Again, After a Break . . .

My Internet went out again and is now back again. I feel like the man in the movie who notices little things here and there, things that aren't quite right but also don't add up just yet. After a while he realizes: these things are indications of something greater--something more ominous and sinister--afoot in the world. But what is it? What exactly is happening? The post office refuses your mail. Your phone and Internet go out. The lobbies at fast food restaurants are closed because there aren't enough workers to keep them open. Even when you go into the lobby, no one is there to take your order. You hear of shortages of school bus drivers in the United States, fuel truck drivers in the United Kingdom. Shortages of electrical power in China. Shortages of natural gas in Europe forecast for this winter. Forget global warming. How many people will die this winter because of the cold? On the opposite end of serious situations, there are shortages of comic book bags and backer boards. If it's cold and dark, at least you can light a candle and wrap a blanket around yourself. But comic books must be protected. How do we save civilization if we don't save all of the elements of civilization? Anyway, these are the situations our elites have created for us. More bad things are on their way. We can all be sure of that. Those same elites would have us believe that they know what they're doing, that they know better than we do--or Nature does, or Reality does--about how the world should run. Pride goeth before the fall.

* * *

I have been reading a lot lately. I still have my series on summer reading to complete. First this break, which follows a break.

One of the books I found this year at Half Price Books is Abyss by Kate Wilhelm (Bantam, 1973), a collection of two novellas, "The Plastic Abyss" and "Stranger in the House." First, I should say again what a good writer Kate Wilhelm was. Her prose is full of colors, moods, feelings--full of emotion, sensitivity, and introspection--relationships, too, especially mother-to-child relationships. (She had two children of her own.) In these things, she was a worthy successor to C.L. Moore (except that Catherine died childless). Some people consider C.L. Moore to have been a feminist or at least a proto-feminist author. I'm not so sure about that. But I think feminists will find something of interest in Abyss, especially in the title story, "The Plastic Abyss," which ends in a kind of transcendence of the lead character, a writer named Dorothy.

"The Plastic Abyss" is a work of real sophistication in science fiction. Originally published in 1971, it followed on the heels of a decade of sophisticated works in that genre, a good example of which is "A Bit of the Dark World" by Fritz Leiber, Jr. (1962). Like Leiber's story, "The Plastic Abyss" is almost phantasmagoric or psychedelic in places, though not to the same extent. There are some genuinely weird and eerie events in Kate's story. She handled these things to perfection. I wonder if she could have been influenced by A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay (1920).

"The Plastic Abyss" is in some ways a weird tale. As in other weird tales, there are sensitive characters and there are hard-edged materialists. Dorothy is a sensitive and perceptive person. She is open to possibilities. Being young and not fully formed, her stepdaughter Jo is also open and sensitive. Their friend Tony, a young, visionary painter, completes their trio. Dorothy's husband, Gary, is her opposite. There is friction between them for different reasons, one of which is his lack of sensitivity and openness. Like materialists elsewhere in genre fiction, he is unable to cope in his confrontation with the non-material or supernormal. His wife--significantly, I think, a woman--seems to reach a transcendent state--to make a leap into a new state of consciousness or existence or power. He--significantly a man--is left behind. It would seem, then, that Kate Wilhelm was a non-materialist, for that is where her sympathies so clearly lie in these two stories. But was she also a believer? We still don't know.

(One more thing about "The Plastic Abyss": it seems to have forecast the arrival of a new kind of stealth technology in which an object might be hidden by projecting images not of itself. It's a story of surfaces versus layers or depths.)

* * *

I have asked the question before: Is there or can there be a gothic science fiction? If Frankenstein was science fiction, the answer is obviously yes, for it is also a gothic work. Fritz Leiber attempted to treat the problem of gothicism in the twentieth century. William Gibson is a more recent practitioner of gothic science fiction. In "Stranger in the House," Kate Wilhelm had a go at that mix of seemingly opposite genres. Fans of weird fiction will find in it another story that they might well enjoy.

As I was reading, I thought that "The Plastic Abyss" has a TV-movie quality to it. "Stranger in the House" is actually structured and reads like a teleplay. I could easily imagine it as an episode of Rod Serling's Night Gallery. That made me wonder about the differences in generations of science fiction writers. Some were born in and grew up in the years before there were movies. Their storytelling often reflects that. Others saw movies but not television during their formative years. That influence shows, too. Still others were young enough to have been influenced by the first generations of television shows from the 1950s and '60s. I wonder if Kate Wilhelm--who was born in 1928--was among that younger generation of writers. (Today, writers seem to be influenced by nothing but television and movies, or worse, video games and computer games. It's this kind of stepping-down in culture that leads so easily to decline and decay and dissolution.)

"Stranger in the House" begins like a typical gothic romance, as a married couple moves into an old house with a secret history. The woman, Mandy, begins experiencing strange and seemingly malign things. Her husband, Robert, another materialist, is skeptical that these experiences indicate anything out of the ordinary. He believes his wife is mentally ill. (Where do all of these numbskull materialists come from, not just in fiction but in the real world as well?) The house, though, is not haunted by a ghost or a demon or a crazy woman locked in the attic. The haunter--the stranger--is actually an alien. (I'm not giving anything away by telling you that. You'll find out soon enough as you read the story.) The alien lives under the cellar. He is called the Groth. Take away the "r" and of course you get . . .

Two young people quickly figure out that an alien is responsible for all of the strange things going on. How I'm not sure. It speaks to the period that no one considers a cryptozoological creature as a possible culprit. Anyway, there is a kind of SETI scene that takes place in the cellar, an interesting development for this blog considering that I have written so recently about The Listeners by James E. Gunn. "Stranger in the House" also shares some elements with the movie E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982). I liked "The Plastic Abyss" more than "Stranger in the House." It's a tighter and more pointed work, I think. But both are good and if you have a chance you might delve into Abyss.

* * *

Now that I have read Abyss, I would like to read more of Kate Wilhelm's writing but also more science fiction from the 1960s and early 1970s. I send best wishes to all of you in your own reading adventures.

Abyss by Kate Wilhelm (Bantam, 1973) with cover art by Lou Feck (1925-1981). The title of this collection goes to its first story, the almost typical gothic romance cover illustration to its second.

Original text copyright 2021, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Summer Reading List No. 2-Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang by Kate Wilhelm

I wrote recently of Kate Wilhelm (1928-2018). I had never read anything by her, but in reading about her, I became intrigued. So I looked on my shelf and found Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang (Timescape-Pocket Books, 1977). I read it this summer.

First I should say what a good writer Kate Wilhelm was. Her prose runs clear and smooth, like a river. There is feeling in this novel and an awareness of the importance of human relationships. There is also color. These things are too often lacking in science fiction.

I work as a forester and I'm always glad to see and read stories that take place in the woods and that involve trees. In her statement in The Faces of Science Fiction, Kate wrote about gardening. She knew her plants and she knew her trees. The title may mention birds, but she named more trees than birds here: pine, spruce, and fir; sassafras, silver maple, and bitternut hickory. What other writer in all of literature knows or has named bitternut hickory in her work? But the title is apt, for it is a kind of lament, an allusion to things that have been lost.

If you're trying to categorize Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang, you could call it a post-apocalypse. You might also call it an example of the cosy catastrophe. But in its depiction of a collectivist society guided by science and the needs of science and run by almost soulless (and eventually stupid) clones, Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang is also a Dystopia. And it's clear where the author's sympathies lie, for they are with individual human beings and against collectivist unity. Some illustrative quotes:

     Barry was shaking his head. "Psychology is a dead end for us," he said. "It revives the cult of the individual. When the unit is functioning, the members are self-curing. [. . .] We all know and agree it is our duty to safeguard the well-being of the unit, not the individuals within it. If there is a conflict between those two choices, we must abandon the individual." (p. 100)

* * * 

[Ben speaks:] "Always before us, in infancy there was a period when ego development naturally occurred, and if all went well during that period, the individual was formed, separate from his parents. With us such a development is not necessary, or even possible, because our brothers and sisters [i.e., other members of the unit] obviate the need for separate existence, and instead a unit consciousness is formed." (p. 106)

* * *

[Carl speaks:] "If the human baby [i.e., naturally conceived and carried to term by the mother] has a birth defect, caused by a birth trauma, he can be aborted, and still the cloned babies will be all right."

     "That's hardly in the nature of a drawback," Barry said, smiling. There was an answering ripple of amusement throughout the class.

     He waited a moment, then said, "The genetic pool is unpredictable, its past is unknown, its constituents so varied that when the process is not regulated and controlled, there is always the danger of producing unwanted characteristics. And the even more dangerous threat of losing talents that are important to our community." He allowed time for this to be grasped, then continued. "The only way to ensure our future, to ensure continuity, is through perfecting the process of cloning [. . . .]"

     "Our goal is to remove the need for sexual reproduction. Then we will be able to plan our future. [. . .] For the first time since mankind walked the face of the earth," he said, "there will be no misfits."

     [Conceived through natural sexual reproduction and born from and reared by his mother, Mark, a misfit, retorts:] "And no geniuses." [Emphasis added.] (pp. 132-133)

* * *

There is euthanasia also in this perfect and planned society. Certain women, called breeders, bear children naturally but have them taken away to be reared and educated (or indoctrinated) by the State in the form of the community. These women are kept in a drugged state in an attempt to control or at least dampen their depression and despair.

* * *

So in Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang, we see all of the elements of Utopia/Dystopia: unity, conformity, collectivism, planning, regulation, control, extreme risk-aversion by the Community/State, abortion, euthanasia, attempts to do away with sex (love, too, of course), attempts to eradicate the individual, the view that children are the property of the Community/State, intolerance and punishment of nonconformity and dissent, fear and hatred of and alienation from nature, etc. You might recognize these elements in the real world of today. Yes, they're here. An example from just this week:

"Designer Baby Revolution: Can We Outlaw Sexual Reproduction?" by Cameron English, on the website of the American Council of Science and Health, August 30, 2021.

 * * *

As with so many science fiction writers, Kate Wilhelm was prescient, but then anyone with an awareness and understanding of human nature can probably foresee these things. Maybe the purpose of science fiction is to expand the reach and appeal of philosophy, ethics, theology, psychology, politics, economics, etc., into the popular realm by turning these things into readable, enjoyable, satisfying fiction. Anyway, in its closing, Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang sums up the reason for the satisfaction, happiness, and end of loneliness now felt by Mark, the former misfit: "Because all the children were different."

Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang by Kate Wilhelm, winner of the Locus and Hugo Awards for best novel in 1977 and nominated for the Nebula Award in the same category that same year. The cover art is by Edward J. "Ed" Soyka (b. 1947).

Original text copyright 2021, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

June: Kate Wilhelm & the Nebula Awards

The Nebula Awards, given out annually for the best science fiction of the previous year (or so), were announced earlier this month. The conference and ceremonies, if you can call them that, took place online on June 4 through June 6, 2021. An online conference. Fun fun. I wonder if it occurred to a bunch of sciencey science fiction writers that their risk of catching coronavirus at this late date is pretty minimal. I imagine that most by now are Star-Bellied Sneetches and have nothing to worry about. But worry has no end for the worried person and so there is always something new to cause her fear and anxiety. Maybe the worstest and most deadliest disease in human history will break through our walls of immunity and do us all in after all.

I went to a pulp fiction convention earlier this month, on June 13. It might have been the first of its kind to take place this year in the United States. It was indoors. I didn't detect any sparkling clouds of coronavirus in the convention hall, so I think we're all safe. Phew! That was a close one! For a long time now, I have been looking for a book called The Faces of Science Fiction (1984), with photographs by Patti Perret. I finally found it at the convention, and what a find it is. My new copy is an old library edition, bound in plain forest green but essentially pristine in its interior. I read The Faces of Science Fiction and studied those faces over the course of a couple of nights in the week after I came upon it. I might call it an essential book for the American science fiction fan.

One of the book's featured authors is Kate Wilhelm (1928-2018). Born ninety-three years ago this month (on June 8, 1928), Kate Wilhelm was one of the great figures in American science fiction after mid-century. She was also married to one of the great figures, Damon Knight (1922-2002). In Patti Perret's portrait photograph, they are together on a couch. She leans towards him, smiling. I have a feeling that Kate Wilhelm smiled a lot. She seems to be drawn to him, as if by force of gravity. He has a somewhat intense look in his dark eyes and the beard of an Old Testament prophet or ancient Greek philosopher. The pronounced bald dome of his forehead bespeaks, too, a man of thought and erudition. Above their heads is a painting of planets, a spacescape you might call it. There are two larger planets on her side of the painting and a smaller one on his. Who, then, has the greater gravity? To their right is a potted plant, growing from earth and perhaps representing Earth. Above the plant is an abstract representation of the Crucifixion. I would like to think that one or both of the subjects of this photograph were believers in something positive and hopeful rather than negative and despairing, as so many people are in today's world. I think Damon Knight and Kate Wilhelm knew who and what they were and came from generations in which those things were (and are) plain. It's worth noting that their double portrait was published in 1984, a year that was forecast to be a nightmare.

Kate Wilhelm was born in Toledo, Ohio. I found the book graced by her picture most of the way across the top of the state, in Westlake, just outside of Cleveland, ninety-three years and five days after her birth. Like I said, she married a science fiction writer. The subject of my posting from eleven days ago, J.A. Lawrence did, too. Those two happy events happened within a year or so of each other, in 1963-1964. Both marriages lasted until the end of the men's lives.

Kate Wilhelm and Judy Lawrence collaborated in their creative lives. In the mid 1960s, Kate made a sketch of a proposed award trophy. Judy worked from that sketch to create the design, one that is still used today. The trophy is for the Nebula Award, given out every year by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA). Originally the Science Fiction Writers of America, the organization was founded in 1965 by Damon Knight. It would seem pretty obvious to me that his wife had a pretty big hand in that, too. The trophy is the same or more or less the same as when it was first awarded in 1966, a peak year in American pop culture by the way. Unfortunately I have not been able to find an especially good image of it in this pile of mostly dreck we call the Internet. Anyway, the upper part of the trophy is a transparent block in which are embedded a spiral galaxy and several subordinate planets. The planets are like those circling above the heads of Kate Wilhelm and Damon Knight in Patti Perret's portrait of them.

You hear talk of supposed attempts to silence or erase women, especially women in culture and history. I find this ridiculous. For one, women will never be silenced or erased. To believe that they will be is to lack confidence in the strength and power and natural status of women. Weak women--weak people--may be silenced, I guess, but the words weak and woman don't really go together very well. Women have their power. It may not be a man's power, but it is power nonetheless. Anyway, women will go on speaking and go on being strong because those things and many others are in their nature and built into the nature of the universe.

The Nebula Award trophy was created and designed by two women. The word nebula itself is feminine. The reaching and enfolding arms of the galaxy might also be seen as feminine, as are the full, rounded planets embedded within the trophy, like those lighting the painted skies above Kate Wilhelm's head in her photographic portrait. The earth is feminine, too. (In her song "Banana," Brazilian songstress Joyce Moreno sings of "terra generosa." She has an equally good song called "Feminina.") In her artist's statement, Kate writes about her gardening and her ruminating over a story while she gardens. In working the earth (working may be too hard and rough a word in this case), she solves a problem of creativity. We work and we create, in the fertile soil of the earth, in the fertile soil of the mind and imagination.

Kate Wilhelm never won the Nebula Award for best novel, though she was nominated four times. She did however win twice for her shorter works, in 1969 for "The Planners" (short story) and in 1987 for "The Girl Who Fell into the Sky" (novelette). Nine out of the last thirteen winners for best novel have been women, though, including the last four. The most frequent winner was Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018), with four awards out of six nominations. Those are curious numbers for a sex that is supposedly being silenced and erased. And contrast the trophy itself with the one presented at the World Fantasy Convention. Previously the World Fantasy Award trophy represented a man, H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937), and was designed by a man, Gahan Wilson (1930-2019). That trophy has been canceled. Now it is a tree. (In Italian at least, the words for oak, forest or woodland--and I think some other words related to trees--are feminine rather than masculine. And though the flower--il fiore--may be masculine, the fruit into which it develops--la frutta--is feminine.) The tree in the trophy embraces the circle of the sun: the feminine Earth reaches towards and wraps her arms around the masculine Sun--masculine, though it be full, warm, and round. Kate and Judy's galaxy has arms, too. They, too, are reaching, enwrapping, enfolding. Galaxy, constellation, and star are likewise feminine words in Italian, a most wonderful and beautiful language. The new World Fantasy Award trophy, by the way, was also designed by a man, the American sculptor Vincent Villafranca, whose surname is feminine and a compound of two feminine words, for a place upon the earth and a people upon the earth.

Another annual event happened this month, of course, a greater event built into the workings of the universe. It was the summer solstice, one of the happiest days of the year in which the sun essentially refuses to set. We are now on the downhill slide towards its opposite, which happens, of course, in December. (So we have a religious celebration--Christmas--coinciding roughly with the winter solstice and a pseudo-religious event--the sighting of the first flying saucers--coinciding roughly with its opposite. It just so happens that Flying Saucer Day is also St. John's Day. There is some significance in that, I think.) The day and the author have come together in recent years, for among the annual Nebula Awards is the Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award "for distinguished contributions to the science fiction and fantasy community." (Community--a mostly atrocious word.) The winners this year were two men and a woman. One of the men, science fiction author and editor Ben Bova (1932-2020), died late last year. His death was related to coronavirus, proof that the disease is in fact a serious matter and one that should be taken seriously, including in geopolitical ways. (Let us have the facts and let the facts lead to their logical--and necessary--conclusions.) I think the first book I ever read by Mr. Bova was his adaptation of THX 1138 (1971), but I have also read some of his scientific writing. I marvel at the things so many of these men and women of the interwar and wartime generations accomplished. In the past three years we have lost four of them, Kate Wilhelm, Ursula K. Le Guin, Gahan Wilson, and Ben Bova--all very nearly contemporaries--and so many more like them. In my family we have lost our own father.

Let us remember them. 

Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang by Kate Wilhelm (Pocket/Timsecape, 1977), with cover art by Ed Soyka. It is summer and so the sweet birds sing: the American robin, with its loud, piping notes, echoing in the streets and alleyways and in the narrow places between houses and houses and houses and garages; the northern cardinal, with its high, sweet, melodious song; the irrepressible song sparrow, who will break into its loud cascade of notes at any moment, in any place, for any reason, even if it's only because the bright sun is shining upon the welcoming and grateful earth . . .

Text copyright 2021, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

More Authors of the Golden Age of Science Fiction-Damon Knight

Damon Knight
Author, Editor, Critic, Artist, Cartoonist, Science Fiction Fan
Born September 19, 1922, Baker, Oregon
Died April 15, 2002, Eugene, Oregon

Damon Knight was the youngest by far of my current batch of authors of the Golden Age of Science Fiction. He may have been the most precocious among them as well, becoming as he did a science fiction fan at age eleven and publishing his own two-issue fanzine as a teenager. Born in 1922, Knight was only seventeen when his first cartoon was published in Amazing Stories in May 1940. That same year, Knight also had his first fiction ("The Itching Hour," Futuria Fantasia, Summer 1940) and his first non-fiction (one or more pieces in 1939 Yearbook of Science, Weird and Fantasy Fiction) published. The record of his career, which started off so auspiciously, is extraordinary.

Knight wrote reviews, essays, memoirs, editorial content, and of course fiction in his six decades in science fiction. I won't go into his accomplishments when you can read them in other sources. Being an artist myself, I would like to mention that Damon Knight drew illustrations for several science fiction and fantasy magazines. There aren't many writers of science fiction and fantasy who are also artists. Weird Tales may have had more than its share with C.L. Moore, Hannes Bok, Virgil Finlay, and Damon Knight. Also, I would like to point out that Knight was married to another science fiction writer, Kate Wilhelm (b. 1928).

According to Wikipedia, Damon Knight attributed the term "idiot plot" to James Blish but helped to popularize it in his own critical essays. We have all seen and suffered through movies and TV shows with idiot plots, although we may not have known there was a term for such a thing. An idiot plot, simply enough, is a story that depends on the stupidity of its characters: if they weren't so stupid, the story would come to an immediate end. I have complained for years that the people in a movie or TV show can't be and shouldn't be less intelligent than the people watching it. If they are, the show is in real trouble. Some examples of idiot plot devices: "There's a psycho killer on the loose--let's split up." Or, "There's a Tyrannosaurus rex trying to find us and eat us--let's draw attention to ourselves by shining a flashlight in his eyes." Or, "These aliens speak in metaphors instead of words, but we're too stupid to figure that out in the first five minutes of the show the way our viewers have." (That last example is from Star Trek: The Next Generation, an idiot plot champion if there ever was one.) Damon Knight seems to have been a crusader against bad writing. I'm glad he stood against the idiot plot and other sins.

Finally, Damon Knight wrote "To Serve Man" (Galaxy Science Fiction, Nov. 1950), a sort of idiot plot turned inside out. That story became one of the most memorable episodes from The Twilight Zone and a very fine in-joke from Naked Gun 2-1/2. It was also won a Retro-Hugo Award in 2001, a year before the author's death.

For Weird Tales

"Ghouls Feeding" (poem, Mar. 1944)

Illustrations for Weird Tales

"Herbert West: Reanimator: The Scream of the Dead" by H.P. Lovecraft (Nov. 1942)

"The Dead World" by Clarence Edwin Flynn (poem, Nov. 1942)

"Seventh Sister" by Mary Elizabeth Counselman (Jan. 1943)

"Quest Unhallowed" by Page Cooper (poem, Mar. 1945)

"The Haunted Stairs" by Yetza Gillespie (poem, May 1946)

Damon Knight became a member of the Futurian Society, based in New York City, in 1941. Among the group's other members were Isaac Asimov, Frederick Pohl, Cyril Kornbluth, James Blish, Judith Merril, and Donald A. Wollheim. "Seven marriages and five divorces took place within this group," Knight remembered. "Like the members of any other large family, the Futurians sometimes found they couldn't stand each other: there were quarrels, feuds, factions, even a few more or less serious murder threats." Knight wrote about the group in his memoir from 1977, The Futurians. Despite the occasional or frequent enmity among the members, I have a feeling they looked back on their days in the Futurians as a kind of golden age.

Damon Knight had just turned twenty when this illustration for "Herbert West: Reanimator" was published in Weird Tales in November 1942. The model for West was Knight's friend, John B. Michel (1917-1969).

Text and captions copyright 2013, 2023 Terence E. Hanley