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“Evensong” by Lester del Rey

For me, the most rewarding pages of Dangerous Visions were the introductions by Harlan Ellison and the afterwards by the authors. When I first read this anthology back in the late 1960s, I felt those introductions gave me insight into the family of science fiction writers, one I wanted to join. At the time I was sixteen and I totally bought Ellison’s enthusiasm and promises. Fifty-six years later, I reacted to this anthology and its stories very differently.

Ellison honors del Rey by putting his story in the pole position, and he praises his friend and mentor Lester for being a giant of the genre. Back in 1968, Lester del Rey was not a major figure to me. I had read some of his Winston Science Fiction juveniles, but unknowingly, because they were published under his pen names. However, one had his name on the cover, Marooned on Mars. It wasn’t a standout, and I didn’t remember he wrote it. Lester del Rey was not a giant in the field to me. Later on, I’d discover he wrote “Helen O’Loy” and “Nerves” when I read The Science Fiction Hall of Fame anthologies. I don’t think Lester del Rey was ever a great writer of science fiction, but he became a great editor and publisher.

Ellison hyped Dangerous Visions for publishing stories that editors couldn’t or wouldn’t because they contained ideas that challenged the norms of society, or were too mature for the typical youthful science fiction reader, or were written in creative styles that average science fiction reader would reject.

“Evensong” is about hunting down a fugitive. That fugitive was God. At sixteen that excited my young atheist mind. But at seventy-two, it felt like Mad Magazine’s Alfred E. Neuman saying, “What, me believe?”

Was that really a dangerous vision that no publisher would accept? Then how could Fred Pohl publish del Rey’s “For I Am a Jealous People!” in Star Short Novels in 1954? In that story, mankind is fighting aliens and learns that God has sided with the enemy, so humans declares God is their enemy too. In other words, del Rey gave Ellison a dangerous vision that he’d already used years earlier.

That’s something I keep finding as I reread Dangerous Visions. Ellison was wrong that science fiction publishers wouldn’t take them. It made me wonder if Ellison could have assembled a reprint anthology called Dangerous Visions and collected all the science fiction stories that were published that had been quite startling for the times. Many classics come to mind that I think had more impact than those in Dangerous Visions, such as “Fondly Fahrenheit” by Alfred Bester and “Lot” by Ward Moore. I also think “For I Am a Jealous People!” is a better story than “Evensong.”

Ellison quotes del Rey’s letter to him about the afterward he wrote for the anthology. I thought this part was rather telling: 

The afterword isn’t very bright or amusing, I’m afraid. But I’d pretty much wrapped up what I wanted to say in the story itself. So I simply gave the so-called critics a few words to look up in the dictionary and gnaw over learnedly. I felt that they should at least be told that there is such a form as allegory, even though they may not understand the difference between that and simple fantasy.

I was bothered that del Rey didn’t think critics wouldn’t know what an allegory was and couldn’t tell it from fantasy. That suggests del Rey felt a naive self-importance about his writing. But I also felt that Ellison showed a naive sense of self-importance about Dangerous Visions.

Allegory always seemed to me to be lazy way to tell a story in modern times. And I don’t think “Evensong” is total allegory either because we’re told God’s thoughts and perspective. Would John W. Campbell (Analog), Frederik Pohl (Galaxy), or Edward L. Ferman (F&SF) have rejected “Evensong” in 1967 because it was too dangerous? My guess is they would have run it because of del Rey’s name, although they might have rejected it for being too bland and simple in construction. It’s not a very sophisticated story and comes across as something a precocious student would write who was trying to be daring.

In 1967 revolution and rebellion were in the air. The youth of the 1960s were revolting against the status quo. Looking back, I feel Ellison was trying to do the same thing in the science fiction genre. Ellison was loud, outrageous, and pugnacious, so we might consider him the Abbie Hoffman of the science fiction counter-culture.

As I go through the stories in Dangerous Visions I’m expecting to find psychological snapshots of Ellison, the genre, the writers, and the times. The April 8, 1966, cover of Time Magazine asked if God was dead. Had del Rey forgotten his earlier story and “Evensong” was merely a science fiction riff on the Time cover?

Were the writers in Dangerous Visions thinking about old science fiction, or current events? Was Dangerous Visions anticipating the future, or reacting to an already fading pop culture rebellion?

JWH

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“The Man from the Atom” by G. Peyton Wertenbaker

“The Man from the Atom” by G. Peyton Wertenbaker was first published in the August 1923 issue of Science and Invention before being reprinted in the first issue of Amazing Stories. All the stories in the famous April 1926 issue of Amazing Stories were reprints. However, Wertenbaker has the honor of having the first original science fiction story, “The Coming of the Ice,” published in Amazing Stories, in the June 1926 issue.

Today I’ve been meditating on the idea of science fiction before science fiction was a concept with a label. People who love to read what we now call science fiction back in April 1926 didn’t know they were science fiction fans because the term didn’t exist. Hugo Gernsback was trying to get people to call it scientifiction, a word hard to say. Putting the names “H. G. Wells,” “Jules Verne,” and “Edgar Allen Poe” on the cover in large red letters was the perfect bait for readers who hankered after what we now call science fiction. Although they misspelled Poe’s middle name.

I’ve always assumed readers who bought the first issue of Amazing Stories discovered the kind of fiction they like by reading magazines and newspapers, including pulps. But checking my database I found 108 titles now considered science ficton (or fantastic) published from 1900-1925. But that brings up another question.

How many people had access to bookstores before 1926? I don’t think paperbacks as we know them existed back then. What percentage of Americans were readers? I just finished reading Chasing the Last Laugh: How Mark Twin Escaped Debt and Disgrace with a Round-the-World Comedy Tour by Richard Zacks. It focuses on the years 1893-1895 and discusses book selling. Publishers sold a significant percentage of Twain’s books via door-to-door salesmen. That suggests bookstores were not common.

My guess is would-be science fiction fans mostly read magazines and newspapers. This was an era when radio was becoming popular, but it wasn’t widely adopted yet. That meant most people got their information about the world from newspapers and magazines.

What did people think of “The Man from the Atom?” By today’s standard it’s both stupid and silly. A guy named Kirby has a friend, Professor Martyn, who is an inventor. Kirby enjoys volunteering to be an experimental subject for the professor’s experiments. In this story he’s invited over to test a machine that can do what Alice in Wonderland experienced when eating the food that made her bigger or smaller. Professor Martyn wants to use the device to explore the stars and atoms.

Wertenbaker was likely inspired by The Girl in the Golden Atom by Ray Cummings, which was serialized in All-Story Magazine in 1919. And Cummings was probably inspired by The Diamond Lens (1858) by Fitz james O’Brien and The Time Machine (1895) by H. G. Wells. And maybe young readers of Amazing Stories had already read those stories. I don’t know if any science fiction story is ever completely original. There are always stories that inspired that story, and if the writer is good, their story inspires future science fiction stories.

Kirby is given a space suit to provide oxygen and protect him from heat and cold. He then presses the button to grow larger, and he expands and expands. First, he steps off the earth, then out of the solar system, and then out of the Milky Way, but that’s not said explicitly. That’s because Edwin Hubble was still proving the existence of galaxies in the 1920s and the nature of The Milky Way.

Like many other stories, Kirby grows until he sees our universe as an atom among many, and then expands until he emerges into the water of another world. He realizes that he could never go back to Earth, and for two reasons. First, he couldn’t pick out the atom that was our universe, and two because expanding evidently meant time speeded up, and he figures he was millions of years into the future.

Ultimately, I liked “The Man from the Atom” even though it’s absolute horseshit. It’s just so damn imaginative for 1926. As the hippies use to say, “‘That’s far out, man!” And what kid hasn’t imagined the solar system as an atom?

Of course, I’m curious if readers back then believed any of this story was possible or scientific? Our knowledge of cosmology and subatomic physics in 1926 wasn’t very much. Wertenbaker was savvy enough to give Kirby a space suit. And he figured expanding meant speeding up time. Kirby had to grow much faster than light.

In the July issue, Gernsback wrote “Fiction Versus Facts” and quotes Wertenbaker. He contrasts scientifiction with “sex-type” literature, which I assume he means stories about romance, and says, “Scientifiction goes out into the remote vistas of the universe, where there is still mystery and so still beauty. For that reason, scientifiction seems to me to be the true literature of the future.” Evidently, right from the beginning readers of Amazing Stories, attracted readers of proto-science fiction that were true believers in human potential.

James Wallace Harris, 5/1/24

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Are the Classics the Stories We Don’t Forget?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

James Wallace Harris, 4/30/24

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Four Forewords and Two Introductions to Dangerous Visions

Starting May 5, 2024, our Facebook group read for Sundays will be Dangerous Visions edited by Harlan Ellison. It will be designated GR76W. I thought I’d announce it today so people will have a week to get a copy of the book. There’s a new edition with a new a foreword and introduction, that also includes the 2002 foreword and introduction, and two forewords from the original 1967 edition. Otherwise, the stories are the same. If you have the older editions already, you can read all the forewords and introductions online at Amazon in the Read Sample feature.

I’m going to go over all those forewords and introductions to analyze all the claims for the book that’s been made since 1967. Dangerous Visions is probably the most famous science fiction anthology ever, yet I’m not sure if it ever lived up to the hype. I’m going to cover the forewords and introductions in reverse order.

Foreword 2: “Harlan and I” by Isaac Asimov

It’s interesting Ellison includes two forewords by Asimov, especially since they’re mainly about the two men trading insults. Asimov does not have a story in this collection, and I’m not sure if Asimov isn’t offering the sales value of his name in exchange for slyly warning the reader about Harlan Ellison, who wasn’t famous in 1967, and is one pugnacious little guy.

As we’ll come to see, Dangerous Visions is really all about Harlan Ellison. The success of this anthology is due completely to Ellison’s force of will. And this new 2024 edition is a tribute to his memory. I highly recommend renting Dreams with Sharp Teeth, a documentary about Harlan Ellison. It’s $3.99 at Amazon. Here’s a trailer.

Foreword 1: “The Second Revolution” by Isaac Asimov

In this forward Asimov talks about himself, which was typical, and about the history of science fiction leading up to 1967. Asimov describes Campbell’s Golden Age as the First Revolution in science fiction, and what we’ll be reading in this anthology represents the Second Revolution in science fiction. Readers back in 1967 didn’t know it yet, but this new type of SF will soon be labelled The New Wave in science fiction, something Michael Moorcock and the writers at New Worlds in England had already exploring since the early sixties, and that Judith Merril would call The New Thing in her 1968 anthology England Swings SF. What was great fun was reading all the arguments over New vs. Old in Science Fiction Review in the coming years. That was a fanzine published by Richard Geis that won many Hugo awards. You can read old issues of that fanzine here.

Since its publication, Dangerous Visions has gotten the reputation for being a groundbreaking anthology of New Wave writing. I don’t think Ellison anticipated that. He aimed to be groundbreaking, but I don’t think he intended to start the new wave in science fiction.

Introduction to the 2002 Edition by Harlan Ellison

In this piece, Ellison does a lot of bragging, but it’s been thirty-five years, and he knows how successful and influential Dangerous Visions has been. He asserts that the anthology was a milestone, not because his ego believes it, but because everyone else believes it. But he also says:

Did this really happen? I think over the thirty-three weeks we’ll be discussing Dangerous Visions we need to decide if Ellison was right or not. Was Dangerous Visions the shape of things to come in science fiction? And did the old-style science fiction die off? Personally, I believe readers tried New Wave science fiction, digested it, and then spit out the rest. What happened was another new wave hit in the 1980s after Star Wars came out, when new writers, often with university creative writing experience, entered the genre, and aimed to write SF best sellers. Their work wasn’t daring or literary, but modern writing styles applied to retreading old science fiction themes.

Foreword to the 2002 Edition by Michael Moorcock

I’m surprised by what Moorcock says. He seems to give Harlan Ellison all the credit for the New Wave without even telling how he got the ball rolling in the first place.

What Ellison did next was the hard bit. By any means he knew—by challenging, by cajoling, by flattery and by confrontation—he persuaded the most brilliant Anglophone writers to raise their own standards and offer the world their personal best. He paid them top dollar for it, too—exceeding his publisher’s budget and reaching deep into his own pockets. And he didn’t stop there. He wrote a commentary, beginning with an introduction and running through the whole book, talking about his contributors, their talent and their potential. Singlehandedly he produced a new benchmark, demanding that in future nothing anyone of any ambition did should fall below that mark. He did what we had, as visionaries, wanted to do. He changed our world forever. And ironically, it is usually a mark of a world so fundamentally altered—be it by Stokely Carmichael or Martin Luther King, Jr. or Lyndon Johnson, or Kate Millett—that nobody remembers what it was like before things got better. That’s the real measure of Ellison’s success.

I believe that we need to remember this while we read the stories from Dangerous Visions. Was Moorcock, right? Did the DV writers set a new standard for writing science fiction? Did it change the genre?

Introduction to the Blackstone Publishing Edition of The Dangerous Visions Trilogy by J. Michael Straczynski

Straczynski greatly admired Harlan Ellison, and he’s doing everything he can to elevate and remember Ellison for new editions of the Dangerous Visions anthologies, and a greatest hits collection of Ellison’s own stories.

Straczynski talks about how writers in America have faced censorship and self-censorship. He puts Ellison and Dangerous Visions into a much larger context. He brings up Ralph Ellison, J. D. Salinger, John Steinbeck, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Harper Lee. Has any science fiction writer ever been in that league of writers?

In the original foreword Ellison claims that science fiction writers couldn’t write what they wanted because science fiction magazine editors wouldn’t or couldn’t accept stories about certain topics. It’s also implied that old style science fiction was poorly written. I think as we discuss the Dangerous Visions stories 2024, we need to judge them by those two assertions.

My goal for this group read is to decide if the stories in Dangerous Visions couldn’t be expressed or published before 1967, and were they written to a higher literary standard that uplifted the genre. Was the anthology truly ground breaking, or just a tremendous sales pitch by Harlan Ellison?

James Wallace Harris, 4/28/24

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“Time Waits for Winthrop” by William Tenn

Group Read 72: The Best Science Fiction Stories of 1957

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mr. Mead gets nowhere too.

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

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

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

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

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

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

James Wallace Harris, 4/21/24

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“Flight to Forever” by Poul Anderson

Rereading “Flight to Forever” made me realize something about the core of my personality. There are a limited number of science fictional ideas that I resonate with that I like to regularly recall.

I consider “The Time Machine” the epitome of science fiction because it explored so many new science fiction themes. New to me at age twelve, and maybe new to the world in 1895. Poul Anderson’s “Flight to Forever” recalls many of those same ideas. “Flight to Forever” was first published in Super Science Stories, the November 1950 issue. You can read it here, or listen here. I first read it in Year’s Best Science Fiction Novels: 1952 edited by Bleiler and Dikty. I just read it in The Last Man on Earth edited by Asimov, Greenberg, and Waugh. Here’s a listing of other reprintings.

“Flight to Forever” also reminds me of Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon and Tau Zero, also by Poul Anderson. The writing style, pace, and plotting feels like science fiction from the 1930s. I’m trying to give you enough hints to get you to go read the story before I give spoilers. This cover might also entice you to go read it too, especially if you discovered science fiction before Star Trek.

While reading “Flight to Forever” I kept thinking how it contained several scenes that inspired the kind of sense of wonder I loved experiencing as an adolescent when I first started reading science fiction. I know as an adult that all those mind-blowing concepts are completely unrealistic, just complete bullshit fantasy, but I still love encountering them over and over. Why?

Am I a 72-year-old kid still being enchanted by fairy tales? I like to think of myself as finally growing up and accepting reality for what it is, but I keep retreating into science fiction. Why? Could a good psychiatrist explain the psychology to me? Is it a neurosis? I will admit that science fiction was a coping mechanism for a turbulent adolescence in the 1960s, and maybe it helps me escape the constant chaos in the news of 2020s. Still, that doesn’t explain the specific appeal of science fiction and the way this story triggers my endorphins.

The story begins with Martin Saunders and Sam McPherson setting off in a time machine to travel one hundred years into the future to see why their automatic test time machines haven’t returned. Martin assures his lovely girlfriend Eve Lang that he will return quickly.

Having one’s own time machine is a wonderful fantasy, especially if it’s one you built yourself in your home laboratory. That’s why “The Time Machine” was so appealing. As a kid, I wanted to be Danny Dunn and have access to wonderful time machines and spaceships. It’s why Back to the Future was so much fun in the 1980s even though I was an adult.

Martin and Sam arrive one hundred years into the future without a problem, but when they try to return to their own time, they discover it takes ever more energy to go back in time. They eventually calculate that the amount of energy needed approaches infinity around the seventy-year mark. Poul Anderson has imagined a natural way for time to protect itself from paradoxes. It’s a neat idea.

Martin and Sam decide to head further into the future to see if they can find a time when scientists might know how to break through the going back in time barrier. This is where the story parallels Wells’ unnamed time traveler, stopping now and then to see how society and mankind has changed. This portion of the story also reminds me of Stapledon’s Last and First Men and many science fiction stories about speculated societies.

Sam is soon killed off, so Martin becomes a lone time traveler hoping to find his way back to his beautiful Eve. He acquires another companion, Belgotai, a mercenary from the year 3000 AD. Together they keep going further and further into the future, meeting society after society. They encounter humans that colonize the galaxy, and aliens that conquer Earth. This gives Anderson a chance to dazzle the reader with all kinds of science fictional speculation.

Eventually, Martin and Belgotai join a deposed monarch fighting a renegade galactic empire. That’s when the story becomes an epic space opera. Martin falls for a regal redhead, Empress Taurey. You’d think Martin will settle here, but Anderson has many other adventures for Martin to experience before the story ends. Martin goes further into the future than the time traveler in Wells’ classic story. Like that story, “Flight to Forever” could be considered a dying Earth tale, and it becomes a last man on Earth story too.

I got the feeling Anderson wanted to include every science fictional cliche he could cram into “Flight to Forever.” I won’t tell you anymore. It’s not an exceptional story, but it is appealing. I must wonder if Anderson wasn’t trying to understand the underlying siren song of science fiction when he wrote this story. Of course, he sold it to a cheap market, so he could have been just hacking out a quick novella to thrill kids and pay his rent.

Reading “Flight to Forever” made me wonder if I could collect a small set of stories that pushed all my sense-of-wonder buttons and just reread them whenever I needed therapy. Sort of like what Kip’s father does in Have Space Suit-Will Travel by always rereading Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome. I could create a highly distilled tincture of science fiction to consume when needed, sort of like the playlist of my all-time favorite songs on Spotify.

If I did create a playlist of favorite science fiction stories, would I include “Flight to Forever?” I guess not, because I would keep “The Time Machine” instead. That suggests something to me. Haven’t I been reading one science fiction story after another my whole life just to push the same buttons again? Shouldn’t I explore other stimuli to discover other buttons?

“Flight to Forever” is a nice reminder that certain concepts within my brain like to be remembered, at least every now and then. I’m finding a lot of them in the anthology, The Last Man on Earth. It’s amusing to think about, but I have six large bookcases of science fiction that I could probably reduce to a handful of anthologies that would trigger every type of sense of wonder science fiction ever discovered.

I had a friend that died back in the 1990s. Before he died, he lost interest in the many things he cared about over his lifetime. They went one by one, until he only had two loves left, Benny Goodman and Duane Allman. I call this The Williamson Effect. At 72, I feel I’m in the beginning stages of The Williamson Effect. I’m starting to shed interests. I have a long way to go because I’ve collected an exceedingly long list of interests over my lifetime. I don’t count science fiction as just one interest. Rereading “Flight to Forever” made me see science fiction really is many interests, although a finite set.

James Wallace Harris, 4/15/24

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“Small World” by William F. Nolan

Group Read 72: The Best Science Fiction Stories of 1957

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

James Wallace Harris, 4/13/24

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“The Men Return” by Jack Vance

Group Read 72: The Best Science Fiction Stories of 1957

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

James W. Harris 4/6/24

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“Profession” by Isaac Asimov

Group Read 72: The Best Science Fiction Stories of 1957

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

James Wallace Harris, 4/5/24

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

Group Read 72: The Best Science Fiction Stories of 1957

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

James Wallace Harris, 4/2/24