1950s

What pre-1985 science fiction are you reading? + Update No. XXIX

/ Joachim Boaz / 10 Comments

What pre-1985 science fiction adventures have you started this summer? Any great reads? Disappointing ones? Intriguing discoveries? Here’s the April installment of this column.

  • A selection of read volumes from my shelves

In a conversation on Blueksy, someone asked for my history of science fiction recommendations (including a few general surveys). I scoured my shelves and came up with an all-too-large pile (with some notable volumes I wanted to include but could not find) of favorite histories of science fiction. See photo below. I tried to include monographs that were not studies of single authors.

As I am a historian by training and trade who holds on to some of my disciplinary ticks and hangups, I also included works by trained academics with two major exceptions 1) Mike Ashley’s multi-volume study of science fiction magazines (but no other recent works exist and they’re really good for the nuts and bolts of genre magazines) and 2) Alec Nevala-Lee’s approachable and well-researched group biography  Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction (2018). Both should be read.

  • A photo of a few of my history of science fiction recommendations

I deliberately avoided works by science fiction authors like Damon Knight, Brian W. Aldiss, and Frederik Pohl. They’re great sources and I own and have read many of them but…. they are not histories by trained scholars. I do not mean for this to come off as elitist. Rather, my personal remit for my list—I needed to winnow down the hundreds and hundreds I own–was deliberately narrow! I read and use sources widely. Remember, these are my favorites — they might not be the best but they got me thinking and reading and writing. And that’s what we all should be doing, reading what makes us happy.

Continue reading →

Exploration Log 14: Anti-Racism in Chandler Davis’ “Stereotypes Are Dangerous” (1950)

/ Joachim Boaz / 5 Comments
  • John Grossman’s cover for vol. 1 of the fanzine Futurist, ed. Redd Boggs (Spring 1950)

“Write a story that will give a few bigots the jolt they need. Write a story that will open the eyes of the unconsciously bigoted” (8).

Chandler Davis (1926-2022) strikes a fascinating figure. He was a communist activist, science fiction author, fanzine editor, a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Michigan, and political prisoner. He was fired from the University of Michigan in 1954 and imprisoned for six months in 1960 on charges of contempt of Congress leveled by HUAC.1 Between 1946 and 1970, he published 12 short stories. One additional story, a casualty of Harlan Ellison’s infamous unpublished Last Dangerous Visions, appeared in 1994.2 I reviewed three of his 1940s short stories on the theme of nuclear war back in 2023: “The Nightmare” (1946), “To Still the Drums” (1946), and “The Aristocrat” (1949). He’s certainly an author I need to return to on the merits of his article “Stereotypes Are Dangerous” (1950).

Continue reading →

Book Review: Clifford D. Simak’s The Worlds of Clifford Simak (1960)

/ Joachim Boaz / 10 Comments
  • Richard Powers’ cover for the 1961 paperback edition

3.25/5 (collated rating: Above Average)

At this point in my reading adventure, I approach Clifford D. Simak’s science fiction with a clear intention to expand my understanding of his economic, political, and technological critiques of American society. This culminated in 2024 with my article “’We Must Start Over Again and Find Some Other Way of Life’: The Role of Organized Labor in the 1940s and ’50s Science Fiction of Clifford D. Simak.” Since then, albeit at a slower pace, I’ve continued to cover his science fiction, speeches, and additional interviews I’ve been able to track down. I find him a deeply fascinating author who’s often pigeonholed as “bucolic” or “pastoral” with no real attempt to read beyond his tendency to set a few of his narratives in a rural simulacrum of his childhood corner of America.

Continue reading →

Short Book Reviews: Polly Toynbee’s Leftovers (1966) and Lewis Gibbs’ Late Final (1951)

/ Joachim Boaz / 4 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 palace for future projects. Stay tuned for more detailed and analytical reviews.

1. Polly Toynbee’s Leftovers (1966)

  • Paul May’s cover for the 1969 edition

2.5/5 (Bad)

After reading a monograph on the history of science fiction I inevitably find a handful of works that I must track down (more as an act of data collection than a quest for literary genius). Andrew Hammond’s Cold War Stories: British Dystopian Fiction, 1945-1990 (2017) contained a wealth of lesser-known works that immediately dented my pocketbook.1

Polly Toynbee’s Leftovers (1966) fits into Hammond’s analysis of a British Empire irrevocably weakened by WWII and growing US supremacy in the Cold War. Toynbee’s novel, and in even more severe terms Lewis Gibbs’ Late Final (1951) discussed below, with its focus on a handful of self-absorbed survivors of an apocalyptic event depicts a nation “irrelevant to the geopolitical present and as unrecognizable to its own past.”2 Intriguing ideas aside, debilitating flaws sink Leftovers. I found it interesting only as a lens for the moment — youth culture and rebellion in the mid-60s. As a literary and reading experience, Leftovers leaves a lot to be desired. Toynbee would soon abandon her literary career for a famous career in journalism from a leftist perspective.

Continue reading →

Short Story Review: Richard Wilson’s “Strike” (1953)

/ Joachim Boaz / 8 Comments
  • Milton Luros’ cover for Future Science Fiction, ed. Robert W. Lowndes (July 1953)

3.25/5 (Above Average)

“One by one the cargo-liners blew up, most conveniently for I.C. in its squabble with the union. In fact, these accidents were too convenient…”

Richard Wilson’s “Strike” (1953) first appeared in Future Science Fiction, ed. Robert W. Lowndes (July 1953). You can read it online here.

“Strike” is the third story in the “Dateline Mars” sequence by Richard Wilson (1920-1987). To the best of my knowledge, this sequence follows the investigative career of Reporter Scott Warren, chief of the Iopa bureau of the Galactic News Service on Mars.1 I am unsure how many stories appeared in this sequence as they have not yet been grouped as a unit on The Internet Speculative Fiction Database.2 Regardless, there’s an appealing simplicity to the general framework of the series — how news agencies attempt to provide objective reporting in a future in which humanity has settled Mars. “Strike” also clocks in as an unabashedly pro-labor union tale. From the stories I’ve gathered so far, this is somewhat rare for the 1950s.

Continue reading →

What pre-1985 science fiction are you reading? + Update No. XXVIII

/ Joachim Boaz / 32 Comments

First update post of 2026! What pre-1985 science fiction adventures have you started this year? Any great reads? Disappointing ones? Intriguing discoveries? Here’s the November 2025 installment of this column.

  • A selection of read volumes from my shelf

Exciting news! Rachel S. Cordasco, who occasionally joins me to review older SF short stories in translation, will soon launch Small Planet: The SF in Translation Magazine. As the announcement on File 770 states, “the magazine will come out 4 times per year (February, May, August, and November) and include columns on such topics as: interesting upcoming books and notable reviews, interviews with authors, translators, editors, translators talking about books they’d like to see in English, essays on Anglophone awards, databases, and publishers that should recognize translators/SFT, essays on Anglophone awards, databases, and publishers that should recognize translators/SFT, pieces on interesting translation conundrums, notes on what’s happening in other countries in SF. It will be available for free on Cordasco’s Speculative Fiction in Translation website.”

Missing from the list will be my reviews of vintage SF in translation! The plan is to have one review in each issue for at least the next year or for as long as I can keep up a schedule (schedules and I do not mesh). I’ve already tracked down some lesser known gems from German, Norway, and Italy.

Continue reading →

Short Fiction Review: Alan E. Nourse’s “Marley’s Chain” (1952) and Edward W. Ludwig’s “The Rocket Man” (1951)

/ Joachim Boaz / 6 Comments

Today I’ve selected two lesser-known short stories from the early 1950s that explore issues of race in America. The Civil Rights mass movement gathered steam in the post-WWII world as soldiers returned to segregated hometowns. The federal government took a few tentative steps. In 1948, President Truman issued Executive Oder 9981, which abolished discrimination “on the basis of race, color, religion or national origin” in the United States Armed Forces.1 Both stories I chose for this post appeared in print before the famous Supreme Court case Brown vs. Board of Education (1954) that ruled segregation was inherently unequal. In Edward W. Ludwig’s “The Rocket Man” (1951), a young white child yearns to lead an expedition to Mars. He finds fellowship with other outcasts, including an African American boy who also dreams of space. In Alan E. Nourse’s “Marley’s Chain” (1951), a man must confront his own problematic past in a new America rebuilding from the wreckage of the old.

If you know of any other 1940s/50s short stories that attempt to tackle the topics of race and racism, let me know. As I’m afflicted with a serious strain of listomania, I’ve collated an incomplete catalog on the topic that I will return to periodically in coming months.

Let’s get to the stories!

  • Ted Speicher’s interior art for Alan E. Nourse’s “Marley’s Chain” in If, ed. Paul W. Fairman (September 1952)

4/5 (Good)

Alan E. Nourse’s “Marley’s Chain” first appeared in If, ed. Paul W. Fairman (September 1952). You can read it online here.

Alan E. Nourse (1928-1992) re-entered my shortlist of authors I need to read as a result of my hunt for science fiction on the labor movement. Nourse might be best known for his many medical-themed stories (he was a practicing physician and wrote popular columns on medicine). He deviates from that interest with a classic illustration of 1950s anti-union sentiment in “Meeting of the Board” (1955), which I’ll cover eventually. While searching for further labor-related short stories, I came across a far different (and more perceptive) account of race and labor in America: “Marley’s Chain” (1952).2

Continue reading →

Short Book Reviews: Fritz Leiber, Jr.’s Gather, Darkness! (1943, novelized 1950) and Gillian Freeman’s The Leader (1965)

/ Joachim Boaz / 21 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 palace for future projects. Stay tuned for more detailed and analytical reviews.

1. Fritz Leiber’s Gather, Darkness! (1943, novelized 1950)

  • Uncredited cover for the 1950 1st hardback edition

3.25/5 (Above Average)

Frtiz Leiber’s Gather, Darkness! first appeared across the May, June, and July 1943 issues of Astounding Science-Fiction, ed. John W. Campbell, Jr. It was novelized in 1950. Written in the midst of WWII, Gather, Darkness! is a product of an important moment in Leiber’s life. The previous year he abandoned his profession as a speech and drama instructor at Occidental College (1941-1942) and decided that “the struggle against fascism mattered more than his long-held pacifist convictions.” He joined Douglas Aircraft as a quality inspector and continued to publish science fiction.1

Continue reading →

Updates: Recent Science Fiction Purchases No. CCCXLVIII (Eric Frank Russell, Ben Bova, Pat Frank, and John Collier)

/ Joachim Boaz / 15 Comments

Which books/covers/authors intrigue you? Which have you read? Disliked? Enjoyed?

1. Men, Martians, and Machines, Eric Frank Russell (1955)

  • Paul Lehr’s–uncredited but certainly his style–cover for the 1965 edition

From the back cover: “VOYAGE OF THE MARATHON. Even at the time when space ships were making regular voyages across the universe, the MARATHON was a remarkable craft. Powered by the Flettner system, its speed was so great that for the first time exploration of the outer galaxies was made possible.

Continue reading →