What pre-1985 science fiction are you reading or planning to read this month. Here’s March’s installment of this column.
Before we get to books and birthdays and writing plans…
Today I’m joined again by Rachel S. Cordasco, the creator of the indispensable website and resource Speculative Fiction in Translation, for the second installment of our series exploring non-English language SF worlds. Last time we covered Kōbō Abe’s allegory of Marxist transformation, “The Flood” (1950, trans. 1989).
This time we journey east of the Iron Curtain to 1960s Romania with Vladimir Colin’s “The Contact.” It first appeared in his collection of short stories Viitorul al doilea (1966). We read it in Other Worlds, Other Seas: Science-Fiction Stories from Socialist Countries, ed. Darko Suvin (1970). The story was translated into English by the author. I cannot find a copy online. Reach out if you want to read it!
Make sure to check out Rachel’s website Speculative Fiction in Translation. Not only does she review the global phenomena of speculative fiction but gathers lists of translated fiction by language. Also check out her reference monograph Out of This World: Speculative Fiction in Translation from the Cold War to the New Millennium (2021).
Now let’s get to our reviews!
Which books/covers/authors in the post intrigue you? Which have you read? Disliked? Enjoyed?
1. The Witling, Vernor Vinge (1976)
From the back cover: “Witling: A pretender to wit. (Webster’s Dictionary)
In the eyes of the inhabitants of Giri the scientific explorers from outer space were witlings. In the context of that primitive-seeming planet, they were.
Because on Giri a peculiarity of evolution had given a special talent to all living things–and this talent had made unnecessary most of the inventions associated with intelligent life elsewhere. Roads and planes, engines and doors… these were the products of witlings, not of ‘normal’ people.
So when the little band from Earth’s exploration team fell into Giri hands, their problem was unprecedented. How to demonstrate that science is worthwhile and how to keep the medieval masters of Giri from realizing their potential for cosmic mischief.”
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3.5/5 (collated rating: Good)
From 1937 to 1958, the dynamic writing duo of Henry Kuttner (1915-1958) and his wife C. L. Moore (1911-1987) wrote countless stories together. As SF Encyclopedia puts it, “much of [Kuttner’s] later work is inextricably entwined” with that of Moore–often to the point of being unable to entangle who wrote what. While the cover of Clash by Night and Other Stories (1980) does not mention Moore, all the stories in the collection were co-written with her.1
Continue readingToday I’m joined by Rachel S. Cordasco, the creator of the indispensable website and resource Speculative Fiction in Translation, for something a bit different!
We will both offer our reviews of one of Kōbō Abe’s first published speculative short stories, “The Flood” (1950). Over the next few months, we’ll post reviews of speculative fiction in translation from Romania, Chile, Austria, Poland, France, and the Netherlands. Depending on the story and our thoughts, I might also include our responses to each other’s review.
Also if you haven’t checked out Rachel’s website, you must. Not only does she review the global phenomena of speculative fiction but gathers lists of translated fiction by language. Also check out her reference monograph Out of This World: Speculative Fiction in Translation from the Cold War to the New Millennium (2021). In 2016, she contributed to my site reviews of three French SF stories in translation.
We read Kōbō Abe’s “The Flood” (1950) in The Best Japanese Science Fiction Stories, ed. John L. Apostolou and Martin H. Greenberg (1989). Translated by Lane Dunlop. You can read it online here.
Now let’s get to our reviews!
What pre-1985 science fiction are you reading or planning to read this month? Here’s February’s installment of this column.
Before we get to books and birthdays and writing plans…
Do you have the inner strength to survive the panic of a nuclear attack? Take a test in the August 21st 1953 issue of Collier’s and find out! Sample question: “HOW DO YOU FEEL WHEN: […] You are alone in an automatic elevator when it stalls between floors?” Possible answers: “I’m not bothered,” “I become tense,” “It jars me badly,” and “I blow up.”
Continue readingI ranked Alice Eleanor Jones’ apocalyptic slice-of-life nightmare “Created He Them” (1955) as my favorite SF short story of 2022. I also found Jones’ “The Happy Clown” (1955) a bleakly effective satire of television and consumerism. Unfortunately, Jones only published five short stories in 1955 before leaving science fiction altogether. It’s a shame she did not continue writing SF. With this post, I’ve covered her entire SF output.
Alice Eleanor Jones (1916-1981) received a PhD in English from University of Pennsylvania in 1944 on the seventeenth-century dramatist Shakerly Marmion. In the first year of her writing career, Jones “published five SF stories and two slick romance narratives.” Despite Anthony Boucher’s prediction that she’d be successful in both fields, Jones never returned to science fiction but continued to publish in the leading women’s magazines of the day and wrote a column for the trade magazine The Writer “well into the 1960s.”1 Lisa Yaszek argues that Jones’ “stories about housewife heroines and other domestic figures” do not reiterate conservative ideologues of the day but rather, through the construction of “offbeat” situations, examine how new scientific and social relations would impact women.2 Her two stories from the male perspective, “The Happy Clown” (1955) and “Life, Incorporated” (1955) are anti-consumerist satires.
This post fits–in conjunction with my earlier “Created He Them” (1955) review—in my series on the first three published short stories by female authors. So far I’ve featured 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-).
Now let’s get to the stories!
Which books/covers/authors in the post intrigue you? Which have you read? Disliked? Enjoyed?
1. Santiago: A Myth of the Far Future, Mike Resnick (1986)
From the back cover: “SEBASTIAN NIGHTINGALE CAIN: County hunter. You can call him Songbird–but only once. He’s after Santiago.
VIRTUE MECKENZIE: Freelance reporter. She never give up. She wants an interview… with Santiago.
THE SWAGMAN: He collects art–at gun point. He wants a few pieces currently in the hands of Santiago.
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4/5 (Good)
Nominated for the 1966 Hugo Award for Best Novel
John Brunner’s The Squares of the City (1965) transposes the moves of a 1892 chess game between Wilhelm Steinitz (1836-1900) and Mikhail Chigorin (1850-1905) onto a near future landscape of political intrigue. Inspired by Brazil’s planned capital Brasília (founded in 1960), the action takes place in Ciudad de Vados, the capital city of the imaginary Latin American nation of Aguazul.1 Conjured out of a “barren, rocky stretch of land,” Ciudad de Vados contains all the homogenized trappings of an ultra-modern metropolis (170). It’s sterile. Planned. Mechanized. Quickly the monumental urban regularity fades into the background and the intricate game across its squares takes over.
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Science Fiction and Other Suspect Ruminations 