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.
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.
Ted White (1938-) took over as editor of Amazing Science Fiction and Fantastic from Barry N. Malzberg in October, 1968. As the magazines were bi-monthly and Malzberg had already acquired stories for multiple later issues, White’s first issues appeared in 1969. He’d accepted the position on the condition that he phase out the reprints (not acquired by White) slowly over multiple years.1 Apparently while White was not a fan of the New Wave movement, he “was all for more daring fiction exploring adult themes and saw no reason why these stories could not co-exist alongside more traditional stories.”2 Thus, his two magazines attempted to appeal to a wide-range of readers.
By the early 1970s, White demonstrated growing interest in even “greater liberalization of science fiction, in line with what was happening to youth nationwide.” He saw SF as “a vehicle to push back on the barriers of the ‘establishment’, with no suppression of soft drugs, ‘healthy sex,’ or free expression.”3 His magazines included stories emphasizing future sex in all its forms” far more frequently than its competitors.4 As the pay rates of both magazines were low–White could only pay 1 cent a word vs. 3 cents for the bigger magazines of the day–he attempted to appeal to writers who did not mesh well with the “establishment.”5
White did not earn a living wage as the editor despite the magazines consuming much of his time. In order to cobble together a meager living he also served as art director (which included cutting and pasting each issue) and wrote stories to publish in his own magazines!6 White’s first professional stories appeared in 1962 after a decade of fan writing.
This post includes three of White’s own violent and bleak visions of future society that appeared in Amazing and Fantastic. While he might not have been a fan of the experimental tendencies of the movement, his obsession with violating taboos, scenes of urban decay, and general miasmic gloom are certainly on display.
I am increasingly fascinated by the more radical, bleak, and grimy stories within White’s magazines–both from his pen and others–and plan on exploring more. See my earlier reviews of Lisa Tuttle’s “Stone Circle” (1976) and Grania Davis’ “New-Way-Groovers Stew” (1976).
Let’s get to the stories!
Jeff Jones’ cover for Amazing Science Fiction, ed. Ted White (May 1971)
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.”
While perusing Eric Garber and Lyn Paleo’s indispensable resource Uranian Worlds: A Reader’s Guide to Alternative Sexuality in Science Fiction and Fantasy (1983, second ed. 1990), my eyes fell on stories by Lisa Tuttle and Grania Davis.1 I’ve never read the work of Lisa Tuttle and I know little to nothing about Grania Davis beyond “My Head’s in a Different Place, Now” (1972), which I tersely dismissed as “zany and forgettable.” I’m glad I decided to pair the stories. Both tackle the inability of 60s radicalism to create a lasting ideological movement. Both stories come with caveats.
Preliminary Note: In the future, I might cover problematic stories on this theme or others with a strong heterosexual bias. They too reveal how people thought about queer topics through the lens of science-fictional extrapolation at different points in history.
Let’s get to the stories!
Tom Barber’s cover for Amazing Stories, ed. Ted White (March 1976)
4.25/5 (Very Good)
Lisa Tuttle’s “Stone Circle” first appeared in Amazing Stories, ed. Ted White (March 1976). You can read it online here. It was nominated for the 1977 Nebula Award for Best Short Story.
Pat Murphy’s first novel The Shadow Hunter (1982) is an achingly beautiful tale of displacement. In the distant past, a young Neanderthal boy embarks on a hunt to claim his name and to learn the nature of the world. In the near future, a mogul named Roy Morgan wants to create a Pleistocene oasis (The Project) ensconced in a valley in an increasingly urban world. Morgan employs two damaged souls, Amanda and Cynthia, to aim his machines–that reach backward and forward into time.
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:
Which books/covers/authors in the post intrigue you? Which have you read? Disliked? Enjoyed?
1. Away From the Here and Now, Clare Winger Harris (1947)
Uncredited–JM initials but no known name–cover for the 1st edition
From the inside flap: “In this age of atomic bombs and radar to the moon, Mrs. Harris’ stories may prove closer to the “here and now” than the title would indicate. Mrs. Harris Proudly claims the distinction of being the first woman science-fiction writer in the country. Each of her stories is based upon a sound scientific fact, carried so plausibly to the nth degree that at no time does it overstain credulity. The stories possess the qualities of dealing with ideas of big importance to the human race, of presenting those ideas in a plausible form, and of appealing to emotions that exist deep within the heart of every human being whether he be scientific or not.
Science Fiction and Other Suspect Ruminations 