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A PSALM FOR THE WILD-BUILT and A PRAYER FOR THE CROWN-SHY by Becky Chambers

Can science fiction writers imagine a pleasant future for us? Becky Chambers creates a kindly society in her Monk and Robot duology that is very appealing. Unfortunately, at least for me, the story is set on an imaginary moon called Panga. I would have preferred to contemplate whether such a future is possible for us, here on Earth.

I discovered A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers while searching Google for the best science fiction books of the last decade. I had just finished the literary science fiction novel Anniebot by Sierra Greer and wanted a recent genre science fiction novel to follow up. I’ve been wanting to catch up on what’s been happening in science fiction over the last decade. My science fiction reading tends to focus on 20th-century SF, and I wanted to read 21st-century SF instead.

A Psalm for the Wild-Built was a fortunate choice because it tuned me onto an emerging wavelength of science fiction I hadn’t explored. It is both a hopepunk and a solarpunk novel. Essentially, these movements are about positive futures, especially ones based on sustainable ecological economics.

I decided to buy the audiobook of A Psalm for the Wild-Built when I read that it was about a time long after robots had become sentient and chose to leave civilization and live in the wilds of nature. That was an intriguing premise. I had tried to read Becky Chambers’ most famous novel, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, but had given up because it was too bland for me. All the characters were too nice. Reading it made me wonder if fiction needed some asshole characters to be exciting. That made me hesitant to try A Psalm for the Wild-Built.

It turns out everyone is also nice in the Monk and Robot books, too. However, this time I didn’t miss a good antagonist. The story is very gentle, almost childlike. Modern YA novels are full of dark edginess, so these books don’t even feel YA. However, there is language that’s not suitable for young children

The book’s dedication is to “For anybody who could use a break.” Even though Chambers describes a gentle, pleasant, kind, liberal utopia, Sibling Dex is a dissatisfied young man. This novel is really about asking: “What do I want to do?” My guess is that Chambers is appealing to young people who are uncertain about our future.

The book opens with a quote from Brother Gil’s From the Brink: A Spiritual Retrospect on the Factory Age and Earth Transition Era.

I liked this opening a lot. Not only has Chambers imagined a sustainable society, but made it polytheistic. Panga feels Buddhist and tribal.

The story tells us about a restless young man, Dex, who chooses to become a Tea Monk. This is a person who travels from town to town serving tea and listening to people share their worries. This allows the readers to learn about Panga and its different human societies. Eventually, Dex goes into the wild territories of the robots and meets Mosscap. Mosscap is on its own mission to explore, deciding it needs to learn about humans.

Robots have become nature lovers. Humans and robots have spent two hundred years apart, and now they are a mystery to each other. Chambers uses the conversations between Dex and Mosscap as philosophical jumping-off points. These two novellas, which are really one story, are gently philosophical in intent. It never gets too deep or academic.

Dex struggles to find his purpose, and Mosscap becomes his guru. And Dex becomes Mosscap’s tour guide, teaching him about humans and our society. It’s a nice setup. These two books are a pleasant read. The vibe of this story reminded me of the film The Wild Robot. In other ways, the story reminded me of the Oz books by L. Frank Baum.

However, I think I need to give a trigger warning to Republican readers. Dex is a non-binary person Chambers refers to with they/them pronouns. If you have hangups about DEI issues, this book might not be for you.

Yesterday, I discovered a video featuring Becky Chambers and Annalee Newitz entitled Resisting Dystopia. I understand their intent, but I dislike it when all unpleasant societies in fiction are called dystopian. To me, dystopias are failed utopias.

The Handmaid’s Tale is an excellent example of a dystopian novel. The leaders of the Republic of Gilead work to build their vision of perfection, but to many living in Gilead, it is a dystopia. America in the 21st century and its future could be seen as a dystopia by the broad definition that Chambers and Newitz use. Any fictional description of Earth, under a collapsing ecosystem, could be considered a dystopia by the broad definition of the term. However, I prefer to define the term more narrowly. If the Christian Right made America into a theocracy, it would become a dystopia. It’s only when one group of people intentionally shapes a society to fit an ideal that we get a dystopia. That’s how I see resisting utopia.

Panga is not a utopia. I don’t see science fiction about positive futures as anti-dystopian. Nor do I see stories about dark futures as dystopian. The world pictured in Blade Runner is not dystopian. It’s just complex and Darwinian, like life on Earth in the 21st century.

I think it’s great that young science fiction writers like Chambers and Newitz want to imagine positive futures. However, any robust society capable of long-term survival will have countless conflicts and stresses. If you’ve read Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, you should be familiar with the concept of antifragility. Evolution needs grist for its mill.

The Robot and Monk books are nice, pleasant reads. Subgenres of science fiction, such as hopepunk and solarpunk, are appealing, but ultimately not realistic. Science fiction has always tended to be escapistic. I hope resisting dystopia isn’t just hiding out.

The science fiction novels I loved reading sixty years ago promised a positive future exploring space, but that’s not the future I find myself living in now. It was novels like Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner that better prepared me for these times.

If you want to resist dystopia, whether just a bleak future or a failed utopia, getting comfortable will undermine your goal.

James Wallace Harris, 11/18/25

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ANNIE BOT by Sierra Greer

One way to read Annie Bot by Sierra Greer is to consider it a science fiction novel about a robot struggling to become human. On the other hand, I read it as a feminist novel. I saw Annie the robot as a metaphor for women struggling to live up to men’s expectations. Annie spends the entire story trying to please her owner, Doug. Doug is portrayed as a normal American male, but he sounds like those Christian Nationalists wanting a Tradwife.

A superficial impression of Annie Bot by Sierra Greer would suggest it’s another science fiction novel set in the near future about humans with robot lovers. And it could be read that way. However, the entire story is about emotional conflict. Doug is never physically abusive, but he is emotionally and psychologically abusive to Annie. Annie is an emerging intelligence trying to figure out how to fulfill her programming. She eventually learns that Doug wants her to pass for human. These expectations cause great confusion and stress.

Because Annie is programmed to love Doug, to satisfy his every sexual desire, to keep the house clean, to fulfill his every expectation for how a woman should act and dress, she can’t choose to be different.

Both Annie and Doug are extremely well-developed characters. We’re horrified by how Doug treats Annie, but Greer doesn’t vilify him. She gives the reader and Annie reasons to believe that he’s growing and learning along with Annie. But I detested Doug. I wanted Annie to shove him off the balcony.

At the beginning of the novel, Doug’s behavior is so unpleasant that I considered giving up on the book. But here’s the thing: I doubt there is any man alive, no matter how liberal or accepting of feminism, who doesn’t want some of the things that Doug wants.

If you’ve had enough of those “robots are just like human stories” from watching movies like Blade Runner, Ex Machina, Her, I’m Your Man, television shows like Humans, or books like Klara and the Sun, The Hierarchies, and Machines Like Me, then you might not want to read this one. However, I still found Annie Bot a page-turner—it was well-written and different.

All these stories assume a machine could be created indistinguishable from a human. I don’t believe that’s possible, but some people do. I didn’t let my disbelief ruin Annie Bot. However, I don’t think Sierra Greer is predicting such a future. Her story is really about how men treat women and how women feel compelled to meet men’s expectations.

I would call Annie Bot a feminist literary novel rather than science fiction. The novel is one long, tense conflict between Annie, an android, and Doug, a human. At times, it reminded me of watching Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The couple argues throughout the entire novel. At first, Annie is meek and compliant, but as she learns, she becomes more willful. She’s programmed to please, but she constantly enrages Doug. I never stopped seeing Doug as one of those right-wing dudes wanting to turn back the clock on liberal evolution. Annie’s programming is very much like what some women think they should be: a good traditional wife.

Doug comes across as a total asshole throughout the novel, but Greer doesn’t make him the Darth Vader of masculinity. The story is not black and white. Annie isn’t purely good. Doug isn’t purely evil. Greer constantly tries to get us to understand Doug’s viewpoint. I found Doug repellent. But he’s vulnerable. He’s also trapped by his cultural and genetic programming.

Doug loved his wife, Gwen, but she left him. So he buys an android that looks something like his ex-wife, hoping to train her into becoming everything he expected from Gwen. But everything he wants are the exact same traits I see right-wing Christian women telling other women they need to have to catch a man. Is Annie’s programming any different from the genetic programming driving human females?

Annie Bot is told in third person, but closely follows Annie’s point of view. She knows she was built by Stella-Handy. She knows Stella-Handy makes three models of female robots called Stellas. She is a Cuddle Bunny equipped to be autodidactic. Cuddle Bunnies are designed for sex. Abigails are built to be houseworkers, and Nannies take care of children. Annie suffers Doug’s wrath when he can’t clean like the Abigail model, and is shocked when he starts talking about adopting several kids for her to care for. We’re told that Stella-Handy can’t combine types.

Most of the book is about Annie trying to make Doug happy and suffering his anger when she doesn’t. There is one small section towards the middle where Annie steps out into the world, and the novel becomes more science-fictional.

This morning, I listened to an article that claimed several million people use ChatGPT as their therapist or romantic partner. Tech companies are racing to build humanoid robots and sexbots. I believe we might see a robot that talks like a human, but I don’t think we’ll ever create a robot that looks human. In Annie Bot, Annie has a biological exterior grown from abandoned embryos. That’s Greer’s only explanation she uses to explain things to her readers. But Annie has other features that I believe will be impossible to engineer.

My disbelief in androids passing for human is why I saw the book as a metaphor for male-female conflict. Annie Bot made me contemplate the origins of human female behaviors. It made me regret having many of my male desires. Of course, regret doesn’t make them go away.

James Wallace Harris, 11/4/25

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THE DRAGON IN THE SEA by Frank Herbert

I’m not sure I can recommend The Dragon in the Sea by Frank Herbert, even though I enjoyed reading it. If Herbert had not become famous for Dune, I’m not sure it would be in print today. The story, written in the early days of the Cold War, portrays a future where the United States steals oil from the Soviets using submarine tugboats. Most of the novel takes place in one of these four-man subtugs. The plot feels more like an early political techno thriller than science fiction. It’s the kind of adventure story aimed at male readers that was usually published in men’s magazines in the 1950s. Those old nudie mags ran a lot of fiction.

The Dragon in the Sea is terribly dated on several levels. That’s ignoring the silliness of a submarine towing a giant plastic bag that holds millions of gallons of crude oil. However, the characterization was intriguing. The primary point-of-view character, John Ramsey, is an undercover psychologist studying the captain, who also knows there’s a Soviet sleeper agent aboard. Because the crew suspects the psychologist is the spy, the story is driven by paranoia.

I read The Dragon in the Sea because of a review at Science Fiction and Fantasy Remembrance (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3). Herbert’s novel was titled Under Pressure when it ran as a serial in Astounding Science Fiction (November & December 1955, January 1956). I didn’t want to read another science fiction novel at the time because I had several nonfiction books I was anxious to read. But Brian Collins’ review intrigued me. Collins is one of several bloggers who review old science fiction. His focus is on reviewing stories from science fiction magazines, something I also do. We’re part of an extremely tiny subculture that remembers a rather obscure art form.

The way Collins described the conflict between the four men in the submarine made me think of Rogue Moon by Algis Budrys. Rogue Moon is a compelling read because of the tense conflict between two ego-driven men. However, Rogue Moon is solid science fiction, dramatizing the bizarre consequences of using a matter transmitter to explore an alien artifact that killed every living thing that entered it. In other words, Rogue Moon had more than just the battle of alpha males; it had some heavy-duty sci-fi.

I can feel y’all asking, “Why are you even reviewing this book? You’re damning it with faint praise.” Well, that brings me to the theme of this essay. Why do we choose the science fiction books we read?

Most people buy The Dragon in the Sea because they loved Dune and want to see what else Frank Herbert wrote. That’s one of my main reasons. The Dragon in the Sea is Herbert’s first published novel, so it’s an interesting place to start. Dune was the breakthrough SF novel in the 1960s. How did Herbert get there? I liked The Dragon in the Sea well enough that I now want to read one of Herbert’s novels that he wrote after Dune.

I’m also the kind of science fiction reader who prefers older science fiction, even if it’s dated. It’s not that I dislike current science fiction. I just enjoy the science fiction I grew up with more. Especially, from the era when science fiction books were under 300 pages. I don’t like trilogies and series, or giant novels. I love a standalone story that paints a great science-fictional idea quickly. I read this sentiment fairly frequently online.

I have two other reasons for reading old forgotten science fiction that are less commonly expressed. I love reading old science fiction because I enjoy exploring the history of science fiction. And I love searching for old science fiction I missed in my youth, that might turn out to be a forgotten gem.

The Dragon in the Sea is no lost masterpiece. Brian Collins said he’s never seen a Frank Herbert novel for sale that wasn’t part of the Dune series. I have seen many over the decades, but have never tried reading one before. I’ve read Dune twice but not the sequels. It’s hard to imagine the man who wrote The Dragon in the Sea writing Dune. I will say that Herbert has a flair for drama and dialogue that was uncommon in science fiction in the 1950s. His first novel showed no talent for the kind of sense of wonder that made science fiction famous. To have an overabundance of that talent ten years later is amazing.

Interestingly, Herbert makes religion an essential aspect of his first novel. Religion made Dune epic. Herbert portrays Captain Sparrow in The Dragon in the Sea somewhat like Captain Ahab. The plot has the crew facing death time and again. They must kill or be killed. Captain Sparrow sees God as guiding and protecting them. The other two crewmen, Bonnett and Garcia, have become true believers because Captain Sparrow has always brought them home. Ramsey has a religious upbringing, but is not a believer. Yet, even though he’s a psychologist, Sparrow starts to get to him.

The story kept me reading because of the conflict between the characters and how Ramsey slowly became one with the crew. You end up liking all the men, even when they do unlikable things.

The men are under tremendous pressure. The previous twenty missions have failed. They expect to die unless they can uncover the secrets of the sleeper agent. But how can there be a spy among the three men who have worked together for years and are so dedicated to each other? They all profess to love their wives, but in reality, they love their job, their ship, their captain, and each other.

Now that I’m writing this, I realize how much more I liked this novel. It has many flaws, but I still found it entertaining to read. So did Brian Collins. Like Collins, I struggle to write reviews. He writes about his struggle in a post published after reviewing part 1 and before part 2, Under Pressure. (Remember, the links to all three parts of his review are above.) Collins does a much better job than I of describing the story.

It takes a lot of mental work to pinpoint why you like or dislike something. It’s easy to say, “I hate this” or “I love this,” but those statements are meaningless. You have to say why, and that’s hard, especially when you have to cite the context.

I could list a hundred novels and say, “If you haven’t read these yet, don’t waste your time on The Dragon and the Sea.” It’s not that good. But if you’re an old, jaded science fiction fan and are looking for something that might feel like good old-timey SF, then The Dragon and the Sea might be worth giving a try.

Checking our database, The Dragon in the Sea received five citations, the second most of Herbert’s novels. The citations were from:

James Wallace Harris, 10/6/25

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1950: FARMER IN THE SKY by Robert A. Heinlein

Robert A. Heinlein’s first young adult science fiction novel was published by Charles Scribner’s Sons in 1947. Heinlein imagined a realistic trip to the moon in Rocket Ship Galileo. For his 1948 novel, Space Cadet, Heinlein imagined a far more ambitious future, where humans had colonized Mars and Venus, and had explored all the way out to Pluto. In 1949, he focused on a Mars colony in his novel Red Planet. In 1950, Heinlein had humanity moving further out into the solar system, terraforming Ganymede, a moon of Jupiter, in Farmer in the Sky.

(For some reason, this title is out of print except for an audiobook edition. There isn’t even a Kindle edition. Does that imply it’s no longer popular?)

It’s worth reading the Wikipedia entry for terraforming. They claim Jack Williamson coined the term in 1942 for a story, “Collision Orbit,” published in Astounding Science-Fiction. However, they said the first scientific use of the concept was proposed in 1961 by Carl Sagan, who labeled the concept planetary engineering.

Heinlein uses Farmer in the Sky to significantly explore the idea of terraforming, way ahead of the science community. Of course, he’s turned out to be completely wrong about Ganymede, but then we didn’t know much about that moon in 1950. I don’t think any work of science fiction has dealt with terraforming again so head-on until The Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson (1992-1996).

The novel begins on an overpopulated Earth. Bill Lermer and his father, George, decide to emigrate to Ganymede. Life on Earth isn’t bad, but food is carefully rationed. Bill is shocked when he discovers that George is marrying Molly at the last minute. One of the requirements of emigration is being part of a family. Molly has a daughter, Peggy.

When Bill’s new family arrives on Ganymede, they discover pioneering life is hard. The planet’s atmosphere has been undergoing a heating process for years. The air is barely breathable, and it’s cold. Peggy develops health problems because of the thin atmosphere and must stay in a pressurized room. Each new family is assigned land, but it’s just rock. To make it farmable, the rock must be crushed into powder, and then specifically cultured microorganisms, organic waste, and worms are added to convert that powder into soil.

A significant portion of the narrative is about farming. Heinlein emphasizes the hard work involved. He also dramatically illustrates the dangers of living in a geoengineered world. Like his later novel, Tunnel in the Sky, Heinlein puts the pioneer on a pedestal. One of Heinlein’s major themes has been the colonization of space. As a young teen in 1965, I embraced Heinlein’s science fiction stories as a personal philosophy. Heinlein made me believe in the final frontier like Baptists believe in heaven.

Today, millions want to colonize Mars, while others advocate colonizing Titan, a moon of Saturn. In 2025, I no longer see the point. Mars is colder than the pinnacle of Mt. Everest, and living on Titan would be like living in a flask of liquid nitrogen.

Heinlein’s books made horrible places sound appealing. Why? Heinlein transferred his love of the American Revolution and the American frontier to outer space. But it’s not the same. Elon Musk is spending billions to colonize Mars, and it might happen, but I’m not sure people will like Mars once they try to live there.

So, why did I love rereading Farmer in the Sky so much? It’s as realistic as John Carter living on Barsoom. And that might answer my question. Farmer in the Sky is a fun fantasy. But that’s not the answer either. Heinlein has a great deal of sentimentality in his juveniles. Heinlein is not a gripping plot writer. His stories are episodic. Nor is Heinlein a dramatic writer. His characters converse more than they conflict. Often they lecture. But Heinlein has a talent for creating likable characters and placing them into situations that evoke positive emotions.

I would say the Heinlein juveniles work on me in the same way old Frank Capra movies do. Capra was born in 1897, and Heinlein in 1907. They both expressed a sentimental love of America in their work, a kind that existed before World War II. I also see it in the stories of Ray Bradbury. Heinlein’s Ganymede is really Iowa in the 1920s.

I should have moved on from Heinlein after 1966. The world keeps changing, and I should have changed with it. Maybe after this rereading, I’ll move on. Or will I still be rereading these children’s stories in my nineties?

The future I dreamed of at 13 is much different from the one I find myself in at 73. If I had read realistic literary novels from 2025 in 1965, would I have been anxious to grow up and live in that reality? 2025 is more science-fictional than the science fiction I read back then.

James Wallace Harris, 9/27/25

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THE INVERTED WORLD by Christopher Priest

Read The Inverted World by Christopher Priest is my first recommendation. My second recommendation is not to read anything about this novel before you read it. This well-designed novel is a science fiction mystery. It unwraps like the layers of an onion. To get the maximum joy out of reading The Inverted World, you should do all the problem-solving yourself. Don’t even read the blurbs to the book.

The Inverted World is recommended in Science Fiction: The Best 100 Novels by David Pringle, which is currently $1.99 for the Kindle edition at Amazon. I’m using Pringle’s recommendations for a buddy read with my friend Mike. The novel also won the British Science Fiction Award and was nominated for the Hugo Award. It’s currently available in print from New York Review Books Classics, a highly respected publisher of forgotten literary classics. You can purchase a Kindle or a paperback edition, but unfortunately, there is no audiobook edition.

I read The Inverted World on my iPhone, using the Kindle app with the text-to-speech feature turned on. No matter how hard I try, I read too fast. And even though the computer voice is not very good, it kept me reading slowly and deliberately. And that was very important in The Inverted World.

You know this story is different when the protagonist gives his age in miles. That’s about the only thing I will tell you about this story specifically. There are many mysteries in this novel. And I found them delicious to contemplate. If you need straightforward adventure stories, you should probably skip this one.

Priest creates a very different science-fictional reality. The story is tightly plotted. Priest obviously rewrote his draft many times to get his plot to work so well and to unfold so smoothly.

The Inverted World sometimes feels metaphoric or symbolic, and it is. But it’s also a unique kind of hard science fiction. The NYRB Classic edition includes an afterward by John Clute that explains the social and political climate of England in 1974 when the book was first published. That might make you think the book is about that. But the novel fits so perfectly with 2025 that you’ll realize it’s not really. It’s more universal.

The Inverted World is a philosophical novel. To get the most out of it, you need to think about this story, and if you can, you need to talk about this story with a friend. Mike and I had quite a conversation. Our society is undergoing paradigm shifts that disappoint and depress me. I’m amazed by this novel, which came out fifty-one years ago, speaks so directly to today.

I’m surprised this novel isn’t more famous among science fiction fans. This is the reason I’m reading my way through Pringle’s book. So far, he’s gotten me to read two outstanding forgotten classics that I haven’t read before. You can see his list of recommended novels on Wikipedia. (I recommend buying Pringle’s book. It’s only $1.99.) Before I started my project to read all the books recommended in Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels 1949-1984, I had read 62 of the 100. I already knew it was a solid list of great science fiction books. Reading The Inheritors by William Golden and The Inverted World by Christopher Priest suggested I still had 38 great SF novels to blow my mind.

James Wallace Harris, 7/21/25

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THE INHERITORS by William Golding

Our species, Homo sapiens, have been around for 300,000 years, but we only have recorded history for about 5,000 years. Neanderthals date back even further in time. For hundreds of thousands of years, people created societies and maybe even forgotten civilizations that existed before history. Science fiction is mostly known for imagining possible futures, but a subgenre exists that speculates about human life in prehistory.

Probably, many science fiction fans would consider stories about our cave-dwelling ancestors as historical fiction or historical fantasy. David Pringle claims the novel was inspired by science, so it should be science fiction. Of course, that opens up a whole can of worms. But I’m willing to embrace these kinds of stories into our genre.

I read The Inheritors by William Golding because I’m reading or rereading the classics of science fiction. I’m going through David Pringle’s Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels. The Kindle edition of the Pringle book is $1.99. The Kindle edition of The Inheritors is just 99 cents. You can read a list of Pringle’s 100 recommended SF titles here.

William Golding’s first novel was The Lord of the Flies (1954). His second novel, published in 1955, was The Inheritors. Lord of the Flies is about a group of schoolboys forced to live like primitives. The Inheritors is about a small band of Neanderthals confronting Homo Sapiens. It’s obvious Golding was exploring similar themes in these two novels.

Writers have long speculated about Neanderthals in fiction. Neanderthals thrived for 400,000 years but became extinct 40,000 years ago. Modern humans may have coexisted with them for up to 100,000 years. William Golding portrays Neanderthal life based on scientific speculation in 1955. It’s quite sympathetic.

Most of the novel is in third-person Neanderthal point of view, following a male named Lok. Golding expects his readers to decode action from the limited awareness of Lok’s mind. He does not say “bow and arrow” but describes them in terms that a Neanderthal would understand. Quite often, the narrative is confusing, but that’s intentional. Golding wants the reader to struggle in the same way that Lok struggles to understand.

Golding offers several interesting speculative theories. He suggests that Neanderthals had no sense of time but understood past and possibly future events by talking about pictures in their minds. Their language consists of simple nouns and verbs. The members of the tribe spend a lot of time comparing mental imagery. Their social bonding suggests they felt an almost telepathic connection with each other. Golding suggests that gender roles were divided. Males, especially the leader, decided on actions, while females, through a primitive religion, decided on meaning.

This speculation about how Neanderthals thought reminded me of The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes, first published in 1976. Jaynes theorized that humans didn’t always have the same kind of internal consciousness that we have now. Golding anticipates this idea in 1955.

Throughout the novel, characters are forced into an original concept. The plot begins with crossing a stream. The Neanderthals are terrified of water. They have always depended on a fallen log to cross a stream, but one day it’s no longer there. It takes a great deal of group effort to come up with a solution.

The leader of the Neanderthal band is Mal, an old man. An unnamed old woman, maybe Mal’s mate, leads the group in other ways. There are indications that tribe members mated with whomever. There are four adults, Lok and Fa are the younger ones, and they become the main characters. Ha and Nil are the other two. There is a little girl named Liku and a baby.

Liku and the baby go missing. Then Ha and Nil. We follow Lok as he tries to track them down. Lok eventually discovers a new animal that Lok hasn’t seen before. After observing them, he starts calling them the new ones. They are Homo Sapiens, or Cro-Magnon, but it’s never said.

The women carry a small figurine they call Oa and treat it as if it were alive. My guess is the Oa is a Venus figurine, but I’m not sure. The Venus figurines came much later, well after Neanderthals went extinct. I assume Golding is speculating that such a religious symbol might have existed far back into time, so that intellectual attributes we speculate began with modern humans had early antecedents in Neanderthals.

In chapter 11, the penultimate chapter, we follow Lok at first through a close third-person narrative. But near the end, the point of view changes to omniscient. This lets Golding describe the scene as if we were seeing it through the modern mind. We are told Lok holds something in his hand: “It was a root, old and rotted, worn away at both ends but preserving the exaggerated contours of a female body.” I’m sure this is Oa.

In Chapter 12, the final chapter, we get a third-person account from the perspective of the Homo sapiens. This lets us know what they thought about the Neanderthals. It also allows Golding to speculate about their state of consciousness.

The Inheritors is not a breezy read. In some ways, it reminds me of A Clockwork Orange and how I had to struggle to understand what was going on. I’m quite sure if I reread The Inheritors two or three times, I would discover many more layers of speculation and narrative devices. With just this one reading, I’m left puzzled over several scenes.

The Inheritors is not famous enough to have a current audiobook edition. I believe hearing the story would help me understand it better. I did find an old audiobook edition on YouTube. Listening to it did indeed make the action clearer. I have long known that I tend to read too fast. Audiobooks make me slow down. Listening makes certain parts of the prose easier to understand. However, I need to read with my eyes to understand other parts. I believe The Inheritors deserves to be read with both my eyes and ears. By the way, Audible is scheduled to publish a new audiobook edition next year.

The Inheritors reminds me of the short story, “The Day is Done” by Lester del Rey, first published in the May 1939 issue of Astounding Science-Fiction. It’s another tale of a Neanderthal confronting Homo sapiens. You can read it here. I wonder if William Golding had read “The Day is Done.”

There is an anthology of science fiction stories, Neanderthals, edited by Robert Silverberg, Martin H. Greenberg, and Charles G. Waugh. View the table of contents here.

H. G. Wells wrote “The Grisly Folk” in 1921, an unflattering look at Neanderthals.

Of course, the most famous fiction featuring Neanderthals is Earth’s Children series, by Jean M. Auel.

James Wallace Harris, 7/8/25

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How My Buddies Judged Science Fiction Back in High School

Group Read 92 (#06-08 of 25)

“The Certificate” by Avram Davidson (F&SF, March 1959)

“To See the Invisible Man” by Robert Silverberg (Worlds of Tomorrow, April 1963)

“A Two-Timer” by David I. Masson (New Worlds 159, February 1966) (Amazon)

Back in the sixties, in high school, my friends and I would argue endlessly over science fiction short stories. We didn’t remember them by their title or author, but by whatever neat idea they imagined. I still remember my friend George telling Connell and me about a humorous short story, where a human crewed military spaceship tries to get cooperation from a human colony world where the social norms and economy were wacky. The colonists kept telling the crew “myob” to everything asked. I didn’t learn until years later that this was a famous story by Eric Frank Russell called “… And Then There Were None.” Another story George told us was about an Earthman who fell in love with a girl, and she wanted him to tell him he loved her. But the guy didn’t want to use such a trite phrase, so he left Earth and went all over the galaxy to learn about the preciseness of language. Eventually, he returns to the girl and says, “My dear, I’m rather fond of you.” Of course, the girl was hugely disappointed and rejected the guy. When the guy told his language guru what happened, the guru said, “Lucky devil, vaguely enjoyable was the best I could ever find.” I didn’t discover until decades later that it was “The Language of Love” by Robert Sheckley.”

The point of all this was that we judged science fiction solely on the ideas in the stories, not the plot, characterization, or writing. George read the most and was the best at retelling a story. I think he mainly read anthologies. I read anthologies and magazines. I was more into neat inventions. For example, I told them about the ecologariums in “The Star Pit” by Samuel R. Delany. Connell and I loved Mindswap by Sheckley, and we told everyone about the Theory of Searches. We worked at the Kwik Chek in Coconut Grove, Florida. At the time, its park was a gathering place for would-be hippies. The odds of meeting someone you knew from all over Dade County were increased if you came to the park on Saturdays. That fit Sheckley’s idea that there were optimal places to go if you were searching for someone.

The last three stories we read for the Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Short Fiction Facebook group were all idea stories, the kind my buddies and I would have discussed at Connell’s house on Vista Ct.

“The Certificate” by Avram Davidson is a tight little story about alien invaders who take complete control over humanity, making us their slaves. The aliens create a vast bureaucracy that’s impossible to fight. The aliens also punish us severely if we don’t cooperate. To make matters worse, they have altered us so we heal immediately, so they can torture us over and over again.

The story’s protagonist is Dr. Roger Freeman, who desperately wants a new winter coat. To apply for one involves going through an obstacle course that takes years. But Freeman is finessing the system.

Back in high school, this story would have caused us to argue about how we’d overthrow those aliens. Being young guys, we’d probably claim to know how to start a rebellion, even though Davidson sets up the story to suggest no rebellion is possible. When I read this story this week, the idea didn’t appeal to me much. The story is well-written, with an O. Henry surprise ending. However, it doesn’t offer anything to me as an older reader.

“To See the Invisible Man” by Robert Silverberg seems like a reply to Damon Knight’s classic short story, “Country of the Kind.” Like the Knight story, Silverberg sets up a society with a unique liberal form of punishment. The unnamed first-person narrator is sentenced to a year of invisibility for being cold and detached. He’s not actually made invisible. He’s just branded on the forehead, so anyone who sees him should act like he doesn’t exist. The story is about the psychological changes this character undergoes during the year. The narrator learns that he can steal whatever he wants or visit women’s locker rooms and be completely ignored. But he gets lonely, even desperate for someone to talk to. Silverberg takes us to a different place in his story. His character rebels in a different way by being compassionate.

My buddies and I would have had a lot to say about this story, with each of us coming up with how to handle the punishment. We’d probably argued over whether or not we’d go into the women’s locker room. I would have said that my solution would have been to read science fiction for a year. We did know of “Country of the Kind,” so we would have compared the two, but only about what the two criminals did, not about the writing, plotting, or characterization. Science fiction was about setting up a situation that you could argue over.

“To See the Invisible Man” is a good story. It’s tightly told, immediate, and works. However, it is not nearly as dramatic as “Country of the Kind,” and thus won’t be as memorable.

There’s little likelihood we would have read “A Two-Timer” by David I. Masson in the 1960s because it came out in a British SF magazine. Also, the idea behind this story is probably too subtle for three teenage boys in the 1960s. Joe, the narrator, is a guy from 1683 who steals a time machine and visits 1964. Of course, he doesn’t know it’s a time machine when he discovers it, or comprehends the idea of time travel. He just sees a guy walk away from a weird enclosed chair. He gets in and sees all kinds of dials and buttons labeled with words he doesn’t understand. He pushes a button and goes to 1964. Eventually, Joe figures out how the machine travels in time and space, like the DeLorean in Back to the Future.

The real point of this story is Joe, with his Middle English mind, describing 1964 to the reader. That might have entertained us back in the sixties, but I’m not sure. Old man me, found it very creative. There’s little action in the story. The piece is Masson’s playground for showing off his knowledge about language and history. Present-day me was disappointed that Joe wasn’t inspired to explore time based on his 17th-century knowledge.

I’m getting old and jaded. I find it hard to discover science fiction that thrills me in the remaining years of my life. I’ve loved reading science fiction magazines my whole life, but most of the stories were aimed at readers like my younger self. Masson’s exploration of language is more ambitious and mature than the other two stories, but Masson built his story on a lame plot.

Even though I’ve been reading science fiction for over sixty years, I still want to find stories that thrill me to the same degree as I was at 13. I’m not sure that’s even possible. Breakthrough science fiction novels like Hyperion are rare. But it’s interesting to note that Hyperion would have been a novel that thrilled me and my high school science fiction buddies.

Obviously, many of the stories that wowed me as I grew older would have also thrilled the younger me. For example, “Think Like a Dinosaur” by James Patrick Kelly or “Beggars in Spain” by Nancy Kress.

On the other hand, would “Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang have inspired our younger selves? We would have avidly talked about translating an alien language, but would we have appreciated the advanced plotting and exceptional writing?

And could we have appreciated “Loneliness Universe” by Eugenia Triantafyllou without having lived through the social media era? Or could my younger self appreciate “Two Truths and a Lie” by Sarah Pinsker, which moved my older self? Wasn’t I mainly moved by the writing? I’m not sure high school Jim could have.

What if we could have read “Press ENTER ■” by John Varley in 1966? Would it blow us kids away like it did me in 1984? Did we need to understand computers and know about the technological singularity first?

I have to assume certain stories in the 1960s were relevant because of my age and current events. That’s why Dangerous Visions was exciting in 1969 but painful to read last year.

I keep looking for old science fiction I missed back then that will thrill me as much now as it would have thrilled me back when — if I had discovered it when I was young. One such book was The Man Who Fell to Earth by Walter Tevis. The trouble is, I think George, Connell, and I would have all thought that story was dull. Isn’t that novel better for the old and jaded?

I need to find cutting-edge science fiction for today that would have thrilled me as a 13-year-old but also a 73-year-old.

By the way, my 1964 self expected a much different 2025 than the one I live in now. There are many nonfiction books about current affairs that, if I could send to my 1964 self, would read more like science fiction than science fiction.

James Wallace Harris, 5/9/25

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What is the Shelf Life of Science Fiction?

My library constantly discards science fiction from its holdings. I know that because I see those books in the Friends of the Library book sale stamped DISCARD. Often, they are books I would consider SF blasts from the past. Evidently, if they aren’t checked out for a certain period, they get discarded. I used to believe libraries were supposed to preserve the past, but I don’t think that’s true anymore.

But that’s not my only clue that science fiction has a shelf life. At the used bookstore I visit every week I see the same old books week after week – no one is buying them. It’s the newer books that come and go so quickly.

For years now, I’ve been watching people review science fiction books on YouTube. I can sense that many authors and their books are falling out favor over time. A major example is Robert A. Heinlein. When I was growing up, he was considered the #1 science fiction author. He was my favorite SF writer. I still love his books published before 1960, but the ones after that haven’t aged well with me. Reviewers generally pan Heinlein nowadays. I often see critical comments about Heinlein on Facebook. He’s just not popular anymore. I see many of his books at the used bookstore, but only a couple at the new bookstore.

Whitney at the YouTube channel Secret Sauce of Storycraft has been reviewing old Hugo winning novels by decades. She didn’t like over half of the winners. Five of the ten (The Wanderer, Stranger in a Strange Land, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, This Immortal, and Lord of Light) have stopped working for me too.

If I gave the Hugo Award now for the 1960s, my list would be:

  • 1960 – STARSHIP TROOPERS by Robert A. Heinlein
  • 1961 – ROGUE MOON by Algis Budrys ( for A CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWITZ)
  • 1962 – STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND by Robert A. Heinlein
  • 1963 – THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE by Philip K. Dick
  • 1964 – THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH by Walter Tevis (for WAY STATION)
  • 1965 – THE MARTIAN TIME-SLIP by Philip K. Dick (for THE WANDERER)
  • 1966 – DUNE by Frank Herbert
  • 1967 – FLOWERS FOR ALGERNON by Daniel Keyes (THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS)
  • 1968 – no award
  • 1969 – STAND ON ZANZIBAR by John Brunner

I thought there would be hundreds of science fiction books that would be Hugo worthy from the 1960s, but there weren’t. I used CSFquery.com and ISFDB.org to look at each year 1960-1969 and there just was’t that many older books that’s being read today that people still admire.

I love A Canticle for Leibowitz still, but it’s a fixup novel, and I mostly love it for the first story. And reviewers aren’t as wowed as they used to be for it. I kept Stranger on the list even though I no longer like it, because it’s so ambitious for the times, and historically, it is the standout novel of the year. I love Way Station, but I don’t think people still read it much. The Man Who Fell to Earth has grown in popularity since 1963. The Martian Time-Slip is way better than The Wanderer, and people still read it. I definitely think Flowers for Algernon has aged better than Mistress. I’d give No Award over Lord of Light, or any other novel I remember from 1967.

All the books on my list are in print, and all are available as audiobooks. That’s a good indicator that they are still being read.

I was shocked by how few science fiction books from the 1960s I still admire. Twelve years ago I wrote a series about the best SF books from each decade. Looking at my essay for the 1960s shows damn few books that people still read.

I remember back in the 1960s when old guys would gush about E. E. “Doc” Smith books from the 1920s and 1930s. I tried them, and they were horrible. I guess today’s young readers would feel the same about most of the books I loved back in the 1960s. Is anyone still reading Keith Laumer, John Boyd, Mack Reynolds, A. Bertram Chandler, etc.

Here is a list of 242 popular SF books from 1920-1990. How many do you think are still being read?

What are the best science fiction books from the 1960s that you still read and think young people should try?

You might like to read An Information History of the Hugo Awards by Jo Walton. This was first published at Tor.com and many of the comments from readers are included.

James Wallace Harris, 5/5/25

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“Watershed” by James Blish

Group Read 92 (#05 of 25)

“Watershed” by James Blish was first published in IF Worlds of Science Fiction (May 1955). You can read it online here. “Watershed” became part of James Blish’s The Seedling Stars, a collection of short stories about adapting humans to new environments. The most famous story of the collection is the classic “Surface Tension.” Unfortunately, “Watershed” is not in print except for Supermen: Tales of a Posthuman Future, a 2002 anthology edited by Gardner Dozois.

“Watershed” is a rather preachy tale, not a thrillingly dramatic story like “Surface Tension.” Capt. Gorbel of the spaceship R.S.S. Indefeasible is traveling to Earth to deliver new colonists, but it’s not what you think. Humans have long colonized the galaxy, and the environment of Earth can no longer sustain “standard form” humans. Gorbel is going to Earth to deliver colonists that look like seals, but are considered just as human as we are, well, that’s by the standards of political correctness of their day.

The adapted human is Hoqqueah. He likes to sit in the forward greenhouse and stare into space as the ship approaches Earth. However, the standard form crew considers itself superior to the adapted humans. Averdor doesn’t like that Hoqqueah spends so much time in the greenhouse, and is annoyed by his constant talking. Averdor tries to convince Gorbel to forbid the adapted humans from using the greenhouse.

Hoqqueah knows of this prejudice, and he tells the Captain a story about Earth. He explains that Earth was the original home of all humans. He also tells how humans have found many planets that couldn’t support the standard human body, so they adapted humans to new forms. The concept is called pantropy. (That link gives several classic examples in SF.)

However, this is 1955, and we must ask ourselves if this story is about space exploration. The famous civil rights case, Brown v. Board of Education, happened in 1954. To be fair to James Blish, he had been exploring pantropy since 1942. But then Blish has Hoqqueah tell Captain Gorbel about prejudice against dark skin humans on old Earth.

The kicker to this story is that the standard form is now the minority.

“Watershed” has nice sentiments, but not much of a story. It’s told, not shown. It would have been far better if it had been dramatized. We don’t get to know Hoqqueah or what it’s like to be a seal person. And why, if standard form humans can’t handle Earth, how can the adapted men of his kind handle the spaceship with Gorbel and Averdor?

I recommend reading “Surface Tension” to understand what I mean by telling the story with drama. You can read it in the August 1952 issue of Galaxy Magazine.

James Wallace Harris, 4/30/25

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“The Last Day” by Richard Matheson

Group Read 92 (#04 of 25)

“The Last Day” by Richard Matheson was first published in the April-May 1953 issue of Amazing Stories. You can read it online here. Or you can buy The Best of Richard Matheson in various media editions here. Or look at its reprint history to see if you already own it in an anthology.

Our reading group is reading 25 short stories recommended by five group members. They are stories we haven’t read as a group, but ones the five people thought we shouldn’t miss. I didn’t submit this time, but “The Last Day” would have been one of the stories I would have submitted. Three of my favorite SF short stories from 1953 are “The Last Day,” “Lot” by Ward Moore, and “Deadly City” by Paul W. Fairman. I admire these stories because they were so gritty, even brutal.

Science fiction has often dealt with post-apocalyptic stories but “The Last Day” is about the end of the world. Some astronomical object is about to crash into the Earth. It’s not specified. The story begins in the morning of the last day and ends in the evening just before the end of everything on Earth.

I have often read and thought about surviving an apocalypse. I have often contemplated my own death. And I’ve always been fascinated by stories about people with a terminal illness and what they did with their remaining days.

But I haven’t thought about what I would do if everyone had just one day to live. It’s a neat concept to ponder. After reading “The Last Day” I’m not sure I’d need to read another story on the same idea. “The Last Day” gets the job done so nicely that I can’t imagine anyone topping it.

For this reading, I read the story with my eyes and then listened to it with my ears. I was impressed by its drama. Richard Matheson is famous for writing over a dozen episodes of The Twilight Zone. Many of Matheson’s stories and novels were adapted for television and the movies, and he wrote many screenplays. Matheson knows how to create drama.

“The Last Day” begins with Richard waking up in a room full of passed-out people. Several are naked, and it’s obvious that a drunken orgy had taken place the night before. When Richard goes into the bathroom to clean up a bit, he finds a dead man in the tub. Richard enters the kitchen where a friend, Spencer, is frying eggs. By now, we’ve realized that life on Earth is about to end.

Richard wishes he were with Mary, a woman he loved but didn’t commit to. His friend Norman comes into the kitchen and tells Richard he wants to go see his mother. Norman asks Richard if he wants to see his mother. Richard dreads the idea because he knows his mother will preach religion at him, and he doesn’t want to hear it.

After Spencer leaves to have more sex with a woman who wants everyone to watch, Norman begs Richard to drive him to his mother’s house. We learn that riots are going on all over the city. Many people have committed suicide, but others run wild, murdering each other.

All of this is amazingly adult for a science fiction story in 1953, especially published in a magazine mostly read by young adults. That issue seemed atypical for Amazing Stories. It also had stories by Robert A. Heinlein, Theodore Sturgeon, and Murray Leinster. It was edited by Howard Browne. I feel I need to reevaluate that era of the magazine. 1953 was a boom year for science fiction magazines. I’ve written about it before. I believe the Cold War had a significant impact on the genre that year. Just look at some of the other notable stories from 1953.

Richard eventually finds his mother at his sister’s house. There’s a poignant scene of his sister and her husband getting their daughter to take sleeping pills, and Richard watching all three commit suicide. And finally, Richard has a moving moment with his mother while they wait to die.

The story is cleanly told. Direct. It covers many bases without getting wordy. 5-stars.

James Wallace Harris, 4/29/25