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.
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.
What pre-1985 science fiction are you reading or planning to read this month? Here’s the November installment of this column.
Last week I wrote a post about Clifford D. Simak’s delightfully inclusive 1971 speech at the height of the New Wave in which he celebrated science fiction as a “forum of ideas” open to all voices. While reviewing the various snarky comments leveled at the movement by “classic authors” like Asimov, a faint memory of James Blish’s own anti-New Wave sentiments tickled my memory. I randomly opened up a book on my desk to figure out a fascinating SF tidbit to start this post, and voilà, the James Blish story.
Jacqueline Foertsch’s Reckoning Day: Race, Place, and the Atom Bomb in Postwar America (2013) contains a sustained analysis of Samuel R. Delany’s various post-apocalyptic novels. She includes a discussion of the response to Delany’s Nebula-winning The Einstein Intersection (1967). At the 1968 Nebula Awards Banquet, moments after Delany received his prize for Einstein (and where moments later he’d collected another award for “Aye, and Gomorrah”), Blish lambasted the New Wave. Blish complained about the “loosening of the genre’s parameters” and the “re-christening of the genre” as “speculative fiction” (98). I find all of this hilarious as Blish himself wrote fantasy novels like Black Easter (1968) (that would also nab a 1969 Nebula nomination) and far earlier oblique proto-New Wave speculative fictions like “Testament of Andros” (1953). I wonder if Blish aimed such vitriol at a figure like Simak, who took the loosening of the genre’s parameters to extremes during the New Wave–i.e. novels like The Goblin Reservation (1968), Destiny Doll (1971), and Out of Their Minds (1970). Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s surprising that Blish took especial issue with one of the few black SFF authors of the day.
And let me know what pre-1985 science fiction you’ve been reading!
What pre-1985 science fiction are you reading or planning to read this month? Here’s the September installment of this column. I am a few days late with this post. We’ll pretend it appeared in October!
I’ve been reading the little scholarship on H. Beam Piper (1904-1964) in order to more adeptly understand his political views when I tackle his various union-related stories for my series. I was struck by the extreme poverty, impact of a memorable cover, and dependence on a responsive agent that he found himself mired in after he lost his railroad guard job and had to rely on writing. He kept himself alive by selling off his gun collection that he had accumulated over the years and eating pigeons his shot on his porch. While he doesn’t seem to have been the best with the little money that came his way, often blowing the majority of a paycheck from Campbell, Jr. on expensive suits, it’s shocking what he had to do to survive between story acceptances. Piper seems to have committed suicide in part due to his financial hardships.
Despite the fact that I can’t wholeheartedly recommend John F. Carr’s H. Beam Piper: A Biography (2008) or Typrewriter Killer (2015) as large sections take the form of haphazardly strung together journal entries with little larger historical analysis, I found Carr’s often unnervingly voyeuristic look into his life lay bare the financial realities of publishing SF, even in a moment when magazines paid well. Unfortunately, Carr leaves comments like Piper’s 1961 letter in which he states “John [Cambell, Jr.] is almost as big a fascist sonofabitch as I am — but he wants a couple of points hammered home a bit harder” un-analyzed.
And let me know what pre-1985 science fiction you’ve been reading!
For a large portion of the year, I’ve been collecting evidence on unions in post-WWII to very early 60s American science fiction.1 To be clear, I am not on the hunt for the best by these authors. This project is about stories that reference unions. I will read all the stories I can by American SF authors on the topic during this timeframe for this project in order to understand how authors responded to the historical moment in which they lived. Exciting!
A Bit of Historical Context
During the Great Depression, there was broad consensus among leftist thinkers that the labor movement would lead to radical change. The Second World War and the economic recovery shattered that consensus.2 The unions themselves underwent substantial transformation in this period. American corporate powers and their conservative congressional allies unleashed a “propaganda campaign” against the labor movement.3 This culminated in the contentious passage of the Taft-Hartley Act (1947), which weakened the ability of unions to strike. Over the course of the 1950s, automobile manufacturers and their unions pioneered a new relationship—adopted by other industries—in which companies agreed to grant wage increases, health care, and retirement plans in return for union support of long-term contracts. Increasingly, the political and social transformation of capitalism became secondary to preserving their organizations and maintaining a harmonious relationship with industry.4
Before World World II, anti-capitalist intellectuals imagined the labor movement as the American Proletariat which would, at any moment, transform the capitalist system. After WWII, they struggled to grapple with an economic system they had expected to collapse and the lack of interest in socialism within American unions.5 C. Wright Mills (1916-1962) argued labor had been co-opted by state power.6 Those that continued to support elements of the labor movement, such as Sidney Lens (1912-1986), struggled to rationalize labor’s part in the militarization of Cold War America.7 The one-time Trotskyist, Seymour Martin Lipset (1922-2006), argued that while the labor-movement fell short of representing the “class-based aims of a unified working class” it continued to play a roll in “prohibiting antidemocratic mass movements” by offering workers a role in a “mediating institution.”8 Most involved in the 60s New Left abandoned labor completely as a force for change and grouped unions as part of the liberal establishment, irrelevant in the construction of a new radicalism.9 As in, trade unions “focused on material gains, not fundamental social change.”10
Science fiction written in the post-WWII world likewise reflected outright criticism, deep ambivalence, and confusion over the role of the labor movement. Philip K. Dick’s “Stand-By” (1963) satirizes unions and the media in a post-scarcity world but tentatively suggests conflict between both might lead to the overthrow of a ruling computer and the eventual reemergence of democracy. Milton Lesser’s “Do It Yourself” (1957), one of only a handful unabashedly positive accounts on unions in the 50s, imagines a post-apocalyptic future in which the American individualist ethos reigns supreme. While banned and publicly ridiculed, a union secretly sends out agents to facilitate the rebuilding project. And in H. Beam Piper and John J. McGuire’s “Hunter Patrol” (1959), a ragtag group of disaffected, including a union man (an object of jest), attempt to recruit a soldier from earlier in time to overthrow a dictator. More than a few 50s authors, like Robert Silverberg (whom I’ll feature in a later post) and Clifford D. Simak, read and engaged with contemporary writers on the labor movement.11
Let’s get to the stories!
Lloyd Birmingham’s cover art for Amazing, ed. Cele Goldsmith (October 1963)
2.75/5 (Bad)
Philip K. Dick’s “Stand-By” first appeared in Amazing Stories, ed. Cele Goldsmith (October 1963). You can read it online here.
What pre-1985 science fiction are you reading or planning to read this month? Here’s the August installment of this column.
I often think back to how I got hooked on science fiction. As I have mentioned many times before, I primarily read fantasy–in particular every bloated Tolkein ripoff I could get my hands on–before I moved to science fiction in my late teens. Tad Williams’ fantasy trilogy Memory, Sorrow & Thorn (1988-1998) holds special significance. While looking for other fantasy titles by Williams at the local used book store, I stumbled across his equally bloated four-volume SF sequence Otherland (1996-2001). And so the slow shift began… I had read other science fiction but nothing hooked me quite like Otherland. It’s one of those works that I plan on never rereading—the spell would break.
My article on organized labor in the 1940s and ’50s science fiction of Clifford D. Simak went live! I’d love to hear your thoughts. I’ve spent the last half year researching and reading religiously for this project–from topics such as Minnesota’s unique brand of radical politics to the work of contemporary intellectuals like C. Wright Mills (1916-1962) whom Simak most likely read.
Please check out the complete issue edited by Olav Rokne and Amanda Wakaruk over at Journey Planet. I have also embedded the PDF below.
The issue contains great work on the depiction of labor rights in a vast variety of other SF mediums. There are four articles that touch on vintage SF. The first two listed are by wonderful community members and official “Friends of the Site.”
A selection of previously read novels from my shelf
What pre-1985 science fiction are you reading or planning to read this month? Here’s July’s installment of this column.
Last month I waxed rhapsodic about a powerful interaction with a professor in graduate school… this month I’ll show you a recent obsessive territory I’ve been reading and ruminating about: 1940s and 1950s (and a few from the 60s) social commentary on American affluence, technology, and media. It all started with my media landscapes of the future series–I could not write on the topic unless I read some Marshall McLuhan. And then I had to read about C. Wright Mills to write about Clifford D. Simak and organized labor. And then I needed to track down other popular authors of social commentary published in era. It should not be surprising so much 50s SF revolved around social commentary — it was in the air. You get the idea. This pile represents some of what I now own:
Uncredited cover for the 1960 edition of Pat Frank’s Alas, Babylon (1959)
4/5 (Good)
Pat Frank (1907-1964) began his writing career working for local papers in northeastern Florida before a stint in The Office of Wartime Information (OWI) during WWII. The popular success of Frank’s three nuclear war-themed novels, that culminated with Alas, Babylon (1959), led him to take on the role as a speechwriter for the 1960 Kennedy campaign and beyond.1 As Frank was a lifelong Democrat, Alas, Babylon contains a range of 50s political views that manifest anti-communism and align with the small minority within the party interested in Civil Rights. The novel advocates for vigorous anti-Communist ideology at home and abroad and, in case deterrence fails, survival is possible for those who embody American virtues.
The Narrative Vantage Point Amidst the Mushroom Clouds
Science Fiction and Other Suspect Ruminations 