Benchmarks: Galaxy Bookshelf

by Algis Budrys

Over the years since 1965, Algis Budrys has emerged as the leading critic of mod­ern speculative fiction: insightful, ec­lectic, and notoriously uninhibited. Benchmarks collects the material that started it—all 54 Galaxy Bookshelf book-review columns Budrys created for the now-vanished Galaxy Magazine. Writ­ten for what was then the world’s leading SF periodical, these legendary summa­tions and summary judgments coincided with the period when newsstand-borne science fiction and fantasy were evolving from pulp toward literature. Budrys’ Galaxy reviews trace an incisive, some­times wickedly acerb path through that sparsely charted literary territory.

 

Budrys defines his standards and his function in his own words: “A book should he good. A bird should fly.

 

“Writers of imperfect, tousled books should be made aware that standards of breeding and grooming exist. I strive to fulfill that function.”

 

Genres: Speculative Fiction, Nonfiction

384 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 1985

About the author

Algis Budrys was a Lithuanian-American science fiction author, editor, and critic. He was also known under the pen names Frank Mason, Alger Rome, John A. Sentry, William Scarff, Paul Janvier, and Sam & Janet Argo.

Called "AJ" by friends, Budrys was born Algirdas Jonas Budrys in Königsberg in East Prussia. He was the son of the consul general of the Lithuanian government, (the pre-World War II government still recognized after the war by the United States, even though the Soviet-sponsored government was in power throughout most of Budrys's life). His family was sent to the United States by the Lithuanian government in 1936 when Budrys was 5 years old. During most of his adult life, he held a captain's commission in the Free Lithuanian Army.

Budrys was educated at the University of Miami, and later at Columbia University in New York. His first published science fiction story was The High Purpose, which appeared in Astounding Science Fiction in 1952. Beginning in 1952 Budrys worked as editor and manager for such science fiction publishers as Gnome Press and Galaxy Science Fiction. Some of his science fiction in the 1950s was published under the pen name "John A. Sentry", a reconfigured Anglification of his Lithuanian name. Among his other pseudonyms in the SF magazines of the 1950s and elsewhere, several revived as bylines for vignettes in his magazine Tomorrow Speculative Fiction, is "William Scarff". He also wrote several stories under the names "Ivan Janvier" or "Paul Janvier." He also used the pen name "Alger Rome" in his collaborations with Jerome Bixby.

Budrys's 1960 novella Rogue Moon was nominated for a Hugo Award, and was later anthologized in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume Two (1973). His Cold War science fiction novel Who? was adapted for the screen in 1973. In addition to numerous Hugo Award and Nebula Award nominations, Budrys won the Science Fiction Research Association's 2007 Pilgrim Award for lifetime contributions to speculative fiction scholarship. In 2009, he was the recipient of one of the first three Solstice Awards presented by the SFWA in recognition of his contributions to the field of science fiction.

Budrys was married to Edna Duna; they had four sons. He last resided in Evanston, Illinois. He died at home, from metastatic malignant melanoma on June 9, 2008.

Reviews

[Karl Bunker · Rating 4 out of 5]

This volume collects 54 book-review columns originally written by Algis Budrys for the fondly-remembered Galaxy Science Fiction magazine, covering the years 1965 through 1971. Budrys was an excellent reviewer/critic, and this book is a great read. One of his strengths as a critic was in finding logical flaws in SF stories -- sometimes flaws in the science (even fictional science should be held to the rules of common sense), and sometimes flaws in the behavior of characters (sure, real people often behave like numbskulls, but that doesn't make it okay for a story's plot to be kept aloft purely by a character's convenient numbskullery). Often while reading Budrys' analysis of some book that I was familiar with I would find myself wincing and thinking "Darn, he's right. Why didn't I catch that?" But at the same time Budrys is willing to admit that the worth of a novel is never entirely dependent on rationally analyzable qualities. To quote: "sometimes I find that the enjoyable things in a story will not yield to description in analytical terms."

So while Budrys may find gaping rational holes in many novels (probably including one or two of your favorites, so brace yourself), he's also happy to declare that some books are worthy of high praise (and your reading time) despite flaws of logic and story-telling. For just one example, he calls Norman Spinrad's Bug Jack Barron "a flawed but acceptable telling of a magnificent story; a representation of nobility, one might say, with a Mickey Mouse ending."

In sum, this book makes for interesting and educational reading about what distinguishes good science fiction from bad, and it's also a highly engaging and enjoyable read.