SF Book Reviews

Science Fiction in Dialogue with The Great Depression: Frank K. Kelly’s “Famine on Mars” (1934)

/ Joachim Boaz / 7 Comments
  • Graphic created by my father

Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941) confides in the introduction to his travel memoir Puzzled America (1935) that the Great Depression was inescapable: “I was a writer of tales. It might be that I should have remained just that, but there is difficulty. There are, everywhere in America, these people now out of work. There are women and children hungry and others without enough clothes.”1 Edgar Albion Lyons, in the author’s note to his science fiction novel The Chosen Race: A Novel Based on the Depression and Machine Age (1936), echoes this sentiment: “The following chapters were written during the months of 1932 when the words ‘Depression’ and ‘Unemployment’ were on everyone’s lips.”2 Magazine science fiction, with its eye towards the marvelous technological future, likewise could not escape contemporary economic, political, and societal convulsions.3 Science, “in the form of a hypothesized device or theory,” enabled exciting adventures but also the exploration of “diverse and dire social implications.”4

On May 9th, 1934, a massive two-day dust storm caused by severe drought and human-made factors, removed massive amounts of Great Plains topsoil. The Dust Bowl unleashed its fury. The dust clouds reached Chicago and cities in the east, blotted out the Statue of Liberty and the United States Capitol. Red snow fell in New England.5 In the September 1934 issue of Astounding, a twenty-year-old Frank K. Kelly published “Famine on Mars” (1934) about a desperate attempt to assist Martians dying of thirst and starvation after a drought. In Kelly’s vision, The Combine, Earth’s government, deliberately caused the genocide and refuses to provide assistance.6

  • M. Marchioni’s interior art for “Famine on Mars” (1934)
Continue reading →

Book Review: Star Science Fiction Stories No. 3, ed. Frederik Pohl (1955)

/ Joachim Boaz / 35 Comments
  • Richard Powers’ cover for the 1955 edition

3.5/5 (collated rating: Good)

Ballantine Books’ illustrious science fictional program started with a bang–Star Science Fiction Stories. According to Mike Ashley’s Transformations: The Story of Science-Fiction Magazines from 1950 to 1970 Frederik Pohl’s anthology series of original (mostly) stories was “intended as both a showcase of Ballantine’s authors and a lure to new writers.” Paying better rates than magazines, the Star series foreshadowed the explosion of original anthologies that would provide a sustained challenge to the eminence held in the 50s by the magazine.

I’ve selected the third volume of the six-volume series.1 It contains an illustrative cross-section of 50s science fiction. Philip K. Dick’s “Foster, You’re Dead” (1955), Richard Matheson’s “Dance of the Dead” (1955), and Jack Williamson’s “Guinevere for Everybody” (1955) are not to be missed.

Continue reading →

Short Book Reviews: Margot Bennett’s The Long Way Back (1954) and Mack Reynolds’ The Earth War (1964)

/ Joachim Boaz / 15 Comments

Note: My read but “waiting to be reviewed pile” is growing. Short rumination/tangents/impressions are a way to get through the stack before my memory and will fades. My website partially serves as a record of what I have read and a memory apparatus for future projects. Stay tuned for more detailed and analytical reviews.

1. Margo Bennett’s The Long Way Back (1954)

  • Uncredited cover for the 1955 edition

3.25/5 (Above Average)

I’m always on the lookout for lesser-known SF works by female authors. And Margot Bennett’s The Long Way Back (1954) certainly fits the bill. Bennett (1912-1980), a Scottish-born screenwriter and author of primarily crime and thriller novels, lead a fascinating life before her writing career. During the Spanish Civil War, she volunteered for Spanish Medical Aid, and was shot in both legs. Afterwards, she continued to participate in various left-wing political causes such as the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

The Long Way Back manifests, with satirical strokes, her critical stance on nuclear war and British colonialism. In a future collectivized Africa ruled by a calculating machine that grades the population, Grame, a “mechanical-repetitive worker” (7), dreams of a career in physics. Instead, the machine shuffles him off on an ill-fated expedition to the ruined remains of Britain post “Big Bang” (nuclear blast). On the way he falls in love with the leader of the expedition, Valya, who serves as a virginal Bride of the State (24). After their sea plane lands, they are beset by a bizarre range of mutations–ferocious dogs, micro-horses, etc. Eventually they discover a tribe of hairless white survivors holed up in primitive caves. Grame teaches the brightest arithmetic. Valya sets about measuring and applying pseudo-scientific theories to understand white society, religion, and conception of the world i.e. parroting all the pseudo-science and racist theories posed by British explorers of Africa. As they attempt to find a lost city, Hep, the third surviving member of the expedition, imagines the potential exploitation and colonization Africa might implement—“Yellow America” is on the rise and resources will be needed. History threatens to re-cycle through the horrors of the past in more ways than one.

Continue reading →

Short Fiction Reviews: Philip K. Dick’s “Explorers We” (1959) and James Tiptree, Jr.’s “Painwise” (1972)

/ Joachim Boaz / 4 Comments

The following reviews are the 31st and 32nd installments of my series searching for “SF short stories that are critical in some capacity of space agencies, astronauts, and the culture which produced them.” Some stories I’ll review in this series might not fit. And that is okay. I relish the act of literary archaeology.

Philip K. Dick’s “Explorers We” (1959) reframes the triumphant astronaut’s return home as the ultimate horror.

James Tiptree, Jr.’s “Painwise” (1972) imagines the hallucinogenic journey of a post-human explorer severed from the experience of physical pain.

As always, feel free to join the conversation.

Previously: Clifford D. Simak’s “Founding Father” (1957)

Up Next: E. C. Tubb’s “Without Bugles” (1952), “Home is the Hero” (1952), and “Pistol Point” (1953)

A brief note before we dive into the greater morass of things: This series grew from my relentless fascination with the science fiction of Barry N. Malzberg (1939-2024), who passed away last month. Malzberg wrote countless incisive visions that reworked America’s cultic obsession with the ultra-masculine astronaut and his adoring crowds. As I am chronically unable to write a topical post in the moment, I direct you towards “Friend of the Site” Rich Horton’s obituary in Black Gate. If you are new to his fiction, I proffer my reviews of Revelations (1972), Beyond Apollo (1972), The Men Inside (1973), and The Gamesman (1975). The former two are relevant to this series.

  • Ed Emshwiller’s cover for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, ed. Robert P. Mills (January 1959)

4.5/5 (Very Good)

Philip K. Dick’s “Explorers We” first appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, ed. Robert P. Mills (January 1959). You can read it online here.

Continue reading →

Book Review: Future Power, ed. Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois (1976) (Ursula K. Le Guin, Damon Knight, James Tiptree, Jr., Gene Wolfe, etc.)

/ Joachim Boaz / 17 Comments
  • Uncredited cover for 1st edition

4/5 (collated rating: Good)

What a way to finish 2024! Future Powers, ed. Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois (1976) is a well-crafted thematic anthology with seven original stories and two older classics. Other than R. A. Lafferty’s average contribution, all the tales effectively engage with the theme of the complexities of future control both in everyday and the macropolitical contexts.

A few tantalizing fragments: Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Diary of the Rose” (1976) explores the operations of dystopic control through the eyes of a neophyte doctor (“scopist”); Damon Knight ruminates on the nature and treatment of the psychopath in “The Country of the Kind” (1956); and A. K. Jorgensson’s “Coming-of-Age-Day” (1965) takes the reader through all the unnerving and confusing moments of a child in a strange future attempting to understand the nature of sex.

Continue reading →

Short Story Review: Poul Anderson’s “The Troublemakers” (1953)

/ Joachim Boaz / 28 Comments

This is the 20th post in my series of vintage generation ship short fiction reviews. You are welcome to read and discuss along with me as I explore humanity’s visions of generational voyage. And thanks go out to all who have joined already. I also have compiled an extensive index of generation ship SF if you wish to track down my earlier reviews on the topic and any that you might want to read on your own.

Previously: Fred Saberhagen’s “Birthdays” (1976)

Next Up: George Hay’s Flight of the “Hesper” (1952)

  • Uncredited cover for Cosmos Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine, ed. L. B. Cole (September 1953)

3.25/5 (Above Average)

Poul Anderson’s “The Troublemakers” (1953) first appeared in Cosmos Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine, ed. L. B. Cole (September 1953). You can read it online here.

Anderson’s tale is a fascinating collision of two of my recurring interests in post-WWII science fiction: generation ships and organized labor. Due to my love of Ursula K. Le Guin’s “Paradises Lost” (2002) and Brian W. Aldiss’ Non-Stop (variant title: Starship) (1959), I started a review series on generation ship short fiction in 2019. The series has languished recently as I am running out of pre-1985 depictions of the theme available in English to read. I read Anderson’s vision last year but could not muster a review. However, my recent focus on organized labor caused me to reread Anderson’s account of generational conflict, the working class experience, and the contours of power and government.

Continue reading →

Book Review: In the Drift, Michael Swanwick (1985)

/ Joachim Boaz / 17 Comments
  • Mark Salwowski’s cover for the 1989 edition

3.25/5 (Above Average)

In The Drift (1985), a fix-up novel comprised of two Nebula-nominated short works–“Mummer Kiss” (1981) and “Marrow Death” (1984), maps a new way forward in an ecologically and genetically ravaged post-apocalyptic age. The entire concoction decays with a sense of grim unease and cavorts around piles of dead that would make a triumvir from the Late Roman Republic proud. It’s a violent, erotic, and disquieting experience that can’t entirely hide its flaws behind the decadent panache.

Continue reading →

Short Fiction Reviews: Leigh Kennedy’s “Salamander” (1977), “Whale Song” (1978), “Detailed Silence” (1980), and “Speaking10 to Others2; Speaking3 to Others20” (1981)

/ Joachim Boaz / 24 Comments

In the past few years, I’ve put together a series on the first three published short fictions by female authors who are completely new to me or whose most famous SF novels fall mostly outside the post-WWII to mid-1980s focus of my reading adventures.

Today I’ve selected the first four stories by an author I’ve only recently started to read–Leigh Kennedy (1951-). I’d previously reviewed “Helen, Whose Face Launched Twenty-Eight Conestoga Hovercraft” (1982) and placed her on the list for this series. According to SF Encyclopedia, Kennedy’s “writing is succinct, polished, lucent, and her stories are emotionally penetrating; it is unfortunate that she has fallen from the world of novel publishing, though continuing to work as a professional indexer.” And I can’t agree more! Her first four stories show great promise and moments of refined vision. I can’t help but think the backlash to her Nebula-nominated (and best-known work) “Her Furry Face” (1983) might have had some effect on her trajectory.

So far I’ve featured Alice Eleanor Jones (1916-1981), Phyllis Gotlieb (1926-2009), Sydney J. Van Scyoc (1939-2023), Josephine Saxton (1935-), Carol Emshwiller (1921-2019), Wilmar H. Shiras (1908-1990), Nancy Kress (1948-), Melisa Michaels (1946-2019), Lee Killough (1942-), Betsy Curtis (1917-2002), and Eleanor Arnason (1942-). To be clear, I do not expect transformative or brilliant things from first stories. Rather, it’s a way to get a sense of subject matter and concerns that first motivated authors to put pen to paper.

Let’s get to the stories!

  • George Schelling’s interior art for Leigh Kennedy’s “Salamander” in Analog, ed. Ben Bova (June 1977)
Continue reading →

Short Book Reviews: Lisa Goldstein’s A Mask for the General (1987) and Philip McCutchan’s The Day of the Coastwatch (1968)

/ Joachim Boaz / 13 Comments

Note: My read but “waiting to be reviewed pile” is growing. Short rumination/tangents/impressions are a way to get through the stack before my memory and will fades. My website partially serves as a record of what I have read and a memory apparatus for future projects. Stay tuned for more detailed and analytical reviews.

1. A Mask for the General, Lisa Goldstein (1987)

  • Mick McGinty’s cover for the 1st edition

3/5 (Average)

One of many attempts to dispel fascist gloom novels I’ve been drawn to recently, Lisa Goldstein’s A Mask for a General: A Novel (1987) imagines a deliberate retreat into the “primitive” as a way to resist. The story follows Mary, a young naive teenager desperate to strike out on her own, and her encounter with Lisa, a master mask maker. In this future, in the wreckage of the University of California, Berkeley campus (the parallel to the historical role of the university in the 60s is deliberate), various “Tribes” attempt to escape the grip of The General by wearing masks and taking on new personas detached from the present. Apparently after a series of disasters, Japan has far surpassed the United States as a technological power. Considering how the world viewed Japan in the 80s, this is not a ridiculous assumption. The General controls media and has dismantled every semblance of democratic government. Mary gets drawn into a larger, rather bizarre, attempt to influence The General that might tear down the state.

Continue reading →