fiction

Short Story Review: Poul Anderson’s “The Troublemakers” (1953)

/ Joachim Boaz / 27 Comments

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.

Previously: Fred Saberhagen’s “Birthdays” (1976)

Next Up: George Hay’s Flight of the “Hesper” (1952)

  • 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.

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Book Review: In the Drift, Michael Swanwick (1985)

/ Joachim Boaz / 17 Comments
  • Mark Salwowski’s cover for the 1989 edition

3.25/5 (Above Average)

In The Drift (1985), a fix-up novel comprised of two Nebula-nominated short works–“Mummer Kiss” (1981) and “Marrow Death” (1984), maps a new way forward in an ecologically and genetically ravaged post-apocalyptic age. The entire concoction decays with a sense of grim unease and cavorts around piles of dead that would make a triumvir from the Late Roman Republic proud. It’s a violent, erotic, and disquieting experience that can’t entirely hide its flaws behind the decadent panache.

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

/ Joachim Boaz / 67 Comments
  • A selection of read volumes from my shelf

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!

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Exploration Log 6: Clifford D. Simak’s 1971 Worldcon Guest of Honor Speech

/ Joachim Boaz / 21 Comments
  • Graphic created by my father

In an August 1967 editorial in Galaxy titled “S.F. as a Stepping Stone”, Isaac Asimov (1920-1992) voiced his extreme disapproval of the New Wave movement as “‘mainstream’ with just enough of a tang of the not-quite-now and the not-quite-here to qualify it for inclusion in the genre” (4). He concludes: “I hope that when the New Wave has deposited its forth and receded, the vast and solid shore of science fiction will appear once more and continue to serve the good of humanity” (6). The implication is clear: there is an Platonic science fiction form that exists (and that he writes) that must be rediscovered.

Fellow “classic” author Clifford D. Simak (1904-1988) offered a different, and far more inclusive, take at his Guest of Honor speech at Norescon 1 (Worldcon 1971). In an environment of “shrill” disagreement between various New Wave and anti-New Wave camps, Simak celebrated science fiction as a “forum of ideas” open to all voices (148).

Preliminary note: I read the speech in Worldcon Guest of Honor Speeches, ed. Mike Resnick and Joe Siclari (2006). You can listen to the speech (at the 28:00 min. mark) here. For a wonderful range of photographs of Simak at the convention, check out this indispensable photo archive.

As I did with six Simak interviews earlier this year, I will paraphrase his main points and offer a few thoughts of my own.

Let’s get to the speech!

  • Jay Kay Klein’s photograph of Robert Silverberg, Clifford D. Simak, and Isaac Asimov at the 1971 Worldcon
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Short Fiction Reviews: Leigh Kennedy’s “Salamander” (1977), “Whale Song” (1978), “Detailed Silence” (1980), and “Speaking10 to Others2; Speaking3 to Others20” (1981)

/ Joachim Boaz / 24 Comments

In the past few years, I’ve put together a series on the first three published short fictions by female authors who are completely new to me or whose most famous SF novels fall mostly outside the post-WWII to mid-1980s focus of my reading adventures.

Today I’ve selected the first four stories by an author I’ve only recently started to read–Leigh Kennedy (1951-). I’d previously reviewed “Helen, Whose Face Launched Twenty-Eight Conestoga Hovercraft” (1982) and placed her on the list for this series. According to SF Encyclopedia, Kennedy’s “writing is succinct, polished, lucent, and her stories are emotionally penetrating; it is unfortunate that she has fallen from the world of novel publishing, though continuing to work as a professional indexer.” And I can’t agree more! Her first four stories show great promise and moments of refined vision. I can’t help but think the backlash to her Nebula-nominated (and best-known work) “Her Furry Face” (1983) might have had some effect on her trajectory.

So far I’ve featured Alice Eleanor Jones (1916-1981), 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-). To be clear, I do not expect transformative or brilliant things from first stories. Rather, it’s a way to get a sense of subject matter and concerns that first motivated authors to put pen to paper.

Let’s get to the stories!

  • George Schelling’s interior art for Leigh Kennedy’s “Salamander” in Analog, ed. Ben Bova (June 1977)
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Updates: Recent Science Fiction Purchases No. CCCXXXIX (Frank Herbert, Alan E. Nourse, Ann Maxwell, Craig Harrison)

/ Joachim Boaz / 11 Comments

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

1. Frank Herbert’s Destination: Void (1966, rev. 1978)

  • Paul Alexander’s cover for the 1978 edition

From the back cover: “DESTINATION: VOID

THE COMPLETELY REVISED AUTHOR’S EDITION OF THE CLASSIC DEEP-SPACE ADVENTURE!

‘When the publishers announced that they were going to bring out a new edition of DESTINATION: VOID, they offered me the opportunity to make any changes I felt were necessary. Because of the tightly interwoven scientific premises behind this story and rapid development in the fields related to these premises, it would be extraordinary if discoveries across thirteen years did not dictate certain revisions.

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Updates: Recent Science Fiction Purchases No. CCCXXXVIII (Gregory Benford, Dean McLaughlin, Warren Norwood, and Aileen La Tourette)

/ Joachim Boaz / 21 Comments

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

1. In Alien Flesh, Gregory Benford (1986)

  • Joe Bergeron’s cover for the 1986 edition

From the back cover: “A journey into the depts of space and time by Gregory Benford, winner of the Nebula Award.”

Contents: “In Alien Flesh” (1978), “Time Shards” (1979), “Redeemer” (1979), “Snatching the Bot” (1977), “Relativistic Effects” (1982), “Nooncoming” (1978), “To the Storming Gulf” (1985), “White Creatures” (1975), “Me/Days” (1984), “Of Space/Time and the River” (1985), “Exposures” (1981), “Time’s Rub” (1984), “Doing Lennon” (1975).

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Short Story Reviews: Ted White’s “Growing Up Fast in the City” (1971), “Junk Patrol” (1971), and “Things Are Tough All Over” (1971)

/ Joachim Boaz / 10 Comments

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)

3.75/5 (Good)

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Book Review: Herovit’s World, Barry N. Malzberg (1973)

/ Joachim Boaz / 14 Comments

(Charles Moll’s cover for the 1974 edition)

3.5/5 (Good)

Note: Today is Barry N. Malzberg’s birthday!

Upon reading In the Enclosure (1973) I was immediately seduced by Barry N. Malzberg’s metafictional brand of science fiction — best illustrated by his masterpieces Beyond Apollo (1972) and Revelations (1972).  Although Herovit’s World (1973) contains many of the same metafictional trademarks of Malzberg’s best work, it should be noted that the novel is not science fiction and more a work about writing (pulp) science fiction.  In this case, the mental collapse of a pulp writer whose life may or may not contain “true” autobiographical kernels from Malzberg’s own experience Continue reading →