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.

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

In the four or five years before the summer of 2008 I worked largely outside science fiction, writing steadily for toy- and antique-collector books and magazines, and pursuing part-time jobs that included antiquing. My partner Martha Borchardt and I also headed two central-Wisconsin rock bands, one electric and one acoustic. A car and the ability to drive it came into my life — in that order. When Martha and I used this novelty of mobility to move to Cashton, a village in the west of Wisconsin, band activity gave way to old-house maintenance. Unexpectedly, my mainstay magazines, for whom I wrote five to ten thousands of words per month, abruptly died. The Internet, whose first impact had been to open the gates for the editorial matter I supplied by the ream, now killed off print magazines at my two main publishers. Constantly looming deadlines had driven me forward for four years; and only when contracts appeared in my hands did I write my books. Having now neither deadlines nor contracts, when I began pursuing new ideas I felt skittish and uncentered, overly beset by small exigencies to labor with full concentration. Even so, in fits and starts, by 2008 I was returning to the kinds of writing that meant most to me.

That summer I drove to Denvention, the World Science Fiction Convention in Colorado. Roger Dutcher, an old friend from Beloit, town and not gown, came along to share experiences and expenses. My wallet being mostly empty, the commonplace illusion of plastic solvency buoyed me. Some hope-inspiring portents helped: for RedJack Books was launching my third story collection, Edge of Our Lives, during the event; and an ink drawing of mine that had hung at the 2007 World Fantasy Convention was a Chesley award nominee. I headed west into debts and promises, prepared to accept any writing opportunity that came my way, remunerative or not.

Something of a journey of the psyche hung over this trip. We traveled unhurriedly over two-lane highways from Iowa across Nebraska and half across Colorado. On these often empty roads the quiet, great spaces of those inner-continental states took us in, absorbing yet expanding our tiny souls. In moving westward I headed home, in a sense: for from a suburban house outside Denver as a young teenager in the early 1970s I had entered the world of the fantasy small press, and made my first, most minor launches into the publishing world. Small prairie towns, somnolent and depressed at being situated away from the mass channels of Interstates, seemed more familiar to me than Denver did, however, once we reached that destination. Except for seeing the city through Amtrak windows, I had not returned since leaving there early in my high school years. Yet the sense of return came over me all the same when walking between the far-spaced convention hotels, thanks to faint odors rising from sidewalk sewer grates. Something remained unchanged.

Bob Silverberg, the first familiar soul I encountered, had studied the program schedule already when we met, and lamented that the two main items about older science fiction were placed against one another: his Olaf Stapledon panel, and my Kornbluth. Later I encountered Alex Eisenstein, the only person I know who can spontaneously and accurately quote lines from Kornbluth's stories. He told me he was responsible for my placement as panelist. The convention organizers had no clue why Eisenstein thought I could contribute. I would have enjoyed Silverberg's panel, in part because Stapledon occupied a place in the literary firmament when Cyril was first writing. I doubt Bob would have enjoyed mine, however. It focused so heavily on story recaps, presumably for uninitiated audience members, that I found few opportunities to raise what I considered to be important issues about Kornbluth's life and works. What an interesting audience we had, on the other hand: for it included younger readers recently taken by Kornbluth, possessed by curiosities and excitements that seemed akin to mine. Their comments, when they approached me afterwards, impressed me more than our panel comments did.

I spent time before and after that panel chatting with Mark Durr about the difficulties of establishing the facts of Kornbluth's life with any certainty. I once wrote a history of two college museums, still unpublished today, in which I included nothing which I could not document: for I needed to dispel mistaken conceptions that prevailed, concerning their beginnings. Were I to tell the Kornbluth story, I said to Mark, I would approach it in the same spirit. He said he would love to be selling such a book. When afterwards I formally approached McFarland I proposed two books — a minor one on Kornbluth, to be of limited scope due to the dearth of materials, and a second, Science Fiction, Toys and Society, that was to be the more expansive effort involving historical narrative and cultural criticism. Once the contracts arrived and I began my work, however, I found the Kornbluth task nearly all-absorbing. That autumn, winter and spring I would manage to complete other work: an introduction to a Jules Verne reprint, and an introduction and editing job on a Poe collection, for Engage Books; and early work on a study of Judith Merril's fiction, for Aqueduct. A scattering of smaller writing tasks occupied me as well. Overwhelmingly, however, the Kornbluth effort took over my life and being. I was entering some of the longest months of my life, when the questions that had ridden me and haunted me for over a decade became my masters.

I possessed what seemed to me great advantages. Of the documents I so greatly desired, I had managed through the years to add a precious few to my research library: Cyril's note-card records of his early fiction submissions; and Cyril's and Judy Merril's notes and outlines for Gunner Cade. Also in hand I had a ten-thousand word exploration of Kornbluth's fiction, using the miniature work "Everybody Knows Joe" for a pivotal point of perspective. In the early aughts I had written this piece and submitted it to a 1950s-themed issue of Paradoxa; and although the manuscript reappeared in my mailbox, I retained faith in both its approach and the inter-textual connections it made. It gave me the kernel for the book's second section, focusing more upon the fiction than the life. Beyond these, I had notes and correspondence from my Kornblume days, including invaluable letters from Cyril's brother Lewis.

Despite such advantages no part of the work came easily. Assembling a chronology, even with the skeleton of listed publications, proved a task that took almost as long as the book's writing. While I knew certain important events occurred in Cyril's life, pinning down dates, places, and sequential order proved extraordinarily difficult. Since I aimed to establish a factual basis for future Kornbluth studies, I spent hours and sometimes days struggling over minor events, miniature mysteries, minuscule facts. I wanted those following in my footsteps to have advantages I lacked, during that long period of puzzling, often fruitlessly, over a long-dead man's life.

I set aside accounts by Pohl in my initial task. To all appearances he exerted proprietary control over public memory of Cyril — perhaps naturally, after having been so enriched by The Space Merchants. Yet that strong, widely propagated sense of proprietary control made me cautious about his statements: for he had motivation, consciously or subconsciously, to recall matters in ways that shined favorably upon his own situation. I rued that his influence was such that older members of the field deferred to him, and told me that, of course, my best sources of information were Pohl and The Way the Future Was. One question that pressed upon me — the question of who Cyril's friends were — existed in large part because everyone seemed to know the answer, and to point to the single man. I had doubts; and I had reasons for these doubts — such as the fact of Cyril's and Judy Merril's depiction of Fred in Gunner Cade; the fact that Pohl stood far removed from the early Wollheim magazines that proved all-important in Cyril's early development; and the fact that Pohl had a role in neither the first Milford conference nor The Five. Among other considerations, these made me decide initially to assemble a picture based on whatever other sources I could find, and only afterwards to inject Pohl's published perspective. In this way I hoped to develop an account with a more realistic balance among Cyril's sphere of friends, acquaintances, allies, and foes.

I pursued this course for months, until chance re-connected me with Canadian scholar David Ketterer. The two of us had met at a Poe event in the late 1980s, before my Kornbluth interest became so overridingly a concern. A day or two after the conference he and I shared a meal in which he spoke of his continuing interest in James Blish. The conversation may have helped nourish my sense of sympathy with the Futurians, when I began revisiting their writings a few years later. I remember no mention of Kornbluth, at this dinner; and from what I recall of Ketterer's book on Blish I believe he knew little or nothing of the friendship. If Judith Blish told him what she did me — that Jim never got over the death of his best friend Cyril — then it failed to strike the chiming note for David that it did for me.

As I recall, I had queried John Clute on some matter regarding the Dirk Wylie Literary Agency. At the time I was on pins and needles concerning Pohl's handling of the agency: for Asimov and others who mentioned it had written only vaguely on the matter, at least in published accounts. As a topic, had I had any choice in the matter, I would have skirted it altogether. My subject allowed me no such luxury, however. Clute noted that Ketterer was writing a biography of John Beynon Harris, also known as John Wyndham — who had been a Wylie client. Clute reconnected us. From David, I learned that agency correspondence relating to Wyndham resided in Syracuse University archives, in the Frederik Pohl papers. The notion that Pohl papers existed anywhere came as a tremendous surprise and relief. By happy chance, the University library had recently expanded its on-line catalog of holdings. According to this list, the archive's Frederik Pohl papers included a file bearing Kornbluth's name. The news floored me.

In 1994, in the first issue of Kornblume, I had entitled one section "Correspondence." There I asked, in reference to archives, "Are there any holdings that include CMK correspondence?" Numerous writers including Pohl received that issue. I recall asking Charles N. Brown this question, in person at a later convention. He knew of none. Before my communication with David Ketterer, I had asked Bob Madle if he had ever encountered Kornbluth correspondence in his many years of dealing with fan materials. Never, said Madle — who wondered if perhaps Cyril never wrote letters.

Ketterer's breaking of this long silence, this long expanse of blank wall, provoked a minor crisis. Only a few months remained to me before my deadline. The time had come to tighten my narrative, to focus on refreshing and extending my literary analyses, and to revise the whole. I had only partially paid off the Denver trip, and felt downcast about likely being unable to visit Syracuse. I dwelt on the matter for days, even while knowing I faced not a choice but an imperative. Martha, too, knew this, and offered to dip into emergency funds. While I refused that offer, I resolved to do exactly as much as I could. I could just squeeze onto my credit card the necessary rail travel and three hotel nights, giving me nearly four days of research — if perhaps no meals. I made my arrangements, packed food, and set out, using the long, late-winter train ride for renewing my acquaintance with a dozen old paperbacks I carried along. In Syracuse I spent every available second in the archives, without lunch breaks. Evenings I spent in the main library stacks pursuing other questions, some for the biography and some for reference-book entries for which I had contracts. Since the archives held not only Pohl's early correspondence but also Knight's papers relating to The Futurians, I had on my hands more pieces of the puzzle than I could take in fully. Yet in the slender Pohl-Kornbluth files I found considerable material for documenting a narrative whose shape I had been beginning to perceive, but which I had feared I could do no more than suggest. Aspects of the tale which I feared would end up excised, due to lack of documentation, now could remain. New elements, moreover, would now enter the manuscript. The unfolding details, as revealed by this correspondence, proved more disturbing to me than the story I had thus far reconstructed; and though I was already waking midnights with my mind full of haunted wonderings, I headed now into months of waking midnights haunted, instead, by painful knowledge.

I spent enough time with Damon's transcripts of interviews for The Futurians to make me respect his research methods, and to regret his published presentation: for I learned that much of his book consists of direct quotation from his fellow Futurians. The reader rarely knows, from paragraph to paragraph, however, when someone other than Damon is speaking. I suspect Damon pursued this course out of personal necessity, due to the difficulty he was experiencing in writing anything at all, after long blockage.

I left Syracuse with many pages of penciled notes and the promise of photocopies via mail — and with head and heart both lighter and heavier: for I nursed a transformed hope for the biography, while feeling, more fully than ever, the weight of another's life upon my shoulders. I would discover the irony of the situation much later, when looking back at my original query in Kornblume: for my 1994 question arose after learning that Richard Wilson's Transradio papers resided at Syracuse. This suggested a vague possibility: that some of Cyril's UFO releases might be found there. Although I was coming to appreciate the long and never broken friendship between Cyril and Dick Wilson, his first collaborator, the sad fact was that once I reached Syracuse, fifteen years after my 1994 question, I lacked time to pursue that avenue of inquiry.

A similar experience to the one in Syracuse developed out of a comment made by James Gunn, who told me that materials which had included Kornbluth correspondence, and which had been offered to University of Kansas, may have ended up at Northern Illinois. I received confirmation from archivist Lynne Thomas, and made that trip by car soon thereafter. I found there an unexpectedly rich vein — tiny in comparison to the Syracuse holdings, but invaluable. I had felt curious about the fact that Pohl spoke of Kornbluth in general terms in early appreciations, and then at a later point wrote as though suddenly possessed of factual information. I had no idea how much to trust these later accounts. At NIU I learned that I could trust them — for there, at NIU, reside Pohl's letters of 1981 asking Cyril's father Samuel and brother Lewis for material about Cyril, since Fred himself felt "written out" on the subject. Pohl subsequently used Samuel's and Lewis's information without, to my knowledge, any public acknowledgement. In my book I cited the letters from Kornbluth's father and brother, and left Pohl's introductions uncited.

Also at NIU I found the wonderful photograph of the youthful Cyril that graces the biography's cover. While I had hoped to find a good-quality image of Cyril as an adult, from the 1950s, this image fully answered my need for a striking cover photograph. Taken in the 1940s, it captures the serious aspect of young Cyril, with the saddened set of the eyes that fellow Futurian Johnny Michel had considered revealing and characteristic.

End, Part Three.

Judith Merril: Web Observations

Yesterday I grew curious about what biographical accounts of Judith Merril might have surfaced on the Internet. When I looked I found the usual plenitude of www.flagrant-error.com sources. While some accurate accounts exist out there——for instance Rob Sawyer's personal recollections——after a time I gave up the search for general ones.

People feel remarkably at ease trotting out for public view their insufficient knowledge of any subject. Does instant transmission mean that all such entries are to be viewed as ephemeral, so that today's posting has no special importance? That might explain the attitude. Tomorrow's error will take the place of today's, after all: how could that not solve everything? I suppose all who post to Flagrant-error.com live by the hope that someone else will tidy up the confusion left by a billion Johnnies-on-the-spot. Whatever careful work has been done by those who have built up the Web, what we seem to see most of, and first, are parroting finger-peckings and cut-and-paste posturings——the expressions of people or their virtual equivalents who might like to appear in command in an infodense realm but who too often wear the infodunce cap. These key-tappers take pleasure, it seems, in perpetuating the easily available errors of those who came before them whose preference, too, is to take to a worldwide stage when factually stumbling.

It surprised me to find a quite recent piece in Kirkus Reviews written by Andrew Liptak, whose name is new to me. The posting, despite the venue, makes its share of mistakes, unfortunately; and these and the surrounding expressions of misunderstanding have appeared not only here at Kirkus but also, apparently, at the "75 Years of Science Fiction" conference at University of Vermont on April 27, to judge from this sentence from Liptak's first paraqraph, in which he promotes his impending appearance there: "The paper will be on the evolutionary roots of the genre, and draws heavily upon this column!" The phrase "evolutionary roots" seems less than happy, to me; and the notion of a paper about "roots of the genre" offering Merril as an example seems to reflect a misunderstanding of the genre's early development and maturation, which occurred before Merril became involved. Liptak's use of the phrase "The Golden Age of Science Fiction," immediately afterwards, may reflect a similar misunderstanding, insofar as the "Golden Age," for most observers, antedated Merril's major contributions.

Much of the information Liptak mentions seems drawn from the Merril memoir Better To Have Loved. His ordering of events strikes some off notes, perhaps the result of reading source materials not quite carefully enough. The errors in names reflect particularly poorly on scholarship, proofreading, or both. I puzzled over who "John Michael" was, for a moment; but I felt startled to find the column getting wrong not only the publication date but also the title for Merril's first novel. It also gets wrong the title of the first Cyril Judd serial. Fuzzy thinking and lazy writing flow on to the end.

No doubt Liptak's well-meant posting will become a source for future ones by others. Quite likely it will inspire "corrections" to existing infodense accounts, and provide fodder for all those infodunces——most of them probably virtual——who wait in the wings.

Liptak's list of sources led me to the New York Times obituary by Gerald Jonas, which is quite short but not error-free. Jonas makes a rather large misstatement——"During and just after World War II, Ms. Merril was the only woman associated with ... the Futurians." His listing of prominent Futurians may mislead readers, moreover, since of the four mentioned only James Blish was a member when Merril was. Jonas also perpetuates an error about her birth name.

I know Jonas is, and feel confident Liptak must be, capable of excellent work. Overwork and hurry may well account for much, here. Even Judy had trouble keeping her story utterly factual——as she forthrightly admitted.

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 ...