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How My Buddies Judged Science Fiction Back in High School

Group Read 92 (#06-08 of 25)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

James Wallace Harris, 5/9/25

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What is the Shelf Life of Science Fiction?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

James Wallace Harris, 5/5/25

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“Loneliness Universe” by Eugenia Triantafyllou

“Loneliness Universe” by Eugenia Triantafyllou appeared in Uncanny (#58, May/June 2024) and is a finalist for the 2025 Hugo Award in the Best Novelette category. You can read or listen to the story online. If you are a member of the 2025 Seattle Worldcon, you can vote for this story through July 23, 2025.

I first learned about the Hugo Awards back in the 1960s. I never attended a Worldcon but always wanted to. I did attend some regional conventions back in the 1970s. I kept up with the Hugo and Nebula awards for most of the 20th century, but slowly lost touch with science fiction and fandom in the 21st century. I discovered “Loneliness Universe” when I read Austin Beeman’s “Reviewing the 2025 Hugo Award Finalists: Best Novelettes” at his website www.shortsf.com.

I’m so impressed with “Loneliness Universe” that I will try to read all the finalists. I might even join the convention as a virtual member and vote. Members get a packet that includes many of the works up for voting. Membership is $50, and adding virtual attendance is another $35. There’s little chance I will physically attend a Worldcon, so that might be my best shot at achieving an old desire.

“Loneliness Universe” is not what I’d call science fiction. Nor would I categorize it as fantasy. One reason I let the science fiction genre pass me by is that it’s no longer what I thought it was supposed to be. That’s not a criticism. I just didn’t feel like keeping up with changing times. However, “Loneliness Universe” is an outstanding work of fiction.

The story begins with an email from Nefeli to Cara dated September 18, 2015. Throughout the story, we get to read email exchanges, but the next one is dated July 5, 2015. I don’t know if this is a spoiler, but the first email is the end of the story. I did not discover right away. In fact, I wouldn’t have discovered it at all if I hadn’t immediately reread the story by listening to it a second time.

I recommend you read this story the first time, then listen to it a second time.

I’m not going to spend much time describing this story. Read it. I will spend some time trying to explain what it’s doing.

There are infinite ways to understand fiction. One way is to think of fiction as a spectrum. At one end are stories where the author sends the readers a message. On the other end of that spectrum are stories where the author creates a story that is just a story.

Think of the first type as a message in a bottle from an individual stranded on a deserted island. And think of the second type as how some people describe God as an artist who created our existence but walked away.

In “Loneliness Universe,” Eugenia Triantafyllou has created a metaphor for our current cultural existence. In this story, Nefeli realizes she is losing physical contact with everyone she knows. She can only communicate with them through email and instant messages. They can leave evidence of their existence, but she no longer communicates with people face-to-face.

The setup for this story reminds me of an experience I had on LSD fifty-five years ago. I thought everyone was in an isolated universe by themselves, and our efforts to communicate in words were no better than writing a message, putting it in a bottle, and throwing it into the sea, hoping for a reply. That each of us was an isolated universe inside our heads. In Eugenia’s story, she imagines we’re all moving into separate universes of a multiverse, and for a while, can communicate via email and instant messages. This sounds science-fictional, but it’s probably more Kafkaesque.

The thing about metaphors is not that they are accurate, true, or valid, but that they make you think about a concept from a new perspective. In recent weeks, I’ve often woken in the middle of the night and thought about all the hundreds of people I’ve known in my lifetime and wondered about what has happened to them. And I ask myself, did we ever really communicate? This is what “Loneliness Universe” is about. Are we on the same wavelength?

Are we ever in the same room at the same time with someone else? If you truly understand this question, I will say those moments of being together are fleeting. Many people want to believe sex is a way to achieve such synchronicity, but that’s not true either. I don’t believe telepathy is possible, but sometimes, when two people have had the same life experiences, they can say just the right words, they know they have achieved a kind of psychic Venn diagram intersection for a fleeting moment.

“Loneliness Universe” is not a perfect story. It’s only as good as you can resonate with what Eugenia Triantafyllou is expressing. I don’t know how well her message in a bottle was decoded by my inner self. We will never be in the same room together. But I’d like to believe I know what she was trying to say.

I know full well that can be a delusion.

That’s also the dark bleakness of her ending.

James Wallace Harris, 5/1/25

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“Watershed” by James Blish

Group Read 92 (#05 of 25)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

James Wallace Harris, 4/30/25

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“The Rose” by Charles L. Harness

Group Read 92 (#03 of 25)

“The Rose” by Charles L. Harness was first published in Authentic Science Fiction Monthly (No. 31, March 1953). You can read it online here. Our Facebook group is discussing 25 stories suggested by five members that we haven’t discussed before. Paul Fraser has recommended “The Rose” in comments, but it’s never been up for a group discussion. I’ve tried to read “The Rose” twice before but got bogged down. The story is long, a novella, and it’s dense.

“The Rose” is one of the most ambitious science fiction novellas I’ve ever read. I’m glad that I finally finished it. This is exactly what I was hoping for from our member-recommended group read, a standout science fiction work I haven’t read. One good enough to merit rereading.

The story reminds me of what other writers explored in the years after 1953, works by Theodore Sturgeon, J. G. Ballard, Robert Silverberg, Jack Vance, and Roger Zelazny. “The Rose” has seldom been reprinted, but the most significant anthology to remember it is The Science Fiction Century, edited by David G. Hartwell.

“The Rose” is available as The Rose, a standalone Kindle novel for 99 cents. They say it’s 192 pages, but I can’t tell if it’s expanded from the novella. The UK edition says it’s just 88 pages, so it’s probably the same as the novella.

But for $1 more, you can get the Kindle edition of The Ornament of His Profession for $1.99, which includes “The Rose” and several other stories by Harness. I just discovered I already own that edition in my Kindle Library. Probably, I bought it when Paul recommended “The Rose” the first time.

Both have the same introduction to “The Rose:”

Because “The Rose” appeared in Authentic Science Fiction Monthly, I thought Harness was British, but his Wikipedia page says he was American. I recommend taking the time to read his entry because it made me want to read more of what Charles L. Harness wrote. His science fiction sounds fascinating, but I’ve only read a couple of his shorter works. I may, or may not have read Flight Into Yesterday/Paradox Men. I also recommend reading “The Novels of Charles Harness” by Rich Horton.

Describing “The Rose” is going to be difficult. Anna van Tuyl is a psychiatrist. She’s also a ballet dancer, composer, and choreographer. Anna was once beautiful, but now she is hunched back and has two horn-like structures growing from her forehead. The story is about Anna’s efforts to finish the score for a ballet called Nightingale and the Rose. As the introduction tells us, it’s plotted around a short story, “The Nightingale and the Rose” by Oscar Wilde. Anna is mentally blocked from composing the score’s climax.

Anna’s friend, Max Bell, a psychogeneticist, recommends Anna to Martha Jacques, wife of Ruy Jacques. Martha is a brilliant scientist working on an advanced weapon, and Ruy is an artist. Ruy has also become disfigured by a hump and horns, and recently lost the ability to read and write. Max Bell tricks Anna into meeting Ruy Jacques, where she falls in love with him. Ruy is an over-the-top, outrageous character — narcissistic, insane, and brilliant to the nth degree.

It turns out that Martha is obsessively jealous of Ruy and is hesitant to hire Anna. Throughout the story, Martha and Ruy have one never-ending argument about art versus science. This is one of the many reasons “The Rose” is so dense to read. Harness throws out all kinds of ideas and theories about art and science. Ruy believes artists have long known everything scientists eventually discover.

To complicate the story further, Ruy and Anna are emerging supermen, or examples of Homo superior. They are developing psychic powers, but these are strange powers. Harness has taken on the task of showing how advanced humans will think. Much of his speculation is psychobabble and pseudo-science, but there’s a kind of elegance to his thinking. Harness uses 1953 art theory, combined with a fair knowledge of classical music, ballet, and other arts, to contrast with scientific and mathematical ideas of the time. Reading Charles L. Harness suggests he was a cultured man, better educated than the average science fiction writer. But then, science fiction writers are often great autodidatics and bullshitters. Harness had degrees in chemistry and the law and worked as a patent attorney.

Harness also complicates his story by paralleling the plot of the novella with the plot of the fictional ballet. And Ruy and Anna work to live out their own artistic creation.

It took me a while to embrace Harness’s prose. You have to read it slowly because he intends so much with each sentence. Here’s one sample.

“The Rose” is definitely a story I look forward to rereading someday. I’d love to hear a professional narrator read it in an audiobook. “The Rose” doesn’t emotionally enchant me like “The Star Pit” by Samuel R. Delany or “A Rose for Ecclesiastes” by Roger Zelazny does. It’s about as intellectually impressive as “The Darfsteller” by Walter M. Miller, Jr., another long science fiction story about artists and performers I admire but don’t quite love.

My opinion might change with another reading of “The Rose.” Right now, it doesn’t quite make the five-star rating. I think the density of the prose keeps me from embracing the characters. I never liked Anna or Ruy, only admired them as interesting characters. This might be due to the story being too tightly plotted. Harness wanted his characters to act out a ballet they were creating, and you get the feeling that Anna and Ruy are acting for Harness, not themselves.

James Wallace Harris, 4/26/25

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“Brightness Falls from the Air” by Margaret St. Clair

Group Read 92 – #02 of 25

“Brightness Falls from the Air” by Margaret St. Clair was first published in the April 1951 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction as “?” F&SF ran it as a name-the-story contest. You can read it online here.

If I had been a reader in 1951, I would have submitted “The Plague.” If I had precognition, I would have submitted “The Ugly Terrans,” inspired by the 1958 bestseller, The Ugly American.

“Brightness Falls from the Air” shows writing development for Margaret St. Clair over her “The Listening Child,” published a year earlier. This story has bite. Humans occupy an alien planet where they treat the local intelligent life like the Romans treated conquered people. St. Clair instills this comparison in the first sentence, telling us her protagonist, Kerr, is in the tepidarium. Tepidarium was the name of a warm room positioned between the frigidarium and caldarium in Roman baths.

Kerr meets Rhysha, a bird person, and befriends her when she comes to claim the body of her brother, who died in a gladiatorial battle held by the humans. Throughout this short story, we learn humans have never curbed their population growth and have spread across the galaxy like a pandemic. We are not nice. Kerr tries to give Rhysha hope by telling her humans will one day change. Reading this story 73 years later, we know that’s unlikely.

I liked “Brightness Falls from the Air” so much more than “The Listening Child” (Group Read 92 #01 of 25) because it’s so dark. F&SF began as a light fantasy magazine, but as it included more science fiction, the overall tone of the magazine became heavier and darker. We’d entered the Cold War. Thoughts of nuclear annihilation become rampant.

Worrying about overpopulation in 1951, put Margaret St. Clair ahead of most other science fiction writers. Overpopulation wasn’t a major theme in SF until the 1960s – or so I thought until I read Joachim Boaz’s “Science Fiction Novels/Short Stories about Overpopulation.” Her story would be tied with “The Marching Morons” by C. M. Kornbluth as first since it was also published in April 1951, in Galaxy Magazine. Is it coincidence that both stories claim Homo sapiens are losers?

“Brightness Falls from the Air” could also fit into Boaz’s series concerning science fiction critical of space exploration. (I wish Joachim would put this series on the menu like his series on overpopulation, generation ships, and immortality.)

Even though I liked “Brightness Falls from the Air” much more than “The Listening Child,” they both have the same simple plot: a nice person sympathizes and befriends a tragic person who dies. In both stories, characterization is minimal. Each character is described by their relationship to the plot. None of these characters has their own agenda.

I admire “Brightness Falls from the Air” because it’s a vicious attack on humanity and says we shouldn’t colonize the galaxy. This feels even more valid in 2025. Yet, that’s not enough to make it a great story. It was included in David Hartwell’s The Science Fiction Century, so it’s better remembered than “The Listening Child.” However, it doesn’t have the lasting impact of “The Marching Morons.” It’s too slight.

“Brightness Falls from the Air” is a nice little story, but it’s not good enough to be great.

James Wallace Harris, 4/24/25

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How and Why to Assemble an Anthology of Your Favorite Science Fiction Short Stories

I’ve decided to assemble an anthology of my favorite science fiction short stories. I’m not going to publish it. This book will be just for me to read. Before personal computers I would have created such an anthology by xeroxing all my favorite stories and putting them into a big folder, binder, or box. Now, with computers I can create a digital file that I can read with my iPad. I’ve discovered I can convert digital magazines, e-book pages, web pages, or even scan physical books to .pdf files that are easy to read on my iPad.

This project is only practical if you’re savvy with computers.

You can read .pdf files with almost any device, but for fiction reading, it’s best to read on a tablet. My method doesn’t work well with Kindles, other e-ink readers, or smartphones because the .pdf files are a collection of .jpg images. This system works great with both iOS and Android tablets.

The next step for this project to be practical is to have a convenient way to load files onto your tablet. I save .pdf versions of stories to a folder on Dropbox and read them with the Dropbox application on my tablets. Dropbox has a built-in reader for common file formats like .pdf files.

I create the .pdf files using Abbyy Finereader 15, but you can use any program that will convert a collection of images to a .pdf file. The free PDFgear works great on Windows. However, the Mac version doesn’t allow for no margins and centers all images on a white background. That works but annoys me.

There are other cloud storage providers that work with tablets if you don’t use Dropbox. Dropbox has a free basic account with 2GB’s of space that will hold hundreds of stories. If you’re a tablet user, you probably already know which cloud drive works well with it.

If you have these technical solutions solved, the next step is to find stories to read on your computer. They can be from an ebook, web pages, or a page you scan yourself. If you look around, many old science fiction magazines have been digitized in the CBR/CBZ format. I use a CBR reader call YACreader. YACreader allows me to right-click on any page and save it to a .jpg. I name each page by the title of the story – author – page number of the original publication.

You can also use your screenshot utility to capture what you see on screen from a web page, ebook, or any program that displays stories to save as a .jpg file. I put all the .jpg pages in a folder that I name after the story. Here’s my folder for “Deadly City” by Paul W. Fairman from the March 1953 issue of If Magazine.

I then launch Abbyy Finereader (or PDFgear) and tell it to covert those pages to .pdf. I save the resulted file to a folder called “My Favorite SF Short Stories” and name the file by the title and author. Here are my first 27 stories. I just convert stories as I reread them and determine they are a favorite. Here’s my current folder on Windows:

Here’s what my directory of favorite stories looks like in Dropbox on my iPad mini. The directory is on the left, and the preview is on the right. It’s very nice.

And here’s what the story looks like in the reader view of Dropbox:

As you can see, I’ve copied the story from a scan of the original magazine. You can find scans of old magazines all over the web, such as archive.org. However, sellers on eBay and Facebook are now selling complete collections of digitized old magazines fairly cheap. I bought DVDs years ago with complete runs of my favorite SF magazines.

I do own several hundred of hardback, paperback, ebook, and audiobook science fiction anthologies. I also own several hundred physical issues of science fiction magazines from the 20th century. And I can call up nearly every issue of any science fiction magazine published in the 20th century on my iPad. So, why would I want to take the trouble to make my own anthology of favorite SF stories?

I’ve read thousands of science fiction short stories over the last sixty-three years. Some I’ve read several times. Since I’ve gotten older, I’ve discovered that there’s a depth to fiction that’s only revealed through rereading and study. I’m working to get beyond just reading and pursue understanding. Creating this anthology is my way of narrowing down the list of stories I want to study. I will add and delete to “My Favorite SF Stories” folder for the rest of my life. It’s becoming a project.

I’m focusing on the science fiction short story because I’ve always believed the science fiction magazine was the true heart of science fiction. And besides, novels are too long.

Think of fiction as a symbolic message from another person. How often in day-to-day interaction with your friends would you let one of them talk to you for hours without stopping? Usually, it’s no more than a few seconds. If your friend went on for minutes, you’d get annoyed. But we listen to what the author of fiction says for hours on end because they tell entertaining stories.

When you read a story one time it feels like you got the message and you’re done. But if you reread that story, you’ll often discover that you missed many parts of the message. Sometimes the author is saying something that requires reading the story several times before it’s understandable. You’ll discover there was a lot more to the story than you imagined. Great fiction has great depths to explore. Authors of great fiction often have many things to say but don’t say it directly. Words have severe limitations, so writers must communicate with imagery, symbolism, poetry, psychology, philosophy, and in ways that have no label.

I had a friend who died a long time ago, his name was Williamson. Before Williamson died, he started rejecting everything he loved in life until he had only two interests that kept his interest. I didn’t talk to him just before he died, but I’ve always wondered if he chose his final favorite before leaving this existence.

I’ve notice this process in others who have died. Now that I’m getting old, I understand that process. Our psychic energy dwindles away, and we can’t hang onto everything we once loved, so we start triaging out passions. I call this The Williamson Effect.

I’m in the process of identifying the science fiction stories I still care about and want to remember. My ability to remember is fading. I forget new fiction as fast as I consume it, but some older fiction has lasting power. Like Williamson, I realize I’m letting things go to focus on what I loved best. However, I’m not down to two things yet. I can still hold onto to about a hundred stories. I know the number of stories in my anthology will dwindle over time as I let some stories go.

I have several goals in mind for assembling this anthology:

  1. To decide on my all-time favorite science fiction short stories
  2. To reread short remembered stories to see if they still hold up
  3. To read recommended stories I haven’t read
  4. To collect stories I will regularly reread and study
  5. To collect stories that exhibit the best qualities of science fiction
  6. To collect stories that convey a sense of genre history and evolution
  7. To collect stories that were the most groundbreaking
  8. To collect stories that cover all the essential themes
  9. Hopefully find audio editions of all these stories
  10. To collect stories to psychoanalyze as to why I liked them
  11. To collect stories I feel had special messages in them by the authors

Currently, I’m contemplating how to organize this anthology. My first inclination is by date, like The Science Fiction Hall of Fame Volume One. It also occurs to me I should organize the stories by science fictional themes. Groff Conklin did that in The Best of Science Fiction.

Then, I’ve also had some ambitious ideas. Could I find a program where I could write a memoir of reading science fiction and provide links to all the stories where I could read the full text? Could a wiki or Obsidian handle that? What about feeding all my memories and texts into an AI? I once fed Google’s Notebook LM “The Star Pit” by Samuel R. Delany and it produced a podcast of two people talking insightfully about the story. That was damn neat.

One reason I’m inventing this project is because my memory is becoming unreliable. I’m hoping that working on the project will stenghten my mind. But I’m also running out of energy, so I need to keep things simple enough to get things done. Putting all my favorite stories in one anthology will be the easiest and quickest solution. Right now I remember too many favorite stories. I’ll need to create multiple volumes of this anthology at first, probably by decade.

Ultimately, my anthology of favorite stories will start to shrink as I distill the table of contents to my absolute favorites. I’m hoping, even assuming, that I will discover new insights about myself and my life-long addiction to fiction.

James Wallace Harris, 4/20/25

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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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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