American Science Fiction

by Gary K. Wolfe

  So . . .

  Cassandra and I have this villa on the Magic Island. She likes it here. I like it here. She doesn’t mind my indeterminate age anymore. Which is fine.

  Just this early morning, as we lay on the beach watching the sun chase away stars, I turned to her and mentioned that this is going to be a big, big ulcer-giving job, full of headaches and such.

  “No, it isn’t,” she replied.

  “Don’t minimize what is imminent,” I said. “It makes for incompatibility.”

  “None of that either.”

  “You are too optimistic, Cassandra.”

  “No. I told you that you were heading into danger before, and you were, but you didn’t believe me then. This time I feel that things should go well. That’s all.”

  “Granting your accuracy in the past, I still feel you are underestimating that which lies before us.”

  She rose and stamped her foot.

  “You never believe me!”

  “Of course I do. It just happens that this time you’re wrong, dear.”

  She swam away then, my mad mermaid, out into the dark waters. After a time she came swimming back.

  “Okay,” she said, smiling, shaking down gentle rains from her hair. “Sure.”

  I caught her ankle, pulled her down beside me and began tickling her.

  “Stop that!”

  “Hey, I believe you, Cassandra! Really! Hear that? Oh, how about that? I really believe you. Damn! You sure are right!”

  “You are a smart-alecky kallikanz— Ouch!”

  And she was lovely by the seaside, so I held her in the wet, till the day was all around us, feeling good.

  Which is a nice place to end a story, sic: .

  BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

  NOTE ON THE TEXTS

  NOTES

  Biographical Notes

  Poul William Anderson (November 25, 1926–July 31, 2001), born in Bristol, Pennsylvania, was the eldest child of Anton William Anderson, a civil engineer for an oil refinery, and Astrid (Hertz) Anderson, a Danish-born secretary. He was raised mainly in Port Arthur, Texas, until his father died in an automobile accident in 1937; after a summer in Denmark, the family moved to Maryland and then to Northfield, Minnesota, where he attended high school. Rejected for military service in 1944 because of a scarred eardrum, he majored in physics at the University of Minnesota, graduating in 1948. While still in college, he published stories “Tomorrow’s Children” and “Logic” in Astounding Science Fiction, the former with F. N. Waldrop, and joined the Minneapolis Fantasy Society, where he met other science fiction writers, including Clifford D. Simak and Gordon R. Dickson.

  Anderson’s first novel, the young adult Vault of the Ages, saw print in 1952; the same year, he published “Sargasso of Lost Spaceships” and “The Star Plunderer,” stories that would later find their place in his long-running “Technic History” series. In 1953 he married fellow SF fan and fanzine creator Karen M. Kruse, a cartographer for the Army Corps of Engineers, and set out to earn his living as a writer, publishing nineteen stories and beginning the magazine versions of novels later to appear as Brain Wave (1954), War of Two Worlds (1959), and Three Hearts and Three Lions (1961). The couple moved to Berkeley, California, where their only child, Astrid Anderson, was born in 1954. Also in 1954 he published The Broken Sword, a “sword and sorcery” fantasy novel inspired by Icelandic sagas that began a substantial career for him in fantasy fiction. The novel Star Ways (1956) began his “Psychotechnic League” series. His first collection of short stories, Earthman’s Burden—a collaboration with Gordon R. Dickson—appeared in 1957, followed by Guardians of Time in 1960 and dozens more in later years.

  In 1961, Anderson won his first of seven Hugo Awards for his short story “The Longest Voyage” (1960). His novels of the 1960s included The High Crusade (1960), Orbit Unlimited (1961), After Doomsday (1962), The Makeshift Rocket (1962), Let the Spacemen Beware! (1963), Shield (1963), Three Worlds to Conquer (1964), The Corridors of Time (1965), The Star Fox (1965), Ensign Flandry (1966), World Without Stars (1967), Satan’s World (1967), and The Rebel Worlds (1969). In 1966, he helped to found the Society for Creative Anachronism, for which he styled himself “Sir Bela of Eastmarch.”

  Anderson continued to write prolifically over subsequent decades, publishing over three dozen additional novels, among other works. He served as president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (1972–73), receiving their Grand Master Award in 1998. In 1972 he won his first Nebula Award for the novelette “The Queen of Air and Darkness” (1971). During the 1980s, he collaborated with his wife Karen Anderson on four novels in the “King of Ys” series, gathered as King of Ys in 1996. In 2000 he was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame, and published Genesis, winner of the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. He died from prostate cancer at home in Orinda, California; his novels Mother of Kings (2001) and For Love and Glory (2003) were published posthumously.

  Clifford Donald Simak (August 3, 1904–April 25, 1988) was born on his grandfather’s farm near Millville, Wisconsin. The eldest child of Wisconsin native Margaret (Wiseman) Simak and John Lewis Simak, an immigrant from Bohemia (now part of the Czech Republic), he studied journalism at the University of Wisconsin but left to become a high school teacher. In 1929 he married Agnes Kuchenberg, with whom he had two children, Richard Scott and Shelley Ellen; the same year, he began a long career as a newspaperman, starting at the Iron River Reporter in Iron River, Michigan, and moving frequently over the next decade, taking editorial assignments at small-town papers in Iowa, Missouri, North Dakota, and Minnesota.

  Simak published his first science fiction story, “The World of the Red Sun,” in the December 1931 Wonder Stories, following it during the 1930s with nearly a dozen more. He cofounded the Minneapolis Fantasy Society with other writers, including Oliver Saari and Gordon R. Dickson, and produced The Fantasite, a fanzine. In 1939 he joined the staff of the Minneapolis Star, where he wrote a column called “Science in the News”; after the Second World War, during which he worked for Army Intelligence, he was promoted to news editor. His novels of the 1950s included Cosmic Engineers (1950), Empire (1951), Time and Again (1951), and Ring Around the Sun: A Story of Tomorrow (1953). City (1952), a collection of eight linked stories originally published in Astounding from 1944 to 1947, won the 1953 International Fantasy Award; Strangers in the Universe (1956), The Worlds of Clifford Simak (1960), and All the Traps of Earth (1962) gathered his other short fiction, including “The Big Front Yard,” winner of the 1959 Hugo Award for best novelette.

  In 1961 Simak assumed the post of coordinator of the Minneapolis Tribune’s Science Reading Series, intended for schools, which won an Award for the Advancement of Science from the Westinghouse-American Association. He wrote new novels They Walked Like Men (1962), Way Station (1963; winner of the 1964 Hugo Award), All Flesh Is Grass (1965), Why Call Them Back from Heaven? (1967), The Werewolf Principle (1967), The Goblin Reservation (1968), Out of Their Minds (1970), and Destiny Doll (1971). In 1973 he published “Epilog,” a conclusion to his collection City; the same year, he won the First Fandom Award for contributions to science fiction and was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame.

  Simak retired from the Tribune in 1976, having written its “Medical Report” column since 1969; the following year he received a Grand Master Award for lifetime achievement from the Science Fiction Writers of America. He did not rest on his laurels, publishing stories, including “Grotto of the Dancing Deer” (1980, winner of Hugo and Nebula Awards) and a half dozen new novels, of which Highway to Eternity (1986) was his last. In 1987, he received the Bram Stoker Award for lifetime achievement from the Horror Writers Association. He died in Minneapolis at eighty-three, surviving his wife by two years.

  Daniel Keyes (August 9, 1927–June 15, 2014), born Daniel Korzenstein in Brooklyn, New York, was the eldest of two children of Ukrainian Jewish
immigrants William Korzenstein, a dealer in second-hand goods, and Rebecca (Alicke) Korzenstein, a beautician; he took the name Keyes around 1950 along with his family. While a student at Thomas Jefferson High School in Brooklyn, he worked in factories and waited on tables to earn tuition for the premedical program at New York University, which he started in 1945. Enlisting in the U.S. Maritime Service as ship’s purser later that year, he sailed to Colombia and Japan; after his discharge, he enrolled at Brooklyn College, from which he graduated in 1950 with a BA in psychology.

  Through a neighbor, science fiction writer Lester del Rey, Keyes found a job as associate fiction editor at Stadium Publications, taking responsibility for Marvel Science Fiction and other pulp magazines. His first science fiction story, “Precedent,” appeared in the May 1952 issue of Marvel; the same year, he married fashion stylist Aurea Georgina Vazquez, with whom he had two daughters, Hillary Ann and Leslie Joan. He subsequently worked as a staff writer for Stan Lee at Atlas Comics (c. 1952–53), and then at EC Comics (c. 1955–56), producing scripts for Journey into Unknown Worlds, Shock Illustrated, and Confessions Illustrated; in between these two positions he ran a fashion photography studio with his wife. Beginning in 1957, he taught creative writing in New York City public schools, attending evening classes at Brooklyn College, from which he received an MA in English and American Literature in 1961.

  Keyes published “Flowers for Algernon,” a short story, in the April 1959 Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Written as a sequel to “The Trouble with Elmo,” which had appeared in Galaxy the previous year—and rejected by H. L. Gold at Galaxy for its unhappy ending—it won a Hugo Award and was adapted for television as The Two Worlds of Charlie Gordon (1961). Moving to Detroit, where he taught literature and creative writing at Wayne State University, he expanded the story to novel length; again rejected by several publishers, it won a Nebula Award as Flowers for Algernon (1966) and became a perennial bestseller. Charly, a 1968 movie version, won an Academy Award for its lead actor Cliff Robinson; subsequent adaptations included a 1969 stage play by David Rogers, a short-lived 1978 Broadway musical Charlie and Algernon, and a 2000 TV movie starring Matthew Modine.

  A professor of English and creative writing at Ohio University from 1966 until his retirement in 1990, Keyes went on to publish novels The Touch (1968), The Fifth Sally (1980), and The Asylum Prophecies (2009), along with true crime novels The Minds of Billy Milligan (1981; nominated for Edgar Award by Mystery Writers of America) and Unveiling Claudia: A True Story of Serial Murder (1986), and the memoir Algernon, Charlie, and I: A Writer’s Journey (1999). In 2000, he was presented with the Author Emeritus award from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. Surviving his wife by just over a year, he died at home in Boca Raton, Florida, from complications of pneumonia.

  Roger Joseph Zelazny (May 13, 1937–June 14, 1995), born in Euclid, Ohio, was the only child of Joseph Frank Zelazny, a Polish immigrant who worked as a pattern maker for a typewriter company, and Josephine Flora (Sweet) Zelazny, a Chicago native. He attended Western Reserve University (now Case Western Reserve) after his graduation from Euclid Senior High School, changing his major from psychology to English, winning poetry and essay prizes, and contributing to Skyline, a university literary magazine. After receiving his BA in 1959, he moved to New York, where he continued his studies at Columbia University; his 1962 MA thesis was titled “Two Traditions and Cyril Tourneur: An Examination of Morality and Humor Comedy Conventions in The Revenger’s Tragedy.” While in graduate school, he served six months of active duty with the Ohio National Guard; afterwards, he took a job as a claims representative for the Social Security Administration in Cleveland (later moving to Baltimore) and began to write science fiction.

  Encouraged by Cele Goldsmith, editor of Amazing Stories and Fantastic, Zelazny published four SF magazine stories in 1962 and sixteen the following year, among them “A Rose for Ecclesiastes,” for which he received his first Hugo nomination. He married Sharon Steberl at the end of 1964 (having postponed the ceremony after a serious car accident) and divorced in 1966; later that same year he married Judith Alene Callahan, with whom he had three children, Devin, Jonathan Trent, and Shannon. Still in his thirties, his novelette “The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth” (1965) and novella “He Who Shapes” (1965) won Nebula Awards; his novels . . . And Call Me Conrad [This Immortal] and Lord of Light (1967) received Hugo Awards soon thereafter.

  Retiring from his day job in 1969, Zelazny published Nine Princes in Amber (1970), the first novel in his popular, long-running fantasy series, “Amber,” which later included The Guns of Avalon (1972), Sign of the Unicorn (1975), The Hand of Oberon (1976), The Courts of Chaos (1978), Trumps of Doom (1985), Blood of Amber (1986), Sign of Chaos (1987), Knight of Shadows (1989), Prince of Chaos (1991), and other works. He also published novels The Dream Master (1966), Isle of the Dead (1969), Creatures of Light and Darkness (1969), Damnation Alley (1969), Jack of Shadows (1971), To Die in Italbar (1973), Doorways in the Sand (1976), Roadmarks (1979), The Bells of Shoredan (1979), Changeling (1980), The Changing Land: A Novel of Dilvish the Damned (1981), Dilvish, the Damned (1982), Madwand (1982), and A Night in Lonesome October (1993); several collections of stories; and novels and short fiction in collaboration with Alfred Bester, Philip K. Dick, Gerard Hausman, Jane Lindskold, Fred Saberhagen, Robert Sheckley, and Thomas D. Thomas.

  A guest of honor at the 1974 World Science Fiction Convention, Zelazny moved to Santa Fe in 1975, later separating from his wife and living with writer Jane Lindskold. A big-budget film version of his novel Damnation Alley was released in 1977. He died in Santa Fe of kidney failure related to colon cancer; in 2010 he was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame.

  Note on the Texts

  This volume collects four American science fiction novels of the 1960s: The High Crusade (1960) by Poul Anderson, Way Station (1963) by Clifford D. Simak, Flowers for Algernon (1966) by Daniel Keyes, and . . . And Call Me Conrad [This Immortal] (1966) by Roger Zelazny. A companion volume in the Library of America series, American Science Fiction: Four Classic Novels, 1968–1969, includes four later works: Past Master (1968) by R. A. Lafferty, Picnic on Paradise (1968) by Joanna Russ, Nova (1968) by Samuel R. Delany, and Emphyrio (1969) by Jack Vance.

  The High Crusade. On January 12, 1960, Poul Anderson replied to an inquiry from Timothy Seldes, an editor at Doubleday and Company in New York: Would Anderson allow Doubleday to look at The High Crusade, the novel he was then working on for Avon Publications, in order that they might consider publishing it in Avon’s place after a “suitable arrangement” had been made? Though Anderson confessed himself “rather dubious” that the more prestigious firm would “want anything to do” with the novel (“It’s planned as a rather straight adventure yarn, concentrating on action and rather bloody and rough in places”), he was happy to comply with Seldes’s request. Their subsequent correspondence about the novel is not known to have survived, but within three months they had agreed that Doubleday would publish it, Anderson had delivered his manuscript, and they had concluded any exchanges they may have had about revisions. On April 26, Anderson returned his author’s proofs to Seldes’s assistant Natalie Greenberg: “I found very few corrections needful.”

  Doubleday published The High Crusade on October 7, 1960. No evidence has been found to suggest that Anderson himself was responsible for the occasionally different text that appeared in Analog Science Fact & Fiction, in July, August, and September 1960, or that he sought revisions to the novel at any later date, though many editions followed during his lifetime, including six in the United States and two in the United Kingdom. The text of The High Crusade in the present volume is that of the 1960 Doubleday first printing.

  Way Station. Clifford D. Simak’s Way Station initially appeared as a two-part serial in the June and August 1963 issues of Galaxy, titled “Here Gather the Stars.” The first book version of the novel, published by Doubleday in N
ew York, followed on November 1, 1963, and won the 1964 Hugo Award for best novel. The book text closely follows that of a carbon typescript, also titled Way Station, as emended in Simak’s hand and now among his papers at the University of Minnesota. The alternate title and occasionally variant text of the magazine version probably reflect earlier revisions to the original typescript made at the request of Galaxy’s editor Frederik Pohl, or by Pohl himself, rather than a version of the novel Simak subsequently revised for book publication.

  Simak is not known to have been involved in the preparation of subsequent editions of the novel, which numbered over a dozen during his lifetime, including three in the United Kingdom. The text of Way Station in the present volume is that of the 1963 Doubleday first printing.

  Flowers for Algernon. Daniel Keyes began what became Flowers for Algernon as a short story, in the summer of 1958. Horace Gold, the editor of Galaxy, had recently agreed to publish Keyes’s story “The Trouble with Elmo” and wanted another (as Keyes recalls in his 1999 memoir Algernon, Charlie, and I: A Writer’s Journey). Keyes responded with a short novella, initially titled “The Genius Effect.” Gold admired and hoped to publish the novella but insisted it would need a happy ending before he could do so, and Keyes hesitated to oblige; his friend Phil Klass suggested that he offer it instead to Robert P. Mills, an editor at The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Mills also liked the novella but asked Keyes to shorten it by some 10,000 words. Keyes decided to comply, and, retitled “Flowers for Algernon,” it appeared in the magazine in April 1959, winning a 1960 Hugo Award for best story. In February 1961, “Flowers for Algernon” was adapted for television (as The Two Worlds of Charlie Gordon), and later that year Keyes sold the movie rights.