serious SF novels that intentionally warn us about the future. Other famous ones are Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, and The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson.

Everyone wants to predict the future, but that’s impossible, so science fiction writers sometimes extrapolate current trends, fictionalizing a possible near future. This is what both Stand on Zanzibar and The Deluge do. We can judge Brunner’s speculation since we’ve now lived past the time he imagined. He got a lot wrong, but he got other stuff right, especially how terrorism would spread across the world. Stephen Markley speculates about the politics of climate change will play out over the next sixteen years and five presidential elections.

Did Brunner and Markley hope we’d change our ways because we read their books? Markley warns his readers what will happen if we don’t act soon regarding climate change. His book asks: What will it take for humanity to give up fossil fuels? Kim Stanley Robinson does the same thing in The Ministry of the Future. Both novels spend a substantial number of words on terrorism. I really hope that isn’t the incentive that pushes us to change. Can we avoid these horrible futures because we read about them today?

My other review of The Deluge, intended for people who don’t read science fiction, I focused on the question: Can we change? For this review I want to focus on the question: Can science fiction influence society at large? If it can’t, why write such SF novels? Both The Deluge and Stand on Zanzibar are huge ambitious works that use a large cast of characters, shifting points of view, interspersed with chapters of pseudo journalism and pop culture, giving a multifaceted view of the near future. The Deluge is almost nine hundred pages in print and runs nearly forty-one hours on audio. It’s big and profoundly serious.

Serious science fiction often warns us we’re heading towards specific scary futures we could avoid if we make the effort. Do we ever heed such warnings? Scientists currently studying free will say it looks like humans are not in conscious control of our lives. I agree with them. If that’s true, can we change the way we act based on things we read? Maybe the authors of serious science fiction never hoped to change the course of history, but only wanted to appeal to certain individuals and influence their thinking. Are such novels part of an extended conversation about the future taking place in the genre of science fiction? Do they expect their readers to change the world, or just for other novelists in the future to reply? Are books about possible futures just an extended conversation that’s taken place in print?

Wasn’t Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four a reply to Huxley’s Brave New World? Wasn’t John Brunner having his turn in the discussion when he wrote Stand on Zanzibar and his Club of Rome Quartet? And didn’t Margaret Atwood jump into the conversation with The Handmaid’s Tale? And aren’t such nonfiction books of futurism like The Limits of Growth and Future Shock also part of the conversation? I believe Robinson’s and Markley’s books are just the latest things said in a never-ending conversation about the future. Sure, many readers consider these books a genre of gloom and doom, but do they have a greater purpose and impact?

It’s interesting that all the books I’ve mentioned so far worry about issues that we continue to face. Is that because we’ll always face those issues? Or do their authors expect us readers to change the way we live and act and eventually solve these problems?

Science fiction writers and futurists know they can’t predict the future, but do they believe readers can divert the present away from possible futures they fear? Isn’t that a kind of free will? A kind of hope for the group mind? The reason scientists don’t believe individuals have free will is because they detect brain activity at the unconscious level before we think we claim to consciously make our decisions. Isn’t the world of intellectual speculation only a kind of unconscious group mind thought process?

People like to think we can become captains of our fate, so is it surprising that writers might hope that society can consciously choose what it will become? But does a meta-conversation about what human society could or should be really represent a kind of free will? I’m sure in their heart of hearts that Orwell, Brunner, Atwood, and Markley wanted to influence society and avoid the horrors they saw coming.

Self-help books are bestsellers because some people do change their habits, so isn’t that evidence that if enough people read serious science fiction it might influence the larger society? Scientists studying free will say no because the desire to change comes from our unconscious minds. But does that matter if science fiction influences us on a conscious or unconscious level? Isn’t the woken social movement mainly due to reading?

I do believe certain books about the future, both fiction and nonfiction, represent an ongoing conversation, but I don’t know if we change our lives because we listened to the conversation. I’m liberal, and have a lot of liberal friends, who claim to be very worried about climate change, but none of us have tried to significantly shrink our carbon footprint.

Back in 1969 when I read Stand on Zanzibar, I was frightened by Brunner’s vision of the future. Over the decades I’ve read and discussed its ideas on overpopulation and the limits of growth with my friends, but we’ve never acted on those fears. I’ve been talking with people about the dangers of climate change for over twenty years now, but we haven’t done anything significant either. That’s why in my other essay about The Deluge I titled it: “Will People Change vs. Can People Change?“

I don’t think we will change. So, why read science fiction that warns us about the future? Likely, we don’t have free will, but we might have an existential awareness of who we are, and I believe books speculating about the future expand that awareness.

Most science fiction is written to entertain. Most science fiction readers seldom read serious science fiction. John Brunner got some critical attention for his Club of Rome Quartet novels, but I’ve read he was depressed because they made no real impact on society. Few writers can achieve George Orwell’s and Margaret Atwood’s social impact.

The Deluge got a fair amount of good mainstream press, but I’m the only person I know who has read it. I doubt Stephen Markley intended it for science fiction readers. He’s a mainstream literary writer. However, because it attempts to do what Brunner did all those decades ago, I believe some science fiction writers will find it interesting.

Reviews of The Deluge:

by James Wallace Harris, 2/29/24

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In Which Postapocalyptic Novel Would You Prefer to Live?

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood is a postapocalyptic novel about humanity being assassinated by a mad genetic engineer. Although well-written and thought-provoking it wasn’t a pleasant read. I doubt any science fiction fan would vicariously put themselves into Atwood’s imagined future. Its narrator, a human survivor nicknamed Snowman, is a rather repulsive individual. This novel might be intellectually stimulating, especially for its thoughts on the evilness of humanity, but it’s not a novel that promises hope for rebuilding the future.

As a young reader of science fiction back in the 1960s, I used to fantasize about what I’d do if I lived in the books I read. Even 1950s post-apocalyptic novels about WWIII left room for me to see positive paths to take. Oryx and Crake was as bleak to me as Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. I admired that novel, but I would never daydream myself into it.

The blurb on the cover above praises Atwood for outdoing Orwell, but not by me. Nineteen Eighty-Four was bleak and depressing, but it was infinitely instructional about avoiding possible futures. Oryx and Crake feels like an oracle of doom. But then I haven’t read Nineteen Eighty-Four in a couple of decades, and at 72 I might find it just as nihilistic as Oryx and Crake.

I’m a connoisseur of after the collapse settings in science fiction. My all-time favorite is Earth Abides by George R. Stewart. In that story, almost everyone dies from an illness and the world reverts to a time when humans are few, becoming hunters and gatherers again.

I’m not saying I’d like to live a tribal existence. No, the postapocalyptic world I’d like to live in, is just after the collapse, where the infrastructure of humanity is still intact. I’d want enough leftover supplies to keep me going for the rest of my life, which might not be more than a decade. When I was younger, the idea of rebuilding civilization appealed to me, but I’m too old for that anymore. But if I were in my twenties, would I fantasize about surviving Atwood’s future?

No, old me would want to live in a nicer post-apocalypse to contemplate the end of our species. In Atwood’s book, she has Snowman contemplating his own fucked up life, while he caretakes a genetically engineered new form of humanity. Atwood imagines our replacements as genetically engineered non-violent humanoid beings called Crakers. These post-humans have a reproductive cycle that removes gender conflict and are peaceful herbivores. I can’t imagine these wimpy creatures surviving the highly aggressive genetically modified animals created in the years before humanity was snuffed out.

In Oryx and Crake Homo sapiens are defined by our worse traits. We deserve our fate in Atwood’s story. And I wouldn’t argue with Atwood. But Atwood’s philosophy makes for a bleak depressing read. The novel has two sequels: The Year of the Flood (2009) and MaddAdam (2013). Even though I was bummed out reading Oryx and Crake, I’m tempted to read the rest of the trilogy just to see if Atwood ever offers her readers hope. I have read that the second volume is about religious people, and that was a frequent theme in 1950s postapocalyptic novels. That tempts me.

Oryx and Crake has got me thinking about the appeal of reading postapocalyptic novels. Why are postapocalyptic settings with zombies so popular with readers today? I’ve never been one to enjoy horror themes. And zombies are so damn yucky. Why would anyone find pleasure putting themselves into such a setting? I must wonder if fans of these stories secretly want to live in a world where they could kill, kill, kill to their heart’s content.

I’m more of a Henry Bemis type myself. I want a nice cozy catastrophe postapocalyptic setting. A peaceful place to meditate on the passing of human existence. When I was younger, I fantasized about playing Tarzan and Jane after the fall of civilization, but now that I’m older, having a faithful dog and robot would be the only companions I’d want. I’d desire a Clifford Simak flavored setting if I were the last man on Earth.

I’m trying not to say end of the world. I dislike that phrase. Humans are so arrogant. They believe when our time is up it’s the end of the world. I think Earth will bop along simply fine without us. Animals and plants would flourish again. The Earth would again teem with life. I can only assume self-aware intelligence was an experiment that failed. Let the robots have the next turn. They might be more compassionate to the animals.

I often write about the difference between old science fiction and new science fiction. In old science fiction we do ourselves in because we’re the stupid violent bastards we are, but there’s not a lot of self-recrimination. In the new science fiction, writers dwell on our evilness. In Atwood’s book, we see two boys, Jimmy (Snowman) and Glenn (Crake), grow up and snuff out humanity. Their formative years were spent watching porn, snuff films, child pornography, playing sick violent video games — just being a couple of gifted brainiacs. They are super intelligent, yet soulless and unlikeable. Jimmy and Glenn use their genius to create and sell ugly products to a world all too anxious to consume them. Sure, that reflects our real world, but does experiencing such in fiction do us any good? Will readers in the future cite Oryx and Crake warnings about genetic engineering? It lacks the symbolism or political resonance of The Handmaid’s Tale.

Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale is about another ugly future, but its ugliness offers us inspiration on how to avoid that future? I assume she intended Oryx and Crake to be positive in the same way, but it isn’t. The Handmaid’s Tale inspires us to fix society. Oryx and Crake only make me want to pull the plug on our species.

In most old science fiction novels about after-the-collapse of civilization, we’re shown ideas for starting over. Sure, some of those novels tell us we’re only going to make the same mistakes again, but there is a will to try again. Some of those stories even suggested it might be possible to take different paths. Reading Oryx and Crake left me feeling it’s time to just let go. Let some other species become the crown of creation.

Maybe Atwood put hope in the sequels, so we’d buy them.

Is my pessimism due to my age? Do younger readers find hope in this novel?

James Wallace Harris, 2/16/24

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“The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” by Ursula K. Le Guin

Today our group, Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Short Fiction, is discussing “The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas” by Ursula K. Le Guin. It’s part of “Group Read 69 – Previously Unread Hugo Winners.” I can’t believe out of all our previous sixty-eight group reads we haven’t read this 5-star story before. I have written about “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” before in the essay “A Philosophical Conversation Between Two Short Stories.”

“The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” is perfect for generating classroom discussions about philosophy. It’s short, only seventeen minutes on audio, and is told as an allegory. Le Guin presents a tiny utopian country where everything is wonderful except for one detail. Happiness in this land depends on the suffering of one child. Nearly everyone in Omelas accepts they must allow one ten-year-old child to suffer horribly, because that suffering allows everyone else living in Omelas to be happy. Of course, as you can guess from the title, some citizens can’t accept this and walk away.

Is Le Guin’s story questioning Christianity and asking why did Jesus suffer for all of us? I don’t think so. Is Le Guin pointing a finger at Capitalism, where the happiness of many depends on the suffering of the economic losers? Maybe. Do you worry about the losers in your society when you’re one of the winners? Is the story also asking how can we have a perfect society if even one person must pay a price? Isn’t it true that in every society some must suffer? Where can those who walk away from Omelas go?

Most people who read “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” focus on the ending, the problem of the suffering child. But in the story’s buildup Le Guin describes what she thinks is a utopian society. Le Guin is challenging her readers to imagine a perfect society too. Le Guin says she doesn’t want clergy or the military, but figures she’ll have to accept orgies and drugs. What would you reject and accept?

I think Le Guin started writing this story wanting to speculate about creating a perfect society, but then realized it couldn’t go anywhere, and then came up with the idea for the suffering child, which led to the idea about those who walk away.

I sense the brilliance of this story wasn’t planned. It’s like my recent discussion of Slaughterhouse-Five. Sometimes a writer accidentally produces a story that works perfectly as a mirror. In my essay, I talked about reading Vonnegut’s classic when I was 18, 55, and 72. With each reading I saw something different about myself. I believe this is also true with “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.” Le Guin has created a mirror for her readers.

However, I do believe there is a universal psychological theme that deals with the suffering of a few that allows for the benefit of the many. I thought that theme was explored twice in 1956 by Damon Knight with “Stranger Station” and “The Country of the Kind.” I even wondered if Le Guin was inspired to write “The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas” after reading “The Country of the Kind.”

On my other blog, I produced a theory about ChatGPT, and similar AI programs. I’m wondering if our unconscious minds work in the same way AIs based on large language models. Those AI models are trained on millions of pages of text and images using neural networks. We can query those AI models with a prompt. Imagine all the books Ursula K. Le Guin read in her lifetime before writing “The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas.” Now imagine Le Guin asking herself, “How would a functional utopia work?” Isn’t that the same as prompting an AI model? Her unconscious mind then generated “The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas.”

Readers add the story to their own mental model and then prompt themselves with a question: “What does this story mean?” Their answers will depend on what they’ve read during their lifetime and how their unconscious mind processed that content.

Instead of asking, “What did Le Guin mean by “The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas,” we should ask instead: “Why did I interpret the “The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas” the way I did?”

I’m guessing great writers don’t intend to mean anything specific but aim to excite our unconscious minds into a kind of creativity. In other words. “The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas” is a bit of prompt engineering, aimed at readers, knowing they each have a mental model that will generate a unique personalized output.

James Wallace Harris, 2/13/24

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Has Science Fiction Changed?

I often encounter the opinion that science fiction has changed. Is it true? Over my lifetime novels have gotten longer, trilogies and series have become more common, there are more female authors, and the genre has been heavily influenced by fantasy. Before Star Trek in 1966, the world of science fiction seemed tiny, and that TV show brought in millions of new SF fans. Then Star Wars in 1977 brought in tens of millions of new SF fans. (But I’m not sure how much the population of science fiction readers grew.)

But these are all externals. I’m wondering if the essence of science fiction itself has changed. Yes, the writing has gotten better, and the literary world has become more accepting, but do modern readers get something different out of reading science fiction than what I found in the 1960s? Why do I prefer older science fiction? Is it more than just because I imprinted on it when I was young? I’m not the only one who feels this way. Many aging Baby Boomers say they prefer older science fiction too, but so do some young book reviewers.

Over the last forty days I’ve read five novels by Philip K. Dick written between 1959-1963, plus Ammonite by Nicola Griffith and The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks. These aren’t new novels, but newer than what I’m talking about, and they feel different. Over the last year I’ve read such new SFF books as Sea of Rust by C. Robert Cargill, Babel by R. F. Kuang, and The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler. I know this is a small sample, but I’ve also read hundreds of science fiction short stories, both old and new, over the last couple of years.

All I can say is science fiction from the first half of my life (1951-1987) feels much different than the second half (1988-2024). The change started around the time of Star Wars in 1977. George Lucas and Steven Spielberg might be the main factors changing the genre. I confess that I’ve long thought that science fiction ran out of original ideas at some point, and the genre has been living on recycling ever since. But women writers, literary standards, and fantasy radically changed the flavor of science fiction since the 1970s too.

But what if the change in science fiction is due to other factors? Yesterday I watched a video by Bookborn, “Do SFF authors think we are stupid now” that offered two innovative ideas. Bookborn suggests that current science fiction lacks subtlety. She also suggests that newer science fiction requires less critical thinking because newer authors tell their readers what to think rather than letting the readers draw their own conclusions. Bookborn also felt authors wrote about topical problems too obviously. Even with books she likes, presenting viewpoints she agrees with, she felt they were too explicit, lacking subtly. She admits this problem is not measurable and highly subjective.

Bookborn then cites an essay, “The Death of the Author” by Roland Barthes. The essay in long, so I suggest reading Wikipedia’s summary instead, but to give you a quick idea, here’s a quote from the first paragraph at Wikipedia:

"The Death of the Author" (French: La mort de l'auteur) is a 1967 essay by the French literary critic and theorist Roland Barthes (1915–1980). Barthes's essay argues against traditional literary criticism's practice of relying on the intentions and biography of an author to definitively explain the "ultimate meaning" of a text. Instead, the essay emphasizes the primacy of each individual reader's interpretation of the work over any "definitive" meaning intended by the author, a process in which subtle or unnoticed characteristics may be drawn out for new insight.

Bookborn is quite articulate at explaining her position, and her position is more complex than what I’m conveying here, so I recommend clicking on the link above to watch her video. Bookborn goes on to say that current authors hide from their readers because of social media. They fear attacks on what they say so they are overly careful about what they put forth. I had an additional insight. Because modern science fiction is often about elaborate world building, modern authors struggle to be precise so readers will see clearly what they have worked so hard to invent.

In Ammonite by Nicola Griffith and The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks, I was disappointed by the blandness of the author’s voice. And I never felt the presence of Griffith or Banks in their stories. Yes, in both cases their world building is beautifully detailed, but both authors left no mysteries about their stories or their personal views for me to ponder. I have theories to explain this too.

Modern writers prefer a close personal third point of view, or first person, to the older omniscient point of view which is better suited for conveying the author’s voice. I also find that the novels I admire most are ones written by authors I love reading about. Maybe what I love about older science fiction is my connection to the author.

Any science fictional world that’s set far from Earth becomes a fantasy world, and thus far less complex than our reality. Such fictional worlds are far from the infinite complexity of contemporary controversies. Writers can avoid personal philosophy by using allegory. Reading such fantasies means passively consuming what the book describes. Such stories don’t lend themselves to ambiguity and complexity, which makes the reader think. Our reality is infinitely full of shades of gray. Made up fictional worlds tend to be consistently designed because authors want them to be understandable to readers unless you’re Gene Wolfe writing The Book of the New Sun.

The five Philip K. Dick novels were far more compelling and thought provoking than the books by Griffith and Banks. I often try newer science fiction, but they usually come across as merely fun stories. Overall, newer science fiction stories are like going to Disneyland. They dazzle but when the ride is over, are quickly forgotten. I’m still thinking about those Philip K. Dick novels. When nothing else thrills, switching to a Philip K. Dick story will get my mind excited. Why is that? I believe it’s because his Dick’s books are closer to real life, and that makes them ambiguous and mysterious. They offer endless room for speculation. I’m reading another biography of Philip K. Dick, my sixth, I think, because Dick’s novels make me crave understanding.

Dick’s novels were compelling, Ammonite and The Player of Games were not. They aren’t bad, in fact, they’re exceptionally good stories, just not compelling. Dick was obsessed with deciphering reality. He doubted that what we perceive is real. He was horrified by other people, often thinking they were machines, disguised supernatural beings, or illusions of the mind. Paranoia fueled his narratives. Our reality was too complex for Philip K. Dick, and it drove him into insane states of mind trying to figure it out. Every Philip K. Dick novel is another exciting speculative assumption about reality.

Interestingly, Dick doesn’t fit the theory about the author being dead. Yes, his stories are wonderful without knowing anything about Philip K. Dick, but their complexity increases the more you do know about him. I want stories where the authors aren’t dead by Barthes criteria.

By coincidence, both The Player of Games and Time Out of Joint are about game playing. However, the first novel feels contrived. It’s hard to believe. But the second, which is far more fantastic, yet feels very real and believable. Why is that?

I believe the reason I love older science fiction is because it speculates about reality. Whereas newer science fiction is focused on telling a delightful story. Lucas and Spielberg overly inspired newer writers to focus on entertaining the masses.

I loved the Heinlein novels of the 1950s because they speculated about future space travel. That was before NASA showed us what real space travel would be like in the 1960s. Heinlein’s stories honestly tried to speculate about traveling to the Moon or Mars. Space travel in Star Trek, Star Wars, or the Culture novels of Iain M. Banks are really fantasies. Space travel in Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson is somewhat speculative.
Most science fiction isn’t very speculative, even the old stuff. However, novels like Flowers for Algernon or Earth Abides feel far closer to reality. And I’m sure many people will point out that stories by Philip K. Dick are extremely fantastic, yet their characters feel like ordinary real people, and that grounds them.

For all his insanity, Philip K. Dick struggled to understand reality. And I think the reason I admire many older science fiction writers is because they were commenting on reality. I do love entertaining stories, but pure storytelling seldom offers much to think about.

I’m not sure I understand “The Death of the Author” in the same way as Bookborn. It seems to me that classics were written by authors whose personality dominated their fiction. Think about Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Eudora Welty, Ernest Hemingway, Flannery O’Conner, Jack Kerouac, or the science Fiction writers like H. G. Wells, Robert Heinlein, Philip K. Dick, Theodore Sturgeon, Ursula K. Le Guin, Harlan Ellison, Zenna Henderson, Samuel R. Delany, John Brunner, etc. If you want to write a great science fiction novel, I think it must connect with reality. Just think how silly and fantastic Slaughterhouse-Five is, yet Vonnegut points to reality, and that makes it a great novel.

James Wallace Harris, 2/4/24

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Getting to Know Philip K. Dick, Biographies, Memoirs, Interviews, & Letters

Reprinted and updated from “The Biographies of Philip K. Dick” at SF Signal (April 2016)

Back in 2016 I went on a Philip K. Dick binge, reading several of his novels and a stack of biographies. I wrote an article about the biographies before I burned out of that binge. I’m back to binge-reading on PKD again and I went looking for my article, “The Biographies of Philip K. Dick” at SF Signal, but it’s been taking down. The link above is to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. I decided to reprint it here and update it with any book that would help me get to know Philip K. Dick, including interviews and letters. I also put links to Amazon (I earn a small fee) to those that are in print. The books that are out of print are getting extremely expensive to buy used.

Philip K. Dick inspired more biographers than any other science fiction writer. Were those biographers drawn to Dick’s strange life, or did they hope to learn more about his books? For anyone wanting to know Philip K. Dick, picking a biography can be hard. A definitive biography has not yet emerged, and each of the existing biographies have their own unique appeal. I’ve been reading books about PKD for almost forty years and find they’re revealing in two ways. First, PKD was an exceedingly complex person. Even if you’ve never read one of his novels, his personal story is as far out as his fiction. Second, if you do have a passion for PKD’s work, you’ll want to read the biographies, because Phil often weaved his own experiences into his plots and characters, making those stories deeper if you learn how and why.

But which biography to pick? The latest? The longest? PKD had five wives, two of which wrote memoirs, as well as one lady friend. I loved In Search of Philip K. Dick by Anne R. Dick (married to PKD 1959-1965) because she influenced The Man in the High Castle. And Tessa B. Dick, (married to PKD 1973-1977) offers insight into Phil’s later mystical writings. I wished Kleo Apostolides (married 1950-1959) and Nancy Hackett (married 1966-1972) had also written biographies, so we’d have complete spousal coverage of Dick’s writing years.

Paul Williams and Greg Rickman’s books are out of print, yet very worthy of tracking down. Divine Invasions is excellent, but older, still a top contender. If you’re attracted to Dick’s weirdness, consider Anthony Peake’s book. However, if you only read one, a good place to start will be I Am Alive and You Are Dead by Emmanuel Carrère, a French writer. Be warned though, reading one biography of PKD can draw you into the black hole of PKDickian addiction.

If you know about others, let me know.

James Wallace Harris, 1/11/23

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The Simulacra by Philip K. Dick

How do literary scholars of Philip K. Dick’s fiction determine which of his novels are masterpieces and which are his hackwork? They all seem equally bizarre, and even confusing. Library of America selected four novels for their first volume in 2007 devoted to PKD. The years given are when they were (written, published).

  • The Man in the High Castle (1961,1962)
  • The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1964,1965)
  • Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1966, 1968)
  • Ubik (1966, 1969)

The second volume came out in 2008 recognized:

  • The Martian Time-Slip (1962, 1964)
  • Dr. Bloodmoney (1963, 1965)
  • Now Wait for Last Year (1963, 1966)
  • Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said (1970, 1974)
  • A Scanner Darkly (1973, 1977)

The third volume in 2009 highlighted:

  • A Maze of Death (1968, 1970)
  • VALIS (1978, 1981)
  • The Divine Invasion (1980, 1981)
  • The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (1981, 1982)

Are we to assume these are Dick’s best novels? My personal favorite, Confessions of a Crap Artist wasn’t included. Neither was The Simulacra which I just read and found fascinating and fun. I think some of the Library of America selections are better than The Simulacra, such as The Man in the High Castle, The Martian Time-Slip, and VALIS, but I’d also claim The Simulacra is not a lesser novel to the others. However, using our citation database system, it gets only one citation. Twelve of the twenty-seven PKD novels in our database only got one citation. The novels in the first LOA volume received 9 to 32 citations, which supports the LOA editors.

The only reason The Simulacra received one citation is because it was part of the SF Masterworks series. All the science fiction magazine reviewers ignored it when it came out. As far as I can tell, none of the reprint editions got reviewed either. The Simulacra just isn’t well-known. It’s often disliked when I see it mentioned.

I liked it. And I want to make a case that it’s worth reading. However, it will be hard to even describe. I’m afraid most readers will be turned off by The Simulacra because it has multiple plot lines with over a dozen main characters. And I can imagine many readers calling it stupid too — but that could be true for a lot of readers coming to PKD work. However, if two of the five novels Dick wrote in 1963 made it into the Library of America, why shouldn’t the other three? What divides them? What makes one novel “good” and another “bad?”

The Simulacra‘s complexity might keep readers from liking it, but that complexity might hide many novelistic virtues. Just because I admired this novel, doesn’t mean others will. I’m writing this essay hoping people will read The Simulacra and give me their opinion. I’m curious if I’m a total outlier. I got a big kick out of the story.

According to Samuel Johnson, “No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.” Dick complained in several 1963 letters found in The Selected Letters of Philip K. Dick: Volume One: 1938-1971, that his wife Anne constantly hounded him to make more money. On the other hand, Dick wrote eleven literary (non-genre) novels from 1952-1960 hoping to become a recognized mainstream writer. All were rejected. He then wrote The Man in the High Castle in 1961 which bridges the literary and science fiction world and won a Hugo award for best novel. Dick then wrote twenty-one science fiction novels from 1962 to 1969, five of them in 1963 alone. He obviously needed money and had to crank out the manuscripts.

After 1970, Dick only published six more novels before he died in 1982. Five of which are included in the Library of America editions. That suggests that the novels he took more time writing fared better with the critics. So, the five novels written in 1963 were among the fastest he wrote, suggesting they shouldn’t be as good. Yet, two were selected for the Library of America.

As much as I like The Simulacra, I do see that it’s flawed. It doesn’t have a main character which most readers prefer. Nor does it jump back and forth between two main characters, which can be quite successful with some readers. And it’s not even one of those experimental stories where we follow several unrelated characters that all come together in the end. Readers find that structure confusing but forgive it if the ending brings everyone together in a satisfying way. I’m not sure The Simulacra wraps up nicely.

We might call the plotting of The Simulacra an example of characters doing parallel play. Dick might have aimed for creating a collage of future American scenes. My guess is Dick banged away on his typewriter, vomiting up The Simulacra onto typing paper. The results are fascinating because the novel is one big pile of imagery from PKD unconscious mind — and what a mind! It begs to be psychoanalyzed. And I’m sure, it parallels his personal life, especially regarding insanity, psychoanalysis, and troubling wives and women.

The Simulacra is not satire even though it often feels like the film Dr. Strangelove, nor is it a fantasy even though everything is unbelievable. And I wouldn’t call it surreal or dreamlike, or avant-garde even though it was written in 1963 when trendy artists were creating pop art and post-modern fiction. It’s straight science fiction, meant to be taken as realistic, even though it’s bonkers. The Simulacra has the existential absurd horror of The Tin Drum or The Painted Bird. I don’t even think Dick was making fun of science fiction with its comic book level wild ideas. Dick had crazy ideas, and he saw the world being just as crazy.

The Simulacra pictures future America where psychic abilities are accepted as real, that time travel has been perfected, where people and animals can be artificially created and the results indistinguishable from real people and animals, that colonies exist on Mars and the Moon, and alien lifeforms can be commercialized. In other words, all the crap ideas that science fiction fans and fans of the occult believed in the 1950s. Everything they thought possible, became possible.

The hardest part of this essay is describing what happens in The Simulacra. I wrote about that trouble already for my Auxiliary Memory blog, where I explained I had to read the book and listen to the audiobook to get the most out of The Simulacra. In fact, I’m still picking up the book, or putting on the audiobook, and enjoying random parts of the novel. I can’t seem to leave this story. I’m still finding new insights into whatever scene I stumble upon. I’ve decided the best way to describe the story is by mind mapping the characters. The number given is the number of times the character is mentioned in the story.

I’m trying not to give away too much of the plot. Each of the first level characters involves a subplot. For example, Dr. Egon Superb is the last legally practicing psychiatrist after the pharmaceutical industry pushed through the McPhearson Act that made drug therapy the only legal form of treatment for mental illness. One of his patients is Richard Kongrosian, a psychic pianist who uses telekinesis to play the piano instead of using his hands. Nat Flieger is a sound engineer who wants to record Kongrosian, but he and his crew of Molly Dondoldo and Jim Planck can never track down the man. Ian Duncan and his old friend Al Miller want to perform classical music as a jug band at the White House for Nicole Thibodeaux. Nicole Thibodeaux, the First Lady, but maybe the true ruler of The United States of Europe and America (USEA) wants to negotiate with Hermann Goering via a time machine to get the Nazis to not kill the Jews. Vince and Chic get involve with making the next president, an android, which will replace Nicole’s current husband. Wilder Pembroke, Anton Karp, and Bertold Goltz all vie for power behind the scenes.

If the novel has a main character, it could be Nicole Thibodeaux. Dick’s original draft was called The First Lady of Earth. Since this book was written in the summer of 1963, I assume Dick was inspired by Jackie Kennedy because Nicole spends most of her time charming people, decorating the White House and gardens, and putting on nightly cultural events. Everyone loves Nicole. Yet, out of the public eye, Nicole is also ruthless enough to have people summarily executed. Evidently, she wields unlimited power because of her access to time travel.

The novel is set in a post-apocalyptic future, decades after China attacked the U.S. with missiles with atomic warheads. This gave rise to a population of mutants, similar in appearance to Neanderthals. People ride in self-driving cars. Ads are living creatures that can invade your home and car and must be killed. Richard Kongrosian believes he has a terrible body odor because a deodorant ad infected him with a jingle. The Sons of Job are a neo-fascist political party. People live in giant communal apartment complexes and are required to take civics tests to stay in them. Many people want to escape this totalitarian society by immigrating to Mars. People buy android nuclear families just to have normal friends.

I could go on. There are several layers of political and corporate intrigue in The Simulacra. Dick evidently thought there were conspiracies everywhere. Later in life, Dick would get into Gnostic religion, which is a very paranoid belief system. This novel has many traits of Gnosticism. The Simulacra was written after The Man in the High Castle, We Can Build You, Dr. Bloodmoney, and The Martian Time-Slip, and before The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? There are many similar themes and obsessive ideas that run through all of them. I wish I had the time and energy to study all those novels and plot all the connections. Why did PKD fixate on certain ideas repeatedly? Was it a lack of imagination to explore unfamiliar territory, or were they ideas PKD just could let go of?

James Wallace Harris, 1/5/24

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“A Work of Art” by James Blish

“A Work of Art” was first published in Science Fiction Stories, July 1956 as “Art – Work.” You can read it on Archive.org. It is story #14 of 22 for The Best SF Stories of 1956 group read. Asimov and Greenberg picked “A Work of Art” for The Great SF Stories #18 (1956). It was widely reprinted. Its quality is inferred by the fact that I own “A Work of Art” in seven anthologies:

  • Science Fiction Showcase (1959) edited by Mary Kornbluth
  • The Worlds of Science Fiction (1963) edited by Robert P. Mills
  • The Best of James Blish (1979)
  • Science Fiction of the Fifties (1980) edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Joseph Olander
  • The Great SF Stories #18 (1956) (1988)
  • The Science Fiction Century (1997) edited by David G. Hartwell
  • Masterpieces: The Best Science Fiction of the Century (2001) edited by Orson Scott Card

“A Work of Art” is James Blish’s third most cited story in our database after “Surface Tension” and “Common Time.” James Blish isn’t very well known today, but he had a fair reputation when I was growing up in the 1960s. Among writers who knew Blish, he was remembered for being a scholarly intellectual writer. Older science fiction fans know him for the novel A Case of Conscience and the series Cities in Flight.

I first encountered Blish with his paperback series that converted the original Star Trek episodes into short stories. That was fun reading when I was a teen watching the show back in the 1960s, but it gave me the wrong impression that Blish was a hack writer. It took me decades to throw off that prejudice. “A Work of Art” offers me new hope for Blish.

It’s funny how we start off in our adolescence following a few writers as our favorites, and then years or even decades later, we learn that we should have read more of their contemporaries. Heinlein, Asimov, and Clarke dominated my formative years of science fiction reading. Now in my fading years, I’m discovering the 1950s and 1960s had other interesting science fiction writers — ones I should have been reading.

“A Work of Art” is the first story by Blish that backs the reputation I’ve gotten from reading about Blish. I’ve read A Case of Conscience twice, but I never considered it great, just particularly good. And I never liked the Cities in Flight stories. I keep hoping to discover more by Blish that matches the reputation he has with other readers. I’ve bought Black Easter and The Day After Judgment but haven’t read them yet. I’ve read “A Work of Art” twice and feel it’s closer to Aldiss and Ballard, which makes me want to try harder at finding the better Blish stories.

My friend Mike has been emailing me his thoughts on the Best SF Short Stories of 1956 and I’ll quote his comments to describe “A Work of Art” because I think he’s done a better job than I would have of summing up the story.

In James Blish's "A Work of Art," the mind sculptor Dr. Barkun Kris has "...superimposed memories..." of Richard Strauss onto Jerom Bosch, who "...had no talent for music at all..." 

At first, "A Work of Art" seems little more than Blish's satirical take on modern music. For Strauss (Bosch), "Music was, he quickly began to suspect, a dying art, which would soon have a status not much above that held by flower arranging back in what he thought of as his own century." Composers "...openly used a slide-rule-like device called a Hit Machine..."

Strauss composes a new opera with the intention to "...strike out afresh..." and not depend on his "...old tricks..."

During the opera's premiere, Blish introduces an epiphany for Strauss, who realizes during the performance that there "...was nothing new about the music. It was the old Strauss all over again--but weaker, more diluted than ever."

Strauss's anguish is palpable: "Being brought to life again meant bringing to life as well all those deeply graven reflexes of his style."

"His eyes filled; his body was young, but he was an old man, an old man. Another thirty-five years of this? Never."

The audience is ecstatic about the result of the mind sculpture. But Jerom Bosch has a depth of understanding that Dr. Kris never suspects. Bosch knows that the Strauss that Kris created "...was as empty of genius as a hollow gourd. The joke would always be on the sculptor, who was incapable of hearing the hollowness of the music..." 

Bosch's moment of epiphany adds depth and dimension to the story by creating a nuanced character who will soon be returned to his regular life even though he feels that "I am Richard Strauss until I die, and will never be Jerom Bosch, who was unable to carry even the simplest tune." We feel his grief when Kris "...turned to him to say the word that would plunge him back into oblivion..."

One reason I like “A Work of Art” is it deals with an alternative to mind downloading that I think might be vaguely possible. Mind downloading/uploading has been a popular theme in SF for several decades, but I’ve never thought it possible. However, I’ve wondered if we could create an AI personality based on all the works of a famous person. In “A Work of Art” Dr. Kris sculpts minds in living people. I guess it’s a kind of temporary brainwashing. I don’t think that’s possible, but it’s a good enough idea for the story.

“A Work of Art” gives Blish the opportunity to show off his knowledge of classical music, something I know next to nothing about, but always wished I did. And Blish gets to speculate about the nature of personality, both real, and copied. Richard Strauss’ artificial personality struggles to create a new opera but is faced with two problems. The first is he’s old and has done everything already, so he tends to repeat himself. But the second, and the revelation of the story, is because he’s a copy his creativity is limited by what’s known about him. It begs the question: Can creative work be used to be creative? That’s pertinent today regarding LLM AIs.

Now Mike focuses on something I missed, or something Mike has added to the story. He sees Bosch as being a participant in this mind sculpting artwork. I didn’t. I assumed Bosch had temporarily left the building, so to speak, while the Strauss personality occupies it. Mike evidently saw mind art as a blend of the two. Mike assumes Bosch had the final epiphany, while I think the Strauss personality had it before it was erased.

Even though I disagree with Mike’s take, I like the idea of Bosch being there all along too, being part of the art. I’ll need to read “A Work of Art” for a third time to see if I see clues for that. That’s the fun thing about exceptional stories, that they can be interpreted in diverse ways.

James Wallace Harris, 12/28/23

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“The Man Who Came Early” by Poul Anderson

“The Man Who Came Early” was first published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, June 1956. You can read it on Archive.org. It is story #12 of 22 for The Best SF Stories of 1956 group read. Asimov and Greenberg picked “The Man Who Came Early” for The Great SF Stories #18 (1956) and in Richard Lupoff’s What If? Volume 1, his anthology that reevaluated the Hugo awards, thought “The Man Who Came Early” was the “single finest story” of 1956. “The Man Who Came Early” has been well anthologized.

Science fiction writers often reply to earlier science fiction writers in their fiction, and “The Man Who Came Early” is Poul Anderson’s reply to Mark Train’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court and to L. Sprague de Camp’s Lest Darkness Fall. Both classic time travel novels are about men who are thrown into the past and use their scientific knowledge to gain power and success in less scientifically aware times. Anderson attacks the assumption that modern knowledge would give any time traveler an edge in the past.

Twain’s character, Hank Morgan, goes from the 19th century to the time of King Arthur via a knock on the head. De Camp’s Martin Padway travels to 535 A.D. Rome by being struck by lightning. Anderson’s Sergeant Gerald Roberts returns to about 1000 A.D. Iceland also via lightning strike.

Poul Anderson admired medieval societies, and often used them in his fiction. I’ve read where Anderson claimed such societies are about as complex as what he thinks humans could handle. What impressed me most about “The Man Who Came Early” was the historical details of ancient Iceland. I’m sure Anderson delighted in writing that part of the story.

The plot involving the hapless Gerald Roberts was less appealing to me, but I thought it made a good case for Anderson’s supposition that time travelers from the future will not have an advantage because they know more. If you’ve seen James Burke’s documentary television series Connections, you’ll know he’s right. Knowledge and skills are tied to time and culture.

I believe Anderson’s description of Gerald Roberts fate is spot on. And I was impressed with Anderson’s point of view character, Ospak. I do not know anything about Iceland, either current or past, but Ospak’s voice in the story felt very realistic. He was both wise and insightful. Ospak was also compassionate towards his daughter Thorgunna even though Ospak knew she fell in love with the useless man from the future. Ospak even believed Roberts was from the future, and vaguely perceived why he couldn’t adjust to living in the past. Anderson did a great job describing an alien culture to us.

I was impressed with “The Man Who Came Early” the first time I read it. I’ve never been a big Poul Anderson fan, but reading it made me want to read more of Anderson’s work. I was still impressed, maybe even more so, with this second reading. I find it hard to like most time travel stories because they are so hard to believe. Even if time travel was possible, I find it harder to believe people could overcome the language barrier. Anderson claims that Icelandic is one of the few languages that hasn’t changed much in a thouand years. That might be true, but I’m still skeptical. Kids just two or three generations younger than me already use so many words and phrases that I can’t decipher without checking my iPhone.

In some ways I wonder if “The Man Who Came Early” would have been a better story if told from Gerald Roberts point of view. Wouldn’t we identify more with the frustrations of surviving in the past if we followed the time traveler? I’m sure Anderson was enamored with creating Ospak’s character, but from a storytelling point of view, wouldn’t seeing the experience from Robert’s eyes have been more intense? I’m reminded of Thomas Jerome Newton, the Martian who came to our planet in The Man Who Fell to Earth by Walter Tevis. Newton’s experience of being a stranger in a strange land was emotionally gutwrenching.

I was surprised that my friend Mike didn’t like “The Man Who Came Early” when he emailed yesterday:

My problem with time travel stories is that the plots feel manufactured and synthetic. Character development is sacrificed on the altar of clever machinations.

I realize that "The Man Who Came Early" is a widely praised story, but it felt emotionally flat to me. Everything feels like a plot device, complete with a far-fetched love interest and a convenient adversary (red shirt).

I agree with Joachim Boaz: "There isn’t much redeemable about this stilted caper.  Well, Poul Anderson’s pessimistic theme that the modern man is unable to function in the past despite his superior technology is somewhat interesting despite the story’s poor delivery."

I completely disagree with Boaz’s assessment that the story was poorly delivered. I thought Ospak’s tale exceedingly well done. It let us see an ancient Icelandic perspective that felt genuinely possible to me. I do believe if we followed Roberts’ perspective, we would have felt a greater sense of frustration and tragedy being a time traveler, much like what Karl Glogauer experienced in Behold the Man by Michael Moorcock.

I experienced several levels and kinds of emotions in the story, so my experience is much different from Mike’s. I’m curious how other people felt. If you’ve read the story, please say below in a comment.

The discussion on Facebook has been positive so far.

James Wallace Harris, 12/23/23

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“The Dead Past” by Isaac Asimov

“The Dead Past” was first published in Astounding Science Fiction, April 1956. You can read it on Archive.org. It is story #11 of 22 for The Best SF Stories of 1956 group read. Even though this is one of Isaac Asimov’s better stories, it was not up for the Hugo award, nor was it selected for a best-of-the-year anthology. Of course, it was competing with “The Last Question” which many, including Asimov, considered one of his absolute best stories.

This is the fourth time I’ve read “The Dead Past,” the second time the group has discussed this story in 2023, and I previously reviewed it here. I like what I said in my previous review, so I’ll let it stand. For this essay, I want to talk about multiple readings of a story and reading reactions from different people. If you read a story only once, you’ll have only one perception of it. Reading a story again often produces a different perception. And reading what other people think of a story often produces perspectives different from our own experiences.

For example, my friend Mike is reading these stories along with the group, and here’s his reaction:

In "The Dead Past," Asimov presents the idea of chronoscopy or "time viewing." It's a method of viewing past events. In most stories, chronoscopy is simply a deus ex machina that allows the story's plot to unwind, but Asimov confounds our expectations by making chronoscopy the main "character" in the story. 

Arnold Potterly wants to use chronoscopy to view ancient Carthage. 

Potterly's wife, Caroline, wants to use it to view her deceased daughter, pleading that "I want my child." 

For Jonas Foster, the development of the chronoscope becomes "...a matter of important principle." 

Thaddeus Araman is distraught because if the chronoscope becomes widely available then "There will be no such thing as privacy."

Asimov whipsaws us through conflicting emotions about the chronoscope. Would it be good to allow Potterly to peer into the everyday events of Carthage? Would allowing Caroline to view her long dead daughter bring her happiness or detach her from reality and result in madness? What about government control of chronoscopy? Araman laments the death of privacy, ignoring the fact that the government already uses chronoscopy to spy. Isn't privacy already dead?

Chronoscopy takes center stage and Asimov skillfully allows us to view its many facets. We are left to decipher our own feelings about how it should be used.

Araman's final words are stark and signal the impending dystopian future: "You have created a new world among the three of you, I congratulate you. Happy goldfish bowl to you, to me, to everyone, may each of you fry in hell forever. Arrest rescinded."

Even after reading the story four times myself, I feel Mike saw “The Dead Past” in ways I didn’t. Mike sums up the story nicely, somewhat like I did in my previous review, but leaving me feeling he liked the story more than I did and saw it with a different spin. But what’s interesting when I started rereading the story this time, was how I noticed things that weren’t in my last review, or memory, or in Mike’s comments, or in the comments on the Facebook group.

Even short stories are full of hundreds of details, details smaller than the plot. We might think of them as brushstrokes that paint the story. With each sentence Asimov gave us, we get something to think about, and each impression could take our vision of what’s going on in the story in a different direction. Just look at the first paragraph:

Arnold Potterley, Ph.D. was a Professor of Ancient History. That in itself, was not dangerous. What changed the world beyond all dreams was the fact that he looked like a Professor of Ancient History.

Knowing the rest of the story makes me wonder why did Asimov started the story this way? The word “looked” is italicized for emphasis. Even though I’ve read this story three times before I cannot recall anything in the plot that significantly deals with Potterley’s appearance. And the next paragraph is even more enigmatic.

Thaddeus Araman, Department Head of the Division of Chronoscopy, might have taken proper action if Dr. Potterley had been owner of a large, square chin, flashing eyes, aquiline nose and broad shoulders.

WTF! Did I miss something entirely in my first three readings? What is Asimov doing here? Is he just throwing out Araman’s prejudices to color the story’s opening? Did Asimov feel he personally wasn’t taken seriously because of his own looks, and just added this in as a story insight?

The story drops appearance and switches to the topic of chronoscopy and Carthage. In my previous readings I wondered about Carthage, and why Asimov was using it in this story. Asimov wrote many books on history, so I wondered if it was a pet topic of his. During previous reading I meant to research Carthage to see if what Asimov said about Carthage was true. Did it need defending and promoting?

The story then goes into Potterley’s academic frustration of being ignored and his desperation to use the time viewer. Now and in previous readings I wondered if in 1956 if Asimov had had similar academic tiffs with his superiors? Why is so much of the plot dealing with academic rejection? I especially ask this because I know the ending of the story takes us in a completely different direction to where the story had been taking us all along. In the end, we learn that the chronoscope (time viewer) can’t go back further than a century, so there was never a chance of seeing Carthage. And we learn there’s a reason the government keeps people from using the time viewer, and it abruptly changes the tone of the story.

I’ve often heard that there are two types of writers: pantsers and plotters. Pantsers are writers who sit down and start writing whatever comes to them through inspiration. They have no idea where the story is going but feel that their muse will guide them. Plotters are writers who carefully outline their stories ahead of time and know where they are going when they sit down to write each day. They believe everything must be consciously decided, structured, and interrelated.

I get the feeling Asimov was a pantser when writing “The Dead Past,” and with my every rereading of the story only confirms that impression.

If you only read a story once, you consume it like a pantser reader. But if you read it multiple times, you consume it like a plotter reader.

I assume Asimov’s original inspiration was an idea about a professor wanting to see the past with a time viewer. Asimov quickly decided Potterley wouldn’t get to see Carthage because he would have to turn the story into historical fiction and evidently Asimov didn’t want to go in that direction. He shifted the focus to frustration over not getting the funding to do research. Had that been happening to Asimov? I think Asimov saw this focus wouldn’t get him far, so he created the subplot of getting of the accomplice to add intrigue to the story. But even then, the story didn’t have much, so Asimov added the subplot with the wife. At some point he realized the story needed an ending and an insight and decided that examining the past was a bad idea after all. He then abruptly tied up the plots and subplots.

Even though Rich Horton picked this story as one of his all-time favorites, and “The Dead Past” got voted in on a Locus Poll of all-time favorite short stories, I’m not sure if “The Dead Past” is a good story. It was only in Volume Two of Asimov’s The Complete Stories, and not in any of Asimov’s other best of collections. I assume even Asimov later recognized it was clunky.

Multiple readings have revealed more problems with writing this short story. If Asimov knew when he started writing that time viewing was limited to the past one hundred years, would he have ever written about a professor wanting to view Carthage? My guess is Asimov added the subplot of the wife’s desire to see how her child died when he realized that the final insight showed time viewing dangerous to society because of privacy. I don’t know if he knew this on day one of writing, or several days later. Asimov was known to be a furiously fast writer. He was also famous for publishing hundreds of books. I doubt he spent a lot of time rewriting. I believe Asimov just doctored the story with the wife’s subplot.

If the time viewer had limitations and the government didn’t want to use it because it would cause privacy nightmares, there’s no reason this wouldn’t be made public knowledge. I can understand the government keeping a time viewer secret. But if the public knew time viewers existed, I don’t think there would be any need to keep its limits secret, or the fact that its invasion of privacy could shatter society.

Rereading the story reveals that Asimov liked to throw in interesting tidbits along the way. I won’t chronicle any more examples other than those I’ve given, but if you read the story again, look out for them. I’m fairly sure Asimov was a pantser, and things would come to him, and he’d throw little impressions and insights into his stories as he wrote them even if they don’t work consistently with the whole story. “The Dead Past” is like a snowball rolling downhill gathering more snow and other objects, and then it splatters apart when it hits a boulder. With one reading, following along with Asimov’s inspiration kind of works. But multiple readings make me see that “The Dead Past” was thrown together.

JWH

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“Legwork” by Eric Frank Russell

“Legwork” was first published in Astounding Science Fiction, April 1956. You can read it on Archive.org. It is story #10 of 22 for The Best SF Stories of 1956 group read. “Legwork” was a finalist for the 1956 Hugo Award for novelette, but it was not collected into any of the best of the year anthologies even though I think it’s a four-star-plus story. It did get an honorable mention by Judith Merril.

“Legwork” was rarely anthologized, but Mike Ashley reprinted in Future Crimes in 2021 as part of his British Library Science Fiction Classics series. Here’s Ashley’s introduction for “Legwork.” It makes me want to read more Eric Frank Russell, but then I say that every time I review one of his stories. I need to do what I say.

Eric Frank Russell (1905–1978) was one of Britain’s leading sf writers in the 1950s, alongside Arthur C. Clarke and John Wyndham, but his reputation has faded since he more-or-less stopped writing in 1965. He honed his craft on reading American pulps in the 1930s and could muster a passable American idiom. He enjoyed pulp crime fiction. When he finalized his first novel, Sinister Barrier, which involves the investigation by a special government agent into a series of unusual and unexplained deaths, Russell modelled it on the American pulp G-Men. It clearly worked. John W. Campbell, Jr., bought it for the first issue of Unknown, and the novel, about aliens controlling humans, became instantly popular. Russell enjoyed creating strange mysteries investigated by the police in such early stories as “Shadow-Man” (1938) where the police try and find an invisible criminal, or “Seat of Oblivion” (1941) with the police trying to find a criminal who can possess other people. One of his last books, With a Strange Device (1964), issued in America as The Mindwarpers, was an expansion of a novella which first appeared in a detective pulp in 1956 and many critics argued it was not science fiction at all, but a Cold War thriller about the manipulation of scientists’ minds. I have no doubt Russell would have made a good crime-fiction writer had he put his mind to it. The following story, written and set in 1955, pits human ingenuity against alien ability.

Future Crimes: Mysteries and Detection Through Time and Space. British Library Publishing. Kindle Edition.

“Legwork” introduces us to Harasha Vanash, an invader from Andromeda, who can control minds for a radius of one mile. This allows him to pass as anything his victims can imagine. For all intents and purposes, Vanash is a shapeshifter. “Legwork” begins with Vanash landing his spaceship out in the middle of nowhere, sending the spaceship back up into a parking orbit, hiding the ship’s remote controller in a hollow stump, and heading out to invade Earth alone. Vanash has invaded fifty worlds and is quite confident he will quickly take over our planet. Vanash makes himself seen as a human to the people who see him, hitches a ride to a nearby city, gets a room in a boarding house, and starts studying our ways. Here’s how Russell’s prose sounds:

Once settled and observing that money is essential to our way of life, Vanash sets out to get a steady supply. The story then cuts to Edward G. Rider, a genuine human who works at the United States Treasury. Rider is a big guy, weighing two hundred and fifty pounds. He’s recently married and is quite annoyed by his boss assigning him to an out-of-town job investigating a rather strange bank robbery.

Wikipedia has a fascinating article about the long history of shapeshifting in myth and fiction. It’s a theme that comes up in science fiction often. In myth and fantasy, magic causes shapeshifting, but in science fiction, the writer must come up with a good explanation for it.

“Who Goes There?” by John W. Campbell, Jr. is a famous 1938 science fiction shapeshifting story that might have inspired Russell. I especially wonder that after reading Ashley’s introduction. Campbell asks us to believe in “Who Goes There?” that an alien organism can restructure its body instantly, and the mystery is how to detect such an organism. In “Legwork” the shapeshifting is all illusion, and the humans don’t even know there is a shapeshifter. A good portion of the story is working out how mysterious bank robberies are taking place and coming up with a theory about a shapeshifting crook.

Eric Frank Russell’s “Legwork” could have been a great 1950s film noir movie because it’s about gritty routine detective work. Orson Welles was about the right size in 1956 to play Eddie Rider if you think about his 1958 film Touch of Evil. Russell does an excellent job of producing a police procedural in “Legwork.” In fact, it’s exactly the kind of police procedurals people saw in black and white movies of the 1950s. Imagine seeing The Asphalt Jungle, Odds Against Tomorrow and The Thing from Another World mixed into a slick film noir. I would love to see it. That’s how I imagined “Legwork” when I read it.

And thinking about shapeshifting science fiction and 1950s black and white films, I’m also reminded of Invasion of the Body Snatchers from 1956. It was a metaphorical take on shapeshifting, designed to make us think about communism. “Legwork” isn’t metaphorical, it’s straight-ahead science fictional alien invasion story. What’s weird is our short story reading group just read “Counterfeit” by Alan E. Nourse, another shapeshifting themed story, but not as good as “Legwork” because Nourse’s prose showed bad pulp fiction writing habits while Russell’s did a slick writing job with “Legwork.”

Russell has a light touch in this story, it’s not humorous like his two most famous SF stories, “Allamagoosa” and “… And Then There Were None,” but “Legwork” has just enough subtle sarcasm and faintly absurd situations that we know that Russell is making fun of Vanash’s overconfidence in conquering us humans. Russell also throws in some nice touches along the way. A teen who is an amateur astronomer with a home built 8″ reflector telescope discovers Vanash’s spaceship in orbit. Me and my buddies tried to grind an 8″ inch telescope mirror and failed when I was a teenager. There are two places where dogs start yelping and run off. That lets us know dogs that see what Vanash really looks like and it must be pretty damn scary.

“Exploration Team” by Murray Leinster won the novelette Hugo in 1956. I thought it a pretty good story, but until now in our group read 67, I thought “Brightside Crossing” by Alan E. Nourse should have gotten that Hugo. Now I’m thinking “Legwork” deserved the trophy. I wonder how many times I will change my mind when we read the next twelve stories?

My friend Mike also liked “Legwork” and sent me these comments:

“Legwork” is an interesting humans vs. aliens story, a well-worn science fiction trope that is skillfully manipulated by Eric Frank Russell.


Russell immediately introduces us to Harasha Vanash, an Andromedan thought-form whose “…natural power had been tested on fifty hostile worlds and found invincible.” Vanash is a menace to Earth when “…he’d discovered an especially juicy plum, a world deserving of eventual confiscation by the Andromedon horde.”


Russell’s genius is that he sets the stage for the impending confrontation by contrasting the Andromedon and human problem solving abilities.


The Andromedons depend upon “…flashes of inspiration that come spontaneously, of their own accord. They cannot be created to order no matter how great the need.”


Humans depend on hard work: “Variously it was called making the grade, slogging along, doing it the hard way, or just plain lousy legwork. Whoever heard of such a thing?”


As the story progresses, the humans work tirelessly to solve the problem of the mysterious bank robberies perpetrated by Vanash. Eddie Rider, a special investigator with the feel of a Sydney Greenstreet character, leads the investigation with aplomb.


The humans ultimately triumph and the alien is vanquished. Mankind is preserved. An entertaining and worthwhile story.

James Wallace Harris, 12/18/23