1950s

Book Review: George Hay’s Flight of the “Hesper” (1952)

/ Joachim Boaz / 13 Comments

This is the 21st post in my series of vintage generation ship short fiction reviews. While not technically a short story, George Hay’s novel clocks in at a mere 112 pages. I’ve decided to include it in my series. While I have dabbled in the more esoteric as of late, thanks go out to all who have joined some part of my read-through already. I’ve also compiled an extensive index of generation ship SF–expanded from a monograph by Simone Caroti–if you wish to track down my earlier reviews on the topic and any that you might want to read on your own.1

Previously: Poul Anderson’s “The Troublemakers” (1953)

Next Up: TBD

  • George Ratcliffe’s cover for the 1st edition

2/5 (Bad)

In 2019, I made the resolution to read all the pre-1985 science fiction on the theme of generation ships available in English. I’ve made substantial progress, especially on the short story front! Last year I posted the 20th installment of my short story read-through.2 I’ve covered authors from John Brunner to Judith Merril. As I mentioned above, I’ve decided to include George Hay’s short novel Flight of the “Hesper” (1952) in my series. Unfortunately, no online copies exist to link.

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Magazine Review: Galaxy Science Fiction, ed. H. L. Gold (November 1950) (Brown, Asimov, Boucher, Leiber, Knight, Simak)

/ Joachim Boaz / 28 Comments

Preliminary Note: I plan on reading all 116 issues of the influential, and iconic, SF magazine Galaxy under H. L. Gold’s editorship (October 1950-October 1961) in chronological order. How long this project will take or how seriously/systematically I will take it remain complete unknowns.

See my inaugural post in this series for my reasoning behind selecting Galaxy under H. L. Gold.

Previously: the October 1950 issue.

Up Next: the December 1950 issue.

Let’s get to the stories. We have the first Galaxy masterpiece!

  • Don Sibley’s cover for Galaxy Science Fiction, ed. H. L. Gold (November 1950)

You can read the entire issue here.

Fredric Brown’s “Honeymoon in Hell” (1950), 3/5 (Average): The year is 1962. The Cold War heats up. The race for a permanent presence on the Moon takes center stage. Each side “had landed a few men” and claimed it as their own (4). Each side races to construct a space station in orbit to facilitate the construction of a permanent base on the moon. But there’s another worrying world-wide trend–a massive gender imbalance in new births! Not enough boys! Riots. Cults. What’s the plan?

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

/ Joachim Boaz / 43 Comments
  • A selection of read volumes from my shelves

What pre-1985 science fiction are you reading or planning to read next month? Here’s the May installment of this column.

In my interview with Jaroslav Olša, Jr. about his book Dreaming of Autonomous Vehicles: Miles (Miroslav) J. Breuer: Czech-American Writer and the Birth of Science Fiction (2025), an interesting methodological question jumped out to me: what is the role of more ephemeral publications outside of Hugo Gernsback in the early history of genre? A bit of context: Miles J. Breuer also wrote in Czech. He published stories in Czech-language publications aimed at the immigrant community far earlier than their re-written versions appeared in Gernsback’s Amazing. In addition, he published in various medical journals (that occasionally ran SF) and university publications. As Olša points out in the interview, it obviously depends on the questions asked by the historian — and these publications had small audiences that make it hard to ascertain “influence” or “inspiration” for later authors. Food for thought.

Before we get to the photograph above and the curated birthdays, let me know what pre-1985 SF you’re currently reading or planning to read! 

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Recent Science Fiction Purchases No. CCCXLIV (Margaret St. Clair, Edgar Pangborn, Keith Laumer, and Edmund Cooper)

/ Joachim Boaz / 17 Comments

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

It’s the summer Joachim Boaz. Where are the reviews? I’m currently on a much needed vacation (Iceland). I will be back soon! In the meantime here are four recent purchases.

1. The Dancers of Noyo, Margaret St. Clair (1973)

  • Davis Meltzer’s cover for the 1st edition

From the back cover: “Like so many others before him, reluctant Sam MacGregor was sent on a pilgrimage for the Frail Vision by the Dancers: androids grown from the cells of one man, with the powers of hypnotism and illusion–androids who held the tribes of the Republic of California in thrall.

But soon Sam began to doubt his own identity, for he experienced, in close succession, extra-lives in different corridors of time and space.

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Magazine Review: Galaxy Science Fiction, ed. H. L. Gold (October 1950) (Simak, Sturgeon, MacLean, Matheson, Leiber, Brown, Asimov)

/ Joachim Boaz / 44 Comments

Preliminary Note: I plan on reading all 116 issues of the influential, and iconic, SF magazine Galaxy under H. L. Gold’s editorship (October 1950-October 1961) in chronological order. How long this project will take or how seriously/systematically I will take it are complete unknowns. I am a reader of whim. I will choose whether to reread certain stories that I’ve previously covered. Serialized novels will only be reviewed after I complete the entire work and posted as separate reviews. Why Galaxy, you might ask?

First, I can’t escape the pull of 1950s science fiction focused on social commentary and soft science. Second, I am obsessed with 50s American politics during a time of affluence, the rise of TV and mass culture, and the looming terror of the Cold War. Third, there are a legion of well-known 50s authors I’ve yet to address in any substantial manner on the site who appeared behinds its illustrious covers. Fourth, H. L. Gold was interested in all different types of stories.

As SF Encyclopedia explains, Galaxy was an “immediate success” in part because “Astounding was at this time following John W Campbell Jr’s new-found obsession with Dianetics and was otherwise more oriented towards technology.” Gold’s interests, on the other hand, “were comparatively free-ranging: he was interested in psychology, sociology and satire and other humor, and the magazine reflected this.”

I hope you enjoy this series! Feel free to join.

Up Next: the November 1950 issue.

  • David Stone’s cover for Galaxy Science Fiction, ed. H. L. Gold (October 1950)

You can read the entire issue here.

Clifford D. Simak’s Time Quarry (variant title: Time and Again) (1950). Serialized over three issues. I will post an individual review after I complete the serialization.

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Short Book Reviews: Edgar Pangborn’s The Company of Glory (1974, novelized 1975) and Harold Mead’s Mary’s Country (1957)

/ Joachim Boaz / 6 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. Edgar Pangborn’s The Company of Glory (1975)

  • Vincent Di Fate’s cover for the 1st edition

3.5/5 (Good)

Edgar Pangborn is an unsung SF hero in my book. At his best, he’s a deeply humanistic writer interested in moments of effective metafictional play on the nature of narrative. The Company of Glory (serialized 1974, 1975) is the third novel in the Tales of Darkening World sequence. It forms a prequel to Pangborn’s masterpiece Davy (1964). As with Davy, The Company of Glory attempts to create multiple interlocking layers of narrative, stories within the stories, quotations from various diaries, and the interjections of the overarching narrator of the entire collection of texts who remains anonymous until the final pages.

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

/ Joachim Boaz / 53 Comments
  • A selection of read volumes from my shelves

What pre-1985 science fiction are you reading or planning to read next month? Here’s the April installment of this column.

As readers of the site know, I am obsessed with the machinations of Cold War nuclear logic—historical and science fictional. In Ira Chernus’ brilliant Apocalypse Management: Eisenhower and the Discourse of National Insecurity (2008), he dives into the Manichean ideoscape that dominated Eisenhower’s thinking. In short, he posits that Eisenhower interpreted the Soviet threat as an apocalyptic struggle in which the traditional outcome, eliminating the treat, is impossible. Instead the best hope is “to contain and manage it forever” (2)–hence “apocalypse management.” This “new linguistic paradigm” profoundly influenced their policymaking process and dominated American public discourse.

According to Chernus, Eisenhower was obsessed with Americans practicing voluntary self-control in their consumption in order shoulder the taxes needed to fund the perpetual struggle. With this paradigm, Eisenhower’s gestures towards peace–for example his “The Chance for Peace” (April 16th, 1953) speech–were acts of calibrated psychological warfare designed to put the burden of action on the Soviets and score points with the American public and American allies. The United States, on the other hand, could wage the conflict with perpetual, safe, and managed inaction in which peace is never the ultimate objective.

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

/ Joachim Boaz / 65 Comments
  • A selection of read volumes from my shelves

What pre-1985 science fiction are you reading or planning to read this month? Here’s the March installment of this column.

Recently I came across John Boston and Damien Broderick’s three-volume series examining each and every story and non-fiction article in the pre-Michael Moorcock New Worlds and Science Fantasy/SF Impulse magazines in the UK. John Boston is a valued member of my site’s community — frequently stopping by in the comment sections. I thought for this mini-editorial I’d list a handful of active community members with websites, books, and worthwhile SF-related fanzine articles. I, of course, could be missing a few. Community matters more than you might think. I enjoy the discussion. I enjoy reading reviews that others write — even if it’s on science fiction that might not be within my more narrow focus (the historian in me). I always want to learn and share what’s worth reading and/or historically interesting. Thank you one and all.

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

/ Joachim Boaz / 24 Comments

The following reviews are the 33rd, 34th, and 35th 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.

For this post I’ve selected three short stories about the horrific conditions on a colonized Mars by E. C. Tubb (1919-2010) that appeared in the British SF magazine New Worlds. Along with three additional tales, they were fixed-up as the novel Alien Dust (1955).1 I “blame” the “Friend of the Site” John Boston for my renewed interest in Tubb’s bleak stories. I recently acquired Boston’s three-volume commentary on pre-Moorcock New Worlds and Science Fantasy.2 Boston correctly describes Tubb’s earlier stories as preoccupied with the “domestic lives of spacefarers” in often overwritten and maudlin strokes.3 Regardless, I found the topics he explored worth my time. I’d only previously read his later short story “The Seekers” (1965) and The Space-Born (variant title: Star Ship) (1955). Considering his hard-boiled sensibilities, I imagine a substantial slice of his fiction would fit this series.4

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

Up Next: John Wyndham’s “The Man From Beyond” (variant title: “The Man from Earth”) (1934)

  • Gerard Quinn’s cover for New Worlds, # 13, ed. John Carnell (January 1952)

3.5/5 (Good)

“Without Bugles” first appeared in New Worlds, # 13, ed. John Carnell (January 1952): You can read it online here.

As with most E. C. Tubb stories, “Without Bugles” starts with a punch: “The man writhed on the narrow cot, and fought for his life” (52). The man in question is one of many colonists on Mars afflicted with a futuristic black lung–“an industrial disease. Silicosis they called it once”–caused by radioactive dust (54). The origin of the radioactivity isn’t clear. Dust cannot be avoided on Mars. It seeps through all seals. It gathers in corners. It bypasses masks. Into the colony of the dead and dying and those that tend them, Anders, the Secretary for Extra-Planetary Affairs, and Pat Easton, a vivacious and idealistic reporter for Trans-World Communications arrive on an infrequent rocket. The purpose of the commission? Anders gets straight to the point: “Congress has poured billions of dollars into this project. When are you going to start paying it back?” (56). Pat proposes the fate of the colony can be swayed by a positive depiction of the heroic colonists.

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