I first read Dune when I was in eighth grade.  That first time I read it, when I got to the end, I flipped it back over and read it again.  Then I read it again and again, once a year through my teens and twenties, perhaps twice in my thirties, and once in my forties for this "100 Great Books of Science Fiction List," and I have just read it again, at the half century mark of fifty.

I was flabbergasted by Dune when I first read it, and I am again, just now, finishing it again.  Not because  it isn't flawed (there are flaws); not because of the intelligent use of sense of smell to evoke reality (the spice, the smell of the sietch, the salt of Caladan's ocean); not because of the artful weaving of scenes which completely are their own creatures but create something much more cohesive and greater in my mind; not because of the powerful and realistic portrayals of women; not because of dozens of other reasons why Dune is the best book science fiction has ever produced.

No, I am stunned because, for the very first time, in the first chapter I realized that Frank Herbert had to be a Buddhist. There was no way he could not be.  No way...

I looked it up: yes, Frank Herbert had converted from Catholicism to Zen Buddhism in the Sixties.  The Catholic and Muslim overtones of Dune had always been overt, exotic, and delicious in a way other books don't seem able to embrace: but as I read on, I also realized that this book could not have have existed without this particular philosophical spine and musculature.  At certain points in the book, the characters speak (and oft become) koans.  

I am wondering what else Dune will give to me (that I previously had no idea was there) in my future readings.

When I first reviewed this in 2008 for this list (and lost the review), I remember saying that a book need not be perfect to be great.  This time, I am going to lift a passage from Thomas Merton, that I read just today.  (As an aside, Frank Herbert took six years to write Dune.  This may be why the other books in the series do not speak to me the way Dune does. I'm thinking they must have been written much for quickly.) 

"In any case it is depressing that those who serve God and love Him sometimes write badly, when those who do not believe in Him take pains to write so well.  I am not talking about grammar and syntax, but about having something to say and saying it in sentences that are not half dead. ...Imperfection is the penalty of rushing into print.  And people who rush into print too often do so not because they really have anything to say, but because they think it is important for something by them to be in print.  The fact that your subject may be very important in itself does not necessarily mean that what you have written about it is important."

Thank you, Thomas Merton.  And thank you, Frank Herbert.  Thank you so much.

Another great 50's book, another book about hive (or here, gestalt) intellect, and another foundation writer.  I do not see how Mr. Sturgeon could not have influenced Stephen King, Peter Straub, Peter S. Beagle, Frank Herbert, John Crowley, and so many other authors.  This book addresses telepathy, teleportation, telekinises.

I really enjoyed the story, it was so complete and encapsulated upon itself,  it was difficult to tease out a lesson from it.  Therefore, I am going to steal from Delaney’s On Writing, which has a section addressing suspense, surprise, drama, and violence.   Chip advocates that violence makes the reader shut down, and that suspense, surprise, and drama are better forms for the novel.  This book may very well be proof: you never see Lone die, or Janie abused, the twins beaten, but the suspense is flavorful and memorable.  It works.

Gelatinosities.  That word is just one reason why I love this book.  It’s written in a lovely way, and so smoothly, I didn’t even notice until I was on page 90 that it’s written in present tense.  A second reason is that although this story starts out with exactly the same premise as Wilson Tucker’s The Year of the Quiet Sun  – people collected by the government and sequestered away to participate in a top secret activity – this story is so much better.  Human psychics can abandon their bodies.  Utopic squid-manta-ray things have their thoughts and souls floating around them like halos.  They switch bodies.  It’s cool.  

A third reason for loving this story, is that Tiptree shows how to let emotions climb through characters so the reader can emotionally follow : “But suddenly everything is gone – he has crashed into a stasis assaulted by light, colors, sensations.  Floundering, he perceives dimly that this is embodiment.  His naked life has become incarnated.  A sense which isn’t vision is showing him the image of a landscape in which are immense, trembling globes.  Utterly bewildered, he rolls or tumbles, his mind filled with jelly life.  “Margaret!” he bubbles weakly, and then sees – knows – her radiance is there, flaring among the moving gelatinosities.” 

Tiptree’s technique is beautiful: a description, an emotion or reaction, a perception, a poetic summary.  She does it twice here, and all through the book.  It worked really well for me. 

Cordwainer Smith is the pen name of Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger, who also happened to be an Army Major specializing in military intelligence and psychological warfare.  A well-respected short story writer, this tale of telepathy-gone-awry, wealth, greed, giant sick sheep, cat people, turtle people, and everyone in between was his only novel. 

With killer robots, invasive mindscans, and brainswipes, this story would have been dystopia in any other author’s hands.  Given the zany tone, over-the-top imagery, and deeply sweet characters, this man probably had a huge amount of influence on Roger Zelazny and other New Wave authors.  I have an aversion to animal-people in science fiction, but it worked superbly in this story.  The opening and ending were choppy enough to be confusing, and the characters could have been drawn a little deeper, but I could not help but admire the bitter undercurrent of prejudice, flavored like our own race relations.  For me, the only truly twangy notes were the very fifties views of marriage and the adoration of the animal-based “underpeople” for human beings.   

I was distracted by job interviews while reading this, so I did not enjoy it as much as I could have, and I find it hard to draw out a real writing lesson.  The writing was sparkly, sharp, and entertaining.  How did he do that? Well, it was very funny.  I laughed out loud in quite a few places.  I think humor is an emotion that is often forgotten in writing.  That’s a fine lesson, then.

Oh, my.  I added this weird little black hard-cover book about a telepathic alien invasion to my list because Taryn gave it to me, and she is so good at ferreting out really enchanting stories.

I can see why she liked it, it has these moments, but, uh, um, this is another story that would have been better if written by a more adept author.  It aspires to a Heinlein-esque quality – so much so that I think it might have been created in the fifties, even though it was published in 1970.  And there’s genuine promise in here: concepts that seemed to influence Alien and Ender’s Game both, if not many, many others.  There are certain passages that are just glorious.  Others are painful, out-and-out weird, and nonsensical.  It never got bad enough to abandon outright, but I did have to skim the last few pages to get through it.

I’m thinking it was originally James’s book.  There are two little stickers in it.  One inside the front cover – “Everybody’s on to you!”  On the back cover, “Pushers Kill!” (And someone scrawled beneath it especially around Cliffs.)  In the stew-pot of my brain, these comments speak directly to this story and my feelings about it.  Can I explain that?  Oh, probably not.

Olivia – a gentle, well-spoken, silver-haired woman who wears a different set of gorgeous earrings every day and tutors with me at MPC – made this wonderful observation on books that you don’t want to read... Something along the line that books are in your brain, and if the author isn’t careful with their readers, they stand to abuse them – or worse.  That observation applied to this book displays a strong lesson.   
 

Is this a coincidence, or what?  Did this book on mistreated telepaths inspire both Flowers for Algernon and Beggars in Spain?  There are chapters named “Three Blind Mice” and “Beggars in Velvet!”  I also think, given the writing style and imagery, this author might have been a strong influence on Roger Zelazny.  (Actually, looking up Kuttner right now on Wikipedia, Zelazny is quoted as considering Kuttner a direct influence on Amber.  Man, am I getting good at this!)

I now know for sure that Flowers for Algernon did influence Beggars in Spain: I have read Kress’s book Beginnings, Middles, and Ends, and her first example of a great character is Charlie Gordon.  Now, that can’t be a coincidence.  This, though?  Suspicious, but I can’t be sure...

This is one of the used books I’ve ordered from the dealers on Amazon.com, a small old hardback from a British science fiction club, a 1962 printing of this 1953 story.  There is no doubt in my mind that this story could only have been written in the early fifties – after the horrors of World War II but before the wildly individualistic Summer of Love.

In Mutant’s loosely connected “Baldy” stories, nuclear war creates genetic mutants with telepathic abilities, as well as genetically-flawed telepathic “paranoids” and “psychotics.”  The premise here is that assimilation is absolutely necessary for survival, and that there is something hideously wrong with you if you don’t or can’t... and that murder is an appropriate response for those who don’t fit in.

Sheesh.

This is one of the stories that probably established telepathy/psychic as a science fiction favorite topic, and I think it examines the life of a telepath much better than many other books (although In Conquest Born is still my favorite story) and it almost describes how telepathy could work.  But not quite.  As an aside, Kuttner worked in close partnership with his wife, C.L. Moore, and it is noted that it is very difficult to tell which works are his and which are hers.  They also wrote under a dizzying number of pseudonyms, including Lewis Padgett and Kevin Kent.

Additionally, there was a word I didn’t know at all, which is rare, especially since this one has a biological definition as well as an English definition: tropism.  In biology, it is the tendency of a creature to turn or grow given a certain stimuli.  In English, it is an action that is done without cognitive thought.  Funny: both definitions could apply to my sentias in the story I am working on.

This is the book I read while at Christmas holiday in Orange County.  I also went to Bookman and found four more books for the list.  I also read Nancy Kress’s Beginnings, Middles, and Ends.  It made me look at this story in a different way, especially the opening.  It also made me realize there is much more that I need to learn.  I need to take that class on first chapters at the UC Extension, and I have to go to Clarion.  Going is no longer a choice.  I must go to Clarion.

I think (hope) it was Damon Knight who said “Science fiction isn’t describing a car.  It’ s describing the car crash.”  This story shows how effective it is to consider the ramifications and evolution of the telepaths’ consciousness.  I like it.  Need to do that with my own.  Well, on to Damon Knight.

Who is Harlan Ellison’s biggest fan? 
 
Harlan Ellison, of course.  Mefisto is a beautifully made small press book with cover art and  an introduction by Frank Miller of Sin City, an insult to Tor Book’s  refusal to publish this story, as well as two pages of the author’s works, and an opening blurb that says “What is this book about? Well, it’s Bester’s The Demolished Man as if it had been written by Jim Thompson or James M. Cain...Go ahead. Try for one potato chip. This sucker is relentlessly readable.”

You put yourself with some fine company there, Mr. Ellison.  And of course, it’s readable.  It’s not a book.  It’s a short story.  It took less than an hour to read.  There were paragraphs one just wanted to quote, but there were also painfully uneven characterizations. It was also a predictable story, though the ending was truly enjoyable. 
  
I’ve heard what you’ve done at the respected Clarion science fiction/fantasy writing courses, insulting students without even reading their work. When I get there next summer, God willing if you are there, I will tell you, “Mr. Ellison, you are a pony with one good trick. And Pony Boy, if you can’t play nice with others, I will roll your little wheelchair out into the hallway and let you just think about your behavior.”

But I should also thank you, Mr. Ellison, for saving me one early morning – and damn, it was already getting hot – during the summer of 1997, just outside of Modesto.  I was getting screamed at by one of my
psycho-hillbilly-rice-growers for stopping him from applying Category 1 pesticides without a respirator. 
This yahoo was telling me what a demon the government was, and he quoted you.

Whereupon I said, “Harlan Ellison? My story was just published in a magazine with his!”

Apparently, you do have another  fan.  And it’s not to say that your  one trick isn’t very good.  It is –
and that’s not even counting your hostile self promotion technique or your goofy titles (which reminds me, now I have to read Faust, ‘cuz I didn’t get the reference).  But there are many writers who are equal or
better.

Including Alfred Bester.

His one trick?  Ellison can describe characters in a way that makes them individuals, but also ties them into the rest of all humanity.  For instance, of Ally: “What it is, kind of person so in charge, so easy with they own self, they don’t have  to laugh at your poor dumb struttin’ Armani suit, or your bedroom done in
Laura Ashley, or that gig writing articles for TV Guide...” 

To find older books like this, which is a 1959 printing of this 1953 tale, I have taken to cruising the Internet – Amazon and Ebay and such.  Some truly old pulps are starting to come into my hands.  Have I mentioned how delightful it is to hold an old book in your hands?

This one for instance was a Signet book, marked at 35 cents with a “Business Reply Card” still in the binding offering three more books from the Science Fiction Club for only one dollar.  Priceless.

The story is priceless in its own way: a pulp action adventure about psychics intermixed in society with “normals,” and in particular a natty police prefect named Lincoln Powell.   Admittedly, it does not delve deep into social commentary or introspection or explores its many scientific musings to any depth.  But, to be  honest, it would have been hard to do without detracting from the action-adventure tone of this story.  And this was a highly enjoyable and gleeful story, even if the resolution is forced.  Bester lets the story rollick through fascinating, over-the-top characters and backdrops.  For example: Maria Beaumont, socialite, who had taken advantage of plastic surgery to turn herself into an Indian Shiva.  A Venusian garden where the weeds are indistinguishable from the locals.  And what do great characters in wild settings give you?  In The Demolished Man, it’s droll and fun dialogue. 

This book has the distinction of being the winner of the first Hugo. This book also had the distinction of having my favorite, single line so far: “You can’t kill a man in a hunting accident unless you go hunting.”

Bester was a film writer, and it really shows in this story.  Are these techniques that lend  themselves to every story?  No, or course not.  But appealing characters and settings, especially when compared against Wild Seed, are a must.

The lessons for a writer are not strongly drawn here, but they are there.  Character, gimmick or not, as well as setting needs to draw in the reader.  And if you don’t have strong science or a deep point to make in a particular instance, go for splash and fun!

This was Poul Anderson’s first novel.  It was a toss-up between reading this book and Tau Zero, which is considered his other classic contribution to science fiction.  I went with Brain Wave because I prefer neurology to space, but this book foreshadows Poul’s amazing ability to make hard science fiction accessible and enjoyable to everyone. 

Brain Wave makes heroes of a moron, a pair of chimpanzees, and an escaped circus elephant.  I never would have imagined such characters to be appealing, but I loved them in this book.  As a book of the fifties, Brain Wave has a domestic sensibility that reminded me of I Love Lucy in places – not necessarily a bad thing, just different.  In places, conversational points got long in the tooth.  However, the minimal flaws evaporate in the wake of very pleasing reading. 

The lesson to writers is: give your readers the ability to see things they have not seen before.  His gift to writing is giving us things we couldn’t ordinarily imagine, and giving them to us thoroughly, using beautiful heart-rending descriptions so that we can own those ideas.  Every concept is developed and evolved, and each step described, pulling us deeper into these new worlds of thought, at the amazing pace of about three per page!