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“The Whole Town’s Sleeping” by Ray Bradbury

I have not been writing blogs or reading for a couple of weeks. I lost the habit of reading and writing because of a house guest, many visitors, and a more active social life. However, tonight I felt a wistful urge to read a short story. I chose “The Whole Town’s Sleeping” by Ray Bradbury. It was the first story in Ray Bradbury Stories. You can read a PDF copy online here. “The Whole Town’s Sleeping” is not science fiction or fantasy. And I wouldn’t call it horror, although its purpose is to scare. “The Whole Town’s Sleeping” was published in three magazines, McCall’s (1950), Argosy (1951), and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine (1954), indicating its wide appeal. Finally, the story was incorporated into the fixup novel Dandelion Wine in 1957.

For me, “The Whole Town’s Sleeping” was pure nostalgia. It’s a story that made me think about memory and writing. Sure, Bradbury is trying to tell a scary story, like those he heard camping in the woods, but he’s also remembering his past.

Although the story came out in 1950, “The Whole Town’s Sleeping” is set much earlier, in the era of Bradbury’s youth, because Lavinia, Francine, and Helen go to the theater to see a Charlie Chaplin film. That unnamed film could have been Monsieur Verdoux from 1947, but the story’s mood makes me think it might be The Circus (1928) or City Lights (1931). Bradbury was born in 1920, the same year my father was born. I was born in 1951. It feels nostalgic to the small towns I lived in in the 1950s, but it would have been nostalgic to readers in 1950.

Many of Bradbury’s stories were inspired by his youth growing up in Waukegan, Illinois, which he later fictionalized as Green Town. I believe those little towns I lived in hadn’t changed much in twenty years. Back then, I remember walking with my friends to the theater and talking to people sitting on their porches, which made me identify with the story. I remember walking alone along deserted streets late at night like Lavenia and having the same fears as she did.

My past includes living in small towns where all the stores were set on the square or along Main Street, with all the connecting streets occupied by homes. I had a hard time visualizing the ravine that divides Green Town. Although I do remember living in a little town divided by a small lake. It had a tiny waterfall, which scared me at age nine.

There’s not much I want to say about “The Whole Town’s Sleeping,” because I want to talk about reading. Often in my life, I’ve substituted reading for living. There are times when life is uneventful, so reading is exciting. Life experiences are superior to reading, but idle times are great for reading.

However, there are times when life is full, and I wish I were idle reading. We have two worlds to live in, reality and fantasy. Ray Bradbury created a fantasy world for us to enjoy, and it’s fascinating to think about how and why he did that. On one hand, he’s given us a simple story built to scare us. We even know he’s doing it. Readers know the ending will shock them, but we didn’t know how Bradbury would pull it off. It’s the kind of story that we watched on the old TV show Alfred Hitchcock Presents. (It’s even reprinted in one of Hitchcock’s anthologies.)

But that’s only one level. Fiction usually works on multiple levels. Bradbury also works to describe the past, his past, in the kind of detail that will trigger memories in his readers. And there’s a level beyond that which Bradbury entertains us. It’s the writing.

I have had several intense experiences over the last two weeks. They will stay locked in my head because we seldom share intense experiences. If I were a writer, I would write a story about them. That story might even be read by readers who have had similar experiences.

Isn’t that what Ray Bradbury is doing? Do we read to learn about Bradbury’s experiences, or do we read to remember our own?

Often, we use fiction to escape from boredom. But doesn’t fiction work best when it triggers something inside us? When life is full, I shouldn’t crave reading, but I do. Why? Is reading an essential nutrient of the soul that causes us to fall ill if it goes lacking?

I wish I could fictionalize my experiences so I could understand them. Maybe because I don’t, I read other people’s efforts instead.

James Wallace Harris, 5/25/25

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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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“All Summer in a Day” by Ray Bradbury

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I’ve been rereading Ray Bradbury short stories, and I’m amazed at how well they hold up even when the science is beyond dated. Ray Bradbury is quite cruel to us readers in “All Summer in a Day.” In fact, I had to stop reading when I knew where the story was going, I just didn’t want to go there. I waited a couple of days to finish this fifteen-minute story on audio.

At first the kids in “All Summer in a Day” reminded me of Charles Schultz’s Peanuts characters, but then it was obvious they associated with bad kids from stories by Charles Beaumont or Shirley Jackson.

Remember when Lou Grant told Mary Richards she had spunk? And then Lou said, “I hate spunk.” Well, “All Summer in a Day” has a punch in the gut, and I should say “I hate a punch in the gut,” but when it comes to short stories, a punch in the gut is a good thing. Isn’t that weird. Why do we admire a great punch in the gut from a short story? Why is it so satisfying?

“All Summer in a Day” is set on Venus where it rains continuously except for a two-hour window of clear weather and sunshine every seven years. In a classroom the kids are talking about the impending summer. One girl, Margot, was born on Earth and didn’t come to Venus until she was four. She could remember sunshine and tried to describe it to her classmates who didn’t remember the sun because they were born on Venus. They were just two the previous summer day. They didn’t believe Margot. They resented that she knew something special. So, just before the sun was to come out, they locked Margot in a closet. All the other kids got to see the sun, and it was everything and more that Margot had tried to describe to them.

The children completely forgot about Margot while they cavorted through their brief summer day. When the rain and clouds returned, they remembered Margot and let her out.

This is a simple story about how children are cruel to each other. It’s about being the nail that sticks up. It’s about knowing the undescribable. Does the setting on Venus really matter? It makes the story science fiction so Ray Bradbury can sell it to a science fiction magazine, but does it really matter to the story? Charles Schultz could have done such a story about how the Peanuts gang mistreated Charlie Brown, and may have many times, I just can’t cite a specific panel.

I’m in the process of rereading my favorite science fiction stories and trying to understand why they are my favorites. Writing ability accounts for some of the reasons, but triggered emotions count for many too. I wish I could say I understood every cog in this story, but I don’t. What I do recognize is Ray Bradbury has a set of skills to tell a story in a way that makes it stand out. Not only that, but his stories also endure.

As I reread this story I didn’t remember the details, but either I guessed or remembered what was going to happen to Margot. That’s why I stopped listening to it. But when I returned to the story, I kept thinking to myself: “How is Margot going to react?” I was surprised that Bradbury didn’t give us Margot’s reaction. He left that up to us. That’s another tool in his writing toolbox. Writers don’t have to tell us everything. Bradbury does tell us this about Margot:

Because I just finished reading a biography of Ray Bradbury I know he was an odd child that stood out to his classmates. He also like to write poetry. Bradbury doesn’t have to tell us that this story is for us loners and oddballs, the ones other kids considered weird. When I was growing up, I didn’t know anyone else who read science fiction. Science fiction was like the sun appearing on Venus to me. I tried to explain its appeal to other kids, but they just thought I was a zero. I didn’t make a science fiction reading friend until the tenth grade when I met James Joseph Andrew Connell, III. The experience of meeting another science fiction fan is why Among Others by Jo Walton won the Hugo, Nebula, and British Fantasy Award. Zenna Henderson made a whole writing career out of telling stories about oddballs.

Even in the 1940s Ray Bradbury knew that being labeled a science fiction writer would hurt his career. Bradbury authored stories for all kinds of markets and genres, but when he wrote science fiction, he knew he had to be different. Back in the 1950s he might have been the best-known science fiction writer in America, but many science fiction readers didn’t consider his work science fiction. Bradbury wanted to be a writer like Sherwood Anderson, Ernest Hemingway, or Thomas Wolfe, someone who was just called a writer.

The reason “All Summer in a Day” is good is because of the parts that aren’t science fiction. The reasons why some science fiction fans dismissed him was for the science fiction parts. The obvious lesson here for would-be science fiction writers, is don’t worry about the science fictional aspects but focus on the universal human appeal.

James Wallace Harris, 4/11/25


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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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PARABLE OF THE SOWER by Octavia E. Butler

Parable of the Sowers by Octavia E. Butler is a classic post-apocalyptic science fiction novel from 1993. It’s one of the best stories to read if you want to contemplate America collapsing from economic inequality. Most post-apocalyptic novels begin during the collapse or a short time after and are about the characters struggling to survive. The Parable of the Sowers is different. It starts in the early stages of collapse, so it’s technically a pre-apocalyptic novel. The rich still have civilization, but chaos is moving up from the poor, into the middle class. It begins with the fear of the coming apocalypse.

The Parable of the Sowers should offer a great panel discussion topic at a preppers’s convention. Most preppers picture themselves surviving when others don’t. They imagine grabbing their bug-out bags and heading to the hills where they own a private redoubt to make their last stand. Many post-apocalyptic novels start with tens of millions dying, making more room for those struggling to survive. Octavia Butler’s book imagines a collapse without a huge population die-off. Her scenario has millions clogging the highways fleeing collapsing cities.

Owning an AR-15 and backpack stuffed with survival food and gear won’t get you far. In fact, anyone with anything will be a target. That was also true in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. Reading Parable of the Sower is about as depressing as reading The Road. However, Butler adds one twist that’s different from other post-apocalyptic novels.

The Parable of the Sower is the journal of Lauren Olamina who wants a reason to survive when all around her are dying. She redefines God to explain the horrors she’s experiencing. In fact, she begins writing a book that will eventually be called Earthseed: The Books of the Living. Lauren quotes from Earthseed to head her journal entries. Lauren decides God is change and our purpose is to shape God. Don’t get turned off by the religious angle of the book, most of the story is about survival. There is a sequel called Parable of the Talents. The story was planned as a trilogy, with additional books, but Butler died before finishing it.

Parable of the Sower begins with Lauren a teenager living in a gated community. Her father is a black Baptist minister, and her mother is a deceased drug addict. Her father has remarried and Lauren has three step-brothers. The novel begins in 2024 when Lauren is 15 and ends in 2027 when she is 18. The first half of Parable of the Sowers is about how the people in Lauren’s gated community survive while watching the world outside their walls fall into chaos and violence.

Butler’s book was written thirty years before the time it describes, which happens to be our now. Butler describes living under a president named Donner who has many similarities with Donald Trump. The reason this novel is so powerful is because it feels relevant and all too relatable. It’s exactly the kind of science fiction I consider serious speculation.

Lauren’s father is a leader of the community populated by white, black, and Hispanic people. He teaches both spiritual hope and how to use guns. Lauren doesn’t believe in his God and creates a science fictional religion to give her hope for the future. By the time the poor finally overrun her gated community, Lauren is 18, and the sole survivor of her family. She must survive alone among the hordes fleeing southern California. People survive any way they can, often by robbing each other. The most desperate set fires to force people out of their homes, robbing and killing them as they flee.

Any successful work of science fiction must tell a compelling story about a character or characters we care about who overcome their limitations. The act of reading the story should feel transcendent. Butler succeeds very well at this level.

A great work of fiction will also have its own ontology and epistemology, and Butler puts that into her story. I’m just not sure how well it works. But I give her credit for trying. At least she recognizes that living through an apocalypse will inspire deep existential thoughts.

The best fiction is about surviving reality, but great fiction is about confronting God or the absence of God. I also believe Butler was aiming that high. Again, I’m not sure she succeeds. But it feels close.

Parable of the Sower is on the Classics of Science Fiction List because of these 12 citations:

I do have one major disappointment with the novel. Lauren’s mother was a drug addict using one of many new designer drugs. As a byproduct of her addiction, Lauren is born with psychic empathy. That makes fighting to survive in a dog-eat-dog world difficult. This affliction jazzes up the plot but detracts from the realism Butler paints.

Octavia Butler spent an afternoon with our Clarion West class in 2002. At the time, I had not read anything by her, but I had read about her. I wish I had read the works I’ve since read so I could have asked her many questions. Just another regret on my giant pile of regrets.

James Wallace Harris, 2/6/25

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Off My Feed

I haven’t been reading science fiction lately. After years of gorging on the genre, I’ve suddenly had enough. I still have the urge to read SF, but I’m having trouble finding science fiction I want to read. I have quite a large TBR pile but none of its titles interest me. I’m in the mood for something different, but after reading thousands of science fiction novels and short stories, finding something different isn’t easy.

Has anyone read the Technic Civilization books by Poul Anderson? Yesterday, I was testing out a program to view old pulp magazines on my Mac and I randomly picked the August 1967 issue of Analog. It had a cover story for “Starfog” by Poul Anderson. I started reading it. I’ve only read a handful of Anderson’s novels and short stories and always avoided his book series. I avoid series books in general. I started reading “Starfog” and decided it was exactly something I’ve always avoided, so maybe it will be different.

But I wanted to hear the story. After some research on ISFDB.org, I discovered “Starfog” was included in Flandry’s Legacy, Book 7, the last volume of the Technic Civilization series. I only had three Audible credits left, but what the heck, I decided to give it a try. “Starfog” is a novella, but Book 7 includes three novels, three novellas, and one novelette of stories in the series. This could be a tremendous bargain if I like the series.

I’ll let you know what I think — hopefully soon. The other inspiration I had to find something different came from a YouTube video. Bookpilled had a moving account of discovering the books of Barry Malzberg just before he died. I have read a couple of Malzberg books and they were so-so. But he was very prolific and Bookpilled has convinced me I should give Malzberg another try. So I’m reading about his novels. I did have a few emails from Barry, and he recommended his horse racing novels and a couple science fiction novels. I’ve always found Barry’s books about science fiction more interesting. He was a sharp-tongue critic.

File 770 has a nice tribute to Barry, “Curmudgeonly Breakfast: A Farewells-And-Learn-More-About Barry Malzberg (Last) Round-Up” that links to tons of resources about him. I’m hoping out of all that I will find a SF novel by him to read, hopefully, one that’s available on Audible.

Maybe between Anderson and Malzberg, I’ll get back into science fiction. But things might be slow around here for a while. To be honest, I think the real world has gotten more science fictional than science fiction.

If you’ve read a science fiction story you feel is radically different from any science fiction you’ve read before, leave a comment below.

James Wallace Harris, 1/27/25

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THE CRYSTAL WORLD by J. G. Ballard

At a minimum, The Crystal World by J. G. Ballard was an entertaining cozy catastrophe that I was always anxious to get back to reading. What compels me to write this review is figuring out why. The prose is vivid, propelled by a moderately interesting mystery. However, its characters are rather bland but then so are ordinary people. In the end, the story faintly alludes to something, but what?

What elevates this novel is trying to understand how it works. Its Heart of Darkness vibe feels biblical, spiritual, or at least existential. Reading The Crystal World makes me ask why we read fiction. Why are humans addicted to fiction and how does that addiction affect our brains? I do this because I’m also reading Stephen Greenblatt’s The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve, a nonfiction work that says a great deal about fiction.

Any hardcore bookworm will recognize The Book of Genesis as a genius work of fiction. I also think it’s a brilliant work of speculative fiction. Its author felt challenged to imagine how Earth and life on Earth began. Genesis was written well before the concepts of history or science. The author obviously knew of humans living in cities, and those that farmed and herded animals, the author could even have heard that there were places where humans were hunters and gatherers. And from that knowledge speculated that there was a time when humans lived like animals. The author of Genesis even realized there might be a time when humans didn’t have a language. The author pictured Eden where humans lived in harmony with nature before we became different. The obvious question became: What made us change? The obvious answer was, whatever made everything else. Then the question becomes how. Doesn’t eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil make a lovely allegorical explanation?

Do you see why I consider The Book of Genesis an early example of speculative fiction? And isn’t the story of Noah and the Flood, an early apocalyptic tale? Stephen Greenblatt makes a good case that the author of The Book of Genesis cribbed his ideas from much older Babylonian tales. We’ve always had storytellers and writers who tried to explain reality. However, this makes me wonder about modern writers and storytellers. What are they trying to explain?

Billions of humans have believed in the literal story of Genesis. That story says a lot about fiction and its impact on us. The early fathers of the Christian Church tortured the Book of Genesis for centuries producing endless interpretations. That’s a great example of literary criticism gone wrong.

I bring up Greenblatt’s book because we must ask certain questions about the fiction we read. The first question is: Does it have anything to say? In most modern works of fiction, the answer is no, but not always. If the answer is yes, is the fiction allegorical, satirical, literal, comical, historical, romantic, academic, philosophical, speculative, etc. Of course, the last question: Shouldn’t we abandon fiction for nonfiction if we have something to say? Even when fiction is about saying something, it’s often indecipherable.

I’m getting old, and I worry I’ve wasted too much of my life on fiction. I fear that fiction has no value other than as an entertaining way of killing time, and since time is running out, that’s bad.

Reading The Crystal World made me wonder if J. G. Ballard had something to say, or was his novel was just meant to be entertaining? To complicate the answer, The Crystal World is an early work of New Wave science fiction, published before the term was coined.

As evidence, I reprint below Judith Merril’s “Books” column from the August 1966 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Merril recognizes that science fiction is changing in 1966, and has something to say, and that J. G. Ballard might be leading the way.

The older I get the harder it gets to find science fiction to read. I roam up and down the decades looking for worthy books I’ve missed. With each book that still succeeds on any level, I ask why? Such revelations help me squeeze every last drop of wonder I can out of the genre.

I sometimes wonder if reading fiction hasn’t been a wasted diversion. On the other hand, I wonder if processing fiction hasn’t been my life’s work.

Reading The Crystal World made me think about the power of fiction to temporarily suggest that a made-up story could be true. This isn’t true of all fiction. Some writers can use narrative techniques that convey a sense “that this really happened”
more than others. I’m not claiming that The Crystal World is a brilliant work of realism, but it does use such techniques. And I thought they were the same techniques H. G. Wells used with The War of the Worlds.

The primary technique is using an eyewitness POV. The second technique is telling the story in linear time. The third technique is avoiding fancy prose or embellishments. If the prose feels like reporting events the story will feel real.

The Crystal World is about a science-fictional infection that alters plants and animals. This infection has hit the Earth in several places, much like how the Martian canisters land around the globe in The War of the Worlds. But our narrator, Dr. Edward Sanders doesn’t know this. He learns about one site slowly, by word-of-mouth, as people did before being connected to the internet.

Dr. Sanders lands at Port Matarre on a riverboat steamer from Libreville, in the Cameroon Republic of Central Africa. Dr. Sanders wants to visit two friends, Max and Suzanne Clair, who run a leprosy clinic further upriver. Dr. Saunders works at a leper hospital in Fort Isabelle and is in love with Suzanne Clair.

The story feels like Joseph Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness. At Port Matarre, Dr. Sanders finds it difficult to go any further. The police and army have put up a blockade around the infected area but don’t explain why. At first, Dr. Sanders has no idea of what’s happening, but something mysterious is occurring in the jungle.

I’ve only read Ballard’s novel The Dround World and Vermillion Sands, a collection, and less than a dozen short stories from anthologies. Ballard is great at creating an atmosphere. The Crystal World suggests a plague infecting reality spreading across the galaxy, even the universe, which affects time and consciousness. It’s not much of an idea, as science-fictional ideas go, but it is different.

However, what if The Crystal World was the only text found from our times, thousands of years from now like The Book of Genesis is to us. Would future humans imagine it as an allegory for something that happened to us? Would some think it described a literal event? Would the author of Genesis ever imagine billions of future humans believing their speculation was absolutely literal?

Fiction is like dreams, they both feel like they’re about something. Dreams are supposed to serve some kind of biological/psychological function. Is that true of fiction too? The authors of The Bible intended it to mean something. But millions of books and sermons have been created to explain The Bible and we’ve never agreed on any of them. The Crystal World is entertaining because it triggers that mechanism in our brain that fools us into believing we’re making sense of reality, the same mechanism that processes religious works, political news, or even gossip.

If I were a Zen Master or an intelligent robot, I’d discipline myself to ignore that delusion. The ancient Church fathers decided that eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, was the origin of sin, and the downfall of mankind. I believe the allegory could also explain our addiction to fiction, and I include religion as a genre of fiction. Both drive us crazy. The faithful use scripture to explain reality, while we heathens use novels.

In Eden, we wouldn’t have needed novels or scriptures.

James Wallace Harris, 12/25/24

“Books” by Judith Merril (F&SF August 1966):