Some New Books – January 2016

I haven\’t bought any new SF books in ages now, but, with Christmas behind me and a few quid spare in my pocket, I took the notion over the past couple of weeks to trawl Ebay.co.uk for some books. Actually, none of them are \”new\”, as there\’s not a lot of modern SF that I enjoy, with the exception of some anthologies of short fiction and a very narrow range of authors and sub-genres. But I did find two second hand/used anthologies of classic Golden Age stuff, which is much more my kind of thing, one collection of Isaac Asimov\’s fantasy stories, essays and articles, and, finally, one \”Best of the Year\” SF anthology, from 2007.

  • SCIENCE FICTION: THE BEST OF THE YEAR 2007 EDITION edited by Rich Horton (trade paperback, Prime Books, Germantown MD, US, 2007, ISBN-10: 0-8095-6297-9, ISBN-13: 978-0-8095-6297-8)
  • MAGIC: THE FINAL FANTASY COLLECTION by Isaac Asimov (Paperback, Voyager, London, 1997, ISBN: 0-00-648203-1)
  • GREAT TALES OF THE GOLDEN AGE OF SCIENCE FICTION edited by Isaac Asimov, Charles G. Waugh and Martin H. Greenberg (hardback, Galahad Books, New York, 1991, ISBN: 0-88365-772-4)
  • THE GOLDEN AGE OF SCIENCE FICTION edited by Kingsley Amis (Large Format Paperback, Penguin Books, 1983, first published by Hutchinson & Co., 1981)

The SCIENCE FICTION: THE BEST OF THE YEAR 2007 EDITION trade paperback is a nice anthology of reasonably recent (less than ten years old) stories, twelve in all, five from Asimov\’s SF Magazine, two from F&SF, and the other five from five different sources both magazines and books. I haven\’t read this one yet, but there are a few authors in it that I usually like (Robert Reed, Walter Jon Williams, Ian Watson, Robert Charles Wilson), and Rich Horton rarely puts together a bad \”Best SF\” anthology.

MAGIC: THE FINAL FANTASY COLLECTION is a single-author collection of Isaac Asimov\’s fantasy (as opposed to SF) short fiction. It\’s also notable for collecting a number of Asimov\’s essays and articles about fantasy and other subjects. It\’s a bit of a strange one, this, although I found it an interesting mix of articles and fiction. And Asimov\’s fantasy is just as logical as his science fiction, with its own strict internal rules and limitations, which made it easy for me to read, despite the fact that I\’m not a huge fan of reading fantasy.

GREAT TALES OF THE GOLDEN AGE OF SCIENCE FICTION is a cracking anthology of classic Golden Age SF put together by the ever-reliable trio of Isaac Asimov, Charles G. Waugh and Martin H. Greenberg. Nine stories in all, almost all of them published in Astounding during the 1941-1947 timeframe. Some of the biggest names in SF are in this one – Isaac Asimov, A.E. van Vogt, Jack Williamson, Theodore Sturgeon, Lester del Rey, C.L. Moore, Ross Rocklynne, A. Bertram Chandler, T.L. Sherred – and with some of their most classic stories.

THE GOLDEN AGE OF SCIENCE FICTION edited by Kingsley Amis is another cracking anthology, with a completely different group of stories and authors to the previous anthology. Only Asimov appears in both, but with different stories. And there are seventeen stories in this one, almost twice as many as the other anthology. Aside from Isaac Asimov, we\’ve got Arthur C. Clarke, Poul Anderson, Frederik Pohl, Brian W. Aldiss, Cordwainer Smith, H. Beam Piper, Harry Harrison, Damon Knight, Anthony Boucher, James Blish, Robert Sheckley, J.G. Ballard, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Jerome Bixby, F.L. Wallace and Philip Latham. That is a hugely impressive line-up of SF author talent with some of their most classic stories.

The Kingsley Amis anthology is a completely different kind of book to the other one edited by Asimov, Waugh and Greenberg. I wouldn\’t really consider it a real \”Golden Age\” anthology at all, as the stories are from the 1950s and 1960s (there\’s even one from 1979!), rather than the 1940s (the actual \”Golden Age of SF\” is usually considered to be circa 1938-1950, when Campbell\’s Astounding ruled the roost unchallenged, and before the appearance of F&SF and Galaxy). The stories are therefore slightly more sophisticated than those in the other book, with much less of an emphasis on stories from Astounding, and a much higher percentage coming from F&SF, Galaxy and other sources. The stories are of the highest calibre, and the only criticism I would have is none of them actually qualify as \”Golden Age\” SF, as they come from a later period, and there are several of the 1960s stories that even come dangerously close to belonging to the New Wave. I guess Amis\’ interpretation of \”Golden Age\” SF is a bit different to the rest of us, and maybe a bit more of a personal one. 🙂

All in all, a nice little batch of books. I\’ve gotten the bug back again for hunting down SF books. I must get back on Ebay to see if I can find a few more classic anthologies.

6 GREAT SHORT NOVELS OF SCIENCE FICTION (1954) edited by Groff Conklin

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For this post, we have an anthology, this one from 1954. It\’s another from one of the old dependables and one of my own personal favourite anthologists, Groff Conklin.

This anthology is a paperback, published by Dell, one of their Dell First Edition range, number D9, to be precise. It\’s billed as \”six short novels by six masters of imaginative storytelling\”. One of the six is a long novella (98 pages), and the other five are all short novellas, and one long novelette, spanning 49-58 pages in length, from shortest story to longest.

 

TITLE: 6 GREAT SHORT NOVELS OF SCIENCE FICTION
EDITED BY: Groff Conklin
CATEGORY: Short Fiction
SUB-CATEGORY: Anthology
FORMAT: Paperback, 384 pages
PUBLISHER: Dell First Edition, New York, 1954.

CONTENTS (6 Stories)

  • Introduction by Groff Conklin
  • \”The Blast\” by Stuart Cloete (novella, Collier\’s, April 1946)
  • \”Coventry\” by Robert A. Heinlein (novella, Astounding Science Fiction, July 1940)
  • \”The Other World\” by Murray Leinster (novella, Startling Stories, November 1949)
  • \”Barrier\” by Anthony Boucher (novella, Astounding Science Fiction, September 1942)
  • \”Surface Tension\” by James Blish (novelette, Galaxy, August 1952)
  • \”Maturity\” by Theodore Sturgeon (novella, Astounding Science Fiction, February 1947)

The first story, \”The Blast\”, is a bit of an oddity, as it\’s by a writer that I\’ve never heard of, Stuart Cloete, and it didn\’t even appear in one of the science fiction magazines, but rather in an April 1946 edition of Collier\’s, one of the big mass market, general magazines, which was published in the US between 1888 and 1957.

The other five stories are all from science fiction magazines, Astounding, Galaxy and Startling Stories, and all spanning the years 1940-1952. I\’m familiar with three of them (Leinster, Boucher and Blish), and they\’re old favourites of mine, although it\’s many years since I\’ve read any of them. The titles of the Heinlein and Sturgeon stories vaguely ring a bell for me, so I may or may not have read them at some point in distant past, but I recall absolutely nothing about them.

Quite an interesting anthology of stories. Should be fun reading this one.

STORIES FOR TOMORROW (1954) edited by William Sloane

\"Stories

[I]\’ve got an interesting anthology in front of me at the moment. Actually, I\’ve got two different editions of it. Firstly an original US 1st Edition hardback, which I bought from a dealer on Amazon. This is an ex-library copy, and came without a dustjacket, otherwise the book itself is in excellent condition. The other edition is the UK 1st Edition hardback, complete with dustjacket (pictured here), which has slightly different contents to the US Edition.

The US edition first…

TITLE: STORIES FOR TOMORROW
EDITED BY: William Sloane
CATEGORY: Short Fiction
SUB-CATEGORY: Anthology
FORMAT: Hardback, 628 pages
PUBLISHER: Funk & Wagnalls, US, 1954

CONTENTS LISTING:

About This Book by William Sloane

PART I: THE HUMAN HEART

  • \”The Wilderness\” by Ray Bradbury (Today, April 6th 1952, revised for Fantasy & Science Fiction, November 1952)
  • \”Starbride\” by Anthony Boucher (Thrilling Wonder Stories, December 1951)
  • \”Second Childhood\” by Clifford D. Simak (Galaxy, Feb 1951)
  • \”Homeland\” by Mari Wolf (first published as \”The Statue\”, If Magazine, January 1953)
  • \”Let Nothing You Dismay\” by William Sloane (written for this anthology)
  • \”A Scent of Sarsaparilla\” by Ray Bradbury (Star Science Fiction Stories #1, February 1953

PART II: THERE ARE NO EASY ANSWERS

  • \”The Exile\” by Alfred Coppel (Astounding Science Fiction, October 1952)
  • \”The Farthest Horizon\” by Raymond F. Jones (Astounding Science
    Fiction
    , April 1952)
  • \”Noise Level\” by Raymond F. Jones (Astounding Science Fiction, December 1952)
  • \”First Contact\” by Murray Leinster (Astounding Science Fiction, May 1945)

PART III: SWEAT OF THE BROW

  • \”Franchise\” by Kris Neville (Astounding Science Fiction, February 1951)
  • \”In Value Deceived\” by H. B. Fyfe (Astounding Science Fiction, November 1950)
  • \”Okie\” by James Blish (Astounding Science Fiction, April 1950)
  • \”Black Eyes and the Daily Grind\” by Milton Lesser (If Magazine, March 1952)

PART IV: DIFFERENCE WITH DISTINCTION

  • \”Socrates\” by John Christopher (Galaxy, March 1951)
  • \”In Hiding\” by Wilmar H. Shiras (Astounding Science Fiction, November 1948)
  • \”Bettyann\” by Kris Neville (reprinted from New Tales of Space & Time, edited by Raymond J. Healey, 1951)

PART V: THE TROUBLE WITH PEOPLE IS PEOPLE

  • \”The Ant and the Eye\” by Chad Oliver (Astounding Science Fiction, April 1953)
  • \”Beep\” by James Blish (Galaxy, February 1954)
  • \”And Then There Were None\” by Eric Frank RussellAstounding Science Fiction, June 1951)
  • \”The Girls from Earth\” by Frank M. Robinson (Galaxy, January 1952)

PART VI: VISITORS

  • \”Minister Without Portfolio\” by Mildred Clingerman (Fantasy & Science Fiction, Feb 1952)
  • \”The Head-Hunters\” by Ralph Williams (Astounding Science Fiction, October 1951)
  • \”Dune Roller\” by Julian May (Astounding Science Fiction, December 1951)
  • \”Disguise\” by Donald A. Wollheim (Other Worlds Science Stories, February 1953)
  • \”The Shed\” by E. Everett Evans (Avon SF&F Reader, January 1953)

PART VII: THREE EPILOGS

  • \”The Nine Billion Names of God\” by Arthur C. Clarke (Star Science Fiction Stories #1, ed. Frederik Pohl, Ballantine, 1953)
  • \”The Forgotten Enemy\” by Arthur C. Clarke (King’s College Review, December 1948)
  • \”The Answers\” [also as “…And the Truth Shall Make You Free”] by Clifford D. Simak (Future, March 1953)

This is an ex-library copy, which came without a dustcover, when I bought it from a dealer on Amazon. Otherwise the book itself is in excellent condition.

There are a few stories here that I\’m familiar with, either being old favourites of mine, or having vague but fond memories of them – all of the stories by Clarke, Bradbury, Simak, Russell, Leinster and Blish. The rest I\’ve either not read at all or read so long ago that I can\’t remember them. Personal favourites among these are Blish\’s \”Beep\”, Leinster\’s \”First Contact\”, Russell\’s \”And Then There Were None\”, Simak\’s \”Second Childhood\”, Bradbury\’s \”The Wilderness\”, Robinson\’s \”The Girls from Earth\”, and both of the Clarke stories.

As I\’ve already said, the UK 1st edition is slightly different to the US edition:

TITLE: STORIES FOR TOMORROW
EDITED BY: William Sloane
CATEGORY: Short Fiction
SUB-CATEGORY: Anthology
FORMAT: Hardback, 476 pages
PUBLISHER: Eyre & Spottiswoode, London, 1955.

CONTENTS LISTING:

About This Book by William Sloane

PART I: THE HUMAN HEART

  • \”The Wilderness\” by Ray Bradbury
  • \”Starbride\” by Anthony Boucher
  • \”Homeland\” by Mari Wolf
  • \”Let Nothing You Dismay\” by William Sloane
  • \”A Scent of Sarsaparilla\” by Ray Bradbury

PART II: THERE ARE NO EASY ANSWERS

  • \”Noise Level\” by Raymond F. Jones
  • \”First Contact\” by Murray Leinster

PART III: SWEAT OF THE BROW

  • \”Franchise\” by Kris Neville
  • \”In Value Deceived\” by H. B. Fyfe
  • \”Black Eyes and the Daily Grind\” by Milton Lesser

PART IV: DIFFERENCE WITH DISTINCTION

  • \”Socrates\” by John Christopher
  • \”In Hiding\” by Wilmar H. Shiras
  • \”Bettyann\” by Kris Neville

PART V: THE TROUBLE WITH PEOPLE IS PEOPLE

  • \”The Ant and the Eye\” by Chad Oliver
  • \”Beep\” by James Blish
  • \”And Then There Were None\” by Eric Frank Russell
  • \”The Girls from Earth\” by Frank M. Robinson

PART VI: VISITORS

  • \”Minister Without Portfolio\” by Mildred Clingerman
  • \”The Head-Hunters\” by Ralph Williams

PART VII: THREE EPILOGS

  • \”The Nine Billion Names of God\” by Arthur C. Clarke
  • \”The Forgotten Enemy\” by Arthur C. Clarke
  • \”The Answers\” by Clifford D. Simak

As with many anthologies from that period, a number of the stories have been cut from the UK edition that were in the original US edition. There are seven fewer stories, and the UK edition is 152 pages shorter. My UK edition also has a nice dustjacket, although the one on my copy is a bit on the tatty side.

Overall, another very interesting anthology. I\’m looking forward to working my way through this one.

BUG-EYED MONSTERS edited by Anthony Cheetham

[T]his is a nice little anthology, containing ten stories (more accurately NINE stories and one radio play adaptation) spanning thirty years 1938-1968. It is edited by Anthony Cheetham, with whom I am totally unfamiliar.

TITLE: BUG-EYED MONSTERS
EDITED BY: Anthony Cheetham
CATEGORY: Short Fiction
SUB-CATEGORY: Anthology
FORMAT: Hardback, 280 pages
PUBLISHER: Sidgwick & Jackson, London, 1972.
ISBN: 0 283 97864 3

CONTENTS:

  • Introduction by Anthony Cheetham
  • \”Invasion from Mars\” by Howard Koch (with Orson Welles) – 1938 radio adaptation of War of the Worlds, CBS, October 30, 1938
  • \”Not Only Dead Men\” by A. E. Van Vogt (1942) (Astounding Science Fiction, November 1942)
  • \”Arena\” by Fredric Brown (1944) (Astounding Science Fiction, June 1944)
  • \”Surface Tension\” by James Blish (Galaxy, August 1952)
  • \”The Deserter\” by William Tenn (1953) (reprinted from Star Science Fiction Stories, edited by Frederik Pohl, Ballantine, February 1953)
  • \”Mother\” by Philip José Farmer (1953) (Thrilling Wonder Stories, April 1953)
  • \”Stranger Station\” by Damon Knight (1956) (Fantasy & Science Fiction, December 1956)
  • \”Greenslaves\” by Frank Herbert (1965) (Amazing Stories, March 1965)
  • \”Balanced Ecology\” by James H. Schmitz (1967) (Analog, March 1965)
  • \”The Dance of the Changer & Three\” by Terry Carr (1968) (reprinted from The Farthest Reaches, edited by Joseph Elder, Trident 1968)

According to Cheetham\’s interesting little introduction, the title of the book is a gentle, fun jibe at the old, stereotypical \”bug-eyed monster\” of the pulps. However the ten stories in the anthology are of an altogether higher quality than those old yarns in the pulps, almost a \”rehabilitation\” of the old bug-eyed monster.

There\’s quite a mix in this anthology. We start off with one which is very apt, given the title of the anthology. Howard Koch\’s (and Orson Welles\’s) classic 1938 radio adaptation of H. G. Wells\’s seminal 1898 interplanetary invasion novel War of the Worlds. It first appeared in book form in the anthology Invasion from Mars), edited by Orson Welles (Dell, 1949). The Martian invaders are probably the original archetype for all the B.E.M.s that came afterwards, so this one is as good a place to start as any. I\’ve read it before in a number of publications, and it\’s always nice to revisit it.

As for the other nine stories, as usual, there are a few that I\’m familiar with, and a few that I\’m not. Fredric Brown\’s classic Arena and James Blish\’s Surface Tension are the two that I remember best. Both have always been favourites of mine. Frank Herbert\’s Greenslaves is another one that I recall liking, although my memory is a bit fuzzier on the details of that one. I have very vague memories about encountering the Van Vogt, Knight, Tenn and Carr stories at some point in the distant past, but don\’t recall anything about them except the briefest details. I don\’t recall ever reading either the Farmer or Schmitz stories before.

I may not know (or recall) a few of the stories, but with the exception of Koch, the other nine authors in the anthology are all VERY familiar to me. No obscure writers here, although I must admit that I\’m much more familiar with Terry Carr as one of my favourite anthologists, rather than as an author. Overall, this looks like a good one. With those names in it, how could it not be? I think I\’m going to really enjoy reading BUG-EYED MONSTERS. 🙂

Remembering Frederik Pohl (1919-2013)

Back in June, this blog marked the first anniversary of the sad and untimely death of one of my favourite SF authors, Iain M. Banks, who we lost to cancer last year at the age of only 59. This month marks the first anniversary of the death of yet another of my favourite SF authors, this time one of the old greats, Science Fiction Grand Master and one of the true titans of the genre Frederik Pohl, who died on September 2nd last year, at the age of 93.

Fred Pohl had been with us seemingly forever, since the dawn of time, or, more accurately, since before the Golden Age of Science Fiction began, way back at the end of the 1930s – his first published work was the poem \”Elegy to a Dead Satellite: Luna\” (under the pseudonym \”Elton Andrews\”), in the October 1937 issue of Amazing Stories. I\’m one of those many people who felt almost as though he was always going to be with us, although that was sadly obviously never going to happen.

The previous year or two had been very unkind to the world of SF, with the loss of a number of great authors. Ray Bradbury (91) died in June 2012, and Harry Harrison (87) in August 2012. Jack Vance (96) and movie special effects wizard Ray Harryhausen (91) both passed away in May 2013. And then Banks (59) in June 2013 and Pohl (93) in September 2013. True, with the exception of Banks, all of these authors were \”greats\” from an earlier era, and all lived to a grand old age (Harrison was the youngest to pass on, at \”only\” 87). But they were all giants of the genre, and their passing was a great loss to all of SF.

I\’ve been a huge fan of Pohl\’s writing since I first encountered him in my early teens (way back in the early-to-mid 1970s), and he was a huge figure in my formative years as an SF reader. His SF novels were some of my favourites, among them GATEWAY and the other Heechee books, MAN PLUS, THE SPACE MERCHANTS (with Cyril M. Kornbluth), SEARCH THE SKY (with Kornbluth), GLADIATOR-AT-LAW (with Kornbluth), WOLFBANE (with Kornbluth), MINING THE OORT, JEM, SYZYGY, STARBURST, THE AGE OF THE PUSSYFOOT, DRUNKARD\’S WALK and many, many other classics. These still grace my bookshelves to this day, although most of them are long overdue for a re-read.

But as much as I like his novels, I\’m an even bigger fan of his short fiction. As a matter of fact, the irony is very first Pohl story that I recall reading, \”Wings of the Lightning Land\”, was one that I didn\’t even know was written by Pohl, as it came from that period during the Golden Age of SF the 1940s, when he wrote much of his short stories under the pseudonym \”James MacCreigh\”. I still remember \”Wings of the Lightning Land\” with great fondness, and it\’s one of those old stories which hit me between the eyes at an early age, and has stayed with me ever since.

It\’s now amusing for me to recall that, for quite a while after I read that story, I had absolutely no idea that this \”James MacCreigh\” dude and Frederik Pohl were one and the same person. And it\’s even more amusing to recall that the classic old anthology, in which I first read \”Wings of the Lightning Land\”, was SCIENCE FICTION: THE GREAT YEARS, edited by none other than a certain Carol & Frederik Pohl! It was ironic (and very creepy) that, last year, after not having read that story for many, many years, I just happened to come upon that old anthology again, and re-read \”Wings of the Lightning Land\”, the very week before Frederik Pohl died. How weird is that? 🙂

So this year, to mark the first anniversary of his death, I once again opened up SCIENCE FICTION: THE GREAT YEARS, and re-read \”Wings of the Lightning Land\”, in memory of Frederik Pohl and his alter ego, \”James MacCreigh\”. And to add another one for good measure, I also dug out a really good collection of Pohl\’s earliest short fiction, THE EARLY POHL (1976), which contains a bunch of his Golden Age stories, all written under his \”James MacCreigh\” pseudonym. Great stuff!

Of the short fiction that Pohl wrote under his own name, I think that the first one that I read (and one that has also stuck in my mind all these years) is \”Let the Ants Try\” (1949). Fantastic tale, and the ending of that story still sends chills up my spine, even now, forty years after I first read it. But he also wrote so many other memorable short stories. \”Day Million\”, \”The Tunnel under the World\”, \”The Midas Plague\”, \”The Man Who Ate the World\”, \”Critical Mass\”, \”The Abominable Earthman\”, \”The Gold at the Starbow\’s End\”, \”In the Problem Pit\” and so, so many others.

Fred Pohl was an awesome, awesome writer. But he was also hugely influential in SF as an editor throughout the 1960s, on classic SF magazines Galaxy and its sister publication If. And over the decades he has also edited far too many great SF anthologies to even start listing them here.

I\’ve also been following his blog, The Way the Future Blogs, assiduously over the past couple of years. I\’ve been really loving his recollections about the past history of SF, and I\’m going to miss the writings of this great man, but he\’s left a huge body of work out there for all of us to enjoy. He should be compulsory reading for all SF fans, old and young.

In Memory of Frederik Pohl, Science Fiction Grand Master.

Remembering Frederik Pohl (1919-2013)

Back in June, this blog marked the first anniversary of the sad and untimely death of one of my favourite SF authors, Iain M. Banks, who we lost to cancer last year at the age of only 59. This month marks the first anniversary of the death of yet another of my favourite SF authors, this time one of the old greats, Science Fiction Grand Master and one of the true titans of the genre Frederik Pohl, who died on September 2nd last year, at the age of 93.

Fred Pohl had been with us seemingly forever, since the dawn of time, or, more accurately, since before the Golden Age of Science Fiction began, way back at the end of the 1930s – his first published work was the poem \”Elegy to a Dead Satellite: Luna\” (under the pseudonym \”Elton Andrews\”), in the October 1937 issue of Amazing Stories. I\’m one of those many people who felt almost as though he was always going to be with us, although that was sadly obviously never going to happen.

The previous year or two had been very unkind to the world of SF, with the loss of a number of great authors. Ray Bradbury (91) died in June 2012, and Harry Harrison (87) in August 2012. Jack Vance (96) and movie special effects wizard Ray Harryhausen (91) both passed away in May 2013. And then Banks (59) in June 2013 and Pohl (93) in September 2013. True, with the exception of Banks, all of these authors were \”greats\” from an earlier era, and all lived to a grand old age (Harrison was the youngest to pass on, at \”only\” 87). But they were all giants of the genre, and their passing was a great loss to all of SF.

I\’ve been a huge fan of Pohl\’s writing since I first encountered him in my early teens (way back in the early-to-mid 1970s), and he was a huge figure in my formative years as an SF reader. His SF novels were some of my favourites, among them GATEWAY and the other Heechee books, MAN PLUS, THE SPACE MERCHANTS (with Cyril M. Kornbluth), SEARCH THE SKY (with Kornbluth), GLADIATOR-AT-LAW (with Kornbluth), WOLFBANE (with Kornbluth), MINING THE OORT, JEM, SYZYGY, STARBURST, THE AGE OF THE PUSSYFOOT, DRUNKARD\’S WALK and many, many other classics. These still grace my bookshelves to this day, although most of them are long overdue for a re-read.

But as much as I like his novels, I\’m an even bigger fan of his short fiction. As a matter of fact, the irony is very first Pohl story that I recall reading, \”Wings of the Lightning Land\”, was one that I didn\’t even know was written by Pohl, as it came from that period during the Golden Age of SF the 1940s, when he wrote much of his short stories under the pseudonym \”James MacCreigh\”. I still remember \”Wings of the Lightning Land\” with great fondness, and it\’s one of those old stories which hit me between the eyes at an early age, and has stayed with me ever since.

It\’s now amusing for me to recall that, for quite a while after I read that story, I had absolutely no idea that this \”James MacCreigh\” dude and Frederik Pohl were one and the same person. And it\’s even more amusing to recall that the classic old anthology, in which I first read \”Wings of the Lightning Land\”, was SCIENCE FICTION: THE GREAT YEARS, edited by none other than a certain Carol & Frederik Pohl! It was ironic (and very creepy) that, last year, after not having read that story for many, many years, I just happened to come upon that old anthology again, and re-read \”Wings of the Lightning Land\”, the very week before Frederik Pohl died. How weird is that? 🙂

So this year, to mark the first anniversary of his death, I once again opened up SCIENCE FICTION: THE GREAT YEARS, and re-read \”Wings of the Lightning Land\”, in memory of Frederik Pohl and his alter ego, \”James MacCreigh\”. And to add another one for good measure, I also dug out a really good collection of Pohl\’s earliest short fiction, THE EARLY POHL (1976), which contains a bunch of his Golden Age stories, all written under his \”James MacCreigh\” pseudonym. Great stuff!

Of the short fiction that Pohl wrote under his own name, I think that the first one that I read (and one that has also stuck in my mind all these years) is \”Let the Ants Try\” (1949). Fantastic tale, and the ending of that story still sends chills up my spine, even now, forty years after I first read it. But he also wrote so many other memorable short stories. \”Day Million\”, \”The Tunnel under the World\”, \”The Midas Plague\”, \”The Man Who Ate the World\”, \”Critical Mass\”, \”The Abominable Earthman\”, \”The Gold at the Starbow\’s End\”, \”In the Problem Pit\” and so, so many others.

Fred Pohl was an awesome, awesome writer. But he was also hugely influential in SF as an editor throughout the 1960s, on classic SF magazines Galaxy and its sister publication If. And over the decades he has also edited far too many great SF anthologies to even start listing them here.

I\’ve also been following his blog, The Way the Future Blogs, assiduously over the past couple of years. I\’ve been really loving his recollections about the past history of SF, and I\’m going to miss the writings of this great man, but he\’s left a huge body of work out there for all of us to enjoy. He should be compulsory reading for all SF fans, old and young.

In Memory of Frederik Pohl, Science Fiction Grand Master.

\”Try and Change the Past\” by Fritz Leiber (1958)

[I]\’m just going to start picking stories at random from the two Robert Silverberg edited anthologies that I\’ve been reading. The first one is from TRIPS IN TIME, and is \”Try and Change the Past\” by Fritz Leiber.

TITLE: \”Try and Change the Past\” (1958)
AUTHOR: Fritz Leiber
CATEGORY: Short Story
SUB-CATEGORY: Time Travel, Temporal Paradox
SOURCE: TRIPS IN TIME edited by Robert Silverberg (Wildside Press, 1977)
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: Astounding, March 1958

In the never-ending temporal conflict between the Snakes and the Spiders, one particularly shifty member of the Snakes (a well-deserved description, in the case of this dude) gets the bright idea of illicitly using his side\’s time travel facilities to go back and change his own personal history, so that he doesn\’t die and end up fighting in this damned war. Unfortunately for him, he ends up finding out the hard way that the four-dimensional spacetime universe has its own Law of the Conservation of Reality, and doesn\’t like things to be changed, no siree.

\”Try and Change the Past\” is a clever and quite amusing story set during the Change War milieu of Leiber\’s classic time travel/temporal paradox novel THE BIG TIME. The story was first published in the March 1958 edition of Astounding, at the same time that THE BIG TIME was being serialized in the March and April 1958 editions of Galaxy magazine.

I\’ve always enjoyed Leiber\’s writing, both SF and fantasy (despite the fact that I\’m not a huge fan of fantasy in general), and THE BIG TIME and its Change War setting has always been a favourite of mine. This particular short story, while I certainly wouldn\’t rank it among my \”most favourite short stories of all time\”, is still an enjoyable and worthy addition to the Change War universe.

Rated: 3.0 out of 5.0

Frederik Pohl (1919-2013)

Back in June of this year, I made a blog posting about the tragically sad and untimely passing of one of my favourite SF authors, Iain M. Banks, who we lost to cancer at the far, far too young age of 59. He was merely the latest in a long line of all-too frequent announcements of the passing of yet another top SF author.

This past year or so has been particularly unkind to the world of SF, with the loss of far, far too many great authors. We lost Ray Bradbury (91) in June 2012, and Harry Harrison (87) in August 2012. Most recently, we also lost Jack Vance (96) and movie special effects wizard Ray Harryhausen (91), both in May 2013. True, unlike Iain Banks, these other \”greats\” were from an earlier era, and all lived to a grand old age (totalling a combined age of 365), with Harry Harrison being the \”youngest\” to die (if I manage to live till I\’m 87, I\’ll be more than happy). But they were all giants of the genre, and their passing diminishes and saddens all of us.

And only last night, I come online to find out that we\’ve lost yet another one. Science Fiction Grand Master and one of the true titans of the genre Frederik Pohl passed away yesterday, September 2nd, 2013, at the grand old age of 93. Fred Pohl had been with us seemingly since the dawn of time, or, more accurately, since before the Golden Age of Science Fiction began, way back at the end of the 1930s (his first published work was the 1937 poem \”Elegy to a Dead Satellite\”). I\’m one of those many people who felt almost as though he was going to be with us forever, although that was sadly never going to happen. But it still hurts that he\’s now gone.

When I first read the news last night, on a Google+ status update by SF author David Brin, all I could do was stare at the computer monitor with a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes. Even though he was so old, and we\’ve been expecting this to happen for some time now, it still came as a complete shock. I\’m absolutely, absolutely gutted by this terribly sad news.

Isn\’t it strange how we can get so upset about the passing of someone that we\’ve never even met in person? But Fred Pohl (and his writing) was more real, more vivid, and more important to me than any of the thousands of faceless Joes and Josephines that I see walking the streets of my home town every single day. I\’m fifty-two years old now, and I\’ve been reading SF since I was about eight years old. I\’ve been a huge fan of Pohl\’s writing since I first encountered him in my early teens. He\’s like an old friend, and I\’m so, so sad to see him leave us, even if he was just a shade over six years off his 100th birthday.

I love the writing of many SF greats, but Frederik Pohl was a particular favourite of mine, and was a huge part of my overall life as an SF reader, as I\’ve been a fan of his writing since way back in the early-to-mid 1970s. His SF novels were some of my favourites, among them GATEWAY and the other Heechee books, MAN PLUS, THE SPACE MERCHANTS (with Cyril M. Kornbluth), SEARCH THE SKY (with Kornbluth), GLADIATOR-AT-LAW (with Kornbluth), WOLFBANE (with Kornbluth), MINING THE OORT, JEM, SYZYGY, STARBURST, THE AGE OF THE PUSSYFOOT, DRUNKARD\’S WALK and many, many other classics. These still grace my bookshelves to this day, and all are long overdue for a re-read.

I\’ve also always been a huge fan of his short fiction, going right back to the Golden Age of the 1940s, when he wrote much of his fiction under the pseudonym James MacCreigh. I still remember \”Wings of the Lightning Land\” with fondness, one of the earliest Pohl stories that I read (although for many years I never realized that James MacCreigh and Frederik Pohl were one and the same). A fantastic Pohl collection to read for this early stuff is THE EARLY POHL (1976), which contains a bunch of his James MacCreigh stories. Great stuff!

Of the short fiction that he wrote under his own name, one of the earliest that I read, and one that has stuck in my mind all these years, is \”Let the Ants Try\” (1949). The ending of that story still sends chills up my spine, even now, forty years after I first read it. But he also wrote so many other memorable short stories. \”Day Million\”, \”The Tunnel under the World\”, \”The Midas Plague\”, \”The Man Who Ate the World\”, \”Critical Mass\”, \”The Abominable Earthman\”, \”The Gold at the Starbow\’s End\”, \”In the Problem Pit\” and so, so many others. What an awesome, awesome writer.

He was also hugely influential in SF as an editor throughout the 1960s, on classic SF magazines Galaxy and its sister publication If. And over the decades he has edited so many of my favourite SF anthologies that I wont even start listing them, or I\’ll be here all evening. In an eerily weird stroke of synchronicity, just a few days ago I was re-reading one of my very favourite classic anthologies, SCIENCE FICTION: THE GREAT YEARS, edited by a certain Frederik Pohl and his then-wife Carol, and in that anthology was \”Wings of the Lightning Land\”, by some dude called James MacCreigh. I hadn\’t read that book and story in many, many years, and I just had to pick the week that Frederik Pohl dies to read it again. Wow! How creepy is that? 🙂

I\’ve also been following his blog, The Way the Future Blogs, assiduously over the past couple of years. I\’ve been really loving his recollections about the past history of SF, and I am just so, so gutted that he\’s gone, and we\’ll never see another one of those charming, fascinating blog posts ever again. Tragic.

I\’m going to miss the writings of this great man, but he\’s left a huge body of work out there for all of us to enjoy. He should be compulsory reading for all SF fans, old and young.

RIP Fred. You done well.