About the Story: In CONDITIONALLY HUMAN (February 1952), gene-alteration raises animal intelligence to near human levels, posing ethical and emotional questions for those involved in the animals care. Miller handles the storys horrifying implications with prescient force and cool detachment. He had only been writing for publication for a little over a year when this story appeared GALAXY, and this, the first of his two contributions to the magazine, showed that he had already achieved full control of his talent. The ethical questions raised here (Are they therefore human? Can we continue to treat them like property?) are at the center of societal concern and debate sixty years later and are nowhere closer to being resolved. This version of the novelette is significantly shorter than the version which appears in the major 1980 collection THE BEST OF WALTER MILLER, JR. and it is reasonable to speculate that the version published in GALAXY was a reduction by its editor Horace Gold, who was well known to have engaged in that kind of imperious editing. There is no question that this more economical version fits better into GALAXYs format and serves Golds views of editorial consistency. Millers own views of the presumed alteration are unknown but the fact that his COMMAND PERFORMANCE appeared in the magazine nine months later suggests that he found this editorial intervention acceptable. (Some of GALAXYs authors did not. Theodore Sturgeon was notably discontented and Isaac Asimov left the magazine and science fiction writing in the late 50s, probably for that reason.) About the Author: Walter M. Miller, Jr. (1922-1997) was the author of the Hugo winning novel, A CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWITZ (1960) generally regarded as one of the ten finest works to ever emerge from the genre. Like Joseph Heller, Miller was a WWII combat flier who was severely damaged by his horrific experiences; he became a journalist and published prolifically over the decade of the 1950s, then went silent for his last forty years. (An uncompleted expensively contracted semi-sequel to A CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWITZ was finished off by Terry Bisson after Millers death and published unsuccessfully by Bantam Books.) Miller published approximately 40 magazine stories and the one novel in the 1950s, some of the stories are regarded as monuments to the genre. His novella, THE DARFSTELLAR, published in ASTOUNDINGs January 1955 issue, won the Hugo as did CANTICLE half a decade later for best novel. Millers other contribution to GALAXY, CONDITIONALLY HUMAN, appeared nine months earlier than COMMAND PERFORMANCE and is regarded equally highly. Millers personal involvement with the science fiction community was embittering and disastrous; a well publicized affair with Judith Merril, then Frederik Pohls wife, wrecked her marriage and damaged his, and he abandoned any involvement with that community in the mid-fifties, living as a near recluse. Miller later committed suicide by gunshot. About The Galaxy Project: Horace Gold led GALAXY magazine from its first issue dated October 1950 to science fictions most admired, widely circulated and influential magazine throughout its initial decade. Its legendary importance came from publication of full length novels, novellas and novelettes. GALAXY published nearly every giant in the science fiction field. The Galaxy Project is a selection of the best of GALAXY with new forewords by some of todays best science fiction writers. The initial selections in alphabetical order include work by Ray Bradbury, Frederic Brown, Lester del Rey, Robert A. Heinlein, Damon Knight, C. M. Kornbluth, Walter M. Miller, Jr., Frederik Pohl, Robert Sheckley, Robert Silverberg, William Tenn (Phillip Klass) and Kurt Vonnegut with new Forewords by Paul di Filippo, David Drake, John Lutz, Barry Malzberg and Robert Silverberg. The Galaxy Project is committed to publishing new work in the spirit GALAXY magazine and its founding editor Horace Gold.
--This text refers to the
Kindle Edition
edition.
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