Subway Rockets
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| A very young writer |
I love the stories of Cyril M. Kornbluth (under any byline) which I’ve just recently discovered. (I have lived a sheltered life). I absolutely love them. I can’t help myself. They’re yummy, exotic hotdogs a southerner could only eat in Brooklyn in 1952 as they watch kids play stickball in the street wearing rocketshoes (which are, when you look closer, just old P-F Flyers with small atomic powered rockets tied to them with string). His stories are aged and yellowed Kodachrome photographs full of the recent past; a captured Brylcreem/Mickey Spillane world that exists now only in my parent’s memories; it’s all so wonderfully goofy and thrilling at the same time. If Kornbluth had practiced psychology instead writing he would have actually cured people of mental diseases of the ego(tism). He's a champion of the common man (person). His heroes are just a bunch of slobs like the rest of us, some old alcoholic or a guy whose not so good with the ladies. Kornbluth’s hard-bitten characters fly from planet to planet (often just in our own solar system! - obviously there are many more planets close to Earth than we thought and travel to other star systems can be accomplished in"rust-buckets") in a couple of hours or days but who must call back to Earth via a telephone operator (always some cheeky dame--probably a bottle-blonde) who hooks them up through a switch board. They smoke an entire cigarette while waiting for their calls to be connected. The
rockets to Mars or Pluto are slightly modified 1950’s Subway trains to Coney Island. This is Science Fiction before PCs and the Web, a time before cyberpunk controversies. It’s speculation about the future before there actually was one. If you would like entertainment on a massive (gas giant)scale, amusement that makes your average Network program look like the absolute crap it actually is, then get a copy of His Share of Glory: The Complete Short Science Fiction of C. M. Kornbluth, for yourself and your kids. Therein lies at least six months of unadulterated delight, not to mention an opportunity for self-discovery. I'm getting the idea that Kornbluth had been through some hard times and was lovely enough to help us to learn something from them.
I love the stories of Cyril M. Kornbluth (under any byline) which I’ve just recently discovered. (I have lived a sheltered life). I absolutely love them. I can’t help myself. They’re yummy, exotic hotdogs a southerner could only eat in Brooklyn in 1952 as they watch kids play stickball in the street wearing rocketshoes (which are, when you look closer, just old P-F Flyers with small atomic powered rockets tied to them with string). His stories are aged and yellowed Kodachrome photographs full of the recent past; a captured Brylcreem/Mickey Spillane world that exists now only in my parent’s memories; it’s all so wonderfully goofy and thrilling at the same time. If Kornbluth had practiced psychology instead writing he would have actually cured people of mental diseases of the ego(tism). He's a champion of the common man (person). His heroes are just a bunch of slobs like the rest of us, some old alcoholic or a guy whose not so good with the ladies. Kornbluth’s hard-bitten characters fly from planet to planet (often just in our own solar system! - obviously there are many more planets close to Earth than we thought and travel to other star systems can be accomplished in"rust-buckets") in a couple of hours or days but who must call back to Earth via a telephone operator (always some cheeky dame--probably a bottle-blonde) who hooks them up through a switch board. They smoke an entire cigarette while waiting for their calls to be connected. The
rockets to Mars or Pluto are slightly modified 1950’s Subway trains to Coney Island. This is Science Fiction before PCs and the Web, a time before cyberpunk controversies. It’s speculation about the future before there actually was one. If you would like entertainment on a massive (gas giant)scale, amusement that makes your average Network program look like the absolute crap it actually is, then get a copy of His Share of Glory: The Complete Short Science Fiction of C. M. Kornbluth, for yourself and your kids. Therein lies at least six months of unadulterated delight, not to mention an opportunity for self-discovery. I'm getting the idea that Kornbluth had been through some hard times and was lovely enough to help us to learn something from them.
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