On the evening of Tuesday, 1 November 2011 (All Saints’ Day, the Day of the Dead), at its current venue, the SoHo Gallery for Digital Art on Sullivan Street, the New York Review of Science Fiction Readings Series hosted another in its annual tributes (back in its traditional November) to past great writers of the genre. This year’s honoree was the Hugo (and Retro-Hugo) Award-winning, innovative craftsman and “Dean of Science Fiction” Murray Leinster (pronounced, to the surprise of just about everyone there—except, perhaps, to those of Irish descent—not “Line-ster” but “Len-ster”). [Photo, left-to-right: Billee Stallings, David G. Hartwell, and Michael Swanwick. Photo by Mark Blackman.]
After briefly thanking the Gallery’s absent proprietor, John Ordover, and announcing an upcoming reading by Michael Swanwick (one of the evening’s panelists) and N.K. Jemisin on 10 November at the Way Station in Park Slope, Brooklyn’s only steampunk and Doctor Who-themed bar (no word if it’s larger on the inside), Jim Freund, the Series’ executive curator and host of WBAI-FM’s Hour of the Wolf radio program on sf and fantasy (now broadcasting and streaming every Thursday morning—except during Pledge Weeks—from 1:30 to 3:00AM on WBAI, 99.5 FM), introduced Billee Stallings, the daughter of Will F. Jenkins (Leinster’s real name), and who, with her sister, Jo-an Evans, has written a memoir about their father titled Murray Leinster: The Life and Works (published by McFarland & Co.).
At the podium, Ms. Stallings recounted biographical details about William Fitzgerald Jenkins (1896-1975). Not college-educated (things were different a century ago), he was largely self-taught, an inventor, and fascinated with the world. (Swanwick displayed a photo of the 9-year-old Will with his boy-carrying glider.) His writing career—as Will F. Jenkins, Murray Leinster, and William Fitzgerald—spanned 50 years, from 1919 to 1970, and encompassed over 1,500 short stories and articles, 14 movie scripts, and hundreds of radio scripts and television plays. (Regarding his primary pen name—H.L. Mencken told him to save Jenkins for “the good stuff”—Murray was from a family name of his mother’s, and Leinster derived indirectly from his middle name: the Fitzgeralds were Dukes of Leinster in eastern Ireland.) His first sf story, “The Runaway Skyscraper,” appeared (in Argosy) in 1919—before the label of “science fiction” and sf magazines existed! Astounding Stories was his best market—he had a story (“Tanks”) in its first issue and one (The Pirates of Zan) in its final issue (before being renamed Analog)—but he also sold to Weird Tales, Thrilling Wonder Stories, and Future Science Fiction, and in the mainstream marker, The Smart Set, Argosy, Collier’s, The Saturday Evening Post, Esquire, and even Cosmopolitan. (On screens around the Gallery were displayed covers from several of Leinster’s novels—including Four from Planet 5, The Pirates of Zan, and Time Tunnel—and magazines in which he’d appeared.)
Next, filling in for panelist Barry N. Malzberg (her Halloween costume?), Marianne Porter (Swanwick’s wife) read a critical analysis by him of Leinster’s work, his introduction to A Logic Named Joe, particularly noting three of his classic and most influential stories: “First Contact” (1945) (Malzberg wrote) was the first and still the best story about humanity’s first interaction with an alien race; “A Logic Named Joe” (1946) brilliantly predicted and mapped our contemporary Internet, Google, Siri, etc.; and “Sidewise in Time” (1934) created the alternate history/parallel world/branching world sf subgenre (the alternate history award, the Sidewise, is named in its honor). “A remarkable, irreplaceable figure,” he summed up.
Concluding the first half of the evening’s event, Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author Michael Swanwick delightfully read in its entirety “A Logic Named Joe.” A “logic,” as computers with keyboards hooked up via circuits to “tanks,” or a central databank (sound familiar?), are therein called, accidentally becomes individualized and gets “ambition”; he “wants to work right,” do the absolute best at providing information. Soon, via his open relays (and after censor-circuits are bypassed), all logics everywhere begin telling anybody anything they ask, including foolproof instructions on (literally) getting away with murder… or counterfeiting or bank robbery or lockpickng or bomb-making… and private information is no longer private. Civilization is threatened, whether dangerous data continues flowing (raising “merry hell”) or the system is shut down. (“Logics are civilization!… Shut off logics and everything goes skidoo.”)
After a brief intermission, Freund returned to the podium to announce December’s traditional “Family Night” readers, Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman. Then a panel consisting of Stallings, Swanwick, and moderator David G. Hartwell discussed Leinster and his work. Hartwell, a senior editor of Tor/Forge Books and publisher of The New York Review of Science Fiction (whence this reading series), began by noting his similarity to the other “Dean of Science Fiction,” Robert A. Heinlein, in the way their minds operated; both were inventors and craftsmen as writers. (At one time, he was Heinlein’s favorite writer, though they were not close.) He remarked on the two races in “First Contact” communicating by telling dirty jokes, mused that it might have been inspired by the Christmas night in World War I when both sides sang carols, and alluded to a Soviet “answer” to that story (though he didn’t say, Ivan Yefremov’s “The Heart of the Serpent,” 1959). Swanwick (who met him once) commented on his range and creativity, noted that he was aware of the craft of writing and how most of his stories were about how the protagonist solved a problem, and said that he was a natural storyteller. (Not only did he come up with new concepts, he thought through their ramifications and consequences.) Stallings related that he wrote to sell, it was his job, and he was a professional; he had no patience for pretentious writers. He was shy, but loved to entertain small gatherings (he loved talking to young boys, whom he saw as his audience). (He did not have a “public persona,” wrote Malzberg; and only attended Washington conventions.) He admired James Branch Cabell, she added, and had a map of Jurgen hanging up.
A Q&A session with Ms. Stallings followed. Anticipating the one about where he got his ideas, Stallings disclosed that he read about contemporary science and popular science. How did he get involved in films (silent films)? He was in New York (then the center of the film industry—Vitagraph, etc.) and was part of that crowd. Swanwick enthusiastically plugged Murray Leinster: The Life and Works, copies of which available for sale at the back of the room (as were issues of The New York Review of Science Fiction.) Finally, from the audience, Andrew Porter reported that the “Runaway Skyscraper”—the Met Life Tower—has been bought by Marriott. (So that’s how Snoopy became a World War I Flying Ace—time travel.)
The audience of nearly 50 included Richard Bowes, Richard Friedman, Harold Garber, Karen Hueller, Kim Kindya, Lissanne Lake, Danny Lieberman, Gordon Linzner, Andrew Porter, Terence Taylor, and Bill Wagner. After the ritual folding-up of chairs, the guests and a number of audience members adjourned, as customary, to Milady’s, a nearby pub.