The Science Fiction Hall of Fame

The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume I (edited by Robert Silverberg, Avon, 1971):

Contains: A Martian Odyssey by Stanley G. Weinbaum (1934); Twilight by "Don A. Stuart" (John W. Campbell, Jr.) (1934); Helen O'Loy by Lester del Rey (1938); The Roads Must Roll by Robert A. Heinlein (1940); Microcosmic God by Theodore Sturgeon (1941); Nightfall by Isaac Asimov (1941); The Weapon Shop by A.E. van Vogt (1942); Mimsy Were the Borogroves by "Lewis Padgett" (Henry Kuttner & C.L. Moore) (1943); Huddling Place by Clifford D. Simak (1944); Arena by Fredric Brown (1944); First Contact by Murray Leinster (1945); That Only a Mother by Judith Merril (1948); Scanners Live in Vain by "Cordwainer Smith" (Dr. Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger) (1948); Mars is Heaven! by Ray Bradbury (1948); The Little Black Bag by C.M. Kornbluth (1950); Born of a Man and Woman by Richard Matheson (1950); Coming Attraction by Fritz Leiber (1950); The Quest for Saint Aquin by Anthony Boucher (1951); Surface Tension by James Blish (1952); The Nine Billion Names of God by Sir Arthur C. Clarke (1953); It’s a GOOD Life by Jerome Bixby (1953); The Cold Equations by Tom Godwin (1954); Fondly Fahrenheit by Alfred Bester (1954); The Country of the Kind by Damon Knight (1955); Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes (1959); A Rose for Ecclesiastes by Roger Zelazny (1963).

Counts as twenty-five for the 2004 Short Story Project.

The Science Fiction Hall of Fame was a collection done by the Science Fiction Writers of America as a sort of "retroactive" Nebula Awards. The SFWA started the awards in 1966 (the organization itself was founded in 1965); the members felt that there should be a way of honoring stories that were written before 1966. Hence these collections (five volumes, volume II is listed as IIA and IIB) that should be in every person’s SF library. I’m glad to see that Tor Books has started reissuing them in hardcover. The first two volumes (I and IIA) are out and I intend on picking them up and subsequent releases to replace my torn and worn paperbacks.

A Martian Odyssey by Stanley G. Weinbaum (1934). Stanley G. Weinbaum was an excellent science fiction author whose career was cut short by a early death. A Martian Odyssey was followed up by one sequel, Valley of Dreams (also 1934, and the earliest story, that I know of, that involved extraterrestrials visiting ancient man on Earth). Weinbaum excelled at making aliens that were...well...alien. His Mars is not a thinly-disguised version of Earth with scantily clad heroines and their heaving bosoms (let's make it clear that I am not only a big fan of Edgar Rice Burroughs and others, but also of heaving bosoms).

The story deals with the first human expedition to Mars and what they found there. There are some anachronisms, e.g., a breathable atmosphere and a bit of dialog about people mobbing the first moon pictures. The best bit is Weinbaum's ability to create an alien character in the story—Tweel—that is alien and sympathetic. Other aliens—such as the pyramid create (my first encounter with a silicon-based lifeform) or the dream-beast or the really enigmatic barrel-creatures with their cry of "We are v-r-r-iends!" also work well.

Here, for example, is some dialog by the main character about the gulf between Tweel and himself:

"Well, there we were. We could exchange ideas up to a certain point, and then—blooey! Something in us was different, unrelated; I don't doubt that Tweel thought me just as screwy as I thought him. Our minds simply looked at the world from different viewpoints, and perhaps his viewpoint is as true as ours. But—we couldn’t get together, that's all. Yet, in spite of all difficulties, I liked Tweel, and I have a queer certainty that he liked me.

The story is available in this collection, and many others. The most recent collection of Weinbaum's works (that I'm aware of) was a "best of" collection by Del Rey Books in 1979. I also have it in A Martian Odyssey and Others from Fantasy Press (1949). Perhaps NESFA Press will come out with a collection.

Twilight by "Don A. Stuart" (John W. Campbell, Jr.) (1934). As I've mentioned before, Don A. Stuart was a pseudonym that Campbell used for his stories where he tried to emphasis mood and character and setting. The name is derived from his wife's maiden name. Campbell built his career on such stories as The Black Star Passes or The Mightiest Machine where action was the key. There's still a lot of action in certain of "Stuart's" stories, Cloak of Aesir comes to mind, as well as what may be the best (and certainly the most famous) one of the bunch, Who Goes There?

It's clear that the stories written by "Stuart" had a lot of impact on the field of science fiction. Take a look at Isaac Asimov's Nightfall or Arthur C. Clarke's Against the Fall of Night (later rewritten and expanded as The City and the Stars) for two examples of the influence.

Twilight is a tale of a man who encounters a strange who is lost—lost in time. There's not much characterization, and most of it is the stranger's narrative of his adventures in the far future. This is one tale that is steeped in atmosphere.

"Where do you come from Mr. Kentin?"

"Come from?" He smiled, and his voice was slow and soft. "I come from out of space across seven million years or more. They had lost count—the men had. The machines had eliminated the unneeded service. They didn’t know what year it was. But before that—my home is in Neva'th city in the year 3059."

There are passages here reminiscent of (ital) The Time Machine (H.G. Wells) or Last and First Men (Olaf Stapledon):

And on all Earth there was only man and the organisms he had protected—the plans he wanted for decoration, and certain ultra-hygienic pets, as long-lived as their masters. Dogs. They must have been remarkable animals. Man was reaching his maturity then, and his animal friend, the friend that had followed him through a thousand millenniums to your day and mine, and another four thousand millenniums to the day of man’s early maturity, had grown in intelligence. In an ancient museum...I saw one of those canines. His skull was nearly as large as mine.

Then man reached his full maturity. It extended over a period of a full million years. So tremendously did he stride ahead, the dog ceased to be a companion. Less and less they were wanted. When the million years had passed, and man’s decline began, the dog was gone. It had died out.

Overall, a somber tale. But even at the end, there’s a bit of hope:

So I brought another machine to life, and set it to a task which, in time to come, it will perform.

I ordered it to make a machine which would have what man had lost. A curious machine.

Helen O'Loy by Lester del Rey (1938). A tale of two men and a robot. The robot grows to experience emotions and gains consciousness. One of the men grows to love her. The story is an interesting contrast to Isaac Asimov's Robot stories or Jack Williamson's tales of the Humanoids.

Microcosmic God by Theodore Sturgeon (1941). I really must buy some of the collected works of Ted Sturgeon. During the course of the short story in 2004, I read several of his stories and was struck by their quality. Microcosmic God, on the face of it, could be another B-grade Hollywood-style pulp tale—a man creates life, the lifeform gets him into trouble, dire consequences occur. However, we have trouble in the form of a greedy banker, not the lifeform (which in other hands would have been rebellious monsters, for example). The dire consequences were not for the main character, but (potentially) for us, down the road (I won't say any more). If you have never read this one, please do seek it out.

The Weapon Shop by A.E. van Vogt (1942). The Weapon Shop was one of three (if my memory serves) short stories and one novel (The Weapon Shops of Isher) set in a common universe. Like his tales of the Space Beagle or the Rull he stitched the shorter works together into a book (The Weapon Makers). You can get these is an omnibus from Tor’s Orb line called The Empire of Isher.

I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with van Vogt. Some of his stuff (these tales, the Rull stories, the Space Beagle stories and Slan) are excellent. They’re fun stories from a fun time in science fiction and they’ve (mostly) aged well. Other stories of his have not held up. Part might be that given the rates of pay for the magazines, one had to produce a (bold) lot (bold) in order to survive. This led to a lot of paste jewels among the real jewels.

The Weapon Shop tales are set in the far future of the Empire of Isher. This particular tale outlines how the main character moves from idealizing the Empire to standing up for his own rights. The oddity of the tales is that the person who founded the Empire and the Weapon Shops is the same; and, as this is a van Vogtian tale of van Vogtian supermen, he’s still around and participating in the action.

Mimsey Were the Borogroves by "Lewis Padgett" (Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore) (1943). This is another fine tale by "Lewis Padgett". It's interesting to compare this one with some of the other stories I read in 2004 such as Isaac Asimov's Profession or Baby is Three by Theodore Sturgeon and In Hiding by Wilmar Shiras. See also my thoughts about this kind of story and science fiction fans.

Mimsy gets its title from the nonsense poem by Lewis Carroll that appears in the Alice tales. Or are they nonsense? A being from the future tests out a time machine by dumping some toys into the past. These toys have unexpected consequences in the main time of the story as well as in the time of Lewis Carroll (hence the poem). The story has some nice characters, especially the two child characters and a psychiatrist.

Huddling Place by Clifford D. Simak (1944). This story eventually made its way into Simak's (arguably) most famous work, City. I've already posted about Simak and his works and my fondness for them. Simak had a "stiff" way of writing, his characters all speak very formally (with no contractions, for example), but it works. The story talks about the way cities would fall apart with the development of cheap (almost disposable) housing, cheap and rapid transportation, etc. This one concentrates on a few generations of the family that makes appearances throughout the tales and how the insular society that develops has some negative consequences.

Arena by Fredric Brown (1944). You've probably seen this story, whether you realize it or not. It was made into an episode of the original Star Trek series. The two tales are similar overall, the major differences being the alien (Star Trek did not have the budget to make a realistic version of Brown's rolling alien) and the ending. In Arena, a interstellar conflict is on the verge of starting. The main character is taken to a planetoid (by a third, and vastly superior race) and pitted against one member of the other alien race. Using only whatever materials can be found on the planet they must fight each other. In both versions of the story, humanity wins. In Brown's original, the main character kills the alien and the superior race destroys the alien fleet. In the Star Trek version, Kirk spares the alien and humanity wins because he did not finish the alien off.

First Contact by Murray Leinster (Will F. Jenkins) (1945). I've never encountered another tale by Leinster with the characters that appeared in this story. I don't know if they did make a reappearance (if anybody is aware that this was a series, please let me know). A ship from Earth makes the journey to the Crab Nebula (a supernova remnant) and encounters an alien ship. They both realize that neither ship can return to their respective home planets because they may give away the position of said home world. Leinster's solution to the dilemma is unique, to say the least.

That Only a Mother by Judith Merril (1948). A post a-bomb story of mutation. Merril draws an excellent main character and builds to a final horror quite well. A story with a lot of impact.

Scanners Live in Vain by "Cordwainer Smith" (Dr. Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger) (1950).

Martel was angry. He did not even adjust his blood away from anger. He stamped across the room by judgment, not by sight. When he saw the table hit the floor, and could tell by the expression on Luci’s face that the table must have made a loud crash, he looked down to see if his leg was broken. It was not. Scanner to the core, he had to scan himself. The action was reflex and automatic. The inventory included his legs, abdomen, chestbox of instruments, hands, arms, face and back with the mirror.

Words and phrases like cranch, Scanner, haberman, up-and-out, raw space, the Talking Nail, Beasts, the Great Pain of Space, the Vomact family fill the opening paragraphs of this story. "Smith" wrote an interlocking series of stories of a truly unique future. Some of the dialog and plots are clumsy, but the images. Ships that sail between the stars and whisper between the dimensions. A multi-mile high spaceport on Earth. Altered animals that are given intelligence and serve the "true men". A drug that extends the lifetimes of people. Planets that guard their riches with cats. Quests across space and time. "Smith's" tales and his one related novel have been reprinted by NESFA Press. I urge you to try them, if you haven’t already. One of science fiction’s most original talents awaits you.

Mars is Heaven! by Ray Bradbury (1948). This is one of the early tales that eventually became part of The Martian Chronicles. According to one introduction that I read by Bradbury, they were not planned as a series, but eventually (unconsciously?) he found a series of stories that had common backgrounds and themes. In this tale one of the early expeditions to Mars lands on what appears to be the Earth. Is it Earth? Heaven? Or something else entirely? A nice mix of science fiction (or perhaps that awkward phrase "science fantasy") and horror.

The Little Black Bag by C.M. Kornbluth (1950). Kornbluth is similar to Weinbaum in that he was very popular when he wrote and had a career cut short by an early death. He often wrote with Frederik Pohl (see The Space Merchants for what was probably their best collaboration). In The Little Black Bag, some medical technology from the future is sent into the past with (the usual) bad consequences. One character (who finds the lost bag) wants to use it for good, another wants to exploit it. The story was made into an episode of the original Twilight Zone series, a good episode of the show, but not as good as the original tale.

Born of Man and Woman by Richard Matheson (1950). Probably the strangest tale in the collection. Matheson uses a very abrupt and sparse style (to good effect) to carry the oddness of the main character. Is it science fiction? Horror? A good tale either way.

Coming Attraction by Fritz Leiber (1950). Leiber's science fiction is not as well known as his fantasy (such as the tales of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, which I'll eventually get around to posting on, I promise!!!) or horror. Coming Attraction is an effective tale of post-atomic horror that could also be seen as the grandfather to many cyberpunk tales (with the satin masks and things like cars with fishhooks to snag skirts). For me, it also struck a chord due to a more recent horror:

...with their five-year old radiation flash-burns, and I could begin to make out the distant stump of the Empire State Building thrusting up out of Inferno like a mangled finger.

The Quest for Saint Aquin by Anthony Boucher (1951). One of the very few science fiction stories that involves religion in a sympathetic view (Arthur C. Clarke's The Star or The Nine Billion Names of God comes to mind, as do some books by James Blish such as A Case of Conscience). We have a post-atomic-holocaust setting, where the seat of the Catholic Church is now in the ruins of California, existing underground in a fashion similar to the early days of the Church. A priest (Thomas) is sent with a "robass" (a robotic steed, an interesting twist on the robots of Isaac Asimov) to search out Saint Aquin. He has moments where his faith is weakened and tested (Doubting Thomas?) and ultimately succeeds in his quest. He succeeds but what he finds is not what he expected and may not have the results that the Pope had hoped for.

Surface Tension by James Blish (1952). Blish outlines a method for colonizing planets that has come up a few times in scientific writings (as well as in some other science fiction works, such as Stephen Baxter's Titan). The tale tells of a method to colonize another planet not by adjusting the planet to suit man, but to adjust man to suit the environment of the planet. Humanity is adjusted so that he can live in the puddles and ponds of a world that a ship crashes onto. It's probably the only tale where microbes such as diatoms and paramecium are main characters! Isaac Asimov put the tale to good use in his excellent collection Where Do We Go From Here? (which used science fiction stories to teach you about science).

The Nine Billion Names of God by Arthur C. Clarke (1953). If you're not a regular reader of science fiction, you’ve probably encountered either this tale or The Star by Clarke. As I mentioned in my description of Boucher's short story (above), it's one of the few sympathetic portrayals of religion in science fiction. It is a very brief tale, as are many of Clarke's short stories, but Clarke manages to pack a lot into it. A monastery purchases a computer to help automate the generation of the names of God. What happens when they finally discover the last of those names?

It’s a Good Life by Jerome Bixby (1953). A nice creepy tale about a child who possesses superpowers but not the maturity to use them. This was filmed twice for The Twilight Zone (once for the original series, once for the movie version). Neither filmed version has anywhere near the impact of the written version. The scene with the rat in the basement, for example…

The Cold Equations by Tom Godwin (1954). A good mix of the cold facts of physics to tell a very human story. A girl stows away on a shuttle to visit her brother at a colony planet. The shuttle is fueled by chemical engines. If you add extra mass to such a system, you don't have enough fuel to get to your destination. The rules to be followed when such a situation arises are very harsh.

Fondly Fahrenheit by Alfred Bester (1954). One of Bester's nice experiments in style. A serial killer is on the loose...is it a robot, an android or a human or all. I prefer Bester's novels to his short stories, but this is one of my favorites.

The Country of the Kind by Damon Knight (1955). I haven’t much memory of many of Knight's stories. I seem to remember encountering him more as an editor of a number of excellent anthologies in the 1960's and 1970's rather than an author. Country takes place in a future where (apparently) crime has been eliminated with the exception of one (?) person. That person is altered so that he cannot commit any acts which end in successful violence. He's allowed to roam free, creating havoc, in a prison as big as the whole planet. A very strange tale.

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes (1959). This story first appeared in Fantasy and Science Fiction but a recent edition that I saw in the store seems to ignore these roots. Is it science fiction? Has Keyes joined other authors who have had wider success in ignoring the place that gave him a start? Personally I find the short story much better than the novel. The impact of Charley's tale (running from a state of "retardation" to intelligence to "retardation" again) is greater in the original.

A Rose for Ecclesiastes by Roger Zelazny (1963). This story was one of Zelazny’s early tales, where he consciously imitated the style of the Planet Stories genre but, much as John W. Campbell, Jr. did as Don A. Stuart, took the tale beyond its pulp roots with character and style and setting. A linguist on Mars tries to translate the epic poetry of the Martians as well as translate the great literature of Earth into Martian. His experiences there may lead to a revitalization of a declining race and an infusion of culture into the younger Terrestrial race.

Still to come...reviews of Volumes IIA and IIB.