Customer Reviews

Immodest Proposals: The Complete Science Fiction of William Tenn, Volume 1

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A few years ago I searched the used book stalls and dealer's rooms and slowly assembled the complete sf works (all out of print) of William Tenn, and proceeded to read and review them. You can find these reviews on the Web. The stories were great fun, but what struck me most was that the satires had not lost their edge despite the passage of time. Why? Because Tenn addressed his satire to the underlying conflicts, which are timeless, rather than to the transitory phenomena that tend to be the focus of most humorists, satirists, and social critics. Just as important, Tenn's satirical sword usually has two edges, and will, to mix a metaphor, have gored everybody's ox before he's finished with his tale. First rate stuff. So the question I kept asking myself was: why isn't this guy's stuff in print?? Well now it is, in a handsome volume with an introduction by Connie Willis, and comments on each story by the Author himself. What's not to love?

William Tenn is often referred to as a satirist, and his "satire" is of the socially observant and subversive stripe. Tenn certainly poked and prodded at human weaknesses and political hypocrisy in his classic short stories. Meanwhile, in a fashion that reminds me of another under-appreciated sci-fi genius, Alfred Bester, Tenn also built stories around the contradictions and credibility gaps in stock sci-fi archetypes. Have you ever wondered why sci-fi aliens look human and speak English? Wouldn't aliens be so different from humans that they would find us bizarre and disgusting? When characters travel through time do they alter history, and if they do, does anyone notice? Or how could all humans possibly unite against an alien menace without breaking down into factions? In Tenn's often expertly considered and intricately plotted tales, he explored these contradictions, and constructed fascinating stories that every science fiction historian should know better.

Granted, there are some clunkers in Tenn's body of work, in which he fell into the satirist's trap of creating an improbable fictional universe which would then be used for thin statements about social problems. Some examples here include "The Masculinist Revolt" and "Venus is a Man's World," which merely switch gender domination roles to comment on sexism. Some of Tenn's non-satirical stories such as "The Ghost Standard" and "The Tenants" are held back by quaint explorations of human nature that aren't too illuminating. But these problems are rare in Tenn's repertoire. His winning satires truly bring the weaknesses of sci-fi writing, and humanity, into broad focus, and he was amazingly ahead of his time in some of his political explorations. (Most of the stories here were written for the golden age mags in the 40s and 50s.)

The look at human cruelty and celebrity is truly astonishing in this collection's most insightful story, "Time in Advance," in which criminals have the option to serve their time before committing the crime. Other winning stories explore how humanity doesn't have the inherent strengths to reach for the stars or rise above infighting – including the outstanding "Alexander the Bait," "The Servant Problem," "Project Hush," and several others. Meanwhile, Tenn comes up with absolutely fascinating subversions of sci-fi archetypes, like time travel in "Winthrop Was Stubborn" and "Lisbon Cubed," and the troublesome relations between closed-minded humans and extremely non-human aliens in "The Flat-Eyed Monster," "Venus and the Seven Sexes," and "The Last Bounce," among others. The contrarian and thought-provoking nature of Tenn's works may explain why he's not better known to modern sci-fi fans. Deep-thinking readers can consider the injustice of that while wrapping their minds around Tenn's very sharp and pointed works. [~doomsdayer520~]

I brought a second hand copy of this collection and i regret it. It should have been brand new and in hardback- it's that good. And the money would have gone to the author, for he surely deserves it. I'd never read any of his stuff before, only Bradbury, Dick, Wells Sheckley, Asimov, Bester and Knight. Having finished it, i'd have to place him up their among the legends of sf.
This collection is worth it, if only for one story. But their are many that belong among the all time great masterpieces of the short story; 'The Liberation of Earth'- about an devastating future war in which mankind can be no more than a witness to ir's own extinction, 'Down Among the Dead Men'- zombies reconstituted from the remains of the dead help out the human troops on the front againsts an insect race in a interstellar war, 'The Tenants'- a subtle and fragile fantasy, 'The Sevant Problem'- an astounding and frighteningly funny tale of power manipulation among tha powerful elite of a totalitarin society top strata, 'Time in Advance' has criminals do time for commiting the crime, seven years in this case for murder, who find themselves in demand by people who'd like them to snub out somebody for them and held in fear by those that've wronged them int he past. Other classics include the famous 'Brooklyn Project', the horrorifying 'Wednesday's Child' ( a supperior sequel to the much anthologised 'Child's Play'). Others to note are 'The Generation of Noah''Winthrop was Stubborn' , 'Null-P'and his personal favourite 'The Custodian'. 'Lisborn Cubed' may remind some of the film 'Men in Black' but is vastly more rewarding. A master craftmans, most of his stories seem to have been painstakling put together and the general opinion is of a humanitarian (he almost always sides with the underdog or minorities) taking a aceberic look at the sheer blinding egotistical hyprocrisy of human kind. A blissful way to be entertained. It's companion volume is also a must.

When I was a kid, I was an avid reader of science fiction, and there were three authors whose short stories I especially enjoyed: Fredric Brown, Robert Sheckley and William Tenn. In recent years NESFA Press has issued collections of stories by all three, and of the trio, Tenn's efforts have fared the least well with the passage of time. While Brown was the master of the short-short story and Sheckley's razor-edge wit remains as sharp today as it was a half-century ago, Tenn's stories often seem dated and out-of-touch.

The problem is not technological obsolesence; it is that the issues Tenn addresses are either long since settled or just plain irrelevant now. Some of his best stories (The Servant Problem, Brooklyn Project, Eastward Ho!, and a few others) are still entertaining and insightful -- but others just seem preachy and didactic. Tenn's self-described socialist/pacifist views suffuse his writings, and often overshadow the story lines.

Stylistically, Tenn is not in the same league as either Fredric Brown or Robert Sheckley, and while this book is a treasure for anyone interested in mid-20th-century science fiction, it will likely seem like a curio to most modern-day readers.

I'm sorry fans, but no matter how hard I tried I couldn't get past the "cleverness" of these so called stories---can a story be a story with neither characters nor scene? Tenn's "stories" have neither. They are merely whimsical commentaries on nonsensical situations and, must have been written in front of a mirror, so self-focused are they. We are never allowed to feel anything other than the author's cynicism. We are never allowed to see anything happen. Instead we are offered blather only an intellectual could love.

Though I'm a collector of many of NESFA's great golden age SF, this is one writer who should have been allowed to vanish into the mists of pulp history. If it's good stories you're looking for, skip this one and instead go for James H. Schmitz, Chad Oliver or James Triptree.

This and the other volume collecting the stories of William Tenn contain some of the most memorable stories ever written in the S-F field, paradigmatic stories comparable to Asimov's "Nightfall" and Clarke's "The Star" and "The Nine Billion Names of God".
I first read such Tenn stories as "Lisbon Cubed", "The Discovery of Morniel Mathaway", and "The Masculinist Revolt" almost thirty years ago, but never forgot them, and for all that time, anything which reminded me of these stories would not fail to bring a chuckle to my lips.

Though not a totally stellar collection, there are some stories that I consider real clunkers in this, it is a nice collection by an author not widely known to many people.

The stories aren't sheer entertainment here, they are entertaining, generally, but of a higher caliber, thought-provoking and displaying a wide-breadth of subject matter and technique. As I mentioned, they can be somewhat cynical, sometimes whimsical,and always satirical.

Tenn's afterwords to each story provide some interesting insights, and in a couple cases give good reason anyone would display some cynicism

Overall it was good enough that I shall be trying to get the second volume. The good stories repaid the effort put into reading them and more than made up for the stories I personally did not like.