by Various
"Right," said the radio.
"And remember," said the toaster, "to be nice."
The radio nodded. It picked up the telephone receiver. "Hello?" it said.
"Is this the person with the five appliances?"
"It is! Oh my goodness yes indeed, it is!"
And so the five appliances went to live with their new mistress, for as it happened it was a woman who'd phoned them first and not a man. She was an elderly, impoverished ballerina who lived all alone in a small room at the back of her ballet studio on Center Street in the oldest part of the city. What the ballerina had swapped for the appliances were her five lovable black-and-white kittens. The appliances' former master never could figure out how, upon returning with his wife from their summer vacation by the sea, there had come to be five kittens in their apartment. It was rather an awkward situation, for his wife was allergic to cat fur. But they were such darlings—it would never have done to put them out on the street. In the end they decided to keep them, and his wife simply took more antihistamines.
And the appliances?
Oh, they were very happy. At first the Hoover had been doubtful about entering service with a woman (for it had never worked for a woman before, and it was somewhat set in its ways), but as soon as it realized what a fastidious and immaculate housekeeper its mistress was, it forgot all its reservations and became her greatest champion.
It felt so good to be useful again! The radio would play beautiful classical music for the ballerina to dance to; and when she became tired and wanted to sit down and read, the lamp would light her book; and then when it grew late and she'd finished her book, the blanket would give off a steady, gentle warmth that kept her cozy all through the long, cold night.
And when it was morning and she awoke, what wonderful slices of toast the toaster would toast for her—so brown and crisp and perfect and always just the same!
And so the five appliances lived and worked, happy and fulfilled, serving their dear mistress and enjoying each other's companionship, to the end of their days.
Coming next month
September's feature story is an absolutely fresh and colorful and entertaining after-the-holocaust novella by Felix Gotschalk titled AMONG THE CLIFF DWELLERS OF THE SAN ANDREAS CANYON. Watch for the September issue, on sale July 31.
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Books
Algis Budrys
A Reader's Guide to Science Fiction, Baird Searles, et al. Avon, $2.95
Who Goes There, a Bibliographic Dictionary of Pseudonymous Literature in the Fields of Fantasy and Science Fiction. James A. Rock, Ed. James A. Rock & Co., P.O. Box 1431, Bloomington, IN 47402. $23.95 cloth, $10.95 paper
The Science Fiction Encyclopedia, Peter Nicholls, General Editor. Doubleday Dolphin, $12.95
As others have pointed out, the problem with doing a history of SF is that most of the pivotal characters are still alive. They have articulate memories. They were members of a viciously oppressed minority, and such societies generate a large savings fund of oral tradition astonishing for its depth of detail, some of which may even be accurate and all of which has the verisimilitude that decades of recounting by professional storytellers have brought to it. To the young researcher, those days are a topic. To people still in a position to comment on the research, those days were tears and laughter.
So while it's possible to produce an "encyclopedia" of SF which seems to cover the topic well enough, and appears plausible to outsiders, it's not possible to produce one that will go unchallenged. And it will be challenged, often enough, by the very persons it has imbued with major importance, citing chapter and verse from memory ... and only from memory. The fact is that it's often a memory based not on actual personal experience but on personal experience of hearing a fresh bit of gossip.
Such a source as W—, for instance, unimpeachable in his credentials, tells us the story of how the young and virginal A— was pushed up the whorehouse steps kicking and screaming, to emerge in a half hour, pale and wide-eyed, stammering "No teeth! No teeth!" Was W— among those older boon companions waiting for the results? Well, no, but he heard it the following day from someone who was. Does the incident appear in A—'s own memoirs? It does not. There is instead another rite-of-passage anecdote, very similar in tone but utterly different in circumstance. Third party F—, however, is present in both versions. So we ask F— for the truth of the matter, and he says: "Look, these days I have lunch with A— at the Utter Respectables Club every month." Then he chuckles and grins. "But let me tell you about S— and the divorcee on the Staten Island ferry in 1941. You ever notice how he began writing a lot about tall blue-eyed brunettes right about that time, but always marries short blondes?"
"You mean you were right there in the lifeboat with them?"
"No, but her ex-husband told me all about it."
And so on.
The tradition tells us in similar ways of what someone like Campbell said to someone like George O. Smith about the chemistry of alcohol and what that led to, of why "Ray-Blasters of the Second Moon" appeared in Cometary Tales when it had been sold to Ether Stories, of exactly how C—'s byline came to occur on a story written by his then-wife. Who knows what actually happened? But many of us know the agreed-on version, and some of us do not hesitate to righteously disparage any researcher who tells it differently.
This leads to difficulties not only for the researcher but for the reviewer. How can I explain to you why I think that Brian Ash's 1976 Who's Who in Science Fiction is not trustworthy, despite the perspicacity of many passages, and why I think the now venerable Tuck Encyclopedia (Advent: Publishers, Chicago) is generally reliable despite the many solid cavils that have been directed against it? It's a matter of weighing a hundred factors — of crosschecking a store of anecdotes for mutual corroborations, of assessing the probity of the man who told me the tale.*
There is, for instance, one practicing writer today whose reputation rests essentially on one story. He's a nice guy, writes an acceptable column-inch, sometimes tackles major topics, all of which he muffs slightly. His stature in the field is sustained by a feeling that next time he might display the clarity of logic which made a blockbuster and a classic out of the ending of that one piece, now thirty years past.
I heard from the mouth of his own editor that the fam
ous ending had to be forced on the author, who urgently wanted to say exactly the opposite thing. And I believe that editor, because I knew when and how that editor lied, and this wasn't one of the ways.
I downgrade any researcher who discusses the subject author with overwhelming enthusiasm; it seems to me that the record of the years proves beyond doubt that the man, whatever other gifts he has, lacks the touch of brightness. But to tell you the truth, I can't be sure whether I'm really looking at the body of the rest of that writer's work with any sort of objectivity, or whether I'm hopelessly prejudiced by being so much aware of what I'm ready to swear are the facts regarding the pivotal story. That story encouraged a greater degree of realism in SF plotting: its influence is real, its ripples have been spreading throughout the SF writing community for three decades. Where is the exact truth, the genuine justice? And a hundred years from now, just how much will that matter?
So I fall back, as I must, on the Budrys test. After I have compared the book's listed facts to what facts I remember being told, after I check the usefulness and accessibility of the material embodying the facts, I have to rely for a final judgment on the treatment of material dealing with me and with incidents in which I participated.
The Ash Who's Who failed the test. I was not born in Prussia; I was born in East Prussia, a historically different thing which any scholar can check with a flip of the appropriate Britannica page on German history. There was no Lithuanian Government in Exile for my father to represent in 1936, and, obviously, no need for one since the Soviet occupation did not occur until 1940 — at which time there wasn't any government in exile, either, and never has been. What my father was was Consul General of Lithuania in New York City from 1936-1964, the U.S. never having recognized the Soviet takeover. He brought our family here in flight from Nazi practices. He had failed to wangle the Lithuanian foreign ministry into transferring him from Konigsberg to his first preference, Paris. Which is why I don't write in French and didn't spend World War II hiding in an attic.
Now — these are corrections of casual misstatements made by an English researcher who ought to have immediately seen that his construct made no sense in terms of the dates of World War II, and who ought to at least have seen a need to dig a little deeper into it, granting me sufficient importance to be included at all. What am I to make, then, of the likelihood that Ash has the essential facts straight on, for example, Lester del Rey of St. Charles, Minnesota? Or — since I know he has them slightly cockeyed because I was Lester's apprentice for nine months in 1953 — how about R.A. Lafferty, or Ray Cummings, or Everett B. Cole, none of whom I do know at all well?
So I never reviewed the Ash book when it appeared, which is one way I have of dealing with books I don't like, and I wouldn't bring it up now except it's germane to the topic. And, besides, I see that dumb entry quoted on the flyleaves of all the British editions of my books, and am sick of it.
So with all that in mind, and keeping in mind all the permutations involved when you try to enclose truth between endpapers, let's look at A Reader's Guide to Science Fiction and several other recent reference books which I think are worth reviewing.
Baird Searles — that fellow over in that other column — and his collaborators, Martin Last, Beth Meacham and Michael Franklin, have done a notably useful and pleasant thing. A Reader's Guide is something the field needs badly; the great majority of today's SF readers and nearly all of its librarians are novices. We're fortunate that this editorial team has not only done the job but done it so well.
The book falls into seven parts; an introduction by Samuel R. Delany, one of the field's most respected critical writers; an editorial introduction explaining how to use the book; then, alphabetically by author, a comprehensive set of short literary biographies listing major works and themes; then, a guide to series, a guide to award winners, a guide to a basic SF library, and an unsigned historical essay.
This is, "of course," exactly the way to have done this sort of book; of course, that is, now that it's been done this way and can be seen to work.
The biographies take up the bulk of the contents. They run from Mark Adlard, Alan Burt Akers and Brian Aldiss and on out through Wylie, Wyndham, Zebrowski and Zelazny. (You'll note that the entry is for Wyndham, not for John Beynon Harris, of whom most novices have never heard except under the far better known pseudonym).
The approach is judgmental, opinionated, and enthusiastic. ("Michael Moorcock is unquestionably the most varied and prolific of s-f authors." "EDMOND HAMILTON. Zap! Bam! Baroom!") And it finds peculiar correlations: "If you like Budrys, try the work of Piers Anthony." But it passes the Budrys test; there is no question of which statements are intended to be taken as fact and in truth appear factual as far as the Budrys test can determine,*and which are recommendations and judgments. It happens I disagree with many of the opinions, and very probably you will too, but they are honest opinions, formed on a base of many years' familiarity with the field, and deserve consideration. One might even find oneself revising a long-cherished notion or two.
So, despite the fact that it confuses Philip Klass with Philip J. Klass, I cannot think of a single better book to hand the local librarian or the cousin who has just graduated from Star Trek. It points you in the direction of a fascinating territory, and then gives you your head.
Who Goes There is a compilation of pseudonyms in SF literature, and a very comprehensive one. The main section is alphabetical by real name, but an index does refer out from the pseudonymous bylines. I'd rather see it the other way around, maybe, but I can appreciate the difficulties that might cause.
How does it do on the Budrys test? 8 on a scale of 10. It calls me a naturalized American citizen, for some reason, when in fact, at the age of 49, I'm the youngest Free Lithuanian citizen in the world, and clinging to it. But it spells my real name right, and it doesn't insert a "J." in Algis Budrys. It misses a slew of my pen names from the days when I was writing "Love-Starved Arabs Raped me Often" and "I Shot Down Castro's China-Commie Air Force," which is O.K. with me, and it includes one pen-name I never used on professional SF. It calls "Firegod," a story in the back pages of Rocket Stories, "Fire God."
It also calls Lester del Rey the editor of Ballantine's science fiction line; last time I looked, that was Judy-Lynn del Rey, with Les as the fantasy editor, and assuredly Judy-Lynn was the first cause of the del Rey imprint. Etc. But for the purposes of this book, which updates and centralizes information hitherto not readily accessible, the errors tend to lie in peripheral areas while the core data are solid. There have been other such compilations, and there will have to be fresh ones in the future, but for those who have to know these things, or want to get further along the track started by perusing the Reader's Guide, this is the book to get now.
Peter Nicholls' The Science Fiction Encyclopedia, not to be confused with what seems a score of similarly named productions, is vastly thick, set up like an encyclopedia, with narrow columns, many photographs and art spots, intertwined cross-references, thematic headings, and minutiae such as the dates on which stories were republished in expanded or variant versions. I have to say that it's probably going to be the best there is for some time, because the labor involved in attempting to supersede it would be enormous.
It has in it everything one would expect of an encyclopedia except an index, and an index would be redundant, so thickly sown are the cross-references. You can start anywhere, and if you follow the references will find yourself eventually reading the entire book.
Budrys test: It picks up the "government-in-exile representative" tag from Ash, which immediately makes it a little suspect in my eyes; Ash is not listed as one of the contributing editors, of whom there are a mort, but obviously John Clute, who wrote the article on me, used the Ash as a reference. It also claims my last name is a shortening; it's not. It's my father's nom de guerre and means, approximately, "Sentry," hence "John A. Sentry" in Who Goes There. The Lithuanian original is Polovinskas, but I was baptized Budrys, ha
ving been born some years after my father legally changed his name. In any event, that's a brand new piece of unsubstantiated speculation, apparently original with this reference, which I expect to see faithfully repeated elsewhere in future references.
There is also a tendency less harmless than Searles's cheerful opinions. Clute describes as a "weakness" a tendency on my part to make "genre themes carry mainstream resonances." Apart from the merits of that argument — which is what that is, rather than a judgment — it implicitly stands up SF as a "genre" and nothing more. That is an extremely serious assumption, which I note is shared by a number of British critics and encyclopedists, all of which thus undercut the essential validity of their own researches as being anything more than moves in some of less-than-important game.
That's the kind of rock-in-the-tapioca that can really bring thoughtful rumination to a startled halt. Nor does it appear only in the reference to me. As one tours the volume, there are often asides and entire articles which appear inexplicably frivolous — do we need an entry on Bug! the utterly forgettable 1975 film, for any purpose except to juxtapose a photo of a girl with a beetle in her eye?
So, does it fail the Budrys test? No, because nothing this large could possibly be free of error, and the degree of actual error detected is not serious. Does it arouse the Budrys ire? It will assuredly influence the tone and nature of the articles on SF I'm writing for various university presses, because SF is neither a genre nor a game for children. Does Budrys hope for a better encyclopedia? You betcha. Does he endorse this one? Under the perception that this is the best available current compilation of relevant facts, that it is far fresher than the Tuck, and that most readers have minds of their own with which to process the text for inconsistencies and paradoxes, yes, this is, as I said, the book to go to. Sometimes details in themselves are more effective than literal truth, as SF anecdotalists long ago discovered.