The First Historian

Sam Moskowitz: This year I tackled the first of three books by Sam Moskowitz. One concentrates on early writers of fantastic fiction, one concentrates on later writers (centering around many of the people who wrote for Astounding) and the third is an overview of fandom. Moskowitz was often derided by others (well after he stopped writing) as being a sloppy historian, but if it were not for him, there may have been no later science fiction studies. Certainly a lot of fandom's history would have been lost. I'm treating two of these books as short story/essay collections as I read many of these installments as separate articles either in collections or even magazines. The first of these will be Explorers of the Infinite.

So far, I've enjoyed the profiles. I see nothing here to complain about. Heck, in a John W. Campbell collection that I'm reading now, the introduction by Barry Malzberg makes extensive references to the profile that Moskowitz did. Malzberg complains about the scholarship, but then hinges his introduction on one of the key items that Moskowitz used. Go figure!

If there are any weaknesses, it is because the collection is from the early 1960's at the latest, so misses a lot of development in these writers. For example, the essay on Clarke was written before 2001: A Space Odyssey or even several of his collections which thrust him into the public eye. The same for Clifford D. Simak; the entry on him was written too early to catch the burst of writing that appeared in various magazines such as Galaxy, or in books such as The Goblin Reservation, The Werewolf Principle and many others. Another problem is that these essays appear to have been written for magazine publication and were not re-written for book publication. So there is a fair bit of repetition between entries (for example, the essays on Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore repeat information about their collaborations). The book could have also benefited from some title and spell checking. For example, during one two-page sequence, the Kornbluth/Pohl collaboration Gravy Planet (more popularly known as The Space Merchants) is named Gravy Planet a couple of times, than named Gravy Train, and then named Gravy Planet again!

Moskowitz shows a lot of knowledge about what may or may not have influenced various authors and a more wide-ranging history of science fiction, especially the magazines, would have been an invaluable resource from him (the best we have is Isaac Asimov's Before the Golden Age, for which Asimov drew heavily on Moskowitz's collection of books and magazines as well as his memory of science ficiton trivia).

Made up of: Introduction; E.E. Smith; John W. Campbell; Murray Leinster; Edmond Hamilton; Jack Williamson; Superman; John Wyndham; Eric Frank Russell; L. Sprague de Camp; Lester del Rey; Robert A. Heinlein; A.E. van Vogt; Theodore Sturgeon; Isaac Asimov; Clifford D. Simak; Fritz Leiber; C.L. Moore; Henry Kuttner; Robert Bloch; Ray Bradbury; Arthur C. Clarke; Philip Jose Farmer; Starburst; Epilogue.

Counts as twenty-five (25) entries in the 2006 Short Story Project.