Tag Archives: Astounding Science Fiction

Retro Hugos: “The Wedge” by Issac Asimov

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“The Wedge” was originally published in the October 1944 issue of Astounding.  It’s a Foundation story and was reprinted as “The Traders” when the stories were collected in book form. It was published after “The Big and the Little” but placed before that story (as “The Merchant Princes”).

I thought this was a fairly weak story. A trader gets an emergency message instructing him to go to a particular planet where another trader has gotten himself in trouble with the local potentate.

The trader who is in trouble is actually an agent of the Foundation, and the protagonist knows this. The Foundation has been trying to gain influence and power two ways. With missionaries of the religion the Foundation has set up and through agents who act as traders.

The agent in trouble has violated a ban on nuclear power.  Many of the star systems have reverted to a pre-atomic level of technology since the Empire pulled back from the edge of the galaxy.

The trader uses entrapment to bring about a a change in the policy by blackmailing his main opponent. The story was worked out logically and held my interest, but it is the weakest of the Retro Hugo stories I’ve read so far.

Retro Hugos: “Trog” by Murray Leinster

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Today, June 16, is the birthday of Murray Leinster (1896-1975).  I was going to cover the novellas on the Retro Hugo ballot after I read the short stories, but with Leinster’s birthday today, I’m going to cover this one.

Leinster was a prolific author in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s. He won the Hugo Award in 1956 for “Exploration Team”. At his best, Leinster had few peers. He was the author of such classics as “First Contact” and “Sidewise in Time”, for which the Sidewise Award is named. He anticipated the internet in “A Logic Named Joe”. I wonder if Al Gore read that one before he invented the internet.

“Trog” appeared in the June 1944 issue of Astounding. It has never been reprinted. Continue reading →

Retro Hugos: “No Woman Born” by C. L. Moore

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This is the second to last Retro Hugo post on the novelette category and the last of the stories.  I’ll do a summary post on the novelettes before moving on to the short stories.

“No Woman Born” was first published in the December 1944 issue of Astounding. It is the story of a dancer and singer named Deidre who has been badly burned  in a fire. The story opens a year later, when everyone thinks she is dead.

Only she isn’t dead. Her brain has been transplanted in a robot body by a man named Maltzer. Her press agent, Harris, is the only other person in on it. Her new body is human in shape, but instead of having joints, her limbs are flexible metal rings. This allows her to move in a much more sinuous way than she could before the fire. Entirely new dance forms are possible with her new body. She can also modulate her voice so that it sounds exactly the way it did, husky and distinct. Continue reading →

Retro Hugos: “The Big and the Little”

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“The Big and the Little” was originally published in the August 1944 issue of Astounding. This is a Foundation story. It was published before “The Wedge” (10/44) but was placed after it when the stories were collected in book form.

There is a bit more substance to this story than there is to “The Wedge”, which I’ll review when I get to the short story nominees. A trader who was born on Smyrno (rather than Terminus, the location of the Foundation) is given the task of investigating the disappearance of ships in the Republic of Korell.

Spoilers Ahead Continue reading →

Campbell and Wilhelm

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Today I want to look at two writers who did much to advance the field of science fiction. John W. Campbell, Jr. (1910-1971) is best remembered as an editor, but before he became an editor, he was first a writer.  Kate Wilhelm was one of the strongest female voices in science fiction. Her work should not be forgotten. Continue reading →

Retro Hugos: “When the Bow Breaks” by Lewis Padgett

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Anyone who hangs out around here for any length of time and doesn’t know that Lewis Padgett is one the the pen names used by Henry Kuttner and his wife C. L. Moore clearly hasn’t been paying attention.  Written under the Lewis Padgett by-line, “When the Bough Breaks” was first published in the November 1944 issue of Astounding.

The spring before I started high school, my parents gave permission for me to join the Science Fiction Book Club. So I had a source of hardcover science fiction and fantasy to read that summer.  This was in the days before science fiction was regularly published in hardcover. Most books were mass market paperbacks.

At the time, the SFBC offered a number of titles from Ballantine’s Best of series. This was a way I could discover new writers, and I took full advantage of it.  I mean, if these writers weren’t good, why was there a volume entitled The Best of followed by their names? I was making money mowing lawns, so I had the funds to afford to buy some books. I was already familiar with the series because I had found The Best of Jack Williamson at a flea market about eighteen months earlier, and I bought every one the SFBC offered at the time.  (For some reason, they never offered The Best of C. L. Moore while I was a member, although they had published such a volume a year or three earlier.) Continue reading →

Retro Hugos: “City” by Clifford D. Simak

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Published in the May 1944 issue of Astounding, “City” launched the series that was later collected in book form under that title.  Although I read it last year in The Ghost of a Model T, I reread it for this series.

The story takes place in what would have been considered the relatively near future, although it would certainly be considered our past. It’s set in 1990.

Cities have mostly been abandoned, with the bulk of the population moving out to country estates. Most neighborhoods have been abandoned, with only a few holdouts of the originals residents remaining. Farming is all done by hydroponics now. So the farmers have moved into the abandoned houses. They live a subsistence life by hunting, small gardening, and scavenging. Continue reading →

Retro Hugos: “Far Centaurus” by A. E. van Vogt

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A. E. van Vogt (1912-2000) was born on this date, April 26.  He was one of the most prolific and popular science fiction writers of the 1940s.  In addition to a sizeable body of shorter works, he wrote the popular novels The Voyage of the Space Beagle, Slan, and The Weapons Shops of Isher.  These were either serialized in Astounding or put together from individual stories.

Just as a side note, I haven’t given up on the Retro Hugo posts.  The semester is about over, and I I’ve been swamped.  I’ve also been reading Foundation. The two Asimov stories on the Retro Hugo ballot are the last two sections of the book.  I decided to read the whole thing (something I was thinking about doing anyway) to give them some context.

I was going to look at all the novelettes before moving on to the short stories, but van Vogt doesn’t have an entry in that category.

“Far Centaurus” is one of van Vogt’s most reprinted stories. If I’ve counted correctly, I’ve got copies of it in about ten different publications.  I first read it in middle school, and the last two paragraphs have stuck with me all these years.  Continue reading →

Retro Hugos” “Arena” by Fredric Brown

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Of all the stories on the Retro Hugo ballot, “Arena”  by Fredric Brown is probably the most familiar to readers, for no reason other than it was adapted as an episode of the original Star Trek series.  (They changed the ending.)  Published in the June 1944 issue of Astounding, the story is currently available in The Fredric Brown Megapack. The price as of this writing is 99 cents.  Plus tax, of course.

The plot is pretty straight forward. Mankind has begun to spread out into the galaxy.  Before too long, it encounters another sentient species. At first, the Outsiders commit a few raids. No one survives, so the appearance of the Outsiders is a mystery.

The two species seem fairly evenly matched. The Outsiders’s ships are a little faster and more maneuverable. The humans are slightly better armed. A showdown is inevitable, and mankind builds a fleet in preparation. At last the day comes. Continue reading →

Retro Hugos: “The Children’s Hour” by Lawrence O’Donnell (Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore)

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OK, I’m gonna do it.  With the exception of some of the novels, I’ll be looking at the nominees for the 1945 Retro Hugos, which are awarded for stories published in 1944.  I’m going to start with the novelettes.  I read “The Children’s Hour” earlier this week as a possibility Henry Kuttner birthday post before the Retro Hugo shortlist was announced.  Might as well tackle it while it’s fresh on my mind.

“The Children’s Hour” was originally published in the March 1944 issue of Astounding.  (I’m going to get a lot of mileage out of these posts since many of them will double as Astounding 90th Anniversary posts.)

Before we go any further, I want to address something, and that’s where to find these stories so you can read them.  As a general rule, I don’t do review posts of things that aren’t readily available, although I do make exceptions to that rule from time to time.  For the Hugos, the voting members of Worldcon get copies of the short fiction to read, and the last time I had a membership, that was true for the Retro Hugos as well.

I don’t have a copy of this year’s Retro nominees that was provided to the Wolrdcon membership. The one  year I was a voting member, pretty much everything from the year under question was provided so members could read the stories and nominate for t he short list.  If anyone wants to send me a copy, I won’t snitch.  Promise.

The only short fiction I don’t have a copy of is “Intruders From the Stars” by Ross Rocklynne, and I was able to order a reprint of that one.  I have no illusions that everyone who takes the time to read these posts will have access to all of the stories.  The only reason I have copies of some of them is because I bought several complete runs of pulps on CD last year for myself for Father’s Day.

“The Children’s Hour” is one of the tales that will be hard to come by.  According to the ISFDB, it has only been reprinted in English four times:  twice in 1959, once in 1983, and once in 2010.If you want to read my review, it will be below the “Continue Reading ” link.  I will try to avoid as many spoilers as possible in all of these reviews. Continue reading →