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Heinlein’s Juveniles I Read in the 1960s vs. Philip K. Dick’s 1960s Novels I’m Reading in My 70s

I’ve been gorging on Philip K. Dick books this month. It occurred to me, that I’m consuming vast quantities of PKD in my old age like I did Heinlein books in my youth. Why was Heinlein my #1 science fiction writer in the 1960s when I was a teen? Is it for the same reasons that Philip K. Dick is my #1 sci-fi writer in my seventies in the 2020s?

The short answer is Heinlein’s juveniles were great reads and perfect escapism for a young person growing up in a problem family hoping to find a bright future. While PKD’s books are great escapes for an old guy living through troubled times when the future looks quite bleak. Both offer escapism from troubled times, but their imagined futures were distinctly different. Heinlein’s was best for the young, while Dick might be better for old age.

For some reason I resonate with Heinlein and PKD. I’ve written about that before, read “The Ghosts That Haunt Me.” There are certain writers I can’t stop reading their books, and biographies about them. I’m now curious why Philip K. Dick appeals so much to me late in life.

I discovered Heinlein in the Fall of 1964, just months before the first manned Project Gemini missions in March 1965. This was after Project Mercury was over. I had followed every manned space mission in the 1960s starting with Alan Shepard’s suborbital flight in May of 1961. I grew up as a final frontier true believer, and Heinlein’s twelve juvenile novels shaped my hopes for the future. This was before the psychedelic 1960s hit.

I don’t remember when I changed, but like many teenagers growing up in the 1960s, I radicalized. I tuned in, turned on, and dropped out. I was still living at home, and I was still going to high school, but I wasn’t in either place.

I can’t say I contracted the weirdness of Philip K. Dick back then, but science fiction was getting weird. My favorite writers shifted from Heinlein/Clarke/Asimov to Samuel R. Delany, Jack Kerouac, and Mark Twain as the 1960s ended. My ideas about the final frontier and the future were changing, especially after reading Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner in 1969.

I didn’t discover Philip K. Dick until 1968 when I checked out Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? from the 7-day bookshelf at the Coconut Grove Library in Miami. What a strange ride that was. Before the decade was over, I also read The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch and a couple of others, but I can only dredge up specific memories of those two titles right now. I didn’t seriously get into PKD until after the Paul Williams article ran about Dick in The Rolling Stone magazine in November of 1975, then I started reading PKD for real. Back in the 1980s I told my friend Mike about Philip K. Dick, and we started collecting his books and both of us became big fans. We’ve been discussing PKD ever since. In 1991 I even went to Ft. Morgan to visit Dick’s grave.

This past month, I’ve been binge reading PKD again. I do that from time to time. And something struck me. I discovered Heinlein when I was twelve, just before I turned thirteen at the end of 1964. I read nearly all of Heinlein’s back catalog in the following two years, ending my Heinlein binge by reading The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and The Past Through Tomorrow in 1967 as they came out.

But it was the twelve Heinlein juveniles published from 1947-1958 that made me a science fiction fan. At the end of 1967, with my first paycheck from working at the Kwik Check in Coconut Grove, I ordered all twelve of those books in hardback from Scribners because I loved them so much. I still have them. Those books define my love of science fiction. So, it’s weird that I’m ending up in PKD’s landscape. Heinlein and Dick saw the future vastly different. But then, the future I envisioned for myself in the 1960s is nothing like the future I’m living in the 2020s.

What’s interesting, that I realized this week, is Philip K. Dick’s 1960s science fiction are shaping how I think about science fiction in my old age. And there’s quite a contrast between how Heinlein and Dick wrote science fiction. I just finished five books Dick hammered out in 1963:

Heinlein’s fiction from the 1950s had a consistency to them, with each juvenile novel going step-by-step further from Earth. Heinlein was always adamant that his philosophy was represented in the three novels Starship Troopers (1959), Stranger in a Strange Land (1961) and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (1966). But those books represent his third philosophical stage. Heinlein’s first stage was his Future History stories of the 1940s, but what I cared about most was his Space Exploration stage of the 1950s. Both Heinlein and Dick wrote many books that shared a common vision of the future. Heinlein’s vision of tomorrow in his 1950s books are quite consistent. But then, so is Dick’s science fiction from the 1960s.

I’m sensing that Philip K. Dick went through different philosophical stages too. In the 1950s he was cranking out science fiction to make a living, but Dick really wanted to become a respected mainstream writer. Then from The Man in the High Castle (1961) through Our Friends from Frolix 8 (1969) he wrote twenty-one very strange science fiction novels that all have consistent themes and elements. In the 1970s, he shifted to more serious writing, some of which was based on firsthand experiences.

Many readers accused Dick of being a 1960s sci-fi writer on drugs, suffering from mental illness, and producing psychedelic science fiction. I don’t think that’s accurate. I think his 1959 novel, Confessions of a Crap Artist (published 1975) is a key to PKD’s 1960s fiction. Dick learned a lot about writing from producing all those unsold mainstream novels in the 1950s. Yes, he grew up reading science fiction and falling in love with the genre, but he was well acquainted with the real world and real literature. He had to accept that he could only make money selling science fiction, but he compromised by putting reasonable realistic characters into bizarre science fictional fantasies.

When I was growing up and embracing the Heinlein juveniles, I didn’t understand how unrealistic they were. I wanted space travel as Heinlein described it to be possible, but it would be decades before I realized how unrealistic those expectations were. Philip K. Dick was 23 years older than I was, and he obviously knew how crazy science fiction was back in the 1950s. I imagine he told himself, if science fiction sells, I’ll write science fiction but with the weirdness knob turned to eleven.

Dick’s science fiction in the 1960s got very psychedelic before the 1960s got psychedelic. He lived in California, and that helped put him at the forefront of the counterculture. As I grew up with the counterculture, but slightly delayed in Miami, I was still rereading the Heinlein juveniles. They were fantasies that kept me sane, but they were delusional. It’s a shame I didn’t discover PKD sooner, or even first. Dick knew science fiction was delusional. At least, I think he did. I believe with his VALIS experience, he started wondering if the universe wasn’t far stranger than what even science fiction writers imagined. I want to believe that Dick knew he was a crap artist for most of his career before he started believing in the crap. Evidently, you can’t toy with crap ideas all your life and not get infected.

What’s weird on another level was Heinlein turned strange in the 1960s too. It’s my theory that he too realized that 1950s science fiction wasn’t going anywhere, and thus he needed to go in another direction to stay at the top. My guess is he read Atlas Shrugged and decided he wanted to be a writer like Ayn Rand. One whose political ideas were taken seriously. In some ways, Stranger in a Strange Land is just as weird as PKD’s work in the 1960s.

Heinlein’s lost his mojo in the 1970s, and I quit reading him. Over the years, I’ve become disenchanted with Heinlein’s work after 1960 too. Philip K. Dick took a new direction in the 1970s and found a higher calling. Science fiction, as a genre, also cchanged in many ways in the 1970s. Since then, science fiction books have gotten better written, and more creative, but have mostly retreated into itself, into fantastic feats of world building. I still love 1950s science fiction. I think that’s when the genre peaked in terms of exploring science fictional ideas. Movies and novels are better constructed now, but most of the ideas are retreads.

I guess I haven’t progressed much in life. I started in the 1960s with 1950s science fiction, and now in the 2020s I’m focused on 1960s science fiction. Maybe before I die, I’ll get around to digesting 1970s science fiction. But before I do that, I need to use up PKD’s books from the 1960s. I need to figure them out.

I only reread Heinlein juveniles now for nostalgic reasons. I think I’m reading Dick’s 1960s novels for a reason, but I’m not sure what it is. PKD seemed to be writing about something, and I’m trying to figure out what that was. But I could be wrong. He could have just been cranking out a bunch of crazy sci-fi books to pay the bills. However, I’m not the only one trying to figure out PKD. Lots of people are writing monographs and dissertations on him.

In the 1950s and 1960s Heinlein was king of the genre hill. At the time, I thought he would be seen by people in the 21st century as the Charles Dickens of science fiction. That hasn’t happened. Philip K. Dick is the top dog when remembering 20th century science fiction. I would not have predicted that back in the 1960s. Nor would I have imagined that as an old man I would be so hung up on Philip K. Dick.

James Wallace Harris, 1/21/23

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“Consider Her Ways” by John Wyndham

“Consider Her Ways” was first published in the original anthology, Sometime, Never. It is story #22 of 22 for The Best SF Stories of 1956 group read. Unfortunately, I can’t link to a copy of the story to read online, but you might already own one of the many anthologies where it’s been reprinted. I read “Consider Her Ways” in A Science Fiction Argosy edited by Damon Knight. But I also own it in The Science Fiction Century edited by David G. Hartwell. The story was also included in two of Wyndham’s collections:

I strongly urge you to read the story before reading what I have to say. It’s an exceptional yarn, a classic, and I don’t want to spoil your reading fun. “Consider Her Ways” begins with a woman waking up in a hospital and having no memory of who she is or how she got there. That mystery continues for many pages, and I never guessed the cause.

Let me say, “Consider Her Ways” is a feminist utopian tale that most will consider a dystopia. But what defines a better society? If you’ve read and enjoyed Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, you might want to read “Consider Her Ways.”

“Consider Her Ways” is a very old-fashioned science fiction, reminding me of Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy, When the Sleeper Wakes by H. G. Wells, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, and Beyond This Horizon by Robert A. Heinlein. John Wyndham uses his story to speculate about a future society while commenting on our present society. Referring to these books should give you enough of a clue to the plot of “Consider Her Ways.”

Especially in the 19th century, and to a degree in the 20th century, writers who wanted to write about traveling to the future but without resorting to a time machine, had their present-day characters going into a deep sleep and waking up in the future. John Wyndam invents a drug, chuinjuntin, from South American jungles, which causes a young 20th century woman to project her soul into the body of a woman in the future. Wyndam, solved the problem of return travel by using the same drug again. Mostly sleepers into the future are stuck there unless the story is only a dream. Heinlein had Dan Davis travel to the future via cold sleep in The Door into Summer, but then used a time machine to get him back to 1970.

I won’t go into the society Wyndham creates, other than to say its without men. Jane Waterleigh, our time traveler, does not like the feminist utopia she’s visited and tries to prevent it when she returns to her own time. I’ll call this future, the pink future, since its decor is often painted pink. The pink future Wyndham imagines for women is obviously horrifying from our perspective, but Laura and the other women of the future were completely satisfied with it, even proud of their society. I wasn’t sure I wanted Jane to destroy it. I think each reader will have a different take on Wyndham’s imagined future. Utopia is so hard to define. I don’t think a perfect utopia is possible, but the pink future in “Consider Her Ways” has no violence, lack, ugliness, or apparent unhappiness. However, it has an ant-like social structure. Jane finds herself in a huge body of a woman, a class called mothers. They produced broods of babies, four at a time, and are treated very well.

Wyndham’s missed one point. Jane claims the pink future has no love and romance, and thus a depressing dystopia. What about lesbian love, romance, and sex? Wyndham assumes without men; women wouldn’t have romantic relationships. Even in 1956, that should have been obviously wrong.

We all read stories differently, using fictional clues to customize our versions of the story, based on different assumptions, reactions, wants, and conclusions. Here’s what my friend Mike wrote to me about “Consider Her Ways.”

Ever since I first read The Day of the Triffids back in the sixties, I've been taken with John Wyndham's work. His beautiful prose describes deeply unsettling situations and events.

In "Consider Her Ways," a woman "...who had no idea who I was, or where I was..." is confronted with this vision: "In front of me stood an outrageous travesty, an elephantine female form, looking more huge for its pink swathings."

Only Wyndham could conjure up this disturbing description:

"And this delicate face, this little Fragonard, was set upon that monstrous body: no less outrageously might a blossom of freesia sprout from a turnip."

What transpires is an elaborate hallucination or the future (or one of a number of alternate futures). Jane is confronted with a civilization devoid of men. Her long conversation with the historian Laura could be considered an info dump, but is fascinating and adds considerable depth and nuance to the story. Even after more than sixty-five years it resonates with the reader.

Wyndham never allows us to feel comfortable. Are we dealing with a woman's bad drug trip? Have we had a glimpse of the future? And what do we think about that future? We're left with a jumble of emotions all wrapped up inside of Wyndham's masterful writing.

Mike is open-minded, leaving several possibilities available. I took a different reading route. I accepted Jane’s tale as an actual time travel story. Mike left open the possibility it was all a hallucination, and Jane murdered innocent Dr. Perrigan in an insane delusional state. But Wyndham makes it more complicated. In the end, Dr. Hellyer, Jane’s colleague who gave her the psychoactive drug to test, and Jane’s lawyer, discuss getting Jane off from the murder charge based on insanity. But they wonder if her story is true. Then the lawyer points out that Dr. Perrigan had a son who was also a Ph.D. researcher in the same area as his father. What if Jane’s story is true, but she killed the wrong person?

The story could be a hallucination. The time travel story could be true, but it can take two forms. One, Jane changes, the future, but two, she doesn’t. All the possibilities make “Consider Her Ways” a compelling story. It allows Wyndham to play with several time travel tropes in one tale. Such bendiness makes for great writing.

James Wallace Harris, 1/16/23

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“Anything Box” by Zenna Henderson

“Anything Box” was first published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, October 1956. Sometimes reprinted as “The Anything Box.” You can read it on Archive.org. It is story #21 of 22 for The Best SF Stories of 1956 group read. “Anything Box” was a selection for Judith Merril’s SF:’57: The Year’s Greatest Science Fiction and Fantasy. It’s been reprinted a fair amount, but usually considered fantasy. “Anything Box” has the most citations of Zenna Henderson stories in our citation database, but with just three citations. In other words, she’s not that well remembered.

“Anything Box” is a story about a teacher who has a special student, Sue-lynn, who appears to have an invisible box that lets her see into magical worlds. At first the teacher thought Sue-lynn was just having a bit of normal childhood imaginary fun, but then another teacher suggested that Sue-lynn might be mentally disturbed. Her father was caught robbing a gas station and jailed, so there is reason. Sue-lynn’s teacher, our first-person narrator then begins to wonder if the anything box might be bad for Sue-lynn. Over the course of the story, we go back and forth trying to decide if the anything box is real, imaginary, or dangerous. You should read the story yourself, it’s lovely.

Zenna Henderson is most famous for writing stories about The People, collected in 1995 as Ingathering: The Complete People Stories. They are gentle tales about children and adults who have special powers. Like Superman, they come from another planet. The People look like us, but have extra abilities, like being able to fly. The People stories are light and moving. Over the decades I’ll read a few and think how wonderful Zenna Henderson is as a writer. But I always go on to read somebody else rather quickly. Unfortunately, her stories suffer from a kind of sameness. You need to read them occasionally, at the right moments in your life. Then they can be magical.

“Anything Box” is a story that can mean a lot to a reader. To me, the Anything Box is a stand in for books, and in my case science fiction books. When I was growing up, science fiction let me cope with a bumpy upbringing. Dave Hook, one of our group members said in his comment, “For me, this is SF, not fantasy.” I can see that, but I’m not sure I see it in the same way Dave does. Maybe Dave assumed the story is about a kid with a real alien artifact with special powers.

I don’t think Zenna Henderson’s magic worked with my friend Mike. He wrote this about this story:

"The Anything Box" is a wisp of a fantasy story. Its gossamer framework is too slight to support any metaphorical baggage we might want to heap on it.

A young girl has a mysterious Anything Box (which today would be known as an iPhone). Her teacher gets a chance to peer into the wonderful Anything Box. The girl loses the box and it eventually turns up in the teacher's desk drawer. The teacher gives it back to her.

No epiphanies. No tragic outcome. Calm is quickly restored. We are left wanting something more substantial.

Mike is right, the story is gossamer light, but I can find all kinds of heavy metaphorical meanings in it. When I was ten, I discovered the Oz books by L. Frank Baum at the Homestead Air Force Base Library, a magical place in my memory. Years later, I read an article from the 1950s, about how librarians had started removing Oz books off the shelves because they thought they gave children unrealistic expectations about life. That article could have come out around the time Zenna Henderson wrote “Anything Box,” because the worries of the teachers in the stories are the same kind of worries expressed by the librarians. At the time I read that article, and it was back in the 1980s, I was outraged that librarians would ban books.

But do you want to know what’s hilarious? Those librarians were right. The Oz books gave me tons of unrealistic expectations about life. Whether we need escapist fantasies to cope with living is another issue. Now, in my old age, as much as I embrace Zenna Henerson’s sentiment in “Anything Box,” I know the dangers of an anything box are all too real.

If I had not used my anything box growing up, I might have been more realistic, and successful in life. But might, is the key word. I might not have survived. I know about my life-long addiction to an anything box. I also understand my unrealistic expectations toward reality. But it is, what it is.

James Wallace Harris, 1/13/24

These are the Zenna Henderson paperback books I own. They are how I remember her:

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Getting to Know Philip K. Dick, Biographies, Memoirs, Interviews, & Letters

Reprinted and updated from “The Biographies of Philip K. Dick” at SF Signal (April 2016)

Back in 2016 I went on a Philip K. Dick binge, reading several of his novels and a stack of biographies. I wrote an article about the biographies before I burned out of that binge. I’m back to binge-reading on PKD again and I went looking for my article, “The Biographies of Philip K. Dick” at SF Signal, but it’s been taking down. The link above is to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. I decided to reprint it here and update it with any book that would help me get to know Philip K. Dick, including interviews and letters. I also put links to Amazon (I earn a small fee) to those that are in print. The books that are out of print are getting extremely expensive to buy used.

Philip K. Dick inspired more biographers than any other science fiction writer. Were those biographers drawn to Dick’s strange life, or did they hope to learn more about his books? For anyone wanting to know Philip K. Dick, picking a biography can be hard. A definitive biography has not yet emerged, and each of the existing biographies have their own unique appeal. I’ve been reading books about PKD for almost forty years and find they’re revealing in two ways. First, PKD was an exceedingly complex person. Even if you’ve never read one of his novels, his personal story is as far out as his fiction. Second, if you do have a passion for PKD’s work, you’ll want to read the biographies, because Phil often weaved his own experiences into his plots and characters, making those stories deeper if you learn how and why.

But which biography to pick? The latest? The longest? PKD had five wives, two of which wrote memoirs, as well as one lady friend. I loved In Search of Philip K. Dick by Anne R. Dick (married to PKD 1959-1965) because she influenced The Man in the High Castle. And Tessa B. Dick, (married to PKD 1973-1977) offers insight into Phil’s later mystical writings. I wished Kleo Apostolides (married 1950-1959) and Nancy Hackett (married 1966-1972) had also written biographies, so we’d have complete spousal coverage of Dick’s writing years.

Paul Williams and Greg Rickman’s books are out of print, yet very worthy of tracking down. Divine Invasions is excellent, but older, still a top contender. If you’re attracted to Dick’s weirdness, consider Anthony Peake’s book. However, if you only read one, a good place to start will be I Am Alive and You Are Dead by Emmanuel Carrère, a French writer. Be warned though, reading one biography of PKD can draw you into the black hole of PKDickian addiction.

If you know about others, let me know.

James Wallace Harris, 1/11/23

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“Stranger Station” by Damon Knight – Fourth Reading

“Stranger Station” was first published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, December 1956. You can read it on Archive.org. It is story #20 of 22 for The Best SF Stories of 1956 group read. “Stranger Station” was a selection for Judith Merril’s SF:’57: The Year’s Greatest Science Fiction and Fantasy and Asimov/Greenberg’s 1988 anthology The Great SF Stories # 18 (1956). It’s often reprinted. This is my fourth reading of the story, and the third for the Facebook SF short story reading group. It was tied for fourth place for the most cited SF short story of 1956 in our citation database.

I’ve reviewed “Stranger Station” before.

I think it’s important to note that Damon Knight published two of the most remembered science fiction short stories of 1956: “The Country of the Kind” and “Stranger Station.” I think it’s also important we should note that both were about hate. We must ask, “Were they positive or negative?”

I’m a big believer in rereading fiction, but can a story be reread too much? With this fourth reading, I got even closer to what Knight was creating. In the first half of the story, I marveled at Knight’s hard science setup. The story was more vivid than my previous readings. I admired everything Knight wrote, and I was quite impressed. The second half of the story, especially the ending, still puzzles me. Had Paul Wesson truly figured out the motives of the aliens from Titan? Was his reaction, right? Was Wesson’s solution supposed to leave us feeling ambiguous about what Wesson figured out?

The basic plot is Paul Wesson, an astronaut working on a space station near Earth volunteers to spend months on a distant space station, called Stranger Station, reserved for meeting an alien from Titan every twenty years. Both aliens and humans have trouble being near each other. Nearness causes a deep sense of psychological dread in each species. However, it also causes the aliens to exude a golden liquid from their bodies that humans have discovered has life extending properties for our species. The aliens agree to meet every two decades at a space station far from earth. Just one human and one alien. The fear of being around humans causes the alien to sweat longevity chemicals which they freely give to the humans. But what do the aliens get in return? That’s a mystery.

There is a cost to the human who volunteers for this mission. They go crazy, losing the ability to communicate, and change physically in horrible ways. It might be a form of adapting to the aliens. But Wesson doesn’t know that. It’s another mystery. But all of humanity gets to live another twenty years longer. This reminds me of Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.”

Paul Wesson’s only companion is an AI he calls Aunt Jane. The creation of Aunt Jane was brilliant speculation by Damon Knight in 1956. Paul tries to learn as much as possible about his fate from Aunt Jane, but she is restricted by what she can tell. This relationship slowly reveals the mysteries, and maybe the solutions. However, in the end, we’re not sure what happened to Paul. It appears he’s about to die. And he’s killed the alien. It also implies that humanity’s longevity serum supply will be cancelled. Was Paul Wesson, right? Did he save humans from a fate worse than death, or merely act on his own hatred and xenophobia?

Wesson believes the aliens are fighting us with love because they know we’ll eventually overrun the solar system, go interstellar, and destroy them in the process. Paul believes the aliens give the humans their golden sweat to make us addicted, thus protecting themselves. Wesson then assumes hate is the only way to fight back.

I’m still not sure what philosophical stance Knight makes in this story? Is he saying xenocide is ethical? Or that cooperation or even a symbiotic relationship with aliens is evil? Is he promoting human purity, a kind of interstellar racism? Up until the arrival of the alien at the station, the story is very pro-space, pro-technology, pro-future. Then it gets weird. Is hate the solution, or just Wesson’s solution, or even Knight’s solution?

My friend Mike didn’t have much to say about the story, but he sums it up precisely:

“Stranger Station” has a pervasive underlying element of apprehension and dread. I think Knight is forcing us to confront the stark reality of alien contact. He discards the facile Hollywood model and thrusts us into the bewilderment and dread and menace that will surround an alien contact event. The stakes will be enormous; our survival as a species will be at risk.

Personally, I don’t believe we can have contact with aliens of any kind. I assume that each evolved planetary biological ecosystem will be deadly to all other planetary ecosystems. That was the same conclusion as The World of the Worlds by H. G. Wells and more recently by Kim Stanley Robinson in his novel Aurora. Knight doesn’t seem to be worried about deadly microbes, only of hating each other. Knight is suggesting that there will be psychic barriers that will keep us separate from beings from other worlds. But again, is that Paul Wesson, or Damon Knight?

I tend to think it’s not Knight, but Knight suggesting it’s true about us.

James Wallace Harris, 1/11/23

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“And Now the News…” by Theodore Sturgeon

“And Now the News…” was first published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, December 1956. You can read it on Archive.org. It is story #19 of 22 for The Best SF Stories of 1956 group read. “And Now the News…” was a selection in Asimov/Greenberg 1988 anthology devoted to the best SF of 1956. It’s often reprinted. This is my second reading of the story.

This story has quite a punch, so go read it. Be warned. I’m going to give away the ending.

“And Now the News…” isn’t really science fiction, nor fantasy. It’s about a man named MacLyle who was addicted to the news. To break that addiction, his wife sabotaged the radios and televisions, and destroyed his newspaper. MacLyle divorced his wife, moved out into the woods, and forgot how to use language. His wife hired a psychiatrist who tracked him down and “cured” him. On the way home, he went berserk, killed four people before he was killed himself.

For a story that came out in 1956, it feels quite relevant to 2024. I haven’t read much by Sturgeon, a couple of novels, maybe a dozen stories. He wrote much more. I’d love to read a biography about him. Wikipedia says Sturgeon wrote a bit of an autobiography, Argyll: A Memoir, which was an 80-page pamphlet. Abebooks.com and eBay.com list no copies for sale.

Wikipedia said Sturgeon was married three times and had two other long-term relationships and fathered seven children. He worked at many kinds of jobs. And his stories reflect a certain strangeness. Sometimes I wondered if he led a Beat life or was some kind of bohemian. Other times, because psychiatry is so often mentioned in his stories, I wonder if Sturgeon didn’t have mental problems.

If you read “And Now the News…” I think you’ll also wonder about his mental state. The story seems to be an attack on psychiatry, and even mundane life. Go read it, to see what I mean.

My friend Mike had a lot to say about the story. He hoped I had answers. I don’t. Mike summarizes stories much better than I do, so I won’t repeat what Mike gave me. I’m trying to get Mike to become a blogger because he’s good at reviewing fiction.

I might as well come clean and admit that I don't understand "And Now the News..." I can't fit the pieces together.

The story can be divided into three acts.

Act One

In the first act, we are introduced to MacLyle:

"He had habits and he had hobbies, like everybody else and (like everybody else) his were a little different from anybody's. The one that annoyed his wife the most, until she got used to it, was the news habit, or maybe hobby."

It seems that MacLyle is obsessed with the news and justifies his preoccupation by quoting Donne: "...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind..."

Sturgeon takes pains to emphasize that "...MacLyle was, outside his peculiarity, a friendly and easygoing character. He liked people and invited them and visited them..." At this point, it feels a little like a Clifford D. Simak story.

Then MacLyle's wife Esther decides to sabotage the radios and tv sets so MacLyle can't access the news. When he asks for the newspaper, Esther confesses that she "...hadn't ordered it and wouldn't again." She reveals what she has done and "...realized too late that the news was so inextricably part of her husband that in casting it out she cast him out too."

So the end of Act One results in MacLyle leaving home and going to an attorney to arrange support for his wife and children. The lawyer "...might have entertained fears for MacLyle except for the fact that he was jovial and loquacious throughout, behaving like a happy man..."

Act Two

MacLyle is now on his own. Suddenly, when he tries to read the morning paper, he realizes that he can no longer read. Soon, he realizes he can't speak and can't understand speech. What are we to make of this? Is this a metaphorical transformation? Is it an actual physical manifestation? Why? 

MacLyle retreats to a remote cabin and builds a new life.

Act Three

Esther's psychiatrist tracks down MacLyle. He finds him playing his ophicleide, "...the craziest-looking man he had ever seen." Before long however "...the warm good humor and genuine welcome on MacLyle's sunburned face drove away fright and even caution..." MacLyle shows the psychiatrist his cabin, replete with his paintings and sculptures. It's obvious that MacLyle has worked very hard to build a new life in this remote setting.

"Watching him, the psychiatrist reflected suddenly that this withdrawn and wordless individual was a happy one, in his own matrix..."

The psychiatrist is appalled and realizes that he must "...find a way to communicate with MacLyle, and when he had found it, he must communicate to him the error of his ways." Is the psychiatrist a straw man? Is society the real force that cannot tolerate difference, cannot abide alternatives? Is this a commentary on psychiatry or society?

Eventually, the psychiatrist secretly drugs MacLyle and then injects him with a cornucopia of drugs. In a drugged haze, MacLyle is spirited away by the psychiatrist. MacLyle regains the ability to read and speak. 

MacLyle tells that psychiatrist that "Damn foolishness diminishes me because I am involved. People all the time pushing people around diminishes me. Everybody for a fast buck diminishes me...I just had to get uninvolved with mankind before I got diminished altogether, everything mankind did was my fault. So I did and now here I am involved again." Why did MacLyle think that what mankind did was his fault? What led him to that conclusion? Why is he diminished by the actions of others?

Finally, MacLyle reveals "Why, I'm going out there and diminish mankind right back." We learn that "He killed four people before they got him." How do we connect the dots? Throughout the story MacLyle has been described as kind and easygoing and genuine. Now he's suddenly a rampaging murderer? Is Sturgeon trying to make a broader statement about societal forces that warp perceptions? Does MacLyle represent nonconformity, while the psychiatrist represents the hidebound cultural norms that constrict our lives? 

Too many questions. Not enough answers. I'm hoping Jim has some answers.

Theodore Sturgeon has something philosophical to say in “And Now the News…” but I’m not sure what it is. At first, we think of the title referring to MacLyle’s early addiction to the news, but what if the story we’re reading is the news Sturgeon is tell us?

What if Theodore Sturgeon felt like I do now when I look out at the world? When I was young, I read several biographies of Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) and I was troubled by how bitter Clemens became in old age. I told myself back then that I didn’t want to become embittered by life like Clemens. However, now that I’m old I realize my attitude toward humanity is far from positive. I can only assume “And Now the News…” is Sturgeon having a Mark Twain moment, and this story could be included in Sturgeon’s own collection of stories that could also be titled Letters From the Earth. Maybe the John Donne quote was written when Donne was young, and Sturgeon was sneering at it. I don’t know.

I have a tremendous interest in Philip K. Dick because he was a tortured soul. There’s not enough written about Sturgeon to really say, but I get the feeling that Sturgeon and Dick had a lot in common. I’ve lost count of the number of biographies written about PKD. I think if serious biographies were written about Sturgeon, he might be more famous, and his fiction would get more attention.

James Wallace Harris, 1/10/24

p.s. Sorry for slowing down on reviewing these stories. I’m just running out of energy. However, we’re almost done. Just three more to go.

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“2066: Election Day” by Michael Shaara

“2066: Election Day” was first published in Astounding Science Fiction, December 1956. You can read it on Archive.org. It is story #18 of 22 for The Best SF Stories of 1956 group read. “2066: Election Day” was a selection for Dikty’s SF anthology covering 1956-57 published in 1958 and for Asimov/Greenberg 1988 anthology devoted to the best SF of 1956. It’s also been reprinted in several interesting theme anthologies.

I read Michael Shaara’s famous novel about the civil war, The Killer Angels back in the 1970s, so I’m surprised to see his name here. However, I have discovered other famous writers who got their start writing science fiction. Shaara published several SF stories before moving on.

“2066: Election Day” is about a future America where we elect the president by selecting the most qualified person using a network supercomputer called UNCLE SAM. Anyone can take the test to see if they qualify. The story is about the 2066 election when SAM considers no one qualified.

I’ve always wondered why we don’t have more requirements for the job of United States President other than being a natural born citizen that is at least 35 years old. When I was in my early twenties, I took and passed a civil service test to get a temporary job at the IRS as a data entry clerk. I genuinely doubt Donald Trump could have passed that test, or any civil service exam.

I’ve always thought we should have more qualifications for the job of president. I would suggest either a law degree, or a doctorate in political science or history, and having served at least one term as a state governor, or two terms as a U.S. senator, or a minimum of ten years as a major of a U.S. city with a population over one million.

In “2066: Election Day,” Shaara has the requirement of taking a test that covers knowledge in many subjects, including economics, taxes, military, political science, etc. I’m not sure book learning should be the sole qualification, but meeting minimum scores on such tests could be part of the requirements too.

“2066: Election Day” doesn’t have much of a plot, being mainly an essay about an idea, but Shaara does show Harry Larkin going through a few different emotional states. That’s a big plus for this story.

I was surprised by Shaara repeatedly stating the process was aimed at finding the best “man” for the job. No mention of women. That would have shown more foresight. (There is a hint that women could be president, because there’s a little old lady is taking the tests at the beginning of the story.)

My friend Mike told me he didn’t think this story had anything worth discussing. And it is the kind of science fiction story where the author contorts the short story form to express ideas they want to promote. But to paraphrase that adage, “If you have a message, use Western Union.” I would say, “If all you’ve got is an idea, write an essay.” Shaara added a minimal story as a wrapper for his ideas.

For “2066: Election Day” to be a genuine short story, we’d have to experience Harry Larkin going through a struggle, developing as a person while overcoming obstacles. A good short story should produce a cathartic emotional reaction in the reader, even an epiphany. I thought Shaara tried but didn’t make it. Everything came to Harry Larkin, he never worked for anything in the story.

James Wallace Harris, 1/6/24

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             

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The Simulacra by Philip K. Dick

How do literary scholars of Philip K. Dick’s fiction determine which of his novels are masterpieces and which are his hackwork? They all seem equally bizarre, and even confusing. Library of America selected four novels for their first volume in 2007 devoted to PKD. The years given are when they were (written, published).

  • The Man in the High Castle (1961,1962)
  • The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1964,1965)
  • Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1966, 1968)
  • Ubik (1966, 1969)

The second volume came out in 2008 recognized:

  • The Martian Time-Slip (1962, 1964)
  • Dr. Bloodmoney (1963, 1965)
  • Now Wait for Last Year (1963, 1966)
  • Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said (1970, 1974)
  • A Scanner Darkly (1973, 1977)

The third volume in 2009 highlighted:

  • A Maze of Death (1968, 1970)
  • VALIS (1978, 1981)
  • The Divine Invasion (1980, 1981)
  • The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (1981, 1982)

Are we to assume these are Dick’s best novels? My personal favorite, Confessions of a Crap Artist wasn’t included. Neither was The Simulacra which I just read and found fascinating and fun. I think some of the Library of America selections are better than The Simulacra, such as The Man in the High Castle, The Martian Time-Slip, and VALIS, but I’d also claim The Simulacra is not a lesser novel to the others. However, using our citation database system, it gets only one citation. Twelve of the twenty-seven PKD novels in our database only got one citation. The novels in the first LOA volume received 9 to 32 citations, which supports the LOA editors.

The only reason The Simulacra received one citation is because it was part of the SF Masterworks series. All the science fiction magazine reviewers ignored it when it came out. As far as I can tell, none of the reprint editions got reviewed either. The Simulacra just isn’t well-known. It’s often disliked when I see it mentioned.

I liked it. And I want to make a case that it’s worth reading. However, it will be hard to even describe. I’m afraid most readers will be turned off by The Simulacra because it has multiple plot lines with over a dozen main characters. And I can imagine many readers calling it stupid too — but that could be true for a lot of readers coming to PKD work. However, if two of the five novels Dick wrote in 1963 made it into the Library of America, why shouldn’t the other three? What divides them? What makes one novel “good” and another “bad?”

The Simulacra‘s complexity might keep readers from liking it, but that complexity might hide many novelistic virtues. Just because I admired this novel, doesn’t mean others will. I’m writing this essay hoping people will read The Simulacra and give me their opinion. I’m curious if I’m a total outlier. I got a big kick out of the story.

According to Samuel Johnson, “No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.” Dick complained in several 1963 letters found in The Selected Letters of Philip K. Dick: Volume One: 1938-1971, that his wife Anne constantly hounded him to make more money. On the other hand, Dick wrote eleven literary (non-genre) novels from 1952-1960 hoping to become a recognized mainstream writer. All were rejected. He then wrote The Man in the High Castle in 1961 which bridges the literary and science fiction world and won a Hugo award for best novel. Dick then wrote twenty-one science fiction novels from 1962 to 1969, five of them in 1963 alone. He obviously needed money and had to crank out the manuscripts.

After 1970, Dick only published six more novels before he died in 1982. Five of which are included in the Library of America editions. That suggests that the novels he took more time writing fared better with the critics. So, the five novels written in 1963 were among the fastest he wrote, suggesting they shouldn’t be as good. Yet, two were selected for the Library of America.

As much as I like The Simulacra, I do see that it’s flawed. It doesn’t have a main character which most readers prefer. Nor does it jump back and forth between two main characters, which can be quite successful with some readers. And it’s not even one of those experimental stories where we follow several unrelated characters that all come together in the end. Readers find that structure confusing but forgive it if the ending brings everyone together in a satisfying way. I’m not sure The Simulacra wraps up nicely.

We might call the plotting of The Simulacra an example of characters doing parallel play. Dick might have aimed for creating a collage of future American scenes. My guess is Dick banged away on his typewriter, vomiting up The Simulacra onto typing paper. The results are fascinating because the novel is one big pile of imagery from PKD unconscious mind — and what a mind! It begs to be psychoanalyzed. And I’m sure, it parallels his personal life, especially regarding insanity, psychoanalysis, and troubling wives and women.

The Simulacra is not satire even though it often feels like the film Dr. Strangelove, nor is it a fantasy even though everything is unbelievable. And I wouldn’t call it surreal or dreamlike, or avant-garde even though it was written in 1963 when trendy artists were creating pop art and post-modern fiction. It’s straight science fiction, meant to be taken as realistic, even though it’s bonkers. The Simulacra has the existential absurd horror of The Tin Drum or The Painted Bird. I don’t even think Dick was making fun of science fiction with its comic book level wild ideas. Dick had crazy ideas, and he saw the world being just as crazy.

The Simulacra pictures future America where psychic abilities are accepted as real, that time travel has been perfected, where people and animals can be artificially created and the results indistinguishable from real people and animals, that colonies exist on Mars and the Moon, and alien lifeforms can be commercialized. In other words, all the crap ideas that science fiction fans and fans of the occult believed in the 1950s. Everything they thought possible, became possible.

The hardest part of this essay is describing what happens in The Simulacra. I wrote about that trouble already for my Auxiliary Memory blog, where I explained I had to read the book and listen to the audiobook to get the most out of The Simulacra. In fact, I’m still picking up the book, or putting on the audiobook, and enjoying random parts of the novel. I can’t seem to leave this story. I’m still finding new insights into whatever scene I stumble upon. I’ve decided the best way to describe the story is by mind mapping the characters. The number given is the number of times the character is mentioned in the story.

I’m trying not to give away too much of the plot. Each of the first level characters involves a subplot. For example, Dr. Egon Superb is the last legally practicing psychiatrist after the pharmaceutical industry pushed through the McPhearson Act that made drug therapy the only legal form of treatment for mental illness. One of his patients is Richard Kongrosian, a psychic pianist who uses telekinesis to play the piano instead of using his hands. Nat Flieger is a sound engineer who wants to record Kongrosian, but he and his crew of Molly Dondoldo and Jim Planck can never track down the man. Ian Duncan and his old friend Al Miller want to perform classical music as a jug band at the White House for Nicole Thibodeaux. Nicole Thibodeaux, the First Lady, but maybe the true ruler of The United States of Europe and America (USEA) wants to negotiate with Hermann Goering via a time machine to get the Nazis to not kill the Jews. Vince and Chic get involve with making the next president, an android, which will replace Nicole’s current husband. Wilder Pembroke, Anton Karp, and Bertold Goltz all vie for power behind the scenes.

If the novel has a main character, it could be Nicole Thibodeaux. Dick’s original draft was called The First Lady of Earth. Since this book was written in the summer of 1963, I assume Dick was inspired by Jackie Kennedy because Nicole spends most of her time charming people, decorating the White House and gardens, and putting on nightly cultural events. Everyone loves Nicole. Yet, out of the public eye, Nicole is also ruthless enough to have people summarily executed. Evidently, she wields unlimited power because of her access to time travel.

The novel is set in a post-apocalyptic future, decades after China attacked the U.S. with missiles with atomic warheads. This gave rise to a population of mutants, similar in appearance to Neanderthals. People ride in self-driving cars. Ads are living creatures that can invade your home and car and must be killed. Richard Kongrosian believes he has a terrible body odor because a deodorant ad infected him with a jingle. The Sons of Job are a neo-fascist political party. People live in giant communal apartment complexes and are required to take civics tests to stay in them. Many people want to escape this totalitarian society by immigrating to Mars. People buy android nuclear families just to have normal friends.

I could go on. There are several layers of political and corporate intrigue in The Simulacra. Dick evidently thought there were conspiracies everywhere. Later in life, Dick would get into Gnostic religion, which is a very paranoid belief system. This novel has many traits of Gnosticism. The Simulacra was written after The Man in the High Castle, We Can Build You, Dr. Bloodmoney, and The Martian Time-Slip, and before The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? There are many similar themes and obsessive ideas that run through all of them. I wish I had the time and energy to study all those novels and plot all the connections. Why did PKD fixate on certain ideas repeatedly? Was it a lack of imagination to explore unfamiliar territory, or were they ideas PKD just could let go of?

James Wallace Harris, 1/5/24

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“The Last Question” by Isaac Asimov – 2nd Review

“The Last Question” was first published in Science Fiction Quarterly, November 1956. You can read it on Archive.org. It is story #17 of 22 for The Best SF Stories of 1956 group read. “The Last Question” was a selection for Asimov/Greenberg anthology devoted to the best SF of1956 — but I’ve got to wonder, if it was at Asimov’s request? He’s often said “The Last Question” is his favorite among his own stories. I’ve reviewed the story before, for when the group read The Big Book of Science Fiction.

We’ve had two Isaac Asimov stories from 1956 – “The Last Question” and “The Dead Past.” I thought “The Dead Past” was flawed but I was impressed with Asimov’s ambition to write an emotional story. I know other people who consider it Asimov’s best short story. Neither are my favorites.

On one hand, “The Last Question” is a famous, often loved, science fiction story. On the other hand, it’s a gimmick story without traditional story elements. It’s more of an essay disguised as a short story. I’ve gotten tired of reading gimmick stories, and I’ve gotten tired of reading “The Last Question.” Once you know it, it’s not much fun to reread. I like stories where I get behind a character who is struggling to overcome an emotional problem. And I like stories that get better on rereading. “The Last Question” isn’t that kind of story. I’m thinking that Asimov wasn’t big on writing that kind of story either. However, I need to reread “The Ugly Little Boy.” If I remember right, it does have character development and an emotional punch to the gut.

This morning, I got a text from my friend Mike about the story, he wasn’t too kind:

I think that “The Last Question” is a gimmick story with cardboard characters. But this story is beloved, so I guess that leaves me out in the cold. I don’t really want to dump on Asimov, but I don’t think much of his favorite story.

It has the repetitive plot and thin characters of “Compounded Interest.” I’ve never been a fan of gimmick stories. I need characters that I care about.

I have to say I completely agree with Mike. “The Last Question” is a gem of a story for a gimmick story, but a letdown for when you’re wanting a vicarious emotional experience. I had the same problem with “Compounded Interest” by Mack Reynolds. However, as I mentioned in my review, I found another Mack Reynolds story from 1956 that had all the elements I love in a good dramatic short story. Read: “After Some Tomorrow.”

The genre has room for all kinds of stories, but I’m getting old and sappy, and want to be moved by what I read. I must wonder if the twenty-two stories we’ve selected to read from 1956 are mostly remembered because of their ideas and gimmicks. I wonder if there are loads of emotional stories that weren’t well remembered because they had ordinary science fictional ideas, but ones I would like better for their emotional and dramatic qualities — that is, if I could find them, like I did with “After Some Tomorrow.”

James Wallace Harris, 1/4/24

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“The Doorstop” by Reginald Bretnor

“The Doorstop” was first published in Astounding Science Fiction, November 1956. You can read it on Archive.org. It is story #16 of 22 for The Best SF Stories of 1956 group read. “The Doorstop” was a selection in both the Merril and Asimov/Greenberg anthologies devoted to the best SF of1956, but the story hasn’t been widely anthologized otherwise.

I believe Reginald Bretnor is most famous for his Ferdinand Feghoot pun stories. He wrote three books about science fiction, and besides writing a fair number of science fiction short stories, also liked to write about weapons and war. See his ISFDB entry.

“The Doorstop” is a pleasant mood piece about a country doctor discovering an alien artifact, one his wife bought to use as a doorstop. The story doesn’t have much of a plot, mainly a discussion by scientists and military men, a cliche for science fiction stories and movies, especially in the 1950s. However, what stands out in this story is the doctor’s state of mind. Dr. Cavaness stands between the old world where stars were romantic lights in the sky, with life having a certain order, and a new paradigm, something much different, even threatening and horrifying. (I’m reminded of the Fredric Brown title, The Lights in the Sky Are Stars. I might need to read it.)

Writing “The Doorstop” in 1956, I can imagine Bretnor worrying about all those ordinary people who were about to experience the sense of wonder that science fiction readers and writers cherished. He recognized the mental state of the world was changing, and imagined for many, it might not be wanted.

My friend Mike emailed me his notes for the story, and he was quite taken with it — as was I.

On the surface, the plot of "The Doorstop" is very simple. 

Ellie, the wife of Dr. Cavaness, buys a doorstop: "Oh, that. I got it today from Mrs. Hobbs. It's...well, it's a doorstop."

Cavaness soon realizes that the doorstop "...was no simple artifact. Alien to him and strange, it was a mechanism, a machine." 

Cavaness takes the doorstop to Ted Froberg, "...an electronics engineer working behind the ramparts of Security." Froberg reveals the doorstop "...wasn't made in any country here; it wasn't even made on Mars or Jupiter. It's from the stars."

But there is another story to be considered, an existential drama that unfolds in the mind of Dr. Cavaness. He desperately longs for an ordered existence, a carefully circumscribed life. His mind is comforted by the "...pages of the past, pages of friends and fishing trips, or midnight calls to childbirth, hypochondria, surgery--pages of precious trials and triumphs and routines. That was his life, the busy hours, the days succeeding days, the months, the seasons, the gently moving years, all encompassed by his family, his patients, and his town."

He clings fiercely to his English garden world and calls "...on God to drive the mystery out, extinguish it..." Cavaness poignantly prays:

"Voicelessly, in a despairing language without words, he prayed to a parochial God to make this all untrue, to wipe it out, to let his world remain as it had been. Oh God, preserve these small peripheries against all things incomprehensible; I am my world; its limits limit me; allow the stretches of eternity, the darknesses, to stay unreal; oh, God, deny this living proof that life unthinkable teems in those depths and distance, that they exist--"

Finally, when it's made clear to Cavaness that the doorstop is alien, "...he stared straight ahead--facing the majesty of God, facing a new maturity for man, facing the open door."

What Bretnor doesn't reveal is what comes next for Cavaness. Does he accept the new reality, or does turn away and retreat into his walled city?

I like that “The Doorstop” is about a coming change in our group mind and questions the genre I grew up with and love. It’s not a particularly well-written story, yet I like it quite a lot. But that fondness is for the story’s central insight. I wonder how many people now would like to go back to a pre-SF world where we didn’t think about aliens, an infinite multiverse, and all the other insights science fiction has given us, to when the universe was only as big as The Old Testament?

James Wallace Harris, 1/3/24