SFBC 1959
James Nicoll
Dogded a bullet dept: I very nearly copied a blank file on top
of this, rather than copying it to post.
Lists courtesy of Andrew Wheeler
Twelve selections of which I have read three and perhaps part
or all of a fourth.
No attempt to avoid spoilers will be made.
1959
January NO PLACE ON EARTH by Louis Charbonneau
And we begin 1959 with a miss: I am unfamilar with both author
and novel.
February A MILE BEYOND THE MOON by C.M. Kornbluth
Contents yada yada:
Make Mine Mars
The Meddlers
The Events Leading Down to the Tragedy
The Little Black Bag
Everybody Knows Joe
Time Bum
Passion Pills
Virginia
The Slave
Kazam Collects
The Last Man Left in the Bar
The Adventurer
The Words of Guru
Shark Ship
Two Dooms
Most of these I have forgotten but three stand out. "The Little
Black Bag" features a doctor's bag from a distant future where the majority
of people are morons who can not be trusted with sharp objects (as also seen
in Kornbluth's "The Marching Morons" and his collaboration with Pohl, _Search
the Sky_). The twentieth century person who finds the marvelously capable
bag enjoys a brief but memorably career using it.
"Shark Ship" details the exploration of the land by people from
a culture that long ago abandoned it.
"Two Dooms" explores a future where the Nazis and the Japanese
have conquered America. I wonder if PKD ever read this? Needless to say,
being occupied by violent racist thugs turns out to be suboptimal for the
USA.
March THE BEST FROM FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION, 8th Series edited by
Anthony Boucher
Contained
Introduction (Anthony Boucher)
Ministering Angels (C.S, Lewis)
Through Time and Space with Ferdinand Feghoot: VII (Grendel Briarton)
Backwardness (Poul Anderson)
The Wait (Kit Reed)
Origin of the Species (Karen Anderson)
The Up-To-Date Sorcerer (Isaac Asimov)
Epithalamium (Doris Pitkin Buck)
A Deskful of GIrls (Fritz Leiber)
Erimpav (Damon Knight)
The Watchers (Anthony Brode)
Poor Little Warrior! (Brian Aldiss)
The Better Bet (Anthony Brode)
The Omen (Shirley Jackson)
Ye Phantasie Writer and His Catte (Winona McClintic)
Gil Braltar (Jules Verne trans. by L. O. Evans)
In Memoriam Henry Kuttner (Karen Anderson)
The Grantha Sighting (Avram Davidson)
Theory of Rocketry (C. M. Kornbluth)
C.M. Kornbluth: A Memorial Bibliography
A New Lo! (ROn Goulart)
Gorilla Suit (John Shepley)
Captivity (Zenna Henderson)
The Men Who Murdered Mohammed (Alfred Bester)
Through Time and Space with Fredinand Feghoot: VIII (Grendal Briarton)
Valise Macabre (Winona McClintic)
It's funny. Kuttner and Kornbluth have been dead longer than I have
been alive and I still disliked having to type 'memorium' in front of their
names. It's my impression Kuttner got a somewhat rougher deal because of
the scandal that made (if I haven't had a stoke) his work nearly unsellable
under his own name.
I've quite liked most of the Karen and Poul short stories I have
read so I am quite curious what people think of her solo work.
The first McClintic title leads me to think some things never change
in SFdom.
I had no idea Goulart went back to the 1950s.
Feghoots are an example of humor that a benevolent World State
will use Cobalt 60 on. Briarton (and I think that was a pseudonym) wrote
about a hundred trillion of them over the years.
April THE STAR OF LIFE by Edmond Hamilton
There's a huge gap where my experience with Hamilton should go. In
fact I have a dark suspicion the only Hamilton I ever read was an old Captain
Future novel.
May TRIAD by A.E. Van Vogt
This includes three novels (or in the case of Space Beagle,
fix-ups):
_The World of Null-A_
_The Voyage of the Space Beagle_
_Slan_
I read Null-A and gosh, did I hate it. If anything, Knight was too
kind. Stupid, stupid book.
I must admit I have not reread Beagle in over a quarter century
but I enjoyed it as a kid. One of the sections ("Dark Destroyer"?) is
amazingly similar to the basic plot of _Alien_, lawsuitly similar.
I have not read Slan and I probably missed the optimum age to
read it.
June NINE TOMORROWS by Isaac Asimov
Contains
Profession
The Feeling of Power
The Dying Night
I'm in Marsport without Hilda
The Gentle Vultures
All the Troubles in the World
Spell My Name with an S
The Last Question
The Ugly Little Boy
This looks like a pretty good collection. I recall five
without prompting and at least one of them comes up in YASID threads
on this newsgroup on a regular basis.
"The Feeling of Power" centers around humans rediscovering arithmatics
and features one of the earlier uses of a pocket calculator, well before
such items existed.
"The Gentle Vultures" involves the attempts of malevolent aliens
to make humans autodestruct, and reminds me of a superior story by Tenn.
"Spell My Name with an S" explores the deeper reasons behind a
scientist's minor change of surname.
"The Last Question" is one of Asimov's more famous short stories
and is about entropy.
"The Ugly Little Boy" is about the ultimate resolution of a Neandertal
boy's fate. I think this one made it into "X Minus One", a very good series
of SF radio plays.
July NOT IN SOLITUDE by Kenneth F. Gantz
I don't know this one.
August THE ENEMY STARS by Poul Anderson
But this I do (Trivia: I got it out from Dana Porter Arts Library
the same night I saw _Forbidden Planet_ for the first time). This is set
some time in the future, after a crash and a recovery, when teleportation
devices of the 'vapourise original, recreate elsewhere' variety have opened
the stars to humanity. This is the story of a mission to a dark star (a
cool white dwarf, I think, and if so very very old, older than the universe)
that goes terribly wrong and how the crew deals with that.
For some reason Anderson updated this in the 1970s, removing
references to stars with no business having Earthlike worlds and
substituting tachyons for gravity waves as the means of FTL communication.
I have no idea why the original works for me and the revised version does
not, given that the differences in text can't be more than a hundred words,
tops.
September THE FOURTH GALAXY READER edited by Horace Gold
This contains
In This Corner (Horace L. Gold)
I am a Nucleus (Stephen Barr)
Name Your Symptom (Jim Harmon)
Horrer Howce (Margaret St. Clair)
Man of Distinction (Michael Shaara)
The Bomb in the Bathtub (Thomas N. Scortia)
You Were Right, Joe (J. T. McIntosh)
What's He Doing in There (Fritz Leiber)
The Gentlest Unpeople (Frederik Pohl)
The Hated (Paul Flehr)
Kill Me with Kindness (Richard Wilson)
Or All the Seas with Oysters (Avram Davidson)
The Gun Without a Bang (Finn O'Donnevan)
Man in a Quandary (L. J. Stetcher, Jr.)
Blank Form (Arthur Sellings)
The Minimum Man (Robert Sheckley)
I'm sure I must have read the Scortia but the only one I remember
is the gently creepy offering from Davidson.
October OSSIAN'S RIDE by Fred Hoyle
I seem to have missed this one.
November ACROSS THE SEA OF STARS by Arthur C. Clarke
Introduction (Clifton Fadiman)
The Sentinel
Inheritance
Encounter at Dawn
Superiority
Hide and Seek
History Lesson
"If I Forget Thee, O Earth"
Breaking Strain
Silence, Please!
Armaments Race
The Pacifist
The Next Tenants
The Reluctant Orchid
Rescue Party
Technical Error
The Fires Within
Time's Arrow
Jupiter Five
It would be easier to list the stories I missed. I will center out
for praise above and beyond the norm for ACC the following:
"Superiority", in which a Great Power seeks to win a war through
technological superiority, with unfortunate results.
"Rescue Party" is very much a Clarkean travelogue destined to
be sold to John W. Campbell, Jr, as aliens explored the mysteriously
abandoned and doomed Earth.
December THE WAR AGAINST THE RULL by A.E. Van Vogt
Yet another Van Vogt I missed. I think this got an Orb edition
a few years back.
--
"Repress the urge to sprout wings or self-ignite!...This man's an
Episcopalian!...They have definite views."
Pibgorn Oct 31/02
David Cowie
Snippage ahoy!
>
> Most of these I have forgotten but three stand out. "The Little
> Black Bag" features a doctor's bag from a distant future where the majority
> of people are morons who can not be trusted with sharp objects (as also seen
> in Kornbluth's "The Marching Morons" and his collaboration with Pohl, _Search
> the Sky_). The twentieth century person who finds the marvelously capable
> bag enjoys a brief but memorably career using it.
>
This is the story with the alcoholic doctor, isn't it?
>
> It's funny. Kuttner and Kornbluth have been dead longer than I have
> been alive and I still disliked having to type 'memorium' in front of their
> names. It's my impression Kuttner got a somewhat rougher deal because of
> the scandal that made (if I haven't had a stoke) his work nearly unsellable
> under his own name.
>
What scandal was that?
> I have not read Slan and I probably missed the optimum age to
> read it.
>
I first read _Slan_ at age 39. I thought it was harmless, but I doubt
I will re-read it.
>
> October OSSIAN'S RIDE by Fred Hoyle
>
> I seem to have missed this one.
>
Set in near-future Ireland. The reason for Ireland's sudden giant steps
in technological innovation is revealed.
--
David Cowie david_cowie at lineone dot net
James Nicoll
David Cowie <see...@lineone.net> wrote:
>On Sun, 02 Mar 2003 13:17:18 -0500, James Nicoll wrote:
>
>> It's funny. Kuttner and Kornbluth have been dead longer than I have
>> been alive and I still disliked having to type 'memorium' in front of their
>> names. It's my impression Kuttner got a somewhat rougher deal because of
>> the scandal that made (if I haven't had a stoke) his work nearly unsellable
>> under his own name.
>>
>What scandal was that?
As I recall (insert pointing out all the dents and scars on my
head) he wrote and had published a story that was widely considered to
be smutty and had trouble getting published under his own name after
that.
OTOH, boy, he and CL Moore made a great writing team.
David Tate
> March THE BEST FROM FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION, 8th Series edited by
> Anthony Boucher
A lesser Davidson satire, in which Aliens Land Among Us, for a
surprising and humorous reason.
> Captivity (Zenna Henderson)
One of the People stories. If I'm remembering correctly which one it
is, then it was one of the better ones.
> The Men Who Murdered Mohammed (Alfred Bester)
Classic time travel story -- the first (AFAIK) to explore what became
a common approach to the paradox problem.
> Feghoots are an example of humor that a benevolent World State
> will use Cobalt 60 on. Briarton (and I think that was a pseudonym) wrote
> about a hundred trillion of them over the years.
Grendel Briarton was Reg Bretnor. When I was 10, the first thing I
checked in a new issue of F&SF was whether it had a Feghoot or not, so
it had some positive marketing value.
> June NINE TOMORROWS by Isaac Asimov
> Profession
> The Feeling of Power
> The Dying Night
> I'm in Marsport without Hilda
> The Gentle Vultures
> All the Troubles in the World
> Spell My Name with an S
> The Last Question
> The Ugly Little Boy
>
>
> This looks like a pretty good collection. I recall five
> without prompting and at least one of them comes up in YASID threads
> on this newsgroup on a regular basis.
> "Spell My Name with an S" explores the deeper reasons behind a
> scientist's minor change of surname.
This one was also published/anthologized as "Sebatinsky with an S".
It foreshadows a certain plot that later authors came to like. Roger
Zelazny's "Game of Blood and Dust" springs to mind.
"The Dying Night" is a Wendell Urth mystery.
"I'm in Marsport Without Hilda" is a humorous adventure story that I
never much cared for. It seemed dated even when I first read it in
the '70s.
David Tate
Konrad Gaertner
>
> "I'm in Marsport Without Hilda" is a humorous adventure story that I
> never much cared for. It seemed dated even when I first read it in
> the '70s.
In the author's note he says he wrote it to prove that he could write
love stories, but choses not to.
--KG
Peter D. Tillman
jdni...@panix.com (James Nicoll) wrote:
> February A MILE BEYOND THE MOON by C.M. Kornbluth
[contents snipped]
>
> "Two Dooms" explores a future where the Nazis and the Japanese
> have conquered America. I wonder if PKD ever read this? Needless to say,
> being occupied by violent racist thugs turns out to be suboptimal for the
> USA.
>
This is one of my favorite Kornbluths -- parts of it, eg the Japanese
officer riding a motorized skateboard in California, are as vivid as the
last time I read the piece. The setup is a bit dodgy -- Indian shaman at
a pueblo near Los Alamos yada yada-- but the execution is absolutely
gripping
> March THE BEST FROM FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION, 8th Series edited by
> Anthony Boucher
>
> Contained
>
> A Deskful of GIrls (Fritz Leiber)
-- who are ghost girls, kept in envelopes iirc. I never figured this one
out. Nor did it seem worth the effort.
> Erimpav (Damon Knight)
Well, we can guess what this one's tuoba...
> Poor Little Warrior! (Brian Aldiss)
A classic early dinosaur-hunter story. The mighty hunter gets his
bronto, but [SPOILER WARNING]
the parasites decamp, and the biter, er, shooter is bit. Very nicely
done.
Cheers -- Pete Tillman
Lawrence Watt-Evans
> Feghoots are an example of humor that a benevolent World State
>will use Cobalt 60 on. Briarton (and I think that was a pseudonym) wrote
>about a hundred trillion of them over the years.
Grendel Briarton is a pen name and anagram of Reginald Bretnor.
--
The Misenchanted Page: http://www.sff.net/people/LWE/ Last update 3/1/03
My latest novel is ITHANALIN'S RESTORATION, published by Tor.
Mike Van Pelt
Peter D. Tillman <til...@aztec.asu.edu> wrote:
>> TWO DOOMS by C.M. Kornbluth
>
>This is one of my favorite Kornbluths -- parts of it, eg the Japanese
>officer riding a motorized skateboard in California, are as vivid as the
>last time I read the piece. The setup is a bit dodgy -- Indian shaman at
>a pueblo near Los Alamos yada yada-- but the execution is absolutely
>gripping
Dodgy... yes. But well set up for all that...
SPOILER
SPOILER
SPOILER
SPOILER
SPOILER
The shaman thinks it's perfectly safe to let the physicist
try a peyote trip, because "white men can't think outside
the here and now"... but the physicist understands relativity,
quantum weirdness, etc., and *can* think outside the box.
Yeah, silly, but an interesting concept, and tied in with
the (AIUI) oddities in tense in the Navajo language.
--
The only meaningful memorial, the only one that will really count, will be when there are streets, tunnels, living and working quarters named after each of those astronauts--and those who will yet die in this effort--in permanently occupied stations on the moon, on Mars, in the asteroid belt, and beyond.
-- Bruce F. Webster
Shaad M. Ahmad
James Nicoll <jdni...@panix.com> wrote:
>November ACROSS THE SEA OF STARS by Arthur C. Clarke
> "If I Forget Thee, O Earth"
This still makes me choke up a bit. A story about a man on a lunar
colony taking his son to the surface to show him the glowing (aftermath
of a nuclear war) earth, the home that he and his descendants won't be
able to set foot on for many generations. Yet another one of those starkly
sentimental stories that Clarke did so well.
>December THE WAR AGAINST THE RULL by A.E. Van Vogt
>
> Yet another Van Vogt I missed. I think this got an Orb edition
>a few years back.
I don't know if I would enjoy this if I reread it now; I think Van
Vogt is best read between the ages of 9 to 12. However, this novel does
include the first mention of the "basilisk" effect, a figure or illus-
tration that can short circuit/hack into your brain, that has since
been used by a number of writers.
Regards.
- Shaad
Niall McAuley
> I must admit I have not reread Beagle in over a quarter century
> but I enjoyed it as a kid. One of the sections ("Dark Destroyer"?) is
> amazingly similar to the basic plot of _Alien_, lawsuitly similar.
The huge ship setting down to explore ruins on a dark, deserted planet,
taking an alien on board, mayhem through the ships corridors are from
"Black Destroyer", but the detail of laying eggs inside human hosts to
feed newborn aliens is from "Discord in Scarlet" in the same volume.
Both of Van Vogt's monsters were more intelligent and technically
capable than the alien in _Alien_, smarter than any human too,
except for a Nexialist.
> I have not read Slan and I probably missed the optimum age to
> read it.
One of Van Vogts good ones.
> December THE WAR AGAINST THE RULL by A.E. Van Vogt
>
> Yet another Van Vogt I missed.
Another good one, if more obviously a fix-up.
--
Niall [real address ends in se, not es.invalid]
Monte Davis
>When I was 10, the first thing I
>checked in a new issue of F&SF was whether it had a Feghoot or not, so
>it had some positive marketing value.
Whwnm I was that age (1959) my parents gave me a subscription to F&SF,
for which I bless them to this day. They may have started cursing
themselves when I inflicted each month's Feghoot on them.
-Monte Davis
John M. Gamble
In his biography he said that he wrote it to show that he could write
about sex (the suspect gives himself away by, erm, other means - let's
put it this way, it's a good thing all the suspects were men) but his
editor made him change it.
He took it as a sign that no one would accept him writing that way.
Of course, that was in the fifties.
--
-john
February 28 1997: Last day libraries could order catalogue cards
from the Library of Congress.
wamccabe
> In article <pan.2003.03.02....@lineone.net>,
> David Cowie <see...@lineone.net> wrote:
> >On Sun, 02 Mar 2003 13:17:18 -0500, James Nicoll wrote:
> >
> >> It's funny. Kuttner and Kornbluth have been dead longer than I have
> >> been alive and I still disliked having to type 'memorium' in front of
their
> >> names. It's my impression Kuttner got a somewhat rougher deal because
of
> >> the scandal that made (if I haven't had a stoke) his work nearly
unsellable
> >> under his own name.
> >>
> >What scandal was that?
>
> As I recall (insert pointing out all the dents and scars on my
> head) he wrote and had published a story that was widely considered to
> be smutty and had trouble getting published under his own name after
> that.
>
was supposedly the editor's idea in this case (not that Kuttner hadn't been
doing this before but they were Horror / Detective stories).
While he was out of favour, Lewis Padgett wrote "The Twonky" and "Mimsy were
the Borogroves" and Lawrence O'Donnell did "Clash by night" and "Fury".
> OTOH, boy, he and CL Moore made a great writing team.
>
> --
> "Repress the urge to sprout wings or self-ignite!...This man's an
> Episcopalian!...They have definite views."
>
> Pibgorn Oct 31/02
---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
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David Allsopp
<wamc...@ic24.net> writes
>While he was out of favour, Lewis Padgett wrote "The Twonky" and "Mimsy were
>the Borogroves" and Lawrence O'Donnell did "Clash by night" and "Fury".
BoroGOVES! Borogoves borogoves borogoves! No "r"!!
Sorry. I've calmed down now. Pet hate. Sorry.
--
David Allsopp Houston, this is Tranquillity Base.
Remove SPAM to email me The Eagle has landed.
David Tate
> In article <v6jgpc7...@corp.supernews.com>, wamccabe
> <wamc...@ic24.net> writes
> >While he was out of favour, Lewis Padgett wrote "The Twonky" and "Mimsy were
> >the Borogroves" and Lawrence O'Donnell did "Clash by night" and "Fury".
>
> BoroGOVES! Borogoves borogoves borogoves! No "r"!!
>
> Sorry. I've calmed down now. Pet hate. Sorry.
Perhaps they stole the 'r' from Febuary. (There's gotta be a 'Letter
Man' animated sketch in there somewhere...)
David Tate