(Cover by Frank Kelly Freas. Astounding, December 1955.)
It could be that I’ve simply had too much on my plate, or that I’ve been procrastinating with my projects, but I’ve been feeling sluggish and unfulfilled with my writing as of late. Even in writing this forecast post I feel… uninspired. The drive is not currently in me. Actually the drive has not been there for several days now, which hasn’t stopped me from getting a couple things done. There is a difference, however, between writing like you’re in the midst of a fever and writing as a kind of chore, and it’s felt like the latter too often as of late.
So, I figured it was time I take a break from this site for a month, for the most part. I will still be finishing my review of Under Pressure, and will be writing one or two editorials over the course of this month, but otherwise I’ll stepping away from here momentarily. I have too much going on, and I feel as if I’m the verge of utterly burning myself out with how productive I’ve tried to be, even with missing a couple deadlines. (I might still write a review of The Sorcerer’s Ship sometime this month, but needless to say I could not even start my review, let alone have it posted, yesterday.) I continue to write, often without motivation or imagination, because I really feel like I can’t do anything else. Writers, as opposed to people who write, are like actors, in that they do what they do because they feel helpless or impotent when it comes to other talents. I’m a writer. Unfortunately I don’t even make money from writing, as it stands; maybe if I were to train myself to write fiction, to be published in some of the magazines I take material from for this very site, then I could make some money on top of my meager earnings from my day job. Considering how things are going, it could be that in time I might not even have a choice. I might have to branch out into fiction, and take even more time away from this site, because I might have to do it. But who knows, it might be fulfilling in its own right.
Sometimes I feel like a pastor in an empty church, or with only a few congregates, plus the rats and pigeons. Who am I speaking to? I don’t have much of an audience, and some of the people who say they read my stuff are themselves bloggers, also concerned with traffic for their own projects. It’s a problem that SFF fandom has had for a long time, and I don’t see any way of fixing it. Most fans I know don’t engage with this sort of thing. A lot of people who vote in the fan categories, when it comes time for the Hugos each year, are themselves fan writers, artists, etc. We’re voting for each other. I’m speaking to people who know what it’s like, which is both a good and bad thing. I feel so horribly alone, most of the time, and the time and energy I put into this hobby sometimes only worsen the loneliness and anxiety. I had started this site three years ago as a way to cope with some mental health struggles, but it doesn’t always help.
So I’m taking a break this month, for the most part. There will be a few posts, but I aside from Under Pressure and maybe The Sorcerer’s Ship I don’t feel like writing about any magazine fiction until next month. Maybe I deserve a break like this, but mostly I just feel that I need it. I won’t be entirely gone, so don’t miss me too much.
(Cover by H. R. Van Dongen. Astounding, November 1955.)
So I had read Anne McCaffrey’s “The Weather on Welladays,” and I didn’t like it. I’ve read Dragonflight and The Ship Who Sang, plus one other novel and a few short stories now, and I’m still not really sure what McCaffrey’s appeal is (I say this as someone who jumps to defend A. E. van Vogt’s early work). “The Weather on Welladay” isn’t bad, but it’s seriously hampered by being a novelette where the perspective shifts several times so that we have a few protagonists, when ideally we should have only one. I also just don’t think McCaffrey is that good a writer when compared with some of her peers, who were (and still are) not as popular. It’s nice that McCaffrey was the first woman to win both a Hugo and Nebula for fiction, but I wish those honors had gone to better writers. That’s the gist of how I felt about it, in case you’re wondering where my review post for it is.
The funny thing is that I had too good a time during the couple of days I normally would’ve spent on reading and writing for this site, which is ironic. I struggle to write here either when my personal life is at a peak or when it’s deep in a valley. I have to admit to you, the five of you who actually read these posts, that I sometimes resent writing—well, really anything, but especially for SFF Remembrance. Sometimes I just don’t feel like writing anything, but the problem is that if you stop writing then it can be a real challenge to start again. Writing (if you’re “a writer”) is like brushing your teeth, in that ideally it should be a daily activity. But I also don’t like writing that much; yet at the same time I can barely do anything else that would be considered “productive.” I work a service job. I pay my bills and my rent and my taxes like a “good American,” but I feel like I don’t create anything. I have this urge, or maybe this sense of obligation, to create something that is of any value, but I can’t do it. I hate myself and this country I am forced to live in. The environment is hostile, for creativity but also just for human decency. It’s like that Godspeed You! Black Emperor song: “We are trapped in the belly of this horrible machine, and the machine is bleeding to death.” I hate being here, and yet I’m not sure where I could be that’s better. I hate that this is a culture that worships money and productivity. We must have infinite growth, even if the destination is oblivion.
Putting aside that I’m forced to live in this body, and in this third-rate backwater country called America, things are going well for me! Maybe that’s the problem: on a personal I’m doing well, for the most part, but I get the sense that this contentedness will not last, because the world around me is dying. My surroundings are transient. There will surely come a point where the workers of the world will have their revenge and the last politician is strangled with the entrails of the last capitalist; but I’m convinced that I will not live to see any of this happen. Not even the beginning of it. I will have made my way for the exit before this play called The Downfall of Capitalism will have even gotten to its prelude. The curtains will not have risen and we will not see the stage, let alone the actors. There is a future on the way, but something tells me I won’t take part in it.
…
This is getting to be a bit much.
What’s the holdup? After all, it’s a packed month, as far as my review schedule goes, and I’ve really been meaning to get to some of these works for a hot minute. I’m also taking advantage of the loophole I had made for myself and so I have a serial from Galaxy, on top of a novella. We’ve got one story from the 1920s, one from the 1940s, one from the 1950s, one from the 1960s, one from the 1970s, one from the 1980s, and one from the 2010s. This might be my most diverse roster yet, in terms of when the works were published. Well, let’s get to it.
For the serials:
A Time of Changes by Robert Silverberg. Serialized in Galaxy Science Fiction, March to May-June 1971. Nebula winner for Best Novel. When Galaxy changed editors in 1969, readers at the time as well as historians are prone to say the change was a downgrade. One major plus, however, of Ejler Jakobsson taking over was that we got several Silverberg novels in the magazine as serials in rather quick succession. Despite the acclaim he was earning, A Time of Changes was the only Silverberg novel from this period to win a major award.
Under Pressure by Frank Herbert. Serialized in Astounding Science Fiction, November 1955 to January 1956. Also titled The Dragon in the Sea, this was Herbert’s first novel, after he had been in the field for a few years already with now-forgotten short fiction. Herbert’s legacy pretty much solely rests on his Dune series, to the point where it might surprise the reader to find any Herbert that isn’t Dune-related in the wild. I’ve heard from a friend or two that this is actually supposed to be one of Herbert’s best, but we’ll see about that.
For the novellas:
“The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers Beneath the Queen’s Window” by Rachel Swirsky. From the Summer 2010 issue of Subterranean Online. Nebula winner for Best Novella. More controversially Swirsky also won a Nebula for her story “If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love.” She was also the founding editor of PodCastle, which is crazy to me because she was like, 26? She’s written a good deal of short fiction and poetry over the years, plus one novel so far.
“A Tragedy of Errors” by Poul Anderson. From the February 1968 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction. It’s been a minute since we last covered Anderson, made more conspicuous because he wrote a truly staggering amount of fiction. Of Anderson’s several series the most ambitious might be his Technic History, a centuries-spanning saga tracing the rise and fall of a galactic empire. “A Tragedy of Errors” takes place toward the end of this future history’s timeline.
For the short stories:
“The Storm King” by Joan D. Vinge. From the April 1980 issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction. Not quite as well-known as her late ex-husband, Vernor, partly on account of the fact that she hasn’t written much over the past four decades, but Joan D. Vinge was one of the most promising new writers of the post-New Wave era. She’s more known for her SF, but “The Storm King” is fantasy.
“The Woman of the Wood” by A. Merritt. From the August 1926 issue of Weird Tales. In the ’20s and ’30s Merritt was one of the most popular pulp writers, even getting a magazine named after him. I was set to review one of Merritt’s novels a couple years ago, but I could not get far into it. Well, now it’s time to correct things a bit. Curiously Merritt didn’t write much short fiction.
For the complete novel:
The Sorcerer’s Ship by Hannes Bok. From the December 1942 issue of Unknown. Bok was known far more for his artwork than his fiction, which is understandable given that he was one of the most gifted and recognizable SFF artists of the ’40s and ’50s. You kinda know a certain magazine or book cover is a Bok work just from looking at it. That Bok died relatively young and in poverty, after having all but retired from illustrating, is tragic. Of course, we might not even know about Bok in the first place if not for Ray Bradbury acting as cheerleader for his early material. Bok was really one of the few mavericks of SFF from that era, being a semi-closeted gay man with some niche hobbies, who was also a perfectionist when it came to his art. The Sorcerer’s Ship was Bok’s debut novel and was published complete in Unknown, but would not see book publication until after his death.
(Cover by John Pederson, Jr. Galaxy, October 1965.)
As far as I can tell there’s no book dedicated to the history of Galaxy Science Fiction, although we do have several books that delve into this magazine’s strange history to one degree or other. The best that I’ve read myself would probably be Frederik Pohl’s The Way the Future Was, in which Pohl’s gives us some insight into working as a writer, an agent, and eventually an editor. H. L. Gold edited Galaxy for about a decade, but a car accident that left him in a good deal of physical pain incentivized someone taking over Galaxy and If (Gold was also editor of the latter, briefly). Pohl was already acting as Gold’s assistant by the end of 1960, but by the end of 1961 Pohl had emerged as editor of Galaxy in both name and function. While they had originally started as competitors, Galaxy and If became sister magazines, housed under the same publisher, and Pohl had control of both for most of the ’60s. Despite publishing quite a few award-winning stories during this time, Galaxy never again won the Hugo for Best Professional Magazine, and when Pohl did win three back-to-back Hugos for that category it was for his work on If. Despite initially having the reputation of being Galaxy‘s lesser and trashier sister, If amassed a more devoted following during this decade, somewhat to Galaxy‘s detriment.
I’ll be honest and say that I toyed with what stories I would be covering this month up until the very last minute (that is to say today), not because Galaxy wasn’t publishing enough worthy material during the ’60s, but because it was indeed such a strange time for the magazine. Galaxy under Gold had, for better or worse, a rather strong identity, with a stable of authors associated with it; but Pohl’s Galaxy is harder to define, its material having less of an emphasis on sociological and psychological SF and more being geared towards adventure fiction. There’s something oddly retrograde about Galaxy (even more so with If) under Pohl, not helped by Pohl himself being a vocal critic of the New Wave. This is a bit ironic considering Pohl was politically progressive and rather keen-eyed when it came to making observations on the goods and bads of the industry.
At the end of the ’60s there was another changing of the guard, with Pohl stepping out of both Galaxy and If, indeed leaving magazine-editing altogether, to focus on writing fiction again. Ejler Jakobsson, a Finnish immigrant who was actually nearly a decade older than Pohl and who had been working in the field for about as long, took over both magazines. I’m not covering anything from Jakobbson’s tenure this month; for that we’ll have to wait until October, when I tackle the ’70s. As for what I’m tackling this month, I intentionally decided to go for a roster of authors that is a bit less star-studded than when I covered the ’50s. We’re reaching for deeper cuts, for the most part, although whether this pays off is something only future me will know about.
Now, as for the stories:
“Something Bright” by Zenna Henderson. From the February 1960 issue. I’ve covered Henderson before, and while I wasn’t impressed with “Subcommittee” I’m always willing to give any author another try. What’s curious is to see Henderson out of her natural habitat, since she contributed far more prolifically to F&SF, whose lightness of scientific rigor probably appealed to her more.
“Arcturus Times Three” by Jack Sharkey. From the October 1961 issue. Sharkey debuted in 1959 and wrote basically nonstop for every outlet that would have him until the second half of the ’60s, by which point he seemed to vanish from the face of the earth. The closest I can find to a reason as to why this happened is that Sharkey was more a playwright who treated writing SFF as a side gig.
“Sodom and Gomorrah, Texas” by R. A. Lafferty. From the December 1962 issue. People tend to overlook Lafferty’s pre-New Wave years, which is funny because what early Lafferty I’ve read is still in keeping with his more famous (or infamous) material. Despite being a devout Catholic and politically conservative, Lafferty fit right in with the likes of Harlan Ellison and Kate Wilhelm.
“Think Blue, Count Two” by Cordwainer Smith. From the February 1963 issue. Speaking of authors who very much influenced the New Wave despite differing politics, Cordwainer Smith is the pseudonym of Paul Linebarger, who had US government connections as well as an admiration for Chiang Kai-shek. This didn’t stop him from being one of the most unique SF writers of his day.
“The Rules of the Road” by Norman Spinrad. From the December 1964 issue. People most recognize Spinrad not for any one of his stories or novels, but for having written “The Doomsday Machine,” one of the more memorable Star Trek episodes. He debuted in 1963, just in time to hit his stride when the New Wave came around, even appearing in Dangerous Visions a few years later.
“Shall We Have a Little Talk?” by Robert Sheckley. From the October 1965 issue. Sheckley was most prolific during the ’50s, and while he didn’t make his debut in Galaxy he still became heavily associated with that magazine. It’s easy to pigeonhole Sheckley as someone who only seems to write ironic social satire, which is understandable given he wrote so much of it early in his career.
“The Body Builders” by Keith Laumer. From the August 1966 issue. Like Sharkey, Laumer debuted in 1959 and became a somewhat popular figure during the ’60s, although unlike Sharkey we know why Laumer’s career declined afterward. Laumer suffered a stroke in 1971, and while he recovered somewhat he apparently never wrote as well or as prolifically as during his golden years.
“Eeeetz Ch” by H. H. Hollis. From the November 1968 issue. Hollis was a pseudonym for Ben Neal Ramey, who presumably took on the name so as to separate his SF writing from his day job as a lawyer. I’ve never read any Hollis before, not that he wrote much. The study of cetaceans really took off in the ’60s, hence this story.
“The Weather on Welladay” by Anne McCaffrey. From the March 1969 issue. We have another story revolving around cetaceans, but unlike Hollis I am actually familiar with McCaffrey’s game. By the end of the ’60s McCaffrey had emerged as one of the most popular writers in the field, with her Pern and much smaller Ship series amassing followings, although I’m not really a fan of either.
Not much to say this month, except of course it is the start of Pride Month. For me Pride Month is every month of the year, so I don’t put that much significance in it; maybe I would if I went out more, attended some events in my city, which I should probably do. I’m only now realizing, as I’m finishing up this forecast post, that I could’ve also given more space to authors I know to be queer, but oh well. I focus more on old-timey SF (What even counts as “old-timey” at this point, like pre-2000?), and unfortunately there aren’t many confirmed-queer authors from before maybe the ’70s. You’ve got Frank M. Robinson, who was gay. Ditto for Samuel R. Delany. I’ve heard from a respectable source that Theodore Sturgeon was bisexual, but I’ve yet to dig into this and find actual evidence of it. Marion Zimmer Bradley was queer, but she was also a heinous sex criminal so I’m not sure about counting that. Joanna Russ was a lesbian, although I forget when she came out. You can see what my problem is there.
More so I thought about using this month to inject a bit more variety into my reviewing plate, so that it’s not all science fiction. Obviously I have to finish the Zelazny serial, which I’m liking quite a bit so far, but I also got the itch to tackle some sword-and-sorcery fantasy that isn’t Fritz Leiber or Robert E. Howard. Fuck it, John Jakes’s Brak the Barbarian. We’re also finally returning to Brian Aldiss’s Hothouse “series” with the third entry, this “series” being very much science-fantasy rather than straight SF. We’ve got a ’50s Cold War story from Philip K. Dick, who I love, and who in the ’50s seemed preoccupied with the possibility of nuclear annihilation. Relatable. Last but not least I’ve got a cyberpunk novella from Pat Cadigan, who on reflection I think is one of my favorite short fiction writers from the ’80s and ’90s. Then there’s Sonya Dorman, who I know I’ve read a few stories from in passing but I’ve not actively sought her out until now.
Going by decade, we’ve got one story from the 1950s, two from the 1960s, two from the 1970s, and one from the 1990s.
For the serials:
Doorways in the Sand by Roger Zelazny. Serialized in Analog Science Fiction, June to August 1975. Zelazny is one of the most influential SFF writers of all time, his mark being apparent on the likes of George R. R. Martin and (God help us) Neil Gaiman; and yet despite a couple generations of writers (especially those of fantasy) owing a debt to Zelazny, much of his work remains obscure or simply out of print, including this standalone novel.
Witch of the Four Winds by John Jakes. Serialized in Fantastic, November to December 1963. Jakes later found mainstream success writing historical fiction, but his early career was defined by SF and especially fantasy. During the sword-and-sorcery revival of the ’60s Jakes came in with his own sword-swinging hero, Brak the Barbarian. This serial got published in book form under the much worse title of Brak the Barbarian Versus the Sorceress.
For the novellas:
“Fool to Believe” by Pat Cadigan. From the February 1990 issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction. When it comes to naming the architects of cyberpunk the first to come up are William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, but Cadigan was also instrumental in shaping the movement. She had actually made her debut in the late ’70s, but as she did not write her first novel for several years she initially made her name as one of the best short fiction writers in the field.
“Undergrowth” by Brian W. Aldiss. From the July 1961 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Aldiss started as a brave new talent in the UK before quickly (much faster than most of his peers, it must be said) making a name for himself in the US. “Undergrowth” is the third Hothouse story, out of five, all of which would then form the “novel” Hothouse. Aldiss won a Hugo for these stories collectively, as opposed to the novel version.
For the short stories:
“Breakfast at Twilight” by Philip K. Dick. From the July 1954 issue of Amazing Stories. In the ’50s, before he turned more to writing novels, Dick was one of the most prolific and awesome short story writers in the field. Not everything he churned out was a hit, but he had a respectably high batting average. Of course it’s very hard for me to be objective with Dick since he’s one of my favorites.
“Journey” by Sonya Dorman. From the November-December 1972 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction. Dorman was a poet as well as a short story writer who only wrote SF sporadically, and mostly for original anthologies, even appearing in Dangerous Visions. Most of her short fiction has been reprinted rarely or not at all, with “Journey” never appearing in book form as of yet.
At the beginning of the year I said that I would be covering one short story or novella from Galaxy each month—but I said nothing about serials. The truth is that Galaxy was, alongside Astounding/Analog, the most consistent market for serialized novels and novellas at the time, so it would feel wrong to never acknowledge that part of the magazine’s history. As such we’re getting a novella and a serial from Galaxy this month; that they’re both from authors I admire probably helps.
Last month I covered a horror story by the crime/mystery author Dorothy Salisbury Davis, which gave me the idea of finding more SFF by people who normally write crime/mystery, which while also a genre that has a history in pulp magazines, is “realistic” fiction rather than SFF. One curiosity that struck me ever since I saw it years ago was the fantasy story “The Bronze Door” by Raymond Chandler, which marked one of only two times he appeared in an SFF magazine. Someone who wrote a good deal more SFF than Chandler would be John D. MacDonald, who wrote prolifically for the genre magazines in the late ’40s and early ’50s before shifting to crime fiction and making a killing on that. So for this month’s complete novel we’ve got the early MacDonald novel Wine of the Dreamers. Rounding out the novel-length stuff is a relatively obscure standalone SF novel by Roger Zelazny, who nowadays is more known for his fantasy.
For the women we have two people who are a few generations apart and coming from different continents, but who still, each in her own way, have come to write science fiction. Kate Wilhelm is actually a bit hard to find in magazines after the late ’60s, once she found her voice as a writer, but the September 2001 issue of F&SF was a special issue dedicated to Wilhelm, complete with a new novella. As for the Greek writer Eugenia Triantafyllou, I picked just about the newest story I reasonably could’ve (an unofficial rule of mine is that a story must be at least a year old for me to consider it for review), with “Loneliness Universe” being a finalist in this year’s Hugos. I’m voting in the Hugos, by the way.
That makes one story from the 1930s, two from the 1950s, two from the 1970s, one from the 2000s, and one from the 2020s.
For the serial:
The Dream Millennium by James White. Serialized in Galaxy Science Fiction, October to December 1973. I’ve been meaning to read more James White, and thankfully several of his novels first appeared as serials. White first appeared in the UK, in New Worlds, before eventually finding some success in the US as well. Along with Bob Shaw he was one of the few Irish SF writers to appear regularly on both sides of the Atlantic back in those days.
Doorways in the Sand by Roger Zelazny. Serialized in Analog Science Fiction, June to August 1975. Zelazny is one of the most influential SFF writers of all time, his mark being apparent on the likes of George R. R. Martin and (God help us) Neil Gaiman; and yet despite a couple generations of writers (especially those of fantasy) owing a debt to Zelazny, much of his work remains obscure or simply out of print, including this standalone novel.
For the novellas:
“Yesterday’s Tomorrows” by Kate Wilhelm. From the September 2001 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. It’s easy to forget this, but Wilhelm started in the ’50s, only that she flew under the radar for about a decade. Like a caterpillar turning into a butterfly, though, Wilhelm seemed to metamorphize almost overnight into one of the most acclaimed SF authors from the late ’60s until her death in 2018. She was married to Damon Knight.
“The Other Man” by Theodore Sturgeon. From the September 1956 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction. Sturgeon is one of my favorite authors, especially of short fiction. Sturgeon had started to write professionally with “mainstream” fiction, although this went nowhere and he quickly pivoted to SFF, much to our benefit. His productivity was peaks and valleys so that he was writing either a lot or nothing at all. He was most consistently productive in the ’50s.
For the short stories:
“Loneliness Universe” by Eugenia Triantafyllou. From the May-June 2024 issue of Uncanny Magazine. Hugo and Nebula nominee for Best Novelette. Triantafyllou was born and raised in Greece, and continues to live abroad, but writes her fiction in English. She made her debut back in 2017, and has yet to write her first novel, although maybe she just much prefers writing short fiction.
“The Bronze Door” by Raymond Chandler. From the November 1939 issue of Unknown. Possibly the most acclaimed crime writer of the 20th century, seriously only rivaled by Agatha Christie, Chandler’s known for his series of novels starring Philip Marlowe. Chandler famously didn’t start writing crime fiction until he was in his forties, and didn’t write his first novel until he was pushing fifty.
For the complete novel:
Wine of the Dreamers by John D. MacDonald. From the May 1950 issue of Startling Stories. Fans of crime fiction would know MacDonald for his prolific (21 novels over a span of as many years) Travis McGee series, as well as the standalone novel Cape Fear (first titled The Executioners, but then retitled after the 1962 film adaptation), but he also wrote a good deal of science fiction in the late ’40s and early ’50s. It’s not unusual for authors to cut their teeth on working with one genre before moving to greener pastures, so that much like how Elmore Leonard started with Westerns before moving to crime fiction, the same happened with MacDonald. Wine of the Dreamers was either MacDonald’s first or second novel, it’s hard to say.
(Cover by H. W. Wesso. Strange Tales, January 1932.)
My schedule is not what it used to be, although I’m not sure if that’s my new living conditions, work slowly growing down on me, the real-world turmoil happening just outside of view, or some combination. I used to run this blog as a way of escaping temporarily from the drudgery of my everyday existence, between my job and living with my parents; but since I moved out four months ago, the scales have shifted in balance quite a bit. Writing for this blog no longer feels like an escape, but just more work that I have to do. I must write every couple days or else… what? What would happen if I took a break for, say, a month? Most likely my skill at writing would wither, if only a bit. Writing is like any other skill in that if you don’t do it for long enough then you sort of forget how to do it in the first place. It’s why I always find it amazing whenever an artist, be they a writer, filmmaker, musician, or whatever, takes a hiatus from the craft, then returns years later, seemingly out of hibernation, as if nothing had happened. Do you think Terrence Malick had to remember what it’s like to direct a movie when he was making The Thin Red Line, or if Robert Fripp, after not playing guitar for a couple years, had to refamiliarize himself with the damn thing when recording for David Bowie’s “Heroes”? Really this mindset can be applied to any skill, even one as worthless and solitary as writing.
I just remembered a depressing thought I had the other night, during one of my shifts, which is that I might be witnessing the death of human creativity in my lifetime. I’m not talking about creativity on an individual level, since I think it’s obvious that so long as humankind exists there will be artists, probably living on the margins, for the same reason there will always be Palestinians and Kurds and Chechens and what have you. I’m talking about a collective resentment towards creativity that has, at least in the US and UK, been building up since the Reagan and Thatcher years, if not earlier. Fascism, be it Christofascism or neo-liberalism of the Reagan-Clinton sort, is at its core a rejection of the human mind’s ability, indeed its incessant urging, to grow and progress. There is a Freudian return-to-the-womb desire inherent in fascism, except on a systemic level. The fascist wants to stop the future from happening—not a good or bad future, but the future as a concept. You can at least give the Chinese credit for envisioning a future, although if we’re being honest it’s a rather bleak one. In a more just world “AI” would be used only to make soul-crushing labor easier to stomach for human workers, but instead the right-wing technocrats who have increasingly gotten a stranglehold on government and commerce think such incredible technology should rather be used for kneecapping the human imagination. It’s possible that in just a decade or two the artist will be treated like how drug addicts and the homeless are treated today, which is to say the artist will be treated in the mainstream as at best a nuisance and more often as a threat to “the status quo.” We are undoubtedly on the path to that conclusion, and really it’s been a long time coming.
So what can I do? I talk a lot about art and artists, because I’m of the firm belief that without art human existence is really not worth it. Evelyn Waugh said that without God human existence is “unintelligible and unendurable.” I mostly agree with that sentiment. I write about art, even bad art, even the pulpy stuff, because I think there must be some value in it, and because God knows there isn’t much value elsewhere. Speaking of which, I decided it’s been too long since I last covered material from the pre-Campbell years that isn’t from the pages of Weird Tales. (I can’t help it that on average Weird Tales aged a lot better than its SF contemporaries.) So, I’m doing something a bit different this month. The serial, along with both novellas, will be from the pre-Campbell ’30s. I’m also finally checking the E. E. Smith box off my list, although not by reading a Skylark or Lensman novel but a standalone that caught my eye if only because of its convoluted publication history. The two short stories are from lady writers, one of whom you might’ve heard of if you’re really into crime fiction, while the other is totally obscure. See, the news is not all bad. Spring is finally here, and while my allergies may be kicking in I’m no longer freezing to death.
I’ve done enough yapping. What will I be reading? We have three stories from the 1930s and two from the 1950s.
For the serial:
Triplanetary by E. E. Smith. Serialized in Amazing Stories, January to April 1934. Smith was immensely popular in SF fandom during his lifetime, and yet despite a few attempts to resurrect his reputation he has since then been relegated to something of a sideshow attraction. Along with Edmond Hamilton he was one of the pioneers of space opera, with his novel The Skylark of Space especially laying the groundwork for future entries in that subgenre. The magazine version of Triplanetary was a standalone novel that Smith later retooled so as to make it a prequel in the Lensman series.
For the novellas:
“Proxima Centauri” by Murray Leinster. From the March 1935 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. I actually don’t remember if I’ve read this one before, so I’m counting it as a new read. Anyway, Leinster is curious if only because he’s one of the few writers from the Gernsback era to survive the coming of Campbell; not only that, but he actually hit his creative peak in the ’40s and ’50s.
“Wolves of Darkness” by Jack Williamson. From the January 1932 issue of Strange Tales. Williamson had one of the longest careers of any writer, inside or outside of SF, debuting in 1928 and remaining active until his death in 2006. “Wolve of Darkness” stands out as, if I remember right, getting Williamson his single biggest paycheck for a story up to that point, as he says in his autobiography.
For the short stories:
“The Pilot and the Bushman” by Sylvia Jacobs. From the August 1951 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction. This is now the third time I’ve nabbed a story from this issue of Galaxy. I unfortunately have next to nothing to say about Jacobs since we know basically nothing about her, not even when and where she was born. She wrote a handful of SF stories in the ’50s and ’60s and then vanished.
“The Muted Horn” by Dorothy Salisbury Davis. From the May 1957 issue of Fantastic Universe. This is a case where looking at an author’s ISFDB page can be deceiving, since going by it one would think Davis wrote very little; but actually she was a prolific crime novelist, and was even President of the Mystery Writers of America when she wrote this story, which is apparently horror.
Let’s talk about where genre SF was at in 1950, because this year, perhaps more than any other year in the field’s history barring maybe 1926 (the launch of Amazing Stories) and 1953 (the year the magazine market reached critical mass). Changes in the field tend to come gradually; it’s not like, for example, one day you have a market that’s 95% WASPs and then the next it’s much more racially diverse. These things happen in movements, like the rest of history, or indeed like the waxing and waning of the tide. There really was a profound difference between how genre SF looked at the beginning of 1950 and how it looked by the end of the year. There were multiple changes happening at once, and not all of them were good. The less said about Dianetics the better. But you also had the publications of Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot and Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles, two “novels” (they’re really short story collections) that not only garnered acclaim from the usual suspects but even managed to break into the mainstream. This was practically unheard of at the time, to have science fiction that “normal” readers admitted to caring about. 1950 also saw the publication of other major SF books, like Robert Heinlein’s Farmer in the Sky, Theodore Sturgeon’s The Dreaming Jewels, A. E. van Vogt’s The Voyage of the Space Beagle, Asimov’s Pebble in the Sky, and the book version of Hal Clement’s Needle. Notice that with the exception of the van Vogt book, all the ones I just mentioned were aimed at younger readers—as in teenagers, those who might grow up to be SF enthusiasts.
A revolution, of a sort, was happening.
In the world of the genre magazines, things were shaking up at least much, even putting Dianetics aside. The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, which had launched in the fall of 1949, was finding its footing. There were signs of the coming deluge of new magazines, on top of the current rivals to Astounding, and the biggest of these new arrivals, by far, was Galaxy Science Fiction. Galaxy first hit newsstands with its October 1950 issue, which means it would’ve been available in September. Under the editorship of H. L. Gold, who had already proved himself a capable writer, this was a magazine that would do what Astounding could not, namely be socially conscious, with a focus on science fiction that was rather urbane and literate, while still being very much focused on science. But whereas Astounding was all about the hard sciences, Galaxy would focus just as much on the soft sciences, such as psychology and sociology. Being more socially conscious, there would also thus be much more of a focus on social satire, and one stereotype that would come to haunt Galaxy in the ’50s is that too many of its story would be misanthropic hehe-haha comedy pieces, aimed at the middle-class urbanites it was satirizing. As with The New Yorker around the same time (and indeed The New Yorker now), Galaxy ran the risk of coming off as incessantly liberal and middle-brow. This is a legitimate criticism, but it was also a risk one had to accept when changing the field this radically. To this day a lot of SF being published seemingly either takes after Galaxy under Gold’s editorship or Asimov’s Science Fiction under Gardner Dozois’s. There’s a third, more conservative (because Galaxy was kinda “woke” for its day) brand of SF writing that wants desperately to turn back the clock to a pre-Galaxy world, to a time before white people cared about things like social justice, but you can’t put the genie back in the bottle.
I had to think really hard about what stories and authors to cover this month, because the truth is that Galaxy at its peak had individual issues whose sheer quality and star power would put whole novels to shame. Nearly every story in a given issue would be a banger, or at least a fine read. There are people who wrote for Galaxy during its first decade that I had to leave behind, at least for the moment, including Theodore Sturgeon, Margaret St. Clair, Robert Sheckley, Philip K. Dick, Isaac Asimov, Clifford Simak, Cordwainer Smith, Poul Anderson, Ray Bradbury, and many others. But still we have a mix of usual suspects, as in those who regularly contributed to the magazine during this time, as well as a few lesser known authors. Of course I couldn’t have it all be now-famous selections.
Anyway, for the stories:
“Self Portrait” by Bernard Wolfe. From the November 1951 issue. If Wolfe is little known in the field, it could be because he wrote very little SF, putting out only one SF novel and a handful of short stories. Wolfe was a trained psychologist who also was a committed leftist, specifically a Trotskyist; he even knew the man himself personally, in the years right before Trotsky’s assassination.
“The Snowball Effect” by Katherine MacLean. From the September 1952 issue. I’ve covered MacLean before, actually not too long ago, but seeing as how her most prolific era was when she wrote for Galaxy in the ’50s, why not? She lived a very long time, although she didn’t write that much, making her debut in Astounding in 1949 before (for the most part) switching over to Galaxy.
“A Bad Day for Sales” by Fritz Leiber. From the July 1953 issue. Leiber is one of my favorite writers of old-timey SF, although he was also quite skilled (maybe even more so) in fantasy and horror. He debuted in 1939, and thus was one of the old guard, but he adapted to changes in the market with a chameleon’s touch. I picked this story specifically on a friend’s strong recommendation.
“The Big Trip Up Yonder” by Kurt Vonnegut. From the January 1954 issue. Vonnegut is one of those few authors who needs no introduction, but here it goes. He broke onto the scene in 1952 with his novel Player Piano, which was SF, as would be about half of his other novels. Despite not wanting to be pigeonholed as a “sci-fi” writer, he also occasionally appeared in the genre magazines.
“The Princess and the Physicist” by Evelyn E. Smith. From the June 1955 issue. We don’t know a lot about Smith, which unfortunately is not unusual for women in pre-New Wave SF, and incidentally she had mostly stepped away from the field by the time the New Wave and second-wave feminism kicked in. In the ’50s she wrote by far the most prolifically for Gold’s magazines.
“A Gun for Dinosaur” by L. Sprague de Camp. From the March 1956 issue. As with Leiber, de Camp was perhaps more adept at writing fantasy than SF, but then in the ’50s there wasn’t much of a demand for the former. He too was of the old guard, and was able to adapt to the changing times. He also lived an extremely long time, indeed having one of the longest careers in the field.
“Prime Difference” by Alan E. Nourse. From the June 1957 issue. Nourse is one of the lesser known of the original “hard” SF writers, and indeed the vast majority of his short fiction appeared in the ’50s when he was a very young man. He mostly stopped writing SF probably because he got a very well-paying job as a trained physician, but his work remains to be rediscovered.
“Nightmare with Zeppelins” by Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth. From the December 1958 issue. Pohl and Kornbluth were good friends for many years, but in the ’50s they collaborated on several novels and short stories, the most famous being The Space Merchants. Sadly Kornbluth died in early 1958, making “Nightmare with Zeppelins” one of the last stories he would’ve finished.
“The Man in the Mailbag” by Gordon R. Dickson. From the April 1959 issue. Dickson was born and raised in Canada (he’s from Alberta), but moved with his family to the US when he was a teenager. He’s most known for his regular collaborations with Poul Anderson, as well as his long-running and ambitious Childe cycle. He was one of the pioneers of what we now call military SF.
We seem to be living in a world of shit, or at least it’s easy to think that way. The irony is that the people who think this the most are also probably (being queer and disabled I’m actually not sure how I’m gonna turn out) the ones most likely to come out of all this bullshit unharmed—in body, if not in soul or mind. But, the show continues. I thought I had more to say for this month’s forecast, and at this point I think it’s fair to say my Things Beyond posts have become like actual weather forecasts (I predict, but that doesn’t mean the thing will 100% happen); but still, aside from a couple things I’m sure we all know about already, the past month has been uneventful. I got my purchases for Worldcon at basically the last minute, so I’ll be seeing what I can see of the con virtually if not in person, and with any luck I’ll even be on a couple panels, as one of those inside-a-computer people. I’ve been slowly but surely moving “up” in the world of fandom.
Anyway, for decades we’ve got two stories from the 1920s, one from the 1940s, one from the 1970s, one from the 1990s, and one from the 1890s. As for the stories themselves, we have…
For the serial:
Sunfire by Francis Stevens. Serialized in Weird Tales, July-August to September 1923. Francis Stevens is the androgynous-sounding pseudonym of one Gertrude Bennett, who for just a few years wrote prolifically for the pulp magazines, apparently to help pay the bills. Once her sickly mother died, she stopped writing fiction, with Sunfire being the last story of hers published. It would take more than seventy years for this story to appear in book form.
A Story of the Days to Come by H. G. Wells. Serialized in Amazing Stories, April to May 1928. First published in 1899. Wells is perhaps the most crucial pioneer of science fiction; aside from maybe Edgar Allan Poe he stands as arguably the genre’s nucleus. This is made more remarkable since Wells wrote his most famous work over the span of only about a decade. This story comes from said decade of greatness, but I guess due to its length it remains overlooked.
For the novellas:
“The Glowing Cloud” by Steven Utley. From the January 1992 issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction. Utley was born in Kentucky, at Fort Knox (he was a military brat), before moving to Texas (Austin), and then finally Tennessee. He wrote prolifically in the ’70s, all of it short fiction, as one of the post-New Wave generation. He then fell mostly silent in the ’80s before reemerging in the early ’90s.
“To Fit the Crime” by Joe Haldeman. From the April 1971 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction. Haldeman, like Utley, came about during the post-New Wave era; he had spent the New Wave years in college, and then in Vietnam, where he got damn near killed. Once his wounds healed enough he got to work writing SF. This story here is the first in a loose series, starring Otto McGavin.
For the short stories:
“When the Bough Breaks” by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore. From the November 1944 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. Retro Hugo nominee for Best Novelette. I had missed the boat on reviewing Moore solo last month, and I can’t review Kuttner solo next month either; so together here they go. Kuttner and Moore were of course married, and they’re also two of my favorite writers.
“The End of the Party” by Graham Greene. From the December 1950 issue of Worlds Beyond. First published in 1932. Greene was famous in his day as both a serious novelist and a writer of espionage thrillers, although the two were not mutually exclusive. He also occasionally dabbled in supernatural horror, with this story being one of his own personal favorite works despite its age.
(Cover by Margaret Brundage. Weird Tales, July 1935.)
Happy New Year. Blow confetti. Get drunk. Maybe kiss and cuddle a friend or significant other of yours. Although of course you would’ve done that last night. A lot of stores are closed today, because work sucks and the reality is that with a few notable exceptions nobody really wants to work. I hope this message finds you well. There will be a couple changes to this site, which mind you does not mean bad news at all. Frankly those of you who frequent here might not even notice the one “negative” change, that being the fact that given my current life circumstances I can no longer guarantee that a post will be finished on the date I expect it to be. For two years I kept to a pretty strict release schedule with my posts, but after moving into my own place, with all the pros and cons that come with that, I would expect more posts to get delayed by, say, a day, if I were in your position. Occasionally I might not even be able to post a review that I said I would; this happened a few times actually, since November, and I think it’s time to acknowledge that while I try to be prolific, I can only do so much, from a mix of life changes and depression. Also that’s why I’m reviewing a story I was supposed to write about in November, but never got around to even reading it, that being Eleanor Arnason’s “Checkerboard Planet.”
Now, in good news…
The serials department is back, after I had announced at the start of last year that I would only be covering short stories, novellas, and complete novels in 2024. I had thought about what would be the first serial to commemorate the department’s coming back from hiatus, and ultimately I figured it had to be something big. Thus I went with a Robert Heinlein novel I’ve not read before, and truth be told Heinlein’s juveniles are a bit of a blind spot for me in my knowledge of his work; I’ve read a few of them, my favorite probably being Between Planets, but I should certainly read more. It’s also been too long since I last covered Heinlein here.
In other good news, we have another magazine to pay tribute to this year, albeit not on quite the same scale as what I did with F&SF. As you may or may not know, Galaxy Science Fiction launched with the October 1950 issue, making October (or September, depending on how you look at it) of this year its 75th anniversary. Along with F&SF, Galaxy played a pivotal role in reshaping who and what got published in genre SF following Astounding‘s near-stranglehold on the field the previous decade. Especially in the ’50s, a disproportionate number of now-classic stories and novels first saw print in the pages of Galaxy, under the ingenious (if also tyrannical) editorship of H. L. Gold. Unfortunately Galaxy had a bit of a rough history after its first decade, going through a few editors and experiencing declining sales before finally being put out of its misery in 1980. It only lasted thirty years, which admittedly is still better than what most SFF magazines get, but during that time it was arguably the finest magazine of its kind. So, in March, July, and October, as with last year, I’ll be reviewing only short stories, this time from the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s respectively, and all from Galaxy. I’ll also be reviewing one short story, novella, or serial from Galaxy every month apart from that. This should be a good deal of fun.
Now what do we have on our plate?
For the serial:
Citizen of the Galaxy by Robert Heinlein. Serialized in Astounding Science Fiction, September to December 1957. Heinlein is that rare author who really needs no introduction, but who no doubt deserves one. He made his debut in 1939, at the fine age of 32 but having already entered the field more or less fully formed as a writer; it helps that he had already written a novel, albeit one that had initially gone unpublished, at this point. From the late ’40s to the end of the ’50s he wrote a series of “juveniles,” which helped lay the groundwork for we would now call YA SF. Citizen of the Galaxy was one of the last of these juveniles, and as far as I can tell its serialization occurred more or less simultaneously with its book publication.
For the novellas:
“The Organleggers” by Larry Niven. From the January 1969 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction. Reprinted thereafter as “Death by Ecstasy.” One of those old-fashioned planet-builders who appeared just as the New Wave was getting started, Niven very much follows in the footsteps of Poul Anderson and Jack Vance. “The Organleggers” is the first in a series of SF-detective stories starring Gil Hamilton.
“In the Problem Pit” by Frederik Pohl. From the September 1973 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Pohl is one of those people who can claim to have taken part in pretty much every aspect of SF publication, from author and editor to literary agent. He edited Galaxy and If in the ’60s, to much acclaim, but in the early ’70s he gave up editing returned to writing fiction regularly.
For the short stories:
“Checkerboard Planet” by Eleanor Arnason. From the December 2016 issue of Clarkesworld. Judging from her rate of output you might think Arnason a more recent author, but in fact she was born in 1942 and made her debut back in 1973. She’s been an activist for left-liberal causes since the ’60s but did not start writing full-time until 2009, hence her recent uptick in productivity.
“Jirel Meets Magic” by C. L. Moore. From the July 1935 issue of Weird Tales. Moore might not be a mainstream figure in genre fiction, but she and her first husband, Henry Kuttner, have a strongly passionate following among older readers. With justification. She’s a favorite of mine. It’s been almost two years since I reviewed the first two Jirel of Joiry stories, which is far too long a wait.
Been a while, hasn’t it? By that I mean, little over a week. For some bloggers this is not unusual, to go a week or even a couple weeks without posting; but for me it’s different, as I like to think one of the things that makes this blog different is its regularity. I would post something every three or four days, or even sometimes twice in as many days, and in hindsight I’m not sure how I did that for two years while only occasionally slipping by, say, posting something a day later than I had intended. The idea was that like a magazine having a monthly or bimonthly release schedule, my posts would come out at regular intervals. As you know, I’ve spent this year covering a lot of stories from The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, which is celebrating its 75th anniversary. Unfortunately there’s been a bitter irony to my decision to go on a mini-hiatus, as F&SF has also been falling behind with its scheduling. Years ago they went from monthly to bimonthly, and this year those at the top announced the magazine would now be quarterly, with the big 75th anniversary issue presumably hitting newsstands in December. This is bad news no matter how you look at it. F&SF seems to be run by maybe five people plus a small army of hamsters on wheels, and they’ve fallen so far behind on publishing and even accepting stories that authors have had to retract their stories months after submitting and with no feedback. This has been a bittersweet year for F&SF.
It’s also been bittersweet for me, although more recently leaning toward the sweet. I’ve been through a few turbulent relationships this year, but I also started going to therapy, got a prescription for antidepressants and a hormone blocker, plus I recently got to spend time with one of my partners. I got my annual raise at my job, although it wasn’t worth much. I moved into my first apartment, living partly off of savings. It’s funny, I probably have more time (and certainly space) to myself than I ever had since college, yet I’ve found it harder to write for this damn thing. Call it a soft case of writer’s block. I talked with my therapist about this last week and she suggested that maybe it’s because I wrote for SFF Remembrance partly to get away from living under the same roof as my parents—mentally if not physically. That’s not to say my home life was objectively miserable before, but one can only be so happy living in a cage, even if it’s well-ornamented. I’m now freer than I’ve ever been—which means I also don’t have as much motivation to write now. It doesn’t come as naturally to me as it did before. There was some kind of tradeoff I was not told about in advance. I could be happier and be less productive, or more miserable but more productive—or at least that’s how I interpret it. And then there’s the fucking election. On a macro scale things are looking bad for a lot of us, on the horizon, but for me personally life has been kind to me as of late.
But, sooner or later, the show must continue.
I said months ago that for the “normal” months I’d be covering two stories from F&SF, a novella and short story, or two of either; but I neglected to mention full novels. In fairness, this is a truly exceptional scenario, as Algis Budrys’s Hard Landing might be the only instance of a novel being printed wholesale in a single issue of F&SF. I could be wrong. I’m making a bit of an exception by covering it, plus two short stories from that magazine. Why not? This is the last chance I’ve given myself to do such a thing, at least for a while. This will also be the last time I’m not covering serials, as I’ll be bringing that department back in January, with a bang. The world may go to shit, but we’ll have fun. And before you ask, the three stories I neglected to cover last month will get their due—eventually.
For the novellas:
“Code Three” by Rick Raphael. From the February 1963 issue of Analog Science Fiction. Raphael would write a small number of short stories and novellas over the next decade, but despite living to a reasonably old age (he died just short of his 75th birthday), he wrote very little fiction overall. His work is in such disarray that some of it has fallen out of copyright, including “Code Three,” which would make up the first part of the fix-up novel of the same name. So of course he “won” the Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award.
“Recovering Apollo 8” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. From the February 2007 issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction. Winner of the Sidewise Award for Best Short Form Alternate History and placed first in the Asimov’s readers’ poll for Best Novella. For this final month of paying tribute to F&SF I figured I should cover another author who was at one point one of its editors. Rusch took over in 1991 and for the next six years gave F&SF a darker, one might say more gothic bent, and it helps that she was also the magazine’s first female editor.
For the short stories:
“The Phantom ‘Rickshaw” by Rudyard Kipling. From the July 1968 issue of Magazine of Horror. First published in 1885. The first and possibly only time we’ll be covering a Nobel winner on this site, Kipling wrote a good deal of SF, fantasy, and horror, on top of more realistic fiction and poetry. He wrote “The Phantom ‘Rickshaw” when he was 19, but he was already showing signs of greatness.
“The Christmas Witch” by M. Rickert. From the December 2006 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Mary Rickert is a Wisconsin native who made her debut in 1999, in F&SF, and from then on it would remain her most frequent outlet. She doesn’t seem to have written much if any SF, preferring fantasy and horror. I needed at least one Christmas-themed story, so…
“It Takes a Thief” by Walter M. Miller, Jr. From the May 1952 issue of If. Before the phenomenon that is A Canticle for Leibowitz, Miller wrote prolifically at short lengths, with 1952 being an especially productive year for him. I find myself gradually becoming a Miller fan, helped by his writing candidly about religion, existential crises, and mental illness—things he experienced first-hand.
“A Runaway World” by Clare Winger Harris. From the July 1926 issue of Weird Tales. Harris was supposedly the first woman to write genre SF under her own name, and by the time she entered the field she had written her first and only novel, Persephone of Eleusis. Like too many old-timey female SFF writers she wrote a streak of short stories over the course of a decade, then stopped.
“Skulking Permit” by Robert Sheckley. From the December 1954 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction. Like Algis Budrys, and indeed Walter M. Miller, Sheckley debuted in the early ’50s and probably could not have found enough markets for his kind of fiction (often urbane satire) any earlier than that. But he contributed prolifically to Galaxy, and the two were practically made for each other.
“Strata” by Edward Bryant. From the August 1980 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Bryant was one of the curious new talents of the post-New Wave era, having debuted in 1970, and wrote almost entirely short fiction. “Strata” is one of several stories inspired by Bryant’s childhood in Wyoming, and I have to admit I also picked it for the reason that it involves dinosaurs.
For the complete novel:
Hard Landing by Algis Budrys. From the October-November 1992 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. While Kristine Kathryn Rusch was at one point F&SF‘s editor, Budrys was a regular columnist for the magazine for about 15 years, until he stepped down from that position, incidentally around the same time Isaac Asimov stopped writing F&SF‘s science articles (on account of dying). But Budrys, who had made his debut in the early ’50s, was very much alive still, and while he no longer did book reviews for F&SF, the early ’90s were a busy time for him, as he hosted the annual (and controversial, because of the Scientology connection) Writers of the Future contest, began editing the semi-pro magazine Tomorrow Speculative Fiction, and wrote Hard Landing, which would be his final novel.
Once more into the breach before the year ends, eh?
Science Fiction & Fantasy Remembrance 