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How to Judge Hack Writing?

My friend Mike recently told me an anecdote from Here Comes Civilization: The Complete Science Fiction of William Tenn Volume 2. It was in the afterward to the story “The Human Angle.” It seems Ted Sturgeon invited William Tenn over for dinner with a hidden agenda. When Tennn arrived, Sturgeon told him that Mary Gnaedinger, the editor of Famous Fantastic Mysteries needed three short stories by tomorrow and they would write two of them that night. Ray Bradbury was going to write the third and air mail it special delivery to Mary from California. (See the “Afterward” below for the full tale.)

Tenn, Sturgeon, and Bradbury did come through in twenty-four hours and their stories were printed in the October 1948 issue of Famous Fantastic Mysteries. You can read that issue at Archive.org.

There were many legendary science fiction writers (and pulp writers) who bragged they could crank out a short story in a day, or a novel in a weekend. But is this hack writing any good? That’s hard to say. What is good? All three stories, “The Women,” “The Human Angle,” and “That Low” were readable stories and even entertaining. However, they are also quite forgettable. But not completely forgettable. Follow the links to view their reprint histories.

Men and women who wanted to make a living writing science fiction back in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s had to produce a lot of content. Many science fiction writers made a half-ass living churning out short stories for magazines. But are these speedy productions worth your time to read today? That depends.

Short stories can achieve several levels of quality and recognition. Getting published in a magazine is the first rung up in a ladder of publishing success. The next step up in recognition of quality is being nominated for an award or getting reprinted in an anthology, especially an annual best-of-the-year anthology. Winning an award is another step up. After that, recognition comes slowly. Having an author include a story in one of their short story collections at least says the author is proud of that story. But having a story reprinted in a retrospective or theme anthology means the story stands out over the other stories that came out in the year it was first published. Even greater recognition is when a short story is used in a textbook and taught in school or optioned for a film or television show.

The Bradbury and Tenn were anthologized in a few minor theme anthologies as well as a few author collections. Bradbury included “The Women” in his famous I Sing the Body Electric collection. Tenn used “The Human Angle” for the title of a collection. Sturgeon’s story was reprinted in Mary Kornbluth’s Science Fiction Showcase, which was a special anthology probaby to help the widow of C. M. Kornbluth. “That Low” was only reprinted in Sturgeon’s complete stories series, suggesting that Sturgeon never liked it much. They were not major stories. However, these stories were sold several times, and they are in print today.

But back to my title question: How to judge hack writing. First, we must consider what kind of reader you are. Are you an indiscriminate reader, like someone who comes home from work and turns on the television and quickly finds something to watch by flipping through the channels? Or, are you the kind of person who Googles to find the critically admired shows that just came out this month? Maybe, you’re the person who looks at lists of the best TV series of all-time hoping to find something amazing to watch.

The Bradbury, Tenn, and Sturgeon stories are perfectly good stories if you’re capable of being entertained by an average episode of an average TV series. And that might be good enough for most people. But if you’re the kind of person who thinks in terms of the “Ten Best Episodes of The Twilight Zone,” these stories don’t even come close. And, if you compare them to “Fondly Fahrenheit” by Alfred Bester, or “The Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang, or “The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas” by Ursula K. Le Guin, then they aren’t even in the same galaxy.

I’ve developed a rating system I sometimes use in group discussions about short stories. One star is an amateur effort, and two stars is a story that still needs work and shouldn’t have been published. I seldom even mention these stories. Three stars to me is a professional story acceptable for magazine publishing. Four stars is a story that is good enough for me to look forward to rereading. Five stars is a story I’ve read many times and consider a classic.

Hack writers can routinely crank out three-star stories. The stories by Bradbury, Tenn, and Sturgeon are all three-star stories. I didn’t mind reading them, but at my age, they are a waste of my precious reading time – a commodity that’s dwindling. They were fun to look up and read because of Tenn’s anecdote about how and why they got written, but that’s about all.

When I’m restless, I still enjoy reading old science fiction anthologies. I have trouble watching TV, but I can still read for fun. I enjoy looking for gems. The trouble is I seldom find stories like “The Star Pit” by Samuel R. Delany or “Flowers for Algernon” by Daniel Keyes. But that’s what I’m really hoping to find, stories that work at that level.

I also want to know why and how stories work at the highest level of short story writing. I assume there must be definable qualities I can list, but I can’t list those qualities now. I plan to study my favorite 5-star stories and make a list in the future.

I will say the Bradbury story had the most writing qualities of the three stories. It had the most emotional tension. It had the most vivid details. It had the most poetic imagery. I cared for the wife in the black bathing suit. And it was the least predictable of the three stories.

The Tenn story was a vampire story. It has an unusual setting for a vampire story, which was a plus, and it had a different kind of vampire, another plus. But it was the most predictable of the three stories, and the least developed. Bradbury just had way more tension and conflict in his story. Sturgeon’s ending was the most surprising, but it wasn’t a very insightful surprise.

The obvious thing I can say about hack writing is it needs more drafts. Many hack stories could have been far better if they had baked longer in the oven. Writers who are proud of their first-draft writing might regularly sell their work, but it will never be considered great. A good example is Barry Malzberg. Some of his stories and novels are quite appealing, but none of them are books I want to reread. The absolute measure of great fiction is how often readers reread such work.

Robert Silverberg at the beginning of his career cranked out science fiction. Some of it was readable, but neither memorable nor something I’d want to reread. Then at the end of the sixties he changed. I assume he spent more time rewriting, although in some of those same years he cranked out four novels. But Downward to the Earth was different. I’ve read it twice and look forward to rereading it again.

I’m currently reading book 20 of The Great SF Stories 1-26 (1939-1964) edited by Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg with Robert Silverberg doing #26 with Greenberg after Asimov died. I’ve been reading them in order, along with the other best of the year anthologies that covered the same year. For any given year, I’d say there were less than five stories that I’d rate 5-stars. On average I’d say it’s two 5-star stories in each year. Most of the other stories are 3-stars and 4-stars.

I’m not sure if there are even three hundred 5-star stories in all the years of science fiction. Most would-be science fiction writers who achieve some success publish a handful of stories before starting on novels. I’m not sure if hack writers still exist. There are bestselling writers who crank out one or two novels a year who might be considered hack writers because of their productivity, but I don’t know if they are hack writers like Philip K. Dick, Ray Bradbury, Clifford Simak, Harlan Ellison, Robert Silverberg, and Theordore Sturgeon were early in their career when they could publish a dozen short stories and a couple of novels in a year. Ray Bradbury was quite proud of selling one short story a week pace, and he published in both the pulps and slicks.

Just because a story was written fast, doesn’t mean it’s bad. But the odds of it being great are low. I’m in a handful of online groups whose members love short fiction. There are many readers out there who appreciate good hack writing, especially those old readers who love pulp fiction. I don’t want to criticize such stories and their fans. I have often enjoyed a fun average story, but I’ve forgotten thousands of them.

James Wallace Harris, 4/9/25

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“The Rocket Man” by Ray Bradbury

Did science fiction brainwash us into wanting to go to space? I can remember being a little kid in the 1950s and thinking the most exciting thing I could do in life was to go Mars. Before that I wanted to be a cowboy. If you’re old enough to remember television in the 1950s, most of the shows were westerns. That’s why most little boys back then had Santa bring them a six-gun and cowboy outfit for Christmas. But then we discovered science fiction and Project Mercury, and we traded in our cowboy hat for a space helmet.

My most common daydreams in adolescence after the XXX kind, were about going to Mars. Fantasies about becoming a rockstar came in a distant third. Looking back, I realize how unrealistic my teenage hopes for the future were. I was completely clueless as to what girls wanted, couldn’t carry a tune, and I most definitely didn’t have the right stuff. At seventy-three I see the absurdity of my childhood fantasies, so why didn’t I see them then?

Ray Bradbury is often accused of not being a true science fiction writer. Even as he started selling short stories to science fiction magazines in the 1940s, he knew he didn’t want to be labeled a science fiction writer. Yet, somehow, his very unscientific science fiction from back then has the heart and soul of science fiction, especially his stories collected in The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man.

“The Rocket Man” first appeared in The Illustrated Man and Maclean’s in early 1951. It’s about a 14-year-old boy who cherishes the few days his father is home from space. The father is always going off for three-month tours of duty as a rocket man. He tells the boy and his mother that when he’s in space he can’t wait to get home, but when he’s home, he can’t wait to get back to space. “The Rocket Man” deglamarizes space travel. In fact, the dad eventually asks his son to promise to never go into space.

The main reason Bradbury’s science fiction stories are great is because he sees both the fantasy and reality of science fiction. Bradbury is obviously obsessed with remembering childhood, but somehow, he was wise when young too.

You can read “The Rocket Man” online here.

By the way, the essence of the story is captured wonderfully in Elton John’s song “Rocket Man.” My favorite version of that song is this bluegrass cover:

But the question I want to explore is why did we all want to go into space? What’s so hot about outer space, the Moon, Mars, etc.? Why did we buy into those dreams that science fiction was selling?

My fantasy was always Mars. But Mars is only a planet that a geologist could love. There ain’t nothing there but rocks and cold. Why did reading The Red Planet by Robert A. Heinlein make me think the best place in existence was Mars? Why does rereading The Martian Chronicles elicit so much intense nostalgia? And why do I think “A Rose for Ecclesiastes” is the epitomy of Martian fantasies?

Over the decades I’ve come to realize that the fantasies we embrace as young children are ones we seldom give up. That’s why kids who embrace religion when little seldom give up God and Heaven no matter how convincing science and logic are at invaliding their faith. Some people never let go of their Christian fantasies, and I never gave up science fiction fantasies. We’re all delusional.

Brian Collins at Science Fiction & Fantasy Remembrance seemed depressed in his current post. His solution is to read old science fiction and fantasy. That’s been my solution too when I think about the state of the world and U.S. politics. Even as a kid, I never really believed I would go into space, but thinking about it was a wonderful way to soothe the stresses of growing up. And now reading science fiction is the balm for growing old.

James Wallace Harris, 4/1/25

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“The Million Year Picnic” by Ray Bradbury

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“The Million Year Picnic” by Ray Bradbury is about as famous to science fiction readers as O’Henry’s “The Gift of the Magi” is to English majors. “The Million Year Picnic” was first published in the Summer 1946 issue of Planet Stories. (Read it online here.)

However, most readers know “The Million Year Picnic” as “October 2026: The Million-Year Picnic” from The Martian Chronicles. Most modern readers think The Martian Chronicles is so out of date scientifically that they don’t consider it science fiction but fantasy. But it is science fiction, and “The Million Year Picnic” is a classic, touching on several iconic themes of the genre.

“The Million Year Picnic” was published just one year after Hiroshima, making it one of the earliest stories about humanity destroying the Earth with atomic weapons. But we don’t know that right away. When we begin reading the story, Bradbury voices his story with a quaint tone, almost like a parable, sounding like Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. A father, mother, and their three sons have just landed on Mars. They decide to go fishing. The narrative pacing seems only a few steps up from “See Dick run.”

Back in the 1940s, throughout the 1950s, and even into the 1960s, it was popularly considered that there was life on Mars or had once been, even intelligent life. This is partly due to H. G. Wells and Giovanni Schiaparelli, an Italian astronomer who convinced the world that he saw canals on Mars. Until July 1965 when Mariner 4 showed us a couple dozen grainy pictures of Mars that looked like the Moon, we had so much hope for Mars.

Science fiction writers loved to imagine Mars occupied with all kinds of beings and ancient civilizations. The common belief was Mars was a cold dying cold world and Venus was a hot young jungle world. Ray Bradbury wrote many stories based on these assumptions. In 1950 Bradbury published a collection of his stories about Mars as The Martian Chronicles, a “fix-up” novel. (In 2009, Subterranean Press published The Martian Chronicles: The Complete Edition, which claimed to collect all of Bradbury’s stories about Mars. I’d love to have a copy, but the cheapest copy I can find online is $1,300.) Because “The Million Year Picnic” was so popular it had already been reprinted three times before The Martian Chronicles. And it has been extensively reprinted ever since.

Bradbury also reprinted “The Million Year Picnic” in his collection: S is for Space. Most of Bradbury’s science fiction was found in four collections when I was growing up: The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, S is for Space, and R is for Rocket. Bradbury quit writing science fiction for the most part in the 1950s and went on to write fantasy, horror, and mainstream fiction after that. I read “The Million Year Picnic” this week because the Facebook group Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Short Fiction is reading 12 science fiction stories by Ray Bradbury that they haven’t read before. Here’s the discussion schedule.

But back to the story. After the family sets out on a boat on a Martian canal to go fishing we slowly learn that “The Million Year Picnic” is a post-apocalyptic tale. But we don’t discover it right away. The three boys are all excited. Timothy, the oldest carefully watches his father, trying to learn what’s happening. As they travel down the canal they pass by countless old cities where Martians once lived. Some cities are just mounds, while others have grand skylines. The dad promises his boys he will show them the Martians, and they get excited.

Along the way, we discover “The Million Year Picnic” follows another hoary old science fiction theme, the retelling of Adam and Eve. This idea had become so overused that by the 1960s writer’s guidelines for magazines would state “no Adam and Eve stories.”

I don’t know how many times I’ve read “The Million Year Picnic.” But back in the early 1960s when I first discovered it, I still believed in Martians on Mars. I was so into Mars, that as a kid, I thought my goal in life was to get there. So when I read the story I focused on the dead Martian civilization. That’s what made the story exciting. I too wanted to see the Martians. And that’s how I always remember this story, especially the surprise ending, which was quite clever.

However, on this rereading, I realized that I had forgotten Bradbury’s serious point. Bradbury was a nostalgic writer, even as a young man. He grew up in the 1920s and 1930s and his stories often have the feel of that era, like watching old black and white Frank Capra movies. Many of his Martian stories transplant small midwestern downs to Mars. But Bradbury wrote “The Million Year Picnic” with an undercurrent of horror and even cynicism. The quaint family on Mars has fled an Earth where humanity has destroyed itself in a nuclear war.

When the Dad realizes the radio signals from Earth have gone silent he tells his boys that one day their grandchildren might hear radio signals again. When I read that I thought about Adam and Eve and their sons and how Biblical skeptics always asked “Where did the wives of Adam and Eve’s sons come from?”

I’m always amused and fascinated by what I remember and don’t remember from stories when I reread them. The gimmick ending of “The Million Year Picnic” overshadows all my memories. I had completely forgotten this was a post-apocalyptic story. In other words, I remembered the positive and forgot the negative. I also forgot how many Biblical allusions where were in the story.

Bradbury solves the wives’ problem. In the end, we learn that another family had also secretly prepared to go to Mars when armageddon began, this one had four daughters.

Now that number is interesting. Bradbury even tells us it will be a problem. I think he’s hinting at the old Cain and Abel conflict. Humans don’t change and even if we start over we’ll have violence and wars again. We know two if not three of the sons will want that extra wife.

Every time I reread a Ray Bradbury story I tell myself I need to get into Ray Bradbury in a big way. I even bought three biographies of the man: Becoming Ray Bradbury and Ray Bradbury Unbound by Jonathan R. Eller, and The Ray Bradbury Chronicles by Sam Weller – but I haven’t read them yet. I also bought two giant collections of his stories for the Kindle: The Stories of Ray Bradbury and Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales. And on audio, I bought The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man, which I have listened to. I also bought Golden Apples of the Sun and Other Stories and A Medicine for Melancholy and Other Stories on audio which reprints much of what was in R is for Rocket and S is for Space.

The problem is I always go on to read other science fiction. Rereading “The Million Year Picnic” makes me want to delve into Bradbury once again, and read or reread all these books I’ve collected. Even though I’m retired and have all my time free, I can’t seem to find the time to pursue this project. I’m hoping the Facebook group reading of Bradbury will get me going.

If you’re a fan of listening to short stories, I recommend two giant collections of Ray Bradbury on audio that repackages four of Bradbury’s early collections. #1-32 is The Golden Apples of the Sun and Other Stories (1997), and #33-63 is A Medicine for Melancholy and Other Stories (1998). I wish Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Stories (2003) were on audio, but it is not. (Table courtesy of Piet Nel.)

James Wallace Harris, 3/20/25

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CAMP CONCENTRATION by Thomas M Disch

The first time I read Camp Concentration by Thomas M. Disch, I was around 20 and proud of myself for reading one of those New Wave science fiction novels I had been reading about in fanzines. It wasn’t much fun to read. It was overly intellectual – well beyond my level of comprehension. After reading thousands of other books over the last fifty-plus years, Camp Concentration made much more sense. I actually enjoyed the story. I enjoyed it a lot. But please, don’t buy a copy without carefully reading this review.

It’s important to know that Camp Concentration first appeared in the July, August, September, and October 1967 issues of New Worlds. It suggests it was written in 1966 or early 1967 and published first in England, in a magazine that promoted the New Wave. To fully appreciate this novel, you must remember when it was written and what happened in the United States in 1966 and 1967. The first hardback came out in England in 1968, and it wasn’t until 1969 when it was published in America. I didn’t read it until after the 1971 Avon paperback, cover shown above.

I’d love to hear an audiobook version of Camp Concentration. However, a highly skilled narrator would be needed to handle all the accents, poetry, foreign language quotes, and characterizations. It would also make a wonderful movie. Unfortunately, the audience for either the audiobook or film would be small.

Back in the 1970s Camp Concentration was greatly admired. Philip K. Dick loved the book so much he promoted to friends and suggested it be made into a movie to a producer interested in his own work. But there’s a bizarre story here. Dick, who was paranoid, started seeing things in Camp Concentration and wrote a letter to the FBI claiming it had secret intel. You can read that letter here. Eventually, Disch found out about this and didn’t take it kindly. Wikipedia describes what happened:

I mention this early in the review because it helps set up how strange Camp Concentration is as a novel. It’s quite readable, but it has so many references to literature, music, philosophy, poetry, etc., that you might feel it has some deeper message. Even though I just finished the novel, I’m already looking forward to rereading it again. However, before I can do that, I need to study first. At minimum I should read Christopher Marlowe’s play Doctor Faustus, and Thomas Mann’s novel Dr. Faustus. In fact, I need to go through Camp Concentration, make a list of all the works Disch mentions, and at least read their Wikipedia pages about them.

Louis Sacchetti is a conscientious objector, and Camp Concentration is the journal he writes while imprisoned in two locations. Disch wrote the novel while LBJ was president, and before Nixon. The story is set somewhat in the future, and Robert McNamara is President. McNamara was the Secretary of Defense under JFK and LBJ. McNamara played a major role in promoting the Vietnam War. To get the fullness of Camp Concentration, you need to read the Wikipedia link to McNamara. It also helps to see The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara, a 2003 Academy Award winning documentary.

Camp Concentration is a deeply cynical view of the United States in 1967. Louis is a war resister, at first imprisoned in an ordinary prison. He accepts that. But the novel is about when he is transferred to another prison, a military prison, where an experimental drug is used on the inmates by the U.S. Army. Most of the prisoners had committed crimes while in the Army, but Louis is a special civilian prisoner. The army believes it has synthesized a drug that will enhance intelligence. It was derived from a strain of syphilis.

The U.S. Army conducted experiments with LSD from 1955 to 1967. From 1932 to 1972, the U.S. government studied the effects of syphilis on black people after telling them they were being treated. These are just two examples of unethical experiments by our government. It’s not hard to believe the setup for Camp Concentration.

Camp Concentration reminds some readers of Flowers for Algernon because it’s about a treatment that makes people smarter. Over one hundred journal entries, we see Louis and the other prisoners change and become brilliant. I felt the characters did change, but my friend Mike, who got me to reread the novel, says he didn’t. Writers find it hard to describe humans with superintelligence. I’ve written about that recently. I thought Disch pulled it off, Mike didn’t.

Most of the novel is intellectual discussions about art, literature, poetry, theater, music, religion, philosophy, Alchemy, and other medieval beliefs. Mike thought all this discussion was boring, I was fascinated. I feel it helps to have a classical education to appreciate Camp Concentration. I don’t, but I’ve read enough to wish I had.

While reading Camp Concentration I was reminded of another book I read in the 1970s, Where the Wasteland Ends: Politics and Transcendence in Post Industrial Society by Theodore Roszak. I’m not saying the two books are about the same things, but as the characters evolve intellectually, they start sounding like Roszak.

Read Disch’s Wikipedia entry, you’ll see that Thomas M. Disch and Louis Sacchetti have much in common. Louis is a poet, and Disch wrote The Castle of Indolence: On Poetry, Poets, and Poetastes.

In the novel, the drug makes the test subject smarter, but it also kills them within months. As the characters grow more brilliant, they realize they have much more to live for and become bitter. Disch appears to equate higher IQ with depression and cynicism.

Disch does not suggest that superintelligence leads to super-powers. The test subjects only become more academic in their communication with each other. As they evolve mentally, their use of intellectual ideas to express themselves becomes more dense. This is subtle, and it may be hard to believe they are more intelligent. It seems that most of their references are to ideas covered in Classical studies or Medieval studies.

If you are prone to depression, I would not read this novel. If you are among the faithful, I would not read this novel. If you prefer tightly plotted stories, that are easy to read, and enjoy action, don’t buy this book.

On the other hand, if you’re into the history of science fiction, the New Wave, or the 1960s, Camp Concentration might be a good one to read. Science fiction changed in 1967-1968. I believe several young prodigies like Disch and Delany took the genre in new directions, and older writers like Silverberg, Brunner, and Ellison decided they were tired of where science fiction was going too.

Camp Concentration is available at Amazon.com (Kindle $5.99, Trade paper $15.00)

Reviews:

New Worlds (December 1968)

Amazing Stories (January 1970)

Analog (March 1972)

Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels by David Pringle ($1.99 Kindle)

James Wallace Harris, 3/11/25

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If We Can’t Imagine Human Superintelligence Can We Describe It in Fiction?

In Ted Chiang’s impressive overview of human superintelligence in science fiction, he mentions that John W. Campbell Jr. rejected a story by Vernor Vinge about a character with human superintelligence because no one can write such a story. (Vinge had proposed a sequel to “Bookworm, Run!“) The implication: since none of us know what being superintelligent is like subjectively, we can’t describe it. That’s silly. Campbell had been publishing a magazine describing space travel decades before NASA, or atomic bombs before 1945, or robots long before Roombas.

British journalist Ed Yong describes the umwelt of many species in his book An Immense World. How each organism views reality from its collection of sense organs is called umwelt. We might not be able to imagine being a dog, but we can analyze a dog’s senses and speculate what they can perceive.

Shouldn’t we assume science fiction can speculate on a human being with superintelligence by what it’s capable of perceiving and what it does with those perceptions? I’m guessing John W. Campbell assumed that a dog couldn’t imagine what it’s like to be a human. But is that really true? A dog might not comprehend humans reading a book, but I’m sure they understand much about us in their own special way. In fact, they might observe qualities about us that we’re unaware of.

Astounding Science Fiction in the 1950s was full of stories about ESP and other psychic abilities. Campbell called such abilities psionics. Throughout the history of science fiction, writers have speculated that superhumans would have god-like powers. I’ve written about science fiction and human superintelligence before and described many of the most famous of these stories. See: “Science Fiction and Human Evolution” and “The Origins of Higher Intelligence in Science Fiction.” The genre has a long history of attempting what Campbell supposedly told Vinge he couldn’t.

Strangely, hard science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke wrote two classic novels about superhumans: Childhood’s End and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Clarke gave no scientific explanation of how people might transform into next-stage humans. Clarke’s new humans were almost impossible to imagine. They are god-like to us. This is fun but gives us little to speculate about realistically.

Greg Bear imagines a new strain of virus affecting pregnant women causing a mutation in Darwin’s Radio. Children born of these women are more intelligent, have greater disease resistance, and can communicate non-verbally. This isn’t hard to imagine. Current humans show a tremendously wide spectrum of intelligence and physical health. And some humans are far better at communicating than others, especially via body language and empathy.

Nancy Kress imagines genetic engineering creating a new species of humanity in Beggars in Spain. Their key feature was needing less sleep. This gave them more time to learn, work, and compete. It’s easy to imagine this adaptation and how these new humans would do better than ordinary humans.

The movie Gattaca imagined a future society where normal humans competed with humans with carefully selected genes. The improved humans had the same human frailties, but out-competed normal humans for the better jobs. They were better-looking, smarter, more athletic, and had greater discipline. That’s not hard to imagine.

In Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes, Charlie Gordon undergoes an operation that advances his IQ. At the beginning, Clarlie works as a janitor and is cognitively challenged. The operation allows him to learn new things, and eventually become a super-genius. His new attributes are not beyond belief. Charlie learns new languages, achieves great academic success, and becomes tremendously productive. Charlie doesn’t develop ESP or godlike powers, but achieves the maximum levels of current human skills and traits. This is believable and easy to imagine.

Homo sapiens are only slightly improved over Neanderthals, but those improvements let us do so much more. For us to describe Homo superior we only need to imagine slight enhancements to our species and speculate about what impact they would have.

Some humans have tetrachromacy, which means they can detect four primary colors rather than three. Other people have eidetic memory. Stephen Wiltshire, an autistic savant, can draw detailed images of cities from memory after just a helicopter ride. All the traits that Human 2.0 might have are already showing up in us now. Conversely, all the traits that won’t emerge are those we lack precursors for now.

That’s why I think it’s silly to imagine humans evolving to have telepathy or be able to teleport at will. Those are comic book ideas. Campbell was both too hopeful and too naive about human evolution. He expected “The Man Who Evolved” by Edmond Hamilton. At best, I think we’ll get Gattaca.

One problem with evolving our current abilities is that we often see cognitive issues associated with people with extreme examples of those abilities. Can a perfect memory be imperfect? Can we be too smart? I’ve known many people far ahead of me in many skills. I can’t fathom general and special relativity. Does that mean Albert Einstein was a 2.0 human?

Until recently, I thought the human race was evolving slowly on average. But current events make me think we’re regressing. Some people already have superintelligence compared to others. It could be the evolution of our species won’t be by quantum leaps, but slow adaptation of biological trial and error. Much of science fiction is just fun bullshit speculation. We need to distinguish between fantasy and scientific possibilities.

Personally, I feel our role in evolution was to evolve machine intelligence. I don’t believe humans will ever become giant brains with tiny bodies, nonphysical beings, or something like Q from Star Trek: The Next Generation. It’s interesting that Greg Bear and Nancy Kress in their novels, had normal humans wanting to wipe out the new humans before they got established.

Lester del Rey summed us up nicely in “For I Am a Jealous People!” Our creator and descendants need to watch out.

I don’t see why Campbell rejected Vernor Vinge’s idea of writing a sequel to “Bookworm, Run!” Campbell had already published Slan by A. E. van Vogt and many other stories featuring human superintelligence.

James Wallace Harris, 3/9/25

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A Unique History of Science Fiction (1945-1975)

From 1945 to 1975, P. Schuyler Miller reviewed science fiction books for Astounding Science Fiction and Analog Science Fiction. He died in October of 1974. I stumbled upon an online PDF collection of those reviews from 1945-1967. You can download that file here. (Warning – it’s 235MB.)

Unfortunately, the individual reviews aren’t dated and the run is far from complete. However, the PDF is searchable, and you can use ISFDB.org to date an individual review. Just look up the book title, then scroll down to the Reviews section, and find the one for Miller. Someday I’d like to create a file of all of Miller’s reviews from 1945-1975.

I put this PDF on my iPad and read it like a book. It’s wonderful. The reviews start before science fiction was regularly published in book form. Whoever collected these reviews evidently picked those they thought interesting to modern readers. Collectively, they have a history of science fiction published before 1968. For example, the early reviews cover books published before science fiction was a genre. Then we started seeing books from Gnome and Fantasy Press, essentially fan publishers. After that, we slowly see big name New York publishers take chances on the genre along with the rise of mass market paperback publishers.

We get to read the original reviews of books now remembered as genre classics and books that have since been forgotten. Often I read reviews of forgotten books that sound interesting enough to track down.

The first two reviews are books by Vardis Fisher: Darkness and the Deep and The Golden Rooms (April 1945). These books imagine life when Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon coexisted. Popular writers like H. G. Wells, Jack London, and Stephen Vincent Benet, also wrote on this theme. It wasn’t considered science fiction then, but our genre has claimed that theme since.

Here’s that first review:

Most book reviews in science fiction magazines are short blurbs. Miller writes comprehensive essays. As the years progress, Miller’s reviews become more elaborate, longer, often beginning with some science fiction history. The next review is of The Time Stream by John Taine (March 1947). Miller does more than describe and react to the novel, giving the background of how that story fits in the genre, and biographical information on the author. He compares Taine’s work to A. Merritt’s, and points out how Taine’s work originally appeared in hardback, while Merritt’s stories were serialized in magazines first. I’ve not read Taine or Merritt, but I’ve often read about both in histories of science fiction. This review makes me want to try The Time Stream. These reviews also give me information about collecting original editions. (Amazon has a Kindle edition of The Time Stream for $2.99.) Here’s Miller’s review.

I decided to jump to June 1954 and read the review for The Lights in the Sky are Stars by Fredric Brown, the science fiction novel I’m currently reading. By now Miller’s columns are longer. He reviews more books each month, so each review is shorter. That’s because far more SF books are being published every month. Since October 1951, they come under the title “The Reference Library.” (That’s where I steal the image above for this post.) Miller often begins his columns with a digression exploring topics related to current publishing.

I thought I’d test Miller on something hard. This is his review for Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein from the January 1962 issue of Analog. I’m including his essay in the introduction as a sample of how he composed his columns.

That should give you enough examples to decide on downloading the entire collection of Miller’s reviews. If you’re reading on a computer with a large monitor, I have a page I’m working on that links to Miller’s reviews in issues of Astounding and Analog at Archive.org. You can read each column one at a time on screen.

P. Schuyler Miller also wrote some science fiction. I own this first edition of The Titan with a beautiful Hannes Bok cover.

James Wallace Harris, 3/5/25

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INHERIT THE STARS by James P. Hogan

The original paperback, Inherit the Stars by British writer James P. Hogan (1941-2010), had a terrific cover – the kind that made you buy the book. The artwork appears to show astronauts on the Moon finding a dead astronaut, but that is deceptive. Hogan creates a scientific mystery because the dead astronaut has been there for 25,000 years.

I first read Inherit the Stars in 1992 but after seeing Whitney’s review on YouTube, I wanted to reread the story. I went to Amazon but couldn’t find the book. Was it out of print? I did find it on Audible. Later, I discovered that Inherit the Stars and its sequel The Gentle Giants of Ganymede are now being sold together as The Two Moons for the Kindle. A bargain for $6.99, especially since Whitney also praised the second book. It turns out that there are five books in the series being sold as three Kindle editions. The series is called Giants. Only the first three novels are available on Audible. The Science Fiction Book Club once published the first three novels as The Mirnervan Experiment. Ballentine also published a paperback called The Giants Novels that contains all three.

Before anyone rushes out to buy Inherit the Stars, I need to describe it more, but not enough to give spoilers. Hogan’s story is the kind you want to figure out for yourself. It kept me guessing for the entire novel even though I had read it before. That worried me. Why wasn’t it more memorable? Was that an indication it was a bad book? I don’t think so. How the story is told isn’t very memorable, but the ideas are big-time fun. I did remember some of those, but not connected to the book.

Inherit the Stars is basically scientists talking about one mystery after another. There’s no real plot. A lot happens, but it’s not dramatic. With each discovery, there’s a new puzzle, which makes you think and try to guess what caused each mystery. Inherit the Stars is science fiction focused on ideas and not storytelling. I’ve told you the first mystery, but I don’t want to give away any others.

However, I will give you some fun clues. Inherit the Stars reminds me a lot of Rendezvous With Rama by Arthur C. Clarke. Hogan’s prose is similar to Clarke’s. At one point, the story reminded me of the classic short story “Omnilingual” by H. Beam Piper. The novel also triggered memories of Gateway by Frederik Pohl. At other times it reminded me of the Winston Science Fiction, a series of young adult SF that came out in the 1950s, especially the entries where the protagonists find relics of ancient alien technology. If you love alien archeology stories, you might like Inherit the Stars.

I call Inherit the Stars Pre-NASA Science Fiction, by which I usually mean science fiction written before Mariner 4 photographed Mars in July 1965. Until NASA started exploring the solar system with robotic probes, many people hoped that we would find life, even intelligent life somewhere on other planets in our solar system. For example, Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land from 1961 imagines Mars being inhabited by a dying race. However, after Mariner 4, serious science fiction assumed we were alone in the solar system. (I must admit, that I still love Pre-NASA science fiction. Growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, I desperately wanted us to find Martians.)

I consider Hogan’s 1977 Inherit the Stars Pre-NASA Science Fiction because Hogan maintains the hope that we had neighbors. However, some readers might feel Hogan’s ideas might come across like those of Erich von Däniken, who wrote Chariot of the Gods? Another reviewer dismissed this book as unbelievable. Personally, I find Erich von Däniken’s theories to be insulting to humanity. But I consider Hogan’s speculation to be great science fictional fun.

James Wallace. Harris, 3/1/25

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Gimme That Old Time Science Fiction

Whitney at the Secret Sauce of Storycraft YouTube channel recently reviewed several science fiction books she called Just D@mn Good Vintage Science Fiction Reads. She intentionally avoided books considered classic science fiction and defined the kind of books she was looking for in used bookstores as vintage science fiction. She defined vintage science fiction as books published before barcodes appeared on their covers. That would be the mid-1980s. This would be science fiction her parents and grandparents would have read.

She reviewed these books (Links will bring up the video at YouTube):

I have read most of these books with Empire Star and Downward to the Earth being two of my Top 25 science fiction novels. Whitney’s reviews made me think about all the old books I found in used bookstores that weren’t famous but were fun reads. Maybe not outstanding examples of the genre, but the fun kind of science fiction that made you forget about your worries.

Her video makes me want to make my own list of Vintage SF Gems. Books to look for at library book sales that maybe no one is buying. Books you don’t see reprinted in new editions at new bookstores. If you don’t want to hunt used editions, these vintage SF titles are often reprinted as Kindle books at Amazon, sometimes for just $1.99. Kindle and Audible editions are the best sources for finding vintage science fiction today after the demise of the mass-market paperback.

My favorite science fiction books back in the 1960s were Heinlein’s Juveniles. Robert A. Heinlein’s reputation is fading, and I think that’s partly due to online reviewers reviewing the wrong books. Heinlein wanted to be remembered for Starship Troopers, Stranger in a Strange Land, and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. And those are generally the titles found on new bookshelves and often reviewed. But they are also Heinlein’s novels that many people dislike including myself. And the novels written after that are even worse.

I wish modern reviewers would review Heinlein’s work from the 1950s. If you see old copies of these books give them a try. These science fiction books have given me the most fun over my entire lifetime. I’ve reread them many times. They are how I epitomize science fiction. All by Robert A. Heinlein.

  • Have Space Suit-Will Travel
  • Tunnel in the Sky
  • Time for the Stars
  • The Rolling Stones
  • Farmer in the Sky
  • Citizen of the Galaxy
  • Starman Jones
  • The Star Beast
  • Double Star
  • The Door Into Summer

After this plug for Heinlein, I want to remember those vintage science fiction titles I believe deserve more readers. I’m just going to post images of the covers I fondly remember. Hopefully, you might spot these books at used bookstores, charity shops, and friends-of-the-library sales in their funky old editions. For me, old covers are essential to the vintage science fiction experience.

These are just a handful of books I could recall from memory this morning.

James Wallace Harris, 2/23/25

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THE HEADS OF CERBERUS by Francis Stevens (Gertrude Barrows Bennett)

Most science fiction stories seem to go stale after a couple decades. This week, I listened to The Heads of Cerberus by Frances Stevens, initially published 106 years ago. The story had passed its expiration date decades ago, but I still found it mildly enjoyable as a historical curiosity.

If you’re not fascinated by the evolution of science fiction, I’ll understand you leaving this essay now. The Heads of Cerberus is not a forgotten classic. It gets points for being an early example of time travel and dystopian fiction written by a woman, but it’s not a good example. At best, it’s a sample from 1919, the kind that MIT Press is reprinting in its Radium Age science fiction series.

Gertrude Barrows Bennett (1884-1948) published several fantasy and science fiction stories between 1917 and 1923 as Francis Stevens. This makes her a pioneering author in the pre-Amazing Stories era, especially as a woman writer, but she is practically forgotten today. I just learned about Francis Stevens by reading a two-part review of “Sunfire” on Science Fiction and Fantasy Remembrance (Part 1, Part 2) by Brian Collins. That review inspired me to research her, and what I learned inspired me to read The Heads of Cerberus.

The Heads of Cerberus was first serialized in five 1919 issues of The Thrill Book. It was first printed in hardback in 1952. It’s been reprinted at least a dozen times since.

I listened to a free copy on LibriVox. There are several public-domain ebook editions available, here is one at Gutenberg Australia. Lisa Yaszek who edited The Future is Female! series for the Library of America recently published a collection of Francis Stevens’ stories at MIT Press Radium Age series called The Heads of Cerberus and Other Stories. Gertrude Barrows Bennett is getting rediscovered. However, she’s been rediscovered before, it just never sticks.

The Heads of Cerberus is about three people from 1918 Philadelphia traveling to Philadelphia in 2118. Bob Drayton is a disbarred lawyer. Terry Trenmore is his Irish friend who is a powerfully built giant. And Viola Trenmore, Terry’s beautiful little sister, and just seventeen. In 2118 they find a dystopian society run by a handful of weird characters. The story is painfully simple, although I enjoyed it somewhat. The fun in reading these old science fiction tales is not the storytelling, but seeing how people imagined science fictional ideas before the concept of science fiction was invented.

The 19th century had several tales of people traveling to the future that could have inspired Bennett, each with a unique method of time travel. In “Rip Van Wrinkle,” Washington Irving has his title character sleep for twenty years after drinking potent liquor. Edward Bellamy had Julian West sleep for 113 years via hypnosis in Looking Backward. Frances Stevens has her characters jump ahead two hundred years by sniffing grey dust from a vial of mysterious ancient origins. The vial’s stopper is shaped like Cerberus.

As I said, The Heads of Cerberus isn’t very sophisticated. Its tone reminded me of the Oz books by L. Frank Baum, which were for children. Those books were often about ordinary people meeting extraordinary beings in strange places. Bennett’s imagined future is minimalistic, and somewhat goofy, reminding me of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. However, Stevens lacks the creative imagination of Baum and Carroll.

Edward Bellamy created a complex economic system for his future society that inspired many readers in the 19th century to form over five hundred Nationalist Clubs based on socialist ideas in Looking Backward. Francis Stevens imagines an economy based on the number of hours worked. Her society was ruled by an elite called The Superlatives. Ordinary people didn’t have names but numbers, and the Superlatives had names based on cardinal virtues like the Loveliest, The Bravest, the Fastest, the Strongest, etc.

The main problem with Stevens’ science fiction is her future society isn’t a philosophical idea she believed in or promoted, but merely conjured up quickly to fit a plot. Bennett was a young widow, with a child and mother to support after her dad died. She was a stenographer but made extra money by writing for the pulps. She quit writing after her mother died. The Thrill Book that serialized The Head of Cerberus was a low-paying market, but Stevens sold three novels to Argosy, a much-admired pulp after it. They were Claimed, The Citadel of Fear, and Possessed: A Tale of the Demon Serapion. Even though they are dark fantasies, a genre I’m uninterested in, I should try one to see if her writing improved. Her first serial, The Labyrinth, was to All-Story in 1918, another legendary pulp.

James Wallace Harris, 2/21/25

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HEROVIT’S WORLD by Barry N. Malzberg

Back in the 1960s when other teens fantasized about becoming rock stars, playing for the NFL, or being seen on the silver screen, I dreamed about becoming a science fiction writer. After reading the 1973 satire on science fiction writers, Herovit’s World by Barry N. Malzberg, I see that I was much better off working with computers at a university for thirty-five years and retiring with a pension. You can currently buy the Kindle edition for $1.99. But read my review carefully before you risk even that little money. It’s a good read for only certain kinds of science fiction fans.

Barry N. Malzberg died on December 19, 2024, at 85. Although prolific, he was never a famous science fiction writer. Malzberg’s most successful books were written in the 1970s, and Barry is mostly forgotten today. He is getting some attention on YouTube as a few reviewers rediscovering him. Malzberg has a reputation as being the curmudgeon of science fiction. Malzberg often relies on satire, but his stories were never fun like the satires of Kurt Vonnegut. Malzberg wrote dark, edgy, and psychological fiction like Philip K. Dick, but he never developed a cult following.

Recently, Bookpilled on YouTube declared that Malazberg was his new favorite science fiction writer. Bookpilled skews towards literary and dark SF, often from the 1970s. But to be honest, Malzberg is very hit-and-miss. Joachim Boaz, a true connoisseur of seventies science fiction, found little to love in The Many Worlds of Barry Malzberg. Boaz considered most stories good but rated “Death to the Keeper” brilliant. Boaz also called Malzberg’s most notable novel Beyond Apollo brilliant, giving it a 5 out of 5 rating.

Be sure to read MPorcius’ extensive review who believes Herovit’s World was overpromoted by Robert Silverberg and Harlan Ellison, but he did like it a lot.

And if you pay attention, Malzberg is mentioned occasionally on YouTube, print reviews, blogs, and podcasts. Three years ago, the biographer Alec Nevala-Lee interviewed Malzberg for two hours.

Herovit’s World is a short novel, 160 pages in paperback, and just under six hours on audio. Jonathan Herovit, our protagonist, has written 92 science fiction novels in the past but struggles to finish his latest book. It’s overdue. He only has thirty pages and his editor is hounding him. His wife is hounding him. He’s stuck in a small apartment with a new baby who cries endlessly. Herovit is approaching forty, well on the road to being an alcoholic, depressed, delusional, and coming apart mentally.

Herovit wants to be like Mack Miller, the fictional action hero of his endless Survey Team novels. Herovit wants to be like the decisive Kirk Poland, his alter-ego and pen name for his books. Jonathan Herovit has turned Kirk Polan into an imaginary friend, one that’s become an abusive second personality.

Malzberg uses this novel to satirize editors, publishers, authors, readers, fans, conventions, writer conferences, writer associations, and the science fiction genre. We never know if Herovit’s World is autobiographical. Herovit is self-loathing. Is this Malzberg confessing his own feelings, or just creating a character. But if you read Malzberg’s three books of essays, The Engines of the Night: Science Fiction in the Eighties (1982), Breakfast in the Ruins (2007), or The Bend at the End of the Road (2019) you’ll get the feeling that he did use his own life for inspiration.

Malzberg is confusing. He has stated that he loves science fiction and the genre. Listen to the podcast above. But science fiction also depressed him, even tormented the poor guy. Herovit’s World is recursive science fiction. That is science fiction about science fiction. Often recursive science fiction is fun, even zany, like What Mad Universe by Fredric Brown or God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater by Kurt Vonnegut. Herovit’s World is full of creative ideas and psychological observations, but they’re not fun. Malzberg feels more like Kafka.

Malzberg and Herovit are hack writers. They pride themselves on cranking out any style or type of fiction and getting paid for first drafts. However, Herovit’s World reads quite well. It has its literary aspects and is full of fun experimentation. I’m glad I read it even though it’s about an unhappy man going down the tubes. And it does make you think about science fiction.

Malzberg was several years younger than Herovit. Herovit’s writing career began in the 1950s, while Malzberg started publishing in the 1960s. Herovit remembers the science fiction magazine boom of 1953. Herovit was a disciple of John Steele, who I assume is based on John W. Campbell. So is Malzberg really making fun of 1950s science fiction? At one point in an argument with his wife Janice, she gives a bit of a speech which might be the key to the whole story:

I also remember when there were very few females at science fiction clubs and conventions. Boy have things changed. We must acknowledge that Malzberg skewers SF of the 1950s or 1960s in Herovit’s World. But we should also ask: “How would a disgruntled SF writer skewer the genre today?”

There is a dream sequence late in the novel where Herovit is having tremendous sex with a college coed. He had been invited to a conference and the coed approached him telling Herovit that Kirk Poland was her favorite writer. It turns out she was paid by the university to seduce Herovit so he could be studied for academia. Science fiction was getting noticed by the academic world in the early 1970s. Many writers and fans felt vindicated. However, other writers claimed science fiction was better left in the gutter. Malzberg uses this scene to give his opinion:

Herovit and Malzberg regretted giving so much of their creative effort to a genre that gets so little respect. They know they are writing escapism for adolescents. I think the genre has changed a lot since the 1970s. It does get more respect and it’s taken more seriously, probably because it deserves it. However, some of Malzberg’s criticisms might still be true, especially once you analyze why certain stories and themes are so popular with science fiction fans.

A good deal of Herovit’s World is about marriage. Herovit routinely cheats on his wife at science fiction conventions and neglects her at home. I’ve heard plenty of gossip about science fiction writers at conventions and conferences. But there is a non-SF connection here. There are many literary novels about blocked writers and failed marriages. I can’t tell if Malzberg is satirizing them too, or padding his SF novel. Both Herovit and Malzberg have bragged about being able to pad their fiction. My favorite novel on this theme is Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon, who writes in literary and SF genres.

Herovit’s World also contains a lot of sex. Malzberg got his start as a writer cranking out soft-core porn paperbacks. I don’t know if he’s saying that science fiction writers are sex obsessed, or sexually frustrated, or if he was merely padding his story because he didn’t have enough to say about science fiction to fill out the novel length. I do know that Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth had come out a few years earlier and had become a bestseller dealing with sex honestly. As they say, “sex sells,” and Malzberg was hoping to break out of the science fiction ghetto.

Overall, Herovit’s World is mildly amusing. Most readers at Goodreads give it three stars, but a few love it giving it five stars. My rating would be ***+. I thought it was written well enough (***) and I liked it (+), but I wouldn’t ever reread it. That’s my main problem with Barry N. Malzberg. His books are interesting, but they never reach my next rating level. I give **** to books I know I’ll want to reread.

If Herovit’s World was less padded with sex scenes and had more satire about science fiction, it could have been a **** novel with me. If Malzberg had tried harder, gone beyond a first draft maybe, and really thought about the purpose of this novel, it could have been far better.

Malzberg focused on the pathetic without ever showing what we love about science fiction. His novel could have been elevated by showing Malzberg/Herovit’s passion for the genre. Far Beyond the Stars by Steven Barnes is a recursive science fiction novel that does just that. The story is a novelization of a Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode where the DS9 crew are shown working at a 1950s science fiction magazine much like Galaxy Science Fiction. The story criticizes the racism in the genre back then yet still shows a love for science fiction.

No matter how much I criticize science fiction, I can never forget how much Heinlein’s juveniles meant to me as a kid. I could write a satire on the genre, but I hope I wouldn’t do what Malzberg did in Herovit’s World, by making it all feel slimy and depressing. One reason why my favorite Philip K. Dick novel is Confessions of a Crap Artist is even though it criticizes science fiction fans, it does it with love. It’s a superior recursive science fiction novel.

James Wallace Harris, 2/11/25