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

Happy Flying Saucer Day!

Today is Flying Saucer Day, the anniversary day of the sighting of the first flying saucers over Mount Rainier in Washington State. Flying saucers are at first glance a science-fictional concept. (As I have written before, flying saucers come not from outer space but from science fiction.) But our ideas about them originate in the works of Charles Fort (1874-1932), who greatly influenced the writers and editors of Weird Tales. You can argue that their origins are far older than that, but as works of science and technology, spaceships from other planets coming to Earth are a nineteenth- and early twentieth-century idea.

There were tellers of weird tales who became caught up in the flying saucer mystery. Chief among them were Donald E. Keyhoe (1897-1988) and Wilma Dorothy Vermilyea (1915-1995). Also known as Millen Cook, Wilma helped her husband, Brinsley Le Poer Trench (1911-1995), in his work researching and writing about UFOs. Others included Vincent H. Gaddis (1913-1997), who coined the phrase "Bermuda Triangle" and helped get it into the popular imagination. Anyway . . .

Happy Flying Saucer Day from Tellers of Weird Tales!

Text copyright 2021, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

A New Book by J.A. Lawrence

Judith Ann Lawrence, also known as J.A. Lawrence and Judy Blish, has just had a collection of her short stories published by Reanimus Press. It's called The Other Side of the Surface and Other Stories, and it includes not only her fiction but also some of Judy's artwork.

J.A. Lawrence is an author herself, but she was also married to an author and the daughter of not one but two authors. Her mother was Muriel Cameron Bodkin (1903-1994), who contributed to Weird Tales. (Click here.) Her father was the Canadian-American pulp writer John Frederick Brock Lawrence (1907-1970), better known as Jack Lawrence. Their daughter Judith was married to science fiction author James Blish (1921-1975) from 1964 until his death in 1975. Judy's new book includes a reimagining of James Blish's classic story "Surface Tension," originally published in Galaxy Science Fiction in August 1952.

I don't have advertising or provide links to commercial websites on my blog, but that's okay because you already know how to order books. Just head on down to your local megacorporation and pick up Judy's new collection The Other Side of the Surface and Other Stories today.

Original text copyright 2021, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Memorial Day 2021

Terence E. Hanley, 2021, 2023.

A Season of Discovery and Beginning

Tellers of Weird Tales turned ten years old last week. I first wrote on April 22, 2011. My first entry was on C.L. Moore (1911-1987), who grew up in the same neighborhood in Indianapolis in which I grew up, though half a century before. Being from Indiana and having the pride of a Hoosier in me, I took a special interest in her. In the year before beginning this blog, I began writing an article about her. That article was finally published in the summer of 2019 in Traces, the magazine of the Indiana Historical Society. Its working title was "The Weird and Wondrous Fiction of C.L. Moore." It went to print as "Amazing Tales: The Weird and Wondrous Fiction of C.L. Moore." It's because of my research and writing on C.L. Moore, too, that I have a place on the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDb), but that's for a different article I wrote, published by Paco Arrelano. I'm not a member of the ISFDb, so I'm not sure that I can add to it. I hope someone will add my article from Traces on my behalf. I would also like to hear from Señor Arrelano in hopes that I can get a copy of his magazine Delirio in which my article appeared.

Although C.L. Moore was the subject of my first entry on this blog, she wasn't the reason for my starting it. The impetus actually came while I was reading Weird Tales: The Magazine That Never Dies, edited by Marvin Kaye (1988). Included in that book is the first Damp Man story by Allison V. Harding. Mr. Kaye's introduction to "The Damp Man" is brief, for at the time almost nothing was known about the pseudonymous Harding. But here in front of me was a mystery, one I was determined to solve. I began on April 26, 2011, ten years ago today. I solved the mystery less than a month later, on May 24, 2011, with my entry entitled "Who Was Allison V. Harding?"

The answer to that question was and is Jean Milligan (1919-2004), later the wife of the former associate editor and art editor of Weird Tales magazine, Lamont Buchanan (1919-2015). And now I see that I have to update my entry on the late Mr. Buchanan. Anyway, I have to admit that I was a little hard on Marvin Kaye for the part he played in the Weird Tales debacle of a few years back, but I also have to thank him for the part he unknowingly played in getting this blog off the ground. I have to reassert, too, that I am the person who discovered the identity of Allison V. Harding and Jean Milligan. No one else did that, and no one else should be taking credit for the discovery or pretending like it's something that just fell out of the sky. (This is where the passive voice, mostly a scourge, comes in handy. In using it, you don't have to say that somebody did something, only that something happened, no doer necessary.) Anyway, I did it. I discovered the identity of Allison V. Harding. It's my work. I expect to be cited for it. And I have this to say to people who like to glom on to the work of others: if you want to be known for your work, then do your work. Get up and do it and don't thieve it from others. And once you have done it, publish it, however you can. Get it out there into the world.

* * *

There has been some controversy recently about Allison V. Harding and Jean Milligan. I might have been a little responsible for that, too, by suggesting that Lamont Buchanan was actually the writer behind the pseudonym. The controversy comes from the idea that we're all trying to take something away from women writers, that somehow we're anti-woman and that we want to erase them and silence them. That isn't my idea at all. In fact, it's closer to the opposite. (Should I point out here that the first three authors and five out of the first ten about whom I wrote on this blog were women?)

My idea that Lamont Buchanan was Allison V. Harding came to me as I was reading the last Damp Man story, "The Damp Man Again," from Weird Tales, May 1949. As I was reading, it occurred to me that this was not the work of a woman, for no woman would write about another woman in this way. Only a man--a bitter and angry man at that--could write about women with this kind of cruelty, mean-spiritedness, and misogyny, writing that has in it even intimations of psychopathy and a desire to hurt and punish women. Feminists might object to my suggestion or belief that Lamont Buchanan was Allison V. Harding, but they should first read "The Damp Man Again"--"Take the Z-Train," too--and see what they think afterwards. It's worth noting here that Lamont Buchanan was still a single man in 1949 when "The Damp Man Again" was published. He and Jean Milligan were not married until 1952, in The Bronx, where they went on to live out their lives together. By the way, there is a Harding Avenue in The Bronx. If we play a word game, then Harding Avenue can become Harding Ave. can become Harding, A.V., can become A.V. Harding . . . you get where I'm going.

* * *

There has been another recent controversy when it comes to Allison V. Harding. I wasn't the first person to have made a connection between Lamont Buchanan and J.D. Salinger (1919-2010) and Salinger's character Holden Caulfield, but I think I was the first to get it out into the world of science fiction and fantasy fandom and scholarship. I don't really believe that J.D. Salinger was Allison V. Harding, and I doubt that Buchanan and Salinger, who may have been friends in their college years, collaborated or talked to each other about writing as late as 1947 or 1949 or 1950. But you never know. There seems to be a hole in the scholarship on J.D. Salinger that hasn't been filled yet. I still want to say to all of the bored academics of this world, "Get up and get busy and forget about all of that woke BS that seemingly occupies everybody in your formerly respectable fields!" That's a little long and not very pithy for an exhortation, but you get the idea. In the meantime, the only people who seem to be interested in the idea that Buchanan was the model for Caulfield are those vying for or writing about Buchanan's estate. Money has its ways.

* * *

I have never counted the number of authors who contributed to Weird Tales. Years ago I estimated it at about 700. I had thought that by now I would be about finished with them. But in writing this blog I have gotten on to things other than biography. Biography and the discovery of lives and identities is fun, but so are other things. In any case, I'm planning to get back to some biographies soon. First I have to finish my current series, which is going on about as long as Burroughs' Mars series. I didn't want this anniversary to go by unobserved, though, and so I will let you know that Tellers of Weird Tales is ten years old in this season of discovery and beginning. I plan to continue writing, even after I go over the 1,000,000-visits mark sometime this summer, even after I have covered all of the magazine's writers and artists.

Ten years is a long time. As one of my entomology professors would say, "Time flies like an arrow and fruit flies like a banana."

C.L. Moore at her desk at the bank in Indianapolis, another discovery I have made, and maybe the only photograph of her at work. I presume that the typewriter in front of her is a Royal typewriter and the one that she used in composing her stories. The name of her Venerian character Yarol is an anagram of that brandname. From the Indianapolis Times, May 22, 1939.

Text copyright 2021, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Utopia & Dystopia in Weird Tales-Part Ten

Utopia: Ideal & Idyllic

In the 'teens and 'twenties, Edgar Rice Burroughs busied himself with writing and seemingly every future author of science fiction stories read and loved his Mars books. In addition, seemingly everyone then writing science fiction emulated Burroughs and his creations. I will write more on that topic in a future part of this seemingly interminable series. Maybe for now we can take all of this as a given: Burroughs wrote what we can now call science fiction in its then-contemporary form, and his Mars books became the model for the planetary or interplanetary romance, a sub-genre of the not-yet properly named whole genre of science fiction. (If science fiction is in fact a proper name for it now.)

* * *

The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction has so many interesting things to say, including these two:

The lost-race story [what I have been calling Lost Worlds] is obviously an opportunity for the setting up of imaginary Utopias [q.v.] and Dystopias [q.v.] [. . .]. (p. 736)

It has been suggested, too, that such stories allow exercises in imaginary cultural anthropology [. . .]. (p. 736)

Then the encyclopedists take it back--the way I took things back last time I wrote--pointing out that Lost World utopias and dystopias "are not as common as might be expected" and that in actuality most Lost Worlds stories "are quite straightforward romantic adventures." (p. 736) That seems right to me. I think of Utopia as a progressive or forward-looking genre in which plot and action are secondary to more satiric, intellectual, or high-literary purposes, all fit for publication in a fine hardbound edition and suited for academic or scholarly study. In contrast, the Lost Worlds/science fantasy-type story seems to me more conservative, romantic, and adventurous, essentially a pulp genre meant for popular consumption. Its aims seem simpler. They would appear non-intellectual and even anti-intellectual: Nobody ever accused Edgar Rice Burroughs of being an intellectual, but in our hyper-intellectualized age (which began, I think, in the 1960s and '70s), Burroughs has become a subject for the same kind of academic or scholarly study previously reserved for more literary works. (1)

* * *

The science fiction encyclopedists also write that, in regards to the Lost Worlds genre,

there is more and better cultural anthropology in offworld stories of planetary exploration and colonization of other worlds [q.v.] (mostly postwar), subgenres that largely superseded the lost-race story, than there are in lost-race stories set on earth. [Emphasis added.] (p. 736)

A lot of science fiction history is packed into that little phrase, "subgenres that largely superseded the lost-race story," for it implies that a big part of science fiction came out of the Lost Worlds/science fantasy tradition established by H. Rider Haggard, Rudyard Kipling, and Edgar Rice Burroughs. That seems right to me, too. If it involves other planets--worlds lost and newly discovered--explorations and odysseys--mysteries and journeys through and in time and space--then it seems likely to have come down to us from the science-fantasy adventures of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. (The dystopian and apocalyptic strain of science fiction would appear to have had different origins. That's another topic still to come in this series.) Burroughs in particular seems to have been an originator of the science-fictional (and utopian) hero, which might have been a new type when he wrote but was based on a far older one, as old as the heroes of ancient Greece. More on that soon, too.

* * *

Here is the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction on Utopias:

It can be argued that all utopias are sf, in that they are exercises in hypothetical sociology [q.v.] and political science. Alternatively, it might be argued that only those utopias which embody some notion of scientific advancement qualify as sf--the latter view is in keeping with most definitions of sf [q.v.]. Frank Manuel, in Utopias and Utopian Thought (anth 1966), argues that a significant shift in utopian thought took place when writers changed from talking about a better place (eutopia) to talking about a better time (euchronia), under the influence of notions of historical and social progress. When this happened, utopias ceased to be imaginary constructions with which contemporary society might be compared, and began to be speculative statements about real future possibilities. It seems sensible to regard this as the point at which utopian literature acquired a character conceptually similar to that of sf. (p. 1260)

That's a long quote, almost long enough for its own blog entry, but it gets to a point, which is that categories seemingly fail and definitions lose their precision as time goes by. Utopia by Thomas More, from 1516, is a Utopia. But is Burroughs' Barsoom, first in print in 1912, also a Utopia? An even larger question: Is science fiction of the twentieth century essentially utopian? Or, can we turn it all around and argue that all Utopias are science fiction, as the encyclopedists suggest in their use of the very passive voice? Maybe Charles Fort's concept of continuity in all things applies: science fantasy, planetary and interplanetary romance, and science fiction as a whole are pulp versions of the damned: "By the damned, I mean the excluded," Fort wrote in 1919, shortly after John Carter projected himself to another planet. And that's how I think of the pulp genres: for decades they were excluded, beneath consideration, beneath contempt, not a part of polite society or worthy of academic study, discontinuous with accepted literature. People might have called pulp magazines rags, but in one sense they weren't rags at all, for rag paper is for finely made books and meant to last. Pulps were for the moment, to be read and discarded, to be found again in the trash or on the train, like Jessica Soames' copy of True Story. Printed on acid paper, they were cheap, designed for decay, meant not to last at all. But in them--perhaps now more than then--are lost and decaying worlds and races, all ready for rediscovery, like Haggard's lost valley of Kukuanaland or Burroughs' decaying world of Barsoom. But the pulp genres did and still do lie along a continuum, or more accurately exist in a medium in which all touch and intermingle with all, in which all boundaries are lost. Lost Worlds are Utopia is science fiction is speculative fiction is literary fiction and so on and on . . .

* * * 

It seems to me that in his Lost Worlds stories, of which the Mars books are just one iteration, Burroughs didn't actually write utopian fiction. I think that the definition of Utopia is--like Jabba the Hutt--too broad and flabby. I think that, properly speaking, a utopian story is one concerning a perfect or idealized society. (2) A mere fantasy--even in the form of a Lost Worlds story or some exploration of cultural anthropology--isn't really utopian, for if it is, then all of high fantasy and about half of science fiction is subsumed into Utopia (instead of the other way around). If a word can mean anything, then doesn't it really mean nothing at all? Anyway, in writing their stories of Lost Worlds and cultural explorations, these authors seem pretty clearly not to have had utopian aims. I don't think we should put those aims on them. Instead, I think we should keep our definitions narrow and admit that there are far fewer utopian stories than what some theorists would have us believe. Nonetheless, Utopia seems to have passed into science fiction by way of Lost Worlds and science fantasy . . .

To be continued . . . 

Notes

(1) Witness "Utopia in the Pulps: The Apocalyptic Pastoralism of Edgar Rice Burroughs" by Michael Orth in Extrapolation, Vol. 27, No. 3, 1986.

(2) It's worth noting here that ideal and idyll are from the same root, meaning "form" or "appearance," more remotely "to know" or "to see." So, Utopia = ideal society, and Lost Worlds ≈ idyllic society.

European languages make a distinction we don't make very well in American English: to us, all book-length works of fiction are called novels. I like the European way: novels are realistic, while romances are fanciful. Here's another linguistic twist: in German, science fiction and utopian stories are tied to each other in the use of the words utopische, utopischen, utopischer, and so on. (I know nothing about the German language, only the words that I see in this place or that.) Here is an example, the cover of Insula by Paul Eugen Sieg (1899-1950), subtitled "Utopischer Roman," presumably "utopian romance," or maybe, loosely, "science fiction novel." Published in 1953, Insula is about a secret volcanic island--a kind of Lost World--inhabited by a scientist living in a secret city, like Captain Nemo or Ernst Stavro Blofeld. Sieg had previously written other science fiction novels, including Detatom (1936), at the core of which is a journey to Mars and the discovery of "remnants of a technically superior high culture."

The German firm Pabel published hundreds of entries in its Utopia Großband series between 1954 and 1963. Here is the cover of No. 58, from October 21, 1957, featuring a novelization of the American film 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957), written by Henry Slesar (1927-2002). The artist was Wolfgang Blaar. 

I picked this cover because of its great art, done by Ed Valigursky (1926-2009), and not knowing that the original story, by Andre Norton (1912-2005), is called Secret of the Lost Race. I guess there's no getting away from the idea that Utopia-Lost Worlds-Science Fiction is an unbreakable nexus. (Utopia Großband No. 126, May 31, 1960.)

Pabel also published Utopia Zukunftsroman, or "Utopia Future Fiction" (I guess). The dates were 1953 to 1968. Here is the cover for the last issue, No. 596 from August 30, 1968, with a cover story originally entitled Objectif Tamax and written by the French science fiction writer Peter Randa (1911-1979). The identity of the cover artist is unknown.

Finally in this series of covers, that of Utopia Zukunftsroman No. 547 with a cover story, originally "The Programmed People," by Jack Sharkey (1931-1992) and cover art by R.S. Lonati (Rudolf Sieber [1924-1990]). This issue is dated August 25, 1967.

My reason for showing these covers is to show also that connections of which we might not be aware once existed and may still exist in other languages and cultures. Thanks to Hlafbrot for pointing out to me the utopian-science fiction connection that exists in Germany.

A final image, one that I have just discovered, "The People in Today's State" versus "The People in the Future State," a German-Romantic vision from 1904 by Friedrich Eduard Bilz (1842-1922). (That's his self-portrait in the middle.) So, above, examples of the Zukunfstroman, a story of the future, or science fiction; and below, an image of Zukunftstaat, the State of the future, or Utopia, in this case an idyllic or pastoral Utopia with imagery that could have appeared--and did appear--on the cover of Weird Tales a generation later, drawn by another German artist, C.C. Senf (1873-1949). (See especially the woman in pink on the center right of the page.) I'll say it again: What every romantic and idealist fails to see is that every Utopia is also a Dystopia, for we are not perfect, we cannot be made perfect, and we will not be harried into perfection nor used as soulless and inhuman building blocks in the construction of someone else's vision of a perfect human society.

Original text copyright 2021, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

These Good Things We Are Granted

Today on a cool day in April, with the perfume of crabapple blossoms in my window, I finished reading The Moonflower Vine by Jetta Carleton (1913-1999). It's a beautifully written book, full of love and warmth and affection, and very funny, too. Published in 1962, The Moonflower Vine is also underlain with darker things, with sin and guilt and transgression. As you approach its end, an awareness very suddenly arises within you that there is something hidden at the heart of the story and that the ending of it will be a surprise, just as in a genre story. Suspense builds. There is a kind of anxiety crying out for catharsis. And then it comes, and the whole experience of this book reverberates for long moments after you have turned the last page. The mood of The Moonflower Vine came into my dreams last night, and now that I have finished reading, it still echoes and vibrates within me.

Sometimes authors mention other authors in their books. Jetta Carleton did that in The Moonflower Vine. I have the Fawcett Crest paperback edition (no date). On page 185:

With their stockings rolled down and their skirts pulled up, they read aloud to each other and told naughty jokes and laughed. Sometimes they read Good Housekeeping--lush romantic stories by Temple Bailey, Emma Lindsay-Squier, and Queen Marie of Roumania. Now and then they horrified themselves with a tattered copy of True Story which Jessica had found on the train. [. . .]

These are names from the past, as remote from us now as the household task of washing and baking down feathers and stuffing them into new pillow ticking. (Something done in Jetta's novel, taken as most of it is from life.) But fans of genre fiction might recognize the name Emma-Lindsay Squier* (1892-1941), for she was a teller of weird tales. In addition to authoring a hardbound collection called The Bride of the Sacred Well and Other Tales of Ancient Mexico (1928), Emma-Lindsay wrote one story for Weird Tales, "The Door of Hell," from the August issue, 1926.

Jetta Carleton's mother died in March 1958. Jetta's novel came out four years later to great acclaim. She dedicated it to her father and sisters and in memory of her mother. Her fictionalized mother's story and her surprise and secret close the book. Callie Soames also speaks the last words spoken in The Moonflower Vine:

"Thank you," she says.

Thank you.

My own mother died sixteen years ago today, in the morning, and she went away into the morning.

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"She was thinking that perhaps, after all, her God and Matthew's differed. She had made hers up in her head. But Matthew was smart, he could read; perhaps his God of wrath was the real one and every word of the Bible true, though some were as bitter as gall." (p. 301)

Even before I read that passage in The Moonflower Vine, I had a sense that this was true among its characters, and that it's a truth that might grow outside the pages of a book into whole ways of looking at the world. Callie loves the world and is happy: "Oh, if she never got to heaven, this was enough, this lovely earth with its sunlight and its mornings and something always to look forward to. (Earth had that over Heaven!)" (p. 303) But her ideas are not utopian, for she lives in the real world and is a believer in God. (Utopianism is for nonbelievers and people who live in their heads.) Instead, we might call them idyllic or arcadian or pastoral or whatever word or words we might use to describe things that are without words because they are things of the heart instead of those of the abstract and inward-turning mind.

Matthew, her husband, has his own sins, his own guilt. But his is a darker personality. His imagination seems almost apocalyptic . . .

And so we have these two responses to the world, arising perhaps from differing views of God--on one hand, the idyllic way, and on the other, the apocalyptic vision--and I realize that both might come from the same place: from Christianity itself. Or is it that Christianity addresses the opposition that is within each of us, the opposition of the apocalyptic to the idyllic? The Bible itself is built upon an opposition: at the beginning, a green beginning, a pastoral, an idyll, a Garden of peace and repose; at the end, a dream, a vision--four riders are approaching: Apocalypse.

Are we to be happy? Will there be love and contentment in and among God's Creation? Or will there be rage and despair, buried in and too often erupting--exploding into hatred and violence--from the darkened human heart?

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*Jetta Carleton put the hyphen in the wrong place.

I write on April 14 for publication on April 17, 2021.

Original text copyright 2021, 2023 Terence E. Hanley.