Who Goes There?

The ’50s—especially the first half—were a goldmine for satirical writing in genre SF, with writers like Robert Sheckley, William Tenn, and Philip K. Dick acting as court jesters for the scene; and then there was possibly the most talented of the satirists (or at least he could’ve been, had he lived longer), which was C. M. Kornbluth. Despite having died at the horribly young age of 34, of a weak heart, Kornbluth was prolific and at the time of his death he had been writing fiction for nearly twenty years. He debuted in 1939, about 15 years old, and wrote at a mile a minute (often under pseudonyms) until 1942, when he got pulled into the war effort. He would eventually return to writing circa 1949, just in time for the magazine boom that was about to take place, and he never looked back. He wrote quite a few novels, alone and in collaboration with Frederik Pohl, but his best stuff was short-form, which only got more ambitious as he aged.

“MS. Found in a Chinese Fortune Cookie” is arguably not even science fiction, but it is very much about science fiction, and about science fiction writers. It’s a self-reflexive dual narrative that, in only about ten pages, shows Kornbluth hunting intellectual big game. At first I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it, since it really is a weird fucking story; but, having sat on it for a few days now, I feel more qualified to talk about it. This is the kind of story that rewards the reader for already being familiar with the author’s work, but while it is fannish, it’s not exactly a flattering depiction of being into genre SF at a time when the genre got no respect.

Placing Coordinates

First published in the July 1957 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, which is on the Archive. It was then reprinted in The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction, Seventh Series (ed. Anthony Boucher), the only book publication of this story Kornbluth lived to see. It appeared in the Kornbluth collections The Marching Morons and Other Science Fiction Stories, Thirteen O’Clock and Other Zero Hours, and His Share of Glory: The Complete Short Science Fiction of C. M. Kornbluth.

Enhancing Image

There are two threads, which I’ll call the primary and secondary narrative. The primary is a series of messages hidden inside fortune cookies (hence the title), written by one Cecil Corwin, science fiction writer; and the secondary is asides written by C. M. Kornbluth, whom you may have heard of. Corwin has apparently gone insane and vanished off the face of the earth, with only these secret messages detailing what happened to him, in his own words, while Kornbluth, being a long-time friend and Corwin’s literary executor, gives us some much-needed context. Thus we have the “Corwin Papers”—notes you’d find in place of those platitudes that are normally found inside delicious fortune cookies. It’d be accurate to title the story “MS. Found in Chinese Fortune Cookies,” but I understand that doesn’t quite as good. Still, we have two protagonists: Corwin and Kornbluth.

This is all a bit strange, not least because “Cecil Corwin” is one of the aforementioned pseudonyms Kornbluth used back when he started writing. I’m not sure how many readers in 1957 would’ve known this, but Anthony Boucher almost certainly knew, as did some other folks who knew Kornbluth personally. The implication is that Corwin and Kornbluth are meant to be taken as the same person, or maybe as two sides of the same persona, or maybe as two personalities inhabiting the same body a la A Scanner Darkly. Immediately we’re thrown into the deep end of metafictional hijinks, in a maneuver that probably would’ve made Jorge Luis Borges proud (although Kornbluth had almost no way of knowing about Borges in his lifetime). There are some other characters mentioned, very likely based on real people, whose names have been changed undoubtedly for legal reasons and because Kornbluth doesn’t wanna make too many enemies.

Corwin is a writer who thinks he has found what he calls The Answer—the one secret to life, the universe, and everything, which would end human suffering and initiate the kingdom of Heaven on Earth. Despite being on the brink of monumental success, Corwin suspects he might also be on the precipice of insanity. “Of course The Answer looked logical and unassailable, but so no doubt did poor Charlie McGandress’ project to unite mankind through science fiction fandom, at least to him.” I get the impression Kornbluth (the author) was trying desperately not to bring up L. Ron Hubbard or Scientology by name, but you’d have to be blind as a bat to not notice the allusions to what were then fandom hijinks. And in fairness to Corwin, he’s not wrong when he suspects that trying to write out The Answer will get him into serious trouble. Indeed the conspiracy surrounding The Answer is the closest the story gets to SF territory, which reminds me of the centuries-long feud at the heart of The Crying of Lot 49. I wonder if Thomas Pynchon has read Kornbluth?

I wouldn’t recommend “MS. Found in a Chinese Fortune Cookie” to people unfamiliar with Kornbluth for a few reasons: it assumes you know who Kornbluth is, that you have at least a cursory knowledge of SF fandom politics in the ’50s; and also, structurally, this is a tangled mess of a story. We’re given two unreliable narrators for the price of one. Immediately we’re signaled to doubt Corwin because he says, “They say I am mad, but I am not mad”—only to chide himself for opening on such a cliched line. Then there’s Kornbluth (the character), who cuts out parts of Corwin’s writing for a few given reasons, but the result is that the notes are left even more fractured than they would’ve been originally. Kornbluth (the character) will also sometimes cut in to voice his disagreement with something Corwin says, either because he genuinely believes what he’s saying or because he wants to make sure not to get caught in the conspiracy that would drive Corwin to write these messages. Needless to say the plot is hard to spoil, because of its layers but also the fact that the story is inextricably linked with Kornbluth’s career within the history of genre SF.

There is a key to this story, in a way, although it wouldn’t be published until after Kornbluth’s death. For people like myself who are actively interested in “old” science fiction there’s a little volume called The Science Fiction Novel: Imagination and Social Criticism (ed. Earl Kemp), published in 1959, which collects four lectures given by as many SFF writers, those being Robert Heinlein, C. M. Kornbluth, Alfred Bester, and Robert Bloch. These lectures were originally given a couple years earlier, which Kornbluth giving his in January 1957 at the University of Chicago. The name of the lecture is damning: “The Failure of the Science Fiction Novel as Social Criticism.” The idea, basically, is that while there have been works of SF that work as social criticism, there are too few such examples in a sea of pure entertainment; and, maybe more damningly, said examples fail to leave a tangible impression on the public consciousness. Aside from some excessive psychoanalyzing of George Orwell, it’s a good read.

At one point Kornbluth talks about Wilson Tucker’s 1952 novel The Long Loud Silence, a novel which he feels is effective as social criticism, but an abject failure in sparking any societal change. Unlike Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, which (Kornbluth says) really did change how some people thought and acted (in the case of The Jungle it directly inspired government policy), The Long Loud Silence made no such impression; not only that, but it didn’t become a bestseller and is indeed now an obscure novel—forgotten. In trying to explain how this happened, Kornbluth goes further to explain what it was like being a “science fiction writer” in the ’50s, at a time when the market was more vibrant than ever before but which the mainstream dared not touch:

[The Long Loud Silence] was ignored because publishers think of their books in rigid categories. Tucker’s book fell into the category “science fiction.” Books in the category “science fiction” get no promotion or advertising to speak of, they get misleading jacket blurbs, and a sale of five thousand copies is considered a realistic target. The idea is to sell it to the science fiction readers, clear expenses, make a little money on the paperback reprint, pat the author on the back and tell him to write another book, boy, we love your stuff.

Even 1984, which was a bestseller and which Kornbluth praises immensely, had failed to spark any societal change. One of the most famous novels in the English language, often quoted (and misunderstood), and yet despite its immense popularity 1984 remains a novel of ideas that have never materialized. There has not been (to my knowledge) a libertarian socialist society that exists now past the extreme local level, let alone one that takes direct inspiration from Orwell’s warning. (The point of the novel, of course, was the scare readers away from capitalism and socialistic fascism [or fascistic socialism] and encourage a socialist change wherein people of all skin colors and class backgrounds would be allowed to flourish.) If even the most famous SF novel on the planet cannot do what mainstream literature has done, then why are we here? What is the purpose of writing science fiction other than for the lulz and the funzies? Is SF hopes to stand on the same level as mainstream literature then (Kornbluth says) there has to be a work on part with Uncle Tom’s Cabin in terms of societal impact. (That Uncle Tom’s Cabin is now often held as an “important” but poorly aged protest novel that one doesn’t read for pleasure is beside the point.)

The increasing existential dread for the SF writer is one both Corwin and Kornbluth sense, although unlike Kornbluth (the author), Corwin thinks he has found the answer—even The Answer. In a sense you could say this story is autobiographical, because I do think Corwin’s anxiety about the seeming unimportance of the SF writer mirrors Kornbluth’s own. It’s like what he says about the relationship between the reader and the SF writer (although you could argue this goes for any writer of fiction): “There’s a touch of intellectual sadism in us. We like to dominate the reader as a matador dominates the bull; we like to tease and mystify and at last show what great souls we are by generously flipping up the shade and letting the sunshine in.” Science fiction—the reading and writing of it—is like a game. But Corwin and Kornbluth argue this must not or at least should not be so—that science fiction should serve more purpose than as entertainment.

There Be Spoilers Here

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A Step Farther Out

When Kornbluth died in March 1958 he was on his way to succeeding Anthony Boucher as editor of F&SF, and one can’t help but wonder where the magazine might’ve gone under his direction. Certainly he was becoming increasingly concerned with the bottom-tier position science fiction occupied in the zeitgeist, having at that point been relegated mostly to monster movies and speculation on new technology. The complexity and seriousness (despite its absurd premise) of “MS. Found in a Chinese Fortune Cookie” point toward Kornbluth trying to open a door—a door that would prematurely slam shut. I’m reminded of the SF Encyclopedia’s entry on Edgar Allan Poe, who like Kornbluth died young, before he could reach his full potential: “If his career had lasted longer, he might have awoken us more inescapably to his vision; as it stands, we must awaken ourselves to him.” The same can be said of Kornbluth.

See you next time.