Science Fiction in Dialogue with The Great Depression: Frank K. Kelly’s “Famine on Mars” (1934)

March 26, 2025June 6, 2025 / Joachim Boaz / 7 Comments

Graphic created by my father

Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941) confides in the introduction to his travel memoir Puzzled America (1935) that the Great Depression was inescapable: “I was a writer of tales. It might be that I should have remained just that, but there is difficulty. There are, everywhere in America, these people now out of work. There are women and children hungry and others without enough clothes.”¹ Edgar Albion Lyons, in the author’s note to his science fiction novel The Chosen Race: A Novel Based on the Depression and Machine Age (1936), echoes this sentiment: “The following chapters were written during the months of 1932 when the words ‘Depression’ and ‘Unemployment’ were on everyone’s lips.”² Magazine science fiction, with its eye towards the marvelous technological future, likewise could not escape contemporary economic, political, and societal convulsions.³ Science, “in the form of a hypothesized device or theory,” enabled exciting adventures but also the exploration of “diverse and dire social implications.”⁴

On May 9th, 1934, a massive two-day dust storm caused by severe drought and human-made factors, removed massive amounts of Great Plains topsoil. The Dust Bowl unleashed its fury. The dust clouds reached Chicago and cities in the east, blotted out the Statue of Liberty and the United States Capitol. Red snow fell in New England.⁵ In the September 1934 issue of Astounding, a twenty-year-old Frank K. Kelly published “Famine on Mars” (1934) about a desperate attempt to assist Martians dying of thirst and starvation after a drought. In Kelly’s vision, The Combine, Earth’s government, deliberately caused the genocide and refuses to provide assistance.⁶

M. Marchioni’s interior art for “Famine on Mars” (1934)

Continue reading →

Book Review: Star Science Fiction Stories No. 3, ed. Frederik Pohl (1955)

March 9, 2025March 16, 2025 / Joachim Boaz / 35 Comments

Richard Powers’ cover for the 1955 edition

3.5/5 (collated rating: Good)

Ballantine Books’ illustrious science fictional program started with a bang–Star Science Fiction Stories. According to Mike Ashley’s Transformations: The Story of Science-Fiction Magazines from 1950 to 1970 Frederik Pohl’s anthology series of original (mostly) stories was “intended as both a showcase of Ballantine’s authors and a lure to new writers.” Paying better rates than magazines, the Star series foreshadowed the explosion of original anthologies that would provide a sustained challenge to the eminence held in the 50s by the magazine.

I’ve selected the third volume of the six-volume series.¹ It contains an illustrative cross-section of 50s science fiction. Philip K. Dick’s “Foster, You’re Dead” (1955), Richard Matheson’s “Dance of the Dead” (1955), and Jack Williamson’s “Guinevere for Everybody” (1955) are not to be missed.

Continue reading →

Exploration Log 7: Interview with Jordan S. Carroll, author of Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right (2024)

January 6, 2025January 6, 2025 / Joachim Boaz / 22 Comments

Graphic created by my father

Over the last few years, I have attempted to incorporate a smattering of the vast range of spectacular scholarship on science fiction into my reviews and highlight works with my Exploration Log series that speak to me.¹ Today I have an interview with Jordan S. Carroll about his brand-new book, Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right (2024). In the book, he examines the ways the alt-right uses classic science fiction imagery and authors to mainstream fascism and advocate for the overthrow of the state.

You can buy an inexpensive physical copy ($10) directly from the University of Minnesota Press website or an eBook version ($3.79) on Amazon.

Thank you so much for agreeing to this interview. First, can you introduce yourself and research interests?

Continue reading →

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

November 30, 2024January 4, 2025 / 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

Continue reading →

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

September 25, 2024September 25, 2024 / 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!