Gutenberg Sci-Fi 4
Thomas M. Disch
Thomas Disch worked many jobs for money… and wrote for magazines, newspapers and, towards the end, online. He started in late SciFi and, despite being better known as a poet, remained a fan and author. Utopia? Never! is a very early short story, and is societal speculation with little trace of SciFi style, though it has a SciFi, or angry young man, plot‐end. What SciFi there is jars a little against the ethos—there’s clearly style and themes in this horror‐shock story that could be worked at length. Suggested alternate title, ‘Utopia, Balderdash!’. The Demi‐Urge is a report by alien civilisation on Earth civilisation, with a twist argument to cram into it’s short length—that perhaps humans are ruled by machines, or are they? Solves the style problem, though traces remain in character‐interaction‐dunderheadedness, and an argument worth pondering.
Only two on Project Gutenberg. I wouldn’t expect more, but don’t confuse quantity with quality.
Cory Doctorow
Cory Doctorow should have a place here. At the time of writing, he is contemporary. Cory Doctorow believes in open software, publishes under commons licences, and you can find his SciFi writing on Project Gutenberg (open licences, yes?). Printcrime is a story of defending digital freedoms for people. It’s written in a pulp fiction style that would be utterly convincing if not for modern social references and modern technology. Nice use of the lead character too.
Thirteen items, says Gutenberg…
Dave Dryfoos
…who the Science Fiction Encyclopedia says was “generally competent”. No further information except he edited a story collection. Uniform of a Man is a short story about one of those Fifties types who is very angry, in this case because he’d been chained to a post for years. Unlikely, and it’s not The Count of Monte Cristo, but yeh, competent.
Eight more on Gutenberg by Dave Dryfoos
Harlan Ellison
Nowadays he’s known for arguing with people and making a big show of taking over night‐time parties. He also wrote science fiction, though it is better construction to say he wrote a lot, of which some is called science fiction. Glow Worm was the first story by Harlan Ellison published, and there’s a lot of Harlan Ellison in it. The drive to say something, here about loneliness, means his construction, as often with those who are driven, is not wasteful, skimping or incoherent. There’s also bad science—how can an amateur scientist with no help construct a spaceship, how can any living organism not break when irradiated? But this is maybe better seen as a lack of realism. There is reason—to illustrate overloaded personal reaction, which is a rare intent from the main ages of science fiction. Later, Harlan Ellison became an editor for, and promoter of, the New Age of Science Fiction—‘Glow Worm’ will throw (green) light on why.
The downloads count is a feature of Gutenberg I have no interest in and never refer to elsewhere. Yet the download count of Cosmic Striptese is a puzzle. Is it the snazzy title? No, not the title… I’ll not tell you how, but likely because this story delvers on it’s title. It also shows how M. Ellison was however of the fiction of his age. The characters and dialogue have some of the sparkle of Kuttner and Moore, but are otherwise unlikely and one‐dimensional. Cartoons can do way better than this, as can film (which Ellison wrote for). But the story is well‐made and coherent. And then there is Peter Merton’s Private Mint. This is fantasy wrapped in an enabling excuse of SciFi—it’s time travel! But the work has a good way with it’s idea, adding practical limitations and sticking to them, then adding a condition that is consistent and leads to a fun end. Again, though the characters or wider drama are far from realistic or complex, the drama is developed into plot idea‐by‐idea, which others could learn from. Perhaps not as endearingly odd as the work of Robert Sheckley, this story is wide ranging, and worth a try—you may prefer the character‐based writing and gung‐ho style.
What’s on Gutenberg is maybe five very early stories from a huge output. Though the stories predate work Harlan Ellison is famous for, and which I can’t vouch for, they serve as a dose.
Philip José Farmer
Mr. Farmer was one of those homegrown hackers who love to tinker with the mechanism. A Laurence Sterne of sci‐fi, it can be difficult to say if it’s sci‐fi when he’s prising the badge off to see how it was glued to him. I tried Heel!, which reworks ancient mythology as a film production running into a personal and industrial hell overseen by space pilots. I end that it’s large‐part sci‐fi, well done and original, also airily slick and hard to finish. Or even carry on. Later, I tried They Twinkled Like Jewels. This was unlike—a horror story told from an incomplete perspective with fantastic plot digressions. Outstanding pulp‐horror writing—I read it twice—but where this meets Sci‐Fi, I’m at a loss. In Tongues of the Moon José Farmer takes on guns in space, but highlights with touches of plausible technology, halfway‐likely psychology, keeps action to the moon, uses scenarios with no easy resolution, mines a tricky political background that nowadays would be called Postmodern, and exploits these minerals for vivid scenes including the earth being destroyed by humans. So makes a worn and dull subject gleam and challenge in it’s depths. The Wounded is well‐written with cute asides as it literalises, or physicalizes?, mythology—maybe not the most moving, but you’ve likely never read a plot like this, and I’m not going to spoil it.
There’s no swathe of José Farmer on Gutenberg, currently eight, but clearly worth rooting through.
Charles L. Fontenay
Brief coverage online that he worked for newspapers and wrote a handful of novels. The Gift Bearer is a mild investigation of censorship which throws in a fantasy woman as illustration. Amiable, but barely extra‐terrestrial.
Root round in the trunk, there’s twenty four by Charles L. Fontenay.
H. B. Fyfe
The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction has a little on this writer, saying he wrote many stories and a novel about how clever humans “outwit thick‐skulled… Aliens”. A Transmutation of Muddles builds up a hustle of promises and insurance counter‐claims with aliens dramatised like every other swindled civilisation. The aliens are scaly, do not wear much and are coloured brown.
H. B, Fyfe was something of a fixture, there are twenty two on Gutenberg.
Jack Finney
NB: not represented on Gutenberg
Work in advertising lead to writing, mostly not SciFi but fantasy such as ghosts and time travel. The film adaption Invasion of the Body Snatchers is still well‐known.
Scott Fitzgerald
What, that Scott Fitzgerald? ‘The Great Gatsby’? Yes. Look here, in Tales of the Jazz Age, which has in it a story ‘The Diamond as big as The Ritz’. If you don’t know this one, let me tell a little. A rich boy is sent to a school where he makes a friend of another elusive boy. Which second boy invites the first boy to visit his home. Which visit requires a long journey through contrivance and disguise, and ends in an enclave of fabulous wealth. Here’s the proposal: what separates this story from the other ‘hidden world’ stories on this list? That the story never mentions aliens or spaceflight? I submit to you that’s a lousy definition, like saying a romance can not be a romance if the protagonist is not called ‘Mabel’. The hidden world here is a near exact copy of the likes you can find elsewhere on this list (see Edgar Pangbourn and, especially, Abraham Merrit)—empire riches populated by ‘natives’. Perhaps you wish to claim Mr. Fitzgerald’s notion has a personal or social edge, in that it is generated by finance? But even the through‐drama, when it arrives, has the cartoon construction of what passed ffor ‘Sci‐Fi’. I say you can’t have this both ways, either this is Sci‐Fi, because ‘hidden world’ stories are Sci‐Fi, or the other stories are not Sci‐Fi. Anyway, despite Mr. Fitzgerald’s claims in the index, Mr. Pangbourn and Merritt are more inventive in their world‐construction, and their characters (such as these constructions need character, which they do not), are more complex. Fitzgerald is merely more archetypical, the story a perhaps more acute basic construct, and has his prose style to recommend.
Miriam Allen De Ford
Described herself as ‘born feminist’ when that was a radical stance. Also known as a writer of mysteries, but had commitment to SciFi as a genre (comparable perhaps to the later Doris Lessing?). The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction’s verdict of ‘crisp, clear‐cut style that sometimes lacks grace but never vigour’ sits awkwardly with Not Snow Nor Rain. This folksy story about a postman near retirement could almost be a Hippie song from the Sixties… before it’s story of first contact amiably and mysteriously signs off on the cosmos. This entry worth further investigation!
Eight, eight on Gutenberg by Miriam Allen De Ford.
Raymond Z. Gallun
Damon Knight had criticism worth noting—to summarise, M. Gallun had a duff ear for the English language, but wrote good aliens. Errrm… Asteroid of Fear is a stomper from the days before the Sci‐Fi age; and yes, it’s a planet story, with dodgy but earnest science, characters cut from a western, and a writing style that gleefully deluges cliche. But… there is a but… it’s never incoherent, and the headlong lunge cokes an inferno about a drama few others would try. No aliens. but stars vegetables.
After near‐ten years silence, M. Gallun returned in the Golden age with, wait for it… novels. One of the first was People Minus X. The complaints about style, this time from the Science Fiction Encyclopedia alongside Damon Knight, feel starchy—it’s adequate, more than I can say of other fiction I’ve read. For starters, great title, and if, as Damon Knight says, his characters can’t stop speechifying, it’s about subjects interesting, even if this author is not one to delve. And you can’t argue with the heap of ideas about androids, miniaturisation, communications, travel, social responses to technology and more—it’s a box of tricks. One of the most fun novel‐length texts on this list.
There’s a fair few of Raymond Gallun on Project Gutenberg, but few of the semi‐famous early short stories—most entries seem to be untracked mid‐period novels.
Randall Garrett
Randall Garrett is best known for being a collaborator with Robert Silverberg, but was prolific enough himself. He also had a reputation as a wild man. The Price of Eggs is an odd short story, far more SocFi than SciFi, about a man who compromises himself with aliens so needs extracting from his omelette. Not only is the proposition unusual, so is the reverse‐ending and M. Garret’s summoning of his people is welcome for more subtlety than the usual action drama. Time Fuze is a micro‐story space‐fantasy developed to a logical and planet‐shattering end, with better character than usual. Psichopath, credit for the daft title, is a spy story that throws in limited mind‐reading ability that, reading so far suggests, is field for this author. Also includes a neat point about the progress of scientific development, a few differentiated characters and architecture that resembles a particle accelerator. My only dislike was a few stretches that use a technique of the time, to explain what has happened, “Because the two seaweeds were reading cat, it was obvious the pyrites was not the perpetrator of the jack”. Otherwise, a stack of fun.
There’s something like 80 titles by Randall Garrett on Gutenberg, so I’ve only chipped a stone from a mountain.
Randall Garrett and Laurence M. Janifer
These two wrote a patch of work together. Credited to a ‘Mark Phillips’ Out Like a Light is a full‐length book originally serialised (my guess) as ‘The Impossibles’. The story starts with an indisputably funny and potent premise that people who approach a certain style and model of car are being mysteriously knocked cold. At bottom the story is a mix of detective fiction and the paranormal. This premise is diluted by the mild stupidity of the characters, at odds with the way these same characters land on the right solution when other possibilities may have existed. Still, the characters the authors create are endearing, perhaps more easy to root for than in most SciFi, maybe a light mockery of the old pulp‐fiction detectives, and the authors do stoke up some drama.
James E. Gunn
A historian and sometime critic of ScuFi, James Gunn eventually became something only Americans could invent, a professor of SciFi. A writer with a grasp of pulp fiction writing, but in the more thoughtful and morose later style. Breaking Point, the Science Fiction Encyclopedia says, is a ‘fix up’, several short stories assembled into a novel. The story has one of those ideas that’s a winner from the off—‐what if alien contact is difficult for humans, incomprehensible? Finally, M. Gunn provides reasoning behind the delusions. For me the story keeps scraping on explanations given in the detailed, categorising American style of psychology—European readers, of which I am one, are comfortable with the idea we just don’t know sometimes what goes on in a head. There’s also an issue, not only James Gunn but often on this list, that the characters are not up to the fantastic challenges they face. One character reacts with something plausible and interesting, but the rest are oafs in a boat. Both Arthur C. Clarke and Stanislaw Lem wrote resonant work on the theme of unknowable contact, memorable with marvels and wit. But that doesn’t make this story bad, it’s a compact and different companion piece.
Edmond Hamilton
The Sargasso of Space had me thinking. There’s no what people like to call character here, Edmond Hamilton may as well call the identities A, B, C and D for all the difference it would make. And cleverness is not in this drama, it does exactly what it says it will. Man sees red light on road, he stops. Light turns green, he goes. This is pure stuff, high‐proof. Grant that A thinks this of D, should he do action X? Yes he should, and does. Punk couldn’t overthrow this, because it is punk. M. Hamilton’s proposal? In the future we will drift, helpless. To get that out of us, we will need to beat people up. Right. Time after time.
The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction says Edmond Hamilton was a long‐term pro, and that his work at the time of the book The Universe Wreckers was the start of the road to Space Opera. Even now, that seems obvious, as this work needs only some human‐scale drama and tale‐weaving to get there. As the book stands, it’s an engaging and convincing, if stock and lumpy, story of alien invention, contact and device followed by a breakneck and undisputedly exciting battle scene. Also, at distance, interesting is how close the writing is to John Campbell’s writing and later editorial influence. Even if with some outright misconceptions, this book has the science, the stress on an educative/curious outlook and the tidy writing. Perhaps the alignment was accidental but ‘The Universe Wreckers’ dates ten years earlier.
Plenty of Edmond Hamilton on Gutenberg, mostly it seems from his Space‐Wrecking phase.
Jim Harmon
Jim Harmon was a regular contributor to magazines and, according to online sources, had an interest in radio and radio history. Measure for a Loner stews two SciFi ideas into one, the idea interstellar travel would be a long haul, and the idea that in the future mankind will be better adjusted. The author manages to pull a couple of dramatic moves in the course of the story too, which make it a good example of magazine story.
Gutenberg has currently salvaged twenty‐two of Jim Harmon’s submissions.
Charles L. Harness
Charles Harness is not one of the famous SciFi writers, and by pulp standards he wasn’t prolific. He did most of his life other work for cash, publishing now and then. But he was well regarded and won awards. Stalemate in Space is stock items, to list: space war, heroes and bad guys, zap weapons and a blob of telepathy. Except there’s odd structure here. For starters, the telepathy is limited, which is more interesting than a blather on if can or can not be possible—which then provides plot moments. Though not high drama, bad guys and good guys are not quite what they seem. This story, at least, lacks the fantasy and epic scale of most space opera, lacks also madness and wonder. But, as Damon Knight reviewed of a novel by Charles Harness, this tale makes sense, and there’s a wry amusement through all of it. If that’s your kind of story, this is one to read.
Time of writing, the story is the only the one by Charles L. Harness on Gutenberg