The Very Best of Barry N Malzberg
Table of Contents
Introduction
A Galaxy Called Rome
Agony Column
Final War
The Wooden Grenade
Anderson
As Between Generations
Death to the Keeper
State of the Art
The Only Thing You Learn
Leviticus: In the Ark
Police Actions
Report to Headquarters
The Shores of Suitability
Hop Skip Jump
To Mark the Times We Had
What I Did to Blunt the Alien Invasion
Shiva
Rocket City
Tap-Dancing Down the Highways and Byways of Life, etc.
Coursing
Blair House
Quartermain
Playback
Corridors
Icons
Something from the Seventies
Le Croix
The Men’s Support Group
Out from Ganymede
Kingfish
Morning Light
The Men Inside
Standing Orders
Most Politely, Most Politely
Moishe in Excelsis
Heliotrope Bouquet Murder Case
The Lady Louisiana Toy
Acknowledgments
Introduction by Joe Wrzos
Nonstop Press • New York
The Very Best of Barry N. Malzberg
© Copyright 2013 Barry N. Malzberg
Introduction © Copyright 2013 Joe Wrzos
First Edition: 2013
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Introduction
THE FIRST TIME I met Barry Malzberg was in New York City at the 1976 Lunacon, held that year to honor the 50th Anniversary of Amazing Stories, the world’s first all-science fiction magazine, for which both of us had served as editors. And, like any one of the many bright-eyed fans milling about — the very first thing he did, after posing us politely, was to snap a memento photo (the pre-cellphone kind, of course) of my wife, my two sons, and myself. Tall, dark-haired, lean of build, even gracious, not only didn’t he look like the enfant terrible then being critically excoriated for his iconoclastic novel Beyond Apollo (winner of the 1973 John W. Campbell Memorial Award) or “A Galaxy Called Rome,” an ingenious exercise in “recursive” sf writing (science fiction about science fiction itself!), but he certainly didn’t behave like one. Far from it. So much for the almost universal tendency to judge an author by the color of his writing.
Ironically enough, Malzberg never intended to be a science fiction writer in the first place. True, as an urchin growing up in Brooklyn, he had discovered some pretty good storytelling in both Galaxy and Astounding. But in that period, sniffy mainstream critics still tended to ignore the genre, as did most aloof academics as well. So, older and wiser, he cannily earned his B.A. at Syracuse University, supplementing it with a year as a Shubert Foundation Playwright Fellow. After which — now apparently fiercely ambitious — he set his literary sights higher than genre level, aiming his early plays and stories at loftier markets. The plays, hopefully, at Broadway (or at least Off-Broadway); the fiction, first at the literary quarterlies, and, then at the more upscale (and better-paying) slicks like Esquire and The Atlantic. He probably also tried some of the more prestigious book publishers like Random House, but there too the results were not encouraging. Fittingly, though, in 1973, less than a decade later, after he had achieved a measure of success in the sf field, Random House itself came calling, now eager to publish Malzberg’s prescient Beyond Apollo, his risky taboo-shattering challenge to the basic premise and gung ho spirit of NASA’s military-industrial, manned space program. And this, at a time when most of us were still basking vicariously in the afterglow of those exhilarating 1969 TV transmissions showing a space-suited Neil Armstrong ever so tentatively planting his historic out-sized boot prints on the powdery surface of the Moon, the first Earthling to do so (and an American, too!).
But before Beyond Apollo stirred up all that critical dust, Malzberg had already begun to make a notable, if limited, impact on the science fiction field with “We’re Coming Through the Window” (Galaxy, August 1967). The hilarious short-short about a hapless two-bit inventor, who concocts a homemade time machine but somehow manages (it’s a question of faulty calibrators, you see) to inundate his cramped little apartment with hundreds of replicas of himself, each of whom, desperately striving to rectify the situation, only makes things worse! Malzberg followed this promising debut with “Final War” (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, April, 1968), which he himself has capsulized as being “about an endless war in an ambiguous time fought for no reason.” Exceedingly well written, exhibiting many of the skills he’d already honed before entering the sf field, this relentless indictment of all-out absurdist conflict could well have been snapped up — had they been given first look — by any of the top literary quarterlies or slicks of that period. But, fortunately, science fiction, as it sometimes does, got there first.
Oddly enough (perhaps due to some conflict of interest), Malzberg’s early science fiction — including “Coming Through the Window” and “Final War” — wasn’t written under his own name, but as by “K.M. O’Donnell” (a “cover” he later discarded). The pseudonym was Malzberg’s oblique way of expressing fealty to pioneering sf writers Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore (“Lawrence O’Donnell” being one of their many joint pen names), whose masterfully original, elegantly crafted stories (especially those published during the 1940s) were, and have continued to be, a major if only indirect influence on almost every important sf writer since that time. Including Malzberg himself, who has often acknowledged his debt to Kuttner-Moore’s writings in general, and (I suspect) has also been deeply influenced, in particular, by their brilliantly revisionist novella, “Vintage Season” (Astounding Science Fiction, September, 1946), which with one masterly stroke changed the way “serious” sf writers (like Robert A. Heinlein, Jack Vance, and Robert Silverberg) would thenceforth handle the well-worn time travel theme.
With “Vintage Season,” Kuttner-Moore stripped the apparently exhausted time travel theme of all its outdated baggage, changing the perspective, giving the story a dark and decadent tone, one that makes its impact indelible. For instead of time travelers from the future (whether near or far distant) dropping into the present for the usual reasons — a bit of research, to profit, escape future justice, and often to try, usually futilely, to tamper with the Time Line — the story’s decadent party of tourists has made the journey solely for the thrill of being able to watch (up close and always at a safe distance) the utter destruction of a tranquil 1940s San Francisco as it is being suddenly destroyed by a giant meteor strike snuffing out the life of every one of its sleeping inhabitants. As to what kind of perverted future society could have spawned such corrupt vacationers, the story’s only clue is a subtle hint that in “their” stagnant culture, notions of a free society have lo
ng ago been displaced by some kind of corrupt monarchy sustained by super-technology, one indulging the depraved tastes of its privileged classes. And this is precisely the kind of unflinchingly dour viewpoint, with present-day civilization possibly heading for decline, which Malzberg himself (skeptical about our own chances) sometimes adopts (at least in his fiction), as, for example, he so pyrotechnically does in “The Lady Louisiana Toy” (1993), a riff on Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination (1956), in the marvelous virtual crucifixion novella “Le Croix” (1980), and no doubt elsewhere.
The question of influences aside, in the science fiction field alone, ever since the 1960s (and at a consistently high level), Malzberg has been remarkably prolific, writing more than 200 stories, 30 novels, a plethora of essays, numerous articles, reviews, and introductions, besides somehow finding time to edit magazines like Amazing Stories and Fantastic, as well as almost a dozen genre anthologies. The range of his many subjects (in works both short and long) has also been richly diversified, including satiric scrutiny of the subtler perils of space travel, the insanity of warfare, the paradoxes of time travel, extrapolated urban nightmares, and a particularly ingenious series of “What if?” stories depicting what else might have happened at pivotal moments in the lives of famous poets, writers, composers, and heads of state. Like President John F. Kennedy, for instance, one of the author’s favorite topics, whose bloody assassination in 1963 seems to have become almost an obsession with Malzberg.
But despite all the rich diversity of Malzberg’s writings, his future status as an important literary figure (he long ago transcended the science fiction field, lifting the genre along with him as he did so) may not rest solely on his anti-manned-space flight warnings fiction. Most controversially on Beyond Apollo (whose initial impact, after subsequent limited vindication, has begun to fade), or on his unsettling recursive stories like Herovit’s World (1973), exposing the often spirit-crushing cost of dedicating one’s life to writing science fiction as a full-time career. Especially not advisable these days, at a time of low-circulation sf print magazines and the ever escalating digital ingestion not only of science fiction itself but of everything else into Singularity’s all-consuming Internet.
Nevertheless, as is generally the case, time’s weeding out forces — a consequence of changing critical standards, shifting popular tastes, and evolving cultural concerns — will inevitably determine “which” of Malzberg’s sf and non-genre writings will survive. And though there are many candidates, I, for one, feel pretty certain that among them will be the choicest of his Alternate Writers & Co. series, the best of the Alternate Kennedy stories, and — they’re too good to fade from sight! — his meldings (as, for example, in “Le Croix” and “Quartermain,”) of dystopian, time travel, and religious ecstasy themes.
In the Alternate Writers & Co. category, first place should probably go to Malzberg’s unjustly neglected major work, The Remaking Of Sigmund Freud (1985). In one of whose most delightful episodes, “Emily Dickinson Saved from Drowning,” the reclusive Belle of Amherst poetess is mischievously depicted as “selling out” to the masses, writing down for profit, and even touring the country for cash (stopping off in St. Louis, Missouri, for a brief but heated affair with a surprisingly “needy” Mark Twain). Only to end up perplexed and dismayed by a denunciatory letter she receives from Good Gray poet Walt Whitman, who, not deigning to mince words, roundly berates her for debasing her talent.
As for the very best in the Alternate Kennedy series, clearly one of the chief contenders would be “In the Stone House” (1992), Malzberg’s unstinting portrait, etched in acid, of the decline of a flawed political dynasty. In this particular variant, young Joseph Kennedy, Jr., doesn’t die in the war but returns safely, only to be forced by his father, Joseph, Sr., (and ahead of his younger brother Jack) to seek the Presidency. However, once in office, Joe, Jr. fails to measure up to his pater’s cynically corrupt expectations, the latter then seeing to it that his recalcitrant son isn’t reelected. In reprisal, and after Jack replaces him in the White House, the enraged ex-President (an excellent Veteran rifle marksman), secretes himself in the Dallas Texas Book Depository building and, waiting for his kid brother’s glistening motorcade to come in range, gets all set to put a bloody end to the odious Camelot story for good!
For the third category of Malzberg science fiction likely to hang on, sf stories with a religious theme, I have a hunch that “Quartermain” (1985) has the best chance of besting the competition (few in number as they may be in this subgenre). Narrated by the titular character, it graphically recounts his daring attempt to “escape” from a hellish 22nd Century existence as a mere “cog” in a technologically advanced, dystopian society. One controlled by cynical Administrators craftily manipulating the restless populace with “escape outlets” like the Lotteries, the Slaughter Docks, and, for those potentially seditious, like Quartermain, “replication” tests (actually scams), the passing of which could presumably lead to social advancement. Hoping to become a cult religious leader (and benefit from all the perks), Quartermain undergoes a harrowing simulation as Christ, resisting all manner of temptation, but despite all his suffering, the duplicitous test givers callously welch on the terms of agreement. The ironic moral of the story? “In the twenty-second century you can’t take anything seriously.” And if one acceptable definition of a classic story (of any type) is that with each rereading, it somehow glows brighter in memory, and in apprehension, then I’d say that Malzberg’s “Quartermain” fully qualifies.
A footnote. On how favorite writers, like Malzberg, can get under one’s skin. Once, I had a dream — I can’t seem to shake it — in which, inexplicably, I suddenly was reading a sleazy digest-sized magazine, a little fuzzy-looking in the dream, but I could still make out, quite clearly, that the contents page listed an “Alternate Malzberg” story, evidently the work of some envious rival. The burden of which seemed to be that early in his struggling career, the young Malzberg did go to grad school, did qualify and win that associate professorship at Extension U. (See Malzberg’s “The Shores of Suitability” which is included in this collection.) However, as an unintended consequence, he never did get to write the wonderful and controversial stories for which (in another reality) he’d become famous, or, depending upon one’s point of view, infamous. Stunned by this invidious “dream narrative,” I angrily shook myself awake, discovered that I was in a cold sweat, and, a trifle vexed, realized that it had only been my old unpredictable Id toying with me again. But then I remembered that in “my” reality, Malzberg had never sold out for a college professor’s subsistence level life, that he actually did get to write all those classic stories he dreamed of writing. And, calming down even more, I also, tangentially, recalled my first meeting with the author, at that 1976 Lunacon so long ago, where, happily he snapped pictures of selected celebrities and sundry. Which unfaded recollection, still green in memory, makes me wonder now: Whatever happened to those snapshots he took of me, my wife, and my kids?
Joe Wrzos
Saddle River, NJ
A Galaxy Called Rome
I
THIS IS NOT a novelette but a series of notes. The novelette cannot be truly written because it partakes of its time, which is distant and could be perceived only through the idiom and devices of that era.
Thus the piece, by virtue of these reasons and others too personal even for this variety of True Confession, is little more than a set of constructions toward something less substantial … and, like the author, it cannot be completed.
II
The novelette would lean heavily upon two articles by the late John Campbell, for thirty-three years the editor of Astounding/Analog, which were written shortly before his untimely death on July 11, 1971, and appeared as editorials in his magazine later that year, the second being perhaps the last piece which will ever bear his byline. They imagine a black galaxy which would result from the implosion of a neutron star, an implosion so mighty that gravitational force
s unleashed would contain not only light itself but space and time; and A Galaxy Called Rome is his title, not mine, since he envisions a spacecraft that might be trapped within such a black galaxy and be unable to get out … because escape velocity would have to exceed the speed of light. All paths of travel would lead to this galaxy, then, none away. A galaxy called Rome.
III
Conceive then of a faster-than-light spaceship which would tumble into the black galaxy and would be unable to leave. Tumbling would be easy, or at least inevitable, since one of the characteristics of the black galaxy would be its invisibility, and there the ship would be. The story would then pivot on the efforts of the crew to get out. The ship is named Skipstone. It was completed in 3892. Five hundred people died so that it might fly, but in this age life is held even more cheaply than it is today.
Left to my own devices, I might be less interested in the escape problem than that of adjustment. Light housekeeping in an anterior sector of the universe; submission to the elements, a fine, ironic literary despair. This is not science fiction however. Science fiction was created by Hugo Gernsback to show us the ways out of technological impasse. So be it.
IV
As interesting as the material was, I quailed even at this series of notes, let alone a polished, completed work. My personal life is my black hole, I felt like pointing out (who would listen?); my daughters provide more correct and sticky implosion than any neutron star, and the sound of the pulsars is as nothing to the music of the paddock area at Aqueduct racetrack in Ozone Park, Queens, on a clear summer Tuesday. “Enough of these breathtaking concepts, infinite distances, quasar leaps, binding messages amidst the arms of the spiral nebula,” I could have pointed out. “I know that there are those who find an ultimate truth there, but I am not one of them. I would rather dedicate the years of life remaining (my melodramatic streak) to an understanding of the agonies of this middle-class town in northern New Jersey; until I can deal with those, how can I comprehend Ridgefield Park, to say nothing of the extension of fission to include progressively, heavier gases?” Indeed, I almost abided to this until it occurred to me that Ridgefield Park would forever be as mysterious as the stars and that one could not deny infinity merely to pursue a particular that would be impenetrable until the day of one’s death.