Posted on by jameswharris · 3 Comments

“Horrer Howce” by Margaret St. Clair

“Horrer Howce” was first published in Galaxy Science Fiction, July 1956. You can read it on Archive.org. It is story #13 of 22 for The Best SF Stories of 1956 group read. Asimov and Greenberg picked “Horrer Howce” for The Great SF Stories #18 (1956) and it was also included in Galaxy: Thirty Years of Innovative Science Fiction, which was our Group Read #9. You can read our original discussion thread here.

I know nothing about Margaret St. Clair. Except for reading “Horrer Howce” before in the Galaxy anthology, I can’t recall reading any of her other stories. Wikipedia reports she wrote over 130 fantasy and science fiction stories, and ISFDB,org lists quite a few. She only has two books and five stories cited in CSF, with none getting more than two citations. I once owned a copy of this Ace Double, but I got it for the Philip K. Dick story. St. Clair has been reprinted in a several anthologies devoted to rediscovering women science fiction writers, such as The Future is Female! edited Lisa Yaszek, which I own, but haven’t read.

Unfortunately, I didn’t think much of “Horrer Howce.” The story is about a man named Freeman who tries to sell exhibits to amusement parks featuring haunted houses. He’s having trouble selling his exhibits because they drive his potential clients mad with fear, or even kills them. At first, I thought this might be an oddball fantasy like those Shirley Jackson wrote, but “Horrer Howce” appears to have a science fictional basis. Although, at one point, Freeman consults books like a conjurer. Even after two readings, I was never sure if Freeman was opening gateways to other dimensions or using magic to open fantasy portals. In either sense, I didn’t think such gateway/portals were suitable for amusement parks. The early ones were just scary dark holes, but Freeman expected visitors to enter the world of the Vooms, and it was much too big to be a fake thrill ride.

I can see where “Horrer Howce” has a certain appeal but just not to me. I thought it reasonably good enough for a magazine story, but I find it disappointing for a best of the year or retrospective anthology. My friend Mike summed it up nicely in an email:

Margaret St. Clair's "Horrer Howce" is an effective horror story. It invokes feelings of fear, dread, and dismay. 

We shouldn't ask "Horrer Howce" to be anything more. Examining the characters and plot seems like a fool's errand. We enjoy the creepiness of the Vooms and are left wishing that we could see Freeman's future tableau: A Horrer Howce for the Voom.

I didn’t feel fear, dread, or dismay. I could see how St. Clair worked to create those responses, but her efforts seemed too basic or simple to me. Because of the horror angle, it was out of place in Galaxy — at least for me. I thought it would have been more suited for F&SF, Fantastic, or Fantastic Universe.

I should give Margaret St. Clair another chance. Does anyone know of a better story of hers to recommend?

James Wallace Harris, 12/26/23

Posted on by jameswharris · 6 Comments

“The Man Who Came Early” by Poul Anderson

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The discussion on Facebook has been positive so far.

James Wallace Harris, 12/23/23

Posted on by jameswharris · 4 Comments

“The Dead Past” by Isaac Asimov

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

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

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

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

Arnold Potterly wants to use chronoscopy to view ancient Carthage. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

JWH

Posted on by jameswharris

“Legwork” by Eric Frank Russell

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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


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


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


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


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


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

James Wallace Harris, 12/18/23

Posted on by jameswharris · 1 Comment

“The Exploration Team” by Murray Leinster

“Exploration Team” was first published in Astounding Science Fiction, March 1956. You can read it on Archive.org. It is story #8 of 22 for The Best SF Stories of 1956 group read. “Exploration Team” won the 1956 Hugo Award for best novelette, and has been often reprinted.

In this future that Murray Leinster imagines, humans colonize the galaxy, but are unfairly restricted by intergalactic laws. Huyghens, our human protagonist, along with four Kodiak bears and an eagle, decides to illegally explore Loren Two. Huyghens knows he’s an outlaw but is also an idealist fighting for his way of life and against what he considers is unwise legal oppression. The story begins with a Colonial Survey officer, Roane, landing on Loren Two expecting to find a robot built approved colony but discovering Huyghens squatting illegally instead.

This is my second reading of “Exploration Team.” I liked it much better this time, but I don’t think it’s a classic or deserved a Hugo award. Of the stories we’ve read so far for group read 67, I’d have voted for “Brightside Crossing.” I’d rate the story ***+, meaning I thought it fun enough, but it’s not something I’d want to reread in the future.

Loren Two reminds me of the worlds in the Deathworld series by Harry Harrison, science fiction novels about planets where indigenous life is so violent survival is almost impossible. “Exploration Team” is more an adventure story with philosophy than speculative science fiction. Huyghens is against humanity depending on robots. He is out to prove that humans and their animal companions make better exploration teams. Leinster stacks the deck against robots because he never shows robots making a good effort. I think “Exploration Team” would have been a better story if robots were shown competing fairly within the story — instead they are Leinster’s straw bots.

Leinster has a limited vision of what robots can do. He imagines them being confined to specific programmed functions. Unfortunately, Leinster didn’t foresee robots learning like today’s large language models. Still, Leinster works hard to make a case against robots, and I believe it’s essential to the story. Personally, I believe robots will eventually surpass our abilities and make much better space explorers. They can endure a wider range of temperatures and don’t need to breathe, eat, or drink, nor will bacteria or animals want to eat them.

I guess science fiction fans back in 1956 really liked this story about Grizzly Adams in space. I think modern readers would be horrified by its solution of hunting threatening species to extinction. And Leinster never considers the possibility that Loren Two would evolve its own intelligent species, or even consider the intelligence of the existing species. Of course, this is the 1950s and colonialism is still in vogue, and it’s well before animal rights and ethical considerations for what other planets and evolutionary paths they might take.

What makes this story likable are the bears Sitka Pete, Sourdough Charley, Faro Nell, and the cub Nugget. Robert Heinlein and Andre Norton produced several successful juvenile science fiction novels in the 1950s that featured animal companions. That factor might have influenced Hugo voters.

Here’s what Mike emailed me about the story:

The only thing "Exploration Team" has going for it are the mutated Kodiak bears. Such an outrageous idea provides impetus to an otherwise rickety story.

The story centers on the ongoing battle against the native sphexes, cold-blooded belligerent carnivores. 

The story suffers whenever Huyghens launches into his countless anti-robot screeds. "But you can't tame wilderness with 'em!" In the end, the humans defeat the sphexes by using modified robots, making Huygens seem like a bit of a bloviating dingbat.

The story is told with a certain breathless quality:

"And the sphex whirled. Roane was toppled from his feet. An eight-hundred-pound monstrosity straight out of hell--half wildcat and half spitting cobra with hydrophobia and homicidal mania added--such a monstrosity is not to be withstood when, in whirling, its body strikes on in the chest."

We are repeatedly reminded that sphexes "looked as if they had come straight out of hell."
And we learn that "...lustfully they fueled tracked flame-casters..." Really? Lustfully? 

But it doesn't pay to scrutinize a story like "Exploration Team." Come for the action, stay for the bears.

One writing flaw I noticed while reading was that Leinster kept repeating himself. There are several places in the story where he would describe something, and then a few pages later describe it again with the same words. Plus, the story was too long. Unlike Mike, I accepted the criticism of the robots as the purpose of the story. Leinster promotes his character as an individualist, and protester. I thought Huyghens and the bears did make a good team. But I also can imagine a human and robots making an even better team. Unfortunately, I don’t want to imagine a future where we go around consuming all the planets in the galaxy like we’ve consumed our home world.

James Wallace Harris, 12/14/23

Posted on by jameswharris · 10 Comments

“The Assistant Self” by F. L. Wallace

“The Assistant Self” was first published in Fantastic Universe Science Fiction, March 1956. You can read it on Archive.org. It is story #6 of 22 for The Best SF Stories of 1956 group read. Even though “The Assistant Self” was a finalist for the Hugo Award, it’s never been reprinted.

I was somewhat intrigued when reading “The Assistant Self” but I wouldn’t call it a good science fiction story. I would call it fun pulp fiction with a wild plot. Fantastic Universe was a lesser market, and F. L. Wallace was never much of a writer, with just one novel and a couple dozen short stories listed in ISFDB, most of which is available at Project Gutenberg.

“The Assistant Self” follows Hal Talbot, a guy with an empathy index off the charts through a murder mystery. Even though he always knows how to please his boss, Talbot seldom can keep a job for more than two years. The story starts just after he loses his current job, and his girlfriend Laura dumps him. Talbot is approached by a man Evan Soleri, the Vice President in charge of Research at the TRANSPORTATION Corporation, a company working to develop a rocket engine that can reach most of light speed. Soleri has an exceptionally beautiful secretary, Randy Farrell, who works rather closely with Soleri, and knows all the secrets of the company.

On Talbot’s first day at work, a saboteur throws a bomb into their meeting, and Soleri is killed. Because Talbot is so empathetic, he’d come to work wearing exactly what Soleri had been wearing, and they had the same build. When Talbot regains consciousness, he’s in the hospital with burns and bandages. Randy thinks he’s Soleri. He decides to pretend to be Soleri and find Soleri’s killer. We’re asked to believe Talbot can pull this off, and that’s very hard to do. Talbot must also fool the rocket engine designer Fred Frescura, who Soleri worked closely for years. Wallace tries to get us to believe in the power of empathy.

“The Assistant Self” was readable, moved along at a good pace, and I wanted to know what happened, but I can understand why it’s never been reprinted. I can’t believe people nominated it for the Hugo Award. My friend Mike has been reading these 1956 SF stories with me and emailed me his reaction:

F. L. Wallace uses empathy as an awkward deus ex machina in the unremarkable whodunit "The Assistant Self." The journeyman prose is pedestrian and sometimes odd: "He lunched frugally, and tried to control his agitation." Did he eat an inexpensive lunch or did he eat a small lunch? And why do we need to know?


The characters are from Central Casting:


Hal Talbot, the troubled protagonist "...who couldn't even hold down a simple lousy job." His empathy is "...a dreadful handicap."


Evan Soleri, the concerned vice-president of TRANSPORTATION who is trying to figure out "What official or worker is trying to sabotage us?"


Fred Frescura, the mad scientist at TRANSPORTATION.


Randy Farrell, Soleri's beautiful secretary (who is secretly a psychologist). She provides our love interest.


The story has a Saturday afternoon matinee feel. It would be difficult to conjure up any metaphorical frameworks that would lend substance to this forgettable story.

I think I enjoyed the story more than Mike, but I would never recommend anyone to read it. After finishing “The Assistant Self” I started poking around in other March 1956 issues of science fiction magazines and found two Robert F. Young stories to read. They weren’t very good either, but I remember reading Young’s stories in the magazines in the 1960s. I enjoyed them enough to read his stories when I saw one. That’s the thing about reading science fiction magazines, most of the stories just aren’t that good, but if you’re not too picky, they can be mildly amusing. I have a feeling Wallace might have been good at writing decent and somewhat fun stories.

The April, 1957 issue of Science Fiction News reported there was 168 issues of science fiction and fantasy magazines published in 1956, in the United States and Great Britain. That’s a lot of short stories. If we figure 7 stories per 168 issues gives us 1,176 stories. I picked 22 for our group read as the best SF of 1956. And many of those stories are like “The Assistant Self,” — not really worth remembering or recommending.

Still, there appears to be market for old bad science fiction, and Armchair Fiction has reprinted Wallace’s one novel, packaging it as a faux Ace Double with an Algis Budrys novel. I got to say, I’m tempted, but not at $12.95.

James Wallace Harris, 12/8/23

Posted on by jameswharris · 1 Comment

“The Country of the Kind” by Damon Knight

“The Country of the Kind” was first published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, February 1956. You can read it on Archive.org. It is story #5 of 22 for The Best SF Stories of 1956 group read. “The Country of the Kind” is one of the highest rated stories on The Classics of Science Fiction Short Stories v. 2 list, with eleven citations. It is by far the most remembered science fiction short story from 1956. Here are the eleven citations we used:

“The Country of the Kind” is set in an unnamed utopia and is told by an unnamed narrator. When the narrator was fifteen, he killed a girl who spurned him. In this utopian society they couldn’t punish him directly because it doesn’t allow violence. They fixed the narrator so whenever he tried to hurt someone else, he’d have an epileptic fit. And to warn others of his presence, his body odor and breath were made to smell repulsive. He was then left free to do whatever he wanted. For thirty years he has wandered about the Earth trying to retaliate by sabotaging other people’s activities or destroying their property. People ignored him, so he suffered endless loneliness. The narrator creates small works of art which he leaves everywhere with a message inviting other people to join him and be free.

My friend Mike sends me emails with comments about these 1956 science fiction stories since he doesn’t want to use Facebook. Here’s what he had to say:

A good science fiction tale draws you in completely, overriding your skepticism about the implausibility (or impossibility) of events.

Damon Knight asks us to accept the notion that a murderous psychopath is allowed by society to indulge himself in an endless destructive rampage. Although he is prevented from physically harming others by induced epileptic seizures, the community allows him to wreak havoc without restraint.

Perhaps Knight is exposing the passivity and weakness of that society, but it beggars the imagination that any group would allow such extreme behavior to go unchecked, no matter how kind and understanding they profess to be.

After the "king of the world" murdered his girlfriend named Elen when he was fifteen, he tells us "...if I could do it to Elen, I thought, surely they could do it to me. But they couldn't. They set me free: they had to."

Why did "they" have to? Are we to believe that a seemingly well run country is so "kind" that even a psychopath is allowed free rein? That's a bridge too far for me.

Remember, I talked about how believability was very important to me regarding science fiction when reviewing “Brightside Crossing.” I could understand why Mike didn’t think the world of “The Country of the Kind” was believable, but I said to him in a phone call, didn’t we both believe the world of “Brightside Crossing” was impossible? Yet, we still found the story believable. I asked him what crossed the line for him in “The Country of the Kind.” Mike said he just didn’t believe people would allow a person like the narrator in any society, that was too much for him to believe that people wouldn’t stop the narrator from damaging their property.

I said, wasn’t “The Country of the Kind” unbelievable in the same way “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” is unbelievable, and didn’t you love that story? Mike replied that story was metaphorical.” I countered, doesn’t “The Country of the Kind” seem just as metaphorical in the same way? Both are about utopias that that are held together by the suffering of one person. After I said that, I even wondered if Ursula K. Le Guin wasn’t in some way inspired by “The Country of the Kind” when she wrote “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.” Mike said he would reconsider “The Country of the Kind” as a metaphor. Maybe he will post a reply.

Are the fictional worlds of Brave New World, Nineteen Eighty-Four, or The Handmaid’s Tale believable? Aren’t they metaphorical too, because their authors have something to say about our reality? Dune, The Foundation trilogy, The Left Hand of Darkness and even The Man in the High Castle create worlds that we are asked to believe are realistic. Obviously, Alan E. Nourse wanted us to believe “Brightside Crossing” was realistic. But we aren’t expected to believe the fictional universes of The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy or Sheckley’s Mindswap were realistic.

In other words, fantasy, humor, satire, and metaphorical fiction don’t ask us to believe their settings are realistic. But most literary works, especially of the mimetic type, and some kinds of science fiction do ask us to believe that they are reality based.

Of course, if “The Country of the Kind” is metaphorical, then what is the metaphor? That even kindness can cause great suffering. To be free in a utopia you need to be able to commit evil deeds. 1956 was a time of conformity in America, and many people were freaked out by juvenile delinquents, motorcycle gangs, and other nonconformists. Remember, a year later in 1957, On the Road by Jack Kerouac came out. Kerouac called his kind of nonconformists Beats, and society renamed them beatniks. A few years later, society turned against hippies too. I say On the Road wasn’t metaphorical. But I would say One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest or Catch-22 are.

In the 1950s there was a lot of talk about crime being caused by society, and that criminals were a product of bad biology or a bad environment. Damon Knight’s unnamed narrator is an awful person, but he gets our sympathy. Unlike the tortured child in “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” the unnamed narrator isn’t the engine of utopia. Or is he? Wouldn’t a perfect utopia be dull and boring? What if evil is needed as the engine of goodness? I’m reminded of a phrase, “What if our world is their heaven?”

What if all fiction is metaphorical? What if “Brightside Crossing” was a metaphor for extreme adventurers?

Fiction is based on a suspension of disbelief. If Mike can’t suspend his disbelief that’s perfectly okay. If he doesn’t like “The Country of the Kind” does it matter that I do?

I’m fascinated by the nature of memory. I’m particularly fascinated by fiction that our culture remembers, like works by Jane Austen or Charles Dickens. But I’m also fascinated by the stories I find personally memorable. “The Country of the Kind” and “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” are such stories. A year for now, I might forget “Brightside Crossing.” As I read and reread these old science fiction stories, I’m amazed by which ones I remember and which ones I don’t.

“The Country of the Kind” was voted into The Science Fiction Hall of Fame Volume One because it was so remembered by the first members of the Science Fiction Writers of America. I wish SFWA would poll their membership every ten years on their favorite stories. I’d love to see what every generation of science fiction writers remember.

With this December 2023 reading; it’s probably the fourth or fifth time I’ve read this story, I am somewhat sympathetic to the unnamed narrator of “The Country of the Kind.” I wasn’t before. I totally loathed the narrator. However, this time I still think his actions are still horrific, but I feel the utopian society has imposed a cruel and unusual punishment upon him.

And I’m still unsure of Knight’s intentions in writing this story. Whatever meaning it has could be entirely accidental. Knight might have thought of the situation without considering its implications.

The epileptic pain the narrator experiences is brought on by his own actions. But the loneliness is caused by the utopian society imposing the punishment. And this society is supposedly incapable of causing harm. Such a society would know that social contact is a necessity.

Writers often make their stories ambiguous but this one might be too unclear. I wonder if Knight has ever written an explanation of “The Country of the Kind.”

James Wallace Harris, 12/6/23

Posted on by jameswharris · 6 Comments

“Silent Brother” by Algis Budrys

“Silent Brother” was first published in Astounding Science Fiction, February 1956. It was by Algis Budrys writing as Paul Janvier. You can read it on Archive.org. It is story #4 of 22 for The Best SF Stories of 1956 group read.

Harvey Cable has a fascinating mystery to solve in “Silent Brother.” The spaceship Endeavor has returned from the first interstellar mission. Harvey might have been on that mission but was badly injured in a test flight of an earlier spaceship. He lives alone. Harvey must use a wheelchair or braces on his legs and a cane in both hands to get around the house. After watching the crew of the Endeavor return home on TV, he goes to bed hoping his old astronaut companions will come to see him soon. The next day he wakes up to find that someone has stolen the picture tube from his television.

After carefully searching his house, Harvey finds the picture tube on his basement worktable. He can prove that no one broke into the house. He even tests the picture tube for fingerprints and only finds his own. But Harvey is incapable of carrying a large TV picture tube downstairs because with leg braces, he must firmly hold onto the handrails. If no one broke into his house, who took the picture tube downstairs while he slept?

Harvey goes to bed the next night after rigging his house so he can’t sleepwalk out of his bedroom. Yet, once again he wakes up refreshed and discovers more work has been done on the picture tube in the basement. None of his traps to keep him in his bedroom have been disturbed.

“Silent Partner” is a fun story that sets up a good lock-room mystery. It has a satisfying solution, but I don’t want to tell you about it just yet. I encourage you to go to the link above and read the story. It won’t take long. “Silent Brother” was reprinted in both Merril’s and Asimov & Greenberg’s best of the year anthologies, but it’s not been reprinted in any major anthology since. My friend Mike who is reading these stories along with me emailed me quite a positive review. I’ll post it below after I get into the spoilers. I also liked the story, but does two guys liking a story sixty years later mean it was one of the best of 1956, or a forgotten classic science fiction story?

I’ve been thinking about the levels of good stories. There are good stories, and then there are good stories. A great story is a good story that launches into orbit for the reader. Not everyone who reads a group of stories will love every story, and different readers will pick different stories they think are the good ones. Here’s a hierarchy:

  • One of the good stories in a magazine
  • One of the good stories in a best-of-the-year anthology
  • One of the good stories that are finalists for an award
  • One of the good stories in a general anthology
  • One of the good stories that are in theme anthology
  • One of the good stories that are in a retrospective anthology
  • One of the good stories in a list of the all-time best stories.

“Silent Brother” was in the same 1956 issue of Astounding Science Fiction with the first part of Double Star, one of Heinlein’s best novels, and it won the Hugo award. The issue also contained “Clerical Error” by Mark Clifton which I reviewed last time. Our short story club generally didn’t like “Clerical Error” but Astounding readers back in 1956 picked it as their second favorite after the Heinlein serial in The Analytical Laboratory poll. “Silent Brother” came in third. I like both “Clerical Error” and “Silent Brother,” but I wouldn’t reprint either if I was an anthologist. I thought “Clerical Error” was more ambitious but poorly written, and I thought “Silent Brother” nicely written, and very enjoyable, but far from great. I can easily say it’s a good story, but what does that mean?

If you look at the table of contents for Merril’s best-of-1956 anthology, none of the stories stand out to me except “Stranger Station” by Damon Knight. That story has shown up three times already in our short story reading group because it’s often reprinted. I haven’t read most of Merril’s selection, and “Silent Brother” might be among the good ones. But “Silent Brother” is not in the same league as “Stranger Station.”

Looking at the table of contents from Asimov and Greenberg’s best-of-1956 anthology, we see five stories that stand out: “The Country of the Kind” by Damon Knight, “Exploration Team” by Murray Leinster, “The Man Who Came Early” by Poul Anderson, “The Last Question’ by Isaac Asimov, and “Stranger Station” by Damon Knight. These are all stories our group has encountered several times in the many anthologies we’ve already read. I have read The Great SF Stories 18 (1956), and “Silent Brother” falls toward the back of the pack. (It is interesting that Asimov and Greenberg with thirty-two years of hindsight were able to create such a solid lineup of 1956 SF stories.)

“Silent Brother” wasn’t a finalist for the Hugo award, and it’s never been anthologized for a major theme or retrospective anthology. Nor is it on any fan poll for being an all-time great SF story. Now, do you sense the relative nature of good? What I want to find are the most memorable, most powerful of the SF stories from 1956 that most people consider good. I liked “Silent Brother” a fair amount, but I wouldn’t anthologize it if I was creating an anthology of the best SF short stories of 1956. I might include it in a theme anthology if it worked well with the other stories.

Still, it was a pretty good story. And I think it would be interesting to analyze why? For me, the mystery about who was rebuilding the television made the story a page turner. However, it was the conclusion that elevated the story with a particular kind of happy ending. The crew of the Endeavor brought back invisible aliens who they had developed a highly beneficial symbiotic relationship. The silent brother was a new alien being that lived inside of you. Now, if you had just read Heinlein’s The Puppet Masters you might not think this was so wonderful, but Algis Budrys pulled it off. Why?

I think the idea of having a silent brother that heals and helps you if awful lot like what religion promises, like believing that Jesus will save us, or becoming one with God who will watch over all his followers. “Silent Brother” represents a story of transcendence. It reminds me of the ending to Childhood’s End. Harvey Cable was lonely and suffering from a damaged body. He, and the Endeavor crew welcomed the alien into their bodies and passed them on. But isn’t this the same story as The Invasion of the Body Snatchers? But that story was a metaphor for communism. Budrys presents the alien as a brother. Is it little brother to big brother? Harvey’s personality isn’t changed or possessed; he just has a very helpful invisible friend living inside of him.

Algis Budrys was a savvy guy. I’m guessing he consciously knew about the religion connection in his story, and he knows that most people would love to have a personal god to help them. Instead of inventing a theological being, Budrys creates an alien that serves the same function.

Here’s what Mike had to say:

I think "Silent Brother" is an excellent story.

The genius of the story is what Budrys leaves out. He gives us bits and pieces, and our imagination fills in the blanks.

For example, Harvey Cable has obviously been seriously injured in the past. We don't know for sure what happened to him, but we imagine some kind of space flight misfortune left him damaged. Was it radiation? Was it an equipment failure, or a spaceship catastrophe? Budrys gives us room to speculate.

Budrys relates that Cable's struggle is both physical and mental. He "...trembled on the brink of admitting to himself that his real trouble was the feeling that he'd lost all contact with the world." He is in trouble and "The idea was to hang on to reality."

It's slowly revealed that Cable is disassembling his TV set and reworking it into something else. Budrys writes beautifully descriptive sentences: "How did one shot-up bag of rag-doll bones and twitchless nerves named Harvey Cable accomplish all this in his sleep?" and "What in the name of holy horned hell am I building?"

Once the TV rebuild is complete, Budrys never reveals its exact purpose, but it's obviously of great importance because afterwards "...he felt his silent brother smile within him." Again, we get to fill in the blanks on our own.

A parasitic alien has entered Cable, and healed him. "Who wants symbiosis until he's felt it?"

Budrys explains "...we were born in a solar system with one habitable planet, and we developed the star drive. And on Alpha's planet, a race hung on, waiting for someone to come along and give it hands and bodies

Cable's final act is to send part of his silent brother to each of the three men who have come to interview him. The parasitic alien is passed on.

No long info dumps. No discursions. A concise, heartfelt, beautifully written story.

I think Mike admired the story far more than I did. I thought the rebuilt TV with its flashing lights helped Harvey connect with his new brother and helped him to retrain him to reprogram his damaged body. It’s like when Dr. Cal Meacham builds an “interocitor” in the film “This Island Earth” — the gadget allowed him to connect with aliens.

Mike and I have talked about “Silent Brother,” discussing how stories affect readers differently. Critics often write about fiction as if there were objective standards, but that’s not possible. Fiction is like a day, for some people the day might be wonderful, and for others horrible, and for many just another day.

I’m looking forward to seeing how many members in the Facebook group like or dislike “Silent Brother.”

James Wallace Harris, 12/4/23

Posted on by jameswharris · 5 Comments

“Clerical Error” by Mark Clifton

“Clerical Error” was first published in Astounding Science Fiction, February 1956. You can read it on Archive.org. It is story #3 of 22 for The Best SF Stories of 1956 group read. I selected “Clerical Error” for our best SF stories of 1956 group read because Asimov and Greenberg, and T. E. Dikty selected this story for their best-of-1956 anthologies, and Judith Merril listed it in her anthology for 1956 as an honorable mention.

The only significant anthology that reprinted the story was Neglected Visions (1979) edited by Barry Malzberg, Martin H. Greenberg, and Joseph Olander, whose goal was “an attempt to restore the reputations of eight writers who did not achieve the recognition they deserved.” “Clerical Error” was also reprinted at SciFiction.com in 2002, an early internet effort to reprint classic science fiction online. Barry Malzberg also edited The Science Fiction of Mark Clifton back in 1980. Long out of print, but copies are available on ABEbooks.

In other words, “Clerical Error” has its fans who have tried to save it over the years, but the first time I read it, I found the whole beginning muddled, too full of info dumping. This time I also found the first part impenetrable and stopped reading. I then gave it a rest and started researching the story online. I could tell Clifton was trying to do several things at once in the first half of the story. He was setting up the much simpler second half, but he was also using the story to expound on science, scientists, and the perception of science, among other things.

Clifton also worked hard to develop his characters, and convey them psychologically, and even have us understand the psychological understanding of the psychiatrist. But this requires close reading.

I then read Barry Malzberg’s introduction to “Clerical Error” where he gives us some background on Mark Clifton. After reading that, and thinking about what I had read so far, I went back and started the story for a third time. For some reason I was in the right mood, and I zoned in on what Clifton was doing. This time the story worked great. Here’s Malzberg’s introduction.

I really wanted to hear this story too, but I couldn’t find any audiobook narration of the story. I even downloaded a pirated copy of a Mark Clifton collection in .pdf format and loaded it into the Edge browser which has a very good text to speech function. It works to a degree, but ultimately, I had to give up.

The story’s set up involves a scientist, David Storm, going insane. Because Storm works for the government in a high security job, the government doesn’t want to release him to outside doctors. He babbles about technology that will change the world. Dr. Ernest Moss, the psychiatrist with security clearance in charge of Storm requests that Storm be given a lobotomy. Dr. Kingston, the psychiatrist administrator over Dr. Moss doesn’t want to allow the lobotomy until he understands the case, but he doesn’t have top level security.

Dr. Kingston tries several end-runs around bureaucracy desperately to save Storm. Each step gives Clifton a chance to pontificate about science versus the government. Since Malzberg points out that Clifton was an industrial psychologist, this means his insights have some weight.

One reason why the story is so hard to get into is it digresses in so many directions. Clifton focuses on Dr. Kingston and his secretary Miss Verity. She is the top secretary in the psychiatric division, and Clifton represents them as the two most powerful people in the story. Miss Verity has a mind of her own concerning how things should be done. She wants to protect her boss Dr. Kingston. Dr. Moss tries to bypass Dr. Kingston by trying to get Miss Verity to sign off on the lobotomy for Kingston. That’s when she alerts Kingston to the problem. The rest of the story is Kingston trying to get help for David Storm, which would require sending him to doctors without security clearances.

This is all straightforward. Clifton complicates things by using the power struggle between Kingston and Moss to comment on psychiatry and science. This is why the story is in Astounding, because John W. Campbell Jr. loved these kind of discussion stories that challenge how people think, how they contend with authority, and how the status quo should be questioned.

I can understand how an insane scientist who babbles about government secrets could be a problem, but would a lobotomy even stop him from talking? It could quiet his constant anxiety and rage, but would it erase what he knows? I’m not sure how lobotomies work. Storm has also gone through a series of electroshock treatments that hasn’t shut him up.

Clifton uses “Clerical Error” to promote psychiatry as a science. But he also develops each character with a lot of psychological insight. This adds another layer to the story. And it’s why I said the story is hard to get into. Clifton is doing three things at once. Expressing politics, showcasing psychiatry and psychology, and telling a story. Along the way he also gives several reasons for the title of the story.

Like I said, it all came together for this third reading. I think if I read “Clerical Error” a fourth or fifth time, I’d get even more out of it. There’s a lot to it. It’s a shame that Clifton’s stories aren’t in print. But that’s why we’re doing this group reading for The Best SF Stories of 1956, to find forgotten classics that deserve more attention. I really like what Barry Malzberg said in his introduction to Neglected Visions. I hope he doesn’t mind me reprinting it here.

Unfortunately, Mark Clifton seems to be mostly out of print. You can find his original magazine publications using ISFDB and Archive.com. However, Amazon does have The Second Golden Age of Science Fiction MEGAPACK ®: Mark Clifton for 99 cents. It doesn’t have “Clerical Error,” but it does have a handful of stories and a couple of serials. In 2020 Dover published What Have I Done?: The Stories of Mark Clifton. The paperback is currently $7.48 for 288 pages, but the ebook is $3.99 but claims to only have 21 pages. That worries me. It appears to only be the first story.

James Wallace Harris 11/30/23

Posted on by jameswharris · 5 Comments

“The Minority Report” by Philip K. Dick

“The Minority Report” was first published in Fantastic Universe Science Fiction, January 1956. You can read it on Archive.org or listen to it on YouTube. (Or even listen and read at the same time.) It is story #2 of 22 for The Best SF Stories of 1956 group read. Wikipedia has a rather informative entry for “The Minority Report” that I highly recommend reading.

“The Minority Report” did not meet any of the criteria I used for selecting the best SF short stories of 1956, but I included it because it’s a famous Philip K. Dick story, and because it inspired a movie and television miniseries. It’s interesting that neither Judith Merril, T. E. Dikty, nor the team of Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg picked the story for their best of the year anthologies. Obviously, they were not precogs to the story’s big success in the future, but ultimately, I think they made the right choice.

The premise of “The Minority Report” is built on the idea that the future can be predicted, and murders can be prevented by arresting murderers before they kill. The plot arises when the head of Precrime, John A. Anderton, sees his own name on a computer card stating that he will kill Leopold Kaplan. Anderton immediately figures it’s a frame-up by Ed Witwer to take over his job.

The story is weird because the future is predicted by three mentally and physically damaged people kept in a kind of permanent dream state. They are called precogs. Because the future is always in flux, each precog is monitored by a computer. To convict a person of a precrime requires two of the three computers analyzing the dreams of their precogs predicting the same future, and that’s called the majority report. A single computer produces a minority report.

Most of the story involves Anderton going on the run hoping to prove himself innocent and maintain the validity of precrime as a principle of law enforcement. The story is quite dramatic. I can see why they chose to produce it as a movie. “The Minority Report” is full of action and ideas. Along the way, the story produces quite a bit of PKD weirdness, paranoia, offbeat philosophical questions, and a disloyal wife. Unfortunately, there are so many plot twists that the story breaks down in confusion.

Information about the sale and publication of “The Minority Report” can be found at philipdick.com. It was reprinted in Dick’s 1957 collection The Variable Man and Other Stories, but it was never anthologized in a major anthology. According to the way stories are remembered in the science fiction publishing world, “The Minority Report” was never a respected story. Fantastic Universe was not a top tier publication. This was PKD’s 91st story, and 85th short story. (See philipdick.com for numbering his worksl) Dick cranked them out, and it shows. “The Minority Report” could have been a much better story if Dick had thought about the plot carefully and rewritten it several times. But he had to eat and sold it for little money. Philipdick.com suggests it earned only a little more than $12.95, but don’t say exactly.

Here is the review my friend Mike emailed me.

I think "The Minority Report" is one of Dick's weaker efforts. 


I've never been a fan of hocus-pocus stories, and the idea of Precrime has so much hand-waving magic about it that Penn and Teller would be proud. We never get a plausible explanation why or how precogs manage to predict the future. Good science fiction gets you to believe the unbelievable, but Precrime feels like a story gimmick.


I've also never been a fan of mysteries, because the author typically drops critical details into the narrative at the last minute. We're supposed to marvel at the perspicacity of the protagonist, but I just feel manipulated. Dick drops this important bit of information on us:


"Jerry's vision was misphased. Because of the erratic nature of precognition, he was examining a time-area slightly different from that of his companions."


We discover that precognition, which is the foundation of Precrime, has an "erratic nature" and precogs can examine different time-areas. Doesn't that collapse the entire Precrime house of cards?


You know a story is flawed when the author has to stop and explain for pages why Anderton's name was generated by the Precrime system. PKD finally throws in the towel when he has Anderton announce "Each report was different...Each was unique. But two of them agreed on one point. If left free, I would kill Kaplan. That created the illusion of a majority report. Actually, that's all it was--an illusion."


The whole story feels like an illusion, a magic trick. The characters are subservient to an arcane plot, stock performers in a magic show.

I agree with Mike. I dislike thrillers and mysteries where the author jerks us around contriving plot twists by whatever whim hits them at the moment. They never feel believable or real. Like I said in my previous review. I want to believe what I’m reading, and I have too much distaste for precognition.

Now, if PKD had come up with another system for identifying potential murderers I might have bought the idea of precrime. I don’t think this is possible, but if they had a brain implant that measured various kinds of emotional states and they could identify one that people experience before committing a murder, then that would have been acceptable to me. Dick’s precogs are mutants with ESP. I have problems with psi stories in SF. Too often they feel like comic book plots.

There are a few psychic power stories in science fiction that succeed with some readers. There’s telepathy in The Demolished Man and teleportation in The Stars My Destination, two much admired novels by Alfred Bester. But they are not my favorites. PKD played with ESP in some of his stories, and I’m a big fan of his work, and I can sometimes buy such weirdness as part of his stories because Dick was so weird himself. I’m afraid the precog stuff in “The Minority Report” didn’t work for me this time.

Alfred Bester came up through comics, and I’ve always felt he felt superior to both comics and science fiction. As much as I admire Bester’s writing ability, I’ve always thought he was sneering at science fiction. Writing stories about psionics was his way of saying SF fans would believe anything. But I think Dick was different. He was into thinking about the supernatural and any possible explanation for reality. He played with weirdness.

I need to think about the use of ESP in SF. Let’s see if any more of the 1956 stories deal with psychic powers. I’m not sure it’s a legitimate theme for science fiction.

James Wallace Harris, 11/29/23