Lmst

Innen-Illustration von Ed Emshwiller für
"Operation Distress" von Lester del Rey
aus Galaxy, August 1951

#sciencefiction #GalaxyMag #LesterDelRey #EdEmshwiller

Innen-Illustration von Ed Emshwiller für
"Operation Distress" von Lester del Rey
aus Galaxy, August 1951

#sciencefiction #GalaxyMag #LesterDelRey #EdEmshwiller

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

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.

Recommended.

Brief Plot Summaries/Analysis

“It’s Such a Beautiful Day” (1955), Isaac Asimov, 3.5/5 (Good): The anthology starts off with an effective Isaac Asimov satire of the suburban experience. The creation of suburbia in the 1950s (and subsequent mass white flight) generated increased commutes between home and urban work. The home became a bunker to protect the American family from any threat (fallout shelters, a community away from diversity and interaction with “the other,” etc.).2

Asimov speculates that new, almost instantaneous, transportation portals will isolate the family completely from the external world. A minor glitch in the transportation system instills a change in the young Richard Hanshaw, Jr. He isn’t as willing to trust the portal — and decides to trek to school by foot. His teacher calls mother in shock and suggests psychological treatment. An intriguing, and gentle, satire on American conceptions of normalcy, the new-fangled post-War emergence of psychology as a therapeutic practice, and the suburban experience.3

“The Strawberry Window” (1955), Ray Bradbury, 3/5 (Average): The story follows a family on Mars. The father, Will, spends his day constructing the settlement town. He’s possessed by the dream of Mars and humanity’s conquest of the stars: “It’s not just us come to Mars, it’s the race, the whole darn human race, depending on how we make out in our lifetime. This thing is so big I want to laugh, I’m so scared stiff of it” (31). His long-suffering wife Carrie yearns for the small sounds and big memories that anchor her to Earth. And so Will comes up with a compromise, an expensive compromise.

Ultimately, this is beautiful polish to a banal, almost jingoistic, defense of humanity’s supposed destiny to expand and conquer: “There’s nothing better than Man with a capital M in my book” (32). I am far more interested in the more subversive and quietly critical moments of Bradbury’s other Mars stories. This one is simplistic propaganda of conquest. Despite the enjoyable thematic core (the effects of leaving Earth) and polished telling, I’d classify “The Strawberry Window” amongst his most disappointing and forced. For superior Bradbury that I’ve covered, check out “The Highway” (1950) and “The Pedestrian” (1951).

“The Deep Range” (1955), Arthur C. Clarke, 3/5 (Average): One of the reasons I feel a special attraction to 50s SF is its interest in the working-class experience of the future. Of course, for the reader of the present futuristic trappings suggest a certain glorification of what would be a new form of the mundane daily grind. The heroic blue-collar stories in James Gunn’s fix-up Station in Space (1958) come to mind. In Clarke’s “The Deep Range” humanity farms the seas. Instead of terrestrial herds of sheep or cows, shepherds in submersibles with dolphin assistants protect herds of meat-yielding whales from predatory sharks.

An effective slice-of-working class experience set in an evocative locale. It’s an immersive little story that draws on Clarke’s own interest in scuba diving and underwater adventure. Regardless, I remain uninterested in returning to Clarke’s work in anything more than an anthologized tale here and there.

“Alien” (1955), Lester del Rey, 3/5 (Average): Due to an comically improbable collision at sea, Larry Cross and his alcoholic crewmate Al Simmonds find themselves stranded on an island with an alien which “could swim out of a sunken ship at the bottom of the sea” (51). Al Simmonds is injured and Cross must keep the man alive and figure out the alien’s intentions. A classic SF problem story in which man must figure out a modus operandi in a bizarre new scenario. It’s polished. It’s solid. It’s predictable.

“Foster, You’re Dead” (1955), Philip K. Dick, 5/5 (Masterpiece): Mike Foster spends his school days practicing survival skills–digging, making knives, weaving baskets–in case of a nuclear attack. The kids snicker at him as he walks past. They don’t own a fallout shelter at home. His father refuses to pay into the NATS (National Security fund). If a bomb hit, Mike wouldn’t even be granted access to the school shelter. He’s possessed by a deep, perpetual, encompassing trauma.4 His walk home is nightmarish. Mechanical newspaper machines shout excitedly about “war, death, amazing new weapons” (67). The public shelter beckons with its neon lights but he has no money in his pocket for entry. And the store with the new shelter model mocks with its advertisements: “a powered heating and refrigeration system” and “self-servicing air-purification network” with “three decontamination stages for food and water” (68). Reluctant to yet again confront his father about their lack of shelter, he gazes at the new model and talks to the salesmen. He imagines that every evening he’d sleep in its encapsulating embrace, womb-like.

One of the absolute best fallout shelter themed SF stories I’ve ever read. It’s a fascinating collision of crisp prose, commentary on the arms race, and an evisceration of the complicity of commercialism in Cold War terror. Joins William Tenn’s “Generation of Noah” (1951), Daniel Galouye’s Dark Universe (1961), Modecai Roshwald’s Level 7 (1959), and Fritz Leiber’s “The Moon Is Green” (1952) amongst the best on the theme.

“Whatever Happened to Corporal Cuckoo?” (1953), Gerald Kersh, 3.5/5 (Good): In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries surgical diagrams called “Wound Men” crop up in medical miscellanies in Europe. These illustrations–the human form hacked, slashed, smashed, cut, pierced, bloated–served as an annotated table of contents to guide the reader through various injuries and diseases. Kersh imagines a literary version of himself returning to New York City from WWII interacting with a fantastical manifestation of a Wound Man on board the Cunard White Star liner Queen Mary. Corporal Cuckoo, the “Wound Man” in question, regals the narrator (Kersh) with the history of his scarred and mutilated form that mysteriously heals from every injury.

The reader becomes immersed in a historical military narrative that begins in the early 16th century. There’s a bizarre sense of horror and fantastical displacement. Like some crushed and deformed specimen, Cuckoo becomes an encyclopedic, and culminative, glimpse of humanity’s relentless obsession with death and violence.

Interesting and memorable. I’ll keep on the lookout for more of Kersh’s SFF.

“Dance of the Dead” (1955), Richard Matheson, 4/5 (Good): My third favorite story in the anthology transplants the standard narrative of a young adult straying from the path set out by parents and small town community onto a break-neck road trip in a drug and alcohol drenched near-future. Len, Bud, Barbara, and Peggy race their car towards St. Louis. Bud tries to get Barb to take snuggle–“act of promiscuous love-play; usage evolved during W.W. III” (114)–and take drugs: “Have a jab, Bab” (115). In the kaleidoscope of the new and relentless peer pressure the lessons her mother taught her slowly erode. All her inhibitions come crashing down when the quartet see the transcendent nightmare that is the titular dance of the dead.

Manifesting the SPEED of the car, Matheson’s prose resonates with pulse and hum, snippets of song and signage, slang and youthful lust: “At a hundred miles an hour let me DREAM my DREAMS!” (115). It’s frantic. It’s zappy. It’s vibrant. Recommended for fans of the more linguistically experimental (and bleak) of 50s visions.

“Any More at Home Like You?” (1955), Chad Oliver, 2.75/5 (Below Average): Dangerously close to joke story territory (what I classify stories that rely on a silly last page twist designed to generate a chuckle), Oliver re-imagines the classic flying saucer story. A young “man” named Keith crashes his advanced spacecraft in the swanky Bel-Air neighborhood of LA. He seems friendly. Friendly residents take him in. He meets with politicians. He gives a canned speech at the UN. But what’s the secret behind his sudden appearance? Does he really represent a massive Galactic Civilization as he claims? When the pieces all fit together, there’s a gentle sense to it all mixed in with a little, rather silly, “snip” at humanity’s claims to galactic centrality.

If you’re new to Oliver, I recommend tracking downs his two generation ship short stories–“Stardust” (1952) and “The Wind Blows Free” (1957). This one was not for me.

“The Devil on Salvation Bluff” (1955), Jack Vance, 3.25/5 (Above Average): As my last Vance review came in 2021–The Languages of Pao (1958), I looked forward to this anthology as a way to return to his fiction. “The Devil on Salvation Bluff” imagines a religious colony (everyone calls each other “Brother” or “Sister”) on a planet named Glory without clear scientific or societal patterns. If anything, disorder, irregularity, and chaos is the pattern. Regardless, the community attempts to impose an almost monastic order on their lives. The colonists brings with them a massive clock, build communities in precise patterns, and carve up the landscape with linear canals and irrigation.

In classic missionary fashion, the colonists attempt to impose their religion and regularity on the humanoid inhabitants of Glory, nicknamed Flits, that spend their days indulging in their passions, seemingly random rituals, and goat herding. Using salt as a bribe, they momentarily convince the Flits to settle in a new village created by the colonists. After Brother Raymond and Sister Mary kidnap the chief of the Flits to identify the psychosis they think might underline their impulsive, random, and occasionally destructive actions, the true psychological truth of the planet emerges. Vance suggests that dogmatic religion must shift and change to adapt to the moment.

Fits in with an intriguing cluster of often brilliant 50s stories exploring the clash of Earth religion and the SFnal new–Ray Bradbury’s “The Man” (1949), Arthur C. Clarke’s “The Star” (1955), James Blish’s A Case of Conscience (novella 1953, novelized 1958), Walter M. Miller, Jr.’s A Canticle for Leibowitz (stories 1955-1957, novelized 1959), etc.

Somewhat recommended.

“Guinevere for Everybody” (1955), Jack Williamson, 4.5/5 (Very Good): An artificially created Guinevere stands “chained” in a “vending machine” tempting sleepy passengers in an airport with her plaintive calls (169). “You like me, huh?” she asks strangers as they pass (170). “Won’t you by me?” she cajoles (170). The implication is clear. The reason for her sudden appearance in train stations, and others of her model, far less so. Chimberley represents General Cybernetics, a company building “managerial computers” to replace human workers (171). Chimberley attempts the origins of “THE VITAL APPLIANCE!” with her all too human sex appeal, and disturbing tendency to spout advertisements for other products (170). He, little more than a cypher manifesting the displacement of the mechanical age, feels drawn to her as “his best friends were digital computers” (171). He discerns that she is a recent product created, produced, and distributed by one of these vast managerial computers. Giddy with excitement he sees her as “something human management would never have had the brains or the vision to accomplish” (172). He purchases her from the vending machine and sets off to find the producing facility. But a line has been crossed, and another.

This story bothered me (in a good way) far more than it should. Williamson integrates little comments about how the mechanical (think AI unleashed on the US government) ignores the human experience. And how Chimberley, alone, adrift, insular, feels fulfilled by a programmed device that is but a fragment of a capitalistic assault on the consumer. This disturbed satirical gem took me by surprise. I will be on the lookout for more 50s Williamson short stories.

Notes

Eight if we count the one-volume Star Science Fiction Magazine (1958) and Star Short Novels (1954). ↩︎
There is a ton of scholarship on both of these ideas that I have referenced in various reviews in the past. Here is a short list! Elaine Tyler May’s Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (1988, rev. 2017); Thomas Bishop’s Every Home a Fortress: Cold War Fatherhood and the Family Fallout Shelter (2020); Laura McEnaney’s Civil Defense Begins at Home: Militarization Meets Everyday Life in the Fifties (2000); and Robert A. Beauregard’s When America Became Suburban (2006). ↩︎
For “normalcy” see Anna G. Creadick’s Perfectly Average: The Pursuit of Normality in Postwar America (2010); For the growth of psychology as medical practice in the post-War moment see Ellen Herman’s The Romance of American Psychology: Political Culture in the Age of Experts (1995). ↩︎
I am reminded of studies of childhood trauma conducted on the students of Abo Elementary, New Mexico, a school built underground as a fallout shelter. ↩︎

For cover art posts consult the INDEX

For book reviews consult the INDEX

For TV and film reviews consult the INDEX

#1950s #ArthurCClarke #avantGarde #bookReview #bookReviews #books #ChadOliver #fiction #FrederikPohl #GeraldKesh #IsaacAsimov #jackVance #JackWilliamson #LesterDelRey #philipKDick #RayBradbury #RichardMatheson #sciFi #scienceFiction #writing

Best of SF annuals are a venerable tradition. The first such collection was, according to my research, Bleiler and T. E. Dikty’s The Best Science Fiction Stories: 1949. That being said, a slightly later Best SF series left a lineage that spans decades.

I refer to Judith Merril’s The Year’s Greatest SF. Between 1956 and 1968, Judith Merril edited twelve [Note 1] annual anthologies of works that Merril considered to be the best speculative fiction stories of the previous year. Merril’s tastes were unusually wide-ranging [Note 2].

When I revisited the series in 2023 and 2024, it was the structure of her anthologies that caught my attention. I’d seen that arrangement before. Or rather, I had seen it before in anthologies that were published later than Merril’s were.

A Merril Year’s Best included, in addition to the stories, ancillary material in form of a discussion of the state of science fiction in the previous year and a list of noteworthy works that hadn’t quite made the cut for inclusions. Lester del Rey’s less noteworthy Best Science Fiction Stories of the Year, which he helmed from 1972 to 1976, used a similar approach although minus the long list of recommended works. Gardner Dozois’ The Year’s Best Science Fiction, which ran from 1984 to 2018, resembles Merril’s structure far more closely, albeit at greater length. Rich Horton’s The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy also adopted a similar arrangement.

It’s no surprise that Dozois’ Best of would resemble del Rey’s. Dozois’ 1984-to-2018 series was the second time he’d helmed a Best SF series. The first time, he replaced del Rey as editor of The Best Science Fiction Stories of the Year. A consistent format under those circumstances is no surprise, but if you check Dozois’ first volume, its structure resembles Merril’s more than it does del Rey’s.

The similarity between Merril, del Rey, and Dozois could just be three editors independently arriving at a similar arrangement. Far stranger coincidences have happened in science fiction. On the other hand, Aldiss, Harrison, Carr, Strahan, Hartwell, Cramer, and other editors used different approaches, so alternatives did exist. Still, Merril’s series was hardly obscure, and her way to contextualize the best SF stories makes a lot of sense.

Were del Rey and Dozois drawing on Merril [Note 3]? Or is there an earlier source from which all three were drawing? I’d love to know one way or another.

Ah, but what about Rich Horton, you ask? Why no laborious dot-connecting and strained reasoning to connect Horton and Merril? Horton is still alive, so I asked him if Merril’s Best SF influenced him [Note 4]. His answer: “Yes, definitely.”

As you can see, the past is never gone in the present and future, particularly in SF and its annual anthologies of best SF, where each successive generation is influenced and inspired by and builds on what has come before, not just in content and context of the stories themselves but also in how those anthologies are presented to us.

Notes

Unless you count her three Best of the Best selections from earlier volumes as anthologies in their own right, in which case one could argue for as many as fifteen.
⤴️ Return to reference 1
As was her definition of “year.” It wasn’t uncommon for her anthologies to span more than one calendar year. In at least one case, it spanned more than one calendar decade. Well, Merril never said which planet’s year she was using.
⤴️ Return to reference 2
I did check the debut volumes of both the del Rey and Dozois series to see if they mentioned Merril. If they did, I overlooked it.
⤴️ Return to reference 3
Horton is also influenced by Merril’s wide-ranging, eclectic tastes.
⤴️ Return to reference 4

https://seattlein2025.org/2024/12/13/fantastic-fiction-judith-merrils-approach/

#GardnerDozois #JudithMerril #LesterDelRey #RichHorton

The text Fantastic Fiction against a retrofuturistic design of a rounded triangle shape with a gold swirl pattern.

Cover of the 1956 The Year's Best Science-Fiction and Fantasy, with abstract grey shapes, one being held by a hand, against a purple and green background.

The 1984 Best Science Fiction Stories of the Year, with art of two astronauts floating in front of a space station against a reddish-orange background.

The 2009 The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, with a list of contributing authors and a green-skinned feminine alien wearing a hooded cloak.

Fantastic Fiction: Judith Merril’s Approach: Good ideas can persist in science fiction for generations. Take, for example, Judith Merril’s approach to anthologies of the best science fiction, which has inspired at least one modern descendant, anthologies by Rich Horton, and may have inspired two other anthology series as well, those by Lester del Rey and Gardner Dozo… (#GardnerDozois #JudithMerril #LesterDelRey #RichHorton)

Full post: https://seattlein2025.org/2024/12/13/fantastic-fiction-judith-merrils-approach/

Linkdump – Sort, Hvid, Torment Nexus og fantasy

The Man Who Invented Fantasy
Interessant artikel om Lester del Rey og fantasygenrens opståen – som kommercielt genre
https://slate.com/culture/2023/10/lester-del-rey-invention-fantasy-book-publishing.html

The Journey that Matters
Seks videoer om Ursula K. Le Guin.
https://lithub.com/tag/the-journey-that-matters/

A Hand From One Page, A Bomb From Another: Rethinking “Spy vs. Spy”
En lang og ganske fornøjelige artikel om Antonio Prohías’ “Sort & Hvid”, som jeg ærligt talt helt havde glemt, men genfandt med stor fornøjelse.
“To paraphrase Marshall McLuhan, the stupidity is the message.”
https://longreads.com/2023/09/12/rethinking-spy-vs-spy/

We’re sorry we created the Torment Nexus
Charles Stross har som sædvanlig et interessant take på tingene – som f.eks. om man skal lytte til science fiction-forfatteres forudsigelser om fremtiden.
https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2023/11/dont-create-the-torment-nexus.html

#AntonioProhías #CharlesStross #fantasy #LesterDelRey #Linkdump #scienceFiction #tegneserier #UrsulaKLeGuin

https://superkultur.dk/2023/11/10/linkdump-sort-hvid-og-fantasy/

MT VOID #2297: Film reviews of #MafiaMamma #ToniColette, #WhoKilledCaptainAlex #Wakaliwood #NabwanaIGG; links to articles on #AI dangers #robotapocalypse, #LesterDelRey, #PythagoreanTheorem; book comments on #OnlyToSleep #LawrenceOsborne #RaymondChandler #PhilipMarlowe http://leepers.us/mtvoid/VOID1013.htm from @eleeper and #MarkRLeeper

#UnoLibri
#UnoFantascienza
#ScienceFiction
#RaymondJones
#LesterDelRey

2) Ci sono altri esseri intelligenti, ma la rivelazione con Cristo parte comunque dalla Terra e si diffonde nel resto dei mondi abitati.

Alieno in croce (Weeping May Tarry), 1978, Raymond F. Jones e Lester del Rey

Un gruppo di alieni atterra su un pianeta ormai disabitato, dove trova una croce e una Bibbia
https://www.libripulp.it/2022/09/20/raymond-f-jones-e-lester-del-rey-alieno-in-croce/

3/4 (segue nelle risposte)

Copertina del romanzo "Alieno in croce" di Raymond F. Jones e Lester del Rey

Lester del Rey, The Man Who Invented Fantasy

https://slate.com/culture/2023/10/lester-del-rey-invention-fantasy-book-publishing.html

#Fantasy #LesterDelRey

Lester Del Rey’s 1950 novel When the World Tottered combines ancient mythology with sci-fi (it's definitely sci-fi not fantasy). In the near future a farmer meets a valkyrie and ends up in Asgard. Action-packed and imaginative. Recommended.

My review: https://vintagepopfictions.blogspot.com/2023/06/lester-del-reys-when-world-tottered.html

#sciencefiction #scifi #fantasyfiction #fantasy #norsemythology #pulpfiction #LesterDelRey