The Best of C. M. Kornbluth

by FREDERICK (EDITOR). POHL

Collection of the best stories by C.M. Kornbluth.

Hardcover

Published January 1, 1976

Reviews

[David Agranoff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Had I read this in a different year, when I had less going on, I would probably have written a much longer review of this book, which had waited for me on my shelf for years. Growing up in New York City, CM Kornbluth, Cyril to his friends, was a member of the famous first SF club in New York, the Futurians. Lots of famous voices in SF came from that circle: Fred Pohl, Isaac Asimov, Don Wollheim, and Judith Merrill.

Kornbluth might have been the most naturally talented writer of the bunch, who worked with Fredrick Pohl on two novels, including the classic Space Merchants. He wrote under the name Cyril Judd with Judith Merrill, and still published fairly prolifically on his own. Many short stories, some interesting (in hindsight), like Takeoff, which is a moonshot novel from the fifties. He had double digit number of pen names, including Cecil Corwin, S. D. Gottesman, Edward J. Bellin, Kenneth Falconer, Walter C. Davies, Simon Eisner, Jordan Park, Arthur Cooke, Paul Dennis Lavond, and Scott Mariner. Some early issues of Stirring Science Stories, edited by fellow Futurian Donald Wollheim, would have three or more stories by Kornbluth under different names.

His S.D. Gottesman's story Dead Center was a massive influence on my man Philip K. Dick when he was a young reader. He wrote seven non-SF novels, including political thrillers like Presidential Year, crime like the Naked Storm, and a pulpy erotica called Sorority House, which I am sure is a lost feminist classic. (it was under a pen name for a reason)

That all being said, CM Kornbluth was a working writer who excelled at short science fiction and wrote several all-timers. After reading the Little Black Bag for the Science Fiction Hall of Fame series on my podcast, I decided I needed to finally read this collection from start to finish. I read The Marching Morons a few years back, and it felt like a new read in that light.

Kornbluth is a fascinating writer, and I consider him the Charles Beaumont of the East Coast, one of the most talented of a group of tight-knit writers who left a short but powerful catalog of work. His friends, like Beaumont on the West Coast, thought he was the best among them. A Jewish writer who was also a decorated hero of the Battle of the Bulge. A machine gunner who fought fascism in Europe but several times wrote about the folly of war. Two Domes - one of the best stories in this collection was an early tale of the Axis winning, written by a machine gunner just a few years removed from the battlefield.

This is a must-read collection for anyone interested in vintage SF, and while many of these stories are solidly golden age, the influence on the New Wave is clear. Politically sharp (for the time), creative, experimental in style, but with delicate prose that doesn't waste a word. Kornbluth is capable of expansive ideas that can be described as wild and weird, but he creates characters and settings that ground the stories that some of his friends just couldn't do.

Every single story in this collection had something worthwhile in it, and the stand classics earned their rep. The Little Black Bag is a truly great story that deserves a spot in the SF hall of fame. The Marching Morons, a tale about failed eugenics, is a 1950s take on Idiocracy, and sadly turned out to be very predictive as we currently watch morons lead the country (as I write this) into a war with Iran. This story was written to be the inverse of The Little Black Bag, with a man waking up in the future. I mean, it is about a future overrun by morons, a real estate guy declares himself a dictator and uses Nazi propaganda methods to maintain power…Impossible eh?

My favorite was “The Luckiest Man in Denvu” a socio-economic-based Sci-fi story that has folks in the future living in towers based on wealth and status, written twenty-three years before JG Ballard’s High Rise. This story is a great example of Kornbluth's economic style.

The mindworm might be the best horror or dark themes story in the collection, but the most powerful story of them all was Two Domes, which uses the alternate history setting to explore what could’ve happened if the U.S. hadn’t won the arms race. I am not entirely sure I agree with the point of the story, but it is a powerful one nonetheless.

CM Kornbluth’s place in the history of the genre is one increasingly lost to the march of time. His importance is obvious to anyone who studies the era or just takes the time to read his work. I would hate for it to take a movie to make him important again.
In other words, this should be on your shelf and read.

[RunningRed NightBringer · Rating 5 out of 5]

A collection of stories, curated by Frederick Pohl who included some minor anecdote or context in the introduction to each story.

These are some well written and excellent stories that contain some pretty unique or different ideas.
Not all are scifi or the scifi element is only a backdrop to the story.
"The Words of Guru" could be considered horror, about a young boy who gains forbidden knowledge from eldritch beings.

"Mindworm" is about a child who can read minds and finds he can absorb thoughts from others, becoming something of a vampire. But being able to read minds doesn't protect you when you don't know the language.

"Gomez" is from the point of view of a reporter who befriends a young dishwasher from New York whose instinctual grasp of physics gets him drafted into the Army's atomic energy program.

"Little Black Bag" was adapted into a Twilight Zone episode and got a spinoff in "Marching Morons," which has a similar plot to the later movie "Idiocracy" but was better written than that film.

I don't want to speak more of the other stories, risking spoiling the endings for for first time readers.

The book is out of print. If like me, you find a copy in a used book shop, give it a try.