Part I:The Events Leading Down to Biography: On Writing Kornbluth

Twenty or more years ago ... how did it feel, the haunting, at first?

I noticed nothing — except that while sitting in a Greyhound bus heading east from Wisconsin I felt a growing fascination with the intelligence and humor put into play in the short stories before my eyes — for I felt dazzled, truly, by several; delighted, by others. They amused and surprised that ambitious, impetuous, blindly self-assured, and often overly critical person which I was, and to some degree still am. I knew the writer's name well enough — for while I read books generally, I gravitated toward writings about science fiction of the so-called Golden and Silver ages that were before my time, and of the New Wave that was perpetually ebbing; and from these sources I knew that this writer struck a nerve: for if others saw opportunity to invoke his name then they did so.

I knew and admired his writing before this — or thought I did. I stood where Van Wyck Brooks's Oliver Allston did, who "had known 'all about' writers before he knew the writings of the writers themselves." I think all of us, before older and more willing to admit our limitations, believe we encompass more within our personal spheres than we do within our hemispheres. I think moreover that among those who grew up liking science fiction in the late 1960s to early '70s, as I did, such an attitude arose in an utterly natural way — or a seemingly natural way, just as aquarium fish given their color-enhancing flakes display their "natural" brilliance. I believed in my own natural colors, as other youths do of themselves; and I think I was, indeed, brilliant — not due to my literary diet but due to my diet's additives. I had taken in my flakes and grown attractively reflective. As to my knowing and admiring this writer? These were more scales.

Fifteen years before this, The Best of C.M. Kornbluth had entered my life at age 17, just I before boarded a Greyhound leaving Kansas City for college. In my bag I packed the Science Fiction Book Club edition whose official publication date was September, 1976 — the month I left home and also left the fantasy small-press scene within which I had been finding my early identity as a writer. How much and how carefully I read that Best of I have small idea. That I had the book club edition stood in the book's way — for I would learn through the years how cheapness of presentation affects how eagerly I dip into text. That it was a collection, moreover, meant I could take it in portions and perhaps never take it in whole. That it had story introductions, too, offered a minor obstacle: for I had been maturing as a reader exposed to a publishing scene upon which Harlan Ellison cast a long shadow. I had the habit already of reading through a volume's introductions; and, feeling the satisfaction of that accomplishment, only later or sometimes never would read the works introduced. The introduction-and-story model, I think, had acquired its power from television. Printed-matter editors envied the impact of the Host before the Show: for the cumulative effect of the host's recurring appearances versus the one-time-only appearance of the particular show gave the host a fixed place in memory — no matter if greater care, effort, and artistry had gone into the individual shows themselves. With collections and anthologies of the 1970s and later, if I did read a story in a collection, it almost always meant I had just finished re-reading the introduction.

It remains strangely vivid to me that during my first term at Beloit my college friend Brian Klein borrowed this book and, when returning it, quoted humorously from "The Advent on Channel Twelve." What, I asked, about the famous "The Marching Morons"? He liked that and others — and unlike me had seen a televised version of "The Little Black Bag" — but at the moment he felt taken by "Advent." I re-read that story then — and ended up re-reading that adroit, seemingly lightweight miniature more times than I did any other in the collection. Poetry and Asian philosophy interested me. I had started studying Confucius and Lao Tzu already at Ottawa University in Kansas, and appreciated small forms and expressive compression. I had no idea, since not so informed by the introduction, that "Advent" came from among the writer's last crop of stories. Nor would I learn until decades had passed that his late stories included other such miniatures. His then-agent Harry Altshuler used the word "beautiful" in reference to at least one.

Similarly, over a decade later, on that eastbound Greyhound away from Wisconsin, I had no clue that the collection in my hand, A Mile Beyond the Moon, was another product of the writer's last year. I found no information on its cover beyond general evaluations. "Here is science fiction at its peak" — generic book-cover nonsense that, to my surprise, met with my agreement. "These stories have helped to set the highest standards of modern science fiction" — these words, too, appeared there, attributed to the New York Herald Tribune.

I find it sadly amusing, now, to re-read these words. They helped decide me on buying the Manor Books paperback at a Milwaukee used-book store before setting out on the next leg of my bus trip. Anthony Boucher wrote them. The Tribune fell within his territory. I know now that Boucher's help and influence were immeasurably important in that ending period of Cyril Kornbluth's life. Boucher, in fact, had helped Cyril devise small changes in "Advent" to answer an editor's quibbles. He helped Cyril through revisions of the strange and wonderful "Ms. Found in a Chinese Fortune Cookie" — and must have influenced likewise the story that first made me sit up and take serious, fascinated notice, there on the Greyhound: "The Events Leading Down to the Tragedy." Boucher must have been the force behind the act that should have saved Cyril's life — the act of giving Cyril compatible work to do at The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. How eerily strange I find it now that, in that used bookstore in Milwaukee, Tony Boucher was there to reach out and open my soul just wide enough to let in a ghost.

This occurred in the late 1980s or early '90s. The delight I experienced in my Greyhound encounter turned easily into an abiding respect for the fiction.

I thought I should find an open door into the past, allowing me now to see, and to begin understanding, the man behind the words. I found only a few doors leading back, however — partially ajar, but not as if from opening. Shutting, rather.

That Cyril Kornbluth, not just his works, struck a nerve among readers became evident to me. Why, then, this sense of the closing door? For that matter, why this sense of a wall that required a door? The more I pursued my multiplying questions the more I discovered puzzles and contradictions swirling around his memory, still in motion despite his absence from our world for four decades and more. Some questions became what seemed my personal burden, by the time the '90s ended. As the next decade passed they lost none of their compelling nature and in some cases seemed more urgently pressing than ever. I committed myself, then, at last, to an effort to unravel what mysteries I could and to share my findings with readers.

End, Part One.

Part II: The Events Leading Down to Biography: On Writing Kornbluth

When I first discussed the idea of writing a book on Kornbluth with Mark Durr of McFarland & Co., an academic publisher, the obstacles still reared before me that had stopped my having made the attempt earlier — above all, the dearth of documentary materials that might support the writing of a life. Were I to undertake the book I could only follow the course of the writings themselves, accepting publication chronology for a narrative skeleton. This offered promise enough — for it would allow me to explore the motifs and themes in Kornbluth's fiction as they developed, and to identify alterations to his texts imposed after his death. My book would fall short of offering a full biography, and instead would point the way toward such a life being written. My book, I thought, would raise questions without putting many to rest. On the other hand it could establish a beginning factual basis for later studies, thereby commencing the work of lifting Kornbluth and his days of brilliance and sorrow above the vagaries of foggy memory and convention-corridor hearsay.

What does the C.M. Kornbluth name conjure, among those unacquainted with my book? Some know him as a writer who died at a youthful age 34 in 1958 after shoveling snow. Some know that in his teenage years he wrote with surprising maturity and was a founding member of the Futurians, an early fan group. Some know he contributed memorably to 1950s science fiction magazines. Some know he drank a lot — or believe they know this. Some know his short stories are superior to his novels — or, again, believe this to be true. If they know him at all they know him as co-author of a popular and often-reprinted 1953 novel.

Recently on the Internet I noticed someone who refers to "The Space Merchants by Frederik Pohl," repeatedly. I feel safe in thinking that some readers know Kornbluth not at all.

Pohl became the famous one of the collaborative pair, especially in the 1960s after a surprise boost came from outside the field — from Kingsley Amis — and in the 1970s when his own star as a writer was rising. Kornbluth's name thereafter became subsidiary to Pohl's, in the public eye. Even today what can be gleaned from Pohl's introductory materials comprises most readers' picture of Kornbluth; and some still turn to Pohl's memoir, The Way the Future Was, hoping to find more information. Kornbluth's rare appearances in those pages, however, makes it seem he figured in Pohl's life in only some tangential way. In addition, to readers well acquainted with the field's history, some among Pohl's accounts ring oddly. In describing an event famous in fan circles, when six Futurians were barred from attending the first Worldcon, Pohl relates, "When we came to Bahai Hall, Don Wollheim, Johnny Michel, Bob Lowndes, Jack Gillespie and I were turned away." Since Pohl recalled Bahai, not Caravan Hall where the event actually took place, forgetfulness may explain his omitting the other excluded Futurian. Cyril Kornbluth's being part of that group must have made little impression on him.

Prior to 2010, readers found only a few accounts of Kornbluth's life and works in reference works dedicated to novelists in general or to science fiction ones. While of the accounts some had fair accuracy, others were sketchy, inaccurate, or skewed. Readers lacked means for judging between them. Since many in the science fiction field had come to regard Kornbluth as Pohl's particular friend, accounts that fell most in line with the surviving writer's tended to find favor.

Curious souls, however, could also turn to Damon Knight's 1977 memoir The Futurians, and find there a different Kornbluth — one who rises for the first time into the imagination as a nearly tangible character. Of all writers who knew Cyril and then wrote about him, Knight came nearest to attempting biography. As a later member of the Futurians, Knight knew the early Cyril as much by reputation as by personal acquaintance — so perhaps not well. Being younger and newer, Knight remained outside the writing-critique circle Kornbluth organized within Donald Wollheim's broader Futurian circle. By the time Knight was completing his memoir, however, he could offer a portrait none others could — for he was sole surviving Futurian who also held a place in The Five, the incredibly closely-knit group of 1956-7 writers at whose center stood Kornbluth. Three of its members rose to the first rank in science fiction in the years after his death.

That Damon as biographer would have met with Cyril's approval seems to me likely, not only because of The Five but because of the Milford conference: for when Knight helped organize it he kept Kornbluth's writing-critique circle in mind as an inspiration. Most tellingly, when Cyril chose a writer to introduce his first story collection, 1954's The Explorers, he named Knight. Somehow, between Ian Ballantine and Pohl, the honor ended up deflected to another. I learned this fact after Damon's death. Whether he ever knew that Cyril had wanted him for the task, I cannot say. I hope he knew.

Despite the sketchy facts available — even Damon's account in The Futurians tantalizes more than satisfies — prior to 2010 many readers all the same succumbed to a fascination with Kornbluth. They sought his works in their original published forms or in the occasional reprints. Signs of significant interest appeared — in 1990, when Phil Stephensen-Payne and Gordon Benson, Jr., published a careful bibliography, and in 1997, when the New England Science Fiction Association published a massive collection of Kornbluth's solo short fiction, with completist ambition. Between those dates I published a few numbers of my own fanzine, at first producing each individual copy on a dot-matrix printer — consciously hearkening back to hectograph page-by-page days of early Fandom.

In Kornblume: Kornbluthiana I aired questions, hoping the zine would turn into a panel discussion, or a group interview. Despite the zine's microscopically small circulation, the conversation that it put into motion — "Kornbluthery," Ursula Le Guin called it — inched toward answers. To my surprise it did arrive at a few. Unexpected aspects of his story emerged, as well. I learned that some individuals still cared about Cyril Kornbluth, the man, with surprising depth of feeling, nearly forty years after his death. His presence exerted such continuing force that they felt unable to share with me some aspects of their lives, or Cyril's. Virginia Kidd, one such, took her memories to the grave. To have Kornblume appear in her mailbox, however, seemed to bring her a small share of happiness, or perhaps relief.

I believe Virginia felt as I would, over time. Cyril, though gone, lived.

End, Part Two.

New Essay in Cascadia Subduction Zone

In October an essay of mine appeared that I have been meaning to call to readers' attentions. For me, the topic has importance.

It had disappointed me that after its publication C.M. Kornbluth failed to spur some feminist critic to begin the process of rescuing Cyril Kornbluth from the ill usage he has at times suffered from feminists. In the book I present ample evidence showing that Cyril exhibited a sexually egalitarian attitude; and I show how his writing suffered alterations that reflected poorly on him.

I also presented evidence showing where to place blame for these alterations. Frederik Pohl admitted to them, by and large. To my eyes the changes reflected so chauvinistic an attitude that as a critic I saw no alternative: my observations belonged in my book. I was writing cultural criticism, which combines biography, history and criticism; and to leave out my literary evaluations would have amounted to undermining my own structure.

Thanks to encouragement from Hal Davis to break my silence, and the agreeability of the Wiscon programming committee, I gave a talk in Madison in the spring offering my perspective. (And thanks to Mary Rickert, among others, for taking it in.) I had labored——even at the convention itself, banging away at an old manual typewriter——at shaping my talk to work as an oral presentation: so when Timmi Duchamp expressed interest in publishing it in Cascadia Subduction Zone, she presented me with many questions and suggestions. I ended up re-envisioning it, not just rewriting it, for publication, and truthfully made some important adjustments, and introduced as well one new discovery. As a consequence this published version overshadows the spoken one.

This essay discusses, among other matters, "visibly invisible collaboration," Judith Merril, Mary Byers-Kornbluth, George Barr McCutcheon, and structural feminism in Graustarkian novels. It describes some among Pohl's changes to Kornbluth texts, although without repeating analyses made in CMK, such as the examination of "Trouble in Time." It also discusses a situation that I had somewhat suspected before and confirmed after publication of my book——that the reputation of a novel I consider second-rate, The Space Merchants, rose as high as it did because readers thought it was the same book as the longer and quite Kornbluthian Gravy Planet. (As you might imagine, I deeply rue the fact that the Library of America republished, and in a sense canonized, The Space Merchants.) The new discovery I mention above, by the way, related to Joanna Russ and that worse-than-lackluster Pohl and Kornbluth production, Search the Sky.

My title: "Seeing C.M. Kornbluth as Gender-Egalitarian (For Those Who Have Seen Him as Anything But)." The magazine: The Cascadia Subduction Zone (www.thecsz.com), October 2013, 3:4. My thanks to Hal, Susan Groppi, Mary, Timmi, and Lew Gilchrist.

Cheers ...

Thoughts Written after Frederik Pohl's Death

(I wrote the following on September 2, 2013. I chose not to post them in my blog at the time. Whatever my opinions of Pohl as a man or a writer, I feel respect and affection for certain members of his extended family——in one case deceased, and in another, living. A long moment of quiet——even if after two years of quiet already, on my part——seemed appropriate.)

The news of Frederik Pohl's death has felt strange, settling in: for I have known it would happen soon——whatever "soon" may be. I have been out of touch with news of Pohl's condition; but the thought kept reappearing in my mind, in recent months, that I should prepare myself with some short essay about him, against the eventuality. Not that I did——perhaps because that same notion had been intruding on my thoughts, now and then, for years.

At the point in writing C.M. Kornbluth when I was ready to speak to Fred, and to see whether or not he would turn me down a second time for an interview about Cyril, I called his house and learned that he was in the hospital, due not to illness but frailty. The family feared death might well come for him. I would have been acting rudely, had I kept calling to see if he had come home: for what frail man would want to answer tough questions about events of half a century past? I left that phone number unused, afterwards. My book focused on Cyril, after all; and I doubted Fred remembered anything that he had not put down in print already that he would feel willing to share with me. I knew in addition that his memory, even before this hospitalization, was unreliable.

The questions being left unasked will remain so, of course. Pohl's comments on matters concerning events in the 1930a, 1940s and 1950s, however, will continue to reverberate——for he has left us correspondence from these times——the archived correspondence that allowed me to write about matters that beforehand I had feared would find no place in my study. As the book's few readers know, it rests upon a sturdy backbone of documentation.

It stands because I based its structure upon fact.

At the time I was finishing CMK, knowing of Pohl's frailty, it did enter my mind that my book, which tells quite a different story from the ones he had told over the years, might affect him to the point of altering the balance between his health and his frailty. I felt it might be best if the book slipped quietly into the world, without my making the normal efforts at publicity that might help make it a success. Pohl, if indeed so frail, might never know the book existed. His protective family might shield him, should the news of publication came out sufficiently quietly.

Two other reasons urged me toward my avoiding publicity. The book's writing had put me into debt: so I had a purely practical reason, nearly a necessity, to avoid even convention appearances. Another reason, however, some might call irrational. To me it carried real weight, all the same. I had lived with it since the mid-1990s, when several senior writers advised me to tread with extreme care around Pohl. He exerted tremendous power within the field in which, at the time, I newly ranked as a professional. Many of my questions even at that time concerned Pohl's actions; and his looming presence made it seem impossible to ask those questions in public. In effect my wariness of Pohl silenced me——and the tensions surrounding those questions, and my being haunted by them, made it nearly impossible for me to continue pursuing the writing career that I had begun to establish. It amounted to madness, to allow such questions to overthrow my fiction career. Yet I did, and they did.

I have written of being at sea for many years——constantly achieving in minor ways, at this, at that——but at sea: and the derailment of my soul from its fiction-writing mode of expressing itself fell at the beginning of that long period. I was haunted. I was insane, even if in the quietest possible manner. One or the other, or both.

The warnings to me about Pohl had been meant genuinely; and in 2010 they proved of more relevance than my fears of causing apoplexy in a frail elder. Pohl, after a time, learned of my book——but grew incensed enough at it that, according to his blog, he never finished reading it. In an e-mail to me he raised the issue of a lawsuit. In his blog he began a campaign against me——effectively, so far as I could see. Quite a number of individuals leapt to his defense, with academics writing "reviews" for professional journals making odd assertions, such as the one that my book contains no literary criticism. Non-academics posted pathetically negative noises on Amazon, while fellow science fiction writers made comments at his blog site, including a surprisingly scatological one, in closing ranks with Pohl against me. Pohl himself used the words "forces of evil," linking this phrase to one of his postings about Mark Rich.

I took this in silence, by and large——even though I had faith that the integrity of my work stood effectively against Pohl's threat of lawsuit. A non-provocatory stance suited the situation, to my mind.

My silence did establish for me, however, a vivid picture of Pohl's power within the field. For no one, to my knowledge, stood up for me, in public, against him.

Some, however, stood up for the book.

Most importantly, the book itself continued standing.

Would I have given so willingly of myself, and so fully, to create it as an edifice, had I meant it to fall? I could remain silent; others would remain silent: yet what I built would continue as I built it.

After a time, Pohl, too, fell silent about the matter——at least in public.

Did his e-mailed threat of a lawsuit still ring in my mind?

Yes. It did.

For all these intervening months.

The night after his death's announcement, the memorial comments began. "Death of a giant." "Last of the greats." "I knew him when."

Many, many will have heartfelt, wonderful thoughts and memories to share, as is fitting and proper. Their Fred Pohl had passed away.

As for me, sometime that night I felt a lightening sensation——a shifting and lifting of a weight I had borne long enough to ignore and nearly forget about.

For a threat made against me was ceasing its constant pressure downwards upon my shoulders.

For my Fred Pohl, too, had passed away.

A Random Surfacing of Twain

A day ago, Saturday, we were at a rain-drenched auction here in the west of Wisconsin where we bought a little of this, a little of that. Near the end, when our small Saturn wagon was about full, I bought a large, cubical box of books, mostly children's.

This afternoon when looking through them I found one of those charming collections of sayings and quotations that Peter Pauper press used to do so well. This particular one appeared beneath the Hallmark imprint.

A Treasury of Mark Twain ... not a collection of stories; just short observations and asides.

In opening the small book this evening one quotation caught my eye:

"Few slanders can stand the wear of silence."

When I published C.M. Kornbluth: The Life and Works of a Science Fiction Visionary I did find myself attacked by one of Kornbluth's several erstwhile collaborators ... the only surviving one, naturally. This erstwhile collaborator of Kornbluth claimed not to know me, although he and I had kept in contact, on and off, since the middle 1990s.

Anyway ... I have been reading Twain short works for my bedtime reading, recently. So I opened this little gift book with pleasure. When I came across this saying, provenance unlisted, I smiled ... for I was thinking back upon my strategy in the face of public attack.

For when my name was spoken with derision in public, in a famous author's blog ...

I deemed my best option, for the time being, to be silence.

Cheers ...

At the Sunday Market

In Baraboo a few days ago, at the Sunday Market, I was chatting with a young artist visiting from Chicago. Learning that he had enlisted before enrolling in the Art Institute, I expressed pleasure at learning one can survive the brainwashing involved in military service. That someone should want to be an artist seems to me a sure sign of survival. He understood what I was saying and uttered what must have been a survival mantra, along these lines: "Don't eat the eggs and don't drink the milk." I hope I have this correct in substance, at least, in thinking back over a busy trio of days. Drugs for inhibiting adrenaline production which are mixed in the milk and eggs, he said, helped in the process of crushing the individual being remade into a soldier.

He and his friend, another artist, had already commented on how much my voice reminded them of an Art Institute teacher -- "He even laughs like him," she said to him -- which made me ask about that teacher's area of expertise; so when the topic of brainwashing came up I felt free to speak of my own area of special interest in science fiction; and I asked if the 1950s interested him. Since the decade did, I spoke of a novel that tells of a soldier's emergence from brainwashing, presented as science fiction adventure. The novel is Gunner Cade.

"This is so weird," the young man said. "You're the second person in five days to tell me I should read that novel."

I must have felt as startled as he by the coincidence. Since he had not learned the book's author, I wrote it out: Cyril Judd (Cyril Kornbluth and Judith Merril).

I mentioned that I had, only a few days before, happened to open Gunner Cade again, and had been struck by its opening paragraph: for in depicting the machinery behind Cade's morning waking it suggests so well the world-machine that wholly encompasses his life, and sets for him his horizons:

"Far below the sleeping loft, in ancient cellars of reinforced concrete, a relay closed in perfect silent automaton adjustment; up through the Chapter House, the tiny noises multiplied and increased. The soft whir of machinery in the walls; the gurgle of condensing fluid in conditioners; the thumping of cookers, where giant ladles stirred the breakfast mash; the beat of pistons pumping water to the top."

"Now I really have to read that novel," he said after I described the paragraph.

This morning the thought comes to me that Cyril might have produced a work of stunning intensity had he tackled this novel solo. Even so he outlined and presented it to Judy as a project to work on together to earn some fairly quick cash for the household. He may have felt, consciously or unconsciously, unready to confront his military experience in full. Some direct memories emerged in one of his first solo novels, The Naked Storm, written around the same time -- but only as fragments. Memories of the whole life-changing experience surged too powerfully within him, as of yet, for him to reduce it to dimensions he could grasp, to express them more fully as an artist.

This morning, too, a memory strikes me -- of a small item the young man found in our booth. He reacted to it with enthusiasm. A small, wooden three-piece box, the old thing once served, I believe, as a match-safe. The young man conceived of a different use related to his art-making.

It strikes me only now that the match safe was shaped much like a standing-upright bullet.

Diaz, Zelazny, Kornbluth

A few days before I learned that Junot Diaz was to receive a MacArthur fellowship I happened to be reading his recent New Yorker story, and because of it was thinking of writing an essay about encounters with the fictional structure called the confessional.

A story will sometimes leave the reader unaware of its confessional nature until the end. That, in part, gives the ending its effectiveness: for it offers unexpected relief from what is now understood to be the downward gyre of the protagonist's life. It offers not resolution to a problem but the beginning of an answer.

I remember in the 1980s watching a Disco movie in a TV rerun, to gain a glimpse into the hoopla that raged through lives far glitzier than mine: Saturday Night Fever, I suspect. I remember being struck, at the end, by its confessional structure -- making a pop-culture movie, nakedly commercial in its intent and design, a matter for lingering contemplation -- at least for my erratic and eclectic organ of retrospection.

While that insight had strange immediacy, it took me longer to see it other places where it existed -- such as in Roger Zelazny's Jack of Shadows, the novel of his to which I have returned most often over the decades. That delay in recognition may have come about because of having read it several times before learning much about fictional structure.

Several aspects of "The Cheater's Guide to Love" ring chimes. Although its women characters seem ciphers, often described by the narrator in stereotypical lingo, they perform the Woman of Insight role. That they do so offstage lessens that role to some degree, perhaps. A certain amount of offstage machinations by the Woman Who Knows, however, may be necessary in such stories.

For now I am opting for a blog entry -- the essay may never come about, after all -- because of a different chime being rung. It occurs to me that Gravy Planet's ending gives a confessional arc to the whole. Cyril Kornbluth had already employed structures similar to the confessional; and his shorter story "The Marching Morons," which seems to contain the germ of the novel, might be read as a modified confessional in which the ending note of nascent hope is, instead, a note of nascent understanding without hope.

These thoughts comes as a surprise because the edited-down version of Gravy Planet, published as The Space Merchants, reads more simply as a romance, ending as it does at a point of romantic happiness. I do need to re-read both novels to confirm these impressions. If true, an irony arises in that the female lead in Gravy Planet endures reduction to a stereotypical cipher in The Space Merchants -- so hardly a worthy figure for romance.

As I have noted elsewhere, I have been unable to determine when or if Cyril learned that Space Merchants was significantly shortened and altered from Gravy Planet.

Cheers ...

Zebrowski's Essay on the Kornbluth Biography

During my lengthy silence here at "Vines, Wines and Lines," a few reviews of C.M. Kornbluth continued appearing. Among them is what may be the single weightiest thus far: "A Sense of Something in Him," by George Zebrowski, in the October-November, 2011, Free Inquiry.

For its title, Zebrowski borrowed a phrase from the likewise thoughtful and emotionally engaged F&SF review by James Sallis.

Zebrowski's quiet, reflective tone suits his expansive approach to his subject. Given a readership at Free Inquiry that might be unfamiliar with Kornbluth's name, and that might be foggily aware, at best, that the practice of writing science fiction may have led to the production of works of art, Zebrowski's approach seems calculated to inform and interest intelligent readers of any stripe. "A Sense of Something in Him" is as much an essay written in defense of science fiction as an examination of the book.

Zebrowski seems to mention more of the thematic strands in the biography than do previous reviewers -- or at least different ones. I was especially pleased that he recognizes the importance of the book's final chapter.

In writing the book, my own realization -- my own ability to embrace the ideas in that last chapter -- came actually too slowly. The understanding I exhibit by the end, as a result, makes little appearance in some earlier chapters, such as in those tracing the split-personality thematic element in Kornbluth's works. Those chapters I wrote at a time when I had meager biographical knowledge of the man.

I am pleased, too, by an observation Zebrowski makes, which some would-be detractors may not want to hear, but should: "Notes covering the vast sourcing of this book fill the oversized pages 383-439," Zebrowski writes. "Pohl's material is drawn from his own papers and letters at the Special Collections Research Center of the Syracuse University Library."

Zebrowski brings to this essay-review a personal note that I, at least, appreciate. This and the Sallis essay-review both seem to validate an observation in my book -- which, as it happens, Zebrowski quotes: "An impassioned curiosity takes hold of readers when they encounter Kornbluth's work." I was moved to assert this after meeting some readers who were deeply intrigued by Kornbluth because of the power of his stories. Being of a later generation than he was, their aesthetic appreciation was not based on commonality of cultural experience. Their life experiences were immeasurably different from his.

There remains much about Kornbluth that may remain forever unknown to us ... thus my "immeasurably." We tap into some of it in a passage I quote late in the book -- one from Algis Budrys, written in the 1970s, looking back and remembering a searingly emotional session of The Five.

Budrys understood completely. What a complex, beautiful human being Cyril Kornbluth was! I am grateful for essayists and reviewers like Zebrowski who have come to recognize this, too.

Cheers ...

Four Reasons for Silence

For quite some time it has been on my mind to make mild noises again in my quiescent blog.

A series of situations made it seem more appropriate to keep my thoughts unaired and publicly unshared, however.

Two years ago Martha and I were jointly leaving a job situation that had made the two of us a bit angry. Whatever reasons we may have had, why make uncomfortable protests that benefit no one?

During the same period, one of Cyril Kornbluth's collaborators started making unmeasured statements about my C.M. Kornbluth, and about me. The statements verged on the absurd. To avoid a fruitless war of meaningless pixels, even though observers were poised and eager to witness a war of words, electronic silence on the matter seemed my best option. I had devoted many years and had written hundreds of thousands of words in developing the picture offered by my book.

To have defended my book adequately would have meant repeating it, word for word, footnote by footnote.

Soon after this, "reviews" of my book began appearing on Amazon. The "reviewers" spoke in outrage or disgust about my book's contents while making it obvious they had not read it. In one case the reviewer stated outright that he had not read my book.

While one or two of these were expunged by the Amazon editors, I believe one or two remain.

A hallmark of these literary oddities, by these presuming "reviewers," is their insistence on trotting out the supposed facts of Kornbluth. They note that Kornbluth was a highly prolific writer, and that he drank a lot.

Readers of countless introductions to Kornbluth stories would gather these impressions. Those who gave my book a full reading, however, should feel considerable hesitation about standing behind either statement.

While Cyril was clearly capable of tossing off quality writing under pressure -- true of many among us -- his creative work reflected a studious and careful approach. He developed his capacity for careful literary work during his teen years. Later, in producing the works of his maturity, he labored and sometimes struggled; and he balanced his rough drafts, sometimes quickly produced, by subjecting them to intense and prolonged periods of consideration and revision.

His output per year, in the 1950s, was relatively low.

As to drinking ... Cyril does fall into the category of writers who drink. This category includes a huge group of us. Cyril seems not to fall into the category of writers who need to drink to write, however. His command of prose is durably precise, cogent and clear-headedly rational -- to an intimidating degree.

Worth noting, too, for those who have not read my book: Cyril went through several periods when the meager income that was coming in must have gone in its entirety to home and family expenses. For prolonged periods, drinking money must have been tough to come by. This seems especially, and painfully, to have been true near the end.

Those who trot out such "facts" about Cyril Kornbluth are drawing a picture of the poorly-known man from the image of a widely-known boy. In the small realm of late-1930s science fiction fandom, Cyril was a fairly famous teenager. Cyril's life as an adult, however, was almost entirely unknown until publication of my book.

I hope these "reviewers" are making that mistake. Otherwise they are being a bit too easy about insulting the man's memory.

Returning to silences ... early in 2011 I found that the judgeship for the World Fantasy Awards, which had been proposed to me the previous November, was becoming reality: so suddenly I was doing a great deal of reading which I felt I should not, as judge, be talking about in public. So, again, I felt encouraged to remain mum about matters on my mind.

In the same week that the WFA panel of judges was winding up its work, I accepted work at a vineyard -- eagerly, since between judging and maintaining house and garden I had almost zero income for a period of months.

This work offered perfect fodder for this blog.

The future of matters at the vineyard and winery, however, kept changing from week to week, sometimes day to day, due to the vagaries of the owner's changeable mind ... upsetting me considerably, at times ... making me feel uncomfortable writing about enough matters that I, again, felt ...

Cheers ...

Another Nod for the C.M. Kornbluth Biography

I am more than a little pleased to have the new book be noticed by the new reviewer for Analog.

For those who do not know, Analog: Science Fiction/Science Fact is a magazine that has published a great deal of fiction close to the core of what science fiction is and has been. While not a showcase for experimentalism or for literary-excellences-to-the-fore fiction, Analog has published fiction of mine which was, for me, challenging to imagine and challenging to execute.

My Analog stories seem particularly important in my quite-minor international literary profile. One story of mine from Amazing Stories was translated and published, without my permission, in Spain (it was a story stellar perhaps in concept but, I believe, less than stellar in execution: so the literary pirates undoubted received their comeuppance in the readers' reaction to their having stolen something so eminently not worth the stealing); and one story of mine from the short-lived Expanse saw translation and publication in China. From among my Analog stories two (to my knowledge) have been translated and published in Russian (in one case it even occurred with my permission), while another was translated and published in French.

In any case, I believe Analog has published more of my stories than any other single magazine ... and it has published several personal favorites from among my own stories ... and so as a magazine it holds reign over a region close to my heart. Never mind that the science fiction field's more lofty-nosed cognoscenti largely ignore the magazine's existence.

The new reviewer working under the banner of "The Reference Library" at Analog is Don Sakers, whom I have not, to my recollection, met in person. He has given quite a generous nod in the direction of my biography of Cyril Kornbluth.

I like this line in particular, from Saker's review: "A scholarly text (with the requisite 40 pages of notes) that reads like a novel, Rich's book is nothing short of a delight."

The review is located on-line at http://www.analogsf.com/20100708/reflig.shtml ...

Cheers ...

Culture of Collaboration

In Steven Silver's review, I like that he uses the phrase "culture of collaboration" in relation to the Futurians. Cyril's personality seems to have included a considerable appreciation for working in a cooperative manner. This stood him in good stead with the other Futurians, in learning the ropes of his craft while spending weekends in their company. It also put him in the position of having his talents being used to others' advantage, unfortunately. He was a writer of such conscious ability that I believe he knew what he was providing to his elders, including Wollheim, in terms of writing quality. At the same time, however, I believe he little realized how much he was giving away in terms of writing value.

In the biography, I begin the work of establishing to what degree the young Cyril Kornbluth wrote works which later would be attributed to other, senior writers.

The "collaborative culture" mainly involved Dirk Wylie/Harry Dockweiler, Richard Wilson, and Kornbluth, with Wollheim and others also participating. Perhaps because of his personal power in the group, the "collaborative" work involving Wollheim tended to be on a contractual basis -- which is why at least some of Kornbluth's writings disappeared from sight. Kornbluth's most important writing partnership during Futurian days was probably, indeed, with the Futurian chief -- although until Wollheim's papers become available it will likely remain unknown how many stories Kornbluth wrote that would end up attributed to the older Futurian.

Cheers ...

Short, and Huge

It will be interesting watching reviews as they appear -- presuming that more do appear -- to see what aspects of the book they choose to mention, out of the many presented in the biography. Some reviewers will come at it without realizing how many new topics are being addressed in the book, how many facts are being published that have never reached print before, and how many areas that were previously fogged over by historical obfuscation are being shown with some clarity for the first time. Most will have no idea to what degree such historical obfuscation was imposed upon Cyril's story by others whose careers impinged upon his, and whose careers were lifted and perhaps even created thanks to his literary muscle.

The scope of the biography took on ambitious proportions, during its writing -- and while I undoubtedly fell short in some areas, I can state as a simple factual matter that the resulting book contains an incredible amount of information. I say "incredible" because the amount still seems so to me -- even a year after finishing the task of completing the manuscript. The book, paperback, measures fifteen-sixteenths of an inch across the spine (according to the nifty brass-and-wood Craftsman caliper I picked up at an auction), has more than 400 pages of text comprising well over 200,000 words ... and it has thirty-four chapters, each of which is split into various subsections ... so how could any single review of a few hundred words length, or even a few thousand words length, consider all its aspects?

Such a short life, and so huge a subject.

Cheers ...

Author Copies

Although I've received scant personal comment on C.M. Kornbluth: The Life and Works of a Science Fiction Visionary since January and early February, that was a fairly heady period of time. I had only a few extra copies at hand from McFarland -- and I still have yet to buy more, since the investment is so costly, at the level necessary to obtain a reasonable author's discount ... so I had to pick and choose to whom to send them. My parents had to receive a copy, of course: without their support we would never have managed the move a few years ago, here to Cashton; and we would have been much harder pressed to survive the downturn of the past two years, after the magazines for which I wrote a number of monthly columns shriveled up and blew away in a chill December breeze.

The other extras went to a few good souls who had helped me out -- not to all of them, since I had only that handful of copies. From one of those people I heard nothing; and I have yet to learn, actually, if he saw it and appreciated what it represented, before his death. Phil Klass was quite ill and hospitalized, around the time those early copies arrived. I can only hope Fruma showed him the book, and perhaps pointed out the ways in which I put to use his memories -- especially in the final chapter, hidden at the end of the short "analysis" subsection of the book. There, I drew upon Phil's experiences as a way of suggesting an important aspect of Cyril's character. The option of writing that chapter would have been closed to me without knowledge of the particular way in which Phil faced the trial of his involvement in World War II, and the way in which he dealt with the implications of that trial's ending.

Cheers ...

Kornbluth Book Progress

On March 1, C.M. Kornbluth: The Life and Works of a Science Fiction Visionary officially went into print. That day, feeling I should do something about it, I started a blog at Goodreads to keep track of the book's progress. Since "Vines, Wines and Lines" is my main blog, however, I figured it would do no harm and perhaps do some good to have the postings appear here, as well. The following is based on my first two postings at Goodreads, on March 1 and 2. I am not planning to post there daily.

Since fiction books by both Mark Rich and Ezra Pines (an alter ego of mine) have gone unreviewed, by and large, within science fiction, I am curious if this book's fate will be different. I personally feel this to be an important biography. If none of the major magazines in the field treat it as such, however, the book's chances at having impact are greatly diminished.

The first review of the book -- a thoughtful and positive one -- seems to have been one written by Herve Hauck (my apologies for having no accent markings available) for his Guide Hervelen des Ouvrages de Reference des Science Fiction -- which I only discovered this last week. He posted his review on January 27. Of the biography he writes that it "est extremement solide et s'appuie sur de nombreuses sources (ouvrages divers, interviews avec les protagonistes ou la famille, echanges de courrier, documents archives). Le resultat est un ensemble d'une grande solidite factuelle et d'une lecture tres interessante d'autant plus que la narration integre parfaitement le cadres plus general de l'histoire du genre."

On the other hand, the first print review of C.M. Kornbluth, having appeared in a publication with a February cover date, may have appeared at the same time as, or before, the French review. This is no more than a paragraph in Reference & Research Book News, February, 2010, page two (which I know about thanks to Lori Tedder at McFarland & Company). It is but three lines long -- so hardly more than a notice.

What distinguishes this from an earlier on-line "review" of the book, of a paragraph's length, which was plainly not a review since its author, even within so small a space, made it clear he had not read the book, perhaps not even skimmed it?

The third sentence of this one is as follows: "Kornbluth was an unusual man of unusual habits and views, and Rich incorporates those traits into his biography of the humorous and cynical writer who continues to be regarded as one of the great science fiction authors."

That sentence, a fairly complex one, covers a lot of ground. It does so in a manner, moreover, that suggests at least some reading of the text. This News seems to have a particular format to be followed, for each title: and within that format this "news" includes review-type evaluation.

Cheers ...