My friend Mike told me that he and his wife Betsy were watching The Twilight Zone, one episode each evening. I told him I would do the same. We’ve been texting every morning about the previous night’s episode. Day before yesterday we watched “The Lonely,” from season one, episode seven. I think I’ve seen this episode three times over the last sixty-plus years, but this time I thought more about the story. I think texting with Mike is pushing me to analyze the story in ways that casual watching never did.
The Twilight Zone tended to set its audience up for a surprise ending, often ignoring logic, or even other possibilities for how the story might go. Rod Serling wanted us to get involve and then surprise or shock us – but do it quickly. He treated his stories like a magic trick, and I don’t think he expected us to ask too many questions.
In “The Lonely,” Corry (Jack Warden), convicted of murder, has been sentence to solitary confinement on a deserted asteroid. He is visited four times a year by a supply rocket. The captain of the supply ship, Allenby (John Dehner), has taken pity on Corry and tries to bring him something each time to occupy his mind because he knows Corry is going crazy with loneliness. This time he brings him a large box. Allenby tells Corry not to open until he leaves. It turns out its a robot that looks, acts, and talks just like a beautiful woman. (It’s Jean Marsh who will star in Upstairs, Downstairs in the 1971.)
The robot is named Alicia. At first Corry is offended by thinking his loneliness could be eliminated by the companionship of a machine. But, Alicia is hurt by his rejection, and Corry takes pity on her. They become close.
Then Captain Allenby shows up again and tells Corry he’s been giving a pardon and has twenty minutes to get ready to leave. Corry assumes he can bring Alicia, but Allenby says there’s a weight limit because of limited fuel and he only has room for Corry. Corry can’t believe Allenby could be so cruel as to leave Allicia. To quickly convince Corry he is serious, Allenby shoots Alicia in the face, revealing all her mechanical parts.
This makes “The Lonely” a cold equations story. “The Cold Equations” by Tom Godwin was a controversial story from 1954. It set up a problem where the only solution was killing a teenage girl. A lot of readers hated “The Cold Equations” and over the decades they have protested that the author should have found a way to save her. They completely missed the point of the story. Godwin set up the story so the girl had to die. And that’s what Serling did in “The Lonely.”
Not only that, but they solved the plot quickly by having Captain Alleby shoot Alicia. I accept all that. That’s the point of the story. But here is where in 2024 I took a different path thinking about the story.
Why didn’t people talk about Corry falling in love with Alicia? In 1959, I wonder if the audience assumed Alicia was just a machine, and that Corry’s loneliness overcame the fact, that his love was a delusion. That when we see the mechanical parts of Alicia that we undertand why Alleby shoots her.
Over the decades, we’ve had a lot of stories that might be called robot liberation stories where many readers believe that a machine that looks and acts like a human is just as human as a biological person. I wonder if the ending shocks modern readers who have come to love robots. If someone shot C-3PO in the face and killed him, wouldn’t we be shocked and mourn his death?
If I remember right, there were a couple of Asimov robot stories where Susan Calvin kills a robot. I was always shocked by that.
In 2024 we don’t want robots murdered. Accepting the logic of the story that Alleby can only take one person back, how could we change it to work with modern audiences?
Rod Serling wrote this episode. He didn’t give the audience or Corry a chance to think about the options. His stories are setup to only work one way. When I was watching the episode I had forgotten the ending, and I wondered how Serling was going to solve the problem. Having Allenby shoot Alicia was a tidy way to end the story. After he shoots Alicia Alleby tells Corry that the only thing he’s leaving behind is his loneliness. Corry says, “I must remember that,” and “I must remember to keep that in mind.”
There’s a problem. We don’t get to decide and neither does Corry. I wish Serling had ended the story differently. I wish Allenby had handed Corry the gun and said, “I can take one person back, the ship leaves in fifteen minutes no matter what,” and then walks off.
The story could end there. We don’t really need to know the ending, because the story has shifted to thinking about all the possibilities. We should accept that the rocket only has fuel for one person. We should also assume there will be no future supply runs so if Corry stays, he will eventually die. We might also assume Alicia runs on radioactive pellets and will live a long time.
But let’s say the TV show had to reveal an ending. The camera in the very last scene could be aimed at the rocket’s hatch from the inside waiting to see who shows up. We could see Corry’s face climb into view, Alicia’s face climb into view, or Allenby say, “Time to go, shut the door.”
Each possible ending would imply so much still.
Corry shows up and we think he shot Alicia
Corry shows up and we think he didn’t shoot Alicia but left her to be lonely
Alicia shows up and we think Corry shot himself
Alicia shows up and we think Corry volunteered to die alone
Neither show up and we think Corry decided to stay with Alicia
Neither show up and we think Corry decided to stay with Alicia but kills her before he dies so she won’t be alone
Neither show up and we think Corry decided to stay with Alicia but gives her the gun to make her own decision when he dies
It’s unfair to change an author’s story after the fact. But in this case, I’m suggesting my idea because it illuminates how people might have thought about the story in 1959 would be different from how we like to think about stories in 2024.
Greybeard is a 1964 post-apocalyptic novel by Brian W. Aldiss. It was reprinted as an audiobook by Trantor Media on October 15, 2024, read by Dan Calley. The ebook version is currently available for the Kindle for $1.99 in the U.S. Greybeard has an extensive reprint history. I heard about this novel back in the 1960s, but I’ve only become an Aldiss fan in the last few years, so I was excited when the audiobook edition showed up on Audible.com. Greybeard was one of the novels David Pringle admired in his Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels (1985). That book is available for $1.99 for the Kindle too.
Greybeard is set in the 2020s, and is about the aftermath of atomic bomb testing in space in 1981, when the explosions altered the Van Allen radiation belt. Eventually, people learned “the accident” caused the human race to become sterile, along with certain other animals. In the story, everyone is old, waiting to die, and wondering what will happen after humanity is gone. This is a different premise for a post-apocalyptic novel, but Aldiss uses his tale mostly to toss out a ideas. The story lacks a compelling plot.
The characters are never developed to the point where you care about them. That’s a common problem of older science fiction, where characters were created mainly to present far-out science fictional thoughts.
The story’s main focus is on Algy and Martha Timberlane as they travel around England after the collapse, along with flashbacks of how they got together. Algy, short for Algernon, is called Greybeard because of his long beard. After the accident, during a period when kids were born with genetic defects, but before they stopped coming altogether, the world economies collapsed, which led to wars. As Aldiss points out, a lot of consumerism is targetted to babies, children, and young people, so certain businesses quickly went bust. But also, as people realized they had no future, many gave up on their ambitions, or even committed suicide.
The book is divided into seven chapter, each a different time and setting:
Chapter 1 – The River – Sparcot
Chapter 2 – Cowley (flashback)
Chapter 3 – The River Swifford Fair
Chapter 4 – Washington (flashback)
Chapter 5 – The River – Oxford
Chapter 6 – London (flashback)
Chapter 7 – The River – The End
The novel begins with rampaging stoats (ermine, short-tail weasel). This setting of England being taken over by nature reminded me of After London by Richard Jefferies, but Jefferies did a much better job describing how nature would overrun decaying cities, towns, and roads. After London is a superior post-apocalyptic novel, and one of the earliest
We first meet Greybeard and Martha who have been living for years in a tiny village, Sparcot, ecking out an existing through fishing and gardening. They live near a river surrounded by a barrier of brambles. When two boats arrive with refuges from another village, they hear about how the stoats are attacking everything including people. This reminded me of the stobors in Heinlein’s Tunnel in the Sky. Algy, Martha, and a few friends, flee in a boat Algy had hidden. They plan to float down the river to the sea.
The novel is about what they see along the way. It might be called a picaresque novel. Algy/Greybeard is a bit of a rogue, and we follow his episodic travels. At each stopping place along the river they meet folks living under different conditions. Swifford Fair seemed like something out of the Middle Ages. When they get to Oxford, they find a certain level of civilization has maintained itself around the old university. But in every location, there are wild beliefs about how things are, including lots of charlatans, thieves, and con artists preying on ignorant people. Rumors abound about children still being born, strange mutant beings living in the woods, or even fairy creatures of old returning.
Algy and crew meet a crazy old man on the river who tells them to find Bunny Jingadangelow in Swifford Fair because he can make them immortal. Bunny Jingadangelow shows up several times during this novel running different scams, including one as a messiah.
Greybeard isn’t a bad science fiction novel, but it’s not that great either. If I had read it back in 1968 when I first heard about it, I would have been impressed. But over the decades I’ve read a lot of post-apocalyptic fiction, and Greybeard just isn’t up to the standard of Earth Abides by George R. Stewart or The Road by Cormac McCarthy. I’d say The Hopkins Manuscript by R. C. Sherriff as one of the great post-apocalyptic novels about England to read first. In other words, there are a lot of post-apocalyptic novels you should read before spending time on Greybeard.
It’s a shame that Aldiss didn’t spend more time writing Greybeard because his premise is so good. I just finished the four-volume novel series by Elena Ferrante that begin with My Brilliant Friend. This is a true masterpiece, and future classic. Greybeard and most science fiction feel like starvation rations compared to that novel. Of course, Ferrante used 1,965 pages to tell her story, and Aldiss only used 237 on his story. Aldiss tried to develop the characters with flashbacks, but those flashbacks were mainly used to describe the world during the initial stages of collapse.
Ferrante created a compelling novel by showing how two girls evolve psychological and intellectually over a lifetime. That anchored the novel and gave it a page-turning plot. Aldiss never moors us in the story with anything we can anchor our attention. Richard Jefferies handled his post-apocalyptic London by using the first part of the book to explore ideas around the collapse, and then used the second half with a well-plotted adventure story. I enjoyed Greybeard enough to read it, but just barely.
I wish Aldiss had expanded his story to 400-500 pages and developed Algy and Martha, and found something to give the book a clear purpose. I can only recommend Greybeard to folks who read a lot of post-apocalyptic novels and enjoy studying them.
Aldiss imagines radiation causing a world of only old people. But we’re currently facing a depopulation crisis because most countries around the world aren’t producing enough babies. A country needs every woman to have 2.1 children to grow. Many women don’t want to have any, and one child is common. Theoretically, countries like South Korea can become like the world of Greybeard by the end of this centry. I wonder if any current writers are exploring that idea?
Ron Goulart didn’t like the story in his F&SF (Dec. 1964) review.
P. Schuyler Miller liked it a bit better, but not much, in his Analog (Feb. 1965) review.
Judith Merril in 1966, pointed out to F&SF readers that the original American hardback lacked some of the flashback scenes, and might like the story better in the Signet paperback, which included the full British edition.
Unless you’ve recently become a fan of Kim Stanley Robinson, it’s unlikely you’ll be thinking about reading The Wild Shore. It was Robinson’s first published book back in 1984. The Wild Shore was impressive enough to be the first volume in Terry Carr’s third series of Ace Science Fiction Specials. But still, why would you choose to read a 1984 paperback original in 2024? I can’t claim it’s become a science fiction classic or it’s a highly distinctive take on its theme, which is post-apocalyptic, but it is a worthy read.
I’m a great admirer of Kim Stanley Robinson’s 21st century work because he explores the forefront of science fiction. However, his books don’t compel me to turn their pages. I seldom care for his characters, and I don’t get caught up in his plots. I like Robinson’s books for his insightful philosophical takes on our evolving genre. That was not the case with The Wild Shore. I did care for Henry and Tom, and I never stopped wanting to know what would happen. This book was different. Was it because it was told in first person? Or was it because it was a somewhat realistic post-apocalyptic novel, a favorite theme of mine?
I’m not sure if any post-apocalyptic novel is ever particularly realistic. I’m only separating the silly ones with zombies, mutants, aliens, and robot overlords with those novels which describe normal human life after things fall apart.
I had not planned to read another science fiction novel so soon after reading A Heritage of Stars. (I’m trying hard to read other kinds of books.) But two events intersected that led me to read The Wild Shore. Just as I finished Clifford Simak’s 1977 novel about a post-apocalyptic America, when I caught a YouTube review of The Wild Shore, a 1984 novel about a post-apocalyptic America. I immediately wanted to compare the post-apocalyptic vision by a writer born in 1904, near the end of his career, with the post-apocalyptic vision of a writer born in 1952 publishing his first novel.
Even though the novels came out just seven years apart, they are significantly different. Simak’s book is a science fantasy, not much more sophisticated than an Oz book. Robinson’s story is a literary coming-of-age in a post-apocalyptic world tale.
I’m becoming a connoisseur of apocalyptic fiction. I’ve read so many that I divide them into works covering different time periods. These are some of my favorites:
Stories that begin before the apocalypse
One in Three Hundred by J. T. McIntosh
The Death of Grass by John Christopher
The Last Man by Mary Shelley
Stories that begin during apocalypse
“Lot” by Ward Moore
Survivors (BBC TV)
Stories that begin days after the apocalypse
The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham
The Quiet Earth (film)
The World, The Flesh, and The Devil (film)
Stories that begin weeks or months after the apocalypse
Earth Abides by George R. Stewart
Stories that begin years after the apocalypse
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
The Postman by David Brin
Stories that begin generations after the apocalypse
The Long Tomorrow by Leigh Brackett
The Wild Shore by Kim Stanley Robinson
Stories that begin centuries after the apocalypse
A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr.
A Heritage of Stars by Clifford D. Simak
After London by Richard Jefferies
Stories that begin in the far future
Hothouse by Brian W. Aldiss
I think we should contemplate why post-apocalyptic stories are so popular. If I listed all the ones I knew about from books, movies, and television shows, it would be a painfully long list. Shouldn’t we psychoanalyze ourselves over this? It’s my theory that we’re attracted to post-apocalyptic settings because we feel like we’re living in pre-apocalyptic age.
There’s a telling point about most post-apocalyptic stories – the cause of the apocalypse usually kills off most of the population. Doesn’t that suggest we want to live in a world with fewer people? I believe we’ve been living through a slow developing apocalypse our whole lives caused by overpopulation. People laugh at The Population Bomb, a 1968 book that predicted famine that didn’t happen. However, back in the 1960s I remember reading about experiments with rats and overpopulation. As rats were forced to live with more of their own kind, they started going crazy, attacking each other, and causing universal stress.
Most of the problems we face today that will shape our future are due to there being too many of us. Of course, economists are freaking out now because of dropping birth rates, but that’s only because capitalism is a Ponzi scheme they desperately need to keep going. But this book review is not the place to go into details about all the detrimental effects of overpopulation. Let’s just say that the emotional appeal of reading stories where there are fewer people resonate at a deep psychological level. Just look at all the people who want to return to the 1950s, when the population was less than half of what it is today. Or they dream of rebooting society without all the people they dislike.
This begs the question: What will society be like if we had to start over? Most post-apocalyptic novels are merely action-oriented stories that let readers vicariously run wild in a lawless society. They don’t address societal collapse seriously. I think novels like Earth Abides by George R. Stewart, Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, and The Wild Shore by Kim Stanley Robinson do – to a small degree.
The Wild Shore describes growing up in a small community of about sixty people in San Onofre, California, about halfway between Los Angeles and San Diego. The story is told from the point of view of a young man, Henry “Hank” Fletcher, and his friends. The setting is a small pastoral valley near the ocean where people live off small-scale fishing and farming. The year in 2047. Back in 1984, the United States was mostly destroyed by thousands of neutron bombs, which produced low radiation but caused lots of destruction. Survivors creates thousands of little communities each finding their own unique way to survive.
Henry and his teenage friends are third generation post-apocalypse, who admire an old man, Tom, who was born before the apocalypse. Tom claims to be over 100. He has become their mentor and teacher. The young men mainly fish, while the young women farm. It’s demanding work during the day, but they study with Tom after work. He has taught them to read and tells them tales about the old days. Henry’s best friend Steve Nicolin is desperate to get away from home and his domineering father. Steve pushes Henry into actions that propel the plot.
Tom is an unreliable mentor, but Henry and friends don’t know that, and neither do we at first. For example, Tom tells Henry and his friends that Shakespeare was an American, and England was part of the United States. Tom knows there were both good and bad things about the pre-apocalyptic world, but he has glorified American life before the bombs. Henry and Steve, want to rebuild that America, but don’t know how. Like most young men they are anxious for adventure, and resent the grueling work required for daily survival.
Then one day a group of men from San Diego, led by Jennings and Lee, show up and invite people from Henry’s small community to visit their large one in San Diego. They tell Henry’s community they came by train. It turns out their train is two handcars, those little cars that are people powered. In San Diego they are shown many marvels of reconstruction.
Henry is impressed with what the San Diegans have created for themselves. San Diego’s success is due to a strong man named Danforth who his followers call the mayor. Danforth even has a political slogan: Make America Great Again. (I kid you not.)
The mayor tells Henry and Tom he wants their small community to join his resistance movement. We learn that America was bombed by several countries, but not Russia, who resented our world dominance. The rest of the world have put the United States into quarantine, working to keep Americans from regrowing their power. Japan guards the west coast, Canada the east coast, and Mexico the Gulf Coast. The Japanese command is stationed on Catalina Island off Los Angeles. The mayor wants to get as many Americans as possible to fight them.
Now, this world building is not the true focus of The Wild Shore. In fact, I considered it unrealistic speculation. However, Robinson needed a reason for Henry and Steve to want to leave their community and join a big cause. The book is about growing up in a post-apocalyptic world, and to a degree it realistically speculates about such a life. For example, Robinson imagines that some people would try to survive off what was left in the cities, and others would fish, farm, herd, or ranch, and there would be a conflict between the scavengers and the back-to-the-land folks. I think that’s realistic. He also imagines that strong men like Danforth would consolidate power. And I think that’s realistic too. But the whole plot conflict with the Japanese is not something I bought.
The real value of this story is how the boys grow up. And it’s especially about how they learn from Tom. Eventually they discover that Tom doesn’t know everything, but that’s part of the story too. I feel the mentoring relationship was realistically developed, and what I admired most in The Wild Shore. However, in the end, the novel never achieved the impact of Earth Abides or Station Eleven. At least not with my first reading. It might be in the same league as The Long Tomorrow by Leigh Brackett, but I haven’t reread that one in decades.
Robinson does a lot of speculation and extrapolation that I need to think over. For example, people return to whaling because they use whale oil for lighting. We find whaling repugnant, but whale oil made a significant impact on 19th century America because it was a superior lighting source over candles. Robinson has his America with no form of mass communication. The San Diegians dream of repairing a radio, but so far can’t. Would such technology disappear in 60 years? In the story, much of what we use disappears. In this story, printing is just starting to make a comeback.
One of the most important insights from Earth Abides is we won’t be able to teach the next generation everything they need to rebuild a technological civilization immediately. Isherwood, a former university professor and the Tom of Earth Abides, realized that teaching literature and mathematics to kids who had to work hard just to eat would be nearly impossible. In the end, he understood that he had to teach the next generation things they could readily assimilate and use. So, he taught them how to make bows and arrows to help them hunt food.
Robinson tries to explore what useful knowledge Tom could convey to Henry and his friends, but that theme gets sidetracked by the boys chasing after the anti-Japanese resistance movement. I felt that plot was unrealistic. Robinson could have just kept the conflict to just between the larger San Diegan community take over Henry’s smaller community, and that would have been realistic enough for me. Or the conflict could have been between those who lived by scavenging and those who farmed and fished. He did need a larger conflict for his plot, but I thought the resistance theme too big.
One of the fascinating things about post-apocalyptic stories, is how people live without news organizations and communication systems. To suggest that most of the world was keeping America at a tribal level to protect themselves is hard to believe. But if global civilization has collapse, it’s easy to believe that we could return to a tribal society. It all depends on how many people die in the apocalypse. Europe recovered from the Black Death, which killed up to half the population in many cities, but it survived and thrived.
Realistically, unless we were hit by an asteroid, or a plague with ten percent survival rate, we’re not going to drastically reduce our populations in single apocalyptic event. We could slowly fall apart until we de-evolved into a tribal state, but that might take centuries. A realistic post-apocalyptic world might be the one that’s emerging now as countries return to authoritarian rule, economies collapse, and weather ravages everything.
The Wild Shore is about how young people adapt to a post-apocalyptic world. The book might offer some insight into how things might be if the apocalypse was overwhelming, killing off 99% of the population. What happens when the apocalypse is slow-acting, and reduces the population slowly, which slowly forgets all the technology? We can see this is many countries around the world right now. So far, they have been smaller countries like Sudan, Colombia, or Afghanistan. But Russia and China don’t look too healthy right now.
If people are reading post-apocalyptic novels because they unconsciously feel we’re approaching apocalyptic times, shouldn’t they consciously start reading realistic apocalyptic novels that might help them anticipate new ways of living? The Wild Shore isn’t that realistic, but it does explore some issues about growing up in a post-apocalyptic world that might make it a worthwhile reading. I do recommend giving it a try.
Some preppers have written post-apocalyptic novels, but they are generally about guns and surviving in the early days after the collapse. I don’t think we should expect a Mad Max society. Iraq, Syria, Haiti, El Salvidor. and Afghanistan are great examples to study if you want to write a truly realistic post-apocalyptic novel, or you want to become a prepper. Being a lone wolf with a AR-15 is as much of a fantasy as a zombie apocalypse.
Novels like The Wild Shore and The Long Tomorrow, or a TV series like the 1975 Survivors have more of a realistic ring to them, but only slightly so. The fall of Rome took centuries. A truly realistic post-apocalyptic novel would deal with a slow declining society and the apocalypse wouldn’t be so dramatic as an atomic war.
My friend Mike and I decided to pursue the same reading goal separately, probably because we each discovered book YouTuber Benjamin McEvoy on our own. We both concluded we wanted to become better readers, diving deeper into the books, to develop a note-taking system, and remember more of what we read. Mike brought it all up with me when he told me about reading A Heritage of Stars by Clifford D. Simak. I told him I would read the same book, develop a note system, and then we could compare notes and methods of taking notes when I finished.
Mike also told me about different videos he was watching about taking notes while reading. One covered writing notes in the book while you read. I could never do that. Another suggested stopping at the end of each page you’ve read and jotting down some notes. That’s too much for me. Another suggested making notes after reading each chapter. That’s the method I’m trying here.
A Heritage of Stars came out in 1977, near the end of Simak’s career, and it’s one of many of his forgotten novels. Simak is most famous for his award-winning books City and Way Station. A Heritage of Stars is currently available on Amazon as a $1.99 ebook, but there’s also an audiobook edition on Audible.com. I don’t recommend you buy either until you’ve read some of my notes. A Heritage of Stars is not a worthy read unless you have the right reading background.
I discovered I already owned the Kindle and Audible edition, but I don’t remember reading either, but my reading log says I’ve listened to it twice, first on 12/1/15 and again on 6/1/16. That’s damn weird that I’ve listened to it twice, just six months apart, and don’t remember it at all.
This makes it a perfect book for this experiment in deep reading. One of my goals for becoming a better reader at age 72 is to at least remember that I read the book, and to remember at least one significant detail about the book. My ambition for developing a note taking system is to write down enough to trigger the memory of reading the book.
Starting this goal at 72 is probably a bad idea since I obviously have a memory problem, but that’s also part of my ambition to improve my memory. I want to read fewer books but get so deeply into them that I remember something about them. I’m tired of remembering reading books in the same way I remember each potato chip I’ve eaten.
What’s even crazier, after doing a web search I discovered I wrote a long review of A Heritage of Stars for the Worlds Without End website. This changes the whole deep reading project. If I can’t remember what I read, then note taking becomes more important. I’ve thought in recent years that maybe I need to make a wiki of my thoughts as an external memory. I’ve started using Obsidian, a note taking program that hyperlinks ideas, but I’ve only piddled with it. Obviously, I need to get serious and use it faithfully. This is not the first time I’ve discovered I read a book and wrote a review and completely forgotten both. It’s not even the second or third time. I’ve lost count.
My plan for this essay is to read A Heritage of Stars and take notes chapter by chapter giving a synopsis, my reaction, and maybe some quotes. I’m going to use screenshots for quotes to say me typing. I wish I could write concise synopses like I see in Wikipedia, but that’s going to take some time to train myself.
A Heritage of Stars
Chapter 1
This sets up the story as a post-apocalyptic novel. It also zeroes in on the theme that our civilization is long gone and we’re mostly forgotten. What people know of us is more like the histories of Herodotus or myth.
The image of pyramids of robot brain cases is quite striking. It suggests the collapse might have been due to a war with robots, making this novel a little more appealing to today, since real robots are just around the corner.
Chapter 2
We’re introduced to Thomas Cushing, who farms potatoes. Times are tough, he must fight potato beetles by hand and worries that roving bandits will steal his crop. Food is limited.
Thomas Cushing is also a writer and scholar, who studies Wilson’s history, which was written in ancient times. Cushing has access to Wilson’s notes and contemplates a myth that Wilson left out of his history, one about “the Place of Going to the Stars.”
Cushing is at a university and has access to the library stacks. It might be the last university left, and it’s protected by fortified walls and geography.
Thomas was sponsored by Monty and Nancy Montrose, becoming their unofficial adopted son. As Cushing became a scholar he became obsessed with Wilson’s history, especially about the Place of Going to the Stars.
This chapter reminds me of A Canticle for Leibowitz. Cushing lives a kind of monastic life, doing subsistence farming while also working as a scholar by candlelight reading ancient books. This is one of my favorite themes in science fiction, where people thousands of years in the future try to figure out what our civilization was like.
Chapter 3
We learn that Wilson’s first name is Hiram, and he started his history on the first day of October in 2952 at the University of Minnesota. That’s a thousand years into our future, but our civilization had collapsed five hundred years earlier. Hiram Wilson writes this in his introduction to his history:
We also learn that nearly all texts concerning technology, and any references to technology in other books were destroyed. Wilson is piecing together from scant sources what our technology must have been like. He says the censorship over technology came from extreme fanaticism and hatred. He figured the collapse was due to the depletion of non-renewable resources, pollution of the environment, and massive unemployment. He also deduces that our civilization got too big to manage, especially the corporations and governments. Evidently automation and robots were involved, and there was a revolt. The rebellion destroyed the robots and technology. This caused the collapse that killed billions, and mankind went back to subsistence farming, simple villages, and nomadic raiders. Isolated communities survive behind walls while chaos ruled beyond the walls. Wilson struggles to survive at the university. Evidently some universities were able to create protected communities so mankind could survive the new Dark Ages. Often the universities were the target of attacks and they were destroyed or reduced to tiny enclaves.
This reminds me of The Stars Are Ours by Andre Norton, which was about a post-apocalyptic religious society that hated all science. It also reminds me of The Long Tomorrow by Leigh Brackett.
Chapter 4
We learn that Monty’s full name is Dwight Cleveland Montrose. That Monty and Nancy’s dead son would have been the same age as Thomas Cushing, but he had died of measles, along with sixteen other people in the enclave.
The three talk about the Place of Going to the Stars. We learn that our civilization had gone to the Moon and Mars, and maybe to the stars. Monty and Nancy let Thomas know they understand why he wants to leave and search for the Place of Going to the Stars.
The old couple say they wanted Thomas to stay with them but could see he was restless to find out about the Place of Going to the Stars and suggests he get it out of his system.
Thomas tells the old couple about how he grew up where the farming, fishing, and hunting was good, and he lived in a small community. It’s very prosaic. It describes a way of life that I imagine Clifford Simak did growing up in Wisconsin where he was born in 1904. But we eventually learn that Tom’s family all died. From stories his grandfather told, Thomas learned of the university enclave. After his grandfather died, Thomas traded the farm and left, taking to the road, and leading a life of “woods runner” at age sixteen. But finally remembered the university and went there. Now, he was ready to go roaming again. I figure Thomas is about 21-23.
Chapter 5
The point of view shifts to two aliens, #1 and #2. They refer to the Ancient and Revered (A and R) who is a robot. #1 insists that humanity has reached a decline that it will not recover from. #2 says there might be more than meets the eye because of their interviews with the robots on Earth. #1 replies the Earth’s robots are not reliable because they are incoherent telling meaningless stories.
Of course this reminds me of Simak’s classic fix-up novel, City, where dogs and robots remain on Earth after humanity has gone off to the stars.
Chapter 6
Thomas Cushing is on the move. He silently travels at night across a river, and up a stream to an abandoned city. There he follows a road until he is almost killed by an arrow shot from a device set off by trip wire. After that Thomas must travel over the rough land of decayed houses, fallen trees, and worry about the pits of old basements.
Thomas hears drumming and sounds of a tribal celebration. He sneaks up on their fires and sees primitive dancing around a pyramid of robot skulls. This scares Thomas and he backs off, sneaking away as fast and far as possible. He takes shelter in a depression hidden by a thicket of trees near an abandoned mansion, one that had obviously been looted many times long ago.
I think it’s significant that the city is collapsed and decayed. Simak often writes science fiction about people who live away from cities. In the first City story, written in the 1940s, Simak predicted that our society would spread out and abandon cities because of the helicopter.
There is a common thread in post-apocalyptic stories, a fantasy to live without people, or at least many people. That for readers who love this sub-genre, they have a secret desire for civilization to go away.
When Thomas leaves the thicket the next afternoon an old woman is waiting for him. She calls herself “Ole Meg, the hilltop witch.” She claims she sensed Thomas sneaking through the woods. She tells him he has the mark of greatness. Meg informs Thomas that she is coming with him, along with her horse Andy, and Thomas adamantly refuses. But as we learn in chapter 7, they all go off together to avoid the approaching horde. Meg knows a lot, and has powers.
Chapter 7
We are now in The Wizard of Oz territory. Thomas Cushing is off to see the Place of Going to the Stars and he’s acquired company for his quest, a witch with magical powers and friendly horse.
Chapter 8
This reminds me of all the young adult science fiction I read as a kid that was first published in the 1950s, the Heinlein juveniles, all the early science fiction of Andre Norton, and the Winston Science Fiction series. Of course, it also recalls The Hero With A Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell about the hero’s journey in storytelling.
Again, this story reminds me of The Wizard of Oz. Thomas is Dorothy, Meg is the Scarecrow, Andy is nothing yet. Soon we will meet the Tins Woodsman.
Simak would have been around seventy-three when he published A Heritage of Stars, around my age right now. Who was he writing for? Is it an escapist fantasy he thought readers wanted, or was it a daydream that he enjoyed himself?
Chapter 9
Thomas scouts ahead leaving Meg and Andy hidden. There’s a nice scene of Thomas observing nature including a fox, deer, and a badger. He also spots a band of twenty riders heading east. This scene is one of two in the book that I thought was well described. For the most part, Simak doesn’t spend much time describing scenes or developing his characters.
Thomas Cushing knows the raiders are heading towards the town where he saw the dancers, figures they plan to sack them. Returning to Meg and Andy, Thomas hears a voice call him for help. It turns out to be a robot named Rollo trapped under a fallen tree because of a tornado. This really is getting into The Wizard of Oz territory. Rollo even has rust problems and has survived for hundreds of years because he’s learned to make lubricant from bear fat. Simak was known for his robots, and this paragraph recalls old science fiction stories. Is Simak trying to recapture his own past?
Like Baum’s Tin Woodsman, Rollo didn’t want to kill humans or animals. But to survive, he defended himself in a bear attack and broke his programming when he killed the bear.
Chapter 10
This chapter is from the perspective of trees. Simak is mystical here.
We’ve had one chapter with two aliens observing us, and now we have a chapter with trees. Civilization is gone. Technology is gone. Humans are roaming bands of plunderers, tribes of living off the land like Native Americans before Europeans, and monastic enclaves of scholars.
Chapter 11
In this chapter Rollo tells us about his past. He was a yard robot before the fall, but he has lived for centuries by avoiding humans for the most part. Rollo is excessively talkative, from all the loneliness. Rollo confirms the stories Thomas has heard about a Place of Going to the Stars. He’s able to give a few additional details, that it’s out on the Great Plains atop Thunder Butte.
Chapter 12
This chapter is another excerpt of Wilson’s History. It’s about psychic powers. ESP was a cherished topic of 1950s science fiction. It was equated with evolved humans. Wilson suggests that our scientific society suppressed psychic abilities, and now that our technological civilization is gone, they have reemerged.
Chapter 13
Rollo tells us about the collapse, how after the collapse humans started destroying the robots, and eventually how people started collecting robot brain cases. He even carries a brain case he’s found. Here we learn something special.
Where is Simak going with the story? Is it just a book he’s thrown together to make another sale, one which is assembled from standard off the shelf parts? Simak dies in 1988, eleven years after this book was published. He’s essentially living in the last decade of his life. Is Simak making a philosophical statement about science fiction in this novel? Or was he like Robert A. Heinlein, who would also die in 1988, writing personal fantasies for his own pleasure? Heinlein’s last books recycled all his old favorite characters he had created. It seems like here, that Simak is recycling all his favorite science fictional concepts. Or do old writers get to a place where they can’t create anything new?
Cushing, Meg, Rollo, and Andy must hide from marauders, about forty strong. After the horde leaves, Cushing finds a leather pouch left behind. It contains some knives, a children’s book, and four maps. One of them shows where Thunder Butte lies, the place Rollo believes is where the Place of Going to the Stars is located. This is another hard-to-believe coincidence in this story, and they eventually stack up.
Chapter 14
The group is crossing some rough land without water. At one point Cushing offers his buckskin pants to make water bags, but the others say he shouldn’t risk weather exposure on the chance they could carry some water. This chapter is about hardships, dealing with heat, drought, rattlesnakes, lack of food, and so on. The Shivering Snake that follows Rollo stays with them now, and they are trailed by shadowy shapes they start calling the Followers who Meg says will eat their souls and minds. Rollo’s bear grease is running out and he hopes to find a grizzly bear. This chapter is full of woo-woo stuff.
Then they come across an old man and his granddaughter. They find the old man, Ezra, standing in a hole staring at sunflowers. It turns out the old man talks to plants, and his granddaughter, Elayne, is some kind of weird psychic. So the motley crew grows to seven.
I have to wonder if Simak was influenced by the New Age book called The Findhorn Garden that came out in the 1970s. I remember people back then talking about plants having consciousness.
Chapter 15
This is another transitional chapter where we mainly learn more about Ezra and Elayne. We also learn that Rollo only wants grizzly bear fat, and now black bear or deer. Thomas tells him all animal fat is the same, but Rollo seems to prefer grizzly bear because they are fierce fighters, and he feels killing an animal should involve some risk to himself.
The Tin Woodsman in The Wizard of Oz did not eat meat and wouldn’t kill animals, or even insects.
Chapter 16
The group finally reach Thunder Butte by are met by five wardens who guard it. The wardens believe for centuries they are the designated guardians of Thunder Butte where strange beings sleep. The sleepers are destined to take over the world from men, so they don’t want anyone to awaken them. The wardens say Thunder Butte is also guarded by intelligent trees and rocks that can move.
Ezra tells the wardens that he can talk to the trees, and they will let them though. It’s quite a coincidence that Cushing and comrades found a person that spoke tree. I wonder if Simak was into plant consciousness. In the 1970s, there were lots of New Age theories about that.
By luck (or coincidence) a grizzly bear attacks the wardens and their horses, and they run off. Rollo, Cushing, and Andy kill the bear, and head towards the trees guarding the Butte.
Chapter 17
They make it the trees that block their way, and the living rocks circle behind our troop of characters. Ezra can talk the trees into letting them pass, which disturbs the wardens who have regathered back a way to watch. There is a bit of mystical mumbo-jumbo. Makes me wonder if Simak was a New Ager himself, or was he just using these ideas because they were popular with young people and the counter-culture.
Chapter 18
This is another transitional chapter where our characters talk philosophy amongst themselves and ponder what has happened to them so far.
Then they discover cylinders hovering above them. They have lots of eyes, but no mouth, yet they broadcast strange speeches to the group.
This is weird gobbledygook. However, it will make more sense when it’s explained in a later chapter. But what is your guess now? Our heroes suffer from all this machine chatter, and again do a lot of speculation amongst themselves.
Chapter 19
Next, our heroes head up the butte towards the buildings they’ve spotted.
Our group finally meets the aliens #1 and #2 that we encountered in that early chapter. They call the aliens collectively, The Team. The aliens tell our humans how they are explorers studying collapsed technological civilizations. One of them believes such civilizations never recover, and the other wonders if it might be possible. They mention the Ancient and Revered, a robot that’s been teaching them about Earth. Our group asks about meeting the A & R, but the aliens tell them it’s hard to get an audience with him. Do I have to say it again? (The Wizard of Oz.)
Chapter 20
Our group explores the outside of the city trying to find a way in. There is a lot of speculation about the city, and history. Cushing finds an immense door. He goes in a way and finds hundreds of shining snakes. He tries to go further in, but can’t. Elayne comes up behind him and tells Cushing that they are standing on the edge of eternity.
This reminds me of Methuselah’s Children by Robert A. Heinlein. At one point, Lazarus Long and gang meet aliens that are so far ahead of humans that meeting them directly face to face causes humans to go insane. Back in the 1940s and 1930s, some science fiction writers worried about meeting advanced beings. But that stopped for the most part in Astounding in the 1950s. Various writers have said that John W. Campbell, Jr. didn’t like the idea of any aliens being superior to humans. Simak, in 1977 hasn’t given up on that idea.
Then a cylinder appeared and informed the group that A and R would like to meet them.
Chapter 21
Three days later, we still haven’t got to meet the Wizard. The Ancient and Revered. But first the group has another conversation with the aliens, #1 and #2. The aliens want to know how humans could imagine being replaced by a later evolved species. The aliens haven’t found that to be a common realization.
This is one of my favorite science fiction themes, but it’s seldom explored in SF.
This chapter goes on with more effort to explore the city, and more conversations with the aliens. Ezra learns that the guardian trees are from outer space. I had already assumed that. The group ponders that. And the living rocks. A lot of this pondering is things I’ve already assumed. Did Simak think only people who didn’t know much about science fiction would be reading this book?
Chapter 22
This chapter involves a long psychic session by Elayne trying to break into the city. She fails. Then Meg tries. She makes psychic contact that she describes as a million little bugs.
Can you guess what this is? I did. I won’t say yet.
At one point, Rollo gives Meg the robot brain case he owns to act as her crystal ball. The robot inside the case combined with Meg’s psychic ability finally contacts the Ancient and Revered. He invited them in.
Chapter 23
The A and R explains everything. The cylinders are space probes returned from the stars, each reporting what they found. Their findings are stored in a giant database, which is what Meg had contacted. The A and R has no machines left that can retrieve information from the database. However, the group figures with more psychics like Meg and Elayne, each with a robot brain case, they could mine the data and start rebuilding civilization.
We learn about the fall of civilization. Our efforts to explore space. And the state of the world. We learn that the A and R has a library that hasn’t been censored of technical information. The group decides they also need to find people who can read.
Chapter 24
Short chapter where Cushing argues he alone must confront the wardens.
Chapter 25
This is a nice chapter. It’s also the second example of good description that I mentioned earlier. Simak also wrote westerns, and you get a feel for that here as Cushing walks into the camp of the wardens. It’s a shame this story didn’t have more of this kind of writing.
There’s a lot of action in this chapter, but ultimately, they fail to convince the wardens to help.
Chapter 26
Everything wraps up here, and it’s incredibly positive and gung-ho. They return to Cushing’s old university to get people who can read. But they still worry about technology.
Most of Simak’s science fiction had an anti-technology feel to it. The Heritage of Stars is an interesting book to read today since civilization is heading towards a collapse just as we’re about to give birth to AI and intelligent robots. This novel is relevant to today, but I also think it might be too dated. The New Age died back in the 1970s. There are esoteric believers still around, but they aren’t common.
Final Thoughts
This novel touches on many of the themes in science fiction. It’s almost like a New Testament of science fiction because of its faith in science fictional ideas. But it’s also transcendental, suggesting there’s more to outer space than stars and planets. There’s a lot of woo-woo in the book.
I’ve read all the Oz books when I was a kid. Back in the 1950s some libraries started banning Oz books because librarians felt those books gave young people unrealistic expectations about life. I completely agree because I embraced those unrealistic expectations when I read the Oz books. And I believe science fiction also promotes the same unrealistic expectations.
I believe The Heritage of Stars is Clifford Simak’s version of Heinlein’s The Number of the Beast. Both books are flawed. Both books are personal fantasies by fantasy writers that reference their own work and the formative fiction they read as kids growing up.
James Wallace Harris, 9/10/24
p.s.
I reread my original review and its very similar to what I’ve written here. I did make at least one mistake. I thought #1 and #2 were robots. On this reading, I don’t think they are. I also thought I’d remember this book, but I didn’t. I did predict I would return to it someday, so I was right on that account.
“Enchanted Village” by A. E. van Vogt has been extensively reprinted. It first appeared in the July 1950 issue of Other Worlds Science Fiction. I just read the story in Possible Worlds of Science Fiction edited by Groff Conklin. I first read it in The Great SF Stories 12 (1950) edited by Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg several years ago, although today, I had no memory of reading it before. I can’t tell if it’s a forgettable story, or I’m just forgetting everything.
Bill Jenner is the lone survivor of the first mission to Mars after his rocket crashes. Jenner crosses hundreds of miles of Martian desert on foot with just a bit of food and one bag of water. Jenner thinks he’s saved when he stumbles upon a deserted alien village.
The story is nicely told. Who doesn’t love a Robinson Crusoe type story? Isn’t that why The Martian by Andy Weir was a bestseller and blockbuster? “Enchanted Village” takes a left turn though, one that reminds me of Solaris by Stanislaw Lem. It’s amusing how A. E. van Vogt anticipated so many modern science fiction stories (Forbidden Planet, Star Trek, Alien, etc.).
Jenner eventually realizes the village is an organism or machine, even an intelligent one, and he must learn to communicate with it. The village produces food automatically in low troughs but is poison to Jenner. Through a series of observations Jenner discovers the village could make food for him, but he doesn’t have enough human food for it to model.
Now here is where you should leave this essay if you don’t want spoilers.
“Is it possible?” is the number one criterion I use to define and judge science fiction. All too often science fiction readers are given magic rather than honest speculation. There is nothing wrong with magic in a story if you enjoy fantasies, but the belief in magic is why our species never grows up. To me, fantasy is the fentanyl of fiction. It will make you feel great, but eventually, it will kill you.
The surprise ending of “Enchanted Village” is when Bill Jenner dies, he wakes up to discover he’s a kind of creature that can consume the nourishment the village provides. Bill Jenner is reborn. We are not told how. We are not told anything, but that Jenner now has sharp teeth and a snout allowing him to slurp up the alien food. I pictured the reborn Jenner looking like a lizard creature, suitable for the dry Martian desert.
The alien village is like Jesus, or other deities that tell us to accept them and be saved. Van Vogt’s use of the word enchanted should have warned us this was a story about magic. I don’t know if van Vogt was intentionally parodying religion, or he just needed a quick ending to sell a story. It’s interesting to compare “Enchanted Village” to “A Martian Odyssey” by Stanley G. Weinbaum. That story has strange aliens that accomplish bizarre feats, but I believe it’s within the realm of possibility, and honest science-fictional speculation.
Even with my criticism, I enjoyed the story. It’s the old fashion kind of pre-NASA science fiction I’ve always liked most. But then, science fiction was my substitute for religion. I wanted to believe in the fantasies that science fiction sold me. If we could only fly beyond the Earth, they would all come true. I never really wanted to grow up in Earthly reality but be reborn in outer space. I’ve always known that science fiction was just storytelling, but it did leave me with a kind of secret hope that I should have ignored. There’s a reason Marx said religion was the opiate of the masses, it’s because it makes us want to believe in magic. There’s a safe kind of making believing while turning pages, but if you let science fictional beliefs go beyond them, they can be dangerous.
If you think I’m being silly, read “Racked by Pain and Enraptured by a Right-Wing Miracle Cure” from yesterday’s New York Times. It’s quite moving, and I feel deserves some kind of journalism award. These people hope for a science fictional cure, ones I’ve seen in science fiction stories.
I’m getting worried that I’m becoming too critical of science fiction, and I should stop reviewing it. I don’t want to come across as a downer. I know science fiction should be judged just on its merit as a story, but I can’t help but evaluate it psychologically and philosophically as a kind of hope for the future. I assume my growing doubts and rejection of SF is because I’m getting older and thinking about how things have impacted me psychologically.
What would it be like to experience living through an emerging apocalyptic crisis? Forget about sinister aliens conquering the Earth, or silly zombie invasions, or even biker gangs running around in their skimpy S&M outfits. No, what would it be like if civilization collapsed, and you had to live in an emerging dark age? Reading The Memoirs of a Survivor by Doris Lessing will make you think about it.
It’s what the English call a cozy catastrophe. An unspecified crisis happens, and England slowly unravels. An unnamed narrator, of unspecified gender writes in their memoir about living through such an event. They eventually take in a twelve-year-old girl named Emily, and her pet named Hugo. Hugo is sometimes described as looking like a cat or dog, and it sometimes purrs and other times whimpers. Lessing likes to explore both gender and species identity.
The memoirs narrate two story threads. The more interesting of the two involves the narrator watching society fall apart while Emily grows up. The second thread is episodes in the narrator’s fantasy life, which might be called exploring inner space. This is a science fiction novel that was published in 1974, when Ursula K. Le Guin was becoming famous as a women science fiction writer. Lessing’s style is much different from other women writing science fiction in the 1970s. Imagine Virginia Woolf writing a post-apocalyptic novel.
Doris Lessing (1919-2013) was a British novelist who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007. She also wrote several science-fiction novels, including the five-volume Canopus in Argos (1979-1983) series as well as The Memoirs of a Survivor. She was most famous for her novel The Golden Notebook (1962), which is considered a story of inner space written at the dawn of exploring outer space. Lessing was born in what’s now called Iran and grew up in what was called Rhodesia. She moved to England as a young woman, becoming a writer, and radical.
Lessing’s birth was one year before Isaac Asimov’s, so if she had been considered a science fiction writer, she would have been among the Heinlein-Clarke-Asimov generation. However, her science fiction reminds me of the Ballard-Brunner-Aldiss generation. The Memoirs of a Survivor came out in the era of the best-selling nonfiction books about threats to civilization: The Limits of Growth, The Population Bomb, Future Shock. Those same books inspired John Brunner’s novels Stand on Zanzibar, The Jagged Orbit, The Sheep Look Up, and The Shockwave Rider. The 1970s felt like a pre-apocalyptic time, like our 2020s.
The Memoirs of a Survivor is a very British post-apocalyptic novel, far cozier than American novels covering the same theme. American male writers like to imagine life after the apocalypse as a new wild west. American female writers picture things a good less violent but acknowledge our violent heritage. British writers of both genders often write about characters getting along after the collapse. Their novels do have violence, but it’s not all kill-or-be-kill. The Memoir of a Survivor has a small amount of violence, even some guns, but it’s very minimal.
The setting is a city where the lights and water still work, but the economy is coming undone, and refugees from other parts of the country that have totally collapsed, are streaming through on their way north. The unnamed narrator, presumably an older woman because of how she characterizes people and things, watches the slow unfolding of the collapse from her window. The story become more interesting when a man abandons Emily and Hugo to her care.
Lessing is rather ambiguous in The Memoirs of a Survivor. The gender of the narrator isn’t clear, but the narrator’s personality feels like an old woman. Emily is quite well-defined by the narrator, who spends most of her time observing her and Hugo. Lessing had taken in a young adolescent girl, Jenny Diski, for a while in her life, and I assume much of the novel comes from that experience. Although, Lessing had three children of her own, so she had plenty of experience observing children growing up.
There are two parallel stories within the novel. The one I liked best was about Emily, her growth, and her fascination with the hordes of young people streaming through the city. In the other thread, the narrator stares at a wall, and fantasizes about exploring other apartments in the city, where she cleans, repairs, and paints. Lessing has said this is an autobiography of dreams. I felt it was a metaphor for repairing society because the narrator is always trying to renovate the rooms. However, these fantasies are important for the ending.
What’s beautiful about The Memoirs of a Survivor is it describes the early days of an apocalypse. Young people are on the move, anxious to build a new society, while older people huddle in their houses and apartments, trying to maintain and remember the old society. Since I feel we’re in the early years of a slow decline, The Memoirs of a Survivor is an interesting read for our times. Sadly, this book isn’t well known. There’s no ebook or audiobook edition, although it’s still available in trade paper. I looked everywhere for an audiobook edition because the writing is lovely and serene. I wanted to hear this story, rather than read it because I prefer listening to literary writing.
The growth and transformation of Emily is described in psychological detail that is realistic for most young girls of any time. When Emily first saw the refugees, she desperately wanted to join them but felt rebuffed. She decided to make her own clothes, which the narrator and I felt was a way of creating her own identity. At first, her outfits sounded like something Stevie Nicks would have designed for the bedroom, witchy lingerie, but Emily never even wore them outside. Next, her designs seemed like Madonna’s outfits from the early 1980s. Finally, Emily designed something close to punk and grunge. Remember, this novel was written in the early seventies.
The story is noticeably quiet, and the details of Emily’s relationship with her pet, Hugo, are heart wrenching. Emily wants to run away with the young people but can’t go because she knows they will eat Hugo. Obviously, Hugo is her emotional anchor after losing her parents, but she’s moving into the boy-crazy years. Emily, and many of the city girls fall in love with the various young men who are the leaders of the various roving bands, and these young men take advantage of their attractive powers to create harems of little adoring girls. I wonder if that’s how things were in our cave dwelling days — all the young women wanting the alpha male.
Like I said, The Memoirs of a Survivor is not a Mad Max post-apocalypse. Lessing tells us some people have guns, but guns aren’t part of the story. When you read this story it’s not hard to think about people living in Haiti or Sudan, or the many other countries in the world with failing economies, decaying infrastructures, gangs, which send out hordes of refugees into countries with more civilization.
This novel will make you think about what you would do if things fell apart. What if the electricity stopped working and water stopped flowing from your taps? What would you do? Would you join a group marching north to better economies? Or would you hunker down, learning to live with less, giving up money to barter, accepting violence and mob rule? Would you learn how to grow food and make things?
The Memoirs of a Survivor is like Earth Abides by George R. Stewart in that it assumes the young will quickly invent new ways out of the old, while the youngest children, who were never educated, will become feral. Gerald, a young leader whom Emily loves, does everything he can to save these feral children. What would you do with them? Ish, in Earth Abides, had a tremendous insight into their future survival, but I think Lessing’s take was more cynical, and maybe realistic.
I doubt current generations of science fiction readers will find this novel very appealing. I think it’s becoming a forgotten novel. And I tend to feel Lessing is becoming a forgotten writer, even though her name continues to show up now and then, such as this recent piece “10 of the best Booker Prize-nominated books with a political slant” that includes Lessing’s novel, The Good Terrorist.
I would have rated The Memoirs of a Survivor 5-stars if it had only been about Emily and the collapse. The inner space sequences dragged the story down. However, if I reread this book in the future I might like those part better. For now, 4-stars.
We can often find political opinions in science fiction, but in terms of political philosophers, how useful are science fiction writers? I just read “The Last of the Deliverers” by Poul Anderson from the February 1958 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. You can read it here. Or find it in these anthologies. It was revised in 1976, but I don’t have a copy to evaluate.
“The Last of the Deliverers” is set after the collapse of the United States and the Soviet Union, in a small village in Ohio. It’s told from the point of view of a nine-year-old boy. The boy describes an old man of one hundred, who the village kids call Uncle Jim, and the day a stranger shows up, another old man named Harry Miller. The two men take an instant dislike to each other because Jim is a capitalist and Harry is a communist. Both men hate the way the village is run and criticize it.
Poul Anderson is well known for believing that feudalism was about the most complex form of government humanity could handle. In this 1958 tale, written in the middle of the cold war between America and Russia, Anderson predicts that both systems would fail. The residents of the small town are quite happy getting by with what they can grow and make themselves, and they share the use of land and some technology. Jim thinks these Americans have become degenerate because they don’t want to get ahead and want more. But the village is happy. Harry thinks there should be more collectivism, but the villagers don’t see the point. These two longest paragraphs by the mayor explain their community.
Anderson isn’t promoting a utopia. His ending is rather cynical and bleak. He knows humans can’t find happiness. Of course, Poul Anderson is no political scientist. He’s using his own opinions about how he thinks things should work. Robert A. Heinlein ruined a lot of his fiction by doing this.
On one hand, I admire Anderson’s speculation and extrapolation. On the other hand, why should I trust his insights? I don’t imagine many readers get their political opinions from science fiction writers, but I do imagine they enjoy stories and writers whose opinions resonate with their own. I do think “The Last of the Deliverers” resonates with 2024.
We do know that George Orwell had brilliant insights about politics in his science fiction novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four. They are very respected. However, do they have objective validity? I don’t know. I’m impressed with the many ideas Orwell presented in his novel, and I can use them to reference real world events, but how useful is that? Many people have trouble today recognizing fascism even when endless experts with all kinds of degrees and political experience lecture about it constantly. Anderson doubted people could maintain a complex society. I doubt whether we can understand any kind of complexity.
I think the average person wants to believe they understand the world around them. That their opinions are valid. And some of those people, including some science fiction writers, want to promote their beliefs in their stories. But should we listen to them?
I feel that both conservatives and liberals get their beliefs from other believers. That all concepts are memes that spread through society. Are there any ways to validate these memes? Science can study certain aspects of reality by experimentation. They get no 100% sure answers, but they do find answers with statistical weight. I’ve not sure political theories can be disproved by the scientific method.
I do agree with a lot of what Poul Anderson says in this story. And I think he knows his wishes for creating a harmonious society are just wishes, because of the ending. World building is easy for science fiction writers, futurists, and political theorists but are their ideas ever more than just sand castles?
Sometime in the recent past I read a story very much like “The Last of the Deliverers.” However, it was set in a village in Russia. They had an American scientist studying collective farming when WWIII happened. He had to stay on. The village got by and found a similar kind of simple harmony that Anderson’s story describes. But then a communist party official finds his way to the village and wants to take over. Like the Anderson story, it allowed capitalism and communism to duke it out in a fictional setting. I wish I could remember that story. I may have even reviewed it. I used to believe my blogs were a form of external memory, but not anymore. Like my regular memory, access is poor, and getting poorer.
First off, let me say that I believe “Riders of the Purple Wage” by Philip José Farmer is as complex and ambitious as John Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar, which came out the year after Dangerous Visions. It’s not an easy story to read, and at 30,000 words it will feel overly bloated if you’re not in the mood for Farmer’s purple prose. It co-won the Hugo Award for best novella in 1968 and was up for a Nebula too. When I first read “Riders of the Purple Wage” back in the 1960s, I was still in high school, had not yet discovered James Joyce. I was clueless at what Farmer was attempting to do in the story. Still, it was my favorite story in the anthology.
When Dangerous Visions came out in audio a couple of months ago, I listened to “Riders of the Purple Wage.” It made all the difference at revealing Farmer’s literary ambitions and philosophical insights. Then before writing this review, I listened to the story again, and it was even more revealing. Unless you’re the kind of person who reads very slowly, working out all the intended voices, decoding all the allusions, I doubt you’ll get a fraction of what Farmer intended. I’ve listened to it twice now in two months, and I’ve hardly begun to comprehend everything Farmer is doing. To really understand “Riders of the Purple Wage” will require many close readings and listening, taking lots of notes. It’s easily worth a dissertation.
I highly recommend listening to “Riders of the Purple Wage.” Check your library. If you subscribe to Spotify for music, it’s there as part of your membership. I won’t recommend you buy Dangerous Visions at Audible just for one story unless you really want the whole anthology.
I also expect many people will read “Riders of the Purple Wage” and go “WTF is this crap!” I know that me liking something doesn’t mean others will like it.
Farmer is not working on the same literary level as James Joyce, but he’s trying his best to imitate the guy. Farmer was never a major science fiction writer despite Ellison’s introduction. His one major work, To Your Scattered Bodies Go, the first of his Riverworld series in 1971, shows tremendous imagination, but was a cheat in my book because he used Sir Richard Burton as his protagonist. I consider fiction that uses historical people for characters equal to doping a horse to win a race. And for much of his career after that, Farmer wrote pastiches based on famous real people and famous fictional people. In other words, I consider “Riders of the Purple Wage” the peak of Farmer’s creative efforts. (Although, Blown and Image of the Beast were very impressive.)
I don’t agree with Farmer in what he says in places, but I do admire his ambition.
Don’t let my enthusiasm for the story give you unfillable expectations. Farmer was born in 1918, and was almost fifty when he wrote “Riders of the Purple Wage.” His mid-1960s conservative views might offend some people, especially modern readers, but so will some of his liberal views. “Riders of the Purple Wage” is intentionally vulgar, gross, and punny. The setting is mid-22nd century, where most people live on a guaranteed income, the purple wage, and the government tries to eradicate wars by homogenizing the world’s population by forcing citizens to relocate to other countries. This story is both utopian and dystopian, and gives Farmer a chance to comment on politics, history, sexuality, psychology, literature, and anything else he can squeeze in.
“Riders of the Purple Wage” has a simple plot. Chibiabos Elgreco Winnegan, known as Chib, wants to win a grant for his artwork so he and his mother won’t be forced to emigrate to Egypt. He also wants to get away from his mother whom he had a sexual relationship with until adolescence, when she stop fulfilling his needs. Incest is accepted in this future society. Chib also hides his great grandfather from the authorities. Grandpa Winnegan is the philosopher of this story. He’s supposed to be dead, but the IRB thinks he’s still alive and sheltering a fortune. This plot description is just the skeleton. From just the bones, you won’t be able to imagine how big the full body of this story really is. Whether it’s all bloat will be up to you. Farmer does some furious tap dancing, but I can’t promise you’ll like his routine. I just marveled, thinking, “Look at that old man go!”
I wanted to describe everything in this novella and give my reaction, but I just don’t have the time, energy, or concentration. I’ve tried several times to collect appropriate quotes that would give a sense of the story, but that’s almost impossible. Taken out of context it makes them seem weird and confusing. Even listening to them in context requires a great deal of concentration. Farmer expects you to keep up.
To properly experience this story requires listening to it. Think of it as a one man show on Broadway. An intense experience that runs over two hours. But also imagine that one man one stage morphing between Jonathan Winters and Frank Zappa, to James Joyce and Bob Dylan, to R. A. Lafferty and Robert Sheckley, and at other times Robert A. Heinlein and Edgar Rice Burroughs doing imitations of Shakespeare, Dante, and Laurence Sterne. And if you can recognize them, several ancient Greeks, and Romans.
I get the feeling that Farmer was well educated and was bursting with ideas about how everything is interrelated. I’d love to see the letter Harlan Ellison sent Phil requesting he submit to the anthology. Farmer must have thought he had free rein to write anything. In his afterward, Farmer admits to originally producing 40,000 words, then cutting it to 20,000. Ellison says Farmer asked him if he could expand on that, which Ellison agreed, so Farmer built the story back to 30,000 words. Evidently, Farmer just ran with this story. I picture Farmer typing like a madman for days, just screaming and laughing manically at his own wittiness. I bet he loved writing this story. It runs 2 hours and 31 minutes on audio.
Farmer, in his afterword, also explains the story was inspired by an Ad Hoc Committee report to Lyndon B. Johnson. Farmer calls it the Triple Revolution document that covers (1) the Cybernetion Revolution, (2) the Weaponry Revolution, and (3) the Human Rights Revolution. And you can see all of that in “Riders of the Purple Wage.” The story does some major extrapolation, like I said, comparable to Stand on Zanzibar.
After reading a story about hunting down God and another story about vicious attacks on women, Frederik Pohl anti-prejudice story seems downright pleasant. It is a breezy tale about how people recycle all their old ethnic jokes when NASA brings home a Martian.
“The Day After the Day the Martians Came” reminded me of how things were back in the 1950s and 1960s. People often retold jokes they had heard, and many of them depended on ethnic stereotypes. I seldom hear people tell a joke anymore, and I can only remember one that I heard that I retold in the last few years. It went something like this:
A young guy is out hitchhiking, and he gets a ride with an old man driving a new car. The young guy doesn’t know how to strike up a conversation but finally says, “Aren’t you afraid of giving rides to hitchhikers? They might be a serial killer.” And the old man laughs, “Oh no, I’m not afraid. What are the odds of two serial killers being in the same car?”
Now, that joke is based on a stereotype, but until people start feeling sorry for serial killers, I assume it will be politically correct to use them in a joke. That’s the thing about humor, it usually has a target, and it’s often about cruelty or pain, or someone being the butt of the joke.
Essentially, Pohl’s story is a civil rights tale. It was written during the peak years of the Civil Rights movement. However, its punchline conveys a stereotype about black people. “The Day After the Day the Martians Came” is well-intended, but simplistic. It lacks sophistication.
The setting is a hotel where reporters are staying to report on NASA bringing back a Martian. The hotel is managed by a man, Mr. Mandala, who sounds like he’s from India, who bosses around two black men, one who is the bell captain. Pohl doesn’t use the old word bellboy here. It describes a lobby that is overflowing with reporters who all take turns making up jokes about Martians. We are told Martians are quite ugly and look a lot like seals. All the characters are based on stereotypes. The reporters sound like they came out of the 1940 screwball comedy, His Girl Friday.
It seems rather odd that Pohl is satirizing joke tellers for using stereotypes when his story depends on stereotypes. I wonder if Pohl was aware of this on meta level. I don’t think so. Science fiction evolved out of pulp fiction magazines, and the best pulp fiction writers were brilliant at typing out stories fast and furiously. They depended on stereotypes and caricatures. And like movies from the 1930s and 1940s, readers and audiences loved a good character creatively based on a type, such as a newspaper reporter.
For Pohl to have explored this situation in a deeper way, he would have had to create a unique individual reporter observing a unique individual Martian and realistically portraying unique individual humans reacting to the Martian with specific prejudices regarding specific physical details and characteristics. Something James Joyce or Flannery O’Conner or even Raymond Chandler might have written. I think some New Wave writers knew this in theory, but not in practice.
I’m afraid people will think I’m picking on Dangerous Visions. Ellison claims its stories point to a new way of writing in science fiction, but so far, I don’t think the first three stories have demonstrated a new kind of writing. I think science fiction will change in the decades after the 1960s, but I’m not sure it has changed much in 1967.
The first story in Dangerous Visions was by Lester del Rey, an old friend and mentor to Harlan Ellison. The second story is by Robert Silverberg, one of Ellison’s best friends from the 1950s. And the next story is by Frederik Pohl, another editor and mentor from the 1950s. I get the feeling Ellison said to all his friends, “Hey gang, let’s put on a show!” (in his best imitation of Micky Rooney from 1939). But “Flies” by Silverberg is one disturbing performance, making me think this anthology should have been called Disturbing Visions.
I thought it interesting in Ellison’s introduction, where he’s bragging what a great writer Silverberg is, and listing all Silverberg’s great works, that none of them were the famous science fiction stories we know today. Then I realized that in 1967, Silverberg had not yet become a famous science fiction writer, the one who wrote the stories we associate with him today. I don’t think anyone will ever list “Flies” as great Silverberg. However, Silverberg would take off in 1967 with his story “Hawksbill Station,” which was a finalist for both the Hugo and Nebula and was anthologized in two best-of-the-year annuals. In the following few years Silverberg would become a giant in the genre.
“Flies” is about an astronaut, Richard Henry Cassiday, who nearly dies in space, but aliens find and repair him. They are God-like beings, who make him physically perfect again. But before sending him back to Earth, they turn up the sensitivity of his brain and fix it so he can telepathically report back to them.
Cassiday returns to Earth and proceeds to track down his three ex-wives. With each, he cruelly hurts them. The story is quite vivid, describing what he does. The alien watchers make him come back to be fixed. On being returned to Earth again, he suffers and reports back on his suffering. We are told that Cassiday is “nailed to his cross.” Are we to wonder if Jesus came to Earth to experience God’s sins against humans? I don’t know.
Cassiday even explains himself by quoting Shakespeare, “As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods. They kill us for their sport.” Is Silverberg explaining suffering with theology? Are these two references to religion making the story deeper, or just bullshitting us?
All I know, while reading this unpleasant story, all I felt was horror. Why would Silverberg write such a disgusting tale? Often the stories in Dangerous Visions seem like they were written to top all other stories in grossness. Here’s what Silverberg wrote for his afterward, suggesting the story is about vampirism.
I’ve recently been reading dozens of science fiction stories published before 1930. And one of the most common themes is horror. Before space opera ramped up in the late 1920s, I would say horror was the number one theme of science fiction stories. And if you think about it, horror is still a common theme. A thrilling alien invasion film like Independence Day is full of horrible things happening to people — but the peak thrill of the film is when we do horrible things to the aliens. Isn’t science fiction often being Romans at the Colosseum?
Kurt Vonnegut had advice to budding writers, “Do mean things to your protagonist.” We love characters who overcome adversity. But do we love characters who create adversity? I’m reminded of “Fondly Fahrenheit” by Alfred Bester. In that story, James Vandaleur and his android servant kill people, even children, in horrendous ways. That’s one of my all-time favorite science fiction short stories. But it didn’t disgust me. Why?
One of the reasons why I’m reading all those old pre-1930 science fiction stories is because it shows that science fiction stories were inspired by previous science fiction stories, and if they are successful, inspire later science fiction stories.
Here’s my problem with Dangerous Visions. I can find antecedents for its stories, but I’m having trouble finding stories that DV inspired in the years since. For all its success, Dangerous Visions is a kind of dead end, at least so far in my reading. Is that because science fiction as a genre decided to head off in another direction after Dangerous Visions? Probably not, probably I just can’t recall stories that follow the trajectories of DV stories. Maybe DV taught me to avoid them.
But so far, Dangerous Visions feels like a combination of the 1969 rock festival at Altamont and Charles Manson. Those were two years into the future. Maybe DV was being prophetic.
I thought I’d add this review of Dangerous Visions.
Classics of Science Fiction 