The Golden Age of Science Fiction

by Kingsley Amis (Editor)

Hardcover with unclipped dust jacket in very good condition. Jacket is sunned. Edges are creased and nicked. Board spine ends are slightly bumped, with a bump to the rear lower edge. Binding is sound and pages are clear. LW

Genres: Science Fiction, Short Stories, Fiction, Anthologies

370 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1981

About the author

Best known novels of British writer Sir Kingsley William Amis include Lucky Jim (1954) and The Old Devils (1986).

This English poet, critic, and teacher composed more than twenty-three collections, short stories, radio and television scripts, and books of social and literary criticism. He fathered Martin Amis.

William Robert Amis, a clerk of a mustard manufacturer, fathered him. He began his education at the city of London school, and went up to college of Saint John, Oxford, in April 1941 to read English; he met Philip Larkin and formed the most important friendship of his life. After only a year, the Army called him for service in July 1942. After serving as a lieutenant in the royal corps of signals in the Second World War, Amis returned to Oxford in October 1945 to complete his degree. He worked hard and got a first in English in 1947, and then decided to devote much of his time.

Pen names: [authorRobert Markham|553548] and William Bill Tanner

Reviews

[Zac · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kingsley Amis reveals himself to be the original hipster in the introduction to this collection of science fiction short stories, as he insists that the really good science fiction was all published by the year 1960, which is around a decade after he got interested in sci-fi.

The title of this book is a bit misleading: the golden age of science fiction is the period from the end of the 1930s to just after World War II. But that doesn't stop Kingsley Amis from choosing stories only from the period 1950-1963. In the first sentence of this paragraph, I said that the title of this book is "a bit" misleading. But I only qualified "misleading" so that I didn't seem invidious and cruel to Kingsley Amis in the eyes of people who have never read anything I've written. Now that we're this far into the review, though, I trust that I have demonstrated enough good manners and enjoy enough of the sympathy of the reader that I can say that the title of this book is entirely misleading, and none of the stories in it were published during the golden age of science fiction. A more accurate title for this book might be "Kingsley Amis prefers post-golden-age science fiction", or, less charitably, "Kingsley Amis at best goes against the consensus as to what the golden age of science fiction is and at worst tries to re-define the term 'golden age of science fiction' so that it reflects his own preferences". An accurate but indiscreet subtitle for this collection might mention that Kingsley Amis's own preferences are not particularly well-explained or -defended in his haughty 21-page introduction, and that his sneering attitude toward the readership of science fiction and his rejection of most of the field after 1960 seems to reflect his own prejudice more than it reflects--as he claims--a decline in quality.

Kingsley Amis's introduction is the kind of thing that causes me to have to try really hard not to use adverbs. I find myself wanting to begin sentences about the introduction with words and phrases like "Unaccountably," "Incredibly," "Completely ignoring the work of..." and "Sneeringly".

=========================
The Quest for Saint Aquin
(1951)
novelette
Anthony Boucher
=========================
In a post-apocalyptic landscape shaped presumably by nuclear war, a religious pilgrim discovers that the incorruptible body of a saint is actually a robot lying in a cave. I was completely unimpressed with this story. The journey on the back of a robotic donkey called a "robass" reminded me of the middle part of Larry Niven's Ringworld, a novel I recommend to connoisseurs of misogyny in science-fiction, when the main character had to travel across the ringworld in a from-the-perspective-of-the-people-in-the-narrative-ancient-but-from-the-perspective-of-the-reader-futuristic mechanical conveyance.

As is usually the case when a science fiction short story deals with religious faith, this story failed to interest me in the least. Seems to me there are simple answers to the religious questions that dog lots of people, and after the period of shock that follows the moment of recognition that your culture's superstition is no better supported by evidence than any other culture's, you shouldn't be bothered by those questions. Narratives that deal with those questions are uninteresting and trivial to me. Possibly the target audience for these kinds of narratives includes youngish people at the dawn of their ability to question the foundational, not-supported-by-evidence assertions underpinning the culture they find themselves born into.

In the future described in this short story, Christianity has been made illegal. That doesn't seem to matter very much, though, because almost every character in this story who has dialogue is a secret Christian. The story could be read as a characterization of the persecution under which United Statesian Christians imagine they live.

Here's a summary of the story: A Catholic religious neophyte is sent on a quest to discover the incorruptible corpse of a Catholic saint named Saint Aquin. The neophyte's religious master, the Pope, programs a mechanical vehicle called a "robass" to take the neophyte to the corpse. On the way, the neophyte discovers that the robass can communicate with him, and in the course of the journey it has several conversations with him that charitable or stupid readers will call "philosophical" and which test the neophyte's faith. At the end of the story, the neophyte discovers the incorruptible body of the saint, which turns out to be a robot. Whether this precipitates a crisis of faith in the neophyte is a matter for the court of readerly opinion.

When I finally finished reading this story, my brain made the brain-equivalent of "Huh", and I moved on to the next story, "The Xi Effect".

=======================================
"The Xi Effect"
Robert S. Richardson (as Philip Latham)
1950
originally published in Analog
=======================================
The Xi Effect: Wavelengths are getting smaller, and that's destroying the universe.

This story is somewhat like Asimov's "Nightfall".

Transcendence: No.
Science: Sort of. The thing that is described would be detected by radio astronomers much earlier than the thing described is detected in this short story. It's hard to think of a way that an effect like this would be rendered convincing and credible enough to allow a reasonably well-informed reader to suspend disbelief.

This story belongs to the genre of apocalyptic caused-by-the-natural-world stories.

=========================
The Voices of Time
1957
J.G. Ballard
==========================
This might be the most science-fictiony story I've ever read.
It has a hell of a lot of super-science in it. It includes transcendence, nuclear war, genetic experimentation, zoology, botany, astronomy, radio contact with distant civilizations, weird new diseases with mysterious etiologies.

What little plot there is in this story is simple: A scientist named powers, mortally sick with a disease that causes people to need more and more sleep, loses his life. At the moment that he loses his life, he experiences a transcendent oneness with the Universe caused by a newly-developed ability to "hear the voices of time" (to hear the stars speaking to him).

But the plot isn't why this story is worth reading. The story is worth reading because it is jam-packed with super-science stuff.

Also, the quality of Ballard's writing is much, much higher than the quality of the writing in other short stories in this volume.

=============================
The Streets of Askelon (sic)
1962
Harry Harrison
=============================
This unapologetically anti-religious story features an atheist focus character and a contemptibly naive priest.


The priest arrives on a planet with an indigenous culture that has no notion of God. The indigenous culture is deeply empirical. After learning about the Bible and learning about the nature of God, they decide that in order to be able to believe in God, they need to see a miracle. So, following what they take to be the lead of the Bible, they crucify the priest.

Throughout the story I kept expecting the atheist focus character to break down and admit that the religious character is correct, but that never happens. At the end of the story, the indigenous aliens have crucified the priest and buried him. One of the aliens asks the atheist focus character whether the priest is going to rise after three days. The atheist focus character says no.


I was surprised by how uncompromising and critical was the atheism in this story. Turns out Harrison wrote this for an abortive project of Judith Merril's which would have collected short stories dealing with taboos.

I was impressed by this short story.

There was no misogyny in evidence, because there were no female (human) characters in the story.

There was no suggestion of transcendence in this story. There was a striving for transcendence which was taken by the main character to be nonsense at best and dangerous nonsense at worst.

This story could just as well have been written by Herman Melville and been set in the South Pacific in the 1840s.

[Martyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful collection of stories from some of the greats.

[Connor · Rating 4 out of 5]

I got this book at a used Science Fiction bookstore in Brooklyn and I have been reading it on trains and vacations ever since. A great collection of satisfying short stories.

[Jaq · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dated, a few stories that still stand the test of time.

[Falsedan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some great stories, some so-so. Not as good as the Hugo winners.

Awful!
The Xi Effect - Philip Latham
What the hell, radio astronomers would have notices this in about 2 seconds.

It's a Good Life - Jerome Bixby
Ruined by the Simpsons Halloween episode when Bart turns Homer into a jack-in-a-box

He Walked Around the Horses - H. Beam Piper
Ha ha Napoleon you sure do some crazy stuff but what if you didn't????

Ha ha so funny
The Nine Billion Names of God - Arthur C. Clarke
The Machine That Won the War - Isaac Asimov

Both of these: hey guys look I am a master so I don't need to write serious stuff anymore

OK
The Quest for Saint Aquin - Anthony Boucher
Robo-Jesus, basically. Consistent setting!

Old Hundredth - Brian W. Aldiss
Humans are dead and animals turn into music when they die.

Specialist - Robert Sheckley
Aliens are alien in nature, also humans have hidden superpowers.

The Game of Rat and Dragon - Cordwainer Smith
Cats! In space!

The Streets of Ashkelon - Harry Harrison
Christianity is great except if you can THINK!!!!

Student Body - Floyd L. Wallace
Hyper-evolution on a colonised planet.

The Country of the Kind - Damon Knight
A guy is ignored by everyone while he does whatever he wants because he is an asshole (also the only creative human).

A Work of Art - James Blish
Is a person their experiences and memory or the body that was experienced them in the first place (see MGS2).

The Tunnel Under the World - Frederik Pohl
Actually this one is pretty great.

Harrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut
read the other comments

Holy hell worth it just for these
Sister Planet - Poul Anderson
HOLY

The Voices of Time - J. G. Ballard
HELL

Kinsley's introduction is hilariously elitist.

[Merije · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kingsley Amis wrote what's perhaps the most pedantic, whiny introduction ever to a sci fi book, which is saying something. He tells us sci fi has gone down the drain, mostly because it's supposed to be a naive art form and people insist on analysing it, making writers self aware and thereby destroying the naive aspect. He then goes on to analyse it in great detail.
He also decided to point at a very specific decade and call it the Golden Age, completely ignoring that term was coined long before for a much broader era.
Then there's the part where he tells us sci fi was perfect in his youth but has changed since then and he wanted it to be the same forever. He's aware many people sort of freeze on what they liked in their youth and have trouble moving on from there, blaming the thing they liked for changing. He then goes on to argue at great length that in this case, it really isn't him, it's sci fi's fault and everything should have stayed just as it was when he was young.
This book should be called: "Stories from the decade that 'what Amis likes' and 'what science fiction did' happened to overlap."

As for the stories themselves, some of them are great indeed, and also reproduced everywhere, so no need to get this book for those. The rest is mediocre at best, so I'd say, steer clear of this one if you're new to sci fi and are looking for an introduction. If you're an old hand who wants to roll their eyes at Amis, this is perfect.

[Jennifer Wermes · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an anthology of science fiction short stories. The story that I particularly like is Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. I have paired this text with The Giver as a companion text exploring the issue of Sameness.

In this story, all members of American society have become equal through physical and mental handicaps. This was done so that no one feels inferior to anyone else. No one person has distinguishing characteristics: if one is born pretty, they wear a bag over their face. If one is born strong, they wear chains to wear them down.

Harrison Bergeron, the protagonist of the story, is exceptionally strong, intelligent, and handsome. Because of this, he has to bear an incredible amount of handicaps, as ordered by the Handicapper General. He realizes this, and tries to take over the state-run television station. His attempted coup ends in his death, his parents unable to mourn due to mental handicapping machines.

This story fits with the topic of science fiction because it is set in a future society with a new and different political/social system.

[Patrick Hudson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a terrific collection of classic era SF stories. It's as good an intro as any into what made Golden Age SF so special. I've blogged about each story individually over at my blog on www.patrickhudson.co.uk

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't read this edition, but we read Harrison Bergeron in school and this is the only book that comes up for that.

[Jaime · Rating 4 out of 5]

Contains the excellent Vonnegut story, Harrison Bergeron.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

A brilliant anthology of sci-fi short stories picked by Kingsley Amis, one of the first people to champion genre fiction.