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–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

1. Eight if we count the one-volume Star Science Fiction Magazine (1958) and Star Short Novels (1954). ↩︎
2. 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). ↩︎
3. 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). ↩︎
4. 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. ↩︎

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

• A selection of read volumes from my shelves

What pre-1985 science fiction are you reading or planning to read this month? Here’s the December installment of this column.

Lost texts, and the act of reconstruction the fragments, fascinates. The questions pile up. Would the contents reveal a pattern in an author’s work? Intriguing personal details? A startling modus operandi? At the 11th World Science Fiction Convention (Philcon 2), Philadelphia (September 1953), Philip José Farmer gave a speech titled “SF and the Kinsey Report.” Considering Farmer’s recent publication of “The Lovers” (1952), this is not surprising. Alfred Kinsey, the famous sexologist and founder of the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction on Indiana University’s campus, published his controversial Sexual Behavior in the Human Male in 1948. Sexual Behavior in the Human Female appeared in 1953. Like many of Farmer’s earliest speeches, he did not keep copies.

Deeply intrigued by what the speech might have contained, Sanstone and I (on Bluesky) managed to piece together a few general responses that people had Farmer and suggestions on what it contained.

1) In the December 1953 issue of the fanzine Nite Cry, Earl Kemp wrote: “Then it came. Sex reared it’s [sic] wonderfully compatible head. SF AND THE KINSEY REPORT, a very interesting report on the works of the good Dr.’s Kinsey, Pomeroy, etc. delivered by Phillip Farmer [sic]. Very well handled tark, regardless of the absence of SF, by a very sincere individual. He was somewhat embarrassed, at the conclusion of his talk, as were most of the delegates, when some fan, after securing the floor mike, praised the speech a little too highly for comfort.”

2) In the November 1953 issue of the UK magazine Authentic Science Fiction, the editor H. J. Campbell briefly states: “among other first-rate and informative speakers was Philip Jose Farmer on ‘SF and the Kinsey Report,’ a serious and thoughtful study which was well appreciated by the audience.”

3) Robert A. Madle’s report in the March 1954 issue of Future Science Fiction wrote: “[Farmer’s] talk, ]SF and the Kinsey Report,] was quite unusual — to say the least! Farmer, in addition to indicating that he was one of Kinsey’s’ statistics, delved into a subject which isn’t the ordinary Sunday morning, pre-breakfast fare.” I’d love to know what Farmer meant by “he was one of Kinsey’s statistics.”

4) Milt Rothman’s Philcon II Reminiscence recalls: “Among scheduled talks were “The Future of Love,” by Irvin Heyne, and “SF and the Kinsey Report,” by Philip José Farmer, author of “The Lovers.” At that time heterosexuality was just coming out of the closet.” No other details are provided.

5) Dave Kyle’s article in Mimosa on Sex in Fandom describes the speech, along with many other tangents, as follows: “Maybe sf fans invented the 1960s in the 1950s. (Although I must say that, whatever the excesses, the only drug prevalent to a minor extent was alcohol.) By 1953, women were now a fixture in the sf firmament. Bea, Katherine MacLean, and the two Evelyns had a panel at Philcon II and there were talks on “The Future of Love” by Irvin Heyne and “SF and the Kinsey Report” by Philip José Farmer. Phil Farmer really broke the sex barrier in sf, and Kate MacLean was an unabashed advocate of “free love” and took explicit photos with Charlie Dye.”

If you know of more references, let me know if the comments.

And let me know what pre-1985 science fiction you’ve been reading!

The Photograph (with links to reviews and brief thoughts)

1. I often think back to John Shirley’s fascinating City Come A-Walkin’ (1980). While I struggled to get behind the barebones plot, the vibrancy of the world, the positive take on urban subculture, and the sense and feel of the descriptions made it a heady brew. Inspired by a commenter, I procured a copy of Richard Sennett’s The Uses of Disorder: personal Identity and City Life (1970).
2. Katherine MacLean’s Nebula-nominated Missing Man (1975) ranks high on my shortlist of unknown masterpieces. She won the Nebula for the novella “The Missing Man” (1971), that later became the first part of the novel.
3. World’s Best Science Fiction: 1967, ed. Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr (1967) contains a large number of gems–PKD’s “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale” (1966), Bob Shaw’s “Light of Other Days” (1966), Roger Zelazny’s “The Keys of December” (1966), R. A. Lafferty’s “Nine Hundred Grandmothers” (1966), and Michael Moorcock’s “Behold the Man” (1966).
4. Robert Silverberg’s Downward to the Earth (1970) is one of his best novels.

What am I writing about?

On January 1st, I posted a review of Future Power, ed. Jack Dann and Darner Dozois (1976) — it contained many of my best 20 short stories read in 2024. If you missed it, definitely check out my Best Reads of 2024 post. I also posted reviews of Philip K. Dick’s “Explorers We” (1959) and James Tiptree, Jr.’s “Painwise” (1972) recently for my series on subversive takes on “space agencies, astronauts, and the culture which produced them.”

As for future projects, I find I’m more likely to complete them if I keep the specifics under wraps. As always, I have grand plans and limited time due to my exhausting profession.

What am I reading?

As Barry N. Malzberg recently passed away, I thought I read a few of his novels that I’ve missed. I reviewed Malzberg last in 2021. Hopefully, more novel reviewed will be posted in 2025 than previous, often sparse, novel-reading years.

I also plan on reading De Witt Douglas Kilgore’s monograph above.

A Curated List of SF Birthdays from the Last Two Weeks

January 11th: Jerome Bixby (1923-1998)

January 11th: Terry Goodkind (1948-2020). As a teenager, I was obsessed with bloated fantasy sequences (Robert Jordan, Tad Williams, Stephen Donaldson, etc.). I thought Goodkind would be the perfect addition to my addiction. I tried at least three times to tackle Wizard’s First Rule (1994), the first book in the Sword of Truth Universe, but never got more than a 100 pages in.

January 12th: Jack London (1876-1916). I must confess, I’m utterly ignorant of his SF works like The Iron Heel (1907). My father read The Call of the Wild (1903) to me as a kid.

January 13th: Jody Scott (1923-2007). I should feature her in my first three published stories by female SF authors I should know about. Her noel Passing for Human (1977) judges me from the shelf.

January 13th: Ron Goulart (1933-2022). I have not been impressed with his brand of satire. See my review of After Things Fell Apart (1970).

January 14th: Kenneth Bulmer (1921-2005).

• Frank Kelly Freas’ cover for the 1974 edition of Joseph Green’s Conscience Interplanetary (1972)

January 14th: Joseph Green (1931-). He must rank amongst the oldest SF authors still alive… I have not read any of his work.

January 15th: Robert Silverberg (1935-). An absolute favorite of mine! I’ve reviewed 46 of his short stories and twelve of his novels. I’ve also read but never reviewed A Time of Changes (1971), the stories in Capricorn Games (1976), and Tower of Glass (1970). The Man in the Maze (1969) and The Second Trip (serialized: 1971) might be his most underrated novels.

January 16th: Christine Brooke-Rose (1923-2012) is an author of experimental SF-adjacent works (and a YA SF volume or two). I acquired one of the latter Xorandor (1986), a few months ago. I’d love a copy of her early novel Out (1964)–SF Encyclopedia’s description: a SF novel “set after World War Three in a Post-Holocaust Afro-Eurasia where the colour barrier has been reversed, ostensibly for medical reasons, as only the ‘Colourless’ seem to be fatally afflicted by a form of radiation poisoning.”

January 17th: Paul O. Williams (1935-2009).

January 18th: Arno Schmidt (1914-1979). I tried to read The Egghead Republic: A Short Novel from the Horse Latitudes (1957, trans. 1979) at one point.

January 18th: Artist Eddie Jones (1935-1999). A British artist who contributed an immense number of covers for German SF presses.

January 18th: Clare Winger Harris (1891-1968). I acquired her collection (published after she had stopped writing), Away from Here and Now (1947), a while back. To the best of my knowledge it’s the first collection by a female SF author who appeared in genre magazines ever published.

January 19th: Margot Bennett (1912-1980). I finished Bennett’s The Long Way Back (1954) recently. Stay tuned for my thoughts.

January 19th: George MacBeth (1932-1992).

• Victor Kalin’s cover for the 1st edition of Theodore Sturgeon’s Venus Plus X (1960)

January 19th: Artist Victor Kalin (1919-1991).

January 20th: Author Nancy Kress (1948-). Another one of my favorites! “Talp Hunt” (1982) is a killer of a short story. I also reviewed her first three published short stories–“The Earth Dwellers” (1976), “A Delicate Shape of Kipney” (1978), and “And Whether Pigs Have Wings” (1979).

January 21st: Peter Phillips (1920-2012). I’ve promised myself I’d get to his fiction for years. I’m looking at you “Dreams Are Sacred” (1948)!

January 21st: Judith Merril (1923-1997). My most recent Merril review: Survival Ship and Other Stories (1974).

January 21st: Gina Berriault (1926-1999). Author of one intriguing SF novel of fallout shelters and paranoia–The Descent (1960).

January 21st: Charles Eric Maine (1921-1981).

January 22nd: Robert E. Howard (1906-1936).

January 22nd: Katherine MacLean (1925-2019). As mentioned above, her Nebula-nominated novel Missing Missing Man (1975) is one of the great unknown SF noels.

• Ray Feibush’s cover for the 1974 UK edition of George Zebrowski’s The Omega Point (1972)

January 22nd: Artist Ray Feibush (1948-1998).

January 23rd: Helen M. Urban (1915-2003). Another author I should feature in my series on the first three published short stories by female authors I want to learn more about.

January 23rd: Walter M. Miller, Jr. (1923-1996). A favorite of mine! If you’re new to his non-A Canticle for Leibowitz stories, check out “Death of a Spaceman” (variant title: “Memento Homo”) (1954).

January 23rd: Artists Tim Hildebrandt (1939-2006) and Greg Hildebrandt (1939-2024).

January 24th: C. L. Moore (1911-1987). I recently enjoyed her collection of co-written stories (with her husband Henry Kuttner) Clash by Night and Other Stories (1980).

January 24th: Gary K. Wolf (1941-). Killerbowl (1979) is almost a 70s SF classic.

January 24th: David Gerrold (1944-). I thoroughly enjoyed Moonstar Odyssey (1977).

• Douglas Chaffee’s cover art detail for the October 1968 issue of Galaxy Magazine

January 24th: Artist Douglas Chaffee (1936-2011).

January 24th: René Barjavel (1911-1985).

January 25th: Pauline Ashwell (1926-2015). Best known for her early short story Hugo-nominated “Unwillingly to School” (1958). I’ve reviewed Nebula-nominated “The Wings of a Bat” (1966).

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