Showing posts with label SF Luminaries. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SF Luminaries. Show all posts

Monday, June 05, 2023

SF Luminaries: Ray Bradbury


Ray Bradbury (1920-2012)


As various fans have already pointed out, Stephen King's latest novel Fairy Tale (2022) - despite being overtly dedicated to Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, and H. P. Lovecraft, also contains a number of covert references to another distinguished predecessor in the horror/fantasy genre: Ray Bradbury.

For one thing, it takes place in a small town called Sentry's Rest, Illinois - which seems like a nod to the mythical Green Town, Illinois, setting for Bradbury's classic novel Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962). The alternate universe of Empis which King's protagonist, Charlie Reade [get it? "Read"] explores also contains a magic carousel, one of the central features of the travelling carnival in Bradbury's own book.


Ray Bradbury: Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962)


Mind you, once you start looking for parallels with other fantasy writers, King's story threatens to fall apart under the sheer weight of allusion. Readers have postulated links with William Goldman's The Princess Bride; Lord Dunsany's realm of Elfland, "beyond the fields we know"; not to mention numerous echoes of King's own Dark Tower saga.

Bradbury is special for him, though. As he himself once put it: "without Ray Bradbury, there is no Stephen King." Or, as he wrote on hearing the news of Bradbury's death in 2012, at the age of 91:
Ray Bradbury wrote three great novels and three hundred great stories. One of the latter was called 'A Sound of Thunder.' The sound I hear today is the thunder of a giant's footsteps fading away. But the novels and stories remain, in all their resonance and strange beauty.
So who exactly was this starry-eyed visonary - this laureate of space and small-town life - and why has he left such a strangely equivocal and contradictory reputation behind him?


Library of America: The Ray Bradbury Collection (2022)
Novels & Story Cycles. Ed. Jonathan R. Eller. The Library of America, 347. [‘The Martian Chronicles’, 1950; ‘Fahrenheit 451’, 1953; ‘Dandelion Wine’, 1957; ‘Something Wicked This Way Comes’, 1962]. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 2021.

The Illustrated Man, The October Country & Other Stories. Ed. Jonathan R. Eller. The Library of America, 360. 1951, 1955. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 2022.
You know that you've really arrived when they not only reprint your collected works in the canonical Library of America series, but even provide a specially designed slipcase to put them in!


Ray Bradbury: The Martian Chronicles (1950)


You'll notice, though, that most of the work included in this set is comparatively early - dating roughly from the 1940s to the early 1960s. And even Stephen King claims only three great Bradbury novels among the dozen or so he actually published.


Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451 (1953)



There's little doubt that two of the three must be Fahrenheit 451 (1953) and Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962). The third is more debatable: The Martian Chronicles (1950) would be most people's first choice for the honour, but it is technically a 'story-cycle' rather than a novel. That would leave us with Dandelion Wine (1957) - to me almost unbearably saccharine in its evocation of untroubled boyhood, but certainly a book which has its admirers.


Ray Bradbury: Dandelion Wine (1957)


Are there any other serious candidates? Not really. Ray Bradbury was a writer who peaked comparatively early, with a dazzling series of science fiction and horror short stories published throughout the 1940s and 50s, some of the strongest of which were reprinted in the early collection Dark Carnival, by H. P. Lovecraft's disciple and friend, August Derleth, at his legendary imprint Arkham House.


Ray Bradbury: Dark Carnival (1947)


Only 15 of the 27 stories in this unrelentingly dark and pitiless collection were reprinted, several in revised versions, in The October Country (1955). As Wikipedia tells it:
For many years, Bradbury did not permit Dark Carnival to be reprinted ... However, a limited edition ... with five extra stories and a new introduction by Bradbury, was printed by Gauntlet Press in 2001.
A new paperback edition of this seminal collection is promised for early 2024.

The fact is that it was horror stories such as "The Veldt" (in The Illustrated Man), "The Next in Line" (in Dark Carnival & The October Country), and "Mars is Heaven!" (in The Martian Chronicles) which were responsible for much of Bradbury's early vogue. Cannibalism, live burial, and homicidal children are just a few of his early themes.

So before you go writing him off as an old sentimentalist dreaming of some kind of Tom Sawyer-like childhood paradise in rural Illinois, never forget the dark, Lovecraftian roots behind much of his best work.



A couple of his early Martian stories interested me particularly as I reread all the early collections reprinted in the Library of America boxset.

They're entitled (respectively) "Way in the Middle of the Air" [included in early editons of The Martian Chronicles, 1950] - which concerns a mass exodus of African American people to Mars; and "The Other Foot" [included in The Illustrated Man, 1951] - which tells us what happens when the news of the return to Mars of the last few white people left after their latest suicidal war reaches the now exclusively black population of the red planet.

By today's standards both stories sound rather naive and patronising. There's a lot of Huck Finn-style dialect, use of the "n"-word, and other now unacceptable linguistic usages. Both stories are also intensely well-meaning - it's worth noticing that they long predate such civil rights landmarks as the Montgomery Bus Boycott, let alone the compulsory integration of US schools.

And yet, both now read like museum exhibits: Liberal Northern White Attitudes (c.1950). By contrast, his more complex and haunting stories of the time: "Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed" (1949), for instance - about the gradual possession of an all-American family by the haunting (and haunted?) landscapes and mores of Mars - have a mysterious resonance as powerful now as it was then.


John Huston, dir. Moby Dick (1956)


Perhaps the true turning point for Bradbury was the year he spent working on John Huston's adaptation of Moby Dick. It's not a terrible screenplay - there's a bit too much poetic language in the voice-overs, maybe, but the two of them did a competent enough job at transferring an almost unfilmable novel to the screen.

But Huston's habit of belitting and insulting his collaborators - allegedly (he claimed) to get the best out of them, but actually (it would appear) to indulge his own petty sadism - had a particularly bad effect on the ebullient Bradbury. He wrote a fictionalised version of their encounter in the novel Green Shadows, White Whale, which made it clear that he'd been brooding on the matter for quite some time.


John Huston, dir. Green Shadows, White Whale (1992)


It's not that there aren't gems among the later stories - "The Parrot Who Met Papa" (1972), about the search for a legendary parrot alleged to have memorised Hemingway's last novel as a result of his endless rambling monologues in its presence, for instance - but they're pretty few and far between.

Some terrible lapse in self-confidence - or, perhaps, reluctance to indulge the dark side of his nature any further than he'd already done (one of the most prominent themes in Something Wicked This Way Comes) - seems to have kept him largely on the sunny side of the street thereafter. There's a relentless verbosity in his work from the 1970s onwards - occasionally, mercifully, spiked by humour, but mostly a turbid stream of two-bit words and phrases.

He leaves behind, then, a divided legacy: the dark mysteries of his early stories and novels, and the wordy bathos of his later work. As the Library of America has already signalled, there's little doubt which will prevail in the eyes of posterity.

It does leave you wondering, though, just what did Huston (and, for that matter, Herman Melville) do to him in that windy old castle in Ireland? The novel he wrote about it - after, he claimed, having read Katharine Hepburn's account of her own mistreatment at Huston's hands during the making of "The African Queen" (1951): How I Went to Africa With Bogart, Bacall and Huston and Almost Lost My Mind (1987) - is just that: a novel. What really happened to him there we'll never know.






Charley Gallay: Ray Bradbury (2007)

Ray Douglas Bradbury
(1920-2012)

Books I own are marked in bold:

    Novels:

  1. The Martian Chronicles [aka The Silver Locusts] (1950)
    • The Silver Locusts. 1950. London: Corgi Books, 1969.
  2. Fahrenheit 451 (1953)
    • Fahrenheit 451. 1953. London: Corgi Books, 1963.
  3. Dandelion Wine (1957)
    • Dandelion Wine. 1957. London: Corgi Books, 1972.
  4. Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962)
    • Something Wicked This Way Comes. 1962. London: Corgi Books, 1969.
  5. The Halloween Tree (1972)
    • The Halloween Tree. 1972. Illustrated by Joseph Mugnaini. London: Hart-Davis, MacGibbon, 1973.
  6. The Novels of Ray Bradbury (1984)
    • The Novels of Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451, Dandelion Wine, Something Wicked This Way Comes. 1953, 1957, 1962. London: Book Club Associates, by arrangement with Granada Publishing Limited, 1984.
  7. Death is a Lonely Business (1985)
  8. A Graveyard for Lunatics (1990)
    • A Graveyard for Lunatics: Another Tale of Two Cities. Grafton Books. London: Collins Publishing Group, 1990.
  9. Green Shadows, White Whale (1992)
  10. From the Dust Returned (2001)
  11. Let's All Kill Constance (2002)
  12. Farewell Summer (2006)
  13. Novels & Story Cycles. Library of America (2021)
    • Novels & Story Cycles. Ed. Jonathan R. Eller. The Library of America, 347. [‘The Martian Chronicles’, 1950; ‘Fahrenheit 451’, 1953; ‘Dandelion Wine’, 1957; ‘Something Wicked This Way Comes’, 1962]. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 2021.

  14. Collections:

  15. Dark Carnival (1947)
    1. The Homecoming
    2. Skeleton
    3. The Jar
    4. The Lake
    5. The Maiden
    6. The Tombstone
    7. The Smiling People
    8. The Emissary
    9. The Traveler
    10. The Small Assassin
    11. The Crowd
    12. Reunion
    13. The Handler
    14. The Coffin
    15. Interim
    16. Jack-in-the-Box
    17. The Scythe
    18. Let's Play 'Poison'
    19. Uncle Einar
    20. The Wind
    21. The Night
    22. There Was An Old Woman
    23. The Dead Man
    24. The Man Upstairs
    25. The Night Sets
    26. Cistern
    27. The Next In Line
  16. The Illustrated Man (1951)
    1. The Veldt
    2. Kaleidoscope
    3. The Other Foot
    4. The Highway
    5. The Man
    6. The Long Rain
    7. The Rocket Man
    8. The Fire Balloons
    9. The Last Night of the World
    10. The Exiles
    11. No Particular Night or Morning
    12. The Fox and the Forest
    13. The Visitor
    14. The Concrete Mixer
    15. Marionettes, Inc.
    16. The City
    17. Zero Hour
    18. The Rocket
    • The Illustrated Man. 1951. Corgi SF Collector’s Library. London: Corgi Books, 1972.
  17. The Golden Apples of the Sun (1953)
    • The Golden Apples of the Sun. 1953. Corgi SF Collector’s Library. London: Corgi Books, 1973.
  18. The October Country (1955)
    1. The Dwarf
    2. The Next in Line
    3. The Watchful Poker Chip of H. Matisse
    4. Skeleton
    5. The Jar
    6. The Lake
    7. The Emissary
    8. Touched With Fire
    9. The Small Assassin
    10. The Crowd
    11. Jack-in-the-Box
    12. The Scythe
    13. Uncle Einar
    14. The Wind
    15. The Man Upstairs
    16. There Was an Old Woman
    17. The Cistern
    18. Homecoming
    19. The Wonderful Death of Dudley Stone
    • The October Country. 1955. London: New English Library, 1973.
  19. A Medicine for Melancholy (1959)
  20. The Day It Rained Forever (1959)
    • The Day It Rained Forever. 1959. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969.
  21. The Small Assassin (1962)
    • The Small Assassin. 1962. London: New English Library, 1970.
  22. R is for Rocket (1962)
    • R is for Rocket. 1962. London: Pan Books, 1972.
  23. The Machineries of Joy (1964)
    • The Machineries of Joy. 1964. London: Panther Books, 1977.
  24. The Autumn People (1965)
  25. The Vintage Bradbury (1965)
  26. Tomorrow Midnight (1966)
  27. S is for Space (1966)
    • S is for Space. 1966. New York: Bantam Books, 1978.
  28. Twice 22 (1966)
  29. I Sing The Body Electric (1969)
    • I Sing The Body Electric! 1969. London: Corgi Books, 1972.
  30. Ray Bradbury (1975)
  31. Long After Midnight (1976)
    • Long After Midnight. 1976. London: Panther Books, 1978.
  32. The Mummies of Guanajuato (1978)
  33. The Fog Horn & Other Stories (1979)
  34. One Timeless Spring (1980)
  35. The Last Circus and the Electrocution (1980)
  36. The Stories of Ray Bradbury (1980)
    1. The Night (1946)
    2. Homecoming (1946)
    3. Uncle Einar (1947)
    4. The Traveler (1946)
    5. The Lake (1944)
    6. The Coffin (1947)
    7. The Crowd (1943)
    8. The Scythe (1943)
    9. There Was an Old Woman (1944)
    10. There Will Come Soft Rains (1950)
    11. Mars Is Heaven! (1948)
    12. The Silent Towns (1949)
    13. The Earth Men (1948)
    14. The Off Season (1948)
    15. The Million-Year Picnic (1946)
    16. The Fox and the Forest (1950)
    17. Kaleidoscope (1949)
    18. The Rocket Man (1951)
    19. Marionettes, Inc. (1949)
    20. No Particular Night or Morning (1951)
    21. The City (1950)
    22. The Fire Balloons (1951)
    23. The Last Night of the World (1951)
    24. The Veldt (1950)
    25. The Long Rain (1950)
    26. The Great Fire (1949)
    27. The Wilderness (1952)
    28. A Sound of Thunder (1952)
    29. The Murderer (1953)
    30. The April Witch (1952)
    31. Invisible Boy (1945)
    32. The Golden Kite, The Silver Wind (1953)
    33. The Fog Horn (1951)
    34. The Big Black and White Game (1945)
    35. Embroidery (1951)
    36. The Golden Apples of the Sun (1953)
    37. Powerhouse (1948)
    38. Hail and Farewell (1948)
    39. The Great Wide World over There (1952)
    40. The Playground (1953)
    41. Skeleton (1943)
    42. The Man Upstairs (1947)
    43. Touched by Fire (1954)
    44. The Emissary (1947)
    45. The Jar (1944)
    46. The Small Assassin (1946)
    47. The Next in Line (1947)
    48. Jack-in-the-Box (1947)
    49. The Leave-Taking (1957)
    50. Exorcism (1957)
    51. The Happiness Machine (1957)
    52. Calling Mexico (1950)
    53. The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit (1958)
    54. Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed (1949)
    55. The Strawberry Window (1954)
    56. A Scent of Sarsaparilla (1953)
    57. The Picasso Summer (1957)
    58. The Day It Rained Forever (1957)
    59. A Medicine for Melancholy (1959)
    60. The Shoreline at Sunset (1959)
    61. Fever Dream (1959)
    62. The Town Where No One Got Off (1958)
    63. All Summer in a Day (1954)
    64. Frost and Fire (1946)
    65. The Anthem Sprinters (1963)
    66. And So Died Riabouchinska (1953)
    67. Boys! Raise Giant Mushrooms in Your Cellar! (1962)
    68. The Vacation (1963)
    69. The Illustrated Woman (1961)
    70. Some Live Like Lazarus (1960)
    71. The Best of All Possible Worlds (1960)
    72. The One Who Waits (1949)
    73. Tyrannosaurus Rex (1962)
    74. The Screaming Woman (1951)
    75. The Terrible Conflagration Up at the Place (1969)
    76. Night Call, Collect (1949)
    77. The Tombling Day (1952)
    78. The Haunting of the New (1969)
    79. Tomorrow's Child (1948)
    80. I Sing the Body Electric! (1969)
    81. The Women (1948)
    82. The Inspired Chicken Motel (1969)
    83. Yes, We'll Gather at the River (1969)
    84. Have I Got a Chocolate Bar for You! (1976)
    85. A Story of Love (1951)
    86. The Parrot Who Met Papa (1972)
    87. The October Game (1948)
    88. Punishment Without Crime (1950)
    89. A Piece of Wood (1952)
    90. The Blue Bottle (1950)
    91. Long After Midnight (1962)
    92. The Utterly Perfect Murder (1971)
    93. The Better Part of Wisdom (1976)
    94. Interval in Sunlight (1954)
    95. The Black Ferris (1948)
    96. Farewell Summer (1980)
    97. McGillahee's Brat (1970)
    98. The Aqueduct (1979)
    99. Gotcha! (1978)
    100. The End of the Beginning (1956)
    • The Stories of Ray Bradbury. London: Granada, 1981.
  37. The Fog Horn and Other Stories (1981)
  38. Dinosaur Tales (1983)
  39. A Memory of Murder (1984)
  40. The Wonderful Death of Dudley Stone (1985)
  41. The Toynbee Convector (1988)
  42. Classic Stories 1 (1990)
  43. Classic Stories 2 (1990)
  44. The Parrot Who Met Papa (1991)
  45. Selected from Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed (1991)
  46. Quicker Than The Eye (1996)
  47. Driving Blind (1997)
  48. Ray Bradbury Collected Short Stories (2001)
  49. The Playground (2001)
  50. Dark Carnival: Limited Edition with Supplemental Materials (2001)
  51. One More for the Road (2002)
  52. Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales (2003)
    1. The Whole Town's Sleeping
    2. The Rocket
    3. Season of Disbelief
    4. And the Rock Cried Out
    5. The Drummer Boy of Shiloh
    6. The Beggar on O'Connell Bridge
    7. The Flying Machine
    8. Heavy-Set
    9. The First Night of Lent
    10. Lafayette, Farewell
    11. Remember Sascha?
    12. Junior
    13. That Woman on the Lawn
    14. February 1999: Ylla
    15. Banshee
    16. One for His Lordship, and One for the Road!
    17. The Laurel and Hardy Love Affair
    18. Unterderseaboat Doktor
    19. Another Fine Mess
    20. The Dwarf
    21. A Wild Night in Galway
    22. The Wind
    23. No News, or What Killed the Dog?
    24. A Little Journey
    25. Any Friend of Nicholas Nickleby's Is a Friend of Mine
    26. The Garbage Collector
    27. The Visitor
    28. The Man
    29. Henry the Ninth
    30. The Messiah
    31. Bang! You're Dead!
    32. Darling Adolf
    33. The Beautiful Shave
    34. Colonel Stonesteel's Genuine Home-made Truly Egyptian Mummy
    35. I See You Never
    36. The Exiles
    37. At Midnight, in the Month of June
    38. The Witch Door
    39. The Watchers
    40. 2004-05: The Naming of Names
    41. Hopscotch
    42. The Illustrated Man
    43. The Dead Man
    44. June 2001: And the Moon Be Still as Bright
    45. The Burning Man
    46. G.B.S.-Mark V
    47. A Blade of Grass
    48. The Sound of Summer Running
    49. And the Sailor, Home from the Sea
    50. The Lonely Ones
    51. The Finnegan
    52. On the Orient, North
    53. The Smiling People
    54. The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl
    55. Bug
    56. Downwind from Gettysburg
    57. Time in Thy Flight
    58. Changeling
    59. The Dragon
    60. Let's Play 'Poison'
    61. The Cold Wind and the Warm
    62. The Meadow
    63. The Kilimanjaro Device
    64. The Man in the Rorschach Shirt
    65. Bless Me, Father, for I Have Sinned
    66. The Pedestrian
    67. Trapdoor
    68. The Swan
    69. The Sea Shell
    70. Once More, Legato
    71. June 2003: Way in the Middle of the Air
    72. The Wonderful Death of Dudley Stone
    73. By the Numbers!
    74. April 2005: Usher II
    75. The Square Pegs
    76. The Trolley
    77. The Smile
    78. The Miracles of Jamie
    79. A Far-away Guitar
    80. The Cistern
    81. The Machineries of Joy
    82. Bright Phoenix
    83. The Wish
    84. The Lifework of Juan Díaz
    85. Time Intervening/Interim
    86. Almost the End of the World
    87. The Great Collision of Monday Last
    88. The Poems
    89. April 2026: The Long Years
    90. Icarus Montgolfier Wright
    91. Death and the Maiden
    92. Zero Hour
    93. The Toynbee Convector
    94. Forever and the Earth
    95. The Handler
    96. Getting Through Sunday Somehow
    97. The Pumpernickel
    98. Last Rites
    99. The Watchful Poker Chip of H. Matisse
    100. All on a Summer's day
  53. Is That You, Herb? (2003)
  54. The Cat's Pajamas: Stories (2004)
  55. A Sound of Thunder and Other Stories (2005)
  56. The Dragon Who Ate His Tail (2007)
  57. Now and Forever: Somewhere a Band Is Playing & Leviathan '99 (2007)
  58. Somewhere a Band is Playing: Early Drafts and Final Novella (2007)
  59. Summer Morning, Summer Night (2007)
  60. Ray Bradbury Stories Volume 2 (2009)
  61. We'll Always Have Paris: Stories (2009)
  62. A Pleasure To Burn (2010)
  63. The Lost Bradbury: Forgotten Tales of Ray Bradbury (2010)
  64. The Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury: A Critical Edition – Volume 1, 1938–1943 (2011)
  65. The Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury: A Critical Edition – Volume 2, 1943–1944 (2014)
  66. Killer, Come Back to Me: The Crime Stories of Ray Bradbury (2020)
  67. The Illustrated Man, The October Country & Other Stories. Library of America (2022)
    • The Illustrated Man, The October Country & Other Stories. Ed. Jonathan R. Eller. The Library of America, 360. 1951, 1955. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 2022.

  68. Edited:

  69. Timeless Stories for Today and Tomorrow (1952)
  70. The Circus of Dr. Lao and Other Improbable Stories (1956)

  71. Children's Books:

  72. Switch on the Night (1955)
  73. The Other Foot (1982)
  74. The Veldt (1982)
  75. The April Witch (1987)
  76. The Fog Horn (1987)
  77. Fever Dream (1987)
  78. The Smile (1991)
  79. The Toynbee Convector (1992)
  80. With Cat for Comforter (1997)
  81. Dogs Think That Every Day Is Christmas (1997)
  82. Ahmed and the Oblivion Machines: A Fable (1998)
  83. The Homecoming (2006)

  84. Non-fiction:

  85. No Man Is an Island (1952)
  86. The Essence of Creative Writing: Letters to a Young Aspiring Author (1962)
  87. Creative Man Among His Servant Machines (1967)
  88. Mars and the Mind of Man (1971)
  89. Zen in the Art of Writing (1973)
    • Zen in the Art of Writing. 1973. In The Capra Chapbook Anthology. Ed. Noel Young. Santa Barbara, CA: Capra Press, 1979.
  90. The God in Science Fiction (1978)
  91. About Norman Corwin (1979)
  92. There is Life on Mars (1981)
  93. The Art of Playboy (1985)
  94. Zen in the Art of Writing: Essays on Creativity (1990)
  95. Yestermorrow: Obvious Answers to Impossible Futures (1991)
  96. Conversations with Ray Bradbury. Ed. Steven L. Aggelis) (2004)
  97. Bradbury Speaks: Too Soon from the Cave, Too Far from the Stars (2005)
  98. Match to Flame: The Fictional Paths to Fahrenheit 451 (2007)

  99. Poetry:

  100. Where Robot Mice & Robot Men Run Round in Robot Towns (1977)
  101. To Sing Strange Songs (1979)
  102. Beyond 1984: Remembrance of Things Future (1979)
  103. The Ghosts of Forever (1980)
  104. The Complete Poems of Ray Bradbury (1982)
  105. The Love Affair (1982)
  106. I Live By the Invisible: New & Selected Poems (2002)

  107. Screenplays:

  108. The Best of The Ray Bradbury Chronicles (2003)
  109. It Came from Outer Space: Screenplay (2003)
  110. The Halloween Tree: Screenplay (2005)

  111. Miscellaneous:

  112. Long After Ecclesiastes: New Biblical Texts (1985)
  113. Christus Apollo: Cantata Celebrating the Eighth Day of Creation and the Promise of the Ninth (1998)
  114. Witness and Celebrate (2000)
  115. A Chapbook for Burnt-Out Priests, Rabbis and Ministers (2001)
  116. The Best of Ray Bradbury: The Graphic Novel (2003)
  117. Futuria Fantasia: SF Fanzine (2007)

  118. Secondary:

  119. Weller, Sam. The Bradbury Chronicles. Harper Perennial. 2005. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2006.
  120. Eller, Jonathan R. Becoming Ray Bradbury. Vol. 1 of 3. Champaign, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2011.
  121. Eller, Jonathan R. Ray Bradbury Unbound. Vol. 2 of 3. Champaign, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2014.
  122. Eller, Jonathan R. Bradbury Beyond Apollo. Vol. 3 of 3. Champaign, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2020.




Jonathan Eller: The Bradbury Trilogy (2011-2020)

Sam Weller: The Bradbury Chronicles (2005)


Monday, April 03, 2023

SF Luminaries: John Christopher


The Tripods (1984-85)


"John Christopher" - aka Christopher Youd, Samuel Youd (his real name), Hilary Ford, William Godfrey, Peter Graaf, Peter Nichols, William Vine, and Stanley Winchester - is perhaps best remembered for his YA SF series The Tripods, dramatised - rather poorly - by the BBC a couple of decades after the trilogy first appeared.


John Christopher: The Tripods Tetralogy (1967-88)


Concentrating solely on his 'second life' as a YA author would be to sell him short, though. His earlier adult novels have often been characterised - mostly by people who haven't read them - as imitations of fellow Brit John Wyndham's crossover megahit The Day of the Triffids (1951).


John Christopher: The Death of Grass (1956)


This may hold some truth for one or two of them - The World in Winter (1962), for instance - but even the Wyndham-influenced Death of Grass (1956) occupies a distinctly fiercer and more troubled space in the post-apocalyptic landscape than the older writer's "cosy catastrophes" (in Brian Aldiss's phrase). It's this brutal and uncompromising flavour which makes his work particularly relevant to readers today.



As you'll see from the bibliography here, Youd began writing novels under his own name, then under a succession of other pseudonyms, each tailored to one of his many interests. It was as "John Christopher" that he achieved his greatest commercial (and probably artistic) success, however:
I read somewhere ... that I have been cited as the greatest serial killer in fictional history, having destroyed civilisation in so many different ways – through famine, freezing, earthquakes, feral youth combined with religious fanaticism, and progeria.
- quoted on his Goodreads author page

John Christopher: The Caves of Night (1958)


These early novels were all thrillers of one type or another, but not all of them can be classified as Sci-fi. The Caves of Night is about a group of amateur speleologists lost in an unknown cave system, and The Long Voyage (which I've discussed in more detail here) describes the strange odyssey of a ship that drifts through the North Sea to the ice-packs of Greenland.


John Christopher: The Guardians (1970)


The first of his novels I myself read was The Guardians. I got it for my birthday one year, and it made an indelible impression on me. There was a sharpness and precision to the writing which I hadn't really encountered before. He didn't seem to pull any punches for his "juvenile" audience. In fact it's clear in retrospect that he found these shorter narrative units particularly suited to his talents.


John Christopher: The Prince in Waiting trilogy (1970-72)


Perhaps the high point of his talent is the brilliantly original - and terrifying - "Prince in Waiting" books. The protagonist Luke was, I think, my very first antihero. Camus's Meursault, Greene's whisky priest, Joyce's Leopold Bloom, none of them surprised me as much as the bitter, scheming, unrepentant hero of these three vividly imagined novels.

After that the temperature of his writing began to cool off a little. Had he gone too far for Puffin Books? Certainly the successors to The Prince in Waiting were mostly one-offs, and the "Fireball" trilogy, when it finally arrived, was a bit of a disappointment.

But then I don't think it really matters where you start with John Christopher. The "adult" novels are not really significantly more demanding - or terrifying - than the children's ones. My favourite of them all remains The Long Voyage - it's the one I keep on coming back to - but I suppose his most dazzling achievement would have to be The Prince in Waiting and its sequels.

Whichever of them you choose to read, though, you certainly won't be wasting your time. He's long outlasted the era he wrote in, and only a few of his books are still in print. They're worth snapping up when you see them, though. I still have a couple of them I'm looking for, but fewer and fewer bookshops now maintain those tatty shelves of SF paperback which used to be such a happy hunting ground for fans like me.


John Christopher: The Fireball trilogy (1981-86)





Sam Youd (1929-2018)

Sam Youd ['John Christopher']
(1922-2012)


John Christopher: The Year of the Comet (1955)

    Novels:

  1. The Year of the Comet [US: Planet in Peril (1959)] (1955)
    • The Year of the Comet. 1955. London: Sphere Books, 1978.
  2. The Death of Grass [US: No Blade of Grass (1957)] (1956)
    • The Death of Grass. 1956. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963.
  3. The Caves of Night (1958)
    • The Caves of Night. 1958. London: Panther, 1962.
  4. A Scent of White Poppies (1959)
  5. The Long Voyage [US: The White Voyage] (1960)
    • The Long Voyage. 1960. London: Sphere books, 1986.
  6. The World in Winter [US: The Long Winter] (1962)
    • The World in Winter. 1962. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1964.
  7. Cloud on Silver [US: Sweeney's Island] (1964)
    • Cloud on Silver. 1964. Hodder Paperbacks. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1966.
  8. The Possessors (1964)
    • The Possessors. 1964. London: Sphere books, 1978.
  9. A Wrinkle in the Skin [US: The Ragged Edge] (1965)
    • A Wrinkle in the Skin. 1965. London: Sphere books, 1978.
  10. The Little People (1966)
  11. Pendulum (1968)
    • Pendulum. 1968. Hodder Paperbacks. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1969.
  12. Bad Dream (2003)

  13. Short Stories:

  14. The Twenty-Second Century (1954)

  15. YA Fiction:

  16. The Tripods trilogy:
    1. The White Mountains. 1967. Rev. ed. (2003)
    2. The City of Gold and Lead (1967)
    3. The Pool of Fire (1968)
    • The Tripods Trilogy: The White Mountains; The City of Gold and Lead; The Pool of Fire. 1967 & 1968. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984.
  17. The Lotus Caves (1969)
    • The Lotus Caves. 1969. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971.
  18. The Guardians (1970)
    • The Guardians. 1970. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973.
  19. The Sword of the Spirits trilogy
    1. The Prince In Waiting (1970)
    2. Beyond the Burning Lands (1971)
    3. The Sword of the Spirits (1972)
    • The Prince in Waiting Trilogy: The Prince In Waiting; Beyond the Burning Lands; The Sword of the Spirits. 1970, 1971 & 1972. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1983.
  20. In the Beginning. Structural Readers (1972)
  21. Dom and Va (1973)
    • Dom and Va. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1973.
  22. Wild Jack (1974)
    • Wild Jack. 1974. A Beaver Book. London: Hamish Hamilton Children’s Books, 1978.
  23. Empty World (1977)
    • Empty World. 1977. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981.
  24. The Fireball trilogy
    1. Fireball (1981)
      • Fireball. Fireball Trilogy, 1. 1981. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984.
    2. New Found Land (1983)
      • New Found Land. Fireball Trilogy, 2. 1983. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984.
    3. Dragon Dance (1986)
      • Dragon Dance. Fireball Trilogy, 3. 1986. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986.
  25. When the Tripods Came (1988)
    • When the Tripods Came. 1988. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1990.
  26. A Dusk of Demons (1993)
    • A Dusk of Demons. 1993. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1994.


  27. John Christopher: A Dusk of Demons (1993)


    as Christopher Youd:

  28. The Winter Swan (1949)

  29. as Samuel Youd:

  30. Babel Itself (1951)
  31. Brave Conquerors (1952)
  32. Crown and Anchor (1953)
  33. A Palace of Strangers (1954)
  34. Holly Ash [US: The Opportunist] (1955)
  35. Giant's Arrow [UK: as Anthony Rye] ((1956)
  36. The Burning Bird [US: The Choice (1961)
  37. Messages of Love (1961)
  38. The Summers at Accorn (1963)

  39. as William Godfrey:

  40. Malleson at Melbourne (1956)
  41. The Friendly Game (1957)

  42. as William Vine:

  43. "Death Sentence". Imagination Science Fiction (June 1953)
  44. "Explosion Delayed". Space Science Fiction (July 1953)

  45. as Peter Graaf:

  46. The Joe Dust Series:
    1. Dust and the Curious Boy [US: Give the Devil His Due] (1957)
    2. Daughter Fair (1958)
    3. The Sapphire Conference (1959)
  47. The Gull's Kiss (1962)

  48. as Hilary Ford:

  49. Felix Walking (1958)
  50. Felix Running (1959)
  51. Bella on the Roof (1965)
  52. A Figure in Grey (1973)
  53. Sarnia (1974)
  54. Castle Malindine (1975)
  55. A Bride for Bedivere (1976)

  56. as Peter Nichols:

  57. Patchwork of Death (1965)

  58. as Stanley Winchester:

  59. The Practice (1968)
  60. Men With Knives [US: A Man With a Knife] (1968)
  61. The Helpers (1970)
  62. Ten Per Cent of Your Life (1973)



John Christopher: Bad Dream (2003)


Saturday, May 07, 2022

SF Luminaries: Orson Scott Card


Gavin Hood, dir.: Ender's Game (2013)


Back in the early nineties when I was working as an English tutor at Auckland University, I was asked to supervise a research essay by one of the undergraduates. It was on Science Fiction, so no-one else felt sufficiently qualified, I suppose.

I don't remember all that much about the project, but I do recall some very interesting discussions with my supervisee about the overall tenor of SF as a genre. There's always been a good deal of talk - mainly by the more starry-eyed writers in the field - about the 'sense of wonder' and imaginative openness encouraged by its speculative, open-ended nature.


Orson Scott Card: Maps in a Mirror (1990)


However, I'd recently been reading Orson Scott Card's short story collection Maps in a Mirror, and its general tendency seemed quite otherwise. What stood out most for me in his work was an obsessive preoccupation with violence. There was one story in particular whose protagonist was killed in the most gruesome manner, then repeatedly revived by the authorities for further executions: his crime of dissent was such that mere death was regarded as insufficient punishment.

That's not all there was to the story, mind you. Its hero was finally sent into exile as the government had failed to break his indomitable will, so there was (at least ostensibly) a 'moral' purpose to it all. But the sheer detail supplied about the various methods of execution employed by his oppressors showed a kind of sadistic glee which seemed, to say the least, a little troubling.


Frank Herbert: The Dosadi Experiment (1977)


It put me in mind of Frank Herbert's late novel The Dosadi Experiment, which extended his notions on the necessity of extreme suffering to "train the faithful" (as expounded in Dune and its sequels) to almost ridiculous extremes. The more oppression is heaped upon people, the more likely it appears to be - in Herbert's view, at any rate - that you will end up with a race of super-beings.

I'd long been aware of the quasi-fascistic tendencies of (especially) the later work of Robert Heinlein and other Campbell-era SF writers, but this seemed an even more extreme doctrine - one which operated behind the overt scaffolding of the stories to imply a more sinister agenda.

I suspect that the student I was supervising began to think that I had a real bee in my bonnet on the subject of these subliminal themes in contemporary SF. He certainly showed little patience for the subject. At the time it seemed to me a legitimate exploration of the figure in the carpet for at least a few of its principal exponents, however.

Recently I've been catching up with some of Orson Scott Card's work from the thirty years since that short story collection, which spanned only the first two decades of his career. It's been a very interesting experience. He's always been a prolific writer, as you can see from the (partial) listings below, but of late a good deal of his energy seems to have gone into comics, games, and collaborations with other writers rather than the paperback novels that made his reputation.


Orson Scott Card: The Ender Series (1985-2008)


The first, and undoubtedly the best known of his story-cycles was first known as the 'Ender's Game Trilogy', then the 'Ender's Game Quartet', and finally the 'Ender's Game Series' as successive volumes were added.

The original 1985 novel, an expansion of his 1977 Analog novella "Ender's Game", remains an SF masterpiece. The ethical dilemmas involved in training children for a war which only they can win - without telling them that that's what you're doing - remain sharply relevant to this day. And the 2013 feature film did a pretty good job of encapsulating these themes in its (inevitably) truncated form - except for Sir Ben Kingsley's "Kiwi" accent, that is, which had to be heard to be believed.

After that things got a bit more complicated. First Card decided to send his hero off on a series of relativistic hops through the universe which took him a couple of thousand years into the future; then he landed him on a planet where the literally 'inhuman' values of another alien race, the Pequeninos (or "Piggies"), led to an even more complex conflict and the threat of another Xenocide.

This new conundrum takes a good three volumes to resolve, mainly owing to the tendency of Card's characters to sit down and talk things through - at inordinate length - on a regular basis. In the process Ender gets married to a typical Card heroine: stubborn, irritable, and prone to taking perverse, self-destructive decisions whenever reason threatens to prevail. I'm not quite sure what that implies, but it does make you wonder a bit about Card's own personal experience in this area ...


Orson Scott Card: The Shadow Series (1999-2005)


But wait, there's more. Meanwhile, back on earth, the cast of the original Battle School set up to defeat the Formics (or "Buggers") are all still battling to restore the government of Earth to its proper state of blind obedience to the Hegemon, Ender's sociopathic brother Peter. All of that takes another four (or five, depending on how you count) volumes to settle.


Orson Scott Card & Aaron Johnston: The First Formic War Series (2012-14)


I can't speak to the events in the First (and now Second) Formic War Trilogies, as I haven't read them. All one can conclude is that any rumours of Ender's having actually ended hostilities with the Formics at the conclusion of Ender's Game appear to have been greatly exaggerated.

Nor has this series of spin-offs concluded as yet. And presumably there are many hardcore fans out there who are still anxiously watching this space ...


Orson Scott Card: The Tales of Alvin Maker (1987-2003)


Card's second major series is the alternate-history, American-frontier saga collectively labelled the (tall) Tales of Alvin Maker. Card's Mormonism comes through far more strongly in these books than in the Ender ones. Nevertheless, his vision of a North America half of which still belongs to the Native American tribes is a strangely inspiring one. And there's an infectious exuberance to (especially) the early volumes in the sequence which keeps you reading even as they become gradually more and more encumbered by plot and backstory.

There is still, apparently, one volume of tales to come, though I have my doubts about that. Card has a tendency to divide and subdivide his novels into they fill two or three volumes rather than just the one he originally promised. And his characters are so very, very talkative.


Orson Scott Card: The Homecoming Series (1992-95)


A good example of this is the series above, originally intended as a trilogy, which grew into a huge, sprawling, five-volume saga.

I think that if I knew more about The Book of Mormon (had read it, for instance), I might be better equipped to judge these books. It is, it seems, a 'Science-fictional" version of the major events in the Mormon scriptures, which may account for the extreme perversity of many of the characters' basic motivations.

The hero, Nafai, for example, seems almost infinitely long-suffering, and his evil, plotting brothers, Elemak and Mebbekew, almost impossibly villainous. There is a certain narrative drive which kept me reading, but it does seem to be intended for a more specialised audience than most of his other fiction.


C. S. Lewis: The Cosmic Trilogy (1938-45)


What, then, is one to conclude about Orson Scott Card? Ender's Game remains a fine novel. Many of his other novels are also well worth reading, too - particularly the 'Alvin Maker' series. I wouldn't myself say that his experiment of mixing Mormon themes with the matter of conventional genre fiction has been a particularly successful one, but then the same could easily be said of other such ideologically driven Speculative Fiction such as C. S. Lewis's Interplanetary trilogy, or even Charles Williams' theological thrillers.

So I find myself inscribing a tick in the "yes" column, despite my reservations about the endless blah-blah in (especially) his later books, and despite my nagging suspicions of a certain residual sadism and misogyny at the root of much of his fiction. Once again, the same could be said of many canonical authors, and this inference remains, in any case, a debatable one.


Orson Scott Card: Assorted Enderverse Comics (1938-45)





Orson Scott Card

Orson Scott Card
(1951- )


    The Enders Game Series:

  1. Ender’s Game. The Ender Quartet, 1. 1985. A Legend Book. London: Arrow Books Ltd., 1988.
  2. Speaker for the Dead. The Ender Quartet, 2. 1986. A Legend Book. London: Arrow Books Ltd., 1986.
  3. Xenocide. The Ender Quartet, 3. 1991. A Legend Book. London: Arrow Books Ltd., 1992.
  4. Children of the Mind. The Ender Quartet, 4. 1996. A Tor Book. New York: Tom Doherty Associates, LLC, 1997.
  5. Ender's Shadow. 1999. The Shadow Saga, 1. An Orbit Book. London: Little, Brown and Company (UK), 2000.
  6. Shadow of the Hegemon. 2000. The Shadow Saga, 2. An Orbit Book. London: Little, Brown and Company (UK), 2001.
  7. Shadow Puppets. 2002. The Shadow Saga, 3. A Tor Book. New York: A Tom Doherty Associates Book, 2003.
  8. Shadow of the Giant. 2005. The Shadow Saga, 4. A Tor Book. New York: A Tom Doherty Associates Book, 2006.
  9. First Meetings in the Enderverse. An Orbit Book. London: Time Warner Books UK, 2003.
  10. A War of Gifts: An Ender Story (2007)
  11. Ender in Exile (2008)
  12. Shadows in Flight. The Shadow Saga, 5 (2012)
  13. [with Aaron Johnston] Earth Unaware. First Formic Wars trilogy, 1 (2012)
  14. [with Aaron Johnston] Earth Afire. First Formic Wars trilogy, 2 (2013)
  15. [with Aaron Johnston] Earth Awakens. First Formic Wars trilogy, 3 (2014)
  16. [with Aaron Johnston] The Swarm. Second Formic Wars trilogy, 1 (2016)
  17. Children of the Fleet. Fleet School (2017)
  18. Ender's Way: short stories (2021)
  19. [with Aaron Johnston] The Hive. Second Formic Wars trilogy, 2 (2019)
  20. The Last Shadow. The Shadow Saga, 6 (2021)
  21. [with Aaron Johnston] The Queens. Second Formic Wars trilogy, 3 (tba)

  22. The Tales of Alvin Maker:

  23. Seventh Son. The Tales of Alvin Maker, 1. 1987. A Legend Book. London: Arrow Books Ltd., 1989.
  24. Red Prophet. The Tales of Alvin Maker, 2. 1988. An Orbit Book. London: Little, Brown and Company (UK), 2001.
  25. Prentice Alvin. The Tales of Alvin Maker, 3. 1989. An Orbit Book. London: Little, Brown and Company (UK), 2001.
  26. Alvin Journeyman. The Tales of Alvin Maker, 4. 1995. An Orbit Book. London: Little, Brown and Company (UK), 2001.
  27. Heartfire. The Tales of Alvin Maker, 5. An Orbit Book. London: Little, Brown and Company (UK), 2001.
  28. The Crystal City. The Tales of Alvin Maker, 6 (2003)
  29. Master Alvin. The Tales of Alvin Maker, 7 (tba)

  30. The Homecoming Series:

  31. The Memory of Earth. Homecoming, 1. 1992. Legend Books. London: Random House UK Ltd, 1993.
  32. The Call of Earth. Homecoming, 2. 1993. A Tor Book. New York: A Tom Doherty Associates Book, 1994.
  33. The Ships of Earth. Homecoming, 3. 1994. A Tor Book. New York: A Tom Doherty Associates Book, 1995.
  34. Earthfall. Homecoming, 4. 1995. A Tor Book. New York: A Tom Doherty Associates Book, 1996.
  35. Earthborn. Homecoming, 5. 1995. A Tor Book. New York: A Tom Doherty Associates Book, 1996.

  36. Women of Genesis:

  37. Sarah (2000)
  38. Rebekah (2001)
  39. Rachel and Leah (2004)

  40. The Empire Duet:

  41. Empire (2006)
  42. Hidden Empire (2009)

  43. The Pathfinder Series:

  44. Pathfinder (2010)
  45. Ruins (2012)
  46. Visitors (2014)

  47. The Mithermages Series:

  48. The Lost Gate (2011)
  49. The Gate Thief (2013)
  50. Gatefather (2015)

  51. Miscellaneous Novels:

  52. A Planet Called Treason [aka Treason (1988)] (1979)
  53. Songmaster. 1980 & 1987. A Legend Book. London: Arrow Books Ltd., 1990.
  54. Hart's Hope (1983)
  55. Saints [aka Woman of Destiny] (1983)
  56. Wyrms. 1987. A Legend Book. London: Arrow Books Ltd., 1988.
  57. with Lloyd Biggle, Jr.] Eye for Eye / Tunesmith. Tor double novel (1990)
  58. Lost Boys (1992)
  59. [with Kathryn H. Kidd] Lovelock (1994)
  60. Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus (1996)/li>
  61. Treasure Box (1996)
  62. Stone Tables (1997)
  63. Homebody (1998)
  64. Enchantment (1999)
  65. [with Doug Chiang] Robota (2003)
  66. Magic Street (2005)
  67. [with Aaron Johnston] Invasive Procedures (2007)
  68. A Town Divided by Christmas (2018)
  69. Lost and Found (2019)

  70. Short Story Collections:

  71. The Worthing Saga. ['Capitol' (1979); 'The Worthing Chronicle' (1982)]. A Legend Book. London: Random Century Group, 1991.
  72. The Folk of the Fringe. 1990. A Legend Book. London: Random Century, 1991.
  73. Maps in a Mirror. 1990. 2 vols. A Legend Book. London: Arrow Books Ltd., 1992.
  74. Keeper of Dreams (2008)

  75. Poetry:

  76. An Open Book (2004)

  77. For Children:

  78. Magic Mirror (1999)

  79. Non-fiction:

  80. Listen, Mom and Dad (1977)
  81. Ainge (1981)
  82. Saintspeak (1981)
  83. Characters and Viewpoint (1988)
  84. How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy (1990)
  85. A Storyteller in Zion (1993)
  86. Complete Guide to Writing Science Fiction: Volume One, First Contact (2007)

  87. Edited:

  88. Dragons of Light (1980)
  89. Dragons of Darkness (1981)
  90. Future on Fire (1991)
  91. Future on Ice (1998)
  92. Masterpieces (2001)
  93. The Phobos Science Fiction Anthology, Volume 1 (2002)
  94. The Phobos Science Fiction Anthology, Volume 2 (2003)
  95. The Phobos Science Fiction Anthology, Volume 3 (2004)
  96. Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show (2008))




Orson Scott Card: Ender's Game (1985)


Thursday, January 06, 2022

SF Luminaries: Walter M. Miller, Jr.


Walter M. Miller, Jr.: A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959)


Ever since I first picked up a scruffy secondhand paperback copy in a local bookshop, I've been entranced by A Canticle for Leibowitz. As you can see from the montage below, there's been no shortage of editions and reprints of this 'famous and prophetic best seller of the new dark age of man". What of its author, though? Who was this strange man Walter M. Miller, Jr.?


Walter M. Miller, Jr.: Leibowitz covers


Well, as W. H. Auden states so succinctly in his sonnet Who's Who: "A shilling life will give you all the facts" - or, as in this case, a brief consultation of the relevant wikipedia entry:
Miller was born on January 23, 1923, in New Smyrna Beach, Florida. Educated at the University of Tennessee and the University of Texas, he worked as an engineer. During World War II, he served in the Army Air Forces as a radioman and tail gunner, flying more than fifty bombing missions over Italy. He took part in the bombing of the Benedictine Abbey at Monte Cassino, which proved a traumatic experience for him. Joe Haldeman reported that Miller "had post-traumatic stress disorder for 30 years before it had a name"

Joe Haldeman: The Forever War (1974)


Joe Haldeman is, of course, the author of the classic Vietnam-cum-SF novel The Forever War, still in print after almost fifty years.
After the war, Miller converted to Catholicism ... Between 1951 and 1957, [he] published over three dozen science fiction short stories, winning a Hugo Award in 1955 for the story "The Darfsteller".

Late in the 1950s, Miller assembled a novel from three closely related novellas he had published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in 1955, 1956 and 1957. The novel, entitled A Canticle for Leibowitz, was published in 1959. It is a post-apocalyptic novel revolving around the canonisation of Saint Leibowitz, and is considered a masterpiece of the genre. It won the 1961 Hugo Award for Best Novel.

After the success of A Canticle for Leibowitz, Miller ceased publishing, although several compilations of Miller's earlier stories were issued in the 1960s and 1970s.

In Miller's later years, he became a recluse, avoiding contact with nearly everyone, including family members; he never allowed his literary agent, Don Congdon, to meet him. According to science fiction writer Terry Bisson, Miller struggled with depression, but had managed to nearly complete a 600-page manuscript for the sequel to Canticle before taking his own life with a firearm on January 9, 1996, shortly after his wife's death.

The sequel, Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman, was completed by Bisson at Miller's request and published in 1997.

Walter M. Miller, Jr.: Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman (1997)


I wish I could say that this last, posthumous work of fiction was a triumphant vindication of his decades in the wilderness. Alas, it is not. Various of the commentators on his Goodreads page do their best to defend it:
[Dropping Out]: Miller's "problem" was that he hit a grand-slam home-run in Canticle, and he spent the remainder of what must have been a sad and frustrating life trying to get out from under Canticle's shadow. ...

[Jason]: Saint Leibowitz reminded me very much of Herbert's Dune. They are both sprawling novels dealing with the political machinations of both Church and State, and they both center on the manipulations of the mysterious, isolated, less-civilized nomadic peoples whose loyalties will tip the balance of power.

[Doreen]: Oddly enough, I seem to be one of the few people here who enjoyed the sequel much more than its predecessor. I found A Canticle... devoid of much of the human suffering that pervades this book, which questions the conflict between faith and tradition, desire and happiness, and what it means to be a good human being.
Others seem more inclined to tell it like it is:
[Bryn Hammond]: There’s almost no science fiction left. It was much more like reading a (burlesque) historical fiction on the medieval church, muddled up with the American West. Canticle’s concerns with science aren’t pursued, and the post-nuclear-war setting becomes accidental.

[Jon]: The sequel to A Canticle for Leibowitz was thirty years in the making, but unfortunately, Miller seems to have forgotten how to write a novel in those decades. Many of the moral and ethical arguments that made Canticle so brilliant are still present, as is the occasional bit of dry humor, but these are overshadowed by long and drawn-out passages, poor plotting, and a conclusion that seems to have been hastily written the night before the book went to press (the "Wild Horse Woman" from the title, for example, virtually never appears in the novel; I'm still confused as to why her name appears so prominently on the book's spine)
Perhaps the best overall summary comes from Zoe's Human:
Life is too short for books you don't enjoy.

Maybe the fault is mine for trying to read this right after A Canticle for Leibowitz which would be a tough act to follow for anyone (including, apparently, the author who wrote it). Perhaps my expectations were just too high. This started off well enough with a nice premise about loss of faith, but it kind of fizzled after the first two or three chapters.

Or perhaps the fact that the author was suicidally depressed and took his own life before he finished it was a factor. Another author finished it from a reportedly almost complete manuscript, but how complete was it really? And how much did the original author's struggle with mental illness factor in?


One of Miller's rarer stories, not included in any of the various collections of his short fiction, is "Izzard and the Membrane." An extra level of confusion is added by the fact that the book above, which I inherited from my father's science fiction collection, is the 1953 UK edition of a book which originally appeared in the USA in 1952. Despite its publication date, then, it actually constitutes The Year's Best Science Fiction Novels 1952, not 1953:



The American edition also included an extra story, Arthur C. Clarke's "Seeker of the Sphinx", presumably omitted from the British reprint for copyright reasons.

The reason this bibliographical minutiae seems worth stressing is because "Izzard and the Membrane" is quite a remarkable story, every bit the equal of most of the novellas included in his officially sanctioned collections. Its cold war stereotypes may be a little dated now, but Miller's astonishing intuitions about the possibilities of computer artificial intelligence and the creation of alternate realities are worthy of the creators of Westworld or the Metaverse itself.

So good is it, in fact, that it makes one feel rather curious about some of the other stories I've tried to list below as comprehensively as possible. By my count he wrote 43 stories in all (at least two of which were not SF). Of these 41, a mere fourteen were collected in his final selection The Best of Walter M. Miller, Jr. (1980) - subsequently reprinted under other titles, but without any expansion of the contents.

That leaves at least 26 other stories to read (not counting the two romance stories and a co-authored crime story) from that incredibly productive period of writing between 1951 and 1957. There may well be some duds among them, but it seems hard to believe that only "Izzard" is worthy of resurrection among such a number of pieces published - for the most part - in the top SF journals of the day.

That's the new Walter M. Miller book I'm holding out for: not the last, incomplete, rather depressing Saint Leibowitz. After all, his short stories and short novels were always his strongest work. From the much-anthologised "Crucifixus Etiam," with its unforgettable image of the purgatorial plains of Mars, to ,"Big Joe and the Nth Generation" (aka "It Takes a Thief"), he showed a flair for memorable characterisation and arresting plotlines second to none - not even such celebrated contemporaries as Philip K. Dick and Robert A. Heinlein.


James Blish: A Case of Conscience (1958)


That's not to say that there was anything unprecedented about Miller's trajectory from slam-bang Sci-fi to the subtleties of religious dogma in the apocalypse-haunted 1950s. It wasn't just mainstream fiction which had become obsessed with the ethical dilemmas associated with (mainly Catholic) Christianity. Authors such as Graham Greene, François Mauriac and Evelyn Waugh dominated the bestseller lists, and it seemed for a while there as if the twin blows of Hiroshima and Auschwitz had discredited scientific reductionism for good.

James Blish's A Case of Conscience is a good example - within the strict genre-boundaries of SF - of this type of writing. It could apparently then be taken for granted that monastic orders would accompany any future space-faring expeditions, and that the local religious concerns of this world were bound to find echoes out in the great beyond.


C. S. Lewis: The Cosmic Trilogy (1938-45)


C. S. Lewis's interplanetary trilogy undoubtedly helped to demonstrate the viability of such themes in a genre still dominated by the rationalist assumptions of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells. Ray Bradbury got in on the act, too, in his story "The Fire Balloons" [aka "In This Sign ..."] included in some editions of his classic Martian Chronicles.



In a way, though, despite his obvious affinity with other such earnest Catholic strivers in the 1950s, the sheer philosophical scope of Miller's Canticle seems to me to have more in common with Hermann Hesse's Glass Bead Game (1943) than with the likes of Blish, Bradbury or Lewis.


Ray Bradbury: The Fire Balloons (1951)


Its popularity then and since has undoubtedly depended to some extent on its links with other SF apocalypses of the 1950s: George Stewart's Earth Abides (1949), or Philip K. Dick's zany Dr Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along After the Bomb (1965). A Canticle for Leibowitz continues to evade us, though. It has elements of all of these things - Catholic apologia, SF Apocalypse, Dystopian satire - and yet it can't be said to be subsumed entirely by any of them.


George R. Stewart: Earth Abides (1949)


I do hope one day to be able to purchase at least some of the uncollected stories of Walter M. Miller in convenient book form, but there's certainly a strong case for believing that everything significant he had to say was contained in this one, stand-alone masterpiece. His mistake, then - if mistake it was - lay in thinking he could emulate or even surpass it in his final few years.


Walter M. Miller, Jr.: A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959)






Walter M. Miller, Jr. (1923-1996)

Walter Michael Miller, Jr.
(1923-1996)


    Novels:

  1. A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959)
    1. Fiat Homo [aka 'A Canticle for Leibowitz'] (1955)
    2. Fiat Lux [aka 'And the Light is Risen'] (1956)
    3. Fiat Voluntas Tua [aka 'The Last Canticle'] (1957)
    • A Canticle for Leibowitz: A Novel. 1959. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1960.
    • A Canticle for Leibowitz. 1959. Corgi Science-Fiction. London: Transworld Publishers Ltd., 1970.
  2. [with Terry Bisson] Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman (1997)
    • Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman. Ed. Terry Bisson. 1997. An Orbit Book. London: Little, Brown and Company (UK), 1998.

  3. Collections:

  4. The Year’s Best Science Fiction Novels. Ed. Everett F. Bleiler & T. E. Dikty. London: Grayson & Grayson, 1953.
    1. Izzard and the Membrane, by Walter M. Miller, Jr.
    2. … And Then There Were None, by Eric Frank Russell
    3. Flight to Forever, by Poul Anderson
    4. The Hunting Season, by Frank M. Robinson
  5. Conditionally Human (1962)
    1. Conditionally Human (1952)
    2. The Darfsteller (1955)
    3. Dark Benediction (1951)
  6. The View from the Stars (1965)
    1. Blood Bank (1952)
    2. Dumb Waiter (1952)
    3. Anybody Else Like Me? (1952)
    4. The Big Hunger (1952)
    5. The Will (1954)
    6. Crucifixus Etiam (1953)
    7. I, Dreamer (1953)
    8. Big Joe and the Nth Generation (1952)
    9. You Triflin' Skunk! (1955)
  7. The Science Fiction Stories of Walter M. Miller Jr. (1977)
    1. Conditionally Human (1952)
    2. Blood Bank (1952)
    3. Dark Benediction (1951)
    4. Dumb Waiter (1952)
    5. Anybody Else Like Me? (1952)
    6. The Big Hunger (1952)
    7. The Darfsteller (1955)
    8. The Will (1954)
    9. Crucifixus Etiam (1953)
    10. I, Dreamer (1953)
    11. Big Joe and the Nth Generation (1952)
    12. You Triflin' Skunk! (1955)
  8. Conditionally Human and Other Stories. 1980. Corgi Science-Fiction. London: Transworld Publishers Ltd., 1982.
    1. Conditionally Human (1952)
    2. Blood Bank (1952)
    3. Dark Benediction (1951)
    4. Dumb Waiter (1952)
    5. Anybody Else Like Me? (1952)
    6. The Big Hunger (1952)
  9. The Darfsteller and Other Stories. 1980. Corgi Science-Fiction. London: Transworld Publishers Ltd., 1982.
    1. The Darfsteller (1955)
    2. The Will (1954)
    3. Vengeance for Nikolai (1957)
    4. Crucifixus Etiam (1953)
    5. I, Dreamer (1953)
    6. The Lineman (1957)
    7. Big Joe and the Nth Generation (1952)
    8. You Triflin' Skunk! (1955)
  10. Dark Benediction. [aka 'The Best of Walter M. Miller, Jr.', 1980]. SF Masterworks. Gollancz. London: Orion Publishing Group, 2007.
    1. Conditionally Human (1952)
    2. Blood Bank (1952)
    3. Dark Benediction (1951)
    4. Dumb Waiter (1952)
    5. Anybody Else Like Me? (1952)
    6. The Big Hunger (1952)
    7. The Darfsteller (1955)
    8. The Will (1954)
    9. Vengeance for Nikolai (1957)
    10. Crucifixus Etiam (1953)
    11. I, Dreamer (1953)
    12. The Lineman (1957)
    13. Big Joe and the Nth Generation (1952)
    14. You Triflin' Skunk! (1955)
  11. Two Worlds of Walter M. Miller (2010)
    1. The Hoofer (1955)
    2. Death of a Spaceman (1954)

  12. Chapbooks:

  13. The Hoofer [1955] (2009)
  14. Death of a Spaceman [1954] (2009)
  15. Way of a Rebel [1954] (2010)
  16. Check and Checkmate [1953] (2010)
  17. The Ties That Bind [1954] (2010)
  18. Conditionally Human [1952] (2016)
  19. It Takes a Thief [1952] (2019)

  20. Short Stories & Novellas:

    [Included in The Year’s Best Science Fiction Novels (1952);
    A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959);
    Conditionally Human (1962);
    The View from the Stars (1965);
    The Best of Walter M. Miller, Jr. (1980);
    Two Worlds of Walter M. Miller (2010)]

    1. MacDoughal's Wife [not SF] (1950)
    2. Month of Mary [not SF] (1950)
    3. Secret of the Death Dome [novella] (1951)
    4. Izzard and the Membrane [novella] (1951)
    5. The Soul-Empty Ones [novella] (1951)
    6. Dark Benediction [novella] (1951)
    7. The Space Witch [novella] (1951)
    8. The Song of Vorhu ... for Trumpet and Kettledrum [novella] (1951)
    9. The Little Creeps [novella] (1951)
    10. The Reluctant Traitor [novella] (1952)
    11. Conditionally Human [novella] (1952)
    12. Bitter Victory (1952)
    13. Dumb Waiter [novella] (1952)
    14. Big Joe and the Nth Generation {aka "It Takes a Thief"} (1952)
    15. Blood Bank [novella] (1952)
    16. Six and Ten Are Johnny [novella] (1952)
    17. Let My People Go [novella] (1952)
    18. Cold Awakening [novella] (1952)
    19. Please Me Plus Three [novella] (1952)
    20. No Moon for Me (1952)
    21. The Big Hunger (1952)
    22. Gravesong (1952)
    23. Anybody Else Like Me? {aka "Command Performance"} [novella] (1952)
    24. A Family Matter (1952)
    25. Check and Checkmate [novella] (1953)
    26. Crucifixus Etiam {aka "The Sower Does Not Reap"} (1953)
    27. I, Dreamer (1953)
    28. The Yokel [novella] (1953)
    29. Wolf Pack (1953)
    30. The Will (1954)
    31. Death of a Spaceman {aka "Memento Homo"} (1954)
    32. I Made You (1954)
    33. Way of a Rebel (1954)
    34. The Ties that Bind [novella] (1954)
    35. The Darfsteller [novella] (1955)
    36. You Triflin' Skunk! {aka "The Triflin' Man"} (1955)
    37. A Canticle for Leibowitz {aka "The First Canticle"} [novella] (1955)
    38. The Hoofer (1955)
    39. And the Light is Risen [novella] (1956)
    40. The Last Canticle [novella] (1957)
    41. Vengeance for Nikolai {aka "The Song of Marya"} (1957)
    42. [with Lincoln Boone] The Corpse in Your Bed is Me (1957)
    43. The Lineman [novella] (1957)

    Secondary:

  21. David N. Samuelson, "The Lost Canticles of Walter M. Miller, Jr." Science Fiction Studies #8 (Vol 3, part 1) (March 1976) - "Appendix: The Books and Stories of Walter M. Miller, Jr.":
    1. "Secret of the Death Dome," novelette, Amazing (January, 1951; reprinted in Amazing (June, 1966).
    2. "Izzard and the Membrane," novelette, Astounding (May, 1951); anthologized in Everett Bleiler and T.E. Dikty, eds., Year’s Best Science Fiction Novels: 1952 (New York: Frederick Fell, 1952).
    3. "The Soul-Empty Ones," novelette, Astounding (August, 1951).
    4. "Dark Benediction," short novel, Fantastic Adventures (September, 1951); collected in Conditionally Human (1962).
    5. "The Space Witch," novelette, Amazing (November, 1951); reprinted in Amazing (October, 1966).
    6. "The Song of Vorhu ... for Trumpet and Kettledrum," novelette, Thrilling Wonder Stories (December, 1951).
    7. "The Little Creeps," novelette, Amazing (December, 1951); reprinted in Fantastic (May, 1968); anthologized in Milton Lesser, ed., Looking Forward (New York: Beechhurst, 1953).
    8. "The Reluctant Traitor," short novel, Amazing (January, 1952).
    9. "Conditionally Human," novelette, Galaxy (February, 1952); revised and collected in Conditionally Human (1962); anthologized in Everett Bleiler and T.E. Dikty, eds., Year’s Best Science Fiction Novels: 1953 (New York: Frederick Fell, 1953).
    10. "Bitter Victory," short story, IF (March, 1952).
    11. "Dumb Waiter," novelette, Astounding (April, 1952); collected in The View from the Stars (1965); anthologized in Groff Conklin, ed., Science Fiction Thinking Machines (New York: Vanguard, 1954) and Damon Knight, Cities of Wonder (Garden City: Doubleday, 1966).
    12. "It Takes a Thief," short story, IF (May, 1952); collected, as "Big Joe and the Nth Generation," in The View from the Stars (1965).
    13. "Blood Bank," novelette, Astounding (June, 1952); collected in The View from the Stars (1965); anthologized in Martin Greenberg, ed., All About the Future (New York: Gnome Press, 1953).
    14. "Six and Ten are Johnny," novelette, Fantastic (Summer, 1952); reprinted in Fantastic (January, 1966).
    15. "Let My People Go," short novel, IF (July, 1952).
    16. "Cold Awakening," novelette, Astounding (August, 1952).
    17. "Please Me Plus Three," novelette, Other Worlds (August, 1952).
    18. "No Moon for Me," short story, Astounding (September, 1952); anthologized in William Sloane, ed., Space, Space, Space (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1953).
    19. "The Big Hunger," short story, Astounding (October, 1952); collected in The View from the Stars (1965); anthologized in Donald A Wollheim, ed., Prize Science Fiction (New York: McBride, 1953).
    20. "Gravesong," short story, Startling (October, 1952).
    21. "Command Performance," novelette, Galaxy (November, 1952); collected, as "Anybody Else Like Me?" in The View from the Stars (1965); anthologized in Everett Bleiler and T.E. Dikty, eds., The Best Science Fiction Stories: 1953 (New York: Frederick Fell, 1953); Horace Gold, ed., The Second Galaxy Reader (New York: Crown, 1954); and Brian W. Aldiss, ed., Penguin Science Fiction (London: Penguin, 1961).
    22. "A Family Matter," short story, Fantastic Story Magazine (November, 1952).
    23. "Check and Checkmate," novelette, IF (January, 1953).
    24. "Crucifixus Etiam," short story, Astounding (February, 1953); collected in The View from the Stars (1965); anthologized in Everett Bleiler and T.E. Dikty, eds., The Best Science Fiction Stories: 1954 (New York: Frederick Fell, 1954); Judith Merril, ed., Human? (New York: Lion, 1954); Michael Sissons, ed., Asleep in Armageddon (London: Panther, 1962); Kingsley Amis and Robert Conquest, eds., Spectrum V (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1966); and Robert Silverberg, ed., Tomorrow’s Worlds (New York: Meredith, 1969).
    25. "I, Dreamer," short story, Amazing (July, 1953); collected in The View from the Stars (1965).
    26. "The Yokel," novelette, Amazing (September, 1953).
    27. "The Wolf Pack," short story, Fantastic (Oct., 1953); reprinted in Fantastic (May, 1966); anthologized in Judith Merril, ed., Beyond the Barriers of Space and Time (New York: Random House, 1954).
    28. "The Will," short story, Fantastic (February, 1954); reprinted in Fantastic (April, 1969); collected in The View from the Stars (1965); anthologized in T.E. Dikty, ed., The Best Science Fiction Stories and Novels: 1955 (New York: Frederick Fell, 1955).
    29. "Death of a Spaceman," short story, Amazing (March, 1954); reprinted in Amazing (March, 1969); anthologized in William F. Nolan, ed., A Wilderness of Stars (Los Angeles: Sherbourne Press, 1971); anthologized as "Memento Homo" in T.E. Dikty, ed., The Best Science Fiction Stories and Novels: 1955 (New York: Frederick Fell, 1955); Robert P. Mills, ed., The Worlds of Science Fiction (New York: Dial Press, 1963); and Laurence M. Janifer, ed., Masters’ Choice (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1966).
    30. "I Made You," short story, Astounding (March, 1954).
    31. "Way of a Rebel," short story, IF (April, 1954).
    32. "The Ties that Bind," novelette, IF (May, 1954); anthologized in William F. Nolan, ed., A Sea of Space (New York: Bantam, 1970).
    33. "The Darfsteller," short novel, Astounding (January, 1955); collected in Conditionally Human (1962); anthologized in Isaac Asimov, ed., The Hugo Winners (Garden City: Doubleday, 1962).
    34. "The Triflin’ Man," short story, Fantastic Universe (January, 1955); collected as "You Triflin’ Skunk" in The View from the Stars (1965); anthologized in Judith Merril, ed., Galaxy of Ghouls (New York: Lion, 1955).
    35. "A Canticle for Leibowitz," short novel, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (F & SF) (April, 1955); revised as part of A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959); anthologized in T.E. Dikty, ed., Best Science Fiction Stories and Novels: 1956 (New York: Frederick Fell, 1956); Anthony Boucher, ed., The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction, fifth series (Garden City: Doubleday, 1956); and Christopher Cerf, ed., The Vintage Anthology of Science Fantasy (New York: Vintage, 1966).
    36. "The Hoofer," short story, Fantastic Universe (September, 1955); anthologized in Judith Merril, ed., S_F: The Year’s Greatest Science-Fiction and Fantasy (New York: Dell, 1956), and S-F: The Best of the Best (New York: Dell, 1968).
    37. "And the Light is Risen," short novel, F & SF (August, 1956); revised as part of A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959).
    38. "The Last Canticle," short novel, F & SF (February, 1957); revised as part of A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959).
    39. "Vengeance for Nikolai," short story, Venture (March, 1957); anthologized in Joseph Ferman, ed., No Limits (New York: Ballantine, 1958).
    40. "The Corpse in Your Bed is Me," short story co-authored by Lincoln Boone, Venture (May, 1957).
    41. "The Lineman," short novel, F & SF (August, 1957); anthologized in William F. Nolan, ed., A Wilderness of Stars (Los Angeles: Sherbourne Press, 1971).



Walter M. Miller, Jr.: A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959)