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

At McFarland, editors had been expressing fears that I would fail to find material sufficient to fill a book for their line. The day arrived, however, when they discovered what they described as a cement brick on their doorstep: my manuscript, all 240,000 words of it, in a large cardboard box.

I gave my book a somewhat morbid title: Kornbluth and the Death of Science Fiction. In my preliminary efforts, before conducting interviews or becoming aware of archival caches, I was attempting to place Kornbluth's works within the larger history of the earlier wonder stories and the later science fiction. Since I was accepting Northrop Frye's suggestion that a distinctly Modern age extended from around 1860 to around 1960, it seemed striking to me that the "science fiction" pulp-magazine field in the United States, within which Kornbluth worked, arose quite late as an expression of Modern culture. The fact also struck me that, by the early 1950s, older observers had begun bemoaning a falling-off of quality within the field — and that, by decade's end, they were speaking of the death of science fiction. The closely spaced deaths of Henry Kuttner and Kornbluth helped set the latter tone. The science fiction field, as long-time readers knew it, was reaching its end, to be supplanted by a different field, in which such figures as Harlan Ellison and Roger Zelazny could flourish and rise to prominence. The stories "The Mindworm," the magazine version of "With These Hands," and "The Last Man Left in the Bar," all by Kornbluth, offer direct antecedents to the stylistic audacity of the New Wave writings in science fiction that were to appear after his death.

Even as my book slowly blossomed in the biographical direction, this narrative strand about the waning of the traditional science fiction wonder story remained an important one. All the same, McFarland editors felt that the "death of science fiction" title did injustice to the book's scope. I accepted their title: C.M. Kornbluth: The Life and Works of a Science Fiction Visionary.

I failed to give my all to the book: for, after all, I survived — penniless, but alive. And yet I did give all I could, driven by haunting questions, including one unanswerable one. If I failed to place possession of Cyril's story where it belonged, who else could? For his story belonged not in my hands; it belonged in the reading public's hands. I believed and believe this. Kornbluth is mine; Cyril Kornbluth, not. His works have an importance that makes him, the author, belong to all of us. I wrote the book motivated by that idea.

This claim to achievement anyone may feel free to dispute. For with C.M. Kornbluth: The Life and Works of a Science Fiction Visionary I believe I succeeded.

I placed his life in the right hands.

The End

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Notes

Quotation from Frederik Pohl: "When we came to Bahai Hall," p. 77, The Way the Future Was, Ballantine Books: New York, 1978. From Cyril Judd: "Put him in with Fledwick," p. 57, Gunner Cade, Simon and Schuster: New York, 1952; or p. 45, Dell Publishing Co.: New York, 1969.

I dedicated my biography of Cyril to his brother Lewis, for several excellent reasons. This essay, though, I dedicate to Martha and our late, lamented Lorna.

A Note on H.T. Webster

I grew up with a book of H. T. Webster's cartoons in the house — part of the family library. This comes to mind thanks to a 1923 work I have just seen reproduced on-line, which shows a cartoonist of the year 2023 with his cartoon-inventing machine beside him.

I still admire Webster's work greatly. Such cartoons as this one are trotted out, these days, as extraordinary for their time. Part of my effort in writing Toys in the Age of Wonder was to emphasize that rather than being extraordinary, such works as this one were typical for their time.

"Characteristic" might be a better word-choice, for what I tried to say. I used "typical" in my writing, though, as I recall.

To view such works as extraordinarily far-sighted may seem appropriate; and yet it is, in a way, condescending. The far-sightedness was part of the texture of the times. Webster was so good because he was so firmly expressive of his times.

Cheers . . .

Toys in the Age of Wonder

My new book has been published.

I am here announcing it . . . about a month late. Am I laggard in my affections? (Where in the world does that line come from?) Actually, I rather like this book. I have lived with it for ten years, and have struggled over its myriad subjects, facts, and ideas for many more. It has its flaws, but sits all the same among my most important efforts, in the arts.

Toys in the Age of Wonder: Science Fiction, Society, and the Symbolism of Play brings together many things. My personally favored title, Wonder Tales, Toys, and the World that Swallowed Itself, I believe does convey some of the book's breadth. In it, I am talking much less about science fiction than the wonder tale; I am thinking about toys whether they were dimestore baubles or Emerson's "toys that infatuate men and which they play for;" and I am exploring the West's efforts to technically envelope the human sphere — a "consolidated civilization scheme," as I recall a character saying, in one story I discuss. I speak about toy history, history of science, novels, poetry, comic strips, lexical changes, and cultural changes. I draw in works by Poe and Verne, in particular, and by many other authors along the way — with "the way" moving mainly along a time-line from 1859 to 1957-8. My method is cultural criticism, on model of Lewis Mumford, with further guidance taken from the writings of Northrup Frye and Van Wyck Brooks — among, again, many others.

The book's illustrations, all in black and white, make it other than the glossy and colorful affairs which some among my earlier ones were. The items pictured, however, show what sorts of things fascinate me: illustrations from both children's and older-reader books; photographs of children with toys; catalog pages; postcards; World's Fair images and memorabilia; and the toys themselves, children's and adult — anything, in other words, that conveys the symbolic reality that prevails, to my point of view, over the concrete, in culture.

I should note that my announcement's delay comes from concern and circumstance. I did and do wonder: should I, indeed, make a quiet noise about this, and act as though the book's publication might rank in any way against the troubles of our time — the pandemic, the criminal political "leadership," the bought-and-sold legislatures, the bestial police actions, the wildfires, the extinctions, the dying of the only economy that truly matters, which is the economy of life on Earth?

The book does rank, in a way, and not only because it happened to become a fact in this particular time. It ranks, in its small way, because, for the patient few who read it, it will help elucidate how it is that we placed ourselves into these times which encompass our lives. Moreover, it discusses the process by which our present conditions came into being.

A circumstance working into this announcement's delay came about from my having an "outdated" computer system which my blog's host decided to stop recognizing or allowing, a few months ago. Having limited means, limited technical savvy, and a will-to-succeed that often ends up absorbed in soup-makings, dishwater, and garden dirt, it took me quite a while to reach that point in which I could not only pencil these words but also publish them electronically here.

My sympathy for those poorer than I am has grown quite keen. So much activity has shifted on-line during the pandemic that ever more individuals are, literally, being virtually excluded from society. While a part of society is reflected off and conducted by the shell of satellites circling Earth, another part goes unreflected.

Now myself enabled, until that point when I am granted obsolescence once again by our technological shell, I propose to make some quiet noise in relation to my book — with the hope that people will understand that if I make myself a nuisance — oh, if only! — I do so not to advance my fortunes, which will grow by little more than nothing from this effort, but to advance my society's, in however microscopic a manner.

Cheers . . .

P.S. The book has a higher price-tag than I might wish. When your nearest library reopens, please make a request for it.

Thinking about Wonderland

One pair of books I may have been giving inadequate weight in attempting to understand the Modern century (in my current work) is Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass (1871) -- books that were, indeed, part of the middle period of that time-period -- and which, strikingly, had their first impact at the same time Jules Verne's novels were having their early and likewise enormous impact. Verne's novels were also satirical, and also relied on an absurdist approach -- although not the same absurdist approach that Dodgson-Carroll employed. The Alice books like the Verne books are "extraordinary journeys."

In a somewhat unrelated note, how interesting that Charles Carroll (of Carrollton), last surviving signer of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, should die in the year Charles Dodgson should be born -- in 1832. It is not of significance -- just a fun, odd coincidence.

Cheers ...