This morning, I read an email from a discussion group that mentioned Fitz-James O’Brien (1826-1862). You can sample his fiction at Project Gutenberg.
One member posted a link to a review of a new three-volume collection of his stories at The New York Review of Books. The review implied that O’Brien is little known, but several folks in the group quickly claimed they knew who he was. But that’s logical, our group is devoted to fiction in old magazines. I’ve even read some of O’Brien’s stories because they show up in science fiction anthologies, and I collect those. (See my post on 19th Century Science Fiction Short Stories.)
But this got me to thinking. How many people would know who Fitz-James O’Brien and read any of his stories? Then I asked myself, how many people read short stories? And of those, how many read old short stories? It’s one thing to read the short story in the latest issue of The New Yorker, and it’s another thing to read short stories originally published in the 19th century. Yes, some people still read Edgar Allan Poe, but how many outside of school?
I’ve always been a fan of science fiction magazines. When I was young, some of the top titles had over 100,000 subscribers. Over my lifetime, I’ve watched their subscriber base dwindle to well below 10,000.
It appears the three-volume Collective Speculative Works by Fitz-James O’Brien will be limited to 300 copies. Does that mean the publisher thinks fewer than 300 people in the world are interested in reading O’Brien’s stories? Or that some kind of marketable ploy? I don’t know. 300 is 0.0000036% of the world’s population. That’s one tiny subculture!
Almost half of the respondents haven’t read any books in over a year: 48.5%
Print books were the most read books: 35.4%
The 65+ age group recorded the highest population of print book readers: 45.1%
The 45-54 age group contains the highest population of non-readers: 60.9%
Males recorded a slightly higher population of non-readers compared to females: 51.4%
The article reported that the Pew Research Center found that 64% of Americans read at least one book in the previous year. That’s a lot more than I expected, and it disagrees with their own poll.
This suggests there are many kinds of readers, and that made me speculate about possible names to give different types of readers. I’m not very good at creating fun labels, but here’s my lame attempt.
Non-readers (0 books per year)
Casual readers (1-11 books per year)
Steady readers (read a book a month)
Bookworms (read a book a week)
Super Bookworms (read two or more books a week)
This doesn’t say anything about the kinds of books they read. Someone who reads over a hundred books a year might never encounter the name Fitz-James O’Brien. In one of my older essays, I speculated that the average reader could not list more than one hundred titles from novels from the 19th century. And I listed the hundred I thought would be the most common. I doubt most people would come even close to recalling one hundred titles from the 19th century.
Outside of people I know in my discussion groups that specialize in old fiction, I doubt I have ever met anyone in my life who has read a story by Fitz-James O’Brien.
What possible name could we give to people who do? Bookworm is the tag that most people give to obsessive readers. But for every 1,000 bookworms, is there even one who reads old short stories from the 19th century? I know a fair number of people like me who love science fiction short stories from the 20th century, and I also know a smaller group who love short stories published in pulp magazines (mainly from 1900 to 1950). But how many people are we talking about? I asked CoPilot, and it estimates that the number is below 20,000 for people who read and collect old pulp fiction. That’s .0059% of the current U.S. population.
Would the word aficionado apply here? Here are some other words that CoPilot helped me find. Maybe we could use each for a different type of reader.
Aficionado
Enthusiast
Devotee
Connoisseur
Curator
Archivist
Bibliophile
Esotericist
Antiquarian
Obscurist
Archaeologist
We could use all these words to describe someone who would buy Collective Speculative Works by Fitz-James O’Brien.
At one time, I would have ordered this set. However, I’ve now reached an age where I’m trying to get rid of books rather than collect. But that set does call to me. Actually, what I would really like is digital scans of the periodicals where his stories were first published. I’ve collected scans of most science fiction magazines from the 20th century, but have next to nothing from the 19th century on my hard drive.
How many people are like me who love reading old magazines?
I’m sure it’s less than .006% of the population. What nickname would you give to such people? My wife would probably say, “A nut.”
I’ve had this fantasy for the last few years, since the beginning of the AI boom, of creating a Philip K. Dick chatbot. I envision finding a local LLM with a huge upload capacity. Currently, Claude allows for up to 30 megabytes in a maximum of 20 files. That’s not nearly enough for my fantasy.
According to Wikipedia, Dick wrote 45 novels and 121 short stories. I’d want to include all of those, plus all the letters I could find. I currently have a five-volume set of his letters, but unpublished letters might be available. I’d also include all the biographies on PKD, as well as every interview I could find. Then I would track down every review and critical work. Also, add every photo I could find of him and those of anyone he knew. I’d also want to include books that we know PKD read or studied. And the memoirs of his wives or the people who knew Dick. Finally, I’d include any Wikipedia entry on topics Phil liked to discuss. That could easily end up being over a thousand files, and who knows how much disc space they would take up.
Here’s the thing. I run into a roadblock with my fantasy. When I begin to fantasize about chatting with this artificial Phil, I have doubts about the project. I know AI Phil can not be trusted to say the same things that human Phil would have said. But theoretically, this AI chatbot should be an expert on PKD.
I think I would need to rename this AI. I’d call it Jack Isidore. That’s the protagonist of my favorite PKD novel, Confessions of a Crap Artist. Phil created Jack, so I would use Jack to recreate Phil, to be the ultimate scholar on PKD.
To test Jack’s ability, I would give the AI this prompt:
Write a 200,000-word biography of Philip K. Dick. Tell his story day by day as much as possible working in as much verifiable details as possible. Where you don’t have good validation of source material, but there is good reason to speculate, give us the most reasonable assumption and state why. Describe the writing of each of his work and why he wrote them. Relate any of PKD’s life experiences that inspired his fiction. Do not hallucinate.
I’ve read several biographies on PKD, and a handful of memoirs by wives and friends. I’m curious if I will be able to properly judge Jack’s biography of PKD. Would it be more insightful than any biography written by a human? Would we learn anything about Phil that we didn’t know, but feel might be an undiscovered truth about him?
Mostly, I’ve wanted a PKD chatbot to discuss Phil’s stories. Dick’s books are like comfort food for me. I read them when I’m tired of dealing with reality. They are wildly creative, and I often wonder what PKD is implying in his stories. Was he just making shit up, or were creations commentary on experiences in his life? Was he being silly or serious?
Philip K. Dick was a guy I wish I had known. Talking with him would be fascinating. There’s always a chance that an AI chatbot would be a decent substitute. It would be fun to try.
It would also be fun to say, “Jack, tell me a new PKD story.”
Can science fiction writers imagine a pleasant future for us? Becky Chambers creates a kindly society in her Monk and Robot duology that is very appealing. Unfortunately, at least for me, the story is set on an imaginary moon called Panga. I would have preferred to contemplate whether such a future is possible for us, here on Earth.
I discovered A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers while searching Google for the best science fiction books of the last decade. I had just finished the literary science fiction novel Anniebot by Sierra Greer and wanted a recent genre science fiction novel to follow up. I’ve been wanting to catch up on what’s been happening in science fiction over the last decade. My science fiction reading tends to focus on 20th-century SF, and I wanted to read 21st-century SF instead.
A Psalm for the Wild-Built was a fortunate choice because it tuned me onto an emerging wavelength of science fiction I hadn’t explored. It is both a hopepunk and a solarpunk novel. Essentially, these movements are about positive futures, especially ones based on sustainable ecological economics.
I decided to buy the audiobook of A Psalm for the Wild-Built when I read that it was about a time long after robots had become sentient and chose to leave civilization and live in the wilds of nature. That was an intriguing premise. I had tried to read Becky Chambers’ most famous novel, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, but had given up because it was too bland for me. All the characters were too nice. Reading it made me wonder if fiction needed some asshole characters to be exciting. That made me hesitant to try A Psalm for the Wild-Built.
It turns out everyone is also nice in the Monk and Robot books, too. However, this time I didn’t miss a good antagonist. The story is very gentle, almost childlike. Modern YA novels are full of dark edginess, so these books don’t even feel YA. However, there is language that’s not suitable for young children
The book’s dedication is to “For anybody who could use a break.” Even though Chambers describes a gentle, pleasant, kind, liberal utopia, Sibling Dex is a dissatisfied young man. This novel is really about asking: “What do I want to do?” My guess is that Chambers is appealing to young people who are uncertain about our future.
The book opens with a quote from Brother Gil’s From the Brink: A Spiritual Retrospect on the Factory Age and Earth Transition Era.
I liked this opening a lot. Not only has Chambers imagined a sustainable society, but made it polytheistic. Panga feels Buddhist and tribal.
The story tells us about a restless young man, Dex, who chooses to become a Tea Monk. This is a person who travels from town to town serving tea and listening to people share their worries. This allows the readers to learn about Panga and its different human societies. Eventually, Dex goes into the wild territories of the robots and meets Mosscap. Mosscap is on its own mission to explore, deciding it needs to learn about humans.
Robots have become nature lovers. Humans and robots have spent two hundred years apart, and now they are a mystery to each other. Chambers uses the conversations between Dex and Mosscap as philosophical jumping-off points. These two novellas, which are really one story, are gently philosophical in intent. It never gets too deep or academic.
Dex struggles to find his purpose, and Mosscap becomes his guru. And Dex becomes Mosscap’s tour guide, teaching him about humans and our society. It’s a nice setup. These two books are a pleasant read. The vibe of this story reminded me of the film The Wild Robot. In other ways, the story reminded me of the Oz books by L. Frank Baum.
However, I think I need to give a trigger warning to Republican readers. Dex is a non-binary person Chambers refers to with they/them pronouns. If you have hangups about DEI issues, this book might not be for you.
Yesterday, I discovered a video featuring Becky Chambers and Annalee Newitz entitled Resisting Dystopia. I understand their intent, but I dislike it when all unpleasant societies in fiction are called dystopian. To me, dystopias are failed utopias.
The Handmaid’s Tale is an excellent example of a dystopian novel. The leaders of the Republic of Gilead work to build their vision of perfection, but to many living in Gilead, it is a dystopia. America in the 21st century and its future could be seen as a dystopia by the broad definition that Chambers and Newitz use. Any fictional description of Earth, under a collapsing ecosystem, could be considered a dystopia by the broad definition of the term. However, I prefer to define the term more narrowly. If the Christian Right made America into a theocracy, it would become a dystopia. It’s only when one group of people intentionally shapes a society to fit an ideal that we get a dystopia. That’s how I see resisting utopia.
Panga is not a utopia. I don’t see science fiction about positive futures as anti-dystopian. Nor do I see stories about dark futures as dystopian. The world pictured in Blade Runner is not dystopian. It’s just complex and Darwinian, like life on Earth in the 21st century.
I think it’s great that young science fiction writers like Chambers and Newitz want to imagine positive futures. However, any robust society capable of long-term survival will have countless conflicts and stresses. If you’ve read Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, you should be familiar with the concept of antifragility. Evolution needs grist for its mill.
The Robot and Monk books are nice, pleasant reads. Subgenres of science fiction, such as hopepunk and solarpunk, are appealing, but ultimately not realistic. Science fiction has always tended to be escapistic. I hope resisting dystopia isn’t just hiding out.
The science fiction novels I loved reading sixty years ago promised a positive future exploring space, but that’s not the future I find myself living in now. It was novels like Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner that better prepared me for these times.
If you want to resist dystopia, whether just a bleak future or a failed utopia, getting comfortable will undermine your goal.
Humans have created artificial realities long before computers. I define artificial realities as cognitive models that claim to describe reality that have no basis in reality. In crude terms, it’s shit we make up, believe to be true, act like it’s real, but isn’t. I like Philip K. Dick’s definition of reality: “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”
Science fiction has created a number of artificial realities we hope will become real. One desire is for a galactic civilization, or galactic empire. Often with artificial realities we try to make them real. For centuries traveling to the Moon was an artificial reality. Then it became real on July 20, 1969.
When I read “Foundation” by Isaac Asimov I wondered if he was ground zero for the idea of a galactic empire? I knew there was earlier science fiction stories that imagined the galaxy occupied by other intelligent beings. And there were stories about humans exploring the galaxy, and even having wars with other intelligent beings. But had any writer imagined humans colonizing the entire galaxy?
Today, that idea firmly exists as an artificial reality in our culture. Many people assume in the future humanity will spread across the Milky Way. It’s a kind of faith. We see it especially in Star Trek and Star Wars, but also in books like the Culture series by Iain Banks.
Like any artificial reality, I assume one person got the ball rolling. Was that Isaac Asimov? Like all the famous explorers looking for the source of the Nile, I wonder if I can find the source of galactic civilizations or galactic empires.
The oldest surviving artificial realities are myths and religions. Artificial realities start in one mind as ideas, and are spread as memes. Each person who spreads the memes mutates the artificial reality slightly. That’s why there were many forms of Christianity in the first century, and why they are so different from all the forms of Christianity in the twenty-first century. Reading books about the origins of Christianity or how the Old Testament came into being is a black hole of fascinating research.
In 2015 and 2025, I tried to reread The Foundation Trilogy. I’m embarrassed to admit this, but I just hated that much-loved science fiction classic. In both attempts, I couldn’t get past the first book. All I could focus on were its flaws.
That bothered me. Was I being unfair to the book? What was I missing that so many readers found in this story? When Paul Fraser came up with a great idea for a group read at the Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Short Fiction Facebook group, I decided to give the trilogy one more chance.
Paul suggests we read The Foundation Trilogy as it was originally published in Astounding Science-Fiction back in the 1940s. That gave me an idea. I would read the stories in the order they were published. I would seek to enjoy them as the fans originally did, as they were published one by one in Astounding Science-Fiction. Furthermore, I would try my damndest to get what Asimov was doing.
Wikipedia nicely lays out the publication history of the Foundation Trilogy in this table:
Collections
Astounding Science Fiction
Published
Book title
Story retitle
Original title
Published
Original trilogy
1951
Foundation
“The Psychohistorians”
—
“The Encyclopedists”
“Foundation”
May 1942
“The Mayors”
“Bridle and Saddle”
June 1942
“The Merchant Princes”
“The Big and the Little”
August 1944
“The Traders”
“The Wedge”
October 1944
1952
Foundation and Empire
“The General”
“Dead Hand”
April 1945
“The Mule”
“The Mule”
November 1945 December 1945
1953
Second Foundation
“Part I: Search by the Mule”
“Now You See It…”
January 1948
“Part II: Search by the Foundation”
“…And Now You Don’t”
November 1949 December 1949 January 1950
In the 1960s, I read The Foundation Trilogy when I bought the one-volume edition from the Science Fiction Book Club. At the time, I was unaware that many of the classic science fiction stories I was reading in book form were first published in magazines. Nor did I know about the concept of the fix-up novel. I didn’t question what I read. I just consumed it. (I recently wrote about this in “Reading at 13 vs. 73.”)
I can remember how thrilled I was by the first story, “The Psychohistorians,” which was set on the planet Trantor. And I liked all the pseudo-encyclopedia intros. The other stories didn’t stick with me. I remember the trilogy as an epic idea and visualized Trantor and Terminus existing in a galaxy with humans living on twenty-five million worlds.
In 2015, I reread Foundation, the first book in the trilogy. By then, I knew all about pulp magazines and fix-up novels. Foundation was obviously five separate, standalone stories. The first story was again impressive, the second was still interesting, but the rest were tedious. I was shocked that this famous book was so annoying to read. I gave it one star on Goodreads. I didn’t go on to reread the other two books.
Over the years, I’ve talked to so many science fiction fans who loved The Foundation Trilogy. It was the first series to be given a special Hugo Award. Recently, I watched a YouTube video about the Top 20 SF Series, and The Foundation series came in fourth. (Really, it was second after Dune. #1 were Star Wars books, and #2 were Star Trek books, and I don’t consider them a proper SF series. The host said that 20 million copies of The Foundation series have been sold.
So, why don’t I like it? And why did so many people love it? Was it because it first instilled the artificial reality of galactic civilization into their minds? This made me wonder if I could put myself in their shoes as they read the Foundation stories.
To get into the character of a 1940s science fiction fan, I intentionally skipped the first story in the book. I began my reading with “Foundation” from the May 1942 issue of Astounding Science-Fiction. I wanted to feel like I was living back in 1942, encountering the series for the first time. To see if Asimov rewrote the story for the hardback, I read the magazine with my eyes, but listened to the story with an audiobook edition.
In creative writing classes, we’re urged to start our stories in the middle of the action to avoid boring the reader with introductory material. This is exactly what Isaac Asimov did. However, when Asimov published Foundation as a book, he wrote an introductory story, “The Psychohistorians.” Out of the nine short stories, novelettes, and novellas in the Foundation Trilogy, “The Psychohistorians” was my favorite.
Asimov opened “Foundation” with this introduction on the first page. This is how we learn about Hari Seldon and his plan. This is how the series began in 1942, in just thirteen short paragraphs. We never see Trantor or meet Gaal Dornick. Our first real character is Salvor Hardin. In the book form, “The Psychohistorians” replaced this intro.
Most readers assume Asimov had just become a better writer by the time he wrote “The Psychohistorians” for the hardback. I’m not so sure. I feel I loved “The Psychohistorians” so much more because the Empire was more interesting than Terminus. Trantor is far more fascinating than any other setting in the trilogy. Asimov has claimed that the series was inspired by his discussions with John W. Campbell, Jr., and reading The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon. But be honest, don’t most people love reading about Rome in its glory days?
As a young reader in the 1960s, I remember being blown away by the idea of a galactic civilization. But the stories of its fall didn’t make a lasting impression on me. I’m not sure, but I believe I read The Foundation Trilogy before seeing Star Trek in 1966. It might have been my first introduction to the idea of a galactic civilization. Was it to readers back in the 1940s?
To get into the spirit that I wanted to achieve, I need to forget all of this. I need to put myself back in 1942. I’d be reading the May issue of ASF just five months after the U.S. declared war on Germany and Japan. Let’s imagine I’m in the golden age of science fiction, and I’m 12 years old. How would “Foundation” WOW! me?
If you read Hari Seldon’s speech above, we don’t get what the empire is like. We only learn that it’s collapsing. The only empire I might have known about at that age in 1942 was the British Empire, due to watching Gunga Din. I doubt I would know anything about Rome.
I guess that I, and other readers, would have gotten a strong sense of wonder rush thinking about the galaxy being populated by humans. But was that a new idea? Is there any way to find out? I thought I’d poke around and see.
With this issue, Isaac Asimov launched his monumental “Foundation” series with the appearance of the initial novelette of the series, “Foundation.” After tens of thousands of years the Galactic Empire had spread to millions of worlds throughout the galaxy, its power all but absolute, its influence all pervading. The Empire, however, was on the brink of collapse and, with the impending collapse, the universe could be expected to be plunged into at least thirty thousand years of anarchism and barbarism. Hari Seldon, through the application of psychohistory which enables him to predict the future course of history by the interpretation of statistical laws as derived from the inconceivable mass of humanity, foresees this imminent fate of civilization and takes measures to insure the survival of civilization and knowledge through the long dark ages ahead and, if possible, shorten the period of barbarism. He does this by establishing two Foundations at opposite ends of the galaxy: the First Foundation of the Encyclopedists at Terminus, a small system on the edge of the galaxy, the Second Foundation — hidden even from the First — at “Star’s End,” at the “other end of the galaxy.” “Foundation” introduced the basic elements of the plot of the series and recounted the successful resolution of the first of the critical crises predicted by Seldon which the Foundation must surmount in order to carry on the Seldon Plan.
Rogers’ book remembered Astounding issue-by-issue. I had hoped his entry for “Foundation” would have given me his initial reaction, but I feel this quote is heavily influenced by reading the trilogy.
Next, I found the July issue to see how “Foundation” did in The Analytical Laboratory feature, where readers vote for their favorite stories. Evidently, “Foundation” didn’t make much of an impression, since it came in a distant fourth. Nor did it get mentioned in a letter to the Brass Tacks second.
I thought about looking through fanzines at Fanac.org, but I fear what I want might be looking for a needle in a haystack.
My next stop was The World Beyond the Hill by Alexei and Cory Panshin, my favorite book about Astounding during the Golden Age of Science Fiction. It can be checked out from the Archive.org, or ordered from Amazon for the Kindle for $9.99.
“Chapter 17 – An Empire of Mind” covers how Asimov developed the Foundation series on pages 520-566. If I had read this chapter before rereading “Foundation,” I would have approached the story with far more enthusiasm. Alexei and Cory Panshin describe Asimov’s inspiration and writing process for starting the series. I have read The World Beyond the Hill twice, but I didn’t remember any of this. I especially didn’t remember how Asimov was influenced by “After World’s End,” a short novel by Jack Williamson, which he read in the February 1939 issue of Marvel Science Stories. It also influenced Asimov’s take on robots.
The Panshins got most of details about Asimov working with John W. Campbell from Aismov’s biography, In Memory Yet Green. That book can be checked out from Archive.org.
The Panshins cited “After World’s End” and others as proto-stars that would evolve into galactic empire science fiction.
I wish I could reprint the 46 pages from this book because it describes in great detail how Asimov got the idea for a galactic empire. The Panshins showed that Asimov had already started on the idea in earlier stories.
Panshins have this to say, despite the fact that we know E. E. “Doc” Smith, Edmond Hamilton, and John W. Campbell had been publishing stories about humans speeding around the galaxy since the 1920s.
I would love to copy more of the Panshin’s book, but I don’t know if that’s proper. I highly recommend The World Beyond the Hill to anyone interested in learning about the evolution of science fiction in the 1940s.
I haven’t read Gibbon’s six-volume history, but reading the Wikipedia entry, it’s considered lacking in accuracy, and scholars disagree with his thesis that Christianity is to blame for Rome’s decline. The Panshins explores how Asimov’s used religion in the series. They felt Asimov saw it as a positive tool, while Heinlein saw it as a manipulative tool in his stories at the time.
The Panshins go into great detail Asimov’s collaboration with Campbell and how the first two Foundation stories were written, edited and published. Both were finished and sold to Campbell before December 1945. The Panshins then go on to deeply analyze “Foundation” and “Bridle and Saddle.”
I admire this chapter immensely. This is the kind of writing about science fiction history that I’ve always fantasized of achieving myself. I can’t come close. This chapter does give one excellent account of the origins of the idea of galactic empire. However, is it correct? Is it the only one. Many explorers thought they found the source of the Nile only to be proved wrong.
While reading the five stories that make up Foundation, I didn’t find much serious speculation about how a galactic empire would collapse. All of Asimov’s speculations seem rather superficial to me. It’s such a wonderful idea that I’m always disappointed when the individual stories in the first volume don’t live up to the grand vision.
If I studied the series and analyzed it as deeply as the Panshins, I probably would see far more than I have. I know I’m not being fair to the series. I fear my dislike of Asimov’s prose keeps me from enjoying his ideas. The Panshins found many layers of ideas to explore that I missed. I’m sure a scholarly work the size of the trilogy could be written on the Foundation series.
I believe America is beginning its decline. Predicting the future is impossible. We can’t even foretell one year, much less a thousand. But let’s say you’re a science fiction writer and want to set a story one hundred years in our future. How would you set up your story to convey a big picture of how the United States will change? Having a series of short stories is one possible solution.
Each time I read Foundation, I’ve been disappointed that it has no continuing characters. Let me provide an example to make a point. My wife loves TV shows, but I also want to watch movies. Switching between the two formats, I must admit that TV shows, with continuing characters, are far more addictive than movies. Not having characters that last the entire book hurts Foundation. That’s why the miniseries changed the story so drastically.
In 1968, John Brunner published Stand on Zanzibar, envisioning the world of 2010. This was far less ambitious than Asimov. The Foundation series attempts to portray a thousand years of a galactic empire featuring twenty-five million inhabited worlds. I never felt the immensity of such a setting while reading Asimov’s classic. However, Brunner’s technique of combining a novel with continuing characters, interspersed with short stories about people around the world, with samples from newspapers, television shows, radio broadcasts, and journals, and the regular commentary of a shock jock, does give us a complex picture of 2010.
For me, and I mean just me, because I know this series is so beloved, Asimov promised us a trip to Mars but took us on a suborbital flight. The original trilogy never delivers what it promises.
“Foundation” – Astounding (May 1942)
“Foundation,” the story that readers first learned about the Foundation series, didn’t get the cover. Evidently, John W. Campbell, Jr. wasn’t impressed enough. Readers preferred Heinlein, van Vogt, and Bester over Asimov’s story in the July readers’ poll. Not an auspicious beginning. Yet, the series is still admired today, and is even the basis of a television miniseries. And I believe the Foundation stories must have influenced the creation of Star Wars.
For some reason many people love the idea of the galaxy populated by humans. I see that as a growing artificial reality that will continue to build. Whether we make it reality is a whole other issue. I tend to doubt it. I think a future reality with humanity spread across the galaxy is no more real than the past artificial realities of the history of religions.
Note:
Normally, I try to keep my blog posts to 500-1,000 words. Even that is uncommonly long for most blog posts. That’s because internet readers don’t like to spend a lot of time reading any one piece. The internet is a browsing medium.
This piece kept going and going. I finally just had to quit. I feel I could write an entire book just on searching for the origins of specific science fiction concepts. I could have also written a whole book just on the Foundation Trilogy.
I’m old and I have trouble focusing my mind. I also lack the energy to keep working at any one task for long. I’d love to be able to write a book like The World Beyond the Hill but that is impossible at 73. More than likely, I never had the brain power to write such a book at any age. I need to learn how to convey a major insight in a few words.
In the 1960s, we often thought about what life would be like in the 21st century. We’d speculated about fantastic inventions. One that frequently came up was having the Library of Congress in a device we could hold in our hands. In a way, a smartphone is that device. However, we didn’t anticipate networking. We just imagined all the works in the Library of Congress copied onto a small device.
We’re close to having that invention now. It’s not like how we imagined. We don’t think about the future as much today as we did back in the 1960s. Change is happening so fast that every day seems like the future. However, can we speculate what a fantastic invention we might have in another sixty years?
I did something fun the other day, something even science fictional. I put all my scanned science fiction magazines and books on a teeny-tiny 1 TB microSD card and loaded it into my old Amazon Fire 10 HD tablet. That tiny library contains 7,266 magazines and fanzines, as well as 3,570 fiction and nonfiction books. I’ve assembled this collection from the internet. Many items can be found on the Internet Archive or the Luminist Archives. Although some come from DVD-R disc collections I bought on eBay.
The Internet is a gigantically large library itself, but not one that’s always easy to use. When I was young, I worked in libraries. I always loved special collections. Special collections can contain material of any type, but they often house personal libraries donated by famous people. These donated libraries frequently focus on a single subject or type of work that’s been collected over a lifetime. I have a lifetime love for science fiction and science fiction magazines.
My microSD card is a special collection on a tiny chip that, back in the 1960s, we would have considered a marvel of the future. They are not so special today. I keep several in an old orange plastic pill bottle.
For fifteen years, I’ve collected digital copies of books and magazines on Dropbox. I had almost filled my two terabytes of cloud storage when I decided to buy a NAS. NAS stands for network-attached storage. I purchased a Ugreen DXP2800 and two Seagate 12 TB drives, which I mirrored. Now my digital library can expand to six times its previous size.
There is a major problem with leaving the cloud. If something bad happened to my DXP2800, such as the house burning down, my library and years of work would disappear. I have copies on external drives, but I need to find a way to keep regular copies off-site. My first thought was to take an external drive to a friend’s house, but then I remembered the microSD card.
Years ago, I bought a 128 GB card (pictured above) to test with my Amazon Fire 10 HD. That didn’t work out well because the card was too small, and larger capacity cards were too expensive.
Up till now, I have read my digital library with an iPad Mini, accessing my files from Dropbox. It didn’t matter that my old iPad only had 64 GB of storage. Each time I downloaded a magazine, it took about 30 seconds.
When I first considered backing up to a microSD, I checked current prices, and a 1 TB card was $67. That’s when I got the idea to see if I could copy my science fiction library onto a single 1 TB microSD. Copying just science fiction-related magazines, fanzines, and books, I used up just 650 GB.
I loaded that microSD into my Amazon Fire HD 10 and ran CDisplayEX. It saw the files. It even displayed them beautifully. And it was fast. Pulp magazines loaded instantly. Here’s the directory page for Astounding Science-Fiction 1942.
I realized I held in my hands what I had dreamed about sixty years ago. I had the ultimate pulp magazine reading machine. The tablet also allowed me access to thousands of Kindle books and Audible audiobooks. It wasn’t The Library of Congress in my hands, but it was amazing. I could kick back in my La-Z-Boy and browse through decades of magazines. That’s quite cool.
This got me thinking. How can I best use this resource? How can I integrate it into my work routines? Normally, as I create posts for this blog, I read and think in my La-Z-Boy, but I get up and write at my computer.
Being the lazy person that I am, I’ve long wanted to write anywhere and at any time. I spend a lot of time with my eyes closed, thinking. I compose essays in my head, but they are vaguely formed. After a point, the pressure of keeping all those ideas in my head gets too great, and I have to jump up and start writing.
I’ve always wanted to read, think, and write simultaneously. I’m now wondering if I can combine my new reading machine with a note-taking app and a word processor? Combining CDisplayEX with Obsidian and Jetpack goes a long way towards that idea. It occurs to me there’s more needed.
A large library isn’t useful without a card catalog. Before computers, this was called a card catalog because it was contained in drawers of index cards. However, special collections usually had their own index. Most people use Google and the Internet as their card catalog, but it is becoming more problematic every day.
I depend on two indexes to explore science fiction: Wikipedia and ISFDB.org. For example, here is the ISFDB.org page that indexes the history of the magazine Astounding/Analog. Here is the Wikipedia entry that describes the history of that magazine. And although ISFDB.org will eventually link you to the Internet Archive to read a particular issue, it would be cool if it linked to my copy of the magazine. It is possible to download copies of Wikipedia and ISFDB.org, but it’s not practical to integrate them into my tablet library of science fiction.
Certain things should stay in the cloud. Realistically, that should include the magazines and books. What we didn’t imagine back in the 1960s was a better version of The Library of Congress. Why should everyone own a NAS and build their own special collection?
The only advantage I have for messing with this tablet is speed. If my access to everything on the Internet were instant, would I need any storage at all? No, I wouldn’t. Currently, Internet speeds are fast, but not quite speedy enough. The real speed bump is how everything is organized. It’s finding what you want that’s really slow.
Here’s where AI comes in. I’ve discovered it’s quicker to ask CoPilot to find something than to ask Google. Unfortunately, when CoPilot can’t find what I want, it makes shit up.
You might be wondering by now where this essay is going. At first, I only wanted to describe the delight I found in my science fiction library on a tablet. But along the way, I began to imagine other science-fictional possibilities of taking the idea further.
Writing this essay has made me realize that what I really want to build is an annotated science fiction library. My blog is a disjointed attempt to write an annotated history of science fiction.
Here is my speculation for an awe-inspiring future device. Instead of having a Library of Congress we can hold in our hands, I’d like a handheld device that saves a copy of every artwork that inspires me, with a lifetime of my annotated thoughts about them. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Shakespeare had such a gadget? I wish my parents had left me such memory cubes.
Read The Inverted World by Christopher Priest is my first recommendation. My second recommendation is not to read anything about this novel before you read it. This well-designed novel is a science fiction mystery. It unwraps like the layers of an onion. To get the maximum joy out of reading The Inverted World, you should do all the problem-solving yourself. Don’t even read the blurbs to the book.
The Inverted World is recommended in Science Fiction: The Best 100 Novels by David Pringle, which is currently $1.99 for the Kindle edition at Amazon. I’m using Pringle’s recommendations for a buddy read with my friend Mike. The novel also won the British Science Fiction Award and was nominated for the Hugo Award. It’s currently available in print from New York Review Books Classics, a highly respected publisher of forgotten literary classics. You can purchase a Kindle or a paperback edition, but unfortunately, there is no audiobook edition.
I read The Inverted World on my iPhone, using the Kindle app with the text-to-speech feature turned on. No matter how hard I try, I read too fast. And even though the computer voice is not very good, it kept me reading slowly and deliberately. And that was very important in The Inverted World.
You know this story is different when the protagonist gives his age in miles. That’s about the only thing I will tell you about this story specifically. There are many mysteries in this novel. And I found them delicious to contemplate. If you need straightforward adventure stories, you should probably skip this one.
Priest creates a very different science-fictional reality. The story is tightly plotted. Priest obviously rewrote his draft many times to get his plot to work so well and to unfold so smoothly.
The Inverted World sometimes feels metaphoric or symbolic, and it is. But it’s also a unique kind of hard science fiction. The NYRB Classic edition includes an afterward by John Clute that explains the social and political climate of England in 1974 when the book was first published. That might make you think the book is about that. But the novel fits so perfectly with 2025 that you’ll realize it’s not really. It’s more universal.
The Inverted World is a philosophical novel. To get the most out of it, you need to think about this story, and if you can, you need to talk about this story with a friend. Mike and I had quite a conversation. Our society is undergoing paradigm shifts that disappoint and depress me. I’m amazed by this novel, which came out fifty-one years ago, speaks so directly to today.
I’m surprised this novel isn’t more famous among science fiction fans. This is the reason I’m reading my way through Pringle’s book. So far, he’s gotten me to read two outstanding forgotten classics that I haven’t read before. You can see his list of recommended novels on Wikipedia. (I recommend buying Pringle’s book. It’s only $1.99.) Before I started my project to read all the books recommended in Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels 1949-1984, I had read 62 of the 100. I already knew it was a solid list of great science fiction books. Reading The Inheritors by William Golden and The Inverted World by Christopher Priest suggested I still had 38 great SF novels to blow my mind.
I reread “The Cloud Sculptors of Coral-D” by J.G. Ballard because my short story reading group is reading The Best Fantasy from The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Inclusion in this volume suggests its fantasy. However, it was also included in The Great Science Fiction Series edited by Martin H. Greenberg, Joseph Olander, and Frederik Pohl. The story contains no magic, no dragons or elves, and it’s set in our present day, but in a fictional resort called Vermillion Sands.
Vermillion Sands feels like a decadent playground for the rich, which also features the many kinds of parasites that live off the wealthy. It’s also an artist and expat colony. We don’t know its location, but it feels like Palm Springs, California. Many worldly travelers come and go there.
“The Cloud Sculptors of Coral-D” was my first introduction to J. G. Ballard back in the 1960s. Other stories from that setting make up the series, collected into Vermillion Sands.
“Prima Belladonna” (Science Fantasy, December 1956)
“Venus Smiles” (Science Fantasy, June 1957)
“Studio 5, the Stars” (Science Fantasy, February 1961)
“The Thousand Dreams of Stellavista” (Amazing Stories, March 1962)
“The Singing Statues” (Fantastic Stories, July 1962) (not in original collection)
“The Screen Game” (Fantastic Stories, October 1963)
“Cry Hope, Cry Fury!” (F&SF, October 1967)
“The Cloud-Sculptors of Coral D” (F&SF, December 1967)
“Say Goodbye to the Wind” (Fantastic, August 1970)
Wikipedia provides an excellent overview of the stories, highlighting that each dealt with a different artistic medium being affected by technology.
When I first read “The Cloud Sculptors of Coral-D” as a teen, it felt very grown-up to me. The characters were the kinds of people I met growing up in Miami, not the typical heroes of science fiction stories I spent so much time reading. It never occurred to me to think of the story as fantasy, but it didn’t seem like science fiction either. At the time, I was just discovering British science fiction writers like Brian Aldiss and John Brunner and the New Wave SF. The stories were set in the present or near future and took place on Earth. No rockets or robots. Was this actual science fiction?
“The Cloud Sculptors of Coral-D” is about a band of glider pilots who shape clouds with silver iodide. At first, their audience and patrons are people who park their cars along the lagoon road to watch. Eventually, the Garbo-like Leonora Chanel hires them to perform for her party. Sculpting clouds is a neat idea, but far from realistic. Does that make the story science fiction? Ballard does throw in a creature called sand rays, which I suppose are like manta rays that live under the sand instead of the sea. Do they make the story a fantasy?
Science fiction has often been the dumping ground for any kind of weird story that can’t be classified. The Vermillion Sands stories would have been rejected by mainstream and literary magazines. They fit nicely in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. They were also published in the British magazine Science Fantasy and the American Fantastic. Only one was published in a straight-ahead science fiction magazine, Amazing Stories. I doubt John W. Campbell would have accepted them in Astounding or Analog. Nor would he have published them in Unknown. I wonder if Rod Serling would have used “The Cloud Sculptors of Coral-D” for The Twilight Zone?
I’m not fond of traditional fantasy, and many of the stories in The Best Fantasy from The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction aren’t enjoyable for me to read. But I did enjoy “The Cloud Sculptors of Coral-D.” The story has a pleasant, surreal feel. The setting is very close to this world, but just a smidge off. I love the artist colony atmosphere, the hint of decadence, the ever-so-slight sense of unreality. The story combines barnstorming, carny folks, and the ugly rich. I visualize it as a cross between early Faulkner and Fellini.
The shortest description would be to say the story has atmosphere.
I’ve been getting back into Ray Bradbury again. I loved The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man when I was young, but then I forgot about Ray Bradbury for a long time. I came late to Fahrenheit 451, and I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I loved the Truffaut film more than the book. In 2015, I reread The Martian Chronicles. I was dazzled. Yet again, I quickly moved on. Bradbury has a sweet quality that I can’t overindulge.
However, over the last five years, I’ve been gorging on science fiction short stories, and I’ve been surprised by how often his stories show up in anthologies. Then, a few weeks ago, I read The Bradbury Chronicles, a biography of Ray Bradbury by Sam Weller. Bradbury’s life was riveting, inspiring me to read more of his work. According to the Library of Congress, Bradbury published over 600 short stories. According to the Weller biography, by the late 1940s, Bradbury was writing and publishing a short story a week.
Piet Nel sent me a spreadsheet with 375 stories from all of Bradbury’s major collection. Piet also said, “Ray Bradbury: The Life of Fiction, by Eller & Touponce (2004), has a comprehensive story list, compiled with academic rigor, up to 2002. It runs to about 400 stories.” So, it’s hard to reconcile the 600 number from the Library of Congress. Piet also sent me the link to Phil Nichols’ site and his Short Story Finder.
Piet also emailed me this comment, which I will quote:
I think it's quite simple. If you read everything collected up to and including 1980, I think you've read as much Bradbury as all but serious experts need to read. The later collections get progressively weaker and the last ones are mostly leftovers. In saying all that, I am referring to the short fiction only. I've never liked the late detective novels because, for me, they seem a bit Nancy Drew-ish.
The short course is simply to read The Stories of Ray Bradbury (1980), which is more essential than Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Essential Tales.
The intermediate course is to read The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, The Golden Apples of the Sun, The October Country, Dandelion Wine (a disguised story collection), A Medicine for Melancholy, The Machineries of Joy, R Is for Rocket (without duplicates), S Is for Space (without duplicates), I Sing the Body Electric!, Long After Midnight, and The Stories of Ray Bradbury (again without duplicates, which leaves about five stories).
Piet Nel, in our short story reading group, created this graph showing the stories in The Golden Apples of the Sun and Other Stories (peach 1-32) and A Medicine for Melancholy and Other Stories (blue-gray 33-63). Those two collections reprinted many of the stories in the four previous collections (orange, blue, red, green). The numbers in the four earlier collections are the story’s position in the table of contents.
I told my friend Mike, a computer programmer, and he decided that comparing the collections of Ray Bradbury’s short stories is an interesting programming problem.
It all depends on what you want.
All of his stories – would buying all his collections do that?
The best stories – who knows how many collections.
The fewest collections with the least duplicates.
Just science fiction?
Maybe add fantasy?
Just the literary works. Mysteries.
Just in ebook, or audiobook, or in print?
Mike might make this an interactive program if enough people are interested, but for now, he’s just testing the idea by generating reports. Here’s the latest one showing 30 of 1003 combinations generated so far.
As you can see, we’re only working with a handful of his collections, and the maximum number of stories is 256.
------------------------------------------------------- Group 1
1: Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales 2: Driving Blind 3: The Golden Apples of the Sun and Other Stories 4: I Sing the Body Electric and Other Stories 5: The Illustrated Man 6: The Martian Chronicles 7: A Medicine for Melancholy and Other Stories 8: The Stories of Ray Bradbury
Total unique stories: 256 Total duplicate stories: 100 ------------------------------------------------------- Group 2
1: Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales 2: Driving Blind 3: The Golden Apples of the Sun and Other Stories 4: I Sing the Body Electric and Other Stories 5: The Illustrated Man 6: The Martian Chronicles 7: A Medicine for Melancholy and Other Stories 8: S is for Space 9: The Stories of Ray Bradbury
Total unique stories: 256 Total duplicate stories: 116 ------------------------------------------------------- Group 3
1: Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales 2: Driving Blind 3: The Golden Apples of the Sun and Other Stories 4: I Sing the Body Electric and Other Stories 5: The Illustrated Man 6: The Martian Chronicles 7: A Medicine for Melancholy and Other Stories 8: R is for Rocket 9: The Stories of Ray Bradbury
Total unique stories: 256 Total duplicate stories: 117 ------------------------------------------------------- Group 4
1: Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales 2: Driving Blind 3: The Golden Apples of the Sun and Other Stories 4: I Sing the Body Electric and Other Stories 5: The Illustrated Man 6: The Martian Chronicles 7: A Medicine for Melancholy and Other Stories 8: R is for Rocket 9: S is for Space 10: The Stories of Ray Bradbury
Total unique stories: 256 Total duplicate stories: 133 ------------------------------------------------------- Group 5
1: Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales 2: Driving Blind 3: I Sing the Body Electric and Other Stories 4: The Illustrated Man 5: The Martian Chronicles 6: A Medicine for Melancholy and Other Stories 7: R is for Rocket 8: The Stories of Ray Bradbury
Total unique stories: 253 Total duplicate stories: 88
Group 4 stories that are not in Group 5: En la Noche The Murderer Sun and Shadow ------------------------------------------------------- Group 6
1: Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales 2: Driving Blind 3: I Sing the Body Electric and Other Stories 4: The Illustrated Man 5: The Martian Chronicles 6: A Medicine for Melancholy and Other Stories 7: R is for Rocket 8: S is for Space 9: The Stories of Ray Bradbury
Total unique stories: 253 Total duplicate stories: 104 ------------------------------------------------------- Group 7
1: Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales 2: Driving Blind 3: The Golden Apples of the Sun and Other Stories 4: The Illustrated Man 5: The Martian Chronicles 6: A Medicine for Melancholy and Other Stories 7: The Stories of Ray Bradbury
Total unique stories: 252 Total duplicate stories: 75
Group 6 stories that are not in Group 7: Christus Apollo Drink Entire: Against the Madness of Crowds The Lost City of Mars One Timeless Spring
Group 7 stories that are not in Group 6: En la Noche The Murderer Sun and Shadow ------------------------------------------------------- Group 8
1: Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales 2: Driving Blind 3: The Golden Apples of the Sun and Other Stories 4: The Illustrated Man 5: The Martian Chronicles 6: A Medicine for Melancholy and Other Stories 7: S is for Space 8: The Stories of Ray Bradbury
Total unique stories: 252 Total duplicate stories: 91 ------------------------------------------------------- Group 9
1: Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales 2: Driving Blind 3: The Golden Apples of the Sun and Other Stories 4: The Illustrated Man 5: The Martian Chronicles 6: A Medicine for Melancholy and Other Stories 7: R is for Rocket 8: The Stories of Ray Bradbury
Total unique stories: 252 Total duplicate stories: 92 ------------------------------------------------------- Group 10
1: Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales 2: Driving Blind 3: The Golden Apples of the Sun and Other Stories 4: The Illustrated Man 5: The Martian Chronicles 6: A Medicine for Melancholy and Other Stories 7: R is for Rocket 8: S is for Space 9: The Stories of Ray Bradbury
Total unique stories: 252 Total duplicate stories: 108 ------------------------------------------------------- Group 11
1: Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales 2: Driving Blind 3: The Golden Apples of the Sun and Other Stories 4: I Sing the Body Electric and Other Stories 5: The Martian Chronicles 6: A Medicine for Melancholy and Other Stories 7: The Stories of Ray Bradbury
Total unique stories: 251 Total duplicate stories: 85
Group 10 stories that are not in Group 11: The Concrete Mixer Epilogue (The Illustrated Man) The Highway The Other Foot Prologue: The Illustrated Man
Group 11 stories that are not in Group 10: Christus Apollo Drink Entire: Against the Madness of Crowds The Lost City of Mars One Timeless Spring ------------------------------------------------------- Group 12
1: Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales 2: Driving Blind 3: The Golden Apples of the Sun and Other Stories 4: I Sing the Body Electric and Other Stories 5: The Martian Chronicles 6: A Medicine for Melancholy and Other Stories 7: S is for Space 8: The Stories of Ray Bradbury
Total unique stories: 251 Total duplicate stories: 101 ------------------------------------------------------- Group 13
1: Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales 2: Driving Blind 3: The Golden Apples of the Sun and Other Stories 4: I Sing the Body Electric and Other Stories 5: The Martian Chronicles 6: A Medicine for Melancholy and Other Stories 7: R is for Rocket 8: The Stories of Ray Bradbury
Total unique stories: 251 Total duplicate stories: 102 ------------------------------------------------------- Group 14
1: Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales 2: Driving Blind 3: The Golden Apples of the Sun and Other Stories 4: I Sing the Body Electric and Other Stories 5: The Illustrated Man 6: The Martian Chronicles 7: R is for Rocket 8: S is for Space 9: The Stories of Ray Bradbury
Total unique stories: 251 Total duplicate stories: 107
Group 13 stories that are not in Group 14: The Headpiece In a Season of Calm Weather The Little Mice The Marriage Mender The Time of Going Away
Group 14 stories that are not in Group 13: The Concrete Mixer Epilogue (The Illustrated Man) The Highway The Other Foot Prologue: The Illustrated Man ------------------------------------------------------- Group 15
1: Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales 2: Driving Blind 3: The Golden Apples of the Sun and Other Stories 4: I Sing the Body Electric and Other Stories 5: The Martian Chronicles 6: A Medicine for Melancholy and Other Stories 7: R is for Rocket 8: S is for Space 9: The Stories of Ray Bradbury
Total unique stories: 251 Total duplicate stories: 118
Group 14 stories that are not in Group 15: The Concrete Mixer Epilogue (The Illustrated Man) The Highway The Other Foot Prologue: The Illustrated Man
Group 15 stories that are not in Group 14: The Headpiece In a Season of Calm Weather The Little Mice The Marriage Mender The Time of Going Away ------------------------------------------------------- Group 16
1: Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales 2: Driving Blind 3: I Sing the Body Electric and Other Stories 4: The Illustrated Man 5: The Martian Chronicles 6: A Medicine for Melancholy and Other Stories 7: The Stories of Ray Bradbury
Total unique stories: 250 Total duplicate stories: 74
Group 15 stories that are not in Group 16: En la Noche Here There Be Tygers The Murderer R is for Rocket Sun and Shadow The Time Machine
Group 16 stories that are not in Group 15: The Concrete Mixer Epilogue (The Illustrated Man) The Highway The Other Foot Prologue: The Illustrated Man ------------------------------------------------------- Group 17
1: Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales 2: Driving Blind 3: I Sing the Body Electric and Other Stories 4: The Illustrated Man 5: The Martian Chronicles 6: A Medicine for Melancholy and Other Stories 7: S is for Space 8: The Stories of Ray Bradbury
Total unique stories: 250 Total duplicate stories: 90 ------------------------------------------------------- Group 18
1: Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales 2: Driving Blind 3: The Golden Apples of the Sun and Other Stories 4: I Sing the Body Electric and Other Stories 5: The Illustrated Man 6: The Martian Chronicles 7: S is for Space 8: The Stories of Ray Bradbury
Total unique stories: 250 Total duplicate stories: 91
Group 17 stories that are not in Group 18: The Gift The Headpiece In a Season of Calm Weather The Little Mice The Marriage Mender The Time of Going Away
Group 18 stories that are not in Group 17: En la Noche Here There Be Tygers The Murderer R is for Rocket Sun and Shadow The Time Machine ------------------------------------------------------- Group 19
1: Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales 2: Driving Blind 3: The Illustrated Man 4: The Martian Chronicles 5: A Medicine for Melancholy and Other Stories 6: R is for Rocket 7: The Stories of Ray Bradbury
Total unique stories: 249 Total duplicate stories: 63
Group 18 stories that are not in Group 19: Christus Apollo Drink Entire: Against the Madness of Crowds En la Noche The Lost City of Mars The Murderer One Timeless Spring Sun and Shadow
Group 19 stories that are not in Group 18: The Gift The Headpiece In a Season of Calm Weather The Little Mice The Marriage Mender The Time of Going Away ------------------------------------------------------- Group 20
1: Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales 2: Driving Blind 3: The Illustrated Man 4: The Martian Chronicles 5: A Medicine for Melancholy and Other Stories 6: R is for Rocket 7: S is for Space 8: The Stories of Ray Bradbury
Total unique stories: 249 Total duplicate stories: 79 ------------------------------------------------------- Group 21
1: Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales 2: Driving Blind 3: I Sing the Body Electric and Other Stories 4: The Martian Chronicles 5: A Medicine for Melancholy and Other Stories 6: R is for Rocket 7: The Stories of Ray Bradbury
Total unique stories: 248 Total duplicate stories: 73
Group 20 stories that are not in Group 21: The Concrete Mixer Epilogue (The Illustrated Man) The Highway The Other Foot Prologue: The Illustrated Man
Group 21 stories that are not in Group 20: Christus Apollo Drink Entire: Against the Madness of Crowds The Lost City of Mars One Timeless Spring ------------------------------------------------------- Group 22
1: Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales 2: Driving Blind 3: I Sing the Body Electric and Other Stories 4: The Illustrated Man 5: The Martian Chronicles 6: R is for Rocket 7: S is for Space 8: The Stories of Ray Bradbury
Total unique stories: 248 Total duplicate stories: 78
Group 21 stories that are not in Group 22: The Headpiece In a Season of Calm Weather The Little Mice The Marriage Mender The Time of Going Away
Group 22 stories that are not in Group 21: The Concrete Mixer Epilogue (The Illustrated Man) The Highway The Other Foot Prologue: The Illustrated Man ------------------------------------------------------- Group 23
1: Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales 2: Driving Blind 3: I Sing the Body Electric and Other Stories 4: The Martian Chronicles 5: A Medicine for Melancholy and Other Stories 6: R is for Rocket 7: S is for Space 8: The Stories of Ray Bradbury
Total unique stories: 248 Total duplicate stories: 89
Group 22 stories that are not in Group 23: The Concrete Mixer Epilogue (The Illustrated Man) The Highway The Other Foot Prologue: The Illustrated Man
Group 23 stories that are not in Group 22: The Headpiece In a Season of Calm Weather The Little Mice The Marriage Mender The Time of Going Away ------------------------------------------------------- Group 24
1: Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales 2: Driving Blind 3: The Golden Apples of the Sun and Other Stories 4: I Sing the Body Electric and Other Stories 5: The Illustrated Man 6: The Martian Chronicles 7: R is for Rocket 8: The Stories of Ray Bradbury
Total unique stories: 248 Total duplicate stories: 94
Group 23 stories that are not in Group 24: Chrysalis Come Into My Cellar The Headpiece In a Season of Calm Weather The Little Mice The Marriage Mender Pillar of Fire The Time of Going Away
Group 24 stories that are not in Group 23: The Concrete Mixer En la Noche Epilogue (The Illustrated Man) The Highway The Murderer The Other Foot Prologue: The Illustrated Man Sun and Shadow ------------------------------------------------------- Group 25
1: Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales 2: Driving Blind 3: The Golden Apples of the Sun and Other Stories 4: The Martian Chronicles 5: A Medicine for Melancholy and Other Stories 6: The Stories of Ray Bradbury
Total unique stories: 247 Total duplicate stories: 60
Group 24 stories that are not in Group 25: Christus Apollo The Concrete Mixer Drink Entire: Against the Madness of Crowds Epilogue (The Illustrated Man) The Highway The Lost City of Mars One Timeless Spring The Other Foot Prologue: The Illustrated Man
Group 25 stories that are not in Group 24: Chrysalis Come Into My Cellar The Headpiece In a Season of Calm Weather The Little Mice The Marriage Mender Pillar of Fire The Time of Going Away ------------------------------------------------------- Group 26
1: Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales 2: Driving Blind 3: The Golden Apples of the Sun and Other Stories 4: The Martian Chronicles 5: A Medicine for Melancholy and Other Stories 6: S is for Space 7: The Stories of Ray Bradbury
Total unique stories: 247 Total duplicate stories: 76 ------------------------------------------------------- Group 27
1: Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales 2: Driving Blind 3: The Golden Apples of the Sun and Other Stories 4: The Martian Chronicles 5: A Medicine for Melancholy and Other Stories 6: R is for Rocket 7: The Stories of Ray Bradbury
Total unique stories: 247 Total duplicate stories: 77 ------------------------------------------------------- Group 28
1: Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales 2: Driving Blind 3: The Golden Apples of the Sun and Other Stories 4: I Sing the Body Electric and Other Stories 5: The Illustrated Man 6: The Martian Chronicles 7: The Stories of Ray Bradbury
Total unique stories: 247 Total duplicate stories: 78
Group 27 stories that are not in Group 28: Chrysalis Come Into My Cellar The Gift The Headpiece In a Season of Calm Weather The Little Mice The Marriage Mender Pillar of Fire The Time of Going Away
Group 28 stories that are not in Group 27: Christus Apollo The Concrete Mixer Drink Entire: Against the Madness of Crowds Epilogue (The Illustrated Man) The Highway The Lost City of Mars One Timeless Spring The Other Foot Prologue: The Illustrated Man ------------------------------------------------------- Group 29
1: Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales 2: Driving Blind 3: The Golden Apples of the Sun and Other Stories 4: The Illustrated Man 5: The Martian Chronicles 6: R is for Rocket 7: S is for Space 8: The Stories of Ray Bradbury
Total unique stories: 247 Total duplicate stories: 82
Group 28 stories that are not in Group 29: Christus Apollo Drink Entire: Against the Madness of Crowds The Lost City of Mars One Timeless Spring
Group 29 stories that are not in Group 28: Chrysalis Come Into My Cellar The Gift Pillar of Fire ------------------------------------------------------- Group 30
1: Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales 2: Driving Blind 3: The Golden Apples of the Sun and Other Stories 4: The Martian Chronicles 5: A Medicine for Melancholy and Other Stories 6: R is for Rocket 7: S is for Space 8: The Stories of Ray Bradbury
Total unique stories: 247 Total duplicate stories: 93
Group 29 stories that are not in Group 30: The Concrete Mixer Epilogue (The Illustrated Man) The Highway The Other Foot Prologue: The Illustrated Man
Group 30 stories that are not in Group 29: The Headpiece In a Season of Calm Weather The Little Mice The Marriage Mender The Time of Going Away -------------------------------------------------------
“The Rose” by Charles L. Harness was first published in Authentic Science Fiction Monthly (No. 31, March 1953). You can read it online here. Our Facebook group is discussing 25 stories suggested by five members that we haven’t discussed before. Paul Fraser has recommended “The Rose” in comments, but it’s never been up for a group discussion. I’ve tried to read “The Rose” twice before but got bogged down. The story is long, a novella, and it’s dense.
“The Rose” is one of the most ambitious science fiction novellas I’ve ever read. I’m glad that I finally finished it. This is exactly what I was hoping for from our member-recommended group read, a standout science fiction work I haven’t read. One good enough to merit rereading.
The story reminds me of what other writers explored in the years after 1953, works by Theodore Sturgeon, J. G. Ballard, Robert Silverberg, Jack Vance, and Roger Zelazny. “The Rose” has seldom been reprinted, but the most significant anthology to remember it is The Science Fiction Century, edited by David G. Hartwell.
“The Rose” is available as The Rose, a standalone Kindle novel for 99 cents. They say it’s 192 pages, but I can’t tell if it’s expanded from the novella. The UK edition says it’s just 88 pages, so it’s probably the same as the novella.
But for $1 more, you can get the Kindle edition of The Ornament of His Profession for $1.99, which includes “The Rose” and several other stories by Harness. I just discovered I already own that edition in my Kindle Library. Probably, I bought it when Paul recommended “The Rose” the first time.
Both have the same introduction to “The Rose:”
Because “The Rose” appeared in Authentic Science Fiction Monthly, I thought Harness was British, but his Wikipedia page says he was American. I recommend taking the time to read his entry because it made me want to read more of what Charles L. Harness wrote. His science fiction sounds fascinating, but I’ve only read a couple of his shorter works. I may, or may not have read Flight Into Yesterday/Paradox Men. I also recommend reading “The Novels of Charles Harness” by Rich Horton.
Describing “The Rose” is going to be difficult. Anna van Tuyl is a psychiatrist. She’s also a ballet dancer, composer, and choreographer. Anna was once beautiful, but now she is hunched back and has two horn-like structures growing from her forehead. The story is about Anna’s efforts to finish the score for a ballet called Nightingale and the Rose. As the introduction tells us, it’s plotted around a short story, “The Nightingale and the Rose” by Oscar Wilde. Anna is mentally blocked from composing the score’s climax.
Anna’s friend, Max Bell, a psychogeneticist, recommends Anna to Martha Jacques, wife of Ruy Jacques. Martha is a brilliant scientist working on an advanced weapon, and Ruy is an artist. Ruy has also become disfigured by a hump and horns, and recently lost the ability to read and write. Max Bell tricks Anna into meeting Ruy Jacques, where she falls in love with him. Ruy is an over-the-top, outrageous character — narcissistic, insane, and brilliant to the nth degree.
It turns out that Martha is obsessively jealous of Ruy and is hesitant to hire Anna. Throughout the story, Martha and Ruy have one never-ending argument about art versus science. This is one of the many reasons “The Rose” is so dense to read. Harness throws out all kinds of ideas and theories about art and science. Ruy believes artists have long known everything scientists eventually discover.
To complicate the story further, Ruy and Anna are emerging supermen, or examples of Homo superior. They are developing psychic powers, but these are strange powers. Harness has taken on the task of showing how advanced humans will think. Much of his speculation is psychobabble and pseudo-science, but there’s a kind of elegance to his thinking. Harness uses 1953 art theory, combined with a fair knowledge of classical music, ballet, and other arts, to contrast with scientific and mathematical ideas of the time. Reading Charles L. Harness suggests he was a cultured man, better educated than the average science fiction writer. But then, science fiction writers are often great autodidatics and bullshitters. Harness had degrees in chemistry and the law and worked as a patent attorney.
Harness also complicates his story by paralleling the plot of the novella with the plot of the fictional ballet. And Ruy and Anna work to live out their own artistic creation.
It took me a while to embrace Harness’s prose. You have to read it slowly because he intends so much with each sentence. Here’s one sample.
“The Rose” is definitely a story I look forward to rereading someday. I’d love to hear a professional narrator read it in an audiobook. “The Rose” doesn’t emotionally enchant me like “The Star Pit” by Samuel R. Delany or “A Rose for Ecclesiastes” by Roger Zelazny does. It’s about as intellectually impressive as “The Darfsteller” by Walter M. Miller, Jr., another long science fiction story about artists and performers I admire but don’t quite love.
My opinion might change with another reading of “The Rose.” Right now, it doesn’t quite make the five-star rating. I think the density of the prose keeps me from embracing the characters. I never liked Anna or Ruy, only admired them as interesting characters. This might be due to the story being too tightly plotted. Harness wanted his characters to act out a ballet they were creating, and you get the feeling that Anna and Ruy are acting for Harness, not themselves.
I’ve been rereading Ray Bradbury short stories, and I’m amazed at how well they hold up even when the science is beyond dated. Ray Bradbury is quite cruel to us readers in “All Summer in a Day.” In fact, I had to stop reading when I knew where the story was going, I just didn’t want to go there. I waited a couple of days to finish this fifteen-minute story on audio.
At first the kids in “All Summer in a Day” reminded me of Charles Schultz’s Peanuts characters, but then it was obvious they associated with bad kids from stories by Charles Beaumont or Shirley Jackson.
Remember when Lou Grant told Mary Richards she had spunk? And then Lou said, “I hate spunk.” Well, “All Summer in a Day” has a punch in the gut, and I should say “I hate a punch in the gut,” but when it comes to short stories, a punch in the gut is a good thing. Isn’t that weird. Why do we admire a great punch in the gut from a short story? Why is it so satisfying?
“All Summer in a Day” is set on Venus where it rains continuously except for a two-hour window of clear weather and sunshine every seven years. In a classroom the kids are talking about the impending summer. One girl, Margot, was born on Earth and didn’t come to Venus until she was four. She could remember sunshine and tried to describe it to her classmates who didn’t remember the sun because they were born on Venus. They were just two the previous summer day. They didn’t believe Margot. They resented that she knew something special. So, just before the sun was to come out, they locked Margot in a closet. All the other kids got to see the sun, and it was everything and more that Margot had tried to describe to them.
The children completely forgot about Margot while they cavorted through their brief summer day. When the rain and clouds returned, they remembered Margot and let her out.
This is a simple story about how children are cruel to each other. It’s about being the nail that sticks up. It’s about knowing the undescribable. Does the setting on Venus really matter? It makes the story science fiction so Ray Bradbury can sell it to a science fiction magazine, but does it really matter to the story? Charles Schultz could have done such a story about how the Peanuts gang mistreated Charlie Brown, and may have many times, I just can’t cite a specific panel.
I’m in the process of rereading my favorite science fiction stories and trying to understand why they are my favorites. Writing ability accounts for some of the reasons, but triggered emotions count for many too. I wish I could say I understood every cog in this story, but I don’t. What I do recognize is Ray Bradbury has a set of skills to tell a story in a way that makes it stand out. Not only that, but his stories also endure.
As I reread this story I didn’t remember the details, but either I guessed or remembered what was going to happen to Margot. That’s why I stopped listening to it. But when I returned to the story, I kept thinking to myself: “How is Margot going to react?” I was surprised that Bradbury didn’t give us Margot’s reaction. He left that up to us. That’s another tool in his writing toolbox. Writers don’t have to tell us everything. Bradbury does tell us this about Margot:
Because I just finished reading a biography of Ray Bradbury I know he was an odd child that stood out to his classmates. He also like to write poetry. Bradbury doesn’t have to tell us that this story is for us loners and oddballs, the ones other kids considered weird. When I was growing up, I didn’t know anyone else who read science fiction. Science fiction was like the sun appearing on Venus to me. I tried to explain its appeal to other kids, but they just thought I was a zero. I didn’t make a science fiction reading friend until the tenth grade when I met James Joseph Andrew Connell, III. The experience of meeting another science fiction fan is why Among Others by Jo Walton won the Hugo, Nebula, and British Fantasy Award. Zenna Henderson made a whole writing career out of telling stories about oddballs.
Even in the 1940s Ray Bradbury knew that being labeled a science fiction writer would hurt his career. Bradbury authored stories for all kinds of markets and genres, but when he wrote science fiction, he knew he had to be different. Back in the 1950s he might have been the best-known science fiction writer in America, but many science fiction readers didn’t consider his work science fiction. Bradbury wanted to be a writer like Sherwood Anderson, Ernest Hemingway, or Thomas Wolfe, someone who was just called a writer.
The reason “All Summer in a Day” is good is because of the parts that aren’t science fiction. The reasons why some science fiction fans dismissed him was for the science fiction parts. The obvious lesson here for would-be science fiction writers, is don’t worry about the science fictional aspects but focus on the universal human appeal.
Classics of Science Fiction 