Warm Words & Otherwise: A Blizzard of Book Reviews (47 page)

The Mechanics of Wonder: The Creation of the Idea of Science Fiction

by Gary Westfahl

Liverpool University Press, 344 pages, hardback, 1998

Towards the end of this long book there is an observation (which Westfahl modestly states is not originally his) that casts light not only on the rest of the text but on a great deal of the accepted history of sf.

We are accustomed to reading of the great flowering of writing talent which occurred around the time that John W. Campbell took over the editorship of
Astounding
, a flowering generally attributed to his editorial skills – to his ability to draw the very best out of his writers, to stimulate them with his own originality of thought, etc. As an editor myself (albeit not a magazine or even primarily a fiction editor), I have always been troubled by this accepted truth: editors may make good writers better ones but I am unconvinced that, even if they had the time to do so, they could make good writers out of bad ones.

Westfahl clearly shares my doubts about the prevalent hagiographical approach to Campbell's editorship, because he sets out an alternative hypothesis that makes a great deal more sense: those writers who were a part of the great flourishing of talent in the 1940s were of an age to have been reading, during their formative adolescent years, the sf magazines published by Hugo Gernsback – and many of them have indeed written of the boyhood joys of scouring each new issue of Gernsback's
Amazing
. In so doing they must have read, along with the fiction, Gernsback's frequent editorial pronouncements as to what sf was
about
. Absorbing such messages, even if the surrounding fiction obeyed Gernsback's rules more in the violation than in the observance, the individuals concerned, on reaching maturity and beginning seriously to write, followed either consciously or unconsciously those dictates.

Acceptance of this hypothesis requires, of course, a radical promotion of Gernsback as an important figure in the history of sf, and a corresponding radical demotion of Campbell. And, in case this might seem heretical (although Westfahl is throughout this book unafraid of heresy), there are several cited remarks from authors of the time who significantly did
not
feel that Campbell was the saintly editor described by later generations: for example (page 266), Robert Heinlein remarked, while complaining of difficulties he was having with
F&SF
, "Still, it is pleasanter than offering copy to John Campbell, having it bounced [...] and then have to wade through ten pages of his arrogant insults, explaining to me why the story is no good." Westfahl himself has no high opinion of Campbell (pages 271–2):

Allow me to state those flaws plainly: to an extent that cannot be attributed solely to his upbringing and environment, Campbell was a racist, a bigot, a sexist, and an anti-Semite. He was incredibly gullible in believing what he wanted to believe, incredibly stubborn in refusing to believe what he did not want to believe. He played favourites and held grudges.

And so on. Such personal qualities do not of course necessarily make someone a bad sf editor, and elsewhere Westfahl is at pains to make it clear that Campbell's professional skills were not negligible: in short, it should not be thought that this book is a demolition job; it is merely an attempt to restore a more accurate perspective to studies of sf history.

Such insights of Westfahl's are invaluable to at least this reviewer. However, they come towards the end of what is a very long book, and before them, while there are many riches, there are also many extended stretches wherein Westfahl ponderously labors to prove every single step of the case he is building. He is an exhilarating writer, and one would be hard pressed to find a single boring sentence in this book; but the truth is that those sentences are quite often put together to create boring sections. The primary problem is that every assertion is rigorously supported by material that would better have been banished to endnotes;* this is of course good practice in a

[* The endnotes themselves are another matter. They are placed in the most inconvenient matter possible, at the conclusion of each chapter. Thus one must constantly have two bookmarks on the go, one of which inevitably falls out of the book and into the bathwater.]

doctoral thesis, but it is considerably less desirable in a book intended for real people.

The book essentially falls into two parts: there are four chapters examining Gernsback as (a) an sf theoretician (his views on what sf should be and should not be), (b) an historian of sf (his views on magazine sf's precursors), (c) a writer of sf (to see how he put his theories into practice), and (d) an editor of sf magazines (again to see how he put his theories into practice); the second part subjects Campbell to exactly the same scrutiny except that, because Campbell was not much of a writer, (c) uses as its exemplars Heinlein's
Beyond This Horizon
and "If This Goes On ...", which are taken as accurate reflections of what Campbell might have written had he had the ability. Preceding this main block of the book is an Introduction offering reasons why sf's history should be reconsidered and (deservedly) lambasting previously published historians and critics for their
bêtes noires
(notably Aldiss) and for their pretentious obscurities (notably Suvin); this is racy and enjoyable stuff, and Westfahl revels in it. In his Conclusion – again racy and enjoyable except when he spends pages on the necessarily abortive attempt to produce an accurate definition of sf – he rightly points out, by way of continuation of this argument, that what sf's scholarly historians and literary critics have to say on the subject has little effect on and is almost entirely ignored by sf's actual practitioners.

Here, of course, one is drawn to ask a pertinent question: if sf's practitioners ignore academic lit crit, why has this book been written? The simple answer – that it is aimed at other scholars in the hope of persuading them to review their approaches to the subject – is itself subverted by Westfahl's own (good and well argued) case that sf criticism should be considered as a part of sf rather than as merely an adjunct to it ... which means that sf critics are sf practitioners, and thus by definition largely ignore what they themselves (Westfahl included) write.

This is not the only logical tangle into which Westfahl is led by his own enthusiasm. The most overt, although far from the most important, occurs on pages 170–71:

Two years later, when Ray Palmer took over
Amazing Stories
, his first editorial column promised "tales based on true scientific facts. Insofar as the basic subject matter is founded upon scientific research, it will be essentially a true story magazine [...]"

In Bates, Weisinger and Palmer, one observes a [...] truncation of Gernsback's theory of science fiction [...] But these editors never claimed that scientific principles were actually being explained in these stories or that one could obtain scientific education by reading them.

To be true, Palmer did not state his intentions exactly in Westfahl's prescribed wording, and to be equally true Palmer was an unsatisfactory reifier of those intentions, but Westfahl's conclusion, however many times one reads the passage concerned, appears to fly directly in the teeth of what Palmer actually wrote here.

Elsewhere there are assumptions and conclusions that seem governed more by Westfahl's zeal than anything else. To choose a single example, a statement by David Hartwell (pages 294–5) that,
in marketing and practical terms
, fantasy can be considered as a subset of sf, is taken as support for the distinctly dodgy premise that "fantasy has effectively been absorbed into science fiction". Not only is this conclusion nonsense in terms of theory (a good case can be made that sf is a subset of fantasy, but not the other way round), it is palpably untrue in practice – even for generic fantasy – as a foray to the bookstore will reveal.

So much for the trees in the large forest of this book; what about the forest itself? It is hard to accept that
The Mechanics of Wonder
will, as the blurb promises, "stand among a small number of crucial texts [...] which every science fiction scholar or prospective science fiction scholar will have to read" for, as noted, its primary thesis can be outlined very briefly and most of the rest is taken up with what could be regarded as over-detailed substantiation of the claim. Also, it is hard to agree with its attempts to establish a new, Gernsbackian (as it were) definition of what sf
is
, because what this new definition accurately describes is only what could be called Gernsbackian sf, and a history of sf derived from use of the definition would not surprisingly start with Gernsback, as Westfahl finds himself claiming the history of
all
sf does.

That said, this is for the most part an extremely entertaining and challenging manifesto, and can be highly recommended as such. Had Westfahl's blurb-writer been only a little less ambitious with that claim ("will stand among a small number of crucial texts which every science fiction scholar or prospective science fiction scholar
ought
to read", perhaps) it would be easy to applaud the statement.

—Extrapolation

God Save the Mark

by Donald E. Westlake

Forge, 268 pages, Paperback, 2004; reissue of a book originally published in 1967, with a new introduction by Otto Penzler

One in Forge's "Otto Penzler Presents ..." series of reissues, complete with a new introduction by Penzler himself, this publication sees the welcome reappearance of Donald Westlake's 1967 comic delight
God Save the Mark
. It's not among the very best of Westlake's deliriously inventive capers, but it's close to that leading group – and certainly it's good enough that on first publication it received an Edgar Allen Poe Award from the Mystery Writers of America.

The premise here is that Fred Fitch has what is almost a psychic talent or superpower for attracting confidence tricksters and associated fraudsters: he can barely walk to the local newsstand without someone smoothly conning him out of his wallet. This characteristic, while naturally irritating for poor Fred, makes him quite useful to the police: if there's a new scam on the street, within seconds Fred will have fallen victim to it, and through his friendship with the cop Jack Reilly the details will shortly be in the hands of the Bunco Squad.

But now Fred's troubles are about to enter a new and altogether more serious phase. His Uncle Matt, a fabled confidence trickster, has been murdered, and has left Fred an inheritance of three hundred thousand dollars as well as his deliciously earthy ex-"showgirl" Gertie Divine. With that amount of loot on its way, Fred obviously becomes an absolute magnet for every conman and conwoman on the Eastern Seaboard – among the latter, he strongly suspects, being the domineering Gertie, who has promptly moved herself into his apartment and more or less taken it over. But then there's also his dead uncle's shyster lawyer Goodkind, who would give weasels a bad name. Even Fred's eccentric wannabe-writer neighbor Wilkins is trying to persuade Fred to dedicate some of his hard-inherited cash to publishing Wilkins's unpublishable novel.

Of course, Fred's blood pressure isn't helped by hearing from Gertie that whoever killed Uncle Matt is out to get Fred next ...

All the elements are here for one of Westlake's classic romps, and he doesn't fail to deliver. Here's a sample, as Wilkins describes his historical novel
Veni Vidi Vici Through Air Power
:

I've kept the historical facts, kept them all. The names of the barbarian tribes, strength of armies, the actual battles, kept everything. All I've added is air power. Through a fluke of fate, the [ancient] Romans have aircraft, at about World War I level. So we see the sort of difference air power makes by putting it in a historical setting where it wasn't there. [...] Well, it doesn't change history that much. [...] After all, Caesar won almost all the battles he was in anyway.

This reader confesses he was filled with a powerful yen to get hold of a copy of
Veni Vidi Vici Through Air Power
, but, that aside,
God Save the Mark
satisfies on all counts.

Now, if only Forge will see fit to rerelease Westlake's
I Gave at the Office
...

—Crescent Blues

Love Spell

by Karen Williams

Rising Tide, 156 pages, paperback, 2001; reissue of a book originally published in 1993

The town of Broome has a new vet, Kate Gallagher. She's adjusting well to her fresh locale but is romantically lonely, despite the presence nearby of best friend GiGi. One Halloween she encounters a green-skinned woman, Allegra, dressed as a witch on her way to a children's reading, and the attraction between them is immediate and overpowering. That night they attend a Halloween party, then go back to Kate's home and make love. The following morning when Kate wakes Allegra is gone, and over ensuing days and weeks all that Kate has of what she assumed would be a lifelong love are bittersweet memories and the occasional delivered gift.

At length GiGi spurs her to track down Allegra. Kate is at first revolted to discover that what she assumed was a cosmetic effect is genuinely green skin – that Allegra is truly a being of supernatural origin, one of a whole community of them living in and around Broome. But in due course love conquers all ...

This is an enjoyable enough romantic comedy (with an extremely explicit four-page sex scene in the middle seeming somewhat incongruous), and the fantasy elements – of which there are many more than noted here – are well blended into the rest of the froth. One does tire a little of the innuendo-ridden badinage not just between the two lovers but in virtually every conversation between the women of Broome, an astonishingly high proportion of whom appear to be gay; weak double entendres can be fun in real-life conversation but are not so much fun to read. Otherwise this deliberately lightweight novel is readable and really quite jolly.

—Infinity Plus