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Casey Agonistes and Other Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories

Richard McKenna

3.86 · Rating details · 37 Ratings · 10 Reviews

Contents:
Casey Agonistes (1958)
Hunter, Come Home (1963)
The Secret Place (1966)
Mine Own Ways (1960)
Fiddler's Green (1967)

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Mass Market Paperback, 212 pages

Published January 1st 1978 by Ace Books (first published 1973)

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Feb 19, 2009 Oscar rated it it was ok

Shelves: antología-recopilación, ciencia-ficción, new-wave, prestados

Desde hace tiempo tenía ganas de leer este libro. Me llamaban la atención tanto el título como la edición, en tapa dura, pequeña y manejable, de la antigua editorial Minotauro. Al autor, Richard McKenna, no lo conocía y los relatos incluídos tampoco, aunque son muy admirados por algunos grandes autores, entre ellos Robert Silverberg y Damon Knight.

Richard McKenna empezó a escribir bastante tarde, a los 36 años, y será recordado sobre todo, a parte de por sus relatos, por 'Los granos de arena', l Desde hace tiempo tenía ganas de leer este libro. Me llamaban la atención tanto el título como la edición, en tapa dura, pequeña y manejable, de la antigua editorial Minotauro. Al autor, Richard McKenna, no lo conocía y los relatos incluídos tampoco, aunque son muy admirados por algunos grandes autores, entre ellos Robert Silverberg y Damon Knight.

Richard McKenna empezó a escribir bastante tarde, a los 36 años, y será recordado sobre todo, a parte de por sus relatos, por 'Los granos de arena', libro en el que rememora su vida como marino.

A continuación, voy a desglosar uno a uno los cinco relatos que componen 'Casey agonista', incluyendo entre paréntesis mi nota, del 0 al 5.

CASEY AGONISTA (1). En un pabellón de enfermos una serie de personas, apáticas, están esperando que la muerte las libere. Es entonces cuando uno de ellos les cuenta su secreto, que puede ver a Casey, un mono que le hace la vida más alegre al ver como martiriza (sin que lo noten, por supuesto) a médicos y enfermeras. Este cuento trata de cómo cambiar la realidad, la percepción sobre lo que nos rodea a través de la autosugestión.

REGRESA, CAZADOR (1). A un planeta totalmente dominado por una "raza" de plantas, llegan los miembros de una cultura que necesita restaurar sus costumbres. Es un relato algo flojo para mi gusto.

EL LUGAR SECRETO (2). Este cuento tiene varios puntos en común con el primero, ya que la realidad acaba distorsionada por una ilusión. El protagonista recuerda los años que pasó durante la guerra como ayudante en unas perforaciones en Oregón, donde un chico murió a causa de un cristal de uranio.

MI PROPIO CAMINO (1). Sin duda, el relato que menos me ha gustado. Es una historia extraña, en la que unos "antropólogos" son sometidos a unas pruebas de iniciación para ser hombre, por parte de un pueblo de otro planeta.

EL DORADO (2). Este relato tiene ciertos paralelismos con 'El lugar secreto', ya que la percepción de la realidad juega un papel importante. Ocho náufragos se encuentran en un bote, sin agua ni comida, y están decidiendo si echar a suertes el que uno de ellos se sacrifique para alimentar al resto. Es entonces cuando Kruger les propone una idea a primera vista inverosímil: que mediante hipnosis colectiva todos acaben creyendo en una isla de tal manera que acaben depertando en ella.

Resumiendo, la verdad es que me esperaba más de este libro y de su autor. Los relatos que más me han gustado han sido 'El lugar secreto' y 'El Dorado', pero no creo que volviese a releerlos. Quería resaltar el prólogo de Damon Knight, que mediante cuatro pinceladas, es capaz de darnos a conocer a este desconocido, al menos para mí, Richard McKenna.
...more

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Feb 12, 2018 Daniel Philpott rated it it was amazing

This collection of well constructed sci-fi short stories is poorly named. With sci-fi books almost any deviation into the fantastical is automatically labeled fantasy. This book would have been more aptly titled "and Magical Realism Stories".

It was a great surprise to pick up what should have been some sci-fi stories by a lesser known author and discover what were instead stories investigating the human condition along sci-fi themes. The tales range from masterfully written dense text on dying t ...more

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Mar 10, 2017 Syd Logsdon rated it really liked it

This is a collection of most of Richard McKenna’s science fiction, but I will focus on Hunter, Come Home. McKenna was a force in the science fiction world, but only for a sadly short time before his death. Outside the SF community, he is known for his best seller The Sand Pebbles.
Here is a brief, spoiler-free summary of Hunter, Come Home.
Mordinmen are descendants of a lost Earth colony which has fought a generations long war against the dinosaur like creatures which inhabited their planet. Manh ...more

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Dec 25, 2017 Diego Prado rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

in-cre-í-ble.
el dorado es una pieza de locura lógica sin comparación.

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Feb 24, 2017 Steve rated it it was amazing

Shelves: science-fiction-and-fantasy, one-author-short-story-collections

If I were putting together an anthology of the best fantasy stories from the middle of the Twentieth Century, "Casey Agonistes" would definitely be included. It's a wonderful story, far and away my favorite in this book. I don't think it has dated at all.

Richard McKenna had a fascinating life. He enlisted in the Navy at eighteen and served for twenty-two years, through both World War II and the Korean War. In the early 1950's he left the Navy and went to college. He met the woman he married ther ...more

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Sep 01, 2014 Isidore rated it really liked it

Shelves: horror-noir-fantasy

Primarily remembered as the author of The Sand Pebbles, McKenna's writing career lasted only ten years, and he had just attained mainstream success when he died at fifty-one.

He started out writing fantastic fiction, and never wholly abandoned the genre. "Casey Agonistes" was his first published story.

I first encountered "Casey" many years ago in a Judith Merrill anthology. It moved me to tears. His first published story? Unbelievable.

Well, I'm now a more hardboiled character than I was in my 't Primarily remembered as the author of The Sand Pebbles, McKenna's writing career lasted only ten years, and he had just attained mainstream success when he died at fifty-one.

He started out writing fantastic fiction, and never wholly abandoned the genre. "Casey Agonistes" was his first published story.

I first encountered "Casey" many years ago in a Judith Merrill anthology. It moved me to tears. His first published story? Unbelievable.

Well, I'm now a more hardboiled character than I was in my 'teens, and it still strikes me as quite powerful. Today, however, I can also appreciate the finesse with which he makes the story's almost absurd premise work. I don't like giving away a plot, so I will just say that it's about a group of men in dire circumstances refashioning reality in order to make it bearable. The boundary between real and unreal blurs into non-existence.

The other stories in this collection are, for the most part, less stunning, but they're all remarkably inventive, and most share an appealing sweetness and gentleness which must have been core aspects of the author's personality.

In the novelette "Fiddler's Green" McKenna returns to the same premise which underlies "Casey", but develops it so extravagantly, and with such an abundance of clever ideas and outlandish imagery, that you almost suspect him of showing off. It's a complex tour-de-force which deserves to be much better known.

"Hunter, Come Home", with it's exploration of the conflict between machismo and sensitivity, probably emerged from McKenna's long years of service in the Navy, which he joined as a means of escaping the Depression. It's not hard to imagine McKenna himself as the main character, torn between the aggression and brutishness of his peers and his own tentative, carefully hidden love of beauty and delicacy of feeling. He does a nice job of projecting all this into a science fiction context, although some of the scientific exposition is awkwardly introduced.

"Mine Own Ways" takes "Hunter" and turns it on its head. Here the masculine rites of passage are, if anything, glorified, although the narrative is so compressed that I'm left uncertain of the author's intent. This is the only story in the book I would describe as a misfire; even so, it's lively and intriguing.

"The Secret Place" won McKenna a posthumous Nebula award. The location and nature of the titular secret place, when finally made clear, is breathtakingly unexpected, but somehow I don't feel McKenna successfully builds up to his big revelation. It's definitely an impressive story, but not as powerful as it should have been.

Altogether, I get the impression that McKenna was potentially a major fantasist, cruelly cut off just as he was fully mastering his craft. Despite a certain unevenness, this collection is well worth tracking down. I've read that the recent reprint edition has major textual flaws, but copies of the 1973 or 1978 printings aren't too hard to find. ...more

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Apr 03, 2014 Andrew rated it liked it · review of another edition

This is a blast from my past - stumbled upon while retrieving other books (see the Wild Cards). This was one of the first science fiction books I bought while still finding my way. it was part of a large consignment of books which I bought on face value (I was as much knowledgeable about the artist who did the front cover as much as I knew about the author), and it because part of my introduction to the world of science fiction short stories. It is hard to describe the stories without giving the ...more

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Dec 18, 2016 Phil rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: short-stories, science-fiction

Can't remember the stories themselves, but I just thought the cover was so cool.

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Jul 02, 2014 Variaciones Enrojo marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Shelves: novela, castellano, minotauro

Edición argentina de la novela de McKenna.

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Nov 19, 2013 Kalin marked it as to-read

Especially "Hunter, Come Home".

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About Richard McKenna

Richard McKenna

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RICHARD MCKENNA was born and raised in the small desert town of Mountain Home, Idaho. In 1931, at the age of eighteen, he enlisted in the United States Navy and served for ten years in Asia. Two of those years were on a Yangtze River gunboat. During this time he heard many firsthand accounts of the 1925-1927 Chinese Revolution which he put to use in The Sand Pebbles.

Mr. McKenna, a machinist's mate ...more

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