Mitchell Hooks’ cover for the 1st edition
3.5/5 (collated rating: Good)
Over the years, I’ve slowly made my way through a substantial portion of William Tenn’s output: I’ve reviewed his only SF novel Of Men and Monsters (1968), two short story collections–The Human Angle (1956) and Of All Possible Worlds (1955), and three additional short stories “Bernie the Faust” (1963), “Eastward Ho!” (1958), and “Generation of Noah” (1951). I’ve found him an effective satirist with a penchant for often self-defeating twist endings. At his best, Tenn challenges grand narratives of American progress and exceptionalism, 50s consumerist culture and gender roles, and renders an absurdist spin on Cold War conflict. I imagine his reluctance to write novels relegates his often brilliant ouvre to the fringes of contemporary interest in 50s SF.
Time in Advance (1958) contains four solid but unspectacular visions. I recommend the collection only for fans of his work. If you are new to Tenn’s brand of intelligent satire, check out “Down Among the Dead Men” (1954), “Eastward Ho!” (1958), “The Liberation of Earth” (1953), and “The Servant Problem” (1955) first.
Brief Plot Summary/Analysis
H. R. Van Dongen’s interior art for William Tenn’s “Firewater” in Astounding Science Fiction, ed. John W. Campbell, Jr. (February 1952)
“Firewater” (1952), 4/5 (Good): First appeared in Astounding Science Fiction, ed. John W. Campbell, Jr. (February 1952). You can read it online here.
Easily the best story in the collection, “Firewater” puts an original and fascinating spin on the first contact tale that’s simultaneously in dialogue with the American past. In the years after first contact, blinking light-like aliens are allotted “reservations” in the world’s deserts. In possession of far superior technology, a few brave humans attempt to interact with the alien presences, whom they assume feel far superior to the humans around them. Most humans who interact with the aliens go insane yet receive, in return for a transaction that isn’t entirely clear, unusual powers. A few business men choose to bring in the insane emissaries of the aliens and conduct exchanges for alien technology. Algernon Hebster, motivated entirely by profit, runs a not entirely legal business, Hebster Securities, gleaning details from the linguistic chaos of the transformed humans. He uses the fragments he uncovers to create new fashions and gadgets for the American suburban life.
One day he’s approached by the UM Special Investigating Commission with a deal. Hebster’s unique skills are needed to confront a growing far-right movement called Humanity First that seeks to destroy Hebster and evict the aliens from earth. If he doesn’t help, his own business will be investigated and potentially destroyed. Both sides spy on each other. Hebster finds himself in a meeting with the leader of Humanity First, who expounds his own fascist delusions. He must take actions into his own hands. Can conflict be avoided? Are the aliens as superior as they assume? Or are both sides possessed by a psychological block unique to their species? As with the superior “Eastward Ho!” (1958), Tenn places his future world in dialogue with American narratives of the past–in particular Native American history. I’d love to explore these historiographic and narratological parallels in more detail in a longer-form article.
Recommended for fans of unique first contact stories.
Dick Francis’ interior art for William Tenn’s Galaxy Science Fiction, ed. H. L. Gold (August 1956)
“Time in Advance” (1956), 3.5/5 (Good): First appeared in Galaxy Science Fiction, ed. H. L. Gold (August 1956). You can read it online here.
Imagine a future in which colonization on alien worlds creates a desperate need for almost sacrificial labor. No one wants to volunteer. However, planets must be conquered and massive bugs and monsters rooted out and slaughtered before humanity can lay down outposts in the far beyond. Somehow companies in charge of colonizations manage to push a law that would allow men to serve hard labor for crime. In addition, if you’re itching to murder someone you can sign up for punishment before you commit the crime. To incentive volunteers, you’ll receive half the sentence. If you murder someone and then are convicted, you’ll serve a full sentence. If you survive, you’ll be able to return to Earth already having served a shortened sentence for a crime you have yet to commit.
Two men return from their service making the stars fit for humanity’s inevitable expansion. Both survived, traumatized, and both served long enough to murder anyone they might wish. Both signed up because they wished to commit violence. The media descends in droves desperate for the ultimate scoop: who are YOU going to murder? The story follows Nicholas Crandall. He originally signed up for his punishment in advance as he wanted to murder his business partner who stole his invention. However, when he returns a whole series of people reach out confessing their sins and breaches of trust thinking they might be the target of his murderous ire. Will he murder his original target? Or someone else?
“Time in Advance” contains an outrageous and non-sensical premise for sure. Tenn posits a gentle satire of humanity’s quest for the stars. The story shifts with the focus on Crandall’s life, one spent in a similar quest for financial gain. He was oblivious to the actions of those around him. Had he lived a life worth living? Was he blind to what gave value and worth in the present? Both men find themselves mired in an entirely different existential state as their narratives of purpose come tumbling down.
Somewhat recommended.
Robert Engle’s interior art for William Tenn’s “The Sickness” in Infinity Science Fiction, ed. Larry T. Shaw (November 1955)
“The Sickness” (1955), 3.5/5 (Good): First appeared in Infinity Science Fiction, ed. Larry T. Shaw (November 1955) You can read it online here.
The era: the paranoid depths of the Cold War. Physical conflict seems inevitable: “Something had to be done, and done fast” (83). The last-gasp cooperative idea to generate detente? A multi-ethnic expedition, lead by the non-aligned India, sets off to explore the desert reaches of Mars. Both the Americans and Soviets implant a secret service member into the astronaut ranks with plans to take over if needed. In order to facilitate cooperation in the face of the omnipresent paranoia of secret ploys and plots, the astronauts must learn the language of the other superpower. American astronauts must speak Russian to each other, even in private. Soviets must converse in English. As the expeditions approaches its conclusion, the Russian Belov discovers well-preserved ruins on Mars. A sinister sickness begins to infiltrate the expedition’s best attempts at quarantine and control.
I read this initially for my series on subversive takes on space travel. It’s paranoid. It’s a fascinating manifestation of contemporary fears. Unfortunately, Tenn is wedded to “twist” ending that weakens and diminishes all the effective setup work. Rather than an expedition that falls victim to the paranoid whirlwinds on Earth’s surface or realizes the value of an alternative, Tenn settles on a third far less interesting reveal. I find Tenn’s obsessive hunt for endings with sufficient twist, especially the tacked on sort, diminishes narratological impetus and thematic cohesion.
I’m not entirely sure what to make of this one. The rating comes from the setup and intriguing suggestion that the un-aligned Third World might be valuable players in a more peaceful future. I found the other elements disappointing.
Virgil Finlay’s interior art for William Tenn’s “Time Waits for Winthrop” in Galaxy Science Fiction (August 1957)
“Winthrop Was Stubborn” (1957), 3/5 (Average): First appeared in Galaxy Science Fiction, ed. H. L. Gold (August 1957). You can read it online here.
A group of common Americans, a cross-section of society, is selected for an experimental voyage into the future. There’s a problem. Winthrop, the oldest of the bunch, wants to stay in the 25th century. The others find the constantly shifting hallways and furniture, unusual rituals, discombobulating personal transportation, food consumption as symphonic appreciation, fantastical technology, and unusual future denizens too different and shocking. Winthrop, a product of the Great Depression, reminds his fellow travelers of his “lousy job and lousy life” (106). He was the kid left by his parents in the breadlines as they hunted for work. And when the Depression ended, he could only find menial jobs that never granted security or a moment of peace. Winthrop enjoys the post-scarcity 25th century. He enjoys relaxation. He’s finally able travel and participate in new experiences of every imaginable nature with his daily cares lavishly provided for. His fellow travelers beg him to return. They all need to jointly return at the assigned time else they won’t be able to return at all.
As with “The Sickness,” I found this story’s “twist” ending deeply unsatisfying. It entirely dodges and diminishes the conundrum, the generational issues and desires brought up by Winthrop’s need to stay in the future, Tenn lays out. Is there no way past generational divides? Can we really never bridge differences? Spectacular art by Finlay aside, this is not Tenn at his best.
Not recommended.
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Science Fiction and Other Suspect Ruminations 
‘Time In Advance’ was adapted in the 60s for the BBC’s ‘Out Of The Unknown’ series. Not entirely successful as drama but explores the premise effectively.
Thanks for stopping by,
I can’t say I’ve ever looked through those anthology TV series in any detail. I think your take on the episode matches my take on the story — “Not entirely successful as drama but explores the premise effectively.” Have you read any of his fictions? If so, do you have a favorite?
Not a single word that I know of. Though I have heard of him.
Ah, as I mentioned in the beginning of the review, “Down Among the Dead Men” (1954), “Eastward Ho!” (1958), “The Liberation of Earth” (1953), and “The Servant Problem” (1955) are my favorites.
Andrewnotwerdna also listed a few of this favorites (we have overlap of three stories).
I’d argue much of Winthrop captures the quintessential Tenn.
Because certain stories parody or extrapolate specific social issues it’s easier to identify that as the point of the satire. But there is an underling ethos that motivates that satire, and derives from an issue fundamental to sf. Tenn’s fictions depict humans who are always parochial and inferior to the situation they encounter. Be it a future society or the arrival of aliens his characters generically lack the resources to rise to the occasion, to understand or appreciate. They are steam-rollered, impotent or driven to pained frustration. The lesson Tenn takes from Well’s War of the Worlds – If there had been no banana skin of bacteria then mankind and Earth would have fallen. This attitude is why he eventually became unpublishable in Campbell’s Astounding. Given sudden access to superior technology we are no more than children playing catch with grenades. Our limitations become inescapable when given opportunities of ascendance and transcendence. This, in various forms, is the scenario that he repeats. Confronted by the “future” (that is the very point of sf) in some form or other we can’t happily engage with it, because we are cognitively and conceptually hobbled. We’re just not up to it and it’s just not fair. “We’re going to remain as stupid as we’ve been”
In the same collection, a similar thematic core — “We’re going to remain as stupid as we’ve been” — can be used to describe the superior “The Sickness.” Only far greater intelligence can get us out of the Cold War mire. A similar core can also be applied to his far far far better story “Easterward Ho!” or “The Liberation of Earth” both of which I enjoyed more than Winthrop. All of this is to say, I understand your point but found myself put off by the cop-out ending. I think he explores humanity’s inability to escape previously delineated rituals and patterns of decay and collapse in a more adept way in the stories I listed earlier.
The expectation that many sf/fantasy/horror stories should end with a twist does mean that the standard blackly comic surprise is some variation on “Suddenly, everyone was run over by a truck. -the end-“ from Michael O’Donoghue’s How To Write Good. A fair number of Tenn’s stories follow this, but it requires a degree of finesse which Tenn doesn’t always manage.
I’m all for twist endings that effectively call all that has happened into question and “solves” elements of the story that were left unclear or mysterious. If it is tacked on, or completely diminishes the entire sense of the story or satirical aim… i.e. a twist ending for the sake of a twist ending rather than thematic cohesion, I am less intrigued.
JB: ‘I’ve found him an effective satirist with a penchant for often self-defeating twist endings.’
I’m directing my comment to Tenn’s story ‘Firewater’ specifically, and the question of its weak ending, which is a somewhat different matter than your usual complaint about the standard twist endings of stories from that era.
In the 1950s-70s, Tenn was almost as reliable a staple as Clarke, Asimov, and Bradbury in the diet of SF authors that SF anthology editors customarily put together for multi-author collections. Most often, they’d choose the likes of his ‘Eastword Ho!’ or ‘The Liberation of Earth’, as you say, but as commonly ‘Brooklyn Project’ or ‘Bernie the Faust.’
The one Tenn story I never saw reprinted was ‘Firewater.’ Why not? It’s a good story — you give it your top score among the four you consider here — and arguably for its first three-quarters potentially a great one: the aliens in it are at first presented as being as ungraspably beyond human comprehension in their superiority and intelligence as aliens from a Stanislaw Lem story. Not something one had seen before in American magazine SF in the 1950s.
I only read ‘Firewater’ for the first time when I picked up Tenn’s two-volume NESFA collection a dozen years back. And of course what lets the story down badly is its ending, which, I assume, was why it wasn’t as reprinted as every other Tenn story was back in the day.
According to Tenn’s comments on it in the NESFA volume, however, he’d in fact written an entirely different ending which built on the original presentation of the aliens’ superiority and Campbell demanded a rewrite in accordance with Campbell’s ‘Humanity Uber Alles’ beliefs — as Mathew Davis notes, Tenn would eventually became unpublishable in Campbell’s Astounding (or Tenn increasingly found Campbell unendurable, to put it another way). And because at that time, Tenn continued, ‘Firewater’ was by far the longest, most ambitious thing he’d written, and he wanted the place on Astounding‘s cover and needed the money, he gave in and gave Campbell the ending Campbell wanted. Furthermore, Tenn had then intended to print his original version of the story in the NESFA collections of his work almost a half-century later, and had looked around for a carbon of it but couldn’t find one, and couldn’t remember for the life of him at that late date what his original ending of that story had been, only that it was great.
It feels a bit like a plea of a ‘Please, sir, the dog ate my homework’ on Tenn’s part. Still, who knows? It might could as easily be true. Certainly, the first three-quarters of the story are markedly better than its resolution and were something new in American SF of that time.
Of the bunch in this collection, I found the ending for “Firewater” more satisfying than “Winthrop Was Stubborn” and “The Sickness.” Clearly Tenn wanted something basic to form the possibility of a bridge between the utterly alien — and so he settled on exchange as a basis to form, over time, more effective communication. I think it ties back to Tenn’s dialogue with the American past with the early exchange that occurred between explorers and Native Americans despite the lack of knowledge about each other. But yes, I’m all for his early exploration of the utter alienness of the alien. He also pokes holes in what was by that point the common trope of aliens with superior technology. In this instance, it might seem like it is superior but they too cannot comprehend the nature of human “aliens.”
I think I’ve read all of Tenn’s fiction, and while I agree these are not among his best, I liked Winthrop a bit more than you did. The “frowning glory” bit, in which facial expressiveness is esteemed, was an amusing commentary on how fashions change. Based on many other stories of Campbell’s meddling, I can easily believe Tenn had a better ending in mind for Firewater.
What are your favorite stories of his? I enjoyed the generational/social status differences explored in Winthrop between those that had truly struggled through the Great Depression vs. those born afterwards or those with wealth insulated from its effects. Because the story felt grand in its attemp, it disappointed me more when it gets resolved in such ridiculous way!
“There Were People on Bikini, There Were People on Attu,” “The Liberation of Earth,” “The Servant Problem,” “Down Among the Dead Men,” “The Deserter” or when I need a happier day “My Mother was a Witch,” “The Brooklyn Project,” and “Betelgeuse Bridge”
I’m certainly with you on “The Liberation of Earth,” “The Servant Problem,” and “Down Among the Dead Men.” I have not read the others.
It’s been a while since I’ve read ‘Firewater’ (in the Asimov/Greenberg edited The Mammoth Book of Vintage Science Fiction: Short Novels of the 1950s). I recall liking it but almost nothing of what constituted the story!
I wonder about the association of twist endings and pre-70s written SF. Is this merely the conceit of editorial control, or something more hardwired into he sensibilities of SF writers of the time? I have little to offer on this subject other than this: as a kid, watching way too much TV and film SF in the 70s and 80s I can to believe that the twist ending was just part of the baggage of most SF.
I can’t say I can add much to the obsession with twist endings. But yes, it seems from what I’ve read that they went out of fashion as the 60s progressed. They’re a cornerstone of 50s SF. I assume it’s connected to the editors and what they encouraged in their authors. And as editors shifted (in addition to a wider range of authors), what was narratologically acceptable shifted. Maybe it also syncs up with other genres at the time — but I would not know on that point.