April 1st being part of the "silly season," my editor
suggested that I write reviews of humorous Science Fiction books.
Remembering the long tradition of humor in SF, I thought this would
be an easy task, but humor seems to be a little out of style lately.
I bought a copy of Dangerous Vegetables by Baen Books. Despite
the playful title and the "Lettuce Entertain You" pun on the
cover, all the stories were about - you guessed it - dangerous vegetables.
The stories are all well-written, but most are part of the Horror/SF genre,
and one was not even SF at all! As I searched the bookshelves for something
to review, I came to the realization that (except for the work of Connie
Willis) humorous SF seems to have dried up.
Therefore, for this month I've written a survey of humor in Science Fiction. This
survey is somewhat limited in scope. In order for a work to be mentioned in
the article below:
I have to have read it sometime in the past 35 years or so.
I have to have liked it.
I consider it to be noteworthy, i.e., it stands out among similar works published
during its era.
The links below all connect to Barnes and Noble's
excellent search engine. Where the books are out-of-print, B&N has connections
to used book stores. Most of the out-of-print ones can be had pretty cheap ($6 to
$16 U.S.). One first edition from the '50s costs several hundred dollars, but
cheaper copies of the same title were also available.
Humor has been a part of Science Fiction since the '30s at least, possibly
longer. I'm going to do a quick survey of my favorites, staring with the older
writings, and working my way forward.
L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, had a previous career as a
Science Fiction writer. Under the pseudonym "René Lafayette" he wrote a
series of pulp stories about . Donald Waldheim later
collected them in a book of that name (DAW # 20) and re-printed them in 1970. As the
title suggests, the main character was an M.D. who was "older than Methuselah."
He went around saving the galaxy from rediculous situations.
Isaac Asimov also wrote some fine humorous prose for the pulps. "Christmas
on Ganymede" and "The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated
Thiotimoline" are among my favorites. Both of these are included in the
volumn
( Book Two ). The former involves a mis-understanding
about Santa Claus between human mining executives and alien miners. The latter is
a spoof of a scientific paper about a substance which displays a reaction before
the cause. You have to believe me, this is truly funny stuff!
In the '40s, Science Fiction was viewed as the lowest rung of the ladder of
literature (actually, it wasn't quite on the ladder, but I'm taking a little
license here). It was often derided as tales about "little green men from Mars."
It seems rather peculiar then, that none of the pulps had ever published a story
involving these characters. In September 1954, Fredric Brown redressed this omission with
,
a short story published in Astounding Science-Fiction. He later revised the story
into a novel by the same name which remains a classic to this day. Why it is currently
out-of-print, I'll don't know.
1954 was a banner year for humor in SF. That's also the year that Arthur C. Clark began
to have published his
, a group of SF tall tales told in an English pub. Two and a half decades later, Spider
Robinson would imitate him with
.
In 1961, Harry Harrison concocted a character called The Stainless Steel Rat,
a notorious villain who kills a policeman in paragraph three. (We later find out the cop
is a robot. Harry and the protagonist knew it all along.) James Bolivar diGriz is a master
criminal who gets recruited by The Special Corps. One of the funniest (and longest-running)
tales in Science Fiction begins. Over the years, at least a dozen Stainless Steel Rat novels
have been published - including both sequels and pre-quels. The latest,
, was published in 1996.
In 1967, Norman Spinrad's seminal work Agent of Chaos was first published. It
somewhat over-shadowed a remarkable work of SF humor. That year Simon and Schuster published
the first "Flower Child" book -
by Chester Anderson. The premise was that giant blue lobsters from outer space were trying to
invade Earth. They chose Greenwich Village for the beginning of their invasion because everyone
was so stoned, they would think they'd got hold of some really wierd acid if they spied the
invaders. This combination of humor and satire was great fun then, and its great fun now!
During the '70s - about the same time Harrison's "Slippery Jim diGriz" was becoming
a hit - a writer by the name of Ron Goulart must have made a pact with the devil. That's
the only explanation I can think of for his remarkable ability to consistently write
such side-splittingly funny stories. "Ron Goulart" was, of course, a pseudonym.
To this day, I'm not quite sure who this guy (or gal) really is. We once planned a World-Con
hoax - a bid to host "Goulart-Con I" in Bellaire, Texas at a local motel which
has about 20 rooms. The banquet was to be a Bar-B-Que in our back yard. If the guest of honor
had showed up, we could have found out his identity. The most famous (or notorious)
of his books were
and .
I can whole-heartedly recommend any of his works from the early '70s to the mid-'80s. All of them are
hysterical. If you see anything at a con or in your used book store, grab it! Ron, if you're
reading this, I still want to know why there were two Jake Conger story lines.
Also during the '70s, Reginald Bretnor began writing the "Papa Schimmelhorn" stories.
These were compiled into a book titled
in 1979. Although somewhat sexist by today's standards, these tales were extremely funny in the age
of disco.
If humorous SF became more sexually oriented during the '70s, the epitome of this change
was the oft-explicit
trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson. It was not widely available in most locales
because of the prejudices of book sellers and their fear of reprisal from the law enforcement
community. Its pornographic content is not in doubt. Its artistic merits as social satire were
always questioned. Blue-noses of every stripe were offended. Not only were the books entertaining,
but sometimes being seen to read one was entertaining as well. This was one of the first books
to throw the bright light of reason on America's cult of personality. An excellent read, but
only if you're adult enough to accept the strong sexual content of the story.
In 1975, Philip Jose Farmer also weighed in as part of the "Sexual Revolution" in Science Fiction.
was published under the pseudonym of Kilgore Trout. It was immediately recognized as social
satire, but frankly I didn't think it was very funny. In 1982, TOR published
an hysterical send-up of Verne's classic Around the World in Eighty Days. For some reason,
this one was just not wildly popular as was Venus. Guess I don't have common tastes.
In the late '70s, Spider Robinson began writing his now-famous Callahan stories. Like
,
these were humorous tall tales told in a bar. The setting had changed from London to New York.
The short stories were later compiled into several volumns, including
and
.
Some of the most outrageous puns in Science Fiction have been spoken in Callahan's.
From 1979 to 1981, Sharon Webb wrote her stories about Terra Tarkington, a member of the
Interstellar Nurses Corps. She has the nursing assignment from Hell out on Bull Run.
These stories were all published in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. They were
later compiled into a single volume and published by Bantam as
.
We actually have an autographed copy. My wife, the nurse, loved every word.
During the '80s, Alan Dean Foster and Jack L. Chalker began making their marks as
writers of humorous SF. Mr. Foster's most notable works in this regard are his
novels.
From 1983 1994 he wrote eight of these, all published by Warner Books. Although he
has written other humorous works, these are by far my favorites. Alan, are you reading this?
We need more Son of Spellsinger novels!
Mr. Chalker began his "Dancing Gods" books the year after Foster began
his series. Beginning with
and continuing through ,
he wrote a series of five novels of remarkable humor, wit, and satire. He lampoons
everything from '60s-era television to icons of pop culture. If you haven't read these,
you should.
In the '90s, the field began to broaden. Bradley Denton got us off to a good start
with Buddy Holly is Alive and Well on Ganymede, a thriller about alien interferance
in human affairs. Roger Zelazny began the "Prince Charming" books with Robert Sheckley
with the book .
In 1993, John DeCahncie brought us ,
a story about Captain Wanker of the starship Repulse. Need I say more? That same year, Jack
Hopkins began his "Satellite News Team" novels. This outer space CNN send-up ran
to three novels. I still think the original,
was the best.
But humor seems to have waned in Science Fiction of late. Apparently, the last few
titles mentioned are hard to find, even in the used book stores. With the exception of a few
Star Trek volumes, little has been published in the last five years. I have no prejudice
against Trek fiction.
is really funny, but if you're not a Trekker, you'll only understand about 20% of the jokes.
But there's still one author who writes humorous SF. Connie Willis has been churning out one of
these masterpieces every year since 1995. It started with the amusing Hollywood lampoon
(1995),
and has continued with (1996),
(with Cynthia Felice, 1997),
and just last year .
This last has just been published in paperback. Bellwether and To Say Nothing of the Dog
are two of the funniest books I've ever read. Keep it up, Connie - the rest of the world can catch
up later!
Although I struggled to be as comprehensive as possible, I know I've probably missed
a lot of note-worthy works. If you know of a humorous Science Fiction book or story which I missed,
write to me at: prroberts@netscape.net.
