Jorge Luis Borges | Karel Capek | Anthony Boucher | Minorities and Civil Rights in mystery fiction | R.A. Lafferty | Ray Bradbury | Isaac Asimov | Cordwainer Smith | J.G. Ballard
A Guide to Classic Mystery and Detection Home Page
NOTE: The following stories are the ones I enjoyed reading by these authors, and recommend to others. Unlike the rest of the Guide, many of these works are not mysteries, but include the authors' fine science fiction tales too.
Ficciones
Borges A Reader
Six Problems for Don Isidro Parodi (written with Adolfo Bioy Casares) (1942)
Povídky z jedné kapsy / Tales From One Pocket (1928 - 1929)
The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars (1940)
Nine Times Nine (1940)
The Case of the Solid Key (1941)
Rocket to the Morgue (1942) (first two days)
The Compleat Werewolf
Exeunt Murderers
Far and Away
Uncollected Science Fiction Stories
"Yesterday I Lived!" (1944)
Needle (1949)
Mission of Gravity (1953)
I, Robot (1940 - 1950)
The Foundation Trilogy (1942 - 1950)
Pebble in the Sky (1950)
The Stars, Like Dust (1951)
The Caves of Steel (1953)
The Naked Sun (1956)
Lucky Starr and the Moons of Jupiter (1957)
Lucky Starr and the Rings of Saturn (1958)
The Gods Themselves (1972)
The Early Asimov
Nightfall and Other Stories
Earth Is Room Enough
Nine Tomorrows
Asimov's Mysteries
Tales of the Black Widowers
More Tales of the Black Widowers
Casebook of the Black Widowers
Banquets of the Black Widowers
Puzzles of the Black Widowers
The Return of the Black Widowers
The Union Club Mysteries
The Best Mysteries of Isaac Asimov
Too Many Magicians (1967)
The Best of Cordwainer Smith (these stories are also in other Cordwainer Smith collections, including The Rediscovery of Man)
Nine Hundred Grandmothers
Strange Doings
Does Anyone Else Have Something Further to Add?
"Enfants Terribles" (1971)
The Voices of Time
Billenium
Passport to Eternity
The Terminal Beach (American collection)
The Terminal Beach (British collection)
Vermilion Sands
The Atrocity Exhibition
Low-flying Aircraft
The Wind From Nowhere (1961)
The Drowned World (1961) (Chapters 1-3, 9)
The Crystal World (1964/1966) (Chapters 1-5)
Hello America (1981)
Empire of the Sun (1984)
Memories of the Space Age
Re/Search No 8/9
War Fever
Running Wild (1988)
"A Ghoul and His Money" (1946)
"Adventure of the Martian Crown Jewels" (1958)
Borges is an unusual combination of mainstream and genre writer. An extraordinarily well read and cultured man, Borges' work is packed with literary and philosophical allusions. Yet most of it has strong ties to either mystery fiction, or science fiction and fantasy. Borges' fiction is complex and highly plotted. The plots are fully in the tradition of popular writers of mysteries and sf. Many of the stories are brilliantly ingenious. Borges' work consists of short stories and essays. While the essays tend to be critical works about some author or topic, they usually develop complex, ingenious ideas that are very similar to those in Borges' stories. A strong influence on all of Borges' work are the ingenious tales of G.K. Chesterton, with their complex, well made plots, their rich atmosphere, and philosophical allusions. Borges was also strongly influenced by Chesterton's master Robert Louis Stevenson, and by such 19th Century pioneers of mystery and sf as Poe and Hawthorne.
Borges' first book of fiction was A Universal History of Infamy. This is a collection of brief, highly fictional biographies of real life criminals and adventurers. It has nothing to do with the Rogue tradition of Hornung and Leblanc. Instead, its tales unroll Borges' complex philosophical imaginings. Many of the tales are loaded with Borges' humor. The best of these 1933-1934 tales are included in the omnibus, Borges A Reader. Borges followed this collection in the 1940's with Ficciones, his greatest collection of stories.
Borges' solo fiction includes more science fiction than detective stories. Even "The Garden of Forking Paths" is more interesting for the sf ideas its characters discuss, than for the thriller elements that make up the story proper.
"Death and The Compass" is an anti-detective story, where the idea is to look at all of the ingenious ways in which the author subverts the conventions of the traditional detective tale. The mystery plot is complex, but every aspect of it supports Borges' logical satire of detective fiction. One point: one element of the mystery that is never explained is the nakedness of the corpse under the cape; I suspect that this is simply Borges' homage to Ellery Queen's The Spanish Cape Mystery, where such nakedness plays a role in the solution. Like his master Chesterton, and like Ellery Queen, most of Borges' mystery fiction reflects the intuitionist tradition.
By contrast, "Theme of the Traitor and Hero" is a triumph, a real detective story of the first water. It was made into a beautiful color film by director Bernardo Bertolucci, The Spider's Stratagem (1970), a gorgeous film that is like taking a vacation to Italy.
Six Problems for Don Isidro Parodi, Borges' collaboration with Bioy Casares, lies somewhere in the middle. Most of the problems are too contrived to make really good classical detective stories. Most of the stories also contain some real ingenuity, and the collection is very much worth reading.
Several of Borges most important works deal with mathematics, especially permutations and infinity - two not unrelated subjects. These include the stories "The Babylon Lottery" (1941), "The Library of Babel" (1941) and the essays "The Doctrine of Cycles" (1934), "The Total Library" (1939), "Avatars of the Tortoise" (1939), "The Analytical Language of John Wilkins" (1942). These works take place in an abstract domain entirely created through mathematics. In addition are those Borges stories that deal with "everything": the concept of infinite collections of objects or ideas. These include "Funes, the Memorious" (1942) and "The Aleph" (1945). These two stories by contrast, take place in real neighborhoods in Buenos Aires. They feature characters who eventually encounter the infinite during their otherwise realistic daily lives. Borges' best story, "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" (1940) deals with not "everything", but almost everything: a whole planetful of information. It too has some authentic Buenos Aires atmosphere, and the striking contrast between the near-infinite and the everyday.
Capek, like Borges, was a plot oriented mainstream writer, who often turned to either mystery or science fiction in his writings. Some of Capek's tales are philosophical detective stories. "The Blue Chrysanthemum" is especially concerned with epistemology: how do we know things, learn things, acquire new knowledge. What limitations do we subconsciously impose on our search for truth? Capek's tale ingeniously explores the nature of such concepts. It reminds one somewhat of the philosophical tales of Borges.
Since the early scientific detective stories of Arthur B. Reeve and Cleveland Moffett, there has been an interest in the "word association test" and what it might reveal about our subconscious thoughts. "The Experiment of Professor Rouss" offers an interesting twist on this idea, one that combines satire with a genuine look at how the word association paradigm might break down.
Capek had a certain realism in his approach. His detectives tend either to be policemen, or ordinary people who take up amateur detection for the first time in their lives, as in "The Disappearance of an Actor". This last story is perhaps the closest Capek came to a conventional detective story; one is surprised that it has not been anthologized more often.
Anthony Boucher's works contain three impossible crime novels. One of them, The Case of the Solid Key (1941), is my favorite of Boucher's novels. But not because of the impossible crime. Rather, because it is a fascinating book about 1940's Hollywood, focusing on a bunch of young people who, like Boucher himself at the time, were trying to break into the film industry. Boucher never made it in Hollywood, by the way, but he did become a prolific writer of radio plays. The actual impossible crime in Key is solid but slight.
None of the Boucher novels I have read, considered as fair play, puzzle plot detective stories, reach the heights of his mystery short fiction collected in Exeunt Murderers. These are general purpose mystery stories in the Ellery Queen tradition, not impossible crime tales, and are outstandingly plotted. His "Coffin Corner" (1943), employs sports backgrounds just as EQ did, four years previously, in his Paula Paris series of shorts.
Several of his short stories employ Boucher's series detective Nick Noble. This character recalls Erle Stanley Gardner's Mugs Magoo, in Gardner's Paul Pry stories. Both are alliteratively named former police officers who were thrown off the force for political reasons, had tragedy strike their lives, and who subsequently declined into alcoholism.
A non-series short story "Mystery for Christmas" (1942) stars sleuths Mr. Quilter and Tom Smith, characters who bear a bit of a resemblance to Agatha Christie's Mr. Quin and Mr. Satterthwaite.
Boucher's short tales are persistent users of that EQ convention, the dying message. And variations on the dying message, in which the detective has to find hidden meanings or obscure clues, in a piece of text. These are not "dying" messages, strictly speaking, but are closely related.
Another recurring Boucher approach: a tale in which more than one villain has committed crimes. The detective (and the reader) has to disentangle this, figuring which villain did what. At its crudest, in Boucher's early novel The Case of the Seven of Calvary (1937), this is not very inventive, or even especially fair to the reader. But several later Boucher works use this approach with considerable ingenuity, and a greater fairness to the reader.
Boucher is generally undervalued, both as a mystery writer and as a science fiction author. Many people in both fields think of him in his later years, when he functioned mainly as an sf editor and mystery critic. He left a reputation for both personal kindness and literary quality in these roles, with a special emphasis on the encouragement of new authors. Boucher was both the writing teacher and first publisher of Philip K. Dick, for example; Dick later dedicated his classic Ubik (1968) to Boucher's memory. But Boucher's well deserved reputation as an editor has obscured his earlier literary contributions.
Boucher had an influence on several later science fiction authors. His story "Barrier" (1942) sets forth the basic time travel scenario that will later underlay Isaac Asimov's The End of Eternity (1955). Boucher's mystery novel, The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars (1940), seems to be a key ancestor of Philip K. Dick sf stories where reality collapses. In Boucher's tale, which is not a science fiction story, characters get involved in many strange surreal adventures, that are later explained naturally as bizarre schemes of the villain. The "feel" is remarkably similar to Dick novels, such as the strange adventures of the hero in The Man Who Japed (1956).
Boucher's series detective Fergus O'Breen first appears in The Case of the Crumpled Knave (1939). This is a Golden Age novel that has everything but a really clever solution. It makes pleasant reading, till one reaches the end and discovers that there is nothing clever lurking behind all this development. Along the way there are numerous subplots focusing on the suspects. Boucher reveals that most of them are Not What They Seem To Be. This is a persistent plot gambit in his novels: Boucher will ring many changes on this theme throughout his books. Boucher includes some clever science fiction ideas in Chapter 7 of this book. This chapter also contains some of the running background information on playing cards and their collectors; more is found in Chapters 10 and 12. Boucher's novels have some Van Dine school characteristics. The settings are among the sort of intellectuals one often finds in Van Dine school writers: the playing card collectors in Knave, the mystery fans of Baker Street, the theater people in Solid Key. While Fergus O'Breen is technically a private eye, he is very intellectual, and falls into the tradition of genius amateur detective who works closely with the police. Boucher's investigations take place immediately after the crime and explore every aspect of the crime and people's lives, in the Van Dine tradition.
The best parts of The Case of the Seven of Calvary (1937) deal with putting on a play, and are full of allusions to and ideas about literature. Similar rich inventiveness about matters literary is found in another early Boucher tale, the satire "Threnody" (1936). And while "The Punt and the Pass' (1945) is negligible as a mystery plot, it gives a lively look at a University campus, just like the novel.
Boucher seemingly moved in every intellectual circle in California, in the 1930's and 40's, as a grad student, aspiring playwright, aspiring screen writer, critic for a political newspaper, mystery writer, science fiction writer, radio writer, practicing Roman Catholic, and classical music lover. Intellectuals from all of these areas show up in his stories, delineated with startling vividness, and much background on their life and work. One has a feeling that one is getting a first hand portrait of a real era in American life. And one that is less idealized (and whitewashed) than the portraits of New York City intellectuals in Van Dine, Ellery Queen and the Lockridges. Boucher could also write about policemen, and occasionally about underworld types, who show up in "The Ghost with a Gun" (1945).
"The Smoke-filled Locked Room" (published 1968) was written around 1950. It seems to show the influence of the best-known mainstream political novel of its day, Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men (1946). Both works go behind the scenes in political campaigns, both contain a tough but decent and vulnerable woman political operative, who supports the career of a male politician who ultimately betrays her and what he originally stood for. Both works end in tragedy.
The comic elements in Boucher's novels recall those of John Dickson Carr. The events lurch between wild farce and serious crime; such an alternation of tone derives from Carr. There is also a certain self consciousness about the conventions of detective storytelling, that also recalls Carr, such as Dr. Fell's assertion in The Three Coffins (1935) that one was in the midst of a detective tale.
Anthony Boucher wrote a vast amount of mystery criticism, from the early 1940's till his death in 1968. His writings are the foundation of most histories of mystery fiction of that period, and he is the most influential critic in modern mystery history. Just as Howard Haycraft's Murder For Pleasure (1941) was treated as a canon-defining look at the pre-1941 era, Boucher's critical writings set the tone for modern mystery reviewing. Boucher's early mystery criticism is now available as The Anthony Boucher Chronicles: Reviews and Commentary 1942 - 1947, edited by Francis M. Nevins. This 450 page volume can be ordered from its publisher Ramble House. It mainly contains brief reviews of hundreds of books and authors, including reprints of many works originally published before 1942.
Boucher's influence began right away, in that many of the books he recommended became winners of the Edgar awards, the annual awards for mystery fiction presented by the Mystery Writers of America. Boucher also had two of the most influential pulpits in mystery reviewing: The New York Times (for general readership) and Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine (for hard core mystery fans). One might also point out that Howard Haycraft was a big admirer of Boucher, so that Boucher had the sponsorship of both Haycraft and Ellery Queen, the two best known American critics of the era immediately preceding his.
Boucher was often the first writer to identify famous talent. He was the first translator of Borges into English, in the 1940's, nearly 20 years before anyone else outside of Argentina was aware of his existence. He championed Ross Macdonald as the leading private eye writer of the 1950's, a dozen years before Macdonald achieved mainstream fame in 1969. One might point out that when mainstream critics took these writers up in the 1960's, that they completely failed to mention Boucher's early championing of these authors. Boucher, like all mystery critics, was treated as a non-person by the mainstream establishment.
Boucher started a tradition of separate but equal tradition of the many subgenres of crime fiction. A Boucher year-end round up of the best books of the year, will break the books down into categories such as classical puzzles, police procedurals, private eyes, suspense, spy fiction, comic mystery novels, social commentary novels, and so on, and cite the best books in each category. No one category of crime fiction will be privileged over any other by Boucher. He will suggest that good books in each subgenre are especially worthy of respect. However, Boucher will express personal affection for the classical puzzle. He will make clear that this is the most loved genre of crime fiction, by him at least, and his personal favorite. This will be presented as a personal taste, not a belief that puzzle fiction has greater objective merit than other approaches. This is a delicately nuanced approach to the proliferation of genres within mystery fiction today. It is precisely the approach that has been taken by several of today's mystery historians, such as Francis M. Nevins and Jon L. Breen.
Boucher also strongly influenced the generation of mystery reviewers that came after him. Today's large annual convention of mystery fans is called the Bouchercon. Today's critic for Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Jon L. Breen, writes in a format recognizably similar to Boucher's, and Breen's yearly round-ups in the Mystery Scene annuals recall Boucher's. Bill Pronzini and Marcia Muller's 1001 Midnights (1986) is a huge collection of reviews of mystery novels, most of them from the post-1941 era. It is the most accessible source of information on the 1941-1985 period, and has become a de facto canon of recommended books for that era. Again and again while reading it, one is struck by the fact that many of the books covered in it were first recommended by Boucher in his reviews. The collection reflects a cultural tradition first started by Boucher himself. I cannot imagine that any of the these writers will be offended by my suggestion that they write in the tradition of Boucher. I think they will take it as a compliment.
Not all modern mystery critics are Boucher derived. Authors of large scale histories of mystery fiction, such as the great Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection (1976), and the current Guide you are reading, were probably most influenced by earlier historians Haycraft, Queen, and their ancestor, S.S. Van Dine. I know that in my own case, I have wanted to write a history of mystery fiction ever since I read Van Dine's The World's Great Detective Stories (1928) as a child, a work I have read and reread with intense fascination ever since. The debt I owe all these earlier writers is huge. And a major strand of modern mystery criticism, the book length author biography cum critical study, is also largely independent of Boucher. Classics here include Norman Donaldson on R. Austin Freeman, Charles A. Norton on Melville Davisson Post, Francis M. Nevins on Ellery Queen and Cornell Woolrich, Jan Cohn on Mary Roberts Rinehart, Richard Layman on Dashiell Hammett, Frank MacShane on Raymond Chandler, John McAleer on Rex Stout, Patricia D. Maida on Anna Katherine Green, Roger Bonniot on Émile Gaboriau, and Douglas G. Greene on John Dickson Carr.
Anthony Boucher's sf story, "Q.U.R." (1943), was the one of first to describe African-Americans gaining political prominence in the future: one of them is President of the United States in that tale. Both that story's sequel, "Robinc", and The Case of the Solid Key, give early, sympathetic portraits of gay people. All of these depictions of minorities are astonishingly liberal for their time, and probably form the high water mark of integrationist treatments of minorities in genre fiction before the Civil Rights movement of the 1950's. A later sf tale, "The Ambassadors" (1951), treats civil rights issues in an allegorical fashion, with great wit and humor.
Boucher was a protégé of Ellery Queen, and hence a member of the Van Dine school. This school showed a continuing interest in a more equal treatment of minorities in its fiction. This starts with S.S. Van Dine in The "Canary" Murder Case (1927), where the detective actually congratulates the Canary's black maid on her intelligence, a startling comment with political implications at the time, when so many black people were depicted in the racist literature of the day as of low mentality. In The Kennel Murder Case (1933), Philo Vance's egalitarian regard of a Chinese witness is contrasted to the racist stereotypes of the day, which are satirized as they fall from the lips of the low brow Sgt. Heath. Kennel is probably the model for Rex Stout's Too Many Cooks (1938), in which his detective Nero Wolfe has a memorable encounter, in Chapters 10 and 11, with a group of black waiters who are possible witnesses to a crime. Stout later served as a leader of a World War II writer's group, whose goal was to promote non-stereotyped treatment of minorities in the media. Anthony Abbot's About the Murder of the Circus Queen (1932) has a sympathetically described tribe of Ubangis. Ellery Queen introduced realistic African-American characters in such early tales as "The African Traveler" (1934) and "The House of Darkness" (1935), as well as such later books as Cat of Many Tails (1949). Clyde B. Clason focused on sympathetic depictions of Tibetans and Chinese respectively in The Man From Tibet (1938) and Green Shiver (1941); both novels are explicitly anti-racist. Ngaio Marsh attacked anti-Semitism in Death in a White Tie (1938), and gave a sympathetic portrait of Maori culture in New Zealand in Colour Scheme (1943). The comic detective writer Stuart Palmer has a satirical chapter in The Puzzle of the Happy Hooligan (1941), in which it is made clear that a black servant is far more intelligent and sensible that the ditzy group of white suspects he has to watch over. Palmer would go on to an endorsement of the Civil Rights movement in The Green Ace (1950).
Other important early treatments of Civil Rights in American mystery fiction include T. S. Stribling, who offered a savagely satirical look at Southern race relations in "Bullets" (1932). Norbert Davis took satiric aim at Mexican stereotypes in The Mouse in the Mountain (1943). William MacHarg included a non-stereotyped black character in his story "The Right Gun", in The Affairs of O'Malley (collected 1940); so did Clarence Budington Kelland in The Key Man (1951). Cornell Woolrich included both sympathetic black characters and attacks on racism in his work. During the 1950's some liberal private eye writers wrote sympathetically about black people and Civil Rights, notably Ed Lacy and Kendell Foster Crossen.
Mary Roberts Rinehart usually treated the black characters in her novels realistically, without any of the stereotypes or cheap humor some authors of the period favored. The HIBK writers of the Rinehart school typically followed suit. Among Rinehart's followers, Dorothy Cameron Disney's The Balcony (1940) is especially notable for its trenchant treatment of racial issues.
There is a tendency today for some critics to regard the Van Dine school as artificial, and the hard-boiled school of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler as realistic. Be that as it may, the admirable and pioneering treatment of race by the Van Dine school contrasts with the racism of the hard-boiled writers. Hammett's The Dain Curse (1928) shows an unfortunate acceptance of the stereotypes of the day, whereas the more vicious Chandler positively wallows in hatred in The High Window (1942).
R.A. Lafferty is a prolific writer of comic, surrealistic science fiction extravaganzas. His short stories are generally much better than his novels. His little crime story "Enfants Terribles" (1971) falls within our genre.
Ray Bradbury published around a dozen tales in mystery pulp magazines in the 1940's, in between his much larger careers as a fantasy and mainstream writer. "Yesterday I Lived!" (1944) is a well done tale of mystery on a Hollywood film set. Not surprisingly for Bradbury, the tale is very well written. It also has a good puzzle plot. The article on Karl W. Detzer describes how many of Bradbury's contemporaries were also publishing film set mysteries. Unlike Detzer's, which shows signs of the realist school, Bradbury's is more in a puzzle plot, intuitionist mode.
Even before his official entry into the mystery scene in The Caves Of Steel (1953), Isaac Asimov's science fiction books often exhibited mystery technique. In particular, his great Foundation Trilogy (1941 - 1950) consists of a series of long short stories, each of which has affinities to the formal detective story. Each has a complex plot, and there is usually a surprise ending which reveals hidden aspects to the situation, just as the solution does to a mystery story. Similarly, the stories contained in I, Robot are often science fictional mysteries. A robot is misbehaving: what could possibly cause this? Investigation ultimately reveals the solution to the puzzle. Asimov also wrote non series sf works in the same mystery format, most importantly, "Hostess" (1951). There are no murders or official detectives in these tales, but their status as stories in which mysterious situations are ultimately elucidated, certainly makes them close relatives of the mystery genre. The brilliant plot complexity of the Foundation Trilogy, in particular, marks it out as one of the best works of science fiction.
Asimov's first real novel, and his finest work in the form, Pebble in the Sky (1950) is not a mystery story, but it is a thriller. So is his next, and second best novel, The Stars Like Dust (1951).
Asimov went on to combine the sf novel with an explicit formal Golden Age murder mystery in The Caves Of Steel (1953). This landmark book is not the first sf mystery novel - Asimov's friend Hal Clement wrote Needle (1949), a well done novel which is a science fictional mystery like those in Asimov's earlier short stories - but it is the first full fledged hybrid of the traditional murder mystery and the sf novel, complete with murder case and detectives. Perhaps more importantly, it is a well plotted book, with numerous ingenious surprises and false solutions before the final truth is revealed. Asimov was especially proud of the fact that neither the mysterious situation in the novel, nor its many true and false solutions, would be possible in our 20th century world, that they were entirely enabled by and integrated with the science fictional future of the novel. The book is not merely a contemporary mystery story transposed to the future, but a work in which the sf and mystery elements are totally fused.
Asimov wrote a sequel to The Caves Of Steel, called The Naked Sun (1956). While still being a legitimate detective story, the mystery plotting elements are weaker here, while the sf elements are perhaps stronger than those in the earlier book. Asimov also wrote a series of six sf-mysteries for teenagers about outer space sleuth Lucky Starr. As Joseph Patrouch pointed out in his excellent critical study The Science Fiction of Isaac Asimov, some of these have related backgrounds and mystery puzzles to The Caves Of Steel, notably Lucky Starr and the Big Sun of Mercury (1956) and Lucky Starr and the Moons of Jupiter (1957).
He also published a collection of sf mysteries, Asimov's Mysteries, which show his storytelling and sf skills, but which are not distinguished as Golden Age puzzle plot mysteries.
More importantly, several of the tales in Asimov's best sf collections, Nightfall and Nine Tomorrows, contain mystery or thriller elements. The word "thriller" is perhaps a misnomer here, or at least too vague and imprecise. Asimov's tales are best described as melodramas, in which two sides of a dispute engage in an exciting struggle to achieve some practical result, and also to morally and intellectually justify their position. At their best, such as in Pebble in the Sky or "The Ugly Little Boy" (1958) in Nine Tomorrows, Asimov's melodramas are unforgettable stories.
Asimov went on to write a number of non-sf detective stories. His two mystery novels, A Whiff of Death (1958) and Murder at the ABA (1976) are terrible, but some of his later mystery short stories are ingenious. Most of Asimov's 1970's mystery tales are written in the third person, but during the early 1980's he began to experiment with building a tale around the first person narratives of different characters, a somewhat unusual technique that recalls Wilkie Collins.
Asimov made so many slighting references to his own personal literary style - or his alleged lack of it - that one is afraid that critics are going to take him at his own word. Many science fiction writers write in an elaborate, image laden, complex literary style. Examples: Bradbury, Cordwainer Smith, Samuel Delany, J.G. Ballard. There is very little imagery in Asimov's work, and his literary style clearly has nothing in common with theirs. I strongly admire all of these writers' stylistic achievements. But I also think that there are other valid approaches as well. Asimov's work is written in a style that derives not from poetry, like theirs, but which is closer to the pure form of classical music. The rhythmic complexity of Asimov's prose is breathtaking. Each sentence plays its part in an elaborate over all structure, one that builds to complex climaxes like the music of Beethoven.
I wish to thank my friend, Mark L. Ricard, for suggesting that this web site take a deeper dive into the works of Isaac Asimov. Thanks, Mark!
The hybrid science fiction-mystery short stories in Asimov's Mysteries are a mixed bag. Five are set in the same series, and mainly employ the series sleuth Wendell Urth. Two of these are inverted tales, modeled directly on those of R. Austin Freeman, who Asimov mentions in the collection's introduction: "The Singing Bell" (1955) and "The Dust of Death" (1957). A third tale in the series "The Dying Night" (1956), is a whodunit rather than an inverted, but it has close ties to these two. The clue that gives away the bad guy in each tale is simple, and based on the same sort of science fiction concept in all three stories. The other two stories in the series "The Talking Stone" (1955) and "The Key" (1966) are dying message tales, with the cryptic message being a clue not to a murderer, but to the location of a hidden object. All of these tales are thus in the strict form of a subgenre of mystery fiction: inverted, whodunit, dying message. However, in each case the science fiction elements are elaborate and creative, while the mystery ideas are simple and form a brief percentage of the tale. These are science fiction tales in the form of mysteries, rather than stories whose main plot content is centered on mystery. Also, with the possible exception of "The Dying Night", none of these stories would really allow a reader to figure out the mystery solution from clues in the story: in other words, they are not "fair play".
The science fiction ideas are richest in the first two tales, which are also the best in the series: "The Singing Bell" and "The Talking Stone". "The Singing Bell" has an elaborate background of a future world full of inventions, that has succeeded in colonizing the Solar System. This is a favorite era and setting of Robert A. Heinlein; it is less common in Asimov's work, and its presence seems almost experimental for Asimov. "The Talking Stone" has a rare alien in Asimov. One suspects he was reading his friend Hal Clement's Mission of Gravity (1953); Asimov's alien has a similar sf approach to those in Clement's novel. So both "The Singing Bell" and "The Talking Stone" incorporate sf subject matter that is not typical of Asimov, and both incorporate mystery forms that were new to him too, the inverted and dying message paradigms, respectively. They seem to be tales in which Asimov is deliberately stretching his range. Neither is a masterpiece or core Asimov, but both richly detailed works repay reading. The titles "The Singing Bell" and "The Talking Stone" both echo R. Austin Freeman's pioneering collection which invented the inverted detective story, The Singing Bone.
"The Key" has sf elements recalling Arthur C. Clarke's "The Sentinel", and others that recall Clifford D. Simak's Way Station (1963). This story also includes an sf device that recalls the Mule parts of Foundation and Empire. "The Key" is best in its first third, which sets up the science fiction situation. This is one of Asimov's elaborate melodramas, in which both sides of a conflict get to present their ideas in full. As is typical of Asimov's work, the many aspects of the conflict are worked out in rich detail. After this, the story mainly turns into a series of puzzles, like those to come in some of the Black Widowers tales. The puzzles are not unpleasant, but they are not as good as the science fiction in the earlier section of the story.
Although it is not an inverted detective story, "Little Lost Robot" (1947) from I, Robot shares approaches with "The Singing Bell". In the inverted finale of "The Singing Bell", the detective has to establish that the suspect has characteristics that are indicative of being the killer - and the detective subjects the suspect to a test to show this. This resembles "Little Lost Robot", whose second half consists of a series of tests that will identify and distinguish the missing robot from a large group of seemingly identical robots. In both stories, Asimov is showing ingenious tests that establish the inner, psychological and mental approach of characters have certain special characteristics.
On a level of imagery, "Runaround" (1942) from I, Robot shares approaches with "The Singing Bell". The test in "The Singing Bell" has the suspect throwing something. For different reasons, the heroes in "Runaround" test the robots' throwing ability. Structurally, these two tales have little in common. But the relationship on the level of imagery is striking. Both stories also have scenes on other worlds, on Mercury and the Moon respectively, that involve black shadows coming out from mountains that give way to regions of bright sunshine.
The mix of Solar System space travel, exotic sf artifacts and traditional mystery genres in the Wendell Urth stories anticipates Poul Anderson's "Adventure of the Martian Crown Jewels" (1958). This is an impossible crime short story, with a rich science fiction background to rival Asimov's. One suspects that Anderson was using Asimov's general approach to constructing an sf mystery, in this story.
A note on aliens in Asimov: "Hostess" (1951) looked at alien-human histories on Earth. "C-Chute" (1951) looks at humans encountering insect-based aliens in space. The most interesting part of "C-Chute" are not the aliens per se, although their social beliefs are well-handled, as in its deconstruction of war fever. Asimov shows that the aliens are behaving just as well and just as badly, as the humans in this interstellar alien Vs humans war. The rich sociological detail of the war, and the alien's behavior in it, is quite inventive and forms a substantial and original anti-war commentary. "Kid Stuff" (1953) combines the alien-human history of "Hostess" with the insect-based alien approach of "C-Chute". "Kid Stuff" is elaborately detailed, and in theory I should like it. But actually it seems repulsively horror filled. Asimov returns to these modes in a Black Widowers story, "Neither Brute Nor Human" (1984), a minor tale that takes some unpleasant swipes at Poe and Lovecraft, as well. "The Talking Stone" (1955) is quite different from all of the above. It shows aliens and humans cooperating with each other, instead of being enemies, as in the other Asimov tales mentioned. The aliens resemble those of Hal Clement's Mission of Gravity in that they learn science from humans, and in that the aliens' bodies are designed to live in what for humans would be inhospitable environments.
Asimov wrote 66 non-science fiction short stories about the Black Widowers (1971 - 1991), a group that meets once a month for dinner, and to solve a mystery or a puzzle. The tales have been collected in six volumes. The stories are armchair detective tales. Quite a few of them are disappointingly trivial, linked to some tiny point or obscure fact that serves as the gimmick. But several have more substance. I especially liked 18 stories that contain real mystery, and 12 stories that center around puzzles.
First the real mysteries: tales in which the plot contains a mysterious situation to be solved. These fall into a number of series, each related in terms of plot.
1) "No Smoking" (1974) is the first of several Asimov tales, about people whose behavior is observed, but hard to interpret. It has a miasmic quality, and it is hard to see where the story's situation is going - before detective Henry reveals the inner logic of the events.
"The Driver" (1980) also involves interpretation of an observed person. The tale has an obscure fact gimmick, like many other Black Widowers stories - but here it is worked into a real mystery plot, complete with ingenious solution. The story takes place against a background of scientific research: a common subject in Asimov's late 1950's works, such as the sf-mysteries "The Dying Night" (1956) and "The Dust of Death" (1957).
The Union Club mystery "No Refuge Could Save" (1980) also involves a man who observes job candidates professionally for his living, just like "No Smoking". This tale could be regarded as a puzzle story, being based on an obscure bit of information. But this tiny piece of knowledge is worked into a complex mystery story, a spy tale that shows some originality of approach. The tale is loaded with bits of satire, which are often rooted in paradox, just like the mystery plot of the story itself.
Asimov did not include any of these stories in The Best Mysteries of Isaac Asimov. So Asimov apparently felt they were marginal in his work. But to me they seem like some of his best puzzle plots, and among his works which are closest to the pure mystery tradition of "baffling stories ingeniously and surprisingly explained".
All of these tales involve people under psychological observation, often in a business context. This recalls such sf-mystery tales from I, Robot as "Runaround" and "Little Lost Robot", in which humans study robots on the job, and try to understand their psychology. In both these mysteries and the robot tales, Asimov is most interested in what is going on inside people's minds. Asimov's sf-mystery Lucky Starr and the Moons of Jupiter has sf-based observation, through a Venusian "frog".
2) "Out of Sight" (1973) deals with explaining the puzzling leakage of classified information. "The Recipe" (1990) also deals with an impossible leakage of information, and has a solution partly related to "Out of Sight". Close to these Black Widowers stories is Asimov's sf-mystery Lucky Starr and the Moons of Jupiter (1957). Its main mystery plot deals with hidden leakage of information. And the solution of the mystery has some points in common with the Black Widowers tales.
These stories have solutions that are somewhat related to such tales as "No Smoking" and "The Driver".
"Out of Sight" also has specific links to "Quicker Than the Eye" in the "impossible disappearance" series discussed below, having both a solution related to the latter story, and a setting in the restaurant-like dining room of a cruise ship. Like many of the disappearance stories, its solution involves the psychology of a person watching or participating in the events.
Asimov included "Out of Sight" in The Best Mysteries of Isaac Asimov.
3) "Quicker Than the Eye" (1974) and "The Redhead" (1984) are impossible disappearance stories. Oddly enough, both take place in restaurants. This is in addition to the fact that the frame story in most of the Black Widowers tales is itself in a restaurant. "The Lucky Piece" (1990) has another small object that disappears, as in "Quicker Than the Eye". "The Lucky Piece" is unusually tricky, and has more complications than most of Asimov's impossible disappearance tales. One of his last Black Widowers tales, "Lost In a Space Warp" (1990) is another impossible disappearance, very much in the same mode. This takes place in a private home's kitchen, an environment closely related to the restaurant settings of the other tales. The last Black Widowers story (what a sad thing to say!) "The Guest's Guest" (1991) also deals with a vanishing piece of information. This time, it is lost at the Black Widowers restaurant itself.
The Union Club story "He Wasn't There" (1981) also deals with an impossible disappearance, once again from a restaurant. Its solution is less clever and plausible than the Black Widowers stories in this tradition. And the not-very-good Union Club tale "Never Out of Sight" (1983) provides a sort of absurd version of the same idea, this time set an amusement park.
Asimov included all of the above pre-1987 stories in The Best Mysteries of Isaac Asimov (1987), and made clear in his commentary that he valued such stories highly. In More Tales of the Black Widowers, his commentary on "Quicker Than the Eye" aptly links it to G. K. Chesterton's "The Invisible Man" (1910). Chesterton's tale is rooted in the psychology of an observer, something Asimov preserves.
"The Unabridged" (1976) involves a search for a hidden object. This story has formal similarities to the impossible disappearance tales above. This object has not disappeared, strictly speaking. But like the disappeared objects, it is now in a hidden, obscure place. The story opens with a general philosophical discussion of missing and misplaced objects: this contains ideas that will recur in "Lost In a Space Warp".
Even among the real mystery tales, there are formal resemblances to Asimov's puzzle stories. For example, the impossible disappearances are presented as pure puzzles. "The Redhead" asks: "How did the redhead disappear?" This mystery is not linked to a whodunit, or unraveling some other mysterious crime situation, as it would be in a typical impossible crime story by Carr, Chesterton or Hoch. Asimov's story instead presents a pure, isolated puzzle. Still, the kind of puzzle, an impossible disappearance, is 1) one that reflects a long mystery tradition of impossible crimes 2) rooted in the actual main plot of the story. These two factors make "The Redhead" fall within the paradigm of "real mystery fiction".
Asimov liked the restaurant setting for his real mystery tales. The Black Widowers "The Woman in the Bar" (1980) and the Union Club "The Appleby Story" (1981) have such settings, although neither is an impossible crime tale like those mentioned above. Both are fairly minor among Asimov's mysteries. Both do have relationships with the above series, involving a restaurant or bar as a place of concealed contact for a clandestine organization.
4) Some of Asimov's tales deal with ingenious approaches for creating secret codes. These include "Go, Little Book!" (1972), and the Larry tale "The Key Word" (1977).
Most of Asimov's code tales were not included by him in The Best Mysteries of Isaac Asimov.
"Go, Little Book!" also has ties to the "hidden leakage of information" kind of story. It too has scenes in a restaurant.
5) "The Lullaby of Broadway" (1974) is a sort of sequel to "Go, Little Book!". It is relatively unique within the real mysteries, with a plot that has some similarities with the earlier tale, and many differences.
"The Old Purse" (1987) is another hard-to-classify tale within Asimov's mysteries. It has some features in common with "The Lullaby of Broadway": an innocent married couple at the center of the tale, a writer and his wife, the New York City apartment house where they live, surprising but hard to explain events in that apartment house, and a solution involving somewhat similar kinds of intrigue in both stories. Some of these elements also formed a plot thread in The Caves of Steel, with Lije Bailey and his wife Jessie, and the huge futuristic New York City apartment buildings where they live.
Asimov did not include these stories in The Best Mysteries of Isaac Asimov. In his afterwards, Asimov reveals that the initial premise of each story is based on a real life event, while his solution is fictional and made up for the tale.
6) "Can You Prove It?" (1981) deals with an attempt to establish identity. This is an unusual, innovative subject for a mystery story. The solution invokes some of the hidden information that accompanies daily life. So does the solution of the little mystery in the Union Club tale "The Magic Umbrella" (1983), which is also about trying to establish identity, this time not of a person, but of an umbrella. This latter story is most endearing for the characterization of the two battling elderly men. They reflect the similar battling conversations among the Black Widowers. "The Haunted Cabin" (1990) is another puzzle involving a mysterious establishment of identity, like "Can You Prove It?".
Asimov included both of the pre-1987 stories in The Best Mysteries of Isaac Asimov.
Issues of identity, treated in different fashion, are also involved in such sf-mysteries as The Caves of Steel and "Little Lost Robot" from I, Robot.
7) Asimov wrote some "anti-detective stories", tales which deconstruct the conventions of the detective story, violating its norms: "The Obvious Factor" (1973), "Yes, But Why?" (1990). These have some common plot ideas in their solutions. "The Obvious Factor" especially seemed like a cheat when I first read it. No one should read these expecting fair detective tales. However, Asimov's shock effects in "The Obvious Factor" do have a scientific point, one that he memorably makes about pseudo-science.
The solution of these stories gives them some similarity to a different Asimov series mentioned above: "No Smoking", "The Driver", "No Refuge Could Save".
The robot tale "Galley Slave" (1957) also can be seen as a precursor to the anti-detective stories, in a small way. "Galley Slave" is moderately enjoyable as storytelling, being a not-bad Asimov excursion into courtroom drama, but overall the tale lacks substance. In a different way, the robot detective story "Mirror Image" (1972) also has some shared story material. "Mirror Image" has an elaborate, but somehow not very creative plot.
8) The introduction to "The Haunted Cabin" (1990) contains a real life mini-mystery that happened to Dr. Asimov. So does the entire story of "Where Is He?" (1986). Both tales are interesting, but neither of these "found" mysteries aligns closely with the main series of mystery plots that Asimov created above.
Next the stories about puzzles. These are stories in which the Black Widowers try to solve some puzzle or riddle. There are quite a few of these, probably more than the true mysteries. I confess that I tend to be disappointed by any work of crime fiction that does not offer a good mystery to solve. But still, some of the best Asimov puzzle stories have compensations. The best puzzles can be enjoyable, with the ingenious Dr. A. offering clever sidelights to the puzzle. And the puzzles are embedded in fictional backgrounds that are sometimes well developed.
Probably the closest ancestor to Asimov's puzzle stories are "dying message" tales, and related mysteries in which sleuths have to interpret a mysterious piece of text, such as those which offer cryptic clues to buried treasure. Ellery Queen is the leading writer of dying message tales - and most of the Black Widowers stories were first published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, at the direct suggestion of Ellery Queen. What seems to be the first Asimov tale to involve puzzles, the science fiction mystery "The Key" (1966), centers on both dying messages and clues to the location of a hidden treasure. It establishes Asimov's links with both of these mystery traditions.
Another work, one with more distant relationship to Asimov's writing: Lewis Carroll's A Tangled Tale (1880-1881 in magazines, 1885 in book form). This little-known but ingenious work embeds math puzzles into a fictional story. Asimov only rarely included purely mathematical puzzles or games into his tales. Asimov's Union Club mystery "Getting the Combination" (1982) is an example.
On specific puzzle-oriented Black Widowers tales:
"Friday the Thirteenth" (1975) and "The Year of the Action" (1980) are puzzles that involve both calendars and history; both are about determining ambiguous years; both look at the historical implications of those years. "The Year of the Action" involves Gilbert and Sullivan. It is hardly a mystery - but it does contain a well developed little historical essay about its puzzle, and is fun to read. Asimov had previously written two nicely-done pastiches of Gilbert lyrics: "The Foundation of S.F. Success" (1954) and "The Author's Ordeal" (1957), both in the collection Earth Is Room Enough. Gilbert is quoted by Asimov as early as "Runaround" (1942). "The Year of the Action" prophesizes the rise and re-birth of the animated film. It took awhile, but animation has been a huge business since around 1990.
"The Ultimate Crime" (1976) is a similar pure puzzle, about Sherlock Holmes and astronomy.
"To the Barest" (1979) is fun, because it gives some humorous inside looks at the Black Widowers as an institution. Its "puzzle in a will" aspects recall "The Curious Omission" (1974).
While Asimov was famous for being a religious skeptic, "The One and Only East" (1975) contains a sympathetic character who is religious. It offers a full outline of his religious practice and attitudes. Once again, this is a complex portrait of a whole way of life, that relates in form, to the portraits of new ways of life in Asimov's science fiction stories. As in many of Asimov's puzzle stories, the puzzle is barely connected to the rest of the story. The geography puzzle about "the East" has nothing to do with the religious aspects of the tale, or even the family situation of the hero. It is like a whole second story nested within the tale as a whole. "Sunset on the Water" (1986) has a geographical puzzle related to that in "The One and Only East". It also has autobiographical aspects about Asimov's love of history.
Several of the Black Widowers tales show personal sides of Dr. Asimov. "The Cross of Lorraine" (1976) offers metaphors for Asimov's fictional talent and its place in his personal life, just as the earlier sf "Dreaming is a Private Thing" (1955) did. The tale's puzzle is also unusual, in that it is a purely geometric, non-verbal riddle.
"The Family Man" (1976) deals with cognitive psychology: styles and methods of thinking. The story's puzzle is weak, unfortunately, but the discussions of thinking throughout are interesting. The discussion of "family men" versus solitary men and Henry's position on this adds to the characterization of Henry in the stories. "Middle Name" (1980) is also a pure puzzle, without real mystery in the conventional sense. It is mixed with an unusual discussion of relations between the sexes. This discussion seems related in approach to science fiction. Just as science fiction, especially Asimov's, often sets forth a sociological account of an imaginary or future world, so does this story create a detailed look at relations between the sexes in today's society.
"The Quiet Place" (1988) offers interesting metaphors for the tales of friendship between men that are so important to Asimov. It is a puzzle story, but it also offers some real detective work in its dual attempts to track down a person and a place. The story contains imagery that suggests mystical visions of peace, here linked to a place visited by the hero. This is perhaps related to the mystical visions of mental breakdown during space travel, that occur in some of Asimov's fictions. The tale has subject matter links with the story-within-a-story "The Wandering Londoner" in The Caves of Steel (Chapter 10), although that is a horror tale, while "The Quiet Place" is upbeat.
A historical note: The first Black Widowers tale, "The Acquisitive Chuckle" (1972), does not really have a detective - the solution just unfolds. It is only with the second tale that Henry firmly assumes the role of detective, which he will hold ever after. This second story is also the first tale in which Asimov realized he was writing a series: Asimov originally conceived "The Acquisitive Chuckle" as a one-shot. Also, there are only five Black Widowers in these first two stories. It is only with the third, the otherwise not-too-interesting "Truth to Tell" (1972), that math teacher Roger Halsted makes his appearance. One also notes that as far back as "Super-Neutron" (1941) Asimov was writing a tale about a men's dining club that has a guest telling it a story. So the Black Widowers have deep roots within Asimov's fiction.
The Union Club Mysteries (1980 - 1983) collects a series of very short mystery stories Asimov wrote; a few more appear in The Best Mysteries of Isaac Asimov, and others are still uncollected. Each is around 2,000 words (six pages), but each manages to have a carefully developed background, a puzzle or mystery, and a solution. Like the longer Black Widowers stories, a few of the Union Club tales are real mysteries, and others are preludes to disconnected puzzles embedded in the stories. Quite a few of the tales are fun, in part because of the care Asimov devoted to the backgrounds of the stories, which are often concise but richly developed.
"He Wasn't There" (1981) is one of the most elaborately constructed of the pure mystery Union Club stories. Asimov wrote this based on a plot contributed by Martin Gardner, well known for his "Mathematical Games" columns in Scientific American. Its New York City apartment house setting recalls such Black Widowers stories as "The Lullaby of Broadway" and "The Old Purse", but the mystery plot has a different structure than those tales.
"The Men Who Wouldn't Talk" (1980) has an uninspired puzzle gimmick. But the body of the story deals with a mass investigation at a prison, and contains some inventive ideas. It is related to earlier mass investigations such as "Little Lost Robot" and Lucky Starr and the Moons of Jupiter.
"Irresistible to Women" (1981), despite being in a collection of non-sf mysteries, is actually a science fiction mystery, although it is not labeled as such. Like Asimov's robot sf-mystery novels of the 1950's, it is a whodunit, with a series of suspects, from among whom the detective has to find the guilty party. This whodunit structure is rare in Asimov's post-1972 short stories. Here we have three women suspects who visit the murdered man shortly before his death: a plot set-up found in countless Ellery Queen short stories. The mystery involves cognitive science, and hence is related to the many Asimov mysteries that turn on psychology and the inner mental workings of the characters.
David Starr, Space Ranger (1952) is the first of a series of six juvenile science fiction mystery books Asimov wrote in the 1950's about this character. Like many books published for teen readers, they are long novellas, not really of novel length. Each concentrates on a different region of the solar system, as it was known then.
David Starr, Space Ranger opens with a mysterious death in a restaurant. In this it anticipates the many non-sf mysteries that Asimov would write that were set in restaurants. Unfortunately, as a mystery David Starr, Space Ranger is weak. The identity of the villain is hardly made clear from the one obscure scientific clue against him; Asimov never "closes the circle" to establish that the conspiracy could have been caused only by characters we see in the story; the finale depends on violence and torture, rather than reasoning. The last is both a moral failing, and a structural weakness in a detective story.
"The Hazing" (1942) has plot motifs that will show up again in David Starr, Space Ranger. Both show a group of heroes who are overpowered and kidnapped by ambiguous-but-obnoxious bad guys. One of the kidnappers is a giant, fierce and low-brow, in both tales. Both groups of heroes are taken to a backward, more primitive society on a frontier planet. Both have adventures there that underscore the masculinity of the heroes, and have the heroes accepted into the rough-and-ready all-male primitive society. In both, the heroes soon are in the gaudy clothes of the frontier society. Both have all-male casts, but this is hardly unusual in Asimov. Asimov's late Black Widowers story "Police at the Door" (1990), will return in part to such material, with its intellectual hero's longing to be part of a group of working class men.
There are other links between "The Hazing" and later Asimov. 1) In "The Hazing", the heroes are kidnapped, and sent off on space travel. 2) A similar kidnapping happens to Asimov's series heroes Powell and Donovan in "Escape!" (1945), one of the best tales in I, Robot. Powell and Donovan experience a breakdown in rationality, during their pioneering interstellar jump. This is similar to the mental breakdown experienced by the robot in "Runaround". 3) In "I'm in Marsport Without Hilda" (1957), all space travelers will experience mental breakdowns during such jumps. In all such cases, the mental irrationality is depicted by Asimov using nonsense sentences the characters think or say: an effect that sometimes resembles modernist or symbolist literature such as Eliot or Joyce. In "Escape!", the characters are subjected to mental teasings by the computer brain that kidnaps them; in "Marsport", the hero tries to stimulate the space travelers, during their period of irrationality. There is a sense of hazing in all of these tales. 4) In David Starr, Space Ranger, the hero is abducted and loses consciousness not during space travel, but in the novel's central encounter with advanced Martian intelligences. His mind is manipulated by these beings, but in an apparently more sincere and less teasing way than the scenes in "Escape!" and "Marsport". Still, this is once more a mystical, irrational experience. And the disembodied, non-material Martians he encounters have some similarity to the traditional angels and devils the heroes of "Escape!" think they are seeing. 5) A story with a bit of relationship is "Risk" (1955), one of Asimov's robot tales. Here, a pioneering interstellar jump is seen as a threat to intellect and sanity for humans who attempt it. This is viewed as pure horror, rather than as a mystical or irrational experience, as in the other tales. The hero of this story is forced into a potential jump, somewhat similar to the way the heroes of the other tales are kidnapped.
Lucky Starr and the Big Sun of Mercury (1956) is a science fiction mystery that shares imagery and approaches with "The Talking Stone" (1955). It has rock-living aliens, and a dying message delivered by a non-human character. Here, however, the dying message in Lucky Starr and the Big Sun of Mercury is an actual clue to the identity of the killer, rather than to a hidden treasure, as in "The Talking Stone". Such a dying message clue to the killer is in the mainstream of dying message mysteries. Lucky Starr and the Big Sun of Mercury is a genuine whodunit: a story in which the detective and reader have to pick the guilty party out a cast of suspects. Both the dying message and other clues offer a fully fair play mystery, in which it is possible to identify the villain. In this, it resembles The Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun.
Lucky Starr and the Big Sun of Mercury continues Asimov's interest in portrayals of scientific research. Here the research of Project Light builds upon the earlier discovery of the interstellar jump and subetheric space, which had been seen in "Little Lost Robot" and "Escape!" in I, Robot. As in the earlier stories, this research is viewed as a part of future history: events logically following on previous events. The way Project Light is a large scale human undertaking set in outer space recalls "Little Lost Robot". The jealousy of Cook for his superior recalls "Liar!" in I, Robot.
Lucky Starr and the Big Sun of Mercury reflects the wrong astronomical idea of its era, that Mercury only keeps one face to the sun. It does not: Mercury, we now know, revolves like every other planet. However, luckily the story does not emphasize this aspect much. Instead, the focus of Lucky Starr and the Big Sun of Mercury is how large the Sun seems when viewed from Mercury, and how much light it gets from the sun. These aspects have not dated at all. Asimov uses them to create his poetic opening chapter.
Lucky Starr and the Moons of Jupiter (1957) is a science fiction mystery, that shares some features with The Caves of Steel. Both are whodunits, set in science fiction universes in which all characters are under mental surveillance. Both stories tale place in a related science fictional milieu: Earth versus advanced Outer Worlds, with robots in common use in the Outer Worlds. Perhaps more important is a common structural characteristic. Both works maintain long chains of deductive investigation that stretch over the entire book. Because of this richness of plotting, Lucky Starr and the Moons of Jupiter is the most important of the Lucky Starr works, considered as a mystery.
The Venusian frog aspects develop ideas Asimov first explored with The Mule in The Foundation Trilogy. Lucky also faces a hazing, as in the story "The Hazing", although here it does not lead to space travel or kidnapping.
Lucky Starr and the Moons of Jupiter is also a tale of a large scale scientific program on a base in space, like "Little Lost Robot" and "Escape!" in I, Robot. We see not only people engaged in research, but a richly developed look at the results of the research, anti-gravity. Asimov had previously explored a world in which anti-gravity was in common use, in "The Singing Bell". Here he shows its initial development.
Lucky Starr and the Rings of Saturn (1958) is less of a science fiction mystery, than are some of the other books in the Lucky Starr series. There is no central mystery, and the book is structured as a thriller rather than as a mystery puzzle. Closest element to a conventional mystery: there is a subplot about locating a capsule. At the end (Chapter 16), Lucky does this, using clues based on the dying message of a bad guy. This "dying message used to locate a hidden treasure" approach recalls "The Talking Stone" and "The Key". There is also an interesting passage (Chapter 4) in which Lucky finds hidden significance in a message from a Sirian ship. This is not a dying message, but such "text interpretation" has formal similarities to the "dying message" kind of mystery.
While Lucky Starr and the Rings of Saturn is not mainly a mystery, it is one of the best Lucky Starr novels, gripping throughout. The last three Lucky Starr novels, Lucky Starr and the Big Sun of Mercury, Lucky Starr and the Moons of Jupiter, Lucky Starr and the Rings of Saturn, seem to form a trilogy. Like The Caves of Steel, they emphasize the conflict between Earth and a group of thinly populated outer planets that use robots. In all of these books, robots play a major role. These books and "The Ugly Little Boy" (1958) were the last major sf works Asimov created before the long silence, 1959 - 1971, during which he published almost no new science fiction, except for his novelization of Fantastic Voyage and a few often very short stories. So their very existence seems precious.
Lucky Starr and the Rings of Saturn opens with an absorbing account of space travel, to and near Saturn (Chapters 1 - 8). It involves a chase through space, as well as a vivid account of Saturn and its rings, and shows what Asimov could do when he choose to write "space opera". Everything has been imagined with both logic and detail. Like the space travel in "Super-Neutron" (1941), the space ship goes south of the ecliptic, and views a planet from its South Pole. There were good space travel scenes in the second half of Lucky Starr and the Moons of Jupiter, too. But those mainly restricted themselves to vivid descriptions about what might be seen from Jupiter's moons. In Lucky Starr and the Rings of Saturn, Asimov instead develops a look at space travel as a whole.
The second half of Lucky Starr and the Rings of Saturn deals with a political struggle. Its intrigue reminds one of the political parts of The Foundation Trilogy and Pebble in the Sky. The book has the first real look at the lives and beliefs of the Sirians, and other Outer World planets. It gives a full look at the politics of these societies. The depiction of how the Sirians regard Earth people as racially inferior is a chilling and powerful pro-Civil Rights commentary, like Pebble in the Sky. The book also shsows Asimov's belief that political solutions to problems are far better than war.
Between the complex vision of space travel, and the equally full look at a series of planets and their life styles in its second half, Lucky Starr and the Rings of Saturn is deeply science fictional. It is a full tilt look at a possible future, an Asimov specialty.
The sheer originality of Cordwainer Smith's ideas seem to astonish most people who read his works, especially the great sequence of science fiction short stories. Cordwainer Smith's science fiction resembles Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy, in that it takes place in a far future universe that is completely different from both today's society, and the work of other science fiction writers. Both writers are also more interested in showing a future humanity, than they are in exploring alien worlds or beings. Both writers' works have aspects of the thriller, and both writers' thrillers involve melodrama, in which two sides of a moral dispute compete for their teams' success. Both writers were also scholars in their private life, Smith being a Sinologist with State Department connections. I once interviewed a State Department colleague of Smith's, and he told me that Smith was the wittiest storyteller he had ever met, a man with an amazing flow of monologue.
Cordwainer Smith's novels seem much more minor than his short stories. Nothing in the mainstream novel Ria (1947) is as interesting as the author biography on the jacket, in which Smith says that he has lived in so many cities, that wherever he is, he is homesick for somewhere else. A genuinely Smithian observation! The well written ending of Ria evokes the inner nature of each character in the form of music. This music all blends together and forms a hidden music of humanity, which Smith calls the Instrumentality of Mankind. It is clear that this is another name for the Tao, the hidden inner principle of reality, in Taoist philosophy. Smith evoked Taoism sympathetically in one of his last stories, "Under Old Earth" (1966), and clearly Taoist ideas were important in his work. Smith used the same name for the governing body of his far future sf tales. It is unclear whether he was already planning these sf stories, and based the name and concept in Ria on this sf government, or whether the reverse was true. I suspect the sf ideas came first. In the sf stories, the phrase "Instrumentality of Mankind" contains no musical meanings, or references to musical instruments. It refers instead to its members being the "Instruments" of humanity, carrying out their wishes, and achieving their goals. The use of the same name to refer to the Tao in Ria, and the giving this name a musical significance, seems to be kind of inspired pun. A pun created not as humor, but as an enhancer of meaning and allusion.
Atomsk (1949) is a now forgotten spy novel. It shows that cliché of plotting: the hero first infiltrates an enemy base, then breaks out of it and escapes, with important information. The hero is unusual in that he is an Aleut. He spent World War II undercover posing as a Japanese civilian, and now is fishing for Soviet secrets in Siberia. Only some details about a crashed pilot in the early chapters seem especially Smithian. (This thriller is my excuse for including Cordwainer Smith in this Mystery Guide. Mainly, I just wanted to discuss this major author.)
"Scanners Live in Vain" (1948) is one of Smith's greatest works. The story starts out, first inside the hero's emotions, then expands out from there to the hero's body. Then it encompasses his wife, then his friends, then his coworkers, then finally the whole galaxy. It is a steadily expanding, and very unusual structure. Everything in the story is entirely original; it is not taken from other sf authors, or from common sf conventions of what space travel or the future should be like. Smith's title is a variation on a quote from William Cowper's hymn "Light Shining Out of Darkness", the one that begins "God moves in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform". As an Anglican, Smith presumably sang this hymn many times in church. Cowper's hymn states that "Blind unbelief is sure to err, and scan His work in vain. But God is His own interpreter, and He will make it plain." Perhaps from here, Smith developed the sf concept of a "scanner". It is perhaps another example of a sort of pun or word play leading to creative ideas for Smith.
"The Ballad of Lost C'Mell" (1962) and "The Dead Lady of Clown Town" (1964) are Smith's responses to the Civil Rights era. Some of Smith's most major works, they form a powerful attack against racism, and a look at the integrationist civil disobedience of the day. Like Isaac Asimov's Civil Rights novel, Pebble in the Sky (1950), they need to become much better known among general readers. "The Ballad of Lost C'Mell" is set at a later time period than "The Dead Lady of Clown Town" in Smith's future history and hence was placed later in The Best of Cordwainer Smith. However, I believe "C'Mell" should be read first, to give the two tales maximum impact.
The rhythmic prose of Smith is some of the best in modern literature. His work has some of the subtlest rhythmic effects since that of Sir Thomas Browne.
In "Drunkboat" (1963), Smith incorporates large sections of Arthur Rimbaud's poem "Le Bateau ivre" (1871). "Drunk boat" is just a literal translation of Rimbaud's title. Here Rimbaud's non-rational visions are made to represent the experience of space travel. There are precedents for such hallucinatory and verbally symbolist depictions of space flight, in Isaac Asimov's "Escape!" (1945) and "I'm in Marsport Without Hilda" (1957). Smith includes other such avant-garde passages in his work, notably the opening of Norstrilia.
J.G. Ballard is the world's greatest living writer, and the finest contemporary prose stylist in the English language. His reputation would be much higher, were it not for the prejudices shown against science fiction writers.
Ballard's latest works are a series of short stories and novellas. Ballard had a great period in 1980-1984 with such classic works as the novel Hello America, the story sequence Memories of the Space Age, the historical novel Empire of the Sun, such short stories as "Report on an Unidentified Space Station" and "The Object of the Attack", and the interviews collected in Re/Search No 8/9 and the essay "What I Believe".
Three of his works of the 1985 - 1991 period stand out. "Running Wild" (1988) is a fascinating mystery novella. This story is thematically related to "The Object of the Attack" (1984). Both deal with revolt among a group of disaffected young people against authority in contemporary Britain. Both have a mystery like format, and a similar "tone". Both are full of political and cultural allusions that give the basic plot much richness of meaning.
On its own, "Running Wild" displays Ballard's mastery of narration. Ballard is able to create climaxes and give shape to events the way a classical composer gives structure to a piece of music. The reader soon comes to hang on every word of the story, not just to find out what happens next, but because of its meaningful part in an overall narrative structural flow. Ballard has created such effects before, in stories such as "The Waiting Grounds" and "Now: Zero". But this is one of his longest and most sustained pieces of narrative flow. At each step or stage of the story, Ballard creates a very elaborate "mise-en-scène" or atmosphere, just the way a film director creates a mise-en-scène in a movie. The Ballardian technique of narration shows each mise-en-scène emerging out of the next, through a logical (and emotional) development. Step by step, through eighty pages, Ballard develops each new mise-en-scène out of the last. The constant changes in the inner structure of the mise-en-scène, and the relationships between each mise-en-scène and the next, fascinate any reader with an interest in the formal unfolding of complex structures, whether in the form of music or story or film.
The reader almost "sees" the narrative progression of the story in terms of movement, or as dance images. It awakens mental images of movement, the way the unfolding forms of classical music also do. This is a good mental metaphor, one that springs spontaneously to the brain while under the influence of the artistic experience of the story, a metaphor that seeks to capture the almost magical sense of movement or flow this story seems to provide.
"Dream Cargoes" (1991) is a science fiction short story. It breaks new thematic ground in Ballard's work in that it deals with the conception of a new child, an image of new fertility in Ballard's work. "Dream Cargoes" also succeeds as a complex piece of science fiction imagination. One should never forget that Ballard, in his own words, is "a real science fiction writer", and that creating new science fictional situations is an important component of Ballard's art. "Dream Cargoes", like the stories in Memories of the Space Age, is related in theme and technique to Ballard's earlier novel, The Crystal World (1964/1966). All of these works feature Ballard's most elaborate verbal style, featuring complex rhythmical prose and vivid visual imagery. (So do many Ballard works not thematically related to The Crystal World.) Such beautifully written stories are deeply satisfying to read.
Ballard says that he remembers virtually all his dreams. "Report on an Unidentified Space Station" (1982) is based on one of Ballard's dreams; it is one of his most Borges like works. The story "The Enormous Space" (1989) features some of Ballard's most dream like imagery. This uneven but fascinating tale holds similarities to Ballard's early story "The Overloaded Man" (1961), where the protagonist deliberately tries to abstract his perceptions away from reality, and to "The Terminal Beach" (1964), where the hero deliberately maroons himself on an island with nothing but a candy bar to eat. Here the hero maroons himself in his home.
As hunger breaks down the protagonist's sense of reality, he begins to perceive his house in a new way, "discovering" new doors and rooms he never saw before. I have exactly such experiences in dreams, where I have found and explored such new areas in the house I grew up in. Ballard's story captures this sort of dream experience with extraordinary vividness and accuracy. Although it eventually falls apart into trumped up violence in its second half, the dream experiences of the beginning stab the heart with their beauty and insight to the world of dreams.
The best of J.G. Ballard's very early stories is the exuberantly inventive outer space fantasy, "Passport to Eternity" (written c1955, published 1962). Ballard would never write anything this "science fictional" again. This period also saw the first of his Vermilion Sands short story series, set in a future resort town. All of these stories deal with some futuristic art form, and "Prima Belladonna" (1956) starts this pattern by focusing on singing plants. Both of these early tales are comic and intellectual in tone. Ballard only published intermittently throughout the 1950's. His prolific period begins in force with "The Waiting Grounds" (1959), his first great work. Everything is immensely still in the early portions of this tale. Eventually, slight movement is introduced. It gradually accelerates, and eventually the landscape begins to revolve. The whole movement is one of the great triumphs of mise-en-scène in Ballard's work.
"The Waiting Grounds" is also the first Ballard tale to introduce one of his complex landscapes. These elaborate environments are one of the best features of his work. They are intended to evoke states of mind. The landscape of "The Waiting Grounds" would essentially reappear in the Vermilion Sands series, starting with the second tale, "Studio Five, The Stars" (1961). This tale, with its elaborate description of Vermilion Sands, is in some ways the real start of the series. "Studio Five" deals with the use of computers to write poetry. While now outdated in some slight ways - the use of paper punch tape is now passé, although it is put to magnificently poetic use in the story - this is an amazingly prescient look at the future of computing. It is still one of the best and most realistic looks at artificial intelligence in science fiction.
Ballard wrote several stories in this period, in which the sf events of the tale allegorically depict the mental states of the protagonist. The best of these pieces is "The Last World of Mr. Goddard" (1960). This is a fantasy tale, depicting a man about to be retired. Published the same month (October 1960) as "Goddard" is "The Voices of Time". The climax of Ballard's early fiction, it is Ballard's greatest story. It is exceptionally beautifully written, with a rich collection of imagery. Also very beautiful is "The Cloud Sculptors of Coral D" (1967). This piece has some of Ballard's best allegory, in the scene where the hero and heroine lay down in cracks of a giant mirror. This is allegory worthy of Hawthorne. Ballard is very sensitive to postures: see the Preface to Vermilion Sands, and the finale of "The Atrocity Exhibition" (1966), which concludes when the hero assumes a final posture - a sublimely imagined end. We are used to reading stories whose climax is some colossal event; this tale suggests we should look at the most intimate parts of our personal experience. In all these stories, the posture is "lying down". This is preparatory to sleep, in human life, and reminds one of the onset of sleep at the end of "The Voices of Time".
Ballard has all but disowned his first novel, The Wind From Nowhere (1961), often no longer including it in lists of his published books. Written in two weeks of vacation from his job, it is very atypical of his work of the period. Unlike them, it is written in a plain prose style, and has little poetic imagery. I found it impossible to read years ago. However, after reading Empire of the Sun (1984), I went back to it, and found it surprisingly interesting. Like Empire, it has a war, or at least a military logistics background. It shows a side of Ballard that would not emerge into the rest of his work till twenty years later. The novel eventually turns into an absorbing adventure story.
The Drought (1964) has the best architecture of Ballard's early novels. The first half shows a journey toward a goal (in this case, the sea); the second half takes place some years later, and shows the journey back. Along the way, the characters and places of the first half return, and their fates are revealed. Ballard used an identical architecture for Empire of the Sun. This later novel draws on the architecture of The Drought, and the subject matter of The Wind From Nowhere.