Friday was the first day when I felt like I had enough sleep to actually function properly. So I decided to stay up until the wee hours of the morning.
The day began with panels: Language and Linguistics in Fantasy, Everybody Was There, and Guns, Gears, and Wheels: Medieval Technology in Fantasy (photo below).
Pictured above: Michelle Markey Butler, Scott H. Andrews, and Elaine Isaak
Another panel was Beyond Rebellion in Young Adult Fantasy.
Although there were some pre-convention workshops to start the day, the panel discussions didn’t begin until 2. So Bess and I decided to do some sight-seeing. We took the Old Town Trolley tour from our hotel, which allowed us to ride between multiple locations at our leisure.
Who’s this handsome devil? Just kidding. I know it’s me.
Our first stop was the Lincoln Memorial, which is also near the Vietnam War Memorial and the Korean War Memorial. It seems cliché to use the word surreal, but seeing these monuments just makes me feel like I’m not living in reality or it’s the realization that I am living in a reality I wasn’t fully aware of.
I’m usually posting retro reviews of Galaxy, but for the moment, I’m on assignment covering the World Fantasy Convention in Washington. Okay, technically the hotel is located in Virginia, but we are only minutes away from the White House, Pentagon, and U.S. Capitol building, among other sites.
My wife, Bess, accompanied me on this trip, which is my fourth WFC. For her, this is a brand new experience. I’ll add her brief comments after mine to provide a full range of coverage, both from the perspective of someone highly involved in the speculative community and someone who supports someone highly involved in the speculative community.
We elected to drive from Indianapolis, which provided amazing views of the changing foliage within the forested hills and mountains of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Maryland. It was truly outstanding.
The March, 1952 issue of Galaxy opens with a word from the editor, H. L. Gold. Gold introduces Willy Ley, who’s beginning his monthly department, “For Your Information,” that will vary from complete articles to brief reports on “significant developments in science.”
Along with the introduction, Gold states that a number of readers have asked what he’s like, so shares some details. Of his name, he writes, “Named H(orace) L(eonard) after a prompt casualty in the Princess Pat Regiment. I can’t pretend to be fond of my name, but I don’t use initials to escape it; that was decided upon by an editor, though other editors have used the whole thing. Having had 32 pen names, I find the problem shrug-worthy.” 32 pen names? Was he going for a world record?
About Galaxy, Gold writes, “Galaxy, of course, is my own dream come true. I know I sometimes push too hard, but that’s because everyone wants his dream to be perfect.” I’m glad he did. It was a good dream.
“The Year of the Jackpot” by Robert A. Heinlein — Potiphar Breen is a numbers guy — statistician, analyst, or any role where he can use his skills in numbers and patterns. The latest pattern is an increasing number of odd behaviors, such as women publicly disrobing for no apparent reason. He interviews one of the women, Meade Barstow, and the two of them begin meeting routinely. When the statistics show the approach of an unknown climactic event, Potiphar and Meade flee the city, hoping to avoid becoming a statistic of their own.
I couldn’t quite buy in to the premise of the story, but I let that go. It does move along pretty quickly, and when things start to go bad, they go really bad. And by that point, the predictability of it all isn’t as important as pure survival.
The February, 1952 issue of Galaxy included a pair of articles along with its fiction offering. I covered Robert A. Heinlein’s predictions from an article titled “Where To?” in a previous post. The other, by L. Sprague de Camp, reflects on science fiction from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, assessing the failed predictions within older stories.
It seems odd to showcase an article about how science fiction authors failed to predict the future and then follow it up with a science fiction author predicting the future. But I digress…
“Double Standard” by Alfred Coppel — The protagonist is bent on space travel, even if he isn’t suitable for colonial breeding. With forged documents and the illegal work by a plasti-cosmetician, he’s ready to board a ship to anywhere.
This is a quirky tale with a predictable ending. But it’s short enough that it works.
“Conditionally Human” by Walter M. Miller, Jr. — Norris and his wife run a district pound, not for average dogs and cats, but for genetically modified creatures. Some are intelligent versions of dogs and cats while yet another breed, called neutroids, closely resemble humans. The neutroids only grow to specific, chosen ages between one and ten and remain at that level of development. They are suitable pets for C-class couples — people who have been deemed as having a defective heredity and thus are forbidden from having children of their own.
The February, 1952 issue of Galaxy opens with two articles, and I don’t usually cover articles when I’m reviewing the fiction of each issue. In this case, I couldn’t resist commenting on Robert A. Heinlein’s article: “Where To?”
The first article is by L. Sprague de Camp, commenting on how science-fiction predictions from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries failed on many levels. So it is ironic, I think, that it’s is followed by Heinlein’s, which gives its own point-blank predictions for the future. Heinlein feels that by comparing the present (that is, 1952) to the past (1900), he can reasonably predict what the future (2000) would look like.
Heinlein believes that the curve of human achievement — advances in science, technology and transportation, for example — is one that will rise with increased steepness. And in a graph he provides, it reminds me of an exponential increase (no numbers are shown, so that’s just a guess on my part).
Heinlein’s predictions fall into two categories — achievements that are probable and things we won’t get any time soon, if ever. He was almost 100% correct (or arguably perfect) on the items we would not achieve by 2000: time travel, traveling faster than the speed of light, control of telepathy or E.S.P. phenomena, “radio” transmissions of matter, real understanding of what “thought” is and how it is related to matter, scientific proof of survival after death, manlike robots with manlike reactions (Asimo, the Honda robot wasn’t introduced until late 2000), and a permanent end to war. One item that’s arguable is laboratory creation of life, depending on whether or not cloning counts.
Sometimes, it’s easy to think that writing science fiction in the early 1950’s couldn’t be easier. After all, how many cliches existed at that time?
Well, apparently there were plenty. Gold writes in his opening of Galaxy’s January, 1952 issue:
The world today is loaded with ifs! So crammed, crowded, bulging with ifs jostling each other, in fact, that it’s a pure bafflement to see writers turning the same ones over and over, looking for some new bump never before noticed on the use-worn surfaces.
Yes, he wrote this for the January 1952 issue. The more of his commentaries I read, the more I think nothing has really changed over time.
Galaxy set the bar high, not allowing anyone to write stale stories. “Known authors who depend on their names to sell inferior fiction are finding no market in Galaxy; new authors who are willing to dig for ideas and fresh treatments are getting an enthusiastic, cooperative welcome.” Gold cared deeply about quality fiction and it’s clear to me with each issue I read that he accomplished it.
I’d love the chance to tell him how much I respect the work he did back then, but since I can’t, I only hope it serves to drive others toward that same level of quality, whether as editors, authors, artists, or any other roles involved with speculative fiction. Let’s look to Galaxy as a standard to match or exceed, if that’s even possible.
Galaxy’s December issue hit newsstands with a holiday cover: Santa Claus smoking a pipe on an alien world in a restaurant patronized by humans and aliens. This was a very strong issue and I loved it.
There are other Galaxy stories I would place above those in this issue, such as Bradbury’s “The Fireman” or anything by Poul Anderson, but the contents of December 1951 are amazing. I couldn’t even pick a favorite story. Authors include Damon Knight, Fritz Leiber, and Jack Vance, so that might be part of the reason for its greatness.
“World Without Children” by Damon Knight — George is the last recorded birth for humanity, and even though that was 200 years ago, people still refer to him as The Child. The birth prohibition is firmly in place to prevent overpopulation — a reasonable precaution since scientists have figured out a way to extend a human lifespan by fifty times.
But even if it were repealed, very few of the populace would have the ability to procreate. George is part of a small group of individuals who realize that the trade-off for longevity was sterility, and since they cannot convince the government to take action, they plan to start an underground birthing organization.
The story seemed to start out a bit slow, but it soon moved into a cloak-and-dagger, resist-the-all-powerful-government thriller. I’m not sure if I liked the ending, though. It seemed too upbeat after everything else that took place.
“A Pail of Air” by Fritz Leiber — The earth has been ripped free from its orbit around the sun by the gravitational pull of a dark star. One family works together to survive in the frozen world.
Galaxy s November, 1951 issue began (as it usually does) with a foreword from the editor, Horace Gold. Gold addresses the purpose of science fiction, stating:
What science fiction must present entertainingly is speculation. Not prophecy, but fictional surmises based on present factors… When a story hits a future development on the head, it should be considered a minor accident; its main job was not to predict but to conjecture what might happen if certain circumstances followed certain lines of development.
Regarding the basic plotlines around science fiction, such as interplanetary flight, time travel, and the like, he writes: “Will these worlds ever exist? They may or may not; it doesn’t matter. The possibility is what counts in science fiction, not the certainty.” He concludes that writers “are examining prospects, pleasant and unpleasant alike, and that, if it produces good stories, is the legitimate province of science fiction.”
“Sea Legs” by Frank Quattrocchi — Robert Craig leaves a life of deep space service to live on Earth. But Robert has never known that world; in fact, he has never known constant gravity. He finds there are many more regulations on Earth than in space and that loyalty to the government is of utmost concern. Soon, Robert ends up breaking rules he never knew existed and he flees into radioactive territory to try to escape incarceration.
It took me some time to get into this story, but by the point Robert is on the run, I was finally rooting for him. I think there was enough setup for this to be the opening chapters of a novel, so it seemed like too much to me.
Galaxy began its second year of publication with the October 1951 issue. With contributions from both Asimov and Heinlein, it continued to show the strength of its fiction content.
“The C-Chute” by Isaac Asimov — A disparate group of space travelers become prisoners when their ship is stormed by enemy aliens. The Kloro secure the men in a room and leave only two of their own to pilot the ship back to their territory, where it can be prepared for battle.
Not content to sit idly by and become prisoners of war for an indeterminate amount of time, the men formulate a plan. Someone could suit up and go outside the ship, walking the hull to the steam tubes, in order to re-enter the ship at the control room, hopefully surprising the enemy pilots. The only dilemma is figuring out which of the men has the wherewithal and courage to succeed.
There was a lot of point-of-view shifting throughout the story, allowing the reader to enter the mind of each character. I thought this was done well and honestly there was greater variety in these characters than what Asimov produced in his novel The Stars, Like Dust.
“Pleasant Dreams” by Ralph Robin — Chief Watcher Gniss invites a childhood friend to witness how his group uses technology to spy on criminal suspects. Through the telepathic instrument, they can witness the suspects’ dreams, allowing them to learn of co-conspirators without the need for interrogation.