Review: Space Ships! Ray Guns! Martian Octopods!, edited by Richard Wolinsky

Review: Space Ships! Ray Guns! Martian Octopods!, edited by Richard Wolinsky

by Rich Horton

In 1977, the Berkeley, CA, community radio station KPFA began broadcasting a program called Probabilities Unlimited, aimed at interviewing science fiction personalities. Lawrence Davidson was the host, Richard Wolinsky the (accidental) engineer, and the guests were SF writers Richard A. Lupoff and Michael Kurland. Wolinsky quickly became a co-host, and Lupoff joined shortly later. That program still exists today, though after a couple of name changes, and a broadening of focus beyond science fiction and even beyond literature it is now called Bookwaves/Artwaves.

Davidson and Lupoff had a particular interest in veterans of the pulp era of science fiction (say, from the 1920s to the 1950s) and many of their subjects were writer, editors, and fans from that time. But many writers whose careers started much later were also included. The three original hosts (Davidson, Wolinsky, and Lupoff) had all left the show by 2001, but they discussed turning the interviews they had done into a book, which eventually became the book at hand. The book had a long and not entirely smooth road to publication, and in the interim Davidson died (in 2016) and Lupoff died (in 2020, after writing a few versions of his introduction to this volume.)

The book is not strictly speaking transcripts of the interviews that the program featured. Instead, at the suggestion of Bay Area science fiction writer Frank M. Robinson, it is organized by chronology, theme, and author, roughly, so that it ends up being a casual sort of oral history of the genre, from the point of view of writers, editors, and fans. The various entries reproduce excerpts from different interviews -- so that the interviewees can seem to respond to each other, and even contradict each other. This format works very well, really, and we get a fun, gossipy, look behind the scenes of (mostly) the SF magazines, but also books, and even some TV, up through roughly the 1960s. There is a very heavy focus on the pulp era. Lots of interesting anecdotes, at least some of which are true! (For example, Harlan Ellison claims he was at the gathering when L. Ron Hubbard decided to start a religion, which is a bit hard to believe as Ellison only moved to New York after 1953 when he got kicked out of Ohio State.)

There truly is a sort of three perspective view, though the perspectives intersect. All of the interviewees had some professional role in the science fiction (save perhaps Annette McComas and Phyllis White, who were married to J. Francis McComas and "Anthony Boucher" (William Anthony Parker White), the founding editors of F&SF.) But many of these people were fans first, and so the likes of Charles Hornig, Alva Rogers, Robert Bloch, Ted White, and Forrest J. Ackerman among others discuss that aspect. A significant thread follows the notorious fan group the Futurians.

Some of the interesting contributors were important editors as well as writers: H. L. Gold, Damon Knight, Frederik Pohl, and Larry Shaw. John Campbell died before these interviews started, but he does get a lot of mention -- much very respectful, and some a bit more negative. One publisher was interviewed: Ian Ballantine, the co-founder of Ballantine Books. There are several writers best known for work out of the SF field: Louis L'Amour, William Campbell Gault, Joyce Carol Oates, Margaret Atwood, and Walter Tevis (plus the likes of Alfred Coppel and Kurt Vonnegut, who are famous outside the field but definitely wrote a great deal of SF.)

Besides all those mentioned there are many expected names: Isaac Asimov, A. E. Van Vogt, Ray Bradbury, Jack Williamson, Ursula K. Le Guin, Philip K. Dick, Robert Silverberg, and Anne McCaffrey for example. And also a lot of now obscure writers, such as Ed Earl Repp, Stuart Byrne, Stanton Coblentz, W. Ryerson Johnson, Frank K. Kelly, Frank Belknap Long, Jane Roberts, Richard Tooker, and Basil Wells.

I've read a lot about the history of SF, and many of the stories retold here were familiar, such as Ellison's tale of the origin of Scientology, or the story behind Mickey Spillane's only SF piece, or how Philip José Farmer wrote a novel supposedly by Kurt Vonnegut's pulp writer character Kilgore Trout -- but even in this case the slant on the episodes, and the details, are new. And there were things I'd never heard of, as with Ellison's story about collecting money he was owed by stealing a typewriter, or E. Hoffman Price visiting H. P. Lovecraft in New Orleans, or Ray Bradbury forging Edgar Wallace's signature on a copy of King Kong in order to get enough money to take a girl on a nice date.

I can't say how big an audience there is for this book these days, though I think there's enough interesting stuff here that most people who care about SF would enjoy it. And for those of us -- of a certain age, perhaps -- who already knew a bit about the writers featured here, and the eras discussed -- this book is gold.