Review - A Mirror for Observers by Edgar Pangborn

Short review: Martians live among us, observing, and waiting for humanity to ethically grow enough to accept them. But can one observe without being changed in return?

Haiku
A kind invasion
To observe and not meddle
Observer altered

Full review: The classic fairy story involves the protagonist leaving his home, journeying to the fairy realm where he encounters strange denizens, overcomes an obstacle, learns something about himself, grows a little, and then returns home. In many ways Edgar Pangborn's A Mirror for Observers, the 1955 winner of the International Fantasy Award for Best Fiction Book, follows this fairy story formula, but the exotic and dangerous fairy realm that the protagonist goes to is our world, the obstacle he must overcome is one of his own kind, and the strange denizens that help him learn about himself are us. Elmis, the central character of the book, does not intend to change himself, instead intending merely to observe, but he discovers the fundamental truth that the mere act of observation irrevocably changes both those that are observed, and more radically, those who do the observing.

In A Mirror for Observers Earth has been invaded by Martians who were fleeing their dying planet. It was something of a gentle invasion: No humans noticed it happen when it took place thirty thousand years ago. Now the Martians live sequestered in their hidden cities around the world bound by their strong sense of ethics to avoid interfering in humanity's affairs until humanity evolves its own sufficiently advanced ethical framework that would permit the Martians to reveal themselves and live openly among the Earthlings. Or at least most of Martians adhere to this view, and form a faction called the "Observers". A small handful of Martians called the "Abdicators" reject this, believing that humanity has proven itself to be irredeemably savage, and seek to tip the balance of human ethics in such a way that humanity destroys itself, clearing the way for the Martians to assume ownership of the planet.

The story of the book involved Elmis, an Observer, and Namir, an Abdicator, and their shared but competing interest in the development of a single twelve year boy named Angelo Pontevecchio who lives in the small and somewhat sleepy town of Latimer, Massachusetts. The two Martians focus their attentions on this boy because they believe that he has the correct intellectual capability and inclination to develop the kind of ethical system that the hidden invaders have been hoping for through the centuries. The problem is that while Elmis yearns for such a development to come to fruition, Namir wants to derail Angelo's education and set the stage for humanity to commit racial suicide. In the story, Angelo quickly demonstrates his precocious nature, already immersing himself in the writings of Socrates and Plato, but also displays the carelessness of youth, as he flirts with becoming involved with a gang of local ruffians in order to prove his manliness. And it is in this struggle, between the path of learning and accomplishment, and the path of macho posturing, that Elmis and Namir enter Angelo's life and begin trying to pull him one way or the other. Or rather, that Namir enters Angelo's life and attempts to set him on the road to juvenile delinquency while Elmis, for the most part, is constrained by his ethical beliefs to merely observe.

And this is the first point at which the real point of the book comes into play. The book is not actually about the conflict between Elmis and Namir, or about the development of a superior ethical system, or about Angelo. It is about how Elmir is changed by his contact with humanity, and how, perhaps, the allegedly advanced ethical system of the Martians may in fact be somewhat wanting. Because by doing nothing other than observing, Elmis leaves Angelo to be preyed upon by Namir. By refusing to take a side in this conflict, Elmis actually is taking a side and conceding Angelo's future to his ideological opponent. Noninterference in the cultural development of others is usually seen as a virtue, but in his slow, almost dream-like way, Pangborn quietly calls that belief into question, and poses a severe dilemma for Elmis, even though Elmis himself is mostly oblivious to the danger Namir truly poses. Ultimately, the denouement of this portion of the story is sad, tragic, and devastating, as Namir proves to be even more wily and ruthless in pursuit of his goals than Elmis could imagine.

Intertwined with the story of Angelo coming to grips with being a precocious yet somewhat undersized and fatherless boy while being led astray by an inimical agent, is the story of Angelo's relationship with Sharon, a young girl his age, and both of their relationship with music. Pangborn himself had been something of a musical prodigy in his youth, and for unexplained reasons gave up his musical career to the extent that people who knew him later in life didn't even know he could play an instrument. But in A Mirror for Observers, the artistry of music takes center stage. One human achievement that Elmis and most other Martians admire is music - Elmis himself plays the piano, although he is hampered somewhat by the fact that his alien hands had to be surgically altered to sport five fingers. For Angelo's part, he is also described as being a quite capable musician, but the true musical talent is Sharon, who Elmis immediately identifies as being prodigiously gifted.

And by focusing on music, Pangborn suggests that what makes a society "advanced" may not have anything to do with technology, but rather the art they produce, whether they appreciate the art, how they treat the artists, and ultimately how they treat each other. While Elmis is overwhelmed by the beauty of Sharon's musical gift, Namir pays them no mind at all. And even though Elmis is mostly content to sit on the sidelines and watch Angelo founder on his own with nothing more than a handful of conversations, the Martian is so moved by Sharon's music that he makes arrangements for her to receive proper instruction in her art. Art, it seems, is what makes a society worth having, but at the same time, it lifts us up to make us worth saving. Namir, whose life is entirely lacking in art, has become bitter and cruel as a result; a pattern that is repeated more than once in the book, as those who lack an appreciation for art end up full of hatred and self-loathing.

After documenting Namir's manipulation derail Angelo's life, the story leaps forward by about a decade and moves to New York. Elmis comes to the city because he believes that he will find Angelo there after searching for the boy for years. First, however, he runs across Sharon, who has matured into an accomplished concert pianist who performs in front of large and appreciative audiences. But her music is the one bright note in a dreary and desolate world. The Russians and the Chinese are at war. The Organic Unity Party, which is headquartered in New York, preaches a vicious form of exclusionary nationalism and is only opposed by the tepid Federalist Party. Elmis believes, based upon the scanty evidence of seeing a former youth gang member from Latimer in a photograph with the leader of the organic Unity Party, that Angelo has gotten himself involved in some way with this repugnant organization. This supposition turns out to be correct to a certain extent, and Elmis sets about subtly trying to convince Angelo to disentangle himself from his circumstances. Angelo, now calling himself Abe Brown, feels obligated to the disguised Namir and his prot&eactue;gés for the "help" they have given him - help that seems to have mostly been aimed as ensnaring Angelo into their sphere of influence and diverting his interests away from ethics.

Even though Angelo is the focus of Elmis' efforts, Angelo himself, and even his hoped for development of a superior ethical system, is merely a vehicle to tell the story of Elmis' own journey. As Elmis sheds his Martian ethic of noninterference and becomes more involved in persuading Angelo to take particular actions and pushing Angelo and Sharon together, he becomes less of an observer and more of a participant. Eventually the world enters into a crisis when , despite not actually intending to, the Organic Unity Party unleashes a worldwide epidemic of proportions akin to the 1918 influenza pandemic (which Pangborn himself would have lived through when he was a similar age to Angelo in the first portion of the book). Faced with this human catastrophe, Elmis discards any pretense of merely being an observer and becomes an active participant in events, working in a hospital to provide aid and comfort to the sick and dying. Symbolically, Sharon is struck down by the epidemic and loses her hearing, and in the chaos, Angelo finally does break from Namir's influence.

But all of this is a sideshow. The real story is in Elmis' own transformation. By observing, he is changed. Even though he starts the book with what he believes to be his own superior Martian ethic, the events of the book play out in such a manner that his assumptions are called into question. Through observing, Elmis is changed as much as he changes the characters by his own actions, even if he didn't necessarily realize that he was changing those he came into contact with. In many ways, A Mirror for Observers is about unintended consequences, both those unintended consequences that inure to the instigator and those unintended consequences that redound back upon the original actor. Elmis intends only to observe Angelo, but by his very presence he alters the course of events, affecting not only the lives of Angelo and Sharon, but also his own.

In the end Angelo ends up living in a small town living a small town life with Sharon. Whether or not Angelo ever actually develops the humane ethic that the Martians desperately yearn for him to create is not a question that is ever answered in the book, and is a question that is more or less beside the point. The discovery in the book is that the Martian vigil may have been an exercise in vanity rather than a display of ethical forbearance. And while much of the novel seems to have a dream-like quality, at the end, it feels like Elmis, and possibly the entire Martian race, may be emerging from a self-imposed sleep to become ready to join or ultimately completely eschew the world they have secluded themselves from for so long. Overall, Pangborn's novel about how even our most innocuous actions change the world and ourselves is a fascinating read, and one that should be on every science fiction fan's reading list.

1954 International Fantasy Winner: More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon

1957 International Fantasy Winner: The Lord of the Rings (The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King) by J.R.R. Tolkien

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Review - More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon

Short review: At the edges of society something new is growing, spread through many bodies, blindly searching to find one another and become whole.

Haiku
An outcast or boy
Three girls, and a strange baby
Need still one more thing

Full review: The 1954 winner for of the International Fantasy Award for Best Fiction Book and a 2004 nominee for a "Retro Hugo", More Than Human is made up of three linked stories detailing the rise of Homo Gestalt, a new form of life that is made up of several individual people who gather together to form a single entity. Because the book does not rely upon the technology of the 1950s to make its story effective, the fact that it is very decidedly set in that era does not detract from the book, even though it is now sixty years old. Like some other Sturgeon stories I have read, More Than Human could be taking place right now, or it might have already happened, and we, living our mundane lives, would never even know it. The story is, at its core, a coming of age story, but it is a coming of age story for a life form that is similar to a human, and yet not a human. And that is also very alone in the world.

Of the three stories that make up the novel, only the middle one Baby Is Three, was not specifically written for this book. The first, The Fabulous Idiot, and the third Morality, were written specifically for publication as part of More Than Human. Although it was fairly common in the early era of science fiction to construct a novel by stringing together preexisting shorter pieces, but in this case, this style of book design was intentional. And perhaps that is part of the point, because that makes the book's form parallel the new entity that the book is about, both constructed of smaller subparts that work together to create a complete whole.

And this is part of the poetry of the book: its structure seems to reflect the development of the entity at the core of the story. In The Fabulous Idiot, the story is told in something of a confused jumble, but that is because it is told from the perspective of Lone, for whom the world is a confusing and jumbled place. Lone's stumbles lead him to Evelyn, a young woman who shared Lone's apparent gift of telepathy, but who lives under the thumb of a domineering ultra-religious father. Their meeting ends in disaster, and Lone finds himself on the Prodds' farm, where he finally is able to stop wandering long enough to make a human connection. Meanwhile, a young girl named Janie and a pair of black twin girls named Bonnie and Beanie form a friendship, although given the mores of 1950s society, their friendship is considered scandalous by those around them. In these sequences, Sturgeon explores the casual racism surrounding him, and also details the difficulties that would be faced by children with the unnerving gifts of telekinesis and teleportation. Although all three of the girls have extraordinary gifts, they are viewed with suspicion and fear by the adults in their lives.

Eventually the three girls find Lone, who left the Prodds when the couple was expecting a baby and is now living alone in the woods near the now abandoned house that Evelyn lived in. The girls and Lone begin to work together, forming the first parts of the gestalt creature. Eventually Lone returns to the Prodd farm and finds his only friend despondent. It seems that the child was not what he ad expected, and the disappointment is made even more bitter due to the child's apparent disability. Prodd recognizes the child, described as a "mongoloid", as properly being part of the gestalt, and takes him back to Evelyn's house, but first using his mental abilities to convince Prodd that his wife didn't die but instead took the child and went to visit Pennsylvania. With the telepathic Lone, the telekinetic Janie, the teleporting Bonnie and Beanie, and finally, the computing Baby, the gestalt is now complete. Lone continues to visit Prodd, and decides to help him with his truck that continually gets stuck in the mud by asking Baby to devise a way to prevent that from happening. Displaying the awesome powers of the new entity, Baby devises an anti-gravity device, which Lone installs on Prodd's truck. The fact that Prodd has left to go find his wife in Pennsylvania makes this something of a futile gesture, but the power and the idiocy, of the new life form is demonstrated. The true revelation is that while at first glance one might think that Lone is the one referred to by the title The Fabulous Idiot, the reference is to the gestalt as a whole: capable of almost accidentally creating and building wondrous items of technology, but not capable of thinking of a use for them better than to install them on a rusting abandoned truck.

While The Fabulous Idiot starts as a confused jumble that works towards coherence, much like the gestalt entity, Baby Is Three is told with a clinical, and almost cynical detachment. This entire section is told as a flashback, with Gerry Thompson, the new head of the gestalt, consulting with a psychiatrist in an effort to recover his lost memory. Thompson replaced Lone when the older man died, becoming the new telepathic "head" of the gestalt. But even though Thompson is much more intelligent than Lone ever could be, he is also a child when he inherits the role, whereas Lone, although an idiot, was an adult. Consequently, they gestalt is forced to seek out Evelyn's sister Alicia and take refuge with her, leading to conflict as their close-knit group offends Alicia's conventional ideas about society. By giving the story a viewpoint character that would be the voice of society at large in the form of Alicia, Sturgeon is able to revisit the questions of racism and the treatment of the handicapped that he touched upon in the first part of the story. Each time Alicia tries to impose her ideas about how society should function upon the gestalt, Gerry and Janie fight back, keeping their little group together. The story features several 1950s era ideas about psychiatry, and in the end the mystery of Gerry's missing memory is solved by finding "recovered memories", a concept that is now regarded as dubious at best. On the other hand, Gerry lost his memory as a result of the use of his telepathic powers, so it is difficult to draw any conclusions about psychiatry in general from his treatment.

The final section of the story is told from yet another amnesiac viewpoint character, this time Air Force Lieutenant Hip Barrows, fresh out of the insane asylum and jail. He is nursed back to health by Janie and slowly recovers his memories that include Gerry's attempts to drive him insane and kill him. This portion of the story illustrates the dangers of the gestalt, as Gerry is unstable, and as a result of his tumultuous upbringing, probably a sociopath. Once he killed Alicia, and realized that he could do such things with impunity to those around him, erasing and altering memories to cover up his actions, his innate paranoia caused him to become a monster. And because he was a monster, the entire gestalt became a monster. But it is the kind of monster that is created when an unreasoning child is gifted with unlimited powers. Because the gestalt is formed of those on the fringes of society and is dreadfully and painfully alone, it never had an opportunity to develop a sense of empathy towards those around it. Lone is almost certainly mentally retarded, and is treated with the disdain that society of the time handed out to those with mental handicaps. Janie was the unwanted child of an alcoholic mother and abandoned by her father. Bonnie and Beannie are impoverished black children living in a society that institutionalized discrimination against them. Gerry is an orphan handed over to the state and raised by adults who were alternatively uncaring and abusive. Alicia's efforts to inculcate the parts of the gestalt with what she believed were proper mores fails, both because she tried to instill in them mores that would have destroyed the gestalt, and because she attempted to pass on human values, and although the gestalt is similar to a human, it is not a human. Janie's efforts in trying to aid Hip are a desperate attempt to avert the growing monster and force the gestalt to grow to maturity. In the end, Hip is healed, and even though it did not know it was sick, so is the gestalt. In the final pages of the book, the gestalt begins to hear from other similar entities, revealing that even though it thought it was alone, it was not.

More Than Human is a sterling example of what science fiction can be when it is at its best. Using the vehicle of the genre, Sturgeon was able to examine delicate issues such as racism and demonstrate just how foolish the notions held by society were. But the book also explores the issue of identity and loneliness. For much of the book, the gestalt believes itself to be the only one of its kind, and as a result it has to grope towards understanding itself. An unanswered question raised by the book is the question of the individual components of the gestalt. As Hip discovers, any part of the gestalt could be replaced, making it an effectively immortal entity. But what of the individual parts? They are both themselves, and part of a greater whole. What if, as is implied might happen, Hip and Janie form a sexual relationship and have a child? Would that child be part of the gestalt too? What if the child had no capabilities that would allow it to join the gestalt? Would it be raised by a collective, but be condemned to be forever outside looking in? More Than Human raises as many questions as it answers, which is a hallmark of truly great science fiction. But it also explores what it means to be human, and what it might mean to be something else, living among humans and blindly groping towards establishing one's own identity. This book is Sturgeon at his most poetic, most insightful, and most brilliant.

1953 International Fantasy Award Winner: City by Clifford D. Simak

1955 International Fantasy Award Winner: A Mirror for Observers by Edgar Pangborn

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Review - City by Clifford D. Simak

Short review: The city outlives its usefulness, and so does mankind.

Haiku
After the cities
Man fades and dogs learn to talk
The ants rise to rule

Full review: Winner of the 1953 International Fantasy Award, City is a collection of interconnected short stories describing the decline of the human city, and the subsequent decline of the human race and the rise of dogs and then ants as our replacement as masters of the Earth. In City, Simak's story deals with the intimate relationship between human civilization and cities, and the intimate relationship between human civilization and humanity itself. Using a set of framing pieces between each vignette that style the various installments of the story as fragmentary pieces of "doggish" history, the book skips through several millennia of the decline of man, starting with tales familiar to the reader but wholly alien to the dog historians "commenting" on the stories and moving to accounts progressively weirder to the human reader but more familiar to the fictional dog historians.

One of the most interesting points of the book is that the titular human settlement - the City - starts the book on its deathbed and effectively abolished by the end of the first story. And once the city is eliminated, human civilization begins to collapse - after all, the root of the word "civilization" is the same word that gave us the word "city". Simak posits that improved transportation technology would allow people to leave the cities behind and retreat to large family estates in the country, essentially adopting the lifestyle of the denizens of Edwardian manor houses with robots replacing house servants. In the excitement of the first story with police sweeps to drive out squatters and organized militias rolling cannons out of mothballs to oppose them, the loss of the unifying force in humanity's existence is overlooked. In the next few stories it becomes apparent that isolated in their private estates and waited upon hand and foot by robot servants, humanity has begun to fall apart.

The collapse of human civilization is subtle at first. With the story being told through the eyes of successive generations of the Webster family and their faithful robot butler Jenkins, we see mankind become isolated and fearful, some hiding in their familiar surroundings and eschewing travel even to save the life of their best friends. In an interesting contrast with Asimov's musings in his Robot Mysteries like The Caves of Steel in which Isaac had speculated that humanity might become extremely agoraphobic as a result of living in massive and crowded underground cities, Simak identifies the cause of agoraphobia among his characters as stemming from their reclusive isolation from one another.

With humanity split into tiny settlements inhabited by extreme homebodies, the world splits into factions composed of "normal" humans, super-intelligent mutants, and engineered talking dogs. The science that allows the talking dogs is fairly dated: a member of the Webster family starts performing surgery on the vocal cords of dogs to allow them to talk, and apparently this surgical change breeds true in successive generations of canines. The idea that the only alteration dogs need to be able to talk is a change to their vocal chords is implausible to begin with, but the suggestion that the results of this surgery would then be passed down as an inherited characteristic is just silly. But neither of these are any more plausible than the suggestion that all ants need to develop an industrialized society is to be protected from the elements for a year or two. But the plausibility of these plot developments is beside the point: the story is about declining humanity and the nonhuman civilizations that rise up to follow us when we go.

And by choosing dogs and ants, Simak has picked a pair of successor civilizations that each makes a different point. As mankind either leaves the planet to pursue hedonistic pleasures as transformed inhabitants of the Jovian surface or hides locked away and sleeping within the last city, the dogs pursue their doggish lives aided by the robots men left behind. But even though their rising civilization is built upon doggish preferences and not human ones, they are still mostly familiar to the human mind, and familiar enough that at least for a time the remaining humans, now renamed "Websters" are able to live in this distinctly doggish new world. But even though the new world is doggish in ways that are asserted could not be accomplished by humans, it is still heavily influenced by humanity, despite all of the efforts made to allow them to make their own way, by means of the robots they inherit from humans at the least. Otherwise it seems implausible that predatory and territorial pack animals would create a new order including all the animals of the Earth so pacifistic that they retreat rather than combat the alien threat of the ants.

And it is the contrast between the ants and the dogs that seems to be the critical distinction that forms the denouement of the book. Whereas the dogs are our familiar and well-loved inheritors, the ants are a wholly alien force, given their leg up to forming a civilization and then completely abandoned to their own devices by a member of a branch of humanity that had itself become alien to human concerns. With a nonhuman intelligence on one side, and a wholly alien intelligence on the other side, a conflict is set-up that results in a non-human oriented solution. In the end, the guardians of the dogs seek to consult the last remaining humans, but realize that a human solution to the ant problem would be antithetical to the fundamental nature of dogs, and decide to leave humans to their endless dreaming. Having given up their cities, mankind gave up their civilization, and then their bodies, and finally, their planet.

City is a difficult book to define. One might think that a book in which humankind is freed from the confines of cities to live the life of manorial lords would be optimistic. It isn't. One would think that a book in which human civilization collapses would be depressing. It isn't. One would think that a book in which humanity dwindles to irrelevance would be sad. It isn't. Despite being named for mankind's signature element of civilization, City is mostly about humankind without cities, and then the world without humankind. Told with humor and insight, Simak's tale reveals a intriguing picture of human nature by progressively eliminating humanity from the story. Even though this story is almost sixty years old now and has more than a few science related missteps as a result, it is still an excellent piece of science fiction that should have a place on every genre fan's bookshelf.

Review of 1952 International Fantasy Winner: Fancies and Goodnights by John Collier

Review of 1954 International Fantasy Winner: More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon

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Review - Fancies and Goodnights by John Collier

Stories included:
Bottle Party
De Mortuis
Evening Primrose
Witch's Money
The Touch of Nutmeg Makes It
Three Bears Cottage
Wet Saturday
Squirrels Have Bright Eyes
Halfway to Hell
The Lady on the Grey
Incident on a Lake
Over Insurance
Old Acquaintance
The Frog Prince
Season of Mists
Great Possibilities
Without Benefit of Galsworthy
Back for Christmas
Another American Tragedy
Midnight Blue
Gavin O'Leary
If Youth Knew if Age Could
Thus I Refute Beelzy
Special Delivery
Little Memento
Green Thoughts
Romance Lingers Adventure Lives
Bird of Prey
The Steel Cat
In the Cards
Youth from Vienna
The Chaser

Full review: In 1952 Fancies and Goodnights became the second book to win the international Fantasy Award for best fiction book. That this book won is an indication that genre fiction awards were in their infancy, because in later years the awards would be subdivided more finely than in International Fantasy Award's two broad categories of "best fiction book" and "best non-fiction book". As it is not a novel, but rather a collection of short stories, Fancies and Goodnights would likely not have even been eligible for an award as a whole, which would have been a shame, as it is a very readable collection of dark and macabre stories.

Fancies and Goodnights is also somewhat unusual in that only a handful of the stories in the collection can properly be classified as "fantasy" in the broad sense (which, given the works of fiction that won the award includes science fiction within its ambit). The bulk of the stories are entirely mundane (although twisted) stories of spouses murdering spouses, or nephews plotting to kill rich uncles and claim their fortunes, or greedy villagers killing passers by for their presumed fortunes, and so on. The stories that might be classified as fantasy in the book are reminiscent of tales like Robert Louis Stevenson's The Bottle Imp, or Rudyard Kipling's The Monkey's Paw, insofar as they take place in a world that is almost exactly like our world, just with a fantastical twist that shows up to bedevil the protagonist.

Perhaps it is a consequence of reading them all together, and not as part of Sunday paper one at a time, many of the twists of the stories tend to become pretty predictable. In De Mortuis, when a pair of friends suspect a murder that hasn't happened, they spark an actual one. Or in Three Bears Cottage when a husband tries to poison his wife, it is fairly obvious that she will be the one to poison him. In Over Insurance, when a happy couple invests too heavily in life insurance for both of them, it is predictable that their happiness will be destroyed by their resulting poverty. Some stories have less obvious endings, such as The Touch of Nutmeg Makes It, but for the most part venal characters pursue their venal ends and the twists are not really twists so much as obvious plot developments. One might call them cliches, but when Collier was writing his stories most of the turns his stories took probably seemed fairly fresh to his readers. On the other hand, most of the titles of his stories give the "twist" away for the astute reader, so it seems clear that hiding how the story was going to end was not a priority for Collier.

There are just enough stories with a fantasy edge to make this a viable choice for the International Fantasy Award, although most of them follow a similar formula to the mundane stories, just with a supernatural element thrown in. So, in Bottle Party, when a man buys a bottle containing a genie that can grant him any wish he desires, the reader just knows that this will not work out well for him. Or when, in The Lady on the Grey, a caddish Englishman gallivanting about Wales responds to a summons from his caddish buddy and comes across a beautiful woman with a skittish dog, the reader figures out what sort of trouble the protagonist is in for almost immediately. When a father dismisses his son's imaginary friend in Thus I Refute Beelzy, the reader can feel the tension mounting as the story proceed to a fairly inevitable and messy end. On the other hand, in one of the creepiest stories in the volume - Evening Primrose - Collier imagines a shadow world that lurks under our noses, and crafts a story that is creepy and unpredictable. In a completely different way, the dreamily macabre story Green Thoughts drifts to its strange story and somewhat unexpected denouement, proving that Collier could, if he wanted, craft a story that was not entirely predictable.

And even though it is the fantastical stories that drove this book to being awarded, some of the best and most disturbing are the entirely mundane, such as Witch's Money, in which foolishness and ignorance cause an entire village to conspire in a shocking act of violence. Or The Steel Cat, where greed drives a man to betray what might be his only friend. Or one of the best stories in the book, Youth From Vienna, in which a jilted lover gets revenge upon his former intended and her new spouse in a most inventive and subtle manner. This is not to say that the supernatural tales like In the Cards (which I believe was later made into an episode of Tales from the Crypt) don't share this twisted and dark sensibility. Some, however, are darkly humorous, such as Halfway to Hell, in which a man kills himself, and then connives to trick the Devil out of his soul.

Although the stories are very British, and in many ways quaintly old-fashioned, they remain engaging and interesting to the modern reader. Because Collier's stories tend to deal with universal themes: quarreling spouses, greedy charlatans, jealous lovers, and so on, his writing has aged well, even though the specifics of his stories are now well out of date. For anyone who likes their stories to be tinged with a touch of creepy malevolence, Fancies and Goodnights and excellent collection of quality stories.

1951 International Fantasy Winner: Earth Abides by George R. Stewart

1953 International Fantasy Winner: City by Clifford D. Simak

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Review - Earth Abides by George R. Stewart

Short review: Humankind virtually vanishes from the face of the Earth. The Earth doesn't care. Sexism survives. The Earth doesn't care about that either.

Haiku:
After humans die
Ish is a passive loser
But still Earth abides

Full review: In 1951, four members of the British Science Fiction Convention got together and decided that there should be an award for science fiction and fantasy related books. That year they handed out the first genre related fiction award to George R. Stewart's post-apocalyptic novel Earth Abides, a somewhat desolate and despairing book about the world after almost all of humanity disappears as a result of a world-wide plague. The story is told from the perspective of Isherwood Williams, referred to as "Ish" for much of the book, an anthropology graduate student who is one of the few to survive the ravages of the plague. To a certain extent, it is a little bit like The Stand without all of the supernatural elements (which makes sense, as it was supposedly one of the inspirations King drew upon when he wrote that book). The story is told in three parts each more distant in time from our world, with shorter connecting chapters bridging them.

The first section of the story, titled "World Without End", is the strongest part of the book. In the opening pages of the book Ish is bitten by a snake and falls ill. After he recovers, he discovers that during his delirium, humanity appears to have vanished from the face of the Earth. After establishing the basic outlines of the disaster that wiped out all of his fellow humans, Ish takes a car, a dog, and his hammer with a cracked handle and decides to explore the world looking for anyone else, although he is awfully selective about who he will spend time with given that there seem to be no more than a couple dozen people left alive in all of San Francisco. Because Ish is an anthropology graduate student, he spends a lot of time intellectualizing about humanity, and how the survivors will react to the death of so many millions, repeating the phrase "secondary kill" over and over again to describe people who can't face a world in which all of their family and friends have died and commit suicide, or take foolish risks and get killed, or simply set about drinking themselves to death. Ish, of course, suffers from none of these mental infirmities, and comments several times on how much nicer the world is without people.

Even this early in the book some improbabilities start piling up. One is expected to accept, for example, that even after the electrical grid fails, gas station pumps will continue to work. Ish also behaves fairly profligately, at one point killing a calf and its mother solely so he could cut out the calf's liver for dinner. (I was also left wondering, given that he had two entire dead cows to pick from, why he chose to eat the liver, and only the liver, as opposed to cutting himself a thick juicy steak). Over the course of his trip, which eventually leads him to a desolate New York City, Ish encounters a couple of people, including a black couple living in the rural South who seem to me like the people most likely to prosper in the post-human world, since they seem to actually know how to raise food for themselves. They make for a thematic contrast with the delusional couple Ish meets in New York who spend their time drinking martinis and playing cards, and who are certain to die as soon as the first snows arrive. Eventually Ish turns back, and returns to San Francisco, where as soon as Ish finds himself thinking that he needs some female companionship, an appropriate woman serendipitously shows up. Eventually Ish settles down with his new found partner, a woman named Em, setting the stage for the years to pass.

The second section, which leaps ahead twenty-two years after the death of the bulk of the human race is titled, naturally enough "The Year 22". It is in this middle section that the book starts to seriously fray at the seams. In an interstitial chapter between "World Without End" and this section, it is established that two other men and three other women come to live on the same suburban street where Ish and Em have taken up residence. The little band of people living on the outskirts of San Francisco take to calling themselves the "Tribe" and produce a fairly large band of children. Among the more implausible elements of this section is the idea that these survivors would continue to derive much of their sustenance from leftover canned goods. It is in this section that Ish's annoying passivity comes to the fore. Ish frets that the Tribe has not taken up agriculture or animal husbandry, but consoles himself with the thought that none of them know what they are doing in that regard to begin with, so they wouldn't have enough expertise to do it. But Ish makes a big deal in the book about finding the city public library and the Berkeley university library, and what a great source of knowledge they would be. One is left to wonder why he doesn't bother to educate himself on these sorts of topics given that they seem to be of fairly critical importance (especially given the implausibility of things like canned tomatoes still being edible twenty-two years after they were first canned - even canned food has an expiration date, let alone the fact that the cans would likely rust through in that time frame).

This passive refusal to actually do much of anything seems to be a pattern, since Ish says he thinks it is important that the offspring of the initial seven survivors be educated, but makes only the most halfhearted attempts to do so. Time and again Ish thinks of some element of civilization or technology that he considers fairly important to pass along, makes a halfhearted attempt to do so, and the first time any kind of obstacle to doing so crops up, just gives up. This even shows up when the story reveals that the younger generation had begun to invest Ish's hammer (and the entire older generation as mythically powerful "Americans") with supernatural significance, and Ish makes only the most perfunctory effort to dissuade this fetishization before giving in and allowing this sort of nonsense to take root despite his opposition to it. It seems that Stewart wanted to show how difficult it would be to continue civilization with such a diminished population, especially given the focus placed upon Ish considering which of the younger generation would follow in his footsteps as the intellectual leader (using that term loosely, given the fact that Ish does precious little actual effective leading), and the sad end result of that plot line. However, the way the difficulty in preserving civilization and learning is presented in the book doesn't really make it seem like this is inherently difficult, but is instead only difficult because Ish and the other survivors basically let it happen through their own foolishness, despite having all the resources necessary to prevent this outcome. In short, this element of the story doesn't ring true, but rather seems to be artificial, because Stewart had in mind a particular outcome, and wanted to force the story into that direction no matter how silly it made his characters appear to be.

It is also in this section that the fact that the book was written in 1949 really shows through, and really dates the book in a bad way. There is a level of casual sexism and class snobbery that, while not really shocking, is certainly noticeable. There is a little bit of racism too, but it is somewhat muted, showing up on when Em, Isherwood's post-apocalyptic wife, reveals in a fairly oblique reference that she is of mixed race descent, and Ish's response, though accepting that such things are of no consequence in the post-human world, reveals a level of fairly casual racism in itself. One thing that I suppose is heartening is that while the language of Em's revelation was probably clear when the book was made, the reference is pretty opaque now, and one could easily miss it, or simply not understand it today. Unfortunately, the casual sexism is not nearly as well masked by time. In fact, it is made much more apparent. For example, when Ish is trying to decide who will be the "intellectual" to follow in his footsteps and be the driving force that attempts to preserve culture and civilization, while he considers each of the other male members of the Tribe, he casually dismisses all of the women as a group by saying that they are all consumed by the concerns of motherhood and making homes for their men. This is an area where the class snobbery raises its head too, Ish dismisses George, the one blue collar member of the group, as simply being obviously too dimwitted to have anything important to contribute in the mental arena.

This section of the book also highlights the very 1940s morality that pervades the book. Despite pretensions of being very forward thinking (Ezra has two wives, and of course, Ish is married to a woman who is of mixed race ancestry), the arrival of the stranger Charlie and the plot that follows demonstrates that Stewart, and thus his characters, seems to have stepped right out of a bad high school health film. Charlie shows some fairly inappropriate sexual interest in the mentally childlike Evie, which Ish and the others regard as troubling, but what turns out to be Charlie's "serious" offense is that he admits that he has "Cupid's disease", or in other words, some form of venereal disease. This is such an crime that the Tribe immediately sentences Charlie to death. Apparently, in the post-apocalyptic world, having the clap is a hanging offense. This sequence, more troublingly, illustrates the Tribe's casual dismissal of another element of society - the idea of laws. At one point, when deliberating Charlie's fate, George suggests that punishing Charlie before he has actually committed a crime would be against the law. To which Em derisively responds "What law?", after which everyone concludes they can pretty much do anything they want to to Charlie. But no one stops and says "Hey, maybe we should think about having some rules to follow for our growing community". And the concept of having laws that people know about and are applied fairly is left to die because Em basically thinks the idea is silly.

The third section of the book "The Last American" is also the shortest. It is supposed to serve as more or less the pay off of the entire book, showing the changes that take place as Ish becomes old and the other "first generation" members of the Tribe die out until he is the last living link to the world before the great plague. At this point, Ish's passivity takes over as he sits and watches the world move on around him. The fetishization of Ish, as one of the mythic "Americans" and his hammer continues to take on larger significance, but even when invested with supernatural significance, Ish fails to seize the opportunity this status should provide and basically sits on his ass because it is easier than trying to direct events to keep some vestige of civilization alive. One thing that I find bizarre is that when he is asked questions in his capacity as a supernatural entity, and refuses to answer, the young men of the Tribe "pinch" him until he answers. Pinch? What grown man pinches someone to get their way? In this last section one can only come to the conclusion that the libraries that Ish so carefully made sure to locate and keep sacrosanct in the earlier sections will be useless in the new world, since no one will be able to read their contents. In the end, Ish hands over his supernatural power, beginning what one assumes is a new religion for a new world, leaving as his only legacy the introduction of the bow and arrow, and a fetishized hammer.

I think that a lot of the problems I have with the book stem from Stewart's apparent thematic decision to have a book that shows the disintegration of civilization, and have a single viewpoint character, meaning that this disintegration had to take place in the course of a single lifetime. And consequently, this means that the characters can't really be very proactive or accomplish much of anything other than root around in the ruins of the pre-collapse world and scavenge off of its carcass. As a result, this is a very frustrating book, as most of the troubles the characters end up having are more the result of their own stupidity than the depopulated world that they find themselves living in. Even still, this book remains a classic of science fiction - even if you've never read the book, if you've read or viewed any post-apocalyptic fiction written since its publication, you probably read a book that was influenced by it. The opening section, describing the empty world devoid of humanity is brilliant, and even though the later sections are made less effective by the passive indifference of the characters, they illustrate quite effectively how the world might adjust to the loss of human influence, and how little the world really needs us. Despite being a flawed work, it is a flawed work that is definitely worth reading.

1952 International Fantasy Winner: Fancies and Goodnights by John Collier

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Awards - Back to the Very Roots of Speculative Fiction Awards

Though the Hugo Award is the longest running science fiction oriented award currently in existence, it is not the oldest speculative fiction award. Before the Hugo Awards, there were the International Fantasy Awards. The International Fantasy Award was relatively short-lived: the first awards were handed out in 1951 to Earth Abides (read review) by George R. Stewart (in the fiction category) and The Conquest of Space by Willy Ley and Chesley Bonestell (in the non-fiction category) and the last was awarded in 1957 to J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings.

There is very little information about the award other than the list of winners and the fact that the winners were selected by a panel of prominent fans and professionals. The Locus Index to SF Awards entry for the International Fantasy Award says that it was created by four members of the 1951 British Science Fiction Convention, but gives no clue as to their identity, what standards were supposed to be used to determine eligibility, how the selecting panel was chosen, or really any other useful information. I have no idea why, for example, the award for best non-fiction book was only awarded from 1951-1953, why no award was given at all in 1956, or why the award was discontinued after 1957. All we are left with is a list of nominees and winners (go to list of International Fantasy Award Winners for Best Fiction Book).

Even so, the award is still generally thought highly of today by genre fans whose reading horizon extends back to the 1950s. Unlike most other awards, all of the books honored as winners or even nominees are still well-regarded almost sixty years later. So, in addition to reading through all of the Hugo Winners to get at the roots of modern science fiction, I'll be tackling the International Fantasy Winners as well. As I said before, if the Hugos are the granddaddy of science fiction awards, the International Fantasy Award is the long dead bachelor uncle. 2011 will be the sixtieth anniversary of the birth of this award, so this seems like a propitious time to go back and see just how well these works have held up. So, starting with George R. Stewart's post-apocalyptic classic Earth Abides, I'll be working my way through the venerable works of a long dead award to see for myself is they have stood the test of time.

Review of 1951 International Fantasy Award for Best Fiction Book: Earth Abides by George R. Stewart

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International Fantasy Award Winners for Best Non-Fiction Book

The International Fantasy Award was initially given in two categories, Best Fiction Book, and Best Non-Fiction Book. Of the two, the award for Best Non-Fiction Book proved to be less durable, and it was only bestowed for the first three years of the award's existence. Sadly, the Best Fiction Book award only lasted through three additional voting cycles before the entire award was discontinued.

This was actually quite a forward looking award - the Hugo and Nebula Awards wouldn't start honoring nonfiction books related to the genre for a couple more decades. When one considers that the space race was just getting underway when this award was put into mothballs, and no similar award was put in its place until well after it was over, one can only wonder what books had an impact on the popular mind of the time, but have been consigned to undeserved obscurity by the lack of a method of honoring them.

1951: The Conquest of Space by Willy Ley and Chesley Bonestell
1952: The Exploration of Space by Arthur C. Clarke
1953: Lands Beyond by Willy Ley and L. Sprague de Camp

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International Fantasy Award Winners for Best Fiction Book

Of the two categories given as International Fantasy Awards, the award for Best Fiction Book was the longer lived. This award was handed out every year from 1951 to 1955, and then after a year's hiatus, one last time in 1957. Clicking on the year will take you to a page listing all of the nominees for the International Fantasy Award for that year.

On the whole, this award was granted to deserving candidates. Of the six books that won, the only one I'd quibble with is John Collier's Fancies and Goodnights, mostly on the basis of the book being a collection of shorter, previously published stories rather than a novel, and that there were a couple novels published that year that were probably more deserving such as John Wyndham's Day of the Triffids, Isaac Asimov's Foundation, and Ray Bradbury's The Illustrated Man. That said, Fancies and Goodnights is not a bad choice for a winning book, just, in my opinion, not quite as good as its competition.

1951: Earth Abides by George R. Stewart
1952: Fancies and Goodnights by John Collier
1953: City by Clifford D. Simak
1954: More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon
1955: A Mirror for Observers by Edgar Pangborn

1957: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien

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1957 International Fantasy Award Nominees

By 1957, the International Fantasy Award was in its death throes. The last International Fantasy Award was awarded that year to The Lord of the Rings as Best Fiction Book. The Best Non-Fiction Book award had last been given in 1953 and the award for Best Fiction Book was not even handed out in 1956. In 1957 the only work nominated was The Lord of the Rings. By 1958, the International Fantasy Award was defunct. Oddly, no Hugo Award for Best Novel was awarded in 1957 - in fact, no Hugo Awards of any kind for fiction were bestowed that year.

The 1957 International Fantasy Award for Best Fiction Book was technically given to The Lord of the Rings as a whole, which is appropriate given that Tolkien always regarded it as a single book. However, for publishing reasons the book was divided into three volumes, and as a result I have listed each volume separately here.

Best Fiction Book

Winner:
The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien

Other Nominees:
None

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Go to previous year's nominees: 1955

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1955 International Fantasy Award Nominees

The 1955 International Fantasy Award field of nominees for Best Fiction Book was also strong, and either book would have been a fine winner. This is one year in which the International Fantasy Award clearly got the better of the Hugo Awards, which selected the decidedly mediocre book They'd Rather Be Right by Mark Clifton and Frank Riley as its 1955 Best Novel winner.

The existence of the International Fantasy Award for this year coupled with the fact that there was something of a slate of candidates for this award gives us a valuable eye on the history of the Hugo Award. Even though the Hugo Awards did not maintain records of nominees from years before 1959, this slate of ballots allows us to see what books might have been nominated along with They'd Rather Be Right for the 1955 Hugo Award for Best Novel. And looking at these two novels we can shake our heads at the 1955 voters and wonder: what the Hell were they thinking?

Best Fiction Book

Winner:
A Mirror for Observers by Edgar Pangborn

Other Nominees:

Mission of Gravity by Hal Clement

What Are the International Fantasy Awards?

Go to previous year's nominees: 1954
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1954 International Fantasy Award Nominees

Despite the fact that the 1954 field for Best Fiction Book for the International Fantasy Award consisted of only two books, it was one of the strongest fields the award ever had. Both More Than Human and The Demolished Man are excellent books, and either would have been a creditable winner.

One interesting note is that both of the books nominated for the award focus upon telepathic powers, but both approach the issue from opposite ends. While The Demolished Man focuses on a world in which telepaths are an established reality and have been mostly integrated into society, and indeed almost dominate some segments of society, More Than Human focuses on the emergence of these abilities, which in the book is taking place on the very fringes of human civilization, in the shadows and corners of the world, among the discarded refuse of humanity.

Best Fiction Book

Winner:
More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon

Other Nominees:

The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester

What Are the International Fantasy Awards?

Go to previous year's nominees: 1953
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1953 International Fantasy Award Nominees

The nominee field for the 1953 International Fantasy Award Best Fiction Book was pretty strong, but the winning nominee, Clifford D. Simak's City, was clearly the best of the bunch.

This is also the last year in which the award for Best Non-Fiction Book was awarded. Why the selection committee decided to discontinue giving the Non-Fiction Book Award is, like so many other things about the International Fantasy Award, a complete mystery. Given that the award seems to have sputtered to a slow death over the next couple years, perhaps the enthusiasm for this award in general was waning and the Non-Fiction Book category was just the canary that fell off its perch first. Looking back though the hazy mists of time, we simply have no way to know.

Best Fiction Book

Winner:
City by Clifford D. Simak

Other Nominees:
Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Takeoff by Cyril M. Kornbluth

Best Non-Fiction Book

Winner:
Lands Beyond by Willy Ley and L. Sprague de Camp

Other Nominees:
None

What Are the International Fantasy Awards?

Go to previous year's nominees: 1952
Go to subsequent year's nominees: 1954

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1952 International Fantasy Award Nominees

The International Fantasy Award best fiction book winner for 1952, Fancies and Goodnights, was a somewhat unusual selection in that it was not a novel, but rather a collection of short stories. Of the two other books up for the award, The Illustrated Man was also a collection of short fiction, a testament to the central place short fiction had in the science fiction genre at the time.

Of the three books, both The Day of the Triffids and The Illustrated Man have had more lasting impact than the winning entry. Although Fancies and Goodnights is a good book, and the fact that it took home the prize in 1952 is not particularly shocking, in retrospect, it just isn't of the same quality as its competition.

The Best Non-Fiction Book was the excellent Exploration of Space by Arthur C. Clarke.Writing at a time before the first artificial satellite had been launched into space, Clarke presciently opined upon the future development of space travel leading to a mission to the Moon. The only thing Clarke did not predict was that the Moon race would become a football of Cold War politics, and thus imagined that we would proceed into space in a much more sensible manner than we actually did.

Best Fiction Book

Winner:
Fancies and Goodnights by John Collier

Other Nominees:
The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham
The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury

Best Non-Fiction Book

Winner:
The Exploration of Space by Arthur C. Clarke

Other Nominees:
Dragons in Amber by Willy Ley
Rockets, Jets, Guided Missiles, and Space Ships by Jack Coggins and Fletcher Pratt

What Are the International Fantasy Awards?

Go to previous year's nominees: 1951
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1951 International Fantasy Award Nominees

Like many other things about the 1951 International Fantasy Awards, the ballot is a mystery. The only thing that is known for certain is that Earth Abides by George R. Stewart and The Conquest of Space by Willy Ley and Chesley Bonestell won the awards in the two categories that year, but who the other nominees were, or even if there were other nominees, is unknown.

 Given that the awards handed out this year were the first science fiction or fantasy awards bestowed, it seems critical in retrospect that they be handed to deserving works, and on that score the International Fantasy Award voters seem to have done a good job. Both Earth Abides and The Conquest of Space were good selections, and seem to have weathered the tests of time fairly well.

Best Fiction Book

Winner:
Earth Abides by George R. Stewart

Other Nominees:
None

Best Non-Fiction Book

Winner:
The Conquest of Space by Willy Ley and Chesley Bonestell

Other Nominees:
None

What Are the International Fantasy Awards?

Go to subsequent year's nominees: 1952

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