A classic short sf novel of 1940, and one that will surely be in the running for next year’s Retro Hugos. Our two protagonists are slans with telepathic superpowers, running the gauntlet of the oppressive government of normal humans, aided only by powerful secret weaponry. It’s obviously a bit of a fable for fans of earlier days; now that geek culture has gone mainstream, I don’t think it resonates as much, and some of the social attitudes of the writing were already out of date by 1940. I suspect it has a good shot at the Retro Hugo, but not with my vote.
Links I found interesting for 07-11-2015
- The Hillary Clinton Doctrine
Excellent analysis of how the likely next president will handle the world.
- Confessions of a humanitarian: My amoebas and I have gone through so much together
o god yes
- The 18th Brumaire of Jeremy Corbyn
I don’t agree with all of this but it’s a very good read!
The Dark Tower and Other Stories, by C.S. Lewis
A collection of stories by C.S. Lewis, including the time-travel story of the title. It’s not finished, but it would have been an interesting read – the Dark Tower itself turns out to be a replica of Cambridge University Library, built in an Othertime by people who our hero tries to understand. I think Lewis was probably better advised to go to Venus rather than take this route, but there are elements of the story that made it into That Hideous Strength. I see that there is some controversy about the extent to which Lewis’s literary executor Walter Hooper may have had a hand in the text; I didn’t detect anything that set off my alarm bells.
The other interesting fragment in the book is the very last one, about Helen’s return to Menelaus after the siege of Troy – only a few pages, but taking the stroy in a slightly different direction.
I had not realised that Lewis published two stories in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. One of these, “Ministering Angels”, is an awful pile of sexism, but the other, “Forms of Things Unknown”, struck me as rather good, as did the two other complete shorts, “The Shoddy Lands” and “The Man Born Blind”.
Links I found interesting for 06-11-2015
- Serbia shuts down historic Tanjug news service started by revolutionary Tito
Sad news!
- Scoping the possible economic impact of Brexit on Ireland
Bad news, both sides of the Border.
- Who Knows What About Me?
How apps share *your* data.
- Matthew 22:39
Research shows that (some) devout people are just mean.
- The Real Map of Ireland
Even wetter than you realised!
- Brexit to Nowhere: The foreign policy consequences of Out
@ecfr explains.
- The GOP’s Primary Rules Might Doom Carson and Cruz
Detail from @fivethirtyeight.
Thursday reading
Current
Axis, by Robert Charles Wilson
Too Much Happiness, by Alice Munro
The Quantum Archangel, by Craig Hinton
The Sculptor, by Scott McCloud
Last books finished
The Dark Tower and Other Stories, by C.S. Lewis
Slan, by A.E. van Vogt
Family Britain, 1951-1957, by David Kynaston
The Ultimate Egoist, by Theodore Sturgeon (1940 stories only)
Last week’s audios
Welcome to Night Vale, eps 74-75
Next books
The Summer Before the Dark, by Doris Lessing
Saga Volume 4. by Brian K Vaughan and Fiona Staples
To the Slaughter, by Steve Cole
Books acquired in last week
The Sculptor, by Scott McCloud
The Clock Strikes Twelve and other Stories, by H. Russell Wakefield
The Ultimate Egoist, vol. 1, by Theodore Sturgeon
Kai Lung Beneath the Mulberry Tree, by Ernest Bramah
Lethbridge-Stewart: Beast of Fang Rock, by Andy Frankham-Allen, based on a story by Terrance Dicks
Even Dogs in the Wild, by Ian Rankin
The Invention of Morel, by Adolfo Bioy Casares
Kallocain, by Karin Boye
Waiting for Elizabeth: Love and Hate in Tudor Ireland, by Joan Rosier-Jones
Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories vol 2, eds. Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg
Links I found interesting for 05-11-2015
- After Listening To Women, Longtime Anti-Abortion Congressman Becomes Pro-Choice
Smell the coffee!
- Salvador Dalí Illustrates Alice in Wonderland
A perfect match, in some ways.
A Star Chamber Court in Ireland: The Court of Castle Chamber, 1571-1641, by Jon G. Crawford
A rather specialised topic, looking at one specific part of the Irish political/legal system and its role in the conquest of Ireland. The Court of Castle Chamber was effectively the Irish Privy Council sitting as a judicial rather than political body; it came into being in the middle of the Elizabethan period, and was scrapped along with much else when war broke out in 1641. It became particularly notorious in Irish history as an instrument of political enforcement, both by the zealous Sir Arthur Chichester in the first years of James I’s reign, and by Wentworth/Strafford in the 1630s. I was of course particularly interested because my ancestor and namesake was a key figure in the Court’s early years, becoming Master of the Rolls the year after it was established and attempting to guide it as an instrument for establishing the rule of (English) law throughout as much of the island as possible. It’s very detailed, and if I ever get around to working on the biography I some day hope to write, this will be an important source.
Three thoughts that it sparked: first, a frustrating omission is that Crawford doesn’t explain the overall structure of the judicial system in Ireland, or how it compared to the English model that it was to an extent copying. This leaves the lay reader a little at sea – it’s obvious enough that the Court of Castle Chamber was the most important piece of the legal jigsaw puzzle, but one gets very little sense of the number and size of the other pieces.
Second, I deal with countries today which struggle with the rule of law, where courts have basically always been an extension of the executive branch of government, and the notion that judges might make important rulings that are based on legal principle rather than what the Prime Minister wants is naive at best. But it’s actually really important that courts should be independent and work on clear legal principles, and that they should occasionally come to decisions that are inconvenient for the government of the day (the Irish Court of Castle Chamber is not a good example here). For citizens inside the country, the legal system is ideally a protection against government rather than another manifestation of state power. For external investors, it’s more straightforward to pay lawyers to get as good a result as possible within the rules than to bribe officials until you get the right outcome. Those of us who live in countries where the rule of law actually does apply sometimes don’t appreciate its importance.
Third, one particular incident from early in the Court’s existence struck me as particularly important. In 1582, the Chief Justice, Nicholas Nugent, was suspended from office and then tried for treason, on the grounds that he had supported two of his nephews involved in the 1580 Baltinglass rebellion. Treason trials required two witnesses for the prosecution; in this case there was only one. Nugent’s nephews were safely in prison and were not executed (one died in prison years later, the other was pardoned). The Court of Castle Chamber got deeply entwined in the conduct of the jury trial to ensure the right outcome, which was that Nugent was swiftly found guilty and executed. It was a display of lethal executive power against a leading member of the judiciary, and it worked; and in restrospect it was a precursor to the use of the Court as an instrument of oppression in the following century.
Links I found interesting for 04-11-2015
- What does the election of Justin Trudeau mean for the rest of the world?
@francescabinda explains.
- Britain out-spent on diplomacy by New Zealand, report finds
Spending per capita, that is!
- Time No Longer
The Mill House in Great Shelford, setting of Tom’s Midnight Garden.
- 12 reasons why Cameron will lose on Brexit
@DenisMacShane is pessimistic.
- Is the UK a winner or loser in the EU Council?
Both.
- Caitlin Moran’s Posthumous Advice for Her Daughter
Funny and wise.
- “Where Do You Get Your Ideas From?”
Ursula Le Guin explains, passionately.
- EU summit called
Brussels chides member states on migration pledges!
Walking to Babylon by Kate Orman
This was the very first Bernice Summerfield novel I read, long long ago, and then a few years back I then really enjoyed the Big Finish audio adaptation guest-starring Elisabeth Sladen as a Babylonian priestess. I realise now that it’s also partly a homage to Iain M. Banks: the story is about a far-future civilisation, the People (a pretty direct copy of the Culture), two of whom take it into their heads to go to ancient Babylon, with potentially catastrophic results. An archeologist from 1901 gets swept up into Benny’s mission with unexpected consequences. I really enjoyed it when I read it effectively as a standalone novel back in 2002, and I enjoyed it even more now.
Links I found interesting for 03-11-2015
- The Financial Times Partners With Google To Guide Readers Through Europe’s “Hidden Cities”
Starting with Brussels.
- Juncker’s kisses
Greetings from the President of the European Commission!
- The rating game
When the customer becomes the boss.
- The Game is Rigged
It’s not enough to be consensual; it ought to be *good* as well.
- Obituary: Professor John Bossy
An old friend, lost on 23 October.
- DUP uses veto to scupper same sex marriage vote
53 for, 52 against, Unionist veto wielded.
- Another blow for Strasbourg: no more direct Brussels-Strasbourg trains from 3rd April 2016
@jonworth explains.
The Deadstone Memorial, by Trevor Baxendale
This is one of those Who novels that could have made a good TV episode – indeed, it possibly did, with the central theme of children's nightmares becoming reality used twice that I can remember in New Who (Fear Her and Night Terrors). There's also a zombie character from the seventeenth century. It's solid stuff, well-written, giving the Doctor, companions Fitz and Trix, and the various incidental characters plenty to do and doing it interestingly.
Links I found interesting for 02-11-2015
- Are any foods safe to eat anymore?
Some are, some aren’t.
- The Popular Over-The-Counter Cold Medicine That Doesn’t Work
Phenylephedrine useless?
- Juncker’s kisses
Greetings from the President of the European Commission!
- Azeri ruling party wins majority in parliamentary election
In case you were wondering.
Hugo-eligible short fiction Apr-Jun 2015: my first take
Following on from my previous post, and using the methodology explained here, I've read through the fiction output of Tor.com, Clarkesworld, Asimov's and Strange Horizons for the second quarter of this year in quest of stories to nominate for next year's Hugos. (I am also in principle reading Subterranean Press's output, but they don't seem to have published original fiction in those three months.)
Clarkesworld also failed to really engage my enthusiasm. Again, I'll note that "For the Love of Sylvia City", by Andrea M. Pawley, and "Forestspirit, Forestspirit, by" Bogi Takacs, have got fans elsewhere but didn't quite grab me. The one story I'd consider nominating from issues 103-105 is the very first, "The Empress in Her Glory", by Robert Reed, which seemed to me to take Childhood's End in a new direction. On the other hand, that same issue had a story by an author who I'm simply not going to read, and issue 104 had a story about a cute anthropomorphic robot, one of my least favourite tropes.
There are only two issues of Asimov's to consider here, April/May being a double, but I found it by far the best hunting ground. Again, the very first story, "The New Mother", by Eugene Fischer really impressed me, and I'm a bit surprised not to see it more widely recommended (other than by Amal El-Mohtar). From the same issue, I liked "Willing Flesh", by Jay O'Connell which hit a sore spot for me, and from the June issue I liked the musical story "Our Lady of the Open Road", by Sarah Pinsker, though was not quite as convinced as some others are by "The End of the War", by Django Wexler.
Finally, Strange Horizons seemed to me to have had a three strong months. I was amused that it published two gay time-travel romance stories in succession, "Utrechtenaar", by Paul Evanby (1, 2) and "What We're Having", by Nathaniel Lee. The latter is very sweetly done (and also scratches my cookery itch) but I don't think I can nominate or vote for a story which is essentially about a magic saucepan. The former really impressed me with sense of place and time, and educated me about a historical event of which I was unaware. Among what seemed to me a strong line-up, I was also impressed with "Nine Thousand Hours", by Iona Sharma.
Score so far of stories I am considering for nomination:
Novellas
Allen M. Steele, "The Long Wait" (Asimov's, Jan 2015)
Kristine Kathryn Rusch "Inhuman Garbage" (Asimov's, Mar 2015)
Lois McMaster Bujold, Penric's Demon (Spectrum)
Eugene Fischer, "The New Mother" (Asimov's, Apr/May 2015)
Novelette
Eneasz Brodski, "Red Legacy" (Asimov's, Feb 2015)
Vandana Singh, "Ambiguity Machines: An Examination" (Tor.com, Apr 2015 – at 7800 words it just scrapes into this category)
Sarah Pinsker, "Our Lady of the Open Road" (Asimov's, Jun 2015)
Paul Evanby, "Utrechtenaar" (1, 2 – Strange Horizons, June 2015 – surprised to find it only 9,000 words)
Short Stories
L.S. Johnson, "Vacui Magia" (Strange Horizons, Jan 2015)
Kelly Robson, "The Three Resurrections of Jessica Churchill" (Clarkesworld, Feb 2015)
Nino Cipri, "The Shape of My Name" (Tor.com, Mar 2015)
Robert Reed, "The Empress in Her Glory" (Clarkesworld, Apr 2015)
Jay O'Connell, "Willing Flesh" (Asimov's, Apr/May 2015)
"Nine Thousand Hours", by Iona Sharma
Well, I'm half way through the year and have enough to fill one category and almost enough to fill each of the other two.
There are a few other recommendation sites out there; my approach so far has been to read the stories, then check back with Rocket Stack Rank, Ladybusiness and Laura "Tegan" Gjovaag to see what I may have missed. The last of these has a number of other useful links as well.
I'm going to take a break from 2015's short fiction now and read up on the offerings of 1940 for the Retro Hugos, following up on my recent posts on the eligible stories and their availability.
The Arabian Nights, ed. Muhsin Mahdi, tr. Hussein Haddawy
A translation of one of the classic Arabian Nights manuscripts, with some familiar stories absent (Aladdin, Sinbad, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves) but lots more, all giving a very vivid picture of a time and a number of places in a world stretching from Egypt to India as a single cultural unit, but centred on Baghdad and Persia. There's a lot of fairly intricate nesting of stories within stories – I think it was four layers deep at one point – but all rather entertaining, with of course some stories displaying the prejudices of the day, but others giving women agency – including the framing narrative. I actually started with the Burton translation, but found it unreadable; this is much better.
Links I found interesting for 01-11-2015
- Sci-Fi’s Hugo Awards and the Battle for Pop Culture’s Soul
Wired updates its coverage.
- All hail the commodification of Halloween
How business created an American “tradition”.
- How the Failure of Reconstruction Destroyed Progress in America
History being made.
- Ancillary Stapler
Beautifully done.
1941 Retro Hugo Awards: Some 1940 short sf available for free online
Following up on my list of the most anthologised sf short stories of 1940, here are links to those I found readliy available for free online after a cursory search (ie in the first page of Google results for title and author). I am happy to expand this list to include other short sf from 1940, as well as any I may have missed from my first list, and also to remove any links which violate copyright.
NB also that UNZ.org has the entire 1940 runs of Unknown, Thrilling Wonder Stories and Argosy in PDF – possibly others as well, but I couldn't see how to find out.
Novellas
"Blowups Happen", by Robert A. Heinlein
"But Without Horns", by Novell Page
"The Mound", by H.P. Lovecraft and Zealia Bishop
Novelettes
"The City of the Singing Flame", by Clark Ashton Smith
"The Exhalted", by L. Sprague de Camp
"Farewell to the Master", by Harry Bates
"The Red Death of Mars", by Robert Moore Williams
"The Sea Thing", by A.E. van Vogt
"Till Doomsday", by Robert Sale
"Vault of the Beast", by A.E. van Vogt
"The Voyage That Lasted 600 Years", by Don Wilcox
Short Stories
"Beauty and the Beast", by Henry Kuttner
"The Bleak Shore, by Fritz Leiber
"The Chaser", by John Collier
"The Circular Ruins", by Jorge Luis Borges
"Derm Fool", by Theodore Sturgeon
"Footsteps Invisible", by Robert Arthur
"The Great God Awto", by Clark Ashton Smith
"Inflexible Logic", by Russell Maloney
"John Duffy's Brother", by Flann O'Brien
"The Pipes of Pan", by Lester Del Rey
"Quietus", by Ross Rocklynne
"Song in a Minor Key", by C.L. Moore
The Song of the Slaves", by Manly Wade Wellman
"Successful Operation", by Robert A. Heinlein
"Thus I Refute Beelzy", by John Collier
“Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius”, by Jorge Luís Borges
"Train for Flushing", by Malcolm Jameson
"When It Was Moonlight", by Manly Wade Wellman
October Books
A lower tally than sometimes – three very long books, and also reading lots of short fiction for Hugo nominations.
TARDIS Eruditorum – An Unofficial Critical History of Doctor Who Volume 6: Peter Davison and Colin Baker, by Philip Sandifer
The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuition Deceives Us: Or Why You Have No Idea How Your Mind Works, by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons
A Question of Time: J.R.R. Tolkien's Road to "Faerie", by Verlyn Flieger
A Star Chamber Court in Ireland: The Court of Castle Chamber, 1571-1641, by Jon G. Crawford
Family Britain, 1951-1957, by David Kynaston
Fiction (non-sf): 1 (YTD 32)
Les Misérables, by Victor Hugo
SF (non-Who): 7 (YTD 96)
Jacaranda, by Cherie Priest
Forsaken, by Kelley Armstrong (did not finish)
Galactic North, by Alastair Reynolds
The Arabian Nights, ed. Muhsin Mahdi, tr. Hussein Haddawy
The Dark Tower and Other Stories, by C.S. Lewis
Slan, by A.E. van Vogt
Doctor Who, etc: 3 (YTD 35)
Business Unusual, by Gary Russell
The Deadstone Memorial, by Trevor Baxendale
Walking to Babylon by Kate Orman
Comics : 0 (YTD 13)
~6,400 pages (YTD 64,000)
4/15 by women (YTD 68/228) – Flieger, Priest, Armstrong, Orman
1/15 by PoC (YTD 15/228) – Mahdi/Haddawy
Reread: 2/15 (Les Miserables, Walking to Babylon), YTD 18/228
Reading now:
Axis, by Robert Charles Wilson
Coming soon (perhaps):
Too Much Happiness, by Alice Munro
The Summer Before the Dark, by Doris May Lessing
Saga Volume 4. by Brian K Vaughan and Fiona Staples
Sleepyhead, by Mark Billingham
Streetlethal, by Steven Barnes, if I can find it
The Oxford Book of Christmas Stories, ed. Dennis Pepper
Dodger, by Terry Pratchett
North Wind, by Gwyneth Jones
The Battle for Gaul, by Julius Caesar
Monkey Planet, by Pierre Boulle
Horrible Science Annual 2010, by Nick Arnold
The Invention of Happiness, by Brian W. Aldiss
Bits of Me are Falling Apart, by William Leith
Keeping it Real, by Justina Robson
When I Was a Child I Read Books, by Marilynne Robinson
Moon Over Soho, by Ben Aaronovitch
Helliconia, by Brian Aldiss
A Princess of Roumania, by Paul Park
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce
New Europe, by Michael Palin
The Folding Star, by Alan Hollinghurst
The Quantum Archangel, by Craig Hinton (2001)
To the Slaughter, by Steve Cole (2005)
Oblivion, by Dave Stone (1998)
Links I found interesting for 31-10-2015
- LinkedIn may be ugly, but at least it knows how to make money
Drastically needs to improve how content is presented!
- The Lords and tax credits: fact and myth
Good analysis.
- Canadian’s death while detained in U.K. immigration centre ‘shameful’
Britain’s welcome to migrants.
- The Astonishingly Non-Nonsensical Plot of The Rocky Horror Picture Show
What’s really going on.
- The Fall of Filat: Moldova’s Crisis Deepens
A grim tale.
- Clout: Campaign manager’s “Terrible” past
Nice to see my friend Mitch getting some media love!
“Home”, by Warsan Shire
home is the mouth of a shark
you only run for the border
when you see the whole city running as well
your neighbors running faster than you
breath bloody in their throats
the boy you went to school with
who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory
is holding a gun bigger than his body
you only leave home
when home won’t let you stay.
no one leaves home unless home chases you
fire under feet
hot blood in your belly
it’s not something you ever thought of doing
until the blade burnt threats into
your neck
and even then you carried the anthem under
your breath
only tearing up your passport in an airport toilets
sobbing as each mouthful of paper
made it clear that you wouldn’t be going back.
you have to understand,
that no one puts their children in a boat
unless the water is safer than the land
no one burns their palms
under trains
beneath carriages
no one spends days and nights in the stomach of a truck
feeding on newspaper unless the miles travelled
means something more than journey.
no one crawls under fences
no one wants to be beaten
pitied
no one chooses refugee camps
or strip searches where your
body is left aching
or prison,
because prison is safer
than a city of fire
and one prison guard
in the night
is better than a truckload
of men who look like your father
no one could take it
no one could stomach it
no one skin would be tough enough
the
go home blacks
refugees
dirty immigrants
asylum seekers
sucking our country dry
niggers with their hands out
they smell strange
savage
messed up their country and now they want
to mess ours up
how do the words
the dirty looks
roll off your backs
maybe because the blow is softer
than a limb torn off
or the words are more tender
than fourteen men between
your legs
or the insults are easier
to swallow
than rubble
than bone
than your child body
in pieces.
i want to go home,
but home is the mouth of a shark
home is the barrel of the gun
and no one would leave home
unless home chased you to the shore
unless home told you
to quicken your legs
leave your clothes behind
crawl through the desert
wade through the oceans
drown
save
be hunger
beg
forget pride
your survival is more important
no one leaves home until home is a sweaty voice in your ear
saying-
leave,
run away from me now
i dont know what i’ve become
but i know that anywhere
is safer than here
Thursday reading
Current
Family Britain, 1951-1957, by David Kynaston
The Dark Tower and Other Stories, by C.S. Lewis
Last books finished
Walking to Babylon by Kate Orman
A Star Chamber Court in Ireland: The Court of Castle Chamber, 1571-1641, by Jon G. Crawford
Last week’s audios
[Sixth Doctor] The Brink of Death, by Nicholas Briggs
Welcome to Night Vale eps 69-74
Next books
Axis, by Robert Charles Wilson
Too Much Happiness, by Alice Munro
The Quantum Archangel, by Craig Hinton
Books acquired in last week
Slan, by A.E. van Vogt
Links I found interesting for 29-10-2015
- How to Defeat Religious Violence
Jonathan Sacks reflects.
- We pay, but have no say: Norway and the EU
Former foreign minister @EspenBarthEide explains.
- Naked Prose, by Jon Courtenay Grimwood
Writng about sex.
- Roger Stone, Political Animal
Extraordinary piece (from 2007) about an extraordinary operator.
- Azerbaijan: rigged elections next Sunday
Great piece by @CommissionerHR, mentions my ex-colleague Ilgar Mammadov.
- Ilgar Mammadov severely beaten in prison
Aliyev’s goons in typical form.
Baked salmon with lemon and pepper breadcrumbs
zest ½ lemon, then cut into wedges
4 tbsp fresh white breadcrumbs
25g butter, melted
1½ tsp coarsely ground peppercorns
4 skinless salmon fillets
Potatoes and greens.
A BBC recipe.
1. Heat oven to 200C/180C fan/gas 6. Start cooking potatoes. (And probably greens.)
2. While the potatoes cook, combine the lemon zest, breadcrumbs, butter and peppercorns. Put the salmon fillets in a large roasting tin and sprinkle 1 tbsp of crumbs on each fillet. Pop the lemon wedges in the tin and bake for 8-10 mins until the salmon is cooked and the crumb is golden and crunchy.
3. Serve with mashed potatoes and greens.
Notes: I think I had way too many breadcrumbs from two slices of ordinary brown bread, judging by the contrast between what I cooked and the picture in the original BBC recipe. Maybe white bread would have given fewer, but we never buy it.
I added a half tsp of ground coriander seed (bashed together with the pepper using pestle and mortar) to deepen the flavour. It could easily have taken the same again.
However this is partly because I misread the recipe and used 1½ tablespoons of peppercorns rather than 1½ teaspoons. It had quite a zing.
Apart from those minor issues, this was a really quick, easy and tasty recipe.
Links I found interesting for 28-10-2015
- #PortugalCoup, and Britain’s post-fact politics
Excellent takedown by @jonworth, applies elsewhere too.
- The strange death of Catholic Ireland
@GerryLynch in fine form.
- Throwout
A pre-election critique of Stephen Harper – from the Right.
- UK Boundary Review 2016 – What needs to be Done
Faha points out that Northern Ireland needn’t lose 2 seats.
Links I found interesting for 27-10-2015
- Eating bacon, ham and sausages can cause bowel cancer
Headline a little alarmist. But still – Aaargh!
- The European Commission is up to its neck in the VW scandal, but for reasons more complex than reported
@jonworth explains.
- Are the Indo-Europeans untraceable?
Maybe not.
1941 Retro Hugo Awards: Getting hold of the short fiction
The number of published volumes containing much in the way of sf short fiction from 1940 is rather finite. Having trawled the pages of the ISFDB, I believe that this is a comprehensive list of all of the collections and anthologies which it lists with three or more stories from that year.
The Dwindling Sphere, by Willard Hawkins
The Automatic Pistol, by Fritz Leiber
Hindsight, by Jack Williamson
Postpaid to Paradise, by Robert Arthur
Into the Darkness, by Ross Rocklynne
Dark Mission, by Lester del Rey
It, by Theodore Sturgeon
Vault of the Beast, by A. E. van Vogt
The Impossible Highway, by Oscar J. Friend
Quietus, by Ross Rocklynne
Strange Playfellow, by Isaac Asimov
The Warrior Race, by L. Sprague de Camp
Farewell to the Master, by Harry Bates
Butyl and the Breather, novelette by Theodore Sturgeon
The Exalted, novelette by L. Sprague de Camp and
Old Man Mulligan, novelette by P. Schuyler Miller
An interesting choice of stories in Phil Stong's 1941 anthology, The Other Worlds aka The Other Worlds: 25 Modern Stories of Mystery and Imagination, includes half a dozen from 1940:
The Pipes of Pan, by Lester del Rey
The Man Who Knew All the Answers, by Albert Bernstein
Adam Link's Vengeance, by Eando [Otto] Binder
Truth Is a Plague, by D. W. O'Brien
The Comedy of Eras, by "Kelvin Kent" [Henry Kuttner]
The Song of the Slaves, by Manly Wade Wellman
A more standard but still interesting half dozen 1940 stories are included in Unknown Worlds: Tales from Beyond (1988), eds. Stanley Schmidt and Martin H. Greenberg:
When It Was Moonlight, by Manly Wade Wellman
The Pipes of Pan, by Lester del Rey
It, by Theodore Sturgeon
Fruit of Knowledge, by C. L. Moore
The Wheels of If, by L. Sprague de Camp and
The Bleak Shore, by Fritz Leiber
The 1990 anthology Rivals of Weird Tales, eds Robert Weinberg, Stefan R. Dziemianowicz and Martin H. Greenberg, includes five 1940 stories:
Me and My Shadow, by Eric Frank Russell
Doomed, by Seabury Quinn
Warm, Dark Places, by H. L. Gold
But Without Horns, by Norvell W. Page and
Philtered Power, by Malcolm Jameson
The classic 1946 anthology Adventures in Time and Space, eds Raymond J. Healy and J. Francis McComas, includes four 1940 stories:
Requiem, by Robert A. Heinlein
The Roads Must Roll, by Robert A. Heinlein
Quietus, by Ross Rocklynne and
Farewell to the Master, by Harry Bates
So does Yesterday’s Tomorrows (1982), ed. Frederik Pohl:
Into the Darkness, by Ross Rocklynne
Strange Playfellow, by Isaac Asimov
Emergency Refueling, by James Blish and
Let There Be Light, by Robert A. Heinlein
So does The Astounding Science Fiction Anthology (1952), ed. John W. Campbell:
Blowups Happen, by Robert A. Heinlein
Hindsight, by Jack Williamson
Vault of the Beast, by A. E. van Vogt and
The Exalted, by L. Sprague de Camp
Those are all the anthologies I found with more than three 1940 stories.
H. Russell Wakefield's 1940 collection, The Clock Strikes Twelve has (not surprisingly) twelve stories, all original: The Alley; Jay Walkers; Ingredient X; "I Recognised the Voice"; Farewell Performance; Not Quite Cricket; In Collaboration; A Stitch in Time; Lucky's Grove; Red Feathers; Happy Ending?; and Masrur.
Another dozen short stories from 1940 are among those compiled in Volume 2 of The Collected Jorkens (2004), by Lord Dunsany: A Fishing Story; The Neapolitan Ice; The Fancy Man; The Lion and the Unicorn; Elephant Shooting; African Magic; Jorkens Consults a Prophet; A Matter of Business; Pundleton's Audience; The Fight in the Drawing-Room; The Ivory Poacher; and After Many a Summer.
The Ultimate Egoist, Volume 1: The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon (1995) contains eight 1940 stories by that author: Mahout; The Long Arm; The Man on the Steps; Punctuational Advice; Place of Honor; The Ultimate Egoist; It; and Butyl and the Breather.
Another 1940 single-author collection of original stories is Kai Lung Beneath the Mulberry Tree, by Ernest Bramah, containing: The Story of Prince Ying, Virtuous Mei, and the Pursuit of Worthiness; The Three Recorded Judgments of Prince Ying, from the Inscribed Scroll of Mou Tao, The Beggar; The Ignoble Alliance of Lin T'sing with the Outlaw Fang Wang, and How It Affected the Destinies; The Story of Yin Ho, Hoa-mi, and the Magician; The Story of Ton Hi, Precious Gem and the Inconspicuous Elephant; The Story of Sam-tso, the Family Called Wong, and the Willing Buffalo; The Story of Sho Chi, the No-longer Merchant Ng Hon, and the Docile Linnets; and The Story of the Poet Lao Ping, Chun Shin's Daughter Fa, and the Fighting Crickets.
The Early Asimov, in its various permutations, includes six 1940 stories: The Callistan Menace; Ring Around the Sun; The Magnificent Possession; Half-Breed; Homo Sol; and Half-Breeds on Venus.
So does The Far Side of Nowhere, by Nelson Bond: Parallel in Time; The Castaway; The Unusual Romance of Ferdinand Pratt; The Scientific Pioneer Returns; The Fertility of Dalrymple Todd; and The Man Who Weighed Minus Twelve.
So does Gateway to Paradise (2008), by Jack Williamson: The Sun Maker; The Crystal of Death; The Girl in the Bottle; Racketeers in the Sky; Ashes of Iron; and Darker Than You Think.
Two different Heinlein collections have five stories from 1940 each, with three overlaps. The first is The Man Who Sold The Moon, which includes: "Let There Be Light"; The Roads Must Roll; Blowups Happen; and Requiem. The second is The Past Through Tomorrow, which includes The Roads Must Roll; Blowups Happen; Requiem; "If This Goes On —"; and Coventry. Confusingly, the Baen collection The Man Who Sold the Moon / Orphans of the Sky contains only three 1940 Heinlein stories: Let There Be Light; Requiem; and The Roads Must Roll.
Volume 1 of The Early Del Rey is another collection with five stories from 1940: The Smallest God; The Stars Look Down; Doubled in Brass; Reincarnate; and Done Without Eagles.
Two of those and two different del Rey stories are collected in Robots and Magic: The Smallest God; Reincarnate; The Pipes of Pan; and Doubled in Brass.
The prolific John Collier collected his four favourite 1940 stories from his own work in four different collections, Presenting MoonshineGreen Thoughts and Other Strange TalesFancies and GoodnightsThe John Collier Reader. They are: Evening Primrose; The Chaser; Another American Tragedy; and Thus I Refute Beelzy.
Far Lands, Other Days, by E. Hoffmann Price includes the following 1940 stories: Khosru's Garden; Heart of a Thief; Vengeance in Samarra; and Selene Walks By Night.
The Henry Kuttner volume in the Centipede Press Masters of the Weird Tale series includes four 1940 stories: Time to Kill; The Seal of Sin; To Boatl and Back; and Threshold.
We have had precisely one story so far by a woman. The 2002 Haffner Press collection, Martian Quest: The Early Brackett, includes the following four 1940 stories by Leigh Brackett: Martian Quest; The Treasure of Ptakuth; The Tapestry Gate; and The Stellar Legion. NB that the 2008 Baen collection, Martian Quest, includes only the first two of these (and for some reason dates one of them to 1942 rather than 1940).
Finally, Robert Bloch's collection Flowers From the Moon and Other Lunacies includes three stories from 1940: Power of the Druid; Be Yourself; and Wine of the Sabbat.
I already had a couple of these collections lurking around somewhere; I must dig them out and also get hold of the Asimov/Greenberg anthology. Of course, a lot of the stories listed here and yesterday are also available in electronic form in one way or another.
1941 Retro Hugo Awards: Eligible short fiction, ranked by anthology prevalence
I've done some more delving into the fiction eligible for the 1941 Hugos, helped in the first place again by Meredith and in the second by the Internet Speculative Fiction Database. On the basis that the most memorable stories of 1940 are likely to be those which have been most frequently picked up for anthologies and collections (and therefore also most likely to have been read by subsequent generations of fans), I did a naked-eye scan of the listings to pick up those which have been republished more than once (novellas) or more than twice (novelettes and short stories) since first publication. This does of course skew the odds towards those authors who lived long enough to have many different collections of their own stories published, but I suspect that will also be reflected in the voting.
Novellas
"Coventry", by Robert A. Heinlein
"The Wheels of If", by L. Sprague de Camp
"Magic, Inc.", Robert A. Heinlein and
"The Mound", by H. P. Lovecraft and Zealia Bishop (written years before but published only in 1940).
Others that I found in two or three anthologies or collections as well as their original publications:
"But Without Horns", by Norvell W. Page
"Darker Than You Think", by Jack Williamson
"Death's Head Face", by Richard Foster
"The Green Lama", by Richard Foster
"The Man Who Wasn't There", by Kendell Foster Crossen
"Mistress of the Blood-Drinkers", by Ralston Shields
"Nopți la Serampore", by Mircea Eliade
"The Sun Maker", by Jack Williamson
Novelettes
"It", by Theodore Sturgeon
After that there are another three stories which are well ahead of the field. They are:
"Blowups Happen", by Robert A. Heinlein
"Farewell to the Master", by Harry Bates (the story that The Day The Earth Stood Still was based on) and
"Vault of the Beast", by A. E. van Vogt
Another 20 novelettes have appeared in three, four, or five anthologies and collections apart from their original publication. They are:
"Butyl and the Breather", by Theodore Sturgeon
"Cargo", by Theodore Sturgeon
"City of Singing Flame", by Clark Ashton Smith
"Dr. Cyclops", by Henry Kuttner
"The Exhalted", by L. Sprague de Camp
"Fruit of Knowledge", by C. L. Moore
"The Gryb", by A. E. van Vogt
"Half-Breed", by Isaac Asimov
"The Hardwood Pile", by L. Sprague de Camp
"I, Spy!", by Eric Frank Russell
"Into the Darkness", by Ross Rocklynne
"The Living Mist" / "We, The Mist", by Ralph Milne Farley
"The Red Death of Mars", by Robert Moore Williams
"The Sandwin Compact", by August W. Derleth
"Seven Seconds of Eternity", by Robert H. Leitfred
"The Smallest God", by Lester del Rey
"The Stars Look Down", by Lester del Rey
"Till Doomsday", by Richard Sale
"The Voyage That Lasted 600 Years", by Don Wilcox and
"The Wonderful Day", by Robert Arthur
Short Stories
"Requiem", by Robert A. Heinlein and
"Strange Playfellow", by Isaac Asimov
Another seven stories appear in ten or more anthologies or collections – but four of them are by an author not closely identified with sf who published a number of different collections of his own works over the years. They are:
"Another American Tragedy", by John Collier
"The Chaser", by John Collier
"Evening Primrose", by John Collier
"Thus I Refute Beelzy", by John Collier
"The Song of the Slaves", by Manly Wade Wellman
"When It Was Moonlight", by Manly Wade Wellman and
"The Bleak Shore", by Fritz Leiber, Jnr.
The last of these is not the greatest of the Lankhmar stories – our heroes get ensorcelled and go on a journey to their likely deaths, and it lacks the usual banter which livens Leiber's prose. But I wouldn't be surprised to see it make the final ballot.
Another 43 short stories have been published between 4 and 9 times according to the ISFDB. They are:
“The Angel Was a Yankee”, by Stephen Vincent Benét
“At the Mountains of Murkiness”, by Arthur C. Clarke
“The Automatic Pistol”, by Fritz Leiber
“Beauty and the Beast”, by Henry Kuttner
“The Circular Ruins”, by Jorge Luís Borges
“Dark Mission”, by Lester del Rey
“Derm Fool”, by Theodore Sturgeon
“The Devil's Rescue”, by L. Ron Hubbard
“The Dwindling Sphere”, by Willard E. Hawkins
“Emergency Landing”, by Ralph Williams
“Escort”, by Daphne du Maurier
“Farewell Performance”, by H. Russell Wakefield
“The Fiddler's Fee”, by Robert Bloch
“Fisherman's Luck”, by Frank Belknap Long
“Footsteps Invisible”, by Robert Arthur
“The Great God Awto”, by Clark Ashton Smith
“Hermit of Saturn's Ring”, by Neil R. Jones
“Hindsight”, by Jack Williamson
“The Impossible Highway”, by Oscar J. Friend
“Inflexible Logic”, by Russell Maloney
“Jay Walkers”, by H. R. Wakefield
“John Duffy's Brother”, by Flann O'Brien
“Jorkens Consults a Prophet”, by Lord Dunsany
“The Last Pin”, by Howard Wandrei
“Let There Be Light”, by Robert A. Heinlein
“Lucky's Grove”, by H. Russell Wakefield
“Me and My Shadow”, by Eric Frank Russell
“Men of Iron”, by Guy Endore
“Philtered Power”, by Malcolm Jameson
“The Pipes of Pan”, by Lester del Rey
“Postpaid to Paradise”, by Robert Arthur
“Quietus”, by Ross Rocklynne
“The Sea Thing”, by A. E. van Vogt
“Song in a Minor Key”, by C. L. Moore
“Stepson of Space”, by Raymond Z. Gallun
“A Stitch in Time”, by Frank Belknap Long
“Successful Operation”, by Robert A. Heinlein
“Threshold”, by Henry Kuttner
“Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius”, by Jorge Luís Borges
“Train for Flushing”, by Malcolm Jameson
“Vengeance by Proxy”, by John Wyndham
“Warm, Dark Places”, by H. L. Gold
“The Warrior Race”, by L. Sprague de Camp
The Flann O'Brien story is barely genre, concerning a man who briefly believes himself to have become a train, but I may give it one of my own nomination slots. I will certainly be giving a nod to “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius”.
I'm afraid that's a rather male list, with one woman writer getting a story in each of the two shorter categories, and another sharing credit for a novella.
I'll do another post tomorrow looking at what anthologies and collections you might want to get if you want to sample the short sf of 1940.
Links I found interesting for 26-10-2015
- British Left and Right are wrong on Portugal
What’s really happening.
- Was it like this for the Irish?: The War on British Muslims
Good question – from 2008!
- Lessons of Past Disasters Helped Mexico Sidestep the Brunt of a Hurricane
Whew.
- EU failed to heed emissions warnings in 2013
@janezpotocnik22 saw VW scandal coming; others failed to act.
- Crusader Chic
Fashion and medieval geopolitics.
1941 Retro Hugo Awards: Eligible novels, ranked by popularity
This entry has been updated.
Thanks to Meredith and Steve Davidson, and the SF Encyclopedia, I've compiled a list of novels eligible for the 1941 Retro Hugo Awards which will be presented at next year's Worldcon (MidAmeriCon II in Kansas City, Missouri). My aim is basically to help myself (and others) make an informed nomination, recognising that books which are relatively obscure now are unlikely to make it through the process to the award ceremony. What, then, are the least obscure SF novels of 1940, and the most likely to receive the favour of Hugo voters?
As is my wont, I've ranked them by popularity on Goodreads and LibraryThing, with a couple of tweaks: several of the top works are now much more easily available as parts of larger books than as standalone works, and while I ranked all the books mentioned by Meredith and Steve Davidson, I was a bit more selective in what I took from the later comments to their posts and from the SF Encyclopedia. The full table is further down this post; the top seven, with links to the Wikipedia article about each book, are as follows.
1) The Ill-Made Knight, by T.H. White, these days available as the third part of The Once and Future King. This is the part of the story which centres on Lancelot's travails with Arthur, Guinevere and Elaine. It must be decades since I last read it, but it sticks in my mind pretty vividly.
2) The Invention of Morel, by Adolfo Bioy Casares. I'm not sure if this qualifies as a novel by length – a number of sources describe it as a novella, and the available editions are only 100 pages long. It gets rave reviews from those who have read it, including the author's close friend Jorge Luis Borges (whose own "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" was also published in 1940). Update: I'm pretty sure that this is a novella. The English translation has 350-400 words per page, and of the 100 pages, several are taken up by Borges' introduction and several more by illustrations. So it's unlikely to be be over 40,000 words, and the same probably goes for the original Spanish text.
3) If This Goes On—, by Robert A. Heinlein, these days available as the first part of Revolt in 2100. This was Heinlein's first published novel, about the overthrow of a religious theocracy in the United States, which feels uncomfortably closer to plausibility today than it did when I first read it in my teens. Update: Alas, it's pretty clear – as pointed out in comments below – that the 1940 text at 33,800 words is well below the cutoff point for novels, so this too is a novella.
4) Slan, by A.E. van Vogt. I actually can't remember if I have read this, but of all the books on the list it was probably the most influential on the genre.
5) Gray Lensman, by E.E. "Doc" Smith. I gave up on Smith's classic series before reaching this one, but there is a view (which I am not in a position to contest) that this is the best of them.
6) The Incomplete Enchanter, by L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt, these days available as the first two parts of The Compleat Enchanter and in various other collections. Although The Incomplete Enchanter was first published as a book in 1941, it compiles two stories published in Unknown in 1940 and is thus eligible. Two scientists explore the worlds of Norse mythology and Spenser's The Faerie Queene. Update: On reflection, I'm convinced by the argument made in comments below that the novel as such was published in 1941 rather than 1940; and the two constituent novellas should be considered individually but not jointly eligible.
7) Kallocain, by Karin Boye. Of the 42 novels on my long list, three are by women, and the other two are pretty obscure. This on the other hand is a classic of Swedish literature, a totaliarian dystopia.
The next two novels on the list are by L. Ron Hubbard, which will not count in their favour, and the rest are orders of magnitude more obscure. So I think it's pretty likely that the five Best Novel finalists for the 1941 Retro Hugos will be five of the seven on the above list. And while it would be great to see the voters reach beyond the usual boundaries of Anglo-American genre to include Bioy or Boye, I'm not really counting on it. Update: I've now reduced the top seven to a top four.
| LibraryThing users | Goodreads users | notes | |
| The Ill-Made Knight, by T.H. White | 10477 | 73526 | in "The Once and Future King" |
| Slan, by A. E. van Vogt | 1108 | 2558 | |
| Gray Lensman, by E.E. "Doc" Smith | 921 | 2232 | |
| Kallocain, by Karin Boye | 411 | 1766 | |
| Fear, by L. Ron Hubbard | 262 | 899 | |
| Final Blackout , by L. Ron Hubbard | 179 | 353 | |
| The Trojan Horse, by Hammond Innes | 81 | 63 | |
| Typewriter in the Sky, by L. Ron Hubbard | 46 | 106 | |
| A Million Years to Conquer / The Creature from Beyond Infinity, by Henry Kuttner | 47 | 56 | |
| Twice in Time, by Manly Wade Wellman | 88 | 25 | |
| The Wonder City of Oz, by L. Frank Baum | 44 | 43 | |
| The Reign of Wizardry, by Jack Williamson | 75 | 21 | |
| Captain Future and the Space Emperor, by Edmond Hamilton | 28 | 40 | |
| Calling Captain Future, by Edmond Hamilton | 26 | 36 | |
| The Triumph of Captain Future, by Edmond Hamilton | 22 | 22 | |
| Captain Future’s Challenge, by Edmond Hamilton | 23 | 14 | |
| Death's Deputy, by L. Ron Hubbard | 16 | 18 | |
| Lightning in the Night, by Fred Allhoff | 13 | 8 | |
| The Flying Visit, by Peter Fleming | 8 | 3 | |
| The Devil and the Doctor, by David H. Keller | 5 | 4 | |
| The Last Man aka No Other Man, by Alfred Noyes | 6 | 2 | |
| The First To Awaken, by Granville Hicks | 3 | 1 | |
| The Indigestible Triton, by L. Ron Hubbard | 1 | 2 | |
| All Aboard for Ararat, by H. G. Wells | 9 | 0 | |
| The Man Who Went Back, by Warwick Deeping | 9 | 0 | |
| And No Man's Wit, by Rose Macaulay | 6 | 0 | |
| The Twenty-Fifth Hour , by Herbert Best | 5 | 0 | |
| Black World , by Raymond A. Palmer | 3 | 0 | |
| Lost World of the Colorado, by Jack Heming | 2 | 0 | |
| Death Over London, by Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson | 0 | 1 | |
| West Point 3000 A.D., by Manly Wade Wellman | 1 | 0 | |
| A Million Years in the Future, by Thomas P. Kelley | 0 | 0 | |
| On the Knees of the Gods, by J. Allan Dunn | 0 | 0 | |
| The Spark of Allah, by Marian O’Hearn | 0 | 0 | |
| Sons of the Deluge, by Nelson S. Bond | 0 | 0 | |
| The Time-Wise Guy, by Ralph Milne Farley | 0 | 0 | |
| The Tommyknocker, by Thomas Calvert McClary | 0 | 0 |
(For completeness, I should note that Meredith also listed Synthetic Men of Mars, by Edgar Rice Burroughs, but as far as I can tell that was published in 1939; and Steve Davidson listed Brer Rabbit Again, but as far as I can tell that was published in 1963.)
Edited to add: H.G. Wells' Babes in the Darkling Wood is enjoyable but not sf. Jongor of Lost Land is a novella, and also a cheap Tarzan ripoff.
Links I found interesting for 25-10-2015
- Hurricane Patricia was made worse by climate change
Crumbs.
- The End of Expertise
Are we all doomed? (“we” = “people in my line of work”)
- Trey Gowdy Just Elected Hillary Clinton President
Best piece I’ve read on this bizarre event. “These morons in Gowdy’s committee were so bent on proving that Hillary is an unfeeling, ambition-crazed schemer bent on riding gleefully to the White House on the corpses of Benghazi victims that they ended up making her look like the one thing she really isn’t, at least not very often: a regular person.”
Oscar-winning film “Franz Kafka’s It’s a Wonderful Life”, written and directed by Peter Capaldi
Starring Richard E. Grant as Franz Kafka