I need an equivalent saying to “My eyes are bigger than my stomach” that applies to trying to read too much. My reading desires far exceed my ability to get things read. For the past year, I’ve spent most of my reading time consuming short stories. On average, I still squeeze in a book a week, but usually, it’s anthologies or nonfiction, rarely novels. Lately, I’ve been missing novels or I thought I did. Novels get all the buzz. Novels are what readers remember. Novels are what pop culture respect. So I felt I was missing something important.
One thing about getting old is letting things and pursuits you love fall away. I regret not keeping up with new science fiction novels. I’ve identified with being a science fiction fan my whole life, so I feel a pang of loss that I haven’t kept up with the genre.
I felt I should fight that aging trend. I told myself I should catch up. Last week I decided I would look for all the best science fiction novels that have come out in 2022 and read three or four of them. I quickly discovered it was like lighting a cigarette from a Raptor 2 engine. Not only are publishers launching SF novels like SpaceX launches Starlink satellites, but many are reaching orbit with reviewers and list makers, and I’m essentially grounded.
I went to Google and searched for the best science fiction of 2022 and found these lists:
Because I subscribe to Scribd.com I was able to sample several of them right away. For the others, I used the Look Inside feature at Amazon. It didn’t take me long to remember that novels aren’t like short stories, which I can read in a sitting, but each requires a week’s commitment. None of the ones I started grabbed me enough to make me want to make that commitment. I’m willing to take on some long reads, but only if the novel is great. I used to go to the bookstore every week and pick a science fiction novel out by the cover. I was willing to climb many mountains to find an El Dorado.
I needed another plan. I needed to know more about a book before I started reading, a judgment of its value. So I started going through the SF magazines and reading their book reviews.
Twenty years ago I felt I was getting out of touch with current science fiction. Going through all these reviews was like pistol-whipping myself with the truth. I’m completely out of touch. And more depressingly, I realize I’ll never catch up. If I really want to read great 2022 science fiction novels, I’ll just have to wait the years until they are universally recognized.
I probably never did keep up, even when I was reading a paperback a day back in my school days. I just had the illusion I was because so many books and authors felt familiar.
I’ve come to accept that I can’t stay current with modern science fiction. I will accidentally stumble upon a new novel now and then, probably because it gained immense popularity. I’ve also got to accept that what I really like is reading old science fiction and reading about old science fiction. I’m now more of a science fiction scholar, specializing in a period in the genre’s history. I can’t honestly call myself a science fiction fan anymore.
I just finished John Brunner by Jad Smith, a monograph on his life and work, part of the Modern Masters of Science Fiction series from the University of Illinois Press. It inspires me to read several Brunner novels I missed from decades ago. Even that urge is unrealistic, but I’m more likely for me to read one of Brunner’s older novels than to read a new novel from an unknown writer.
For me, at seventy, it’s more rewarding to understand the science fiction novels from my past that were about my generation’s imagined future than trying to read current novels about the new futures young readers are imagining today.
Science fiction isn’t really about the future at all. It’s taken me a lifetime to learn that. Science fiction is about the present and what we think about the future at that moment. Reading the science fiction I grew up with is a kind of meditation on who I was. Reading new science fiction tells me about the current generation. And I’m afraid that opens up a can of worms I can’t face. Pop culture has gotten too fast, too complex, and too prolific, to keep up with.
I’ve got to retreat to a smaller territory, to putter about in my own small land.
One of the aspects of getting old is learning to let go of who you think you are, who you wanted to be, doing what you want to do, going places you wanted to go, and things you wanted to own. That sounds depressing, but getting older requires a kind of streamlining or downsizing so you won’t get depressed. It’s just a practicality.
For a couple of days, it became depressing trying to catch up, but now I’m happier.
This review is a product of synergy and serendipity from what I’ve been reading from diverse sources over the last 40 hours. I’m going to try and reassemble all my influences before talking about my reading of “Fair” by John Brunner.
Yesterday, I got a tweet from Joachim Boaz about John Brunner (Modern Masters of Science Fiction) by Jad Smith and it intrigued me enough that I bought the Kindle edition and started reading it. I’ve read Stand on Zanzibar twice, once just after it came out, and again when it was published as an audiobook. And I’ve read a handful of Brunner’s short stories. Normally, that wouldn’t be enough to get me to read a monograph on an author, but I have a fond memory of spending an afternoon once with John Brunner. My college roommate was on the programs committee which brought in Brunner, Fred Pohl, and James Gunn for a morning panel at our school about science fiction. Greg was also their chauffeur, and I got to tag along. I mention this not out of name-dropping but because the authors took us to lunch and Greg and I sat and listened to them talk, Then afterward, we took Pohl and Gunn to the airport and Brunner asked if we’d take him down to see the Lorraine Motel. This was Memphis in the early 1970s before it was renovated into the National Civil Rights Museum. The key piece of information here is Brunner told us about being involved with the Martin Lurther King, Jr. Society in London. After, we went downtown Brunner took Greg and me out to eat at a Mexican restaurant. The impression he made on me came back when I started reading the Jad Smith monograph.
Joachim had also blogged “Future Media Short Story Review: John Brunner’s ‘Fair’ (1956)” but I wasn’t ready to read the story just yet. I was into the monograph, and the monograph inspired me to read Earth Is But a Star (1958) reprinted as an Ace Double The 100th Millenium (1959) and later expanded into Catch A Falling Star (1968). Jad Smith compared it to The Dying Earth (1950) by Jack Vance which I’ve recently read, but what really grabbed me is the inside cover blurb that quotes a passage at the beginning of the novel:
I know you’re wondering why I am digressing so much but stay with me. The sentiment of this quote is exactly what I’m worried about at the moment. But in the Jad Smith book on John Brunner, it’s what he worried about across his entire career, and in so many stories. It can be summed up by this question: What do we owe the future? My faint memories of meeting John Brunner retained an impression that he was both far more sophisticated than I was, and he was concerned about the future and mankind. He wanted us to solve our problems. It’s why he was involved with Martin Luther King, Jr. Society in London. I learned in the Jad Smith book Brunner founded that society.
Yesterday I also read “How To Do More Good” in Time Magazine. And twice yesterday I ran into reviews of What We Owe the Future by William MacAskill. Are you now getting the serendipity and the synergy of my reading? This topic was often at the core of what Brunner wrote. Like the fate of the humans in To Catch a Falling Star, we know our future too regarding climate change. Brunner could never understand why we don’t do something about all the problems we faced. In his later books he got quite cynical, and so am I. This is what draws me to him now.
All of this is important too for when I finally read his early story “Fair” an hour ago. I’ve now read 44% of the Jad Smith book on Brunner, and quite often Brunner’s plots are about saving the future. In his early stories, Smith said he would start out with a very bleak outlook but then end them with endless optimism. That applies to “Fair.”
Smith also summarized a common trait of Brunner’s where he would create an anti-hero, and that’s also what he’s done in “Fair.” Smith described how Brunner, a British author, had to write for the American markets to earn a living. Brunner grew up reading American pulps and understood how American science fiction was different from British science fiction. He tried to develop a style that merged the two. And he slowly worked toward developing a strong realistic attitude towards his subject matter even while using wild pulp conventions.
However, by the time he got to his most successful period of Stand on Zanzibar, The Sheep Look Up, and Shockwave Rider, many reviewers felt he was too realistic, too mainstream. I think we can see a hint of this in “Fair.”
“Fair” is about a nasty future. “Fair” is about Alec Jevons, a man who has lost his job, been left by his wife, and is rejected by society because his mother wasn’t of the right nationality. It was written during the Cold War, but it’s set in the future that Jevons felt he help create. Actually, it is the future we are creating. (And isn’t Brunner always speaking to us?) The fair of the story is a sprawling science-fictional fair of the future where people go to escape their miserable lives. Jevons is older than the mostly young people at the fair and he impresses them with his physical abilities on one gigantic ride designed to throw riders off. But where he has his revelation is in a booth that provides mental experiences that feel real.
I won’t tell you anymore. By luck, my best reading copy of the story was in SF: Authors’ Choice 4 edited by Harry Harrison. I say luck because it has an introduction by John Brunner that tells us quite a bit about why and how he wrote this story. I’m going to reprint it here hoping I’m not violating copyrights too much, but these introductions are seldom reprinted, and often are very enlightening.
Read the ISFDB page for where “Fair” has been reprinted. I always enjoy it when I discover a story I’m searching for is already in one of the anthologies I’ve collected over the years. But you can also read “Fair” online in New Worlds (March 1956) where it was first published under the byline of Keith Woodcott.
I love that I’m rereading these older SF stories. I feel guilty about not reading new science fiction, and not knowing about the latest popular science fiction novels. But I’m retreading over territory I explored growing up. The first time around I read stories that appealed to the teenage me. I mainly focused on Heinlein, Clarke, Asimov, Dick, and Delany, but I read fairly widely. What I’m discovering in old age is I missed so much the first time around. There were so many writers I didn’t get to. Reading the Jad Smith monograph on Brunner tempts me to read a lot of Brunner that I just didn’t know was there.
The monograph also adds a sense of philosophy and intellectualism that I also missed in reading science fiction when I was young. John Brunner had quite a lot to say in “Fair,” and Smith is helping me see how Brunner developed as a writer.
I was an English major in college and had read A Farewell to Arms (1929) and The Sun Also Rises (1926) and a handful of Hemingway’s short stories. Other than classroom discussion I knew little about Hemingway. I’ve read several biographies since then, and more of his fiction, but at the time I didn’t know about the central inspiration of “The Hemingway Hoax,” that Hadley, Hemingway’s first wife, had lost all his early manuscripts. At the time I thought that fascinating and probably encouraged me to go read about Hemingway.
“The Hemingway Hoax” focuses on John Baird, a Boston University professor specializing in Hemingway. Baird is a vet, wounded in Vietnam, who identifies with Hemingway’s war wounds, and eventually makes a list of all the things they share. He’s married to a much younger woman, Lena. They are vacationing in the Florida Keys, but are worried about their future. Baird’s trust fund is about to run out and they are used to living a rich lifestyle. Baird is afraid of how Lena will react to living within an academic’s salary. Then Baird meets Castle, a con man who suggests a scheme for Baird to forge a lost manuscript of Ernest Hemingway. Baird is not really interested, but think’s it is an amusing idea. Lena who married Baird for his money connives with Castle to force Baird into the caper. Along the way, Castle cons a woman named Pansy into the scheme too.
The magazine version of “The Hemingway Hoax” is a long novella, which Haldeman later expanded into a short 155-page novel. (Or did he cut it down for magazine publication?) The novella won both the Hugo and Nebula awards. See Mark R. Kelly’s blog for a comparison of the novella and novel. This long story follows three main plot threads:
The Hemingway Hoax – how to forge a Hemingway unpublished manuscript. I thought this was an A+ idea for a plot both at forty and seventy. Unfortunately, Haldeman doesn’t stick with this plot. A few years ago PBS had an episode of Secrets of the Dead that told of an effort to forge a book by Galileo. It was tremendously fascinating. Baird does do a bit of work on this plot, finding typewriters and paper Hemingway would have used and starting a couple of drafts that were interesting. The old me was quite disappointed when Haldeman didn’t finish this plot, but the younger me was more than happy when Haldeman introduced the science fiction.
The Baird Con – as a counterplot, when Lena and Castle plan to con Baird into doing something illegal it could have taken the story into noir territory. The older me loves film noir and was excited by that direction. This also could have been an A+ idea too, but it was mainly used for sex and violent scenes. When I was younger I liked sex and violent scenes, but the old me hates excessive violence, and graphic sex scenes only seem suitable for hot romance novels and porn. I could understand taking the noir route with the cheating wife, skipping the science fiction, and selling it to Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine or Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Better yet, I would have been even more impressed if Haldeman had skipped both the noir and the SF and gone the straight literary route like Possession by A. S. Byatt, another story about a literary mystery.
The Hemingway Demon – the story has one other character, a supernatural character that physically looks like Hemingway from different times in his life. I call it a demon because like Maxwell’s Demon, it guards the flow actualities between universes in a multiverse Haldeman calls the Omniverse. When I was young this was exciting stuff, but the old crotchety me considers multiverse plots much like time travel plots, easy to abuse. When anything can happen it spoils the story for me. I like my fictional universes to have limitations that reign in the plots. Haldeman goes wild with the universe hopping. That was fun at forty but tedious at seventy. It would have been mindblowing to me at thirteen if the story had been available for me to read in 1964.
You can’t expect a writer to write what you want. That’s completely unfair. But as a reader, every story creates anticipation. Stories are great when they fulfill that initial anticipation. In this reading, Haldeman got me excited about forging Hemingway and then didn’t complete the mission. I have to wonder if he felt compelled to add the science fiction thread because he’s a science fiction writer, and knows where to sell science fiction. I wonder if he would have even liked writing the story as mainstream fiction. When I was young I wanted everything to be science fiction, but as I’ve gotten older, my interests have widened. Not only do I not need everything to be science fiction, but when it is science fiction it needs to be reasonably realistic and down to Earth.
Getting old has done something to my reading tastes. My time in this life is dwindling, and my physical health also limits how much I can read. I now hate when stories are padded with extra scenes. I generally prefer science fiction at the short story or novelette length. Most novellas stretch out ideas too much. The older, impatient me, felt Haldeman was too ambitious with this story. What I really love is a story that has lots of realistic details, good characterization, a tight plot, and a compelling narrative style. But I want it focused. I don’t want any wasted words or scenes.
I’m afraid when reading “The Hemingway Hoax” Haldeman hooked me on the writing of a forged Hemingway manuscript and then distracted me with all the omniverse mumbo-jumbo. It allowed him to come up with a clever idea of what happened to the lost manuscripts, and it gave Haldeman a chance to write from Hemingway’s point of view as he lived his life backward. All that was interesting, but wasn’t part of the story that hooked me this time.
When I was young I found stories and novels that used real people as fictional characters to be neat and fun. But over a lifetime of reading biographies, I now see such a practice as exploitation – an easy way to get readers’ attention. Reading such books as The Paris Wife by Paula McLain produced a false idea of what Hadley and Hemingway were like. I wrote about this in my essay, “Why Did Ernest Hemingway Leave Hadley Out of The Sun Also Rises?“
In recent years, we’ve seen more and more best sellers and movie blockbusters that fictionalize historical people, and I’ve realized that I don’t like this trend. That has tainted my rereading of “The Hemingway Hoax.” I thought John Baird was a great idea for a character, a wounded vet who identified with Hemingway in so many ways, including his war wounds. And I thought a fictional character who is a Hemingway scholar trying to forge a lost Hemingway manuscript was a legitimate use of Hemingway’s name in fiction. Creating a supernatural demon that monitors the influence of Hemingway across the multiverse is a fun science fictional idea, but not really significant or meaningful to me at 70.
When we’re young any far-out idea is fun. But now that I’m old, I like my speculation within the realm of realism. “The Hemingway Hoax” is a case where the story was five stars when I was young, but only three stars when I’m old.
What if our pleasure in life is wallowing in the minutiae of our favorite subject? I follow a lot of YouTubers and most of their channels are about going deeper and deeper into a beloved special interest. When we are young we pursue pleasures of the flesh, but as we get older we follow our Alice of interest down a rabbit hole. This lets us find our true tribe, our people.
I feel like I’m among a few survivors of a tribe that is dying out. I lament that our culture and language are disappearing. My tribe is those beings who grew up reading science fiction magazines in the mid-20th century. I know that tribe was never very large and that all the various tribes of pop culture eventually fade from the collective memory of the present. But this sense of passing is why I find myself enjoying recursive science fiction so much now. Recursive science fiction is science fiction about science fiction, and quite often it remembers the genre’s past. And to enjoy such stories requires either a direct experience of the past or a good education about that past.
One of the funniest recursive science fiction stories I’ve ever read is one that seems to parody/remember more of the genre than any other recursive science fiction story I’ve read. The story is “The Curse of the Mhondoro Nkabele” by Eric Norden (Eric Pelletier 1899-1979). Unfortunately, it’s been a long time since this story has been reprinted, meaning if you want to legally read it, it will require tracking down a used copy of F&SF for September 1980, The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction 24th Series edited by Edward L. Ferman in 1982, or Inside the Funhouse: 17 SF Stories about SF edited by Mike Resnick in 1992. If you have a free account with the Internet Archive you can check outThe Best of F&SF 24th for one hour. Since this story hasn’t been reprinted in 30 years, and its author has been dead for 43 years, I hope their heirs won’t mind me offering you a pdf copy. (If you do, let me know and I’ll take it down, but I doubt if six people will read it.)
Of course, not everyone will find this story funny or meaningful. It depends on you knowing a good deal about the genre’s history. I thought I’d review the story by providing links to the pertinent bits of history that knowing will let the reader appreciate the story.
The story is an exchange of letters between Oginga Nkabele, a young man from Africa studying in America, and Edward L. Ferman, the editor of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (F&SF). Nkabele, from the tribe of Diolas in Senegal, Africa, was educated by French and Belgian missionaries who he refers to as the Holy Ghost Fathers. One of his teachers, Father Devlin brought three steamer trunks containing over five hundred pulp science fiction magazines from 1936-1952. Nkabele has read these magazines so thoroughly that he’s even memorized some of his favorite stories. Nkabele feels he’s an expert on science fiction and decides to become a rich science fiction writer while in America.
Unfortunately, the stories he submits to Ed Ferman are modeled on the writing styles that were heavily criticized for bad writing when they were new and are now so out of fashion as to be glaringly awful. Ferman is appalled by Nkabele’s stories and rejects them immediately. Nkabele feels the rejection letter is a mistake and keeps pestering Ferman with more letters. In fact, he never accepts any rejection and keeps trying to convince Ferman his stories are brilliant and will make him famous and promises they’ll help sell more copies of F&SF.
Through the exchange of letters, two fun plots emerged. One is a horror tale for SF magazine editors which is hilarious if you’re not an editor, and the other is about how the genre has changed drastically from its past which is still wistfully nostalgic for some.
First, it’s important to know the magazines Nkabele admires. It’s notable that Father Devlin did not subscribe to Astounding Science-Fiction, the magazine revered until recent decades (another irony of this tale). Nkabele’s favorites are:
Nkabele’s favorite writers are Richard Shaver, L. Ron Hubbard, and Stanley G. Weinbaum, but is also a fan of Robert Moore Williams, E. E. “Doc” Smith, Nelson Bond, Ray Cummings, Eric Frank Russell, P. Schuyler Miller, and Raymond Z. Gallum. Although not specific to this story, if you know about The Shaver Mystery you’ll have a sense of the kind of thinking fans of these magazines pursued.
Most telling of all is that Nkabele’s favorite editor is Raymond A. Palmer. That’s quite revealing. Young science fiction writers today want to erase the memory of John W. Campbell, but when I was growing up, science fiction fans wanted to forget Ray Palmer’s impact on the genre.
To understand Nkabele’s taste in science fiction, even more, is to know the names of the three stories he keeps submitting:
“Astrid of the Asteroids”
“Slime Slaves of G’Harn”
“Ursula of Uranus”
The magazines Nkabele loved were the ones that appealed most to adolescents featuring exotic interplanetary adventure stories told in purple prose. The exact kind of science fiction John W. Campbell was fighting against in our Golden Age of Science Fiction. But Nkabele considers his science fiction the actual Golden Age of Science Fiction. Over the decades, different generations have defined their own Golden Age of Science Fiction. Youth always reject the past. Nkabele can’t fathom why Ferman is rejecting his Golden Age.
It helps to know a little about Edward L. Ferman since he’s a major character, but it’s very important to know about Harlan Ellison. Ferman panics and gives Nkabele Ellison’s address and phone number to get rid of him. Ferman tells Nkabele about Ellison’s legendary SF anthology Dangerous Visions. Now Harlan Ellison starts writing letters and Eric Norden parodies Ellison’s writing style in an over-the-top style that wasn’t far from Ellison’s own. They even rope in Isaac Asimov. Norden does a great job of making each letter writer sound like a distinct personality. Sometimes the epistolary caricatures aren’t so flattering and it’s a wonder Norden didn’t get sued by Ellison who was known for his litigious wrath.
It also helps to know about BEMs – Bug Eye Monsters – especially SF covers that showed BEMs running off with mostly naked Earth women. BEMs in SF anticipated the whole abductee theme of UFO fanatics. And Ray Palmer turned his SF magazines into UFO fanaticism.
Parodying science fiction has been around for a long time, and Norden mentions a classic, Venus on a Half Shell by Kilgore Trout. Kilgore Trout is a character in many of Kurt Vonnegut’s novels. But I’ll have more to say about such other fun novels and stories soon.
I’m not sure how many current SF readers will enjoy “The Curse of the Mhondoro Nkabele” by Eric Norden. Is the pop culture that it skewers too oldy moldy? I tend to think the people who will enjoy it most are the people of my tribe.
I’ve been reading recursive science fiction lately, and one of the most famous recursive science fiction stories is Barry N. Malzberg’s “A Galaxy Called Rome.” Recursive science fiction is science fiction about science fiction. Sometimes this is a story that mentions science fiction, sometimes it’s a story about science fiction writers, their fans, and science fiction conventions, and sometimes it’s in-jokes about the genre, other times recursive science fiction is about the writing of science fiction, and that’s the case with “A Galaxy Called Rome.”
Malzberg is known for his recursive science fiction, especially since he seems to have experienced a great deal of existential angst over being a science fiction writer. NESFA even came out with a collection of his recursive SF called The Passage of the Light: The Recursive Science Fiction of Barry N. Malzberg.
“A Galaxy Called Rome” is a novelette composed of 14 short chapters. It first appeared in the July 1975 issue of F&SF and has been anthologized a number of times. It is probably Malzberg’s most famous work of short science fiction.
Malzberg expanded the same story into 49 chapters for a 1975 short novel version retitled Galaxies. Malzberg gained attention for a handful of science fiction novels in the first half of the 1970s. He won the John W. Campbell Award for Beyond Apollo but got a fair amount of recognition for Galaxies, The Falling Astronauts, and Herovit’s World. He went on to publish prolifically in and outside of the genre
“A Galaxy Called Rome” and Galaxies are also works of what the literary world calls metafiction – fiction about fiction. I prefer the novelette version of the story because the novelette is my favorite length for science fiction. However, the longer version of the story, Galaxies, lets Malzberg dig deeper into the nature of writing science fiction.
I want to recommend this story, but with carefully considered restrictions. If you read science fiction for escape this story isn’t for you. Well, if you want to know why you read science fiction for escape, then you might want to read it. This story is for people who like to intellectually examine everything and take things apart. This story is for readers who love academic exercises in cleverness. This story is for readers who want to know how magic tricks work.
I alternated reading Galaxies with listening to Red Rising by Pierce Brown. It was an excellent contrast. Red Rising is exactly what most science fiction readers want to read. The story immediately sucks the reader into a fantasy reality. It’s designed for your mind to forget the real world and immerse yourself in a fantasy about Mars. The reader is expected to buy into its make-believe. Galaxies on the other hand constantly remind the reader of our reality while describing how a science fiction writer goes about their business of fooling the reader.
Reading “A Galaxy Called Rome” or Galaxies could ruin your love of science fiction. Or it could make you appreciate escapist literature all the more. I know when I would switch to Red Rising after reading a dozen chapters of Galaxies I felt like that guy in The Matrix, Cypher, who wanted to take the blue pill and enjoy the juicy steak. And that might be a good analogy. Reading Malzberg is like taking the red pill and seeing an ugly reality. It might be philosophically enlightening to know the realness of reality, but it’s still grim and gritty.
This is probably why Malzberg never became a popular sci-fi writer, he was too hung up on reality. Most of the recursive science fiction I read in Inside the Funhouse was big fun. Recursive science fiction comes in many flavors but they can be roughly divided into two kinds. One kind celebrates our addiction, and the other makes you feel like you’re withdrawing from heroin. Reading “A Galaxy Called Rome” is like learning about Santa Claus as a kid, it hurts but makes you feel grown up. Reading Galaxies can feel like the agony of soul searching before deciding on becoming an atheist.
I ended up highlighting almost ten percent of Galaxies when reading the Kindle version. I won’t show all these quotes because that would probably be a copyright violation, but I do want to show enough of them to give people a chance to understand what Malzberg is doing. Malzberg is very open and straightforward with his intentions as stated in this first section.
It’s rather interesting that Malzberg tells us how the idea of the story within a story came to him. Well, the idea for the story he’s going to use to discuss writing. In the course of reading a novel about writing a novel, we will develop a whole story with characters, setting, plot, and conflict. However, we won’t experience that story like we normally do. Imagine being served a meal and instead of enjoying eating it, we put it under scientific analysis.
One thing Malzberg doesn’t do is try to imagine what we readers think while reading all of this. We readers are also part of the process. As I read Galaxies I got the idea that Malzberg both loved and hated science fiction. I got the impression he wanted to be a respected writer of hard SF, but his sense of reality conflicted with the fantasy nature of writing escapist literature.
These early sections are quite seductive, but I must warn anyone considering buying Galaxies that the going will get tough. “A Galaxy Called Rome” is the light fluffy version to read for those who aren’t ready to climb a mountain. Even though Galaxies is only 154 pages long, it’s a Ph.D. dissertation on deconstructing science fiction novel writing.
The story within this novel is about Lena Thomas who is the only living crew member of an FTL spaceship, Skipstone, that carries a cargo of 515 dead people in cryonic suspension. The year is 3902. Like in Heinlein’s novel, The Door Into Summer, rich people with diseases invest their estates and freeze their bodies in the hopes of one day being revived and cured. Those estates pay for the development of interstellar travel. Those dead people will eventually communicate with Lena like the dead in PKD’s Ubik when Lena and the Skipstone get trapped in the black galaxy. This allows Malzberg to explore metaphysical and religious themes in writing a novel. The ship also has robots programmed with human minds that help Malzberg explore other science fictional themes. His story notes get more and more extensive while getting more and more complicated. This also allows Malzberg to show how worldbuilding and plotting are developed as a writer tells their story.
Malzberg uses all this exploration in writing a science fiction novel to also speculate about the future. He imagines our civilization collapsing and being completely forgotten and a new world civilization rising in the following nineteen centuries. Malzberg imagines we’ll face limitations we can’t overcome and wild possibilities that far exceed today’s limitations.
Much of this novel is about being a writer, and specifically a writer of science fiction. You get hints along the way that Malzberg might be jealous of famous literary writers like Cheever and Updike, at other times you might feel his resentment at not being more successful at being a science fiction writer. But Malzberg is confident of his own gifts too.
In some of the actual passages of the novel, the dialog reminds me of Sheckley or Adams, or maybe even PKD, and even then Malzberg keeps making digs at science fiction.
Over time, the conflicts Malzberg provides for Lena’s story become repetitious. He knows he’s padding this novel, and even talks about how writers do pad their novels. The second half of Lena’s story becomes one long dark night of her soul struggling to escape the black galaxy. I have to wonder if such soul searching also plagues Malzberg.
Eventually, you wonder if Malzberg can find an ending to Lena’s story. Chapter after chapter he tortures the poor woman, and we can’t imagine any possible happy ending. Yet, Malzberg gives us a very strange ending that I was quite happy to read. I guess he took pity on us.
Reading Galaxies makes me doubt reading science fiction, but then I’ve doubted my addiction to our genre for decades. As a young person back in the 1960s and 1970s I thought science fiction was a wonderful tool for thinking about all the possibilities of the future, both good and bad. But after living to the year 2022, which was a very futuristic sounding year back in 1965, I know the future is everything we never imagined.
Contrasting Galaxies with Red Rising it’s quite obvious that science fiction’s purpose is escape. And the genius of writing science fiction is creating stories set in fictional worlds that are so compelling we forget this one. By Malzberg intruding into his novel and telling us everything only shows we don’t want the author intruding into our stories. Some philosophers have speculated that God invented our reality and walked away from his creation and that’s a great thing. That knowing God’s intention would ruin his/her/its art. I always felt Heinlein destroyed his career after he started poking his nose into his stories.
“A Galaxy Called Rome” and Galaxies were written as the New Wave in science fiction was fading and postmodernism fiction in the literary world was becoming old hat. It was an impressive experiment of the times, but as far as I know, readers have lost interest in such experiments. The Post Moderns of our times demand wokeness in fiction but not the metafictional kind. If anything, modern SF readers want longer voyages of fictional escape with far greater feats of worldbuilding.
It would be interesting to see someone write a version of Galaxies today that reveals what today’s SF writers go through to entertain their readers in the 2020s.
Emily St. John Mandel’s Sea of Tranquility is straight-ahead science fiction but it doesn’t feel like a genre novel. Explaining why will be hard. Science fiction has always avoided clear definition and trying to discern the difference between hardcore genre science fiction and literary science fiction might prove equally elusive. For most readers, it doesn’t even matter.
Sea of Tranquility was both entertaining and well-written. I liked it quite a lot. Many readers at Goodreads loved this short novel and gave the story five stars. However, the story was missing something for me. It lacked the intense impact I get from classic genre science fiction I love, even ones not as well told as Sea of Tranquility.
Most modern science fiction aims to be as dashing as Hans Solo but Sea of Tranquility was as mundane as a computer programmer. I considered that a positive but I have to admit the story had a certain blandness even though it dealt with many big science fictional concepts.
I do not want to tell you about those concepts because the way Mandel rolls them out makes it fun to explore the plot clue by clue. If you don’t want to read the novel but want to know a precise summary, Wikipedia has a blow-by-blow overview. However, I do want to tell you enough to want to read it. In the year 2401 Gaspery-Jacques learns about three anomalies in history. In the years 1912 a man named Edwin, in 2020 a woman named Mirella, and in 2203 a woman named Olive had the same bizarre experience that they’ve recorded in various ways in their own times. Historians in the 25th century find those records and decide they might be clues to an amazing hypothesis. Gaspery-Jacques decides he wants to be the person that solves the mystery even though he’s only an uneducated house detective for a hotel in a colony on the Moon. Lucky for Gaspery-Jacques, his sister is a brilliant scientist with connections.
BEWARE – Spoilers Ahead
To get into my discussion of mainstream science fiction versus genre science fiction will require giving away the story. The structure of Sea of Tranquility is much like another mainstream science fiction novel, Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. Cloud Atlas was far richer and more intense than Sea of Tranquility, more like a genre novel. Both deal with epic concepts, but only Cloud Atlas felt epic in the storytelling. Mandel gives us a much quieter story and that’s often a trait of mainstream science fiction. Its tone is like two other recent mainstream science fiction novels, Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro and Machines Like Me by Ian McEwan.
Sea of Tranquility explores the idea that our reality is a simulation. In the 25th century, scientists have a very carefully controlled type of time travel. They theorize the anomalies experienced by Edwin, Mirella, and Olive might be glitches in the simulation software. After five years of training, they send Gaspery-Jacques back to interview each of these people. We don’t know that right away, because Mandel at first tells each of their stories chronologically in time. I’m thinking of reading the book again to see if knowing that they are being interviewed by a time traveler changes how I experience the story. I guessed this might be happening because loose-lips by some reviewers said the book is a time travel novel. It would have been more fun not knowing that.
That’s another difference between mainstream science fiction and genre science fiction. Their stories often begin ordinarily and feel mundane and the science-fictional concepts creep into the tale. Genre science fiction often begins like the opening of a heavy metal concert, while mainstream science fiction begins with a quiet chamber quartet before a cerebral symphony.
Genre science fiction writers love to crank the volume to 11 and keep it there, while mainstream science fiction unfolds gently at volume 4 and politely increases to 6 or 7 at carefully chosen moments. If you compare Hyperion by Dan Simmons to Sea of Tranquility you’ll know what I mean.
Sea of Tranquility is science fiction for PBS Masterpiece. Station Eleven was Mandel’s polar opposite of Mad Max: Fury Road. Even though Sea of Tranquility explores such a deafening concept as the simulation hypothesis it does so in a whisper. A genre novelist writing the same story would have had epic rents in the fabric of reality, killing millions while its heroes save the universe at the last minute. Mandel’s hero eerily validates the hypothesis with a kind of “Ummm, that’s weird.”
Sea of Tranquility is also a pandemic novel about a writer writing a novel about a pandemic just before a pandemic hits. Olive Llewellyn is a novelist who lives on the Moon but tells of her publicity tour on Earth just before a brutal plague spreads across Earth in 2203. I assume Olive’s details and feelings about promoting a book came from Mandel’s own experience. Some of the characters in this novel were in Mandel’s previous novel, The Glass Hotel, and Edwin’s full name is Edwin St. John St. Andrew. Since he shares a middle name with Mandel I have to wonder if he was an ancestor of hers? Now I have to read The Glass Hotel. One of my favorite writers, Larry McMurty liked to recycle characters in other novels.
Finally, I wonder if fans of science fiction by Margaret Atwood, Hilary St. John Mandel, or Kazuo Ishiguro would also be fans of Dan Simmons, Iain M. Banks, and James S. A. Corey? Or vice versa? Let me know how you feel.
Imagine a world where science fiction had never been invented. Could you have written the first science fiction story? Be honest now, and think hard about yourself and what I’m asking. Before Galileo, did anyone think the Moon was a world that could be visited? Once people heard Galileo saw mountains on the Moon with his telescope they began to imagine going there. Science fiction needed certain kinds of seed ideas to begin. When the seeds come from reality I’ll call that Stage 1 science fiction. We don’t see a lot of that kind of science fiction anymore. Maybe The Martian by Andy Weir when he tried to realistically portray growing potatoes on Mars or when a writer extrapolates on current events like John Brunner did in Stand on Zanzibar back in 1968 or what Kim Stanley Robinson did in The Ministry for the Future in 2020.
Once the genre got rolling, science fiction seeded itself. One story about a trip to the Moon inspired an infinity. I call that Stage 2 science fiction. In Stage 2 writers try to stick to reality but work off the collective knowledge of the genre. Eventually, science fiction was making copies of copies, where the inspiration had no connection with reality. I’ll call that Stage 3 science fiction.
Early stories about traveling to the Moon were Stage 1 because it’s not likely the authors had read each other’s work. But when Verne and Wells wrote their novels of lunar exploration a lot of their inspiration was Stage 2. When John Varley wrote his stories about a lunar colony, most of the science-fictional concepts within those stories had been germinating for generations in the genre – Stage 3.
I believe science fiction writers have an ongoing conversation that never ends. To take part in this conversation, publish a story. It can be Stage 1, 2, or 3. To be heard and answered requires writing something in Stage 1 or 2, or a very creative Stage 3.
This is why I’ve become fascinated by the forgotten writer Walter F. Moudy. The 1950s and 1960s were a fertile time for Stage 1 and Stage 2 stories. By the second half of the 1960s and early 1970s writers who made themselves noticed were writing a baroque Stage 3 science fiction to attract attention. For example, the works of Samuel R. Delany, Roger Zelazny, and Robert Silverberg were based on old SF ideas told with new writing styles. Unfortunately, Moudy wrote Stage 3 stories in the same prose style that the classics of Stage 2 were written. His 1964-65 stories feel like they were written in 1954. One reason the New Wave writers of the 1960s were so important is they recognized that retelling Stage 2 stories in the same way, would get them ignored. The reason why Heinlein blazed onto the scene in 1939 is that he wrote Stage 1 stories with a new writing style, making his stories stand out.
I enjoy reading Walter F. Moudy in 2022 because I doubt I could write any better than he did, and he was responding to the stories I admired back then. His writing ability and knowledge of the genre were just good enough to get five works published and then become forgotten. As a would-be science fiction writer, I greatly identify with that. He wanted to join the conversation and made the effort to have his say. He just wasn’t heard, but now after decades, I’m listening.
While reading Walter F. Moudy’s meager output of science fiction I kept feeling his stories were inspired by the science fiction he and I both read. They made me wonder what he was trying to say in the ongoing conversation.
Of the five science fiction stories, I’ve read by Walter F. Moudy, “The Search for Man” is my favorite, although if I reread “The Survivor” or No Man On Earth I might change my mind. All were good fun, old-fashion science fiction, the kind my nostalgia loves. As I read “The Search for Man,” I kept wondering what science fiction Moudy had read that inspired this story. I can’t say for sure but this story about robots speculating about long-dead or gone humans reminded me of City by Clifford Simak. That “The Search for Man” set hundreds of years into the future speculated about our times and turned us into a religion reminded me of A Canticle for Leibowitz. That both the protagonists of No Man On Earth and “The Search for Man” were about a super-human and a super-robot reminded me of The Hampdenshire Wonder, Slan, Odd John, Chocky, Stranger in a Strange Land, and all the other science fiction stories about next-stage beings. Reading those two Moudy stories made me think about how I would have written a story on that theme. How much could I base it on reality, and how much would be inspired by other science fiction?
“The Search for Man,” begins with a baby being born, but it’s a strange birth, a kind of decanting that made me think of Brave New World. Then we learn the baby will only have three senses, and it will be put into a robotic baby’s body, the first of four body types it will use.
Moudy sets up a good mystery for us. Humans died out hundreds of years earlier, with all other animal life. The humans had tried to travel to the stars, but it appears their three missions had failed. The robot brains have improved their brains with genetics found in 12 human brains that had been preserved. The robots have found long-dead humans in various kinds of chambers that tried to create suspended animation. Their hope is to find a chamber with a viable human to resurrect. There are classes of robots that are archeologists and others that are priests that teach a strange religion based on their theories about humans. All of that is a very appealing setup for a story, at least for me.
I’m not sure Walter F. Moudy would have written “The Search for Man” without reading a lot of science fiction. Part of the conversation science fiction writers have is about science fictional ideas, but the other part is about how to present those ideas in a story. I felt “The Search for Man” was Moudy’s reply to both but in the language of 1950s science fiction. I wonder if he had been more of a stylist would he have made a greater impact?
“The Search for Man” was published in an original anthology In The Wake of Man that’s never been reprinted. I’ve been trying to get a copy, but it’s expensive, starting at $75 used. I had found a $10 copy for sale, but my order was canceled a couple days after I ordered it. Right now the only source for this story is a copy of In The Wake of Man at Archive.org. If you are a member, which is free, you can check it out for an hour to read online. Thanks to Joachim Boaz for finding that link.
Joachim Boaz and Rich Horton have also been writing about Walter F. Moudy. Rich is planning to review all of Moudy’s work soon.
Writers cherish the myth that their work will make their names immortal. And it is true we have remembered some authors for thousands of years. However, if you want to be heard across time, you have to write something timeless.
My friend Mike and I are fascinated by forgotten writers, especially forgotten science fiction writers. We can’t help but wonder why a writer quits after their initial success of selling a few stories or maybe a novel. Mike texted me the other day about such a writer he discovered in an interview with Geraldine Brooks in TheNew York Times.
It was part of their By the Book series, where all writers are asked the same standard questions. My favorite question: “What’s your favorite book no one else has heard of?” Often this makes for an interesting title to chase down. Brooks said: “‘No Man on Earth,’ by Walter Moudy. The only other person I know who has read it is my son because I pressed it on him.”
So one well-regarded literary writer resurrects Walter F. Moudy 49 years after he died. That one little mention in the Times got me to read his novel. Maybe a few other people will too. And it’s a pretty good science fiction story for 1964. The question is, could it have been better? What would have made that novel stay in print? Is it worth reprinting? And do I recommend you read it?
It turns out that No Man On Earth is a forgotten science fiction novel by a forgotten science fiction writer, Walter F. Moudy (1929-1973). His ISFDB entry lists one novel and four short stories. This novel appeared in October of 1964, and then three of his four stories appeared in April and May of 1965, two in Fantastic and one in Amazing, both edited by Cele Lalli (Goldsmith). Moudy would have been in his mid-thirties. In 1966 he published another novel, The Ninth Commandment, probably not science fiction, and one I can’t track down. Finally, in 1975, after his death, Moudy had one more story, a novella, published in an original anthology, In the Wake of Man. The other two authors in that book were Gene Wolfe and R. A. Lafferty, pretty impressive company.
Besides No Man On Earth, I’ve read his three stories in Fantastic and Amazing, but it would cost me $75 to read his final story and that’s too much. For me, Walter F. Moudy’s science fiction legacy is that one novel, two short stories, and a novelette. Not much to go by, but still, I’m terribly envious since I’m a lifelong would-be science fiction writer. I’d give anything to have contributed even that much to the genre.
Why after his initial success in 1964-1966 did Moudy quit writing? And how did Roger Elwood get his last story? I guess Moudy tried one more time before he died to say something in print. But maybe Elwood had been holding it for years, and it was written in the mid-sixties. Reviewers haven’t been kind to it.
I was able to track down a few biographical details. Moudy was from Missouri, served in the Air Force from 1950 to 1953, got a degree in 1954, and then a law degree in 1957. He was Phi Beta Kappa. Moudy was married and had three children. In other words, he had a successful life and didn’t need to be a writer. Still, as I read his work over the last few days, I felt he had something to say. At least in No Man On Earth.
His three short stories were rather minor. The first, “The Dreamer,” was about a young man who wanted to get rich and famous as a space trader. The story was told like a fable. Its redeeming feature was a super-intelligent parrot. The second, “I Think They Love Me,” is about rock stars going to extreme lengths to survive hordes of screaming teenage girls. This was written a year after The Beatles hit America and was kind of cute, but not really worth remembering. The last, and the one most anthologized, is “The Survivor,” about a televised war game between America and Russia. It reminded me of The Hunger Games. This story came out in 1965 and was probably inspired by the 1964 Olympic games and the films Dr. Strangelove and Fail-Safe. “The Survivor” was gritty, detailed, and suggested each country sacrifice 100 men every four years in a fight to the death rather than risking total national annihilation.
Those three stories were somewhat entertaining, especially the last one, but they don’t leave the kind of impression that Moudy was making a statement. However, No Man On Earth does. Writers can make different kinds of statements. They can aim to write a better story than what’s written before. Or they can capture their times realistically in words. And common with science fiction writers, they can say something philosophical about reality. And there are so many other ways.
For example, I believe Robert Heinlein was influenced by the success of Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand in 1957, and that’s why he aimed so high with Stranger in a Strange Land. In his later years, Heinlein repeatedly tried to convince fans that Starship Troopers (1959), Stranger in a Strange Land (1961) and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (1966) were books that he wanted to be remembered for because they expressed his philosophy on freedom and responsibility.
My guess is Moudy was inspired by Stranger in a Strange Land when he wrote No Man On Earth. Heinlein’s main character Valentine Michael Smith is a human raised by Martians who taught him psychic powers. Moudy’s main character, Thad Stone, had a human mother and alien father and was a super-genius. Both novels are told with picaresque plotting. Both books comment on sex and society. Moudy has Stone tour many planets and visits many kinds of societies and civilizations. No Man On Earth ran 176 pages in its first publication, a slim paperback original to Stranger’s 408 pages in the G. P. Putnam’s Sons first-edition hardback. Heinlein was obviously trying to hit one out of the genre after over twenty years of being a big fish in a small pond. Frank Herbert also aimed sky high with Dune in 1965. It was also over 400 pages.
There are a lot of one-hit wonders in the book world but few writers struggle with their masterpieces like Harper Lee or John Kennedy Toole. My guess is Moudy knocked this novel out quickly and was probably paid around $750 for his paperback original and when it disappeared on the twirling wire racks after a couple of months felt his time was better spent being a lawyer. If he had written a 400-page monster and got it published by a major hardback publisher No Man On Earth might have had a better chance. He just didn’t aim high enough.
It would have also helped if he had written No Man On Earth in an innovative style that made the genre take notice, like Dune and Stranger in a Strange Land. Moudy’s story and writing reminded me a bit of Leigh Brackett’s The Long Tomorrow (1955), Edgar Pangborn’s A Mirror for Observers (1955), and Walter Tevis’s The Man Who Fell to Earth (1963), all books he could have read and could have inspired No Man On Earth.
Obviously, if Geraldine Brooks fondly remembers No Man On Earth in 2022 so it can’t be a stinker. I liked it quite a lot and rushed through it in two days because it was compelling in the old-fashion kind of science fiction I love. It’s great that Tevis’s 1963 novel is still remembered, and I think it’s a shame that Moudy’s book isn’t more remembered.
The first problem I face with assembling my Top 100 Science Fiction Short Stories list is that I’m partial to crusty old SF stories that younger readers will feel are badly dated. Our discussion group read “Rescue Party” by Arthur C. Clarke for today. Here’s my comment:
Some members of the group, and not always the younger ones, have pointed out how dated parts of this story are today, and that the characterization is rather poor. Clarke was never a particularly good writer when it came to characterization, but this story was on par for 1946. Most of our group are older fans, and we’re used to older stories, so even with them, this story might not be a great story. Generally, people liked it, rating it 3-4 stars, with one person giving it 2.
You can read “Rescue Party” for yourself if you want. Here is the story in the original publication, and here it is again at Escape Pod with both audio and text. The group read the story from The Arbor House Treasury of Modern Science Fiction that came out in 1980. Evidently, Robert Silverberg and Martin H. Greenberg considered “Rescue Party” a modern classic 42 years ago even though most anthologies back then were remembering Arthur C. Clarke with “Nine Billion Names of God” and “The Star.” One of our members said Clarke might be remembered for “A Meeting with Medusa” which came out in the 1970s and is a much more polished story by contemporary standards.
“Rescue Party” was anthologized in The World Turned Upside Down edited by David Drake, Eric Flint, and Jim Baen in 2004, but that anthology was promoted as collecting stories that we old SF fans loved when we were growing up. That’s certainly true for me because it has many old science fiction stories I love that I use for my Top 100 list of SF short stories.
In other words, I can make a list of the short science fiction stories I love, but if younger readers read those stories would they be disappointed? First, do I care? It’s my list. Actually, I do. I don’t want to waste readers’ reading time. Nor am I interested in trying to be a teacher pushing young people to read the SF classics.
I realize there are two solutions for me to pursue. One is to find the stories that are great science fiction and are well written that aren’t dated. There’s certainly plenty to choose from. And I might do that. But I had a different idea when I started work on this list. I wanted to show the evolution of science fictional ideas and my evolution as a science fiction reader. It’s not about recognizing the best stories. I no longer believe in the best of anything. This world is too complex and multiplex to order in ranks and ratings. I’ve already bogged down trying to rank my favorites numerically.
I want to start in the 19th century and progress to the 21st by reviewing the science fiction stories that evolved the genre. Contemporary readability or social correctness won’t matter. Figuring this out has given me a direction.
I’ve come to realize that one of the more important things to me in my life is my enjoyment of reading science fiction. I have many friends who love to travel and when they talk about themselves they often talk about where they’ve been. They make me feel guilty because I’ve traveled so little. I tell myself that I travel in my mind because I love to read. Thus making a list of favorite books is like making a list of places I’ve been.
Lately, I’ve been more interested in short trips — reading short stories. I’ve decided to assemble a list of short stories I love most over a lifetime of reading. I have about a hundred I’m pretty sure about, but there’s almost another two hundred I remember fondly that I need to reread before deciding. I’ve also decided that I need to be more selective and limit the final list to 100 or less. Or at least, define my Top 100, and Next 100. But I’m leaning toward forcing myself to pick my absolute favorite 100 SF short stories.
This has pushed me into thinking about the criteria by which I judge a story. Here are qualities I’ve come up with so far:
Sense of wonder
Storytelling
Emotion
Insight
Characterization
Writing
Memorable
For now, seven is enough. I can think of these qualities as The Seven Virtues of Fiction. Here are my two working lists. I’m far from finished. I’m going to have to do a lot of rereading. And I’ve been doing that since I joined a Facebook group that reads a science fiction short story a day and discusses each. It’s these group readings that have made me realize how important science fiction short stories are to me.
I could finish this project in one year if I quit the reading group and read one story a day. That probably won’t happen. Thus, it might take me years to finish. I’ve even thought of turning this project into a book like David Pringle’s Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels.
My Top Favorites For Now
1967 – “The Star Pit” – Samuel Delany
1959 – “Flowers for Algernon” – Daniel Keyes
1895 – “The Time Machine” – H. G. Wells
1976 – “Appearance of Life” – Brian W. Aldiss
1963 – “A Rose for Ecclesiastes” – Roger Zelazny
1946 – “Vintage Season” – Henry Kuttner & C. L. Moore
1957 – “The Menace From Earth” – Robert A. Heinlein
1941 – “Universe” – Robert A. Heinlein
1966 – “Empire Star” – Samuel R. Delany
1977 – “Jeffty is Five” – Harland Ellison
1984 – “Press ENTER ■” – John Varley
1991 – “Beggars in Spain” – Nancy Kress
1973 – “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” – Ursula K. Le Guin
1987 – “Why I Left Harry’s All-Night Hamburgers” – Lawrence Watt-Evans
1950 – “Coming Attraction” – Fritz Leiber
1985 – “Snow” – John Crowley
1990 – “Bears Discover Fire” – Terry Bisson
1953 – “The Last Day” – Richard Matheson
1953 – “One in Three Hundred” – J. T. McIntosh
1953 – “Deadly City” – Paul W. Fairman as Ivar Jorgensen
2020 – “Two Truths and a Lie” – Sarah Pinsker
1944 – “Desertion” – Clifford D. Simak
1944 – “Huddling Place” – Clifford D. Simak
1961 – “The Moon Moth” – Jack Vance
1951 – “Angel’s Egg” – Edgar Pangborn
1953 – “Lot” – Ward Moore
1952 – “The Year of the Jackpot” – Robert A. Heinlein
1950 – “There Will Come Soft Rains” – Ray Bradbury
1934 – “The Martian Odyssey” – Stanley G. Weinbaum
1954 – “Fondly Fahrenheit” – Alfred Bester
1966 – “Light of Other Days” – Bob Shaw
1998 – “Story of Your Life” – Ted Chiang
1987 – “Rachel in Love” – Pat Murphy
1985 – “Sailing to Byzantium” – Robert Silverberg
1988 – “Kirinyaga” – Mike Resnick
1990 – “The Manamouki” – Mike Resnick
1909 – “The Machine Stops” – E. M. Forster
1948 – “Mars is Heaven!” – Ray Bradbury
1957 – “Omnilingual” – H. Beam Piper
1952 – “Baby Is Three” – Theodore Sturgeon
1966 – “Behold the Man” – Michael Moorcock
1995 – “Think Like a Dinosaur” – James Patrick Kelly
1980 – “The Ugly Chickens” – Howard Waldrop
1973 – “The Death of Doctor Island” – Gene Wolfe
1948 – “In Hiding” – Wilmar H. Shiras
2004 – “Travels with My Cats” – Mike Resnick
1956 – “The Country of the Kind” – Damon Knight
1954 – “A Canticle for Leibowitz” – Walter M. Miller, Jr.
1946 – “Rescue Party” – Arthur C. Clarke
1943 – “Mimsy Were the Borogoves” – Henry Kuttner & C. L. Moore
1944 – “No Woman Born” – C. L. Moore
1952 – “Surface Tension” – James Blish
1960 – “The Voices of Time” – J. G. Ballard
1972 – “When It Changed” – Joanna Russ
1940 – “Requiem” – Robert A. Heinlein
1984 – “Bloodchild” – Octavia Butler
1939 – “Black Destroyer” – A. E. van Vogt
1912 – “The Scarlet Plague” – Jack London
1953 – “A Case of Conscience” – James Blish
1977 – “The Screwfly Solution” – James Tiptree, Jr.
1972 – “The Fifth Head of Cerberus” – Gene Wolfe
1965 – “The Saliva Tree” – Brian W. Aldiss
1956 – “The Man Who Came Early” – Poul Anderson
1988 – “The Last of the Winnebagos” – Connie Willis
1983 – “Speech Sounds” – Octavia Butler
1953 – “A Saucer of Loneliness” – Theodore Sturgeon
1969 – “The Last Flight of Dr. Ain” – James Tiptree, Jr.
1957 – “Call Me Joe” – Poul Anderson
1947 – “With Folded Hands …” – Jack Williamson
1977 – “Ender’s Game” – Orson Scott Card
1970 – “The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories” – Gene Wolfe
1933 – “Shambleau” – C. L. Moore
1945 – “Giant Killer” – A. Bertram Chandler
1981 – “True Names” – Vernor Vinge
1951 – “The Quest for Saint Aquin” – Anthony Boucher
1952 – “Sail On! Sail On!” – Philip Jose Farmer
1955 – “The Star” – Arthur C. Clarke
1958 – “The Ugly Little Boy” – Isaac Asimov
2019 – “At the Fall” – Alec Nevala-Lee
1954 – “The End of Summer” – Algis Budrys
1952 – “What’s It Like Out There?” – Edmond Hamilton
1956 – “Brightside Crossing” – Alan E. Nourse
1998 – “Craphound” – Cory Doctorow
1956 – “Exploration Team” – Murray Leinster
1953 – “Four in One” – Damon Knight
1976 – “An Infinite Summer” – Christopher Priest
1954 – “The Music Master of Babylon” – Edgar Pangborn
2002 – “The Potter of Bones” – Eleanor Arnason
1940 – “Quietus” – Ross Rocklynne
1950 – “The Veldt” – Ray Bradbury
1959 – “The Alley Man” – Philip Jose Farmer
1955 – “The Darfsteller” – Walter M. Miller, Jr.
1939 – “The Day Is Done” – Lester del Rey
1957 – “The Lineman” – Walter M. Miller, Jr.
1966 – “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale” – Philip K. Dick
Stories I need to reread or maybe read for the first time.
1897 – “The Thames Valley Catastrophe” – Grant Allen
1920 – “The Mad Planet” – Murray Leinster
1927 – “The Colour Out of Space” – H. P. Lovecraft
1928 – “The Revolt of the Pedestrians” – David H. Keller
1931 – “The Jameson Satellite” – Neil R. Jones
1931 – “The Man Who Evolved” – Edmond Hamilton
1932 – “Tumithak of the Corridors” – Charles R. Tanner
1934 – “Old Faithful” – Raymond Z. Gallun
1934 – “Sidewise in Time” – Murray Leinster
1934 – “Twilight” – John W. Campbell
1936 – “At the Mountains of Madness” – H. P. Lovecraft
1936 – “Devolution” – Edmond Hamilton
1937 – “The Sands of Time” – P. Schuyler Miller
1939 – “The Four-Sided Triangle” – William F. Temple
1939 – “Living Fossil” – L. Sprague de Camp
1939 – “Rust” – Joseph E. Kelleam
1940 – “Coventry” – Robert A. Heinlein
1940 – “Into the Darkness” – Ross Rocklynne
1941 – “Microcosmic God” – Theodore Sturgeon
1941 – “Nightfall” – Isaac Asimov
1941 – “Time Wants a Skeleton” – Ross Rocklynne
1942 – “The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag” – Robert A. Heinlein
1943 – “The Cave” – P. Schuyler Miller
1943 – “Daymare” – Fredric Brown
1943 – “The Halfling” – Leigh Brackett
1943 – “Q.U.R.” – Anthony Boucher
1947 – “E for Effort” – T. L. Sherred
1949 – “Gulf” – Robert A. Heinlein
1949 – “Manna” – Peter Phillips
1949 – “Private Eye” – Henry Kuttner & C. L. Moore
1950 – “Liane the Wayfarer” – Jack Vance
1950 – “The Little Black Bag” – C. M. Kornbluth
1950 – “The Man Who Sold the Moon” – Robert A. Heinlein
1950 – “Scanners Live in Vain” – Cordwainer Smith
1950 – “The Silly Season” – C. M. Kornbluth
1951 – “Bettyann” – Kris Neville
1951 – “Beyond Bedlam” – Wyman Guin
1951 – “Brightness Falls from the Air” – Margaret St. Clair
1951 – “Dune Roller” – Julian May
1951 – “Izzard and the Membrame” – Walter M. Miller, Jr.
1951 – “The Marching Morons” – C. M. Kornbluth
1951 – “The Sentinel” – Arthur C. Clarke
1952 – “Bring the Jubilee” – Ward Moore
1952 – “Command Performance” – Walter M. Miller, Jr.
1952 – “Conditionally Human” – Walter M. Miller, Jr.
1952 – “Fast Falls the Eventide” – Erik Frank Russell
1952 – “Lost Memory” – Peter Phillips
1952 – “The Lovers” – Philip Jose Farmer
1952 – “The Martian Way” – Isaac Asimov
1953 – “Common Time” – James Blish
1953 – “DP!” – Jack Vance
1953 – “Imposter” – Philip K. Dick
1953 – “It’s a Good Life” – Jerome Bixby
1953 – “The Liberation of Earth” – William Tenn
1953 – “The Model of a Judge” – William Morrison
1953 – “Second Variety” – Philip K. Dick
1953 – “Specialist” – Robert Sheckley
1954 – “5,271,009” – Alfred Bester
1954 – “Let Me Live in a House” – Chad Oliver
1954 – “Memento Homo” – Walter M. Miller, Jr.
1954 – “The Midas Plague” – Frederik Pohl
1955 – “The Allamagoosa” – Eric Frank Russell
1955 – “Who?” – Algis Budrys
1956 – “Anything Box” – Zenna Henderson
1956 – “The Dead Past” – Isaac Asimov
1956 – “The Last Question” – Isaac Asimov
1956 – “The Minority Report” – Philip K. Dick
1956 – “Pilgrimage to Earth” – Robert Sheckley
1958 – “Or All the Seas with Oysters” – Avram Davidson
1958 – “Pelt” – Carol Emshwiller
1958 – “Who Can Replace a Man?” – Brian W. Aldiss
1959 – “All You Zombies—” – Robert A. Heinlein
1959 – “Day at the Beach” – Carol Emshwiller
1959 – “The Man Who Lost the Sea” – Theodore Sturgeon
1959 – “Plenitude” – Will Mohler
1960 – “The Fellow Who Married the Maxill Girl” – Ward Moore
1960 – “The Sound Sweep” – J. G. Ballard
1960 – “The Voice of Time” – J. G. Ballard
1961 – “The Dandelion Girl” – Robert F. Young
1961 – “Hothouse” – Brian W. Aldiss
1961 – “Monument” – Lloyd Biggle, Jr.
1961 – “The Ship Who Sang” – Anne McCaffrey
1961 – “The Sources of the Nile” – Avram Davidson
1962 – “The Dragon Masters” – Jack Vance
1962 – “Earthlings Go Home!” – Mack Reynolds
1964 – “The Terminal Beach” – J. G. Ballard
1965 – “He Who Shapes” – Roger Zelazny
1965 – “Man in His Time” – Brian W. Aldiss
1965 – “Traveler’s Rest” – David I. Masson
1966 – “Day Million” – Frederik Pohl
1966 – “The Lady Margaret” – Keith Roberts
1966 – “Neutron Star” – Larry Niven
1966 – “Nine Hundred Grandmothers” – R. A. Lafferty
1966 – “When I Was Miss Dow” – Sonya Dorman
1967 – “Baby, You Were Great” by Kate Wilhelm
1967 – “The Cloud Sculptures of Coral D” – J. G. Ballard
1967 – “Faith of Our Fathers” – Philip K. Dick
1967 – “Gonna Roll the Bones” – Fritz Leiber
1967 – “The Heat Death of the Universe” – Pamela Zoline
1967 – “Riders of the Purple Wage” – Philip Jose Farmer
1968 – “Nightwings” – Robert Silverberg
1969 – “Nine Lives” – Ursula K. Le Guin
1970 – “Slow Sculpture” – Theodore Sturgeon
1971 – “Inconstant Moon” – Larry Niven
1971 – “A Meeting with Medusa” – Arthur C. Clarke
1971 – “The Queen of Air and Darkness” – Poul Anderson
1971 – “Vaster Than Empires and More Slow” – Ursula K. Le Guin
1971 – “And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill’s Side” – James Tiptree, Jr.
1972 – “Nobody’s Home” – Joanna Russ
1972 – “Patron of the Arts” – William Rotsler
1972 – “The Word for World is Forest” – Ursula K. Le Guin
1973 – “The Girl Who Plugged In” – James Tiptree, Jr.
1973 – “Love is the Plan the Plan is Death” – James Tiptree, Jr.
1973 – “The Women Men Don’t See” – James Tiptree, Jr.
1974 – “Born with the Dead” – Robert Silverberg
1974 – “The Day Before the Revolution” – Ursula K. Le Guin
1975 – “A Galaxy Called Rome” – Barry N. Malzberg
1976 – “Houston, Houston, Do You Read?” – James Tiptree, Jr.
1977 – “The Screwfly Solution” – James Tiptree, Jr.
1978 – “The Persistence of Vision” – John Varley
1979 – “Sandkings” – George R. R. Martin
1982 – “Burning Chrome” – William Gibson
1982 – “The Postman” – David Brin
1982 – “Souls” – Joanna Russ
1982 – “Swarm” – Bruce Sterling
1983 – “Blood Music” – Greg Bear
1985 – “The Lake Was Full of Artificial Things” – Karen Joy Fowler
1985 – “The Only Neat Thing to Do” – James Tiptree, Jr.
1985 – “Out of All Them Bright Stars” – Nancy Kress
1988 – “Do Ya, Do Ya, Wanna Dance?” – Howard Waldrop
1988 – “Schrödinger’s Kitten” – George Alec Effinger
1989 – “Dori Bangs” – Bruce Sterling
1989 – “The Edge of the World” – Michael Swanwick
1989 – “For I Have Touched the Sky” – Mike Resnick
1989 – “The Great Work of Time” – John Crowley
1989 – “The Mountains of Mourning” – Lois McMaster Bujold
1991 – “Griffin’s Egg” – Michael Swanwick
1993 – “Wall, Stone, Craft” – Walter Jon Williams
1994 – “The Martian Child” – David Gerrold
1994 – “Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge” – Mike Resnick
1995 – “The Lincoln Train” – Maureen F. McHugh
1995 – “Wang’s Carpets” – Greg Egan
1995 – “The Flowers of Aulit Prison” – Nancy Kress
1997 – “The Undiscovered” – William Sanders
1999 – “Ancient Engines” – Michael Swanwick
1999 – “macs” – Terry Bisson
2001 – “Fast Times at Fairmont High” – Vernor Vinge
2001 – “Hell Is the Absence of God” – Ted Chiang
2001 – “New Light on the Drake Equation” – Ian R. MacLeod
2001 – “Undone” – James Patrick Kelly
2003 – “The Empress of Mars” – Kage Baker
2005 – “The Calorie Man” – Paolo Bacigalupi
2005 – “Magic for Beginners” – Kelly Link
2008 – “Exhalation” – Ted Chiang
2008 – “The Ray-Gun: A Love Story” – James Alan Gardner
2009 – “The Island” – Peter Watts
2010 – “The Sultan of the Clouds” – Geoffrey A. Landis
2010 – “The Things” – Peter Watts
2010 – “Under the Moons of Venus” – Damien Broderick
2011 – “After the Apocalypse” – Maureen F. McHugh
2011 – “The Man Who Bridged the Mist” – Kij Johnson
2012 – “Close Encounters” – Andy Duncan
2012 – “Mahiku West” – Linda Nagata
2014 – “Someday” – James Patrick Kelly
2014 – “Yesterday’s Kin” – Nancy Kress
2015 – “Gypsy” – Carter Scholz
2015 – “Today I Am Paul” – Martin L. Shoemaker
2017 – “Zen and the Art of Starship Maintenance” – Tobias S. Buckell
2018 – “Nine Last Days on Planet Earth” – Daryl Gregory
2019 – “The Archronology of Love” – Caroline M. Yoachim
2020 – “Beyond the Tattered Veil of Stars” – Mercurio D. Rivera
Classics of Science Fiction 