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Futures Past – Jim Emerson

There are millions of science fiction fans, but how many of those readers love to read about science fiction? Especially, about the history of science fiction way before they were born. I do, but maybe I’m an extreme outlier.

Back in the 1960s, I discovered Sam Moskowitz and loved reading his books about the history of science fiction. I also enjoyed his magazine columns profiling science fiction writers. Over the years I’ve read and collected several shelves of books about our genre. In the 1990s, I subscribed to a fanzine titled Futures Past. It was quarterly, and each issue covered one year in science fiction starting with 1926. It died after four issues and I was greatly disappointed.

Now the creator of that fanzine, Jim Emerson is back. He’s starting over again with 1926, but this time each issue has been expanded into a book (pdf, trade paper, and hardback). To keep costs down, Emerson doesn’t sell through Amazon or bookstores. He sells direct. I bought the first two volumes, 1926 and 1927 with Paypal, but there are other purchasing options. Order from this website. Emerson offers the first volume on pdf for free to give readers an idea of what the books will be like. However, the first volume is only 64 pages, and volume 2 is 144 pages, a much more impressive entry in the series. If you want to give the series a try after looking at the pdf of 1926, I’d buy the 1927 volume first. I plan to collect them all. The home page for Futures Past is here.

Emerson is still working full-time and figures he can only produce one volume a year. He writes all the content and does all the graphic layouts. Jim hopes when he retires to produce two or more volumes per year, and eventually cover 50 years of science fiction history (1926-1975). However, this time he plans to jump around and not go year by year after 1928. I’m glad to hear that. As much as I like reading about science fiction in the 1920s and 1930s, I really want to read about the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. I vote for 1941, 1953, and 1968.

I’m very curious how many science fiction fans will be interested in these books. Each volume covers the science fiction magazines, books, and movies that came out during that year. What makes these books so much better than the old fanzines is the use of color printing. I’ve always loved the art on magazine and book covers and still photos and posters from movies. (I’m showing images below from 1927 because you can download the pdf to 1926 and look at it for yourself.)

Each book is a visual history, but there is also a great deal of reading content. Emerson is quite the historian of science fiction’s history, reminding me of Sam Moskowitz, Brian Stableford, and Mike Ashley. Pages 58-93 of the 1927 volume is devoted to the silent film Metropolis which I’ve seen three times over my lifetime, and look forward to seeing it again. About 80 pages of the 1927 volume are devoted to science fiction in silent films.

Both volumes spend many of their pages on science fiction in silent films, a topic I knew little about. I’ve seen fewer than 40 silent films and assumed there was just a handful of science fiction titles. Of course, Emerson includes fantasy and horror, but the number is far greater than I imagined. In one article he lists six pages of lost films.

My favorite section is Science Fiction Books of 1927 (pp.116-133). And my second favorite section is Magazines of 1927 (pp. 94-115. I especially love all the photos of the covers, but there is quite a lot to read about these forgotten books and magazines.

Here’s the table of contents for the 1927 volume.

The original fanzine covering 1926 inspired my interest in Lady Dorothy Mills, a forgotten travel writer from the 1920s who also wrote novels, including one science fiction title. I read about her SF novel Phoenix in the 1926 issue and spent years tracking down a copy. The one mention of a book has inspired thirty years of chasing her books and creating a website devoted to Lady Dorothy Mills. So thanks, Jim Emerson.

Like I said, I love reading about the history of the genre, but I wonder how many science fiction fans are like me? If you like to read about science fiction, leave a comment. I’ve been thinking about profiling some of my other history books on the subject.

James Wallace Harris, 2/9/22

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“Rachel in Love” by Pat Murphy

Group Read 27: The Big Book of Science Fiction

Story #86 of 107: “Rachel in Love” by Pat Murphy

“Rachel in Love” by Pat Murphy is one of the great classics of science fiction. I’ve read it before, and it was a delight to read it again. Of course, I’m partial to science fiction stories about intelligent chimpanzees, and I’m not referring to The Planet of the Apes (but I enjoy those kinds of stories too).

One of the first intelligent chimp stories I can remember reading is “Jerry Was a Man” by Robert A. Heinlein. Then came “Rachel in Love.” Next was the novel, The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore by Benjamin Hale. There is another novel, but I shouldn’t mention the title because it might spoil the story. And there are other stories which I’ve forgotten at the moment. Nor I’m not talking about stories like Brin’s Uplift novels. I’m only talking about stories that are set in the present with an intelligent chimp, one that you can identify with. One that makes you think we’ve been evil to chimpanzees.

And if you want to know just how evil, watch the documentary Project Nim from 2011. Trigger warning: Project Nim is going to rip out your heart, stomped the crap out of it, and if you’re a good person, make you thankful it did. If it doesn’t make you cry in empathy and outrage you might want to see a psychiatrist.

“Rachel in Love” should also make you cry. I did. It should also make you hate what we’re doing to chimpanzees. It made me hate it again. I was thankful to read in the VanderMeer introduction there has been a law passed against using chimpanzees in research. “Rachel in Love” should also make you happy, because of its wonderful storytelling skills. The structure and narrative of this tale are perfect. Sure, it takes some kinky turns sexually, but then, so do our hormones.

Rachel is a chimpanzee who has been imprinted with personality scans of Dr. Aaron Jacob’s deceased daughter Rachel. She has two sets of memories. Her own chimpanzee childhood, and Rachel’s. Dr. Jacob named the chimp after his daughter.

By Murphy inventing the personality overlay for this story, it provides a kind of Rosetta Stone that lets humans see into the world of the chimpanzee. Rachel is neither human nor chimp, but a bridge between the two. Nim Chimpsky, a real chimpanzee raised in a human family is a tragic animal figure that we can only imagine how he thinks. We want to believe he is as intelligent as Rachel when we look into his eyes but we never know for sure. Jerry, Heinlein’s chimp has been uplifted enough for the law to consider giving him legal status. And Bruno Littlemore is really a fantasy creature created for satire, but one we side with.

I’m old enough to remember a time when people considered animals completely lacking in consciousness. Humans were God’s chosen, and the animals were just for our use. Even nature lovers like Teddy Roosevelt would shoot them all day long and never consider what the animals might perceive. Now, I think we realize that consciousness is a spectrum, and awareness, even self-awareness is not unique to us. Back in 1987 Pat Murphy knew this and wrote “Rachel in Love.” I wonder when everyone will know it.

[I’m sorry I’m behind in reviewing these stories. I had to skip #83-85. I hope to get back to them someday.]

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James Wallace Harris, 2/7/22

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“A Gift from the Culture” by Iain M. Banks

Group Read 27: The Big Book of Science Fiction

Story #82 of 107: “A Gift from the Culture” by Iain M. Banks

I strongly disliked “A Gift from the Culture” by Iain M. Banks. Not because it’s badly written, but because the main character kills an untold number of people, and because he doesn’t have the courage to do the right thing. I also hate this story because its plot engine is so uninspiringly cliché that I picture Banks stealing it from an ancient film Noir B-movie.

Wrobik is coerced by mobsters into committing mass murder to pay off his gambling debts. The gambling debt plot motivation is as hoary as tying damsels in distress to the train tracks. But to make matters worse, this story is set within the Culture series, a fictional universe of the far future, where humans are now posthuman, and society is post-scarcity. I’ve read about Culture novels for years and thought it was a great theme. But when I tried one of the novels in the past, I was immediately put off because the plot was about assassins. I quit the novel in disgust. I hate stories about assassins.

If I read a novel about a utopia, I want to read about citizens of that utopia. I want a superior character to follow. In both tries at a Culture story, I get amoral characters. That’s why I hated this story. If you’re a science fiction writer creating a utopian future, I want stories that inspire hope, not make me think human failure is endless.

I assumed while reading “A Gift From the Culture” that Banks would find a clever way to allow Wrobik to escape his role as a mass murderer. But no, evidently Banks felt he promised his readers a spaceship shot down with a handgun and he had to deliver.

I also wondered why Wrobik just didn’t shoot the driver when Kaddus and Cruizell forced the gun on him, and then shoot Kaddus and Cruizell. If the gun can blow up a spaceship, it could blow up a mobster’s limo.

I don’t mind stories with amoral protagonists, but those stories have to justify our observations of evil in some way. There was nothing in Wrobik’s situation or personality to care about. He was weak and despicable. Nor was there anything interesting about the criminals in this story. They were so cardboard and cliché that they made the story cartoonish. Kaddus and Cruizell were no better than Snidely Whiplash. Wrobik is no Walter White.

I’ll have to keep trying to find a Culture novel I will like. I just hope they aren’t all about criminals at the edge of utopia.

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James Wallace Harris, 2/1/22

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“Readers of the Lost Art” by Élisabeth Vonarburg

Group Read 27: The Big Book of Science Fiction

Story #81 of 107: “Readers of the Lost Art” by Élisabeth Vonarburg

On the surface, “Readers of the Lost Art” by Élisabeth Vonarburg feels like something written for the Marquis de Sade but he would have been bored by this pretty presentation of two people being flayed alive for art. Again, the VanderMeers have selected another science fiction horror tale. I have to assume there is more to the story than what we’re told in words.

The introduction claims it’s transgressive and transformative and about ritual and creativity. But I’m sure the Incas could have said the same thing about their human sacrifices. However, the story seemed straightforward to me, and I missed any symbolism or satire. I sensed each action in the story before it was revealed but evidently missed all the intended literary implications. My bad.

“Readers of the Lost Art” feels like the kind of story we read in Dangerous Visions so long ago. That anthology edited by Harlan Ellison from the 1960s was intended to shock. The trouble with stories written to shock is they often don’t. They just seem silly and absurd. They feel like kids playing a game of gross-out. I’m sure the VanderMeers and other readers do find intellectual insights in this story, but I didn’t.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I do enjoy a good story with shocking elements. The same night I read “Readers of the Lost Art” I also reread “Fondly Fahrenheit” by Alfred Bester. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve read that story and it has grosser elements than the Élisabeth Vonarburg tale. And it’s even experimental fiction. The reason why “Fondly Fahrenheit” is a masterpiece is in its storytelling style. “Fondly Fahrenheit” sparkles, whereas “Readers of the Lost Art” was merely good writing. I wonder if it sparkled in the original French?

One major difference between the two stories is pacing. “Fondly Fahrenheit” relentlessly races, while “Readers of the Lost Art” trods at a casual nonchalant. That’s an arty way of being aristocratically indifferent, which I think the story intended, but I also think it hurt its presentation. The story is one long, evenly paced, description of a performance piece, with side glances to events in the audience. I was actually more intrigued by those glimpses at the watchers of the performance.

Notice the even paragraphs, the careful, but the plodding pace of the descriptions.

Now, look at a similar page from “Fondly Fahrenheit.” This is actually one of the slower sections of the story, yet murder and a change of planets happen on this Kindle page. But also, Bester tells more about the characters and moves the story along better with each sentence.

It’s not that “Readers of the Lost Art” is badly written, but it’s overly descriptive. It’s Henry James to Bester’s Ernest Hemingway. And that is an artistic choice. But was it the right choice for a story about humans being skinned alive? If you’re writing about shocking scenes, shouldn’t the sentence structure shock too?

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James Wallace Harris, 1/29/22

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“The Owl of Bear Island” by Jon Bing

Group Read 27: The Big Book of Science Fiction

Story #80 of 107: “The Owl of Bear Island” by Jon Bing

This 1986 tale by Norwegian writer Jon Bing makes me wonder if he intended it to be cyberpunk. Computers play a significant role in “The Owl of Bear Island,” a story about alien possession. To be honest, I thought the VanderMeers’ introduction to the story more interesting than the story itself. And within the story, I got distracted by wondering what kind of computers they might have had in 1986. I assume the scientists were using minicomputers. I began wondering about DEC, Data General, HP, and others from that era, and thinking of one of my favorite books, The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder. Bing also brings up programming (FORTRAN and SIMULA), AI, and Expert Systems. In fact, the narrator’s escape plans involve computers.

This plain story about two scientists at a research station on an island in the Arctic being taken over by an alien presence could have been much better. The unnamed first-person narrator thinks of the alien as an owl. He assumes it killed his partner, and he knows enough to struggle to free his mind. “The Owl of Bear Island” has neither suspense, atmosphere, or dread, but is its matter-of-fact style due to the style being lost in the translation, or was the original writing just that straightforward? I don’t know.

Also, I began to think of the problem of remotely operating another being over the distances of light-years. Is telepathy instantaneous? Or was Bing suggesting the alien was on the island with them? Either way, we might call this story horror cyberpunk. It would have been a creepier story if we learned about the possession as it unfolded. Think of the drama of slowly realizing that your choices aren’t your own, especially while living alone far from civilization, during the dark days of the arctic.

Bing’s narrator just comes out and tells us what happened, and then later, just tells us his plans for escape. Good storytelling involves leading us along as events unfold. This story should have been a chess game between a human and an alien. Instead, it’s a quick journal report.

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James Wallace Harris, 1/27/22

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“The Unmistakable Smell of Wood Violets” by Angélica Gorodischer

Group Read 27: The Big Book of Science Fiction

Story #79 of 107: “The Unmistakable Smell of Wood Violets” by Angélica Gorodischer

I’ve been getting behind in my reviews of the stories in The Big Book of Science Fiction. The discussion group is now on story 81. I don’t want to flame out on this project, now that I’m getting so close to the end. But I’ve also been worrying about publishing too much and not having enough worthy things to say about these stories. Once this project is over I’m not going to commit to reviewing large anthologies story by story. I think reporting on reading stories of quality will be more important than reporting on reading in quantity.

“The Unmistakable Smell of Wood Violets” by Angélica Gorodischer, which was first published in 1985, is a well-written, and quite charming story about a global civilization that has grown up after the fall of our global civilization. For example, the 79 Independent States of North America have only become recently reunited, under an aged bit-part video actor named Jack Jackson-Franklin. The U.S.A. is now a third-world country.

The story setup follows worldwide gossip about a transsexual woman astronaut living in Rosario, a former territory of Argentina, who will fly an ancient preserved spaceship to the edge of the universe.

We are told in this new civilization gun-powder no longer exists but magic does work. That Rosario is so poor that its citizens had to go in together to buy a clock, one of two in the country. The spaceship launched at 5:45am and returned at 6:11am the same day.

The person who is most interested in this news is Her Gracious and Most Illustrious Virgin Majesty Ekaterina V, Empress of Holy Russia. Most of the charm of this story comes from describing the new political orders around the world.

Gorodischer’s prose reminds me of a Bob Dylan song, “Desolation Row” and vaguely remembered hippie novels from the 1960s.

This story is told almost like a fable, a fantasy. I encounter that voice often in translated stories. I wonder if it’s a popular narrative style in South America? Here is the astronaut’s report of what the edge of the universe was like.

For some reason, time dilation worked backward in this story, and the astronaut aged on her 26-minute voyage, rather than the people on Earth. The unnamed astronaut marries and has a son, and when he’s born a green shoot grew out of the ground. I’m not sure what this signifies, other than it’s a sign of renewal in nature.

Angélica Gorodischer gives us another perspective on science fiction. I can see why the VanderMeers liked this story. However, I wonder if it’s not anti-SciFi? It feels like a naturalist or humanist take on the absurdity of the hubris of science fiction.

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James Wallace Harris, 1/27/22

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“The Lake Was Full of Artificial Things” by Karen Joy Fowler

Group Read 27: The Big Book of Science Fiction

Story #78 of 107: “The Lake Was Full of Artificial Things” by Karen Joy Fowler

This is my third time reading “The Lake Was Full of Artificial Things” by Karen Joy Fowler, first published in the October 1985 issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction. It’s another science fiction story about memory, so it’s interesting to compare it with our last story, “Snow” by John Crowley. In that story, a man remembers his dead wife, in this story, a woman remembers her dead boyfriend. We should make a list of all the ways science fiction is used to play with memory.

In 1970, Miranda dumps Daniel a boyfriend she’s in love with because he’s being drafted. He dies in the Vietnam War two years later, and for thirty years Miranda has felt guilty. Especially, because she intentionally broke up with Daniel because she feared what the war could do to him.

The story takes place after Miranda is a grown woman, and her son is older than Daniel when he died. She goes to an experimental therapist, Dr. Anna Matsui, who uses induced lucid dreaming to get her patients to confront their inner demons.

I’ve been obsessed with memory my whole life, and even more so since I’ve become old my memory has begun to fail. When I was young I used to play around with lucid dreaming. So this story resonates with me strongly.

Miranda meets Daniel in her dreams twice under the control of Dr. Matsui. The first time is a satisfactory encounter according to Dr. Matsui, and she wants it to be the only dream session. Daniel had forgiven Miranda, and that was enough to work with Miranda in regular therapy. However, Miranda begs to go again, but things go badly. Dr. Matsui refuses to put Miranda under again. Up till now, the dreams are based on how Miranda remembers Daniel, from their time at college.

However, Miranda induces her own lucid dream at home, and she meets Daniel at Camp Pendleton, and they argue even more. This time Daniel tells her how he killed a young boy thinking the boy had a hand grenade but didn’t. These are experiences that Miranda could have never known. We have to wonder is she learning something real, or if this is her mind playing tricks on her?

Her final dream with Daniel happens in Vietnam, and Miranda tries to keep Daniel from killing the boy and getting killed himself. Everything is realistic, and Miranda is experiencing things beyond her imagination. This time she tries to stay with Daniel as she sees a bomb fall from the sky, but Daniel tells her to go. He tells her he never wanted that. While she pulls away from the scene she sees Daniel and other soldiers die.

I spotted something different this reading. At one point Daniel tells Miranda she could never know what it was like to have the draft hanging over her head, or getting a low number in the draft lottery because of her birthday. This time I wondered if Karen Joy Fowler is writing the story for all women who felt guilty about not going to war in Vietnam. The two times I read the story before, I saw it only as Miranda’s personal story. But now I wonder if Miranda is all of us who didn’t go to Vietnam. That makes it a much more powerful story.

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James Wallace Harris, 1/25/22

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“5,271,009” by Alfred Bester

Why did Alfred Bester write “5,271,009?” Is it merely a wild story, or does Bester have something to say? To rant? Sometimes, when I read old science fiction stories I wonder if science fiction writers weren’t satirizing science fiction and if that’s the case with “5,271,009.”

In the March 1954 issue of F&SF the editors give us a hint with their introduction:

Now, I’m not sure if Boucher and McComas aren’t misleading us, or misreading Bester’s story. I’ve never considered science fiction “pap for paranoids,” or that it’s read by people seeking stories that will free them from their responsibilities. “5,271,009” is one wild ride that begs to be explained.

The editors think the story is Bester’s reply to the critics of science fiction fans. I wonder if Bester isn’t criticizing science fiction too. That it’s a hyperkinetic parody of science fiction. I absolutely crave to hear this story read by a narrator that could do it justice, but the only readers I can imagine reading this story as Bester wrote it are dead. I picture either Robin Williams or Jonathan Winters reading it in their most manic moods.

Alfred Bester was only a part-time science fiction writer. He was also a magazine editor, scriptwriter for radio and television, and scripted comic books. In his introduction below, you can tell Bester has a real life. The over-the-top plot of “5,271,009” reminds me of comic books more than it does science fiction. In the 1950s science fiction was considered crapola-lit for geeky adolescent males, but comic books had even a worse reputation, fit only for the subliterate. Science fiction claimed to teach some science but it was damn little, but comics had no claim to redemption.

Actually, I wonder in “5,271,009” if Alfred Bester isn’t doing something like William Shanter did in the famous “Get a Life” skit on SNL. In the story, Mr. Solon Aquila is described as being two parts Beelzebub, two of Israfel, one of Monte Cristo, one of Cyrano, and mix violently. I believe Mr. Solon Aquila is Bester, Jeffrey Halsyon is either the science fiction genre, or the stand-in for all science fiction fans, or both. Just to give you a taste of Bester’s prose and the sound of Aquila:

Is Aquila just an over-the-top character, or is he a bit more?

This time when I read “5,271,009” I had an introduction by Bester to give me more clues. This copy is from Starlight: The Great Short Fiction of Alfred Bester which reprints a 2-volume collection from 1976.

We learn that “5,271,009” was written on assignment to fictionalize the cover artwork. Bester thought the art was obvious camp, and at first didn’t want to take on the project. He felt the story would have to be mad camp. I’ve been seeing that cover since the 1970s and I’ve never once considered it mad camp. Have you? I love the covers on F&SF, especially the ones from the 1950s. If I had to describe what was happening on the cover, I would say a convict was left to die out in space and given enough air to make it torture. But then, that might be exactly what Bester is making fun of.

Of course, we know what the writer imagines doesn’t have to be what the reader reimagines. The basic setup for “5,271,009” is Jeffrey Halsyon, an artist who has gone insane and has quit painting. Solon Aquila is a collector of Halsyon’s work wants him cured so he’ll return to painting. How that’s achieved is a story that feels like a collaboration by Robert Sheckley, Philip K. Dick, and Douglas Adams. But then, this is 1954, and well before those writers showed us just how far out science fiction could get.

It’s interesting that Solon Aquila takes on the job of curing Jeffrey Halsyon. And doesn’t the name Halsyon sound like halcyon? One definition of halcyon is “Often used to describe an idyllic time in the past that is remembered as better than today.” Another confession, that’s exactly how I look back on old science fiction.

Aquila drugs Halsyon and puts him through a series of hallucinations where Halsyon plays out adolescent fantasies often found in science fiction stories, and the number 5,271,009 shows up again and again in these fantasies. The first is a sex fantasy:

Of course, like stories about three wishes, this fantasy breaks apart when Halsyon is told all the women hate him and consider his duty rape. The next hallucination involves the space adventure pictured on the cover of F&SF. Bester is suggesting that science fiction fans imagine themselves as this kind of hero.

In each fantasy, Judith shows up. She is the fantasy girlfriend of all science fiction fans. After Jeffrey makes his escape he is the vile anti-hero that is blamed for the alien invasion by the Grssh. But at the last minute, Halsyon saves the planet. But that fantasy doesn’t work out either.

His next fantasy is my favorite, one I’ve often entertained in my daydreaming, and the plot of favorite stories. Jeffrey returns to being his 10-year old self but retains his 33-year-old mind.

But damn, this fantasy crashes and burns too. The next fantasy is most unpleasant, where Jeffery is in a time loop, like a bad Groundhog Day. Bester makes allusions to Shakespeare and Dante. Slowly, he’s bringing the story around to a meaningful message.

Next up, is another favorite science fiction fantasy I love to daydream about, being the last man on Earth. By the way, I just read Bester’s story, “They Don’t Make Life Like They Used To” which uses the same fantasy. In both cases, Bester or Mr. Aquila ruins the fantasy.

Finally, Jeffrey Halsyon escapes the fantasies, or so he thinks and confronts Mr. Aquila.

The answer to that question is 5,271,009. Halsyon is not out of the nightmare yet, he still has millions to go.

The ending is very much like the red pill-blue pill of The Matrix. But the choice isn’t between living in reality or living in fantasy. Instead, it’s much like Hindu or Buddhist philosophy. We evolve through many lives of reincarnation. We can grow faster if we live hard lives. Yeah, it’s that old what doesn’t kill us that makes us stronger.

Now, is this just a neat story that Alfred Bester wrote for Boucher and McComas? Or is it Bester telling science fiction, or science fiction fans, “Get a life!” To be more precise to the story, “Grow up!”

James Wallace Harris, 1/24/22

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“Snow” by John Crowley

Group Read 27: The Big Book of Science Fiction

Story #77 of 107: “Snow” by John Crowley

We can learn quite a bit about writing from reading “Snow” by John Crowley. It’s a lovely story that most readers admire. Understanding why reveals those writing lessons. You can read/listen to the story here.

The setup is simple. Beautiful blonde Georgie marries a rich man who buys her everything, including a “wasp” that follows her filming 8,000 hours of her life. The film is destined for a funeral memorial, so it’s a rather odd gift. The rich man dies, Georgie becomes rich, marries Charlie for his looks, and eventually dies herself. Charlie loves Georgie, misses her, and after two years of grieving goes to the cemetery to see the films the wasp took. However, things don’t work out like he thought they would.

First, “Snow” zeroes in on everyone’s deep-rooted feelings for departed loved ones. This has nothing to do with science fiction. William Faulkner said in his 1950 Nobel Prize acceptance speech “…problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing…” is exactly why “Snow” works.

In Kurt Vonnegut’s Rules for Writing, he advises “Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them, in order that the reader may see what they are made of.” What really makes “Snow” work as a story is all the ways the “wasp” fails to work with Charlie’s expectations. Or even to what we readers want and expect. But more than that, chasing memories causes Charlie to learn through the slow suffering of aging, desire, and looking backward.

I expected Charlie would go to the cemetery and request to see certain days that he fondly remembered being with Georgie. That’s what he expected too. But the wasp system didn’t work that way. There are two buttons: Access and Reset. The first shows one scene, randomly. Reset shows another random scene. Charlie goes to the caretaker disappointed. He learns the recording technology used by the wasp is at the molecular level so they can squeeze in 8,000 hours of film, but there is no ordering and no time/date stamps. Just momentary glimpses from the past.

Charlie keeps coming back, addicted to those random scenes, learning about himself and Georgie. Eventually, Charlie notices that the memory clips are fading over time, turning snowy. He complains to the director, who tells him an interesting story about being a film archivist in his old job for the movie studios. He tells Charlie that in the oldest film clips, people’s faces looked pinched, cars and streets looked black, and things felt wintery.

Charlie never goes back to the cemetery. The last paragraphs are about what Charlie has learned about human memory. He believes there are two kinds, one that worsens over time, and another that can grow more intense.

Charlie is a character we can root for, we can feel and empathize. That’s another of Vonnegut’s rules. His number one rule is, “Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.” My time was not wasted. This is the second time I’ve read this story, and both times I felt a powerful sense of resonance with the John Crowley gives us. It made me think about my own life and wants. The time it took to read it produce worthwhile insights for me. “Snow” made me contemplate the nature of memory, recognizing how much our memories are like the memories collected by the wasp. Yet, what I wouldn’t give for a film library of my life.

Vonnegut also says, “Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.” Charlie wants Georgie, either in real life or in memories. This is something everyone feels, so does that make this story more powerful? More powerful than say a story about someone wanting to save Earth from alien invaders? I think it does. I think the most powerful science fiction stories are the ones that make us think about people. Remember Charlie Gordon? Or Kip Russell?

Another piece of advice from Vonnegut is, “Start as close to the end as possible.” Crowley doesn’t spend any time when Georgie was alive. He gets right to the heart of the story and only spends a bit over six thousand words in storytelling. I think that’s another plus for this story. Short, sweet, and POW! That’s why Bob Shaw’s “Light of Other Days” was so effective.

Finally, and this is the hardest to judge, “Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action,” but I believe Crowley adhered to this advice very well indeed. In the end, Charlie says, “I wanted to go, get out, not look back. I would not stay watching until there was only snow.” One for action, one to tell us all about Charlie.

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James Wallace Harris, 1/23/22

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My Anthology Problem

I’ve read over a thousand science fiction short stories in the last three years and I’ve decided I have an anthology problem. This is different from the anthology problem Szymon Szott solved for me in “The SF Anthology Problem – Solved.” No, my current problem is finding anthologies with a higher percentage of great stories to read.

I and other members of our science fiction short story reading group never can find anthologies where we love all the stories. Of course, that’s asking too much from editors but we still crave 24k carat gold anthologies. Even the Gold Standard of science fiction anthologies, volume one of The Science Fiction Hall of Fame had stories I didn’t enjoy (“The Weapon Shop”) and it was created by polling science fiction writers for their all-time favorite stories.

One of our members, Austin Beeman, has a useful website that reviews science fiction anthologies. He has a nifty infographic that measures the percentage of great/good/average/poor/DNF stories. Here’s his chart for The Hugo Winners: Volume One. Austin considers it has a 94% positive rating, but then that’s for a book of all award-winning stories. Austin tends to be generous by including stories he rates Good in that figure. I wouldn’t.

Most science fiction anthologies never get anywhere near that percentage of good and great stories. Why?

I just finished reading The Great SF Stories 25 (1963) edited by Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg. Even though I enjoyed most of the stories to varying degrees, I thought only 5 of the 13 were worth my time.

And isn’t time the essential yardstick here? I only have so much time for reading. I only have so many years left in life. And the number of books I want to read will take more time than I have left. From a different time perspective, many of these stories are supposed to be the best of one year, and often the anthologies I read are assumed to be the best of all time.

There is the problem that some stories are extremely time-worthy to some members of our group, while other members complain those same stories were a waste of their time. I’m realistic enough to know that no editor can ever satisfy every reader one hundred percent, but I believe there are stories that a good majority of readers will admire. Is it possible for editors to pick more of them?

I’ve known many people who say they don’t read science fiction magazines because they don’t find enough good stories in each issue. And I think that’s true. Magazines have the lowest hit rate. And now that most of the print magazines are bi-monthly, they are fat with stories, but instead of feeling I’m getting my money’s worth, it just makes me hesitant to start reading because I dread all the disappointing stories.

Many old-timers complain that the print magazines aren’t fairly represented at award time or in the best-of-the-year anthologies, but is that actually true? I tend to only read online stories when someone recommends a story, and that makes me avoid the filler stories. But also, if I was a writer, I think I’d prefer to have my stories online so they were easy to be read. I generally only read stories published online when they are anthologized by best-of-the-year volumes, so that makes me think online publishers have a higher hit rate. I don’t know if that’s true.

Original anthologies often do much better than magazines, probably because they pay more. You can tell their hit rate by how many of their stories get anthologized in the best-of-the-year volumes.

For the annual best-of-the-year volumes, our group has found that the success rate depends on the editor. But I also think size matters. Gardner Dozois’ giant yearly anthologies with over thirty stories often had more hits in them than his competitors with fewer pages. But his percentage of hits was probably lower.

To be honest, some of Dozois’ competitors mixed fantasy with science fiction, and for me, that automatically lowers the hit rate. Could the success rate of an anthology depend on the type of story?

Our group is currently reading the gigantic anthology The Big Book of Science Fiction and it has many stories generally loved, as well as many stories generally disliked. We were considering four other giant 21st century SF anthologies that look back on the 20th century but I doubt we’ll vote to read them as a group. Some of our members have promised to read and review them on their own and let us all know.

Again, I think size is a factor. If these giant retrospective volumes had been smaller, they might have forced their editors to be pickier about what they anthologized. I have many giant science fiction anthologies on my shelves, and I’m becoming leery of reading them. I think somewhat smaller retrospective anthologies like The World Turned Upside Down edited by David Drake, Eric Flint, and Jim Baen, and Masterpieces edited by Orson Scott Card are much more solid with hits. I’m more likely to buy that size anthology in the future.

Theme anthologies are a bit different. I’m more forgiving. I still expect good stories, but I don’t expect great stories simply because I’m reading to be entertained by how an idea is used.

Giant anthologies are great for writers because more stories are preserved and given a chance to find readers. Yet, is such noble efforts fair to readers? Few readers want to be slush pile readers.

That suggests another possibility. I do think too many stories are being published each year, but what if it’s a theme distribution issue? Allan Kaster has switched from general best-of-the-year SF anthologies to best-of-the-year theme volumes. The Year’s Top Hard Science Fiction Stories and The Year’s Top Robot and AI Stories might be the solution. This opens up a whole new avenue for editors, and maybe readers.

I guess what I want is retrospective science fiction anthologies aimed at science fiction fans who came of age in the 1960s who don’t like fantasy and who are somewhat nostalgic for 1950s science fiction. However, I am willing to try new things. Rich Horton gave our group a list of stories he liked best among the two decades of stories he reviewed for Locus Magazine. I’d buy them as an anthology, even though many of them were fantasy stories. I don’t entirely live in the past, or focus exclusively on SF. And I hope our group finds more anthologies that cover contemporary SF/F to read. I just wished they weren’t too big and had mostly great stories.

The reality is no anthology is going to be perfect, except for the editor who assembled it. Subjective tastes vary. But as readers, I think we all love it when we can find an anthology that has a high percentage of stories that wow us. And I assume editors love it when they create an anthology that gets praise for having a lot of great stories. Perfect anthologies are impossible, but I think we all hope to find them.

James Wallace Harris, 1/21/22