Innen-Illustration von Thorne
für "Cabin Boy" von Damon Knight
aus Galaxy September 1951

#sciencefiction #GalaxyMag #DamonKnight #Thorne

Innen-Illustration von Ed Emshwiller für
"Ask Me Anything" von Damon Knight
aus Galaxy, May 1951

#scifi #sciencefiction #GalaxyMag #DamonKnight #EdEmshwiller

Innen-Illustration von Ed Emshwiller für
"Ask Me Anything" von Damon Knight
aus Galaxy, May 1951

#scifi #sciencefiction #GalaxyMag #DamonKnight #EdEmshwiller

Magazine Review: Galaxy Science Fiction, ed. H. L. Gold (November 1950) (Brown, Asimov, Boucher, Leiber, Knight, Simak)

Preliminary Note: I plan on reading all 116 issues of the influential, and iconic, SF magazine Galaxy under H. L. Gold’s editorship (October 1950-October 1961) in chronological order. How long this project will take or how seriously/systematically I will take it remain complete unknowns.

See my inaugural post in this series for my reasoning behind selecting Galaxy under H. L. Gold.

Previously: the October 1950 issue.

Up Next: the December 1950 issue.

Let’s get to the stories. We have the first Galaxy masterpiece!

• Don Sibley’s cover for Galaxy Science Fiction, ed. H. L. Gold (November 1950)

You can read the entire issue here.

Fredric Brown’s “Honeymoon in Hell” (1950), 3/5 (Average): The year is 1962. The Cold War heats up. The race for a permanent presence on the Moon takes center stage. Each side “had landed a few men” and claimed it as their own (4). Each side races to construct a space station in orbit to facilitate the construction of a permanent base on the moon. But there’s another worrying world-wide trend–a massive gender imbalance in new births! Not enough boys! Riots. Cults. What’s the plan?

Capt. Raymond F. Carmody, retired from the space service (at age 27) after a successful flight to the Moon, steps into the ring. Resisting an administrative role in the service, he’d chosen a new career: cybernetics, “the science of electronic calculating machines” (9). In his new position, he had access to a powerful computer called Junior, built in 1958, tasked with issues of national security. Alone with the machine, he feeds Junior the data. Junior doesn’t have an answer. But Junior does offer a rare extrapolation that Carmody will be married on the morrow.

And a meeting with the President reveals the nature of the plan to birth a male child on the moon to avoid whatever on Earth is causing the problem! He’ll be legally married before they head to the moon and divorced if the pairing doesn’t work out. The catch? His wife will be Russian and their honeymoon will be Hell Crater.1 The “lucky” woman? Anna Borisovna is also a pilot of “experimental rockets on short-range flights” (16). Alcohol included as “icebreaker” for a “happy honeymoon” (19). The twelve day stay will be “plenty of time to get off before the Lunar night” (18) (Brown certainly intends the pun). And then the story morphs, abruptly, into a first contact story. Or does it?

This is an odd story. At its core it’s about a man and a woman (and mortal enemies) who go to the moon to have sex. But it’s the 50s. They need to be married! And all the references to the act are double entendres. As the ridiculousness fades, Brown settles on a rather enlightened position considering the Cold War terror of the moment–détente with the Soviets, politics and all, remains possible (under some circumstances). The story implies that Carmody falls head-over-heels for Anna due to the similarities of their careers and status as intellectual equals despite their divergent politics. Don Sibley’s issue cover shows her abilities under stressful circumstances. Carmody’s even willing to head to the Soviet Union to be with her! Love trumps all message aside, I am not convinced by the reading experience. Brown relays the strange events that transpire on Mars, and almost all of Carmody and Anna’s interactions, after they occur. It weakens the effect.

Somewhat recommended.

Isaac Asimov’s “Misbegotten Missionary” (variant title: “Green Patches”) (1950), 3/5 (Average): “Misbegotten Missionary” begins from the perspective of an alien entity that slipped onboard a human ship after its barrier faltered for a moment. The alien utterly believes that it is a superior “unified organism” (34) over the “life fragments” that populate the ship (34). Fanatical in its mindset, the shape-shifting alien wants to convert the entire vessel to its ways–without their consent. Slowly the nature of its own world, the purpose of the human vessel, and the fate of a past voyage become clear.

While not a miserable entry in his canon, I am starting to dread the Asimov stories in Galaxy and struggle to write coherently about them. And there’s a serialized novel on the horizon that I haven’t read yet and thus cannot skip– The Stars, Like Dust (1951). While far superior to “Darwinian Pool Room” (1950), “Misbegotten Missionary” defeats its initial success with a laborious exposition of what happened before. I appreciated the Asimov’s attempt to convey alienness of the entity’s perspective. Maybe if you’re interested in the evolution of Asimov’s attempts to write about entire planets as alien consciousness this is worth tracking down.

I reviewed this in 2021 and completely forgot. I was even more cruel in the earlier review!

Anthony Boucher’s “Transfer Point” (1950), 3/5 (Average): Three survivors retreat beneath the Earth’s surface after two apocalyptic events–the release of a new element (agnoton) and an attack by mysterious “yellow bands” (are they light-like? It’s not entirely clear. It’s pulpy on purpose). The scientist Kirth-Labbery constructed the self-sufficient retreat due to his allergies (!). His daughter Lavra spends her time eating fruit grown in the hydroponics bay. And Vyrko, a self-described intellectual poet, observes and writes about the end of the world, pines after his lost love, and reads historical pulp science fiction –including Damon Knight’s “Not with a Bang” (1950) and Robert A. Heinlein’s “By His Bootstraps” (1941). He notices that only one author seems to predict correctly what will happen. And also strange narrative parallels with himself…

I’m a sucker for metafictional science fiction that contains references and quotations from other authors both real and invented. Boucher’s “Transfer Point” serves as a recursive commentary on the nature of genre and its favorite tropes (last man and woman as Adam and Eve, time travel, etc.). Behind the tale’s ultra-pulpy exterior and sappy silliness, Boucher jabs (gently and with a smile) at science fiction’s Campbellian delusion of future prediction. Despite its moments, Boucher can’t approach the heights of Richard Matheson’s “Patterns of Survival” (1955), a far more complex commentary on the power of science fiction.

Somewhat recommended.

Fritz Leiber’s “Coming Attraction” (1950), 5/5 (Masterpiece): I reviewed this story in 2013. I’ve decided to reread it and modify my earlier review.

In Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.’s influential The Vital Center: The Politics of Freedom (1949), a blueprint of the “new liberal self-image,” he describes the post-WWII period as an “age of anxiety” in which “Western man” is “tense, uncertain, adrift.”2 Channeling this sentiment, branded as an “American brand of misery” (83), Leiber imagines an America transformed after a limited nuclear war with the Soviet Union.

The physical landscape mirrors the psychological scars of New York’s inhabitants. “H-Bomb scars” tunnel faces (78). The Empire State Building thrusts out of “Inferno like a mangled finger” (77). In a disturbed attempt to maintain control, a new “puritanical morality” (80) replete with “anti-sex songs” (78) and required masks to cover female faces takes hold. A sinister media landscape manifests the corruption within. Billboards promote “hysterical slogans” in which “the very letters of the advertiser’s alphabet have begin to crawl with sex” (78). New TV gadgets facilitate touch and pseudo-connection (80). Perverse new forms of TV entertainment, in particular male wrestlers pitted against masked women, transfix all audiences.

Wysten Turner, the British narrator, gets caught up in the disturbing changes that have swept the US. He rescues a masked woman from a car driven by youths replete with hooks designed to snag the dresses of passing women.  She embodies loneliness and despair. And he wants to help. Soon he finds himself unable to identify the new erotic and violent rituals of control and release. The games layer on themselves. Our narrator, also manipulated, flees in shame when the bizarre tableau’s true nature is unmasked.

Leiber doles out fascinating and punchy commentary on the anxieties of the modern world. A disturbed, erotic, creepy, and hyper-violent exploration of that reflexive Cold War tendency to equate the inability to control and triumph abroad as caused by internal crisis within society as a whole. A brilliant satire of late 40s/early 50s American Cold War culture.

Highly recommended.

Damon Knight’s “To Serve Man” (1950), 3.5/5 (Good): I reviewed this story in 2023. I decided not to reread it. I’ve reproduced the review below.

The Kanamit, pig-like humanoid aliens, arrive on Earth with a promise to assist humanity that appears to have zero caveats. Their similarity to a human food animal creates a disquieting horror: “when a think with the countenance of a fiend comes from the stars and offers a gift, you are disinclined to accept” (91). The Kanama proclaim that they want “to bring you the peace and plenty which we ourselves enjoy, and which we have in the past brought to other races throughout the galaxy” (92). They introduce fantastic power sources, anti-nuclear explosion shields, and technology to exponentially enhance agricultural productivity. Soon there are no “more standing armies, no more shortages, and no unemployment” (98). But no one can decode their language. And when someone finally figures it out, it will be too late.

I don’t completely understand why “To Serve Man” is one of Knight’s best-known short fictions. It won the 2001 Retro Hugo Award for Best Short Story. I would have voted for Fritz Leiber’s “Coming Attraction” (1950) from the list of nominees! That said, “To Serve Man” is an effective twist-ending story that plays with our expectations but doesn’t have the reflective or incisive impact of Knight’s best — for example “The Enemy” (1958), “You’re Another” (1955), or even “Time Enough” (1960) in Far Out (1961). I’m probably in the minority in this view. 

Somewhat recommended.

Clifford D. Simak’s Time Quarry (variant title: Time and Again) (1950). Serialized over three issues. I will post an individual review after I complete the serialization.

Notes

For book reviews consult the INDEX

For cover art posts consult the INDEX

For TV and film reviews consult the INDEX

#1950s #avantGarde #bookReviews #books #CliffordDSimak #DamonKnight #FredricBrown #fritzLeiber #HLGold #IsaacAsimov #sciFi #scienceFiction #ShortStories

Died this day:

Damon Francis Knight (September 19, 1922 – April 15, 2002) was an American science fiction author, editor, and critic. He is the author of "To Serve Man", a 1950 short story adapted for The Twilight Zone.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damon_Knight
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Three works of short science fiction/fantasy from France (in English translation) appeared in the pages of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1962: Henri Damonti’s “The Notary and the Conspiracy,” Charles and Nathalie Henneberg’s “Moon Fishers,” and Suzanne Malaval’s “The Devil’s God-Daughter.” All three were translated by Damon Knight, who was responsible for bringing several French-language speculative pieces into English during the 1960s and 70s.

Since I already talked about Nathalie Henneberg in a previous post, let’s begin with her piece “Moon Fishers.” Written with her husband Charles, “Moon Fishers” is a sensual, lavish story, like The Green Gods. Here, the Hennebergs explore a clash between the past and aliens/alien technology. Set in the year 2500, “Moon Fishers” features a test pilot, Hugh, who is sent into ancient Egypt via a machine constructed in the Paratime Research Laboratory. As the professor in charge of the project explains before Hugh climbs in, time travel should no longer be thought of as a physical form of travel, but one that is based in the perceiver’s brain—basically, the traveler doesn’t actually go anywhere but can travel to other times, somehow. Once Hugh “arrives” in ancient Egypt, though, things go a bit off the rails: we get soul-swapping and aliens and ancient Egyptian pharaohs (like Stargate). Hugh winds up trapped in the past and the body of Pharaoh Amenophis, which was somehow predestined (?). And all this is squeezed into just 20 pages.

Next, in Damonti’s “The Notary and the Conspiracy,” notary Monsieur Duplessis joins a secret club that lets him lead a parallel life in 15th-century Florence, though the plagues and conspiracies that he encounters there turn out to be more dangerous than he had anticipated. Like “Moon Fishers,” “The Notary” asks us what we would do if we had the ability to travel back to the past and interact with/change the people and events we encounter.

However, Suzanne Malaval’s “The Devil’s God-Daughter” is an allegorical tale, unlike the first two stories discussed in this article. Here, a girl named Fanche is the youngest in a family of eight children, and she cannot find a godparent in the entire town. Noticing this problem, the devil steps in to offer his services. Though her mother protests, Fanche’s father accepts the devil’s proposal, and the girl is eventually kidnapped by the devil and dragged into hell. In order to escape, Fanche has to solve a few riddles. The devil’s wife, who is jealous of Fanche, gives her all of the answers, allowing her to go free. When Fanche escapes, she notices that it’s raining—much like for the saying that rain is the effect of the devil beating his wife.

The French SFT in the pages of F&SF in 1962 is strange and wonderfully varied, possibly helping the magazine attract readers interested in learning more about the speculative fiction being written beyond their own borders.

https://seattlein2025.org/2025/02/21/french-sft-in-fsf-1962/

#CharlesHenneberg #DamonKnight #FantasyAndScienceFiction #HenriDamonti #NathalieHenneberg #SuzanneMalaval

French SFT in F&SF, 1962: Three works of short science fiction/fantasy from France (in English translation) appeared in the pages of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1962: Henri Damonti’s “The Notary and the Conspiracy,” Charles and Nathalie Henneberg’s “Moon Fishers,” and Suzanne Malaval’s… (#CharlesHenneberg #DamonKnight #FantasyAndScienceFiction #HenriDamonti #NathalieHenneberg #SuzanneMalaval)

Full post: https://seattlein2025.org/2025/02/21/french-sft-in-fsf-1962/

This month's editorial is about Damon Knight: author, critic, book editor, and for a couple brief moments a magazine editor who ALMOST made it.

https://sffremembrance.com/2023/09/15/the-observatory-damon-knight-failed-magazine-editor/
#sciencefiction #damonknight

December, 1950. Edited by Damon Knight.
🎨 Paul Calle

#PaulCalle #DamonKnight #MackReynolds #FredricBrown #GrahamGreene #PhilipWylie #JackVance #CMKornbluth #ScienceFiction #Fantasy #SF #SFF @sciencefiction @fantasy