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His Share of Glory: The Complete Short Science Fiction of C. M. Kornbluth
His Share of Glory contains all the short science fiction written solely by C. M. Kornbluth. Many of the stories are SF "classics", such as "The Marching Morons," "The Little Black Bag," "Two Dooms," "The Mindworm," "Thirteen O'Clock," and, of course, "That Share of Glory". His Share of Glory includes all of Kornbluth's solo short science fiction, fifty-six works of short SF in all, with the original bibliographic details including pseudonymous by-line. The introduction is by noted SF writer and life-long friend and collaborator of C. M. Kornbluth-Frederik Pohl. Hardbound with cover art by Richard Powers.
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First published April 1, 1997
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About the author
C.M. Kornbluth
359 books87 followers
Cyril M. Kornbluth
grew up in Inwood in New York City. As a teenager, he became a member of the Futurians, the influential group of science fiction fans and writers. While a member of the Futurians, he met and became friends with Isaac Asimov, Frederik Pohl, Donald A. Wollheim, Robert A. W. Lowndes, and his future wife Mary Byers. He also participated in the Fantasy Amateur Press Association.
Kornbluth served in the US Army during World War II (European Theatre). He received a Bronze Star for his service in the Battle of the Bulge, where he served as a member of a heavy machine gun crew. Upon his discharge, he returned to finish his education, which had been interrupted by the war, at the University of Chicago. While living in Chicago he also worked at Trans-Radio Press, a news wire service. In 1951 he started writing full time, returning to the East Coast where he collaborated on a number of novels with his old Futurian friends Frederik Pohl and Judith Merril (as Cyril Judd).
He used a variety of pen-names: 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.
Kornbluth served in the US Army during World War II (European Theatre). He received a Bronze Star for his service in the Battle of the Bulge, where he served as a member of a heavy machine gun crew. Upon his discharge, he returned to finish his education, which had been interrupted by the war, at the University of Chicago. While living in Chicago he also worked at Trans-Radio Press, a news wire service. In 1951 he started writing full time, returning to the East Coast where he collaborated on a number of novels with his old Futurian friends Frederik Pohl and Judith Merril (as Cyril Judd).
He used a variety of pen-names: 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.
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
September 25, 2010
4.5 stars. I have not read all of the stories in the definitive collection of Kornbluth's short fiction so this review is only for the stories listed below (I will update my review as I read additional stories):
The Marching Morons (4.5 to 5.0 Stars): Satirical look at a world in which the vast majority of the world's population are idiots who live carefree lives and the few "intelligent" people work endlessly to keep society going.
That Share of Glory (4.5 stars): Really good short story about an organization of diplomats and translators that assist in galaxy wide trade and commerce, but who may have a hidden agenda.
The Adventurer (4.5 stars): Great look at a dystopian American society run by a corrupt regime and the unusual vehicle for change that revolutionaries develop. An example of the maxim "be careful what you wish for."
The Little Black Bag (5.0 stars): One of Kornbluth's most famous stories about a medical bag from the future that lands in the hands of a down and out doctor. A superb story.
The Marching Morons (4.5 to 5.0 Stars): Satirical look at a world in which the vast majority of the world's population are idiots who live carefree lives and the few "intelligent" people work endlessly to keep society going.
That Share of Glory (4.5 stars): Really good short story about an organization of diplomats and translators that assist in galaxy wide trade and commerce, but who may have a hidden agenda.
The Adventurer (4.5 stars): Great look at a dystopian American society run by a corrupt regime and the unusual vehicle for change that revolutionaries develop. An example of the maxim "be careful what you wish for."
The Little Black Bag (5.0 stars): One of Kornbluth's most famous stories about a medical bag from the future that lands in the hands of a down and out doctor. A superb story.
April 23, 2012
I'm so glad I discovered this writer. Everyone talks about the "golden age SF" writers who were a cut above the norm, and most people always site the same ones: notably, those who have gained a bit of mainstream cred in recent years, like Phillip K. Dick. I've got nothing against Dick, really; some of his stories are great, his world-building excellent, his ideas novel and sometimes gloriously outlandish...but his style just isnt so hot much of the time, the prose often seeming to have been forced out of him with great difficulty and hitting the ground with a clunk. Not so with C. M. Kornbluth. While the quality of stories in this anthology is necessarily variable (more on this later), the man had a really snappy, distinctive and sharp style that you'd recognise within a few sentences, and which brings to life even the most standard of stories.
Not many of these tales are very standard if you ask me; while he got his start within pulp strictures and even wrote stories based on guidelines in the 30s, Kornbluth was clearly a visionary with plenty to say and a huge amount of talent and ability. Maybe, in the end, too cynical to keep plugging on; probably very disillusioned and almost certainly clinically depressed. Many of these stories are startling in their depictions of reality and their observations about humankind. No exuberant one-sided boyish wonder here; for Kornbluth there may well be plenty of great advancements to come, but the future looks kind of grimy and crooked. There are also some fine tales of the present, sometimes with just a hint of the otherworldly lurking beneath the surface. At times I was reminded of Harlan Ellison, but Kornbluth seems a bit less cocky and, to me at least, a bit more enjoyable to read.
Most of the strongest tales in the anthology come from Kornbluth's post-war period, specifically, the 1950s. This makes it all the sadder that Kornbluth died so young as he was obviously climbing to a real pinnacle of artistic craftsmanship. There are still plenty of early gems though, and I found it interesting to notice how under various pseudonyms Kornbluth would tell a different sort of tale with a different sort of voice, depending on what kind of audience he thought he was writing for. There are two or three "occult" stories, written in the 40s, that I found very interesting. The Cecil Corwin stories are very lighthearted and silly, but immensely entertaining.
Some of these ideas seem far ahead of their time to me. "The Marching Morons" is classic; I think everyone should read it. Sure, Idiocracy is fun, but this is far cleverer, far more biting, and will really have you thinking by the end on what it implies. "The Mindworm" is an unusual take on vampirism and is a very dark story, especially as it basically puts the destructive eponymous creature in the role of protagonist. "Two Dooms" concerns a physicist taking a very special kind of psychedelic mushrooms because he is agonising over the ethical problem of the atom bomb, and being transported to an alternate world where the Nazis won World War II. "The Silly Season" is the story of a somewhat disreputable newspaperman struggling to be on the scene and report a number of weird events that are happening...nobody listens to him, and the whole thing is kind of funny until the last line, which is so sudden and packs such an unexpected sting that I laughed out loud. "The Events Leading Down to the Tragedy" reminded me of Poe's more sly and humorous stories because of the way it plays with its audience, and turns out to be a brilliant display of misdirection that reveals a lot about Kornbluth's trickster-like nature. There are even a couple of stories in here about struggling young artists that don't really have any normal SF trappings at all, and in which Kornbluth seems to be coming very close to revealing the stark pain of his inner soul. These are not necessarily the best pieces in the anthology, but they're very surprising coming from a writer most would dismiss as a "pulp hack" without even having read a word of him.
Kornbluth does his best to portray a wide variety of characters and situations and make you feel for most of them. There's some blusteringly anti-Asiatic sentiments on display in a couple of the stories, but all told it's not too alarmist, and they were written immediately in the aftermath of World War II, so they kind of seem like natural products of their time. A few stories show Kornbluth appearing to struggle with the format he was forced to work in, as reading them I got a bizarre, powerful sense that he really, really wanted to take things in better, more interesting directions but was held back by the strictures of some of the magazines who were supplying his paycheque. No more is this evident than in "The Slave", which starts out remarkably and bursting with interesting ideas. Kornbluth even goes through some trouble to show the alien antagonists as being individuals and possessing their own culture, which he tries to elucidate a bit before turning the whole thing off in a quick ending battle and sending everybody home. It was rather disappointing and almost felt like someone else had stolen Kornbluth's typewriter before he could finish the thing. There are a couple of inconsequential pieces, too; one even hinging upon a bad pun, in the manner of Roger Zelazny's "I woke up this morning and then I made a funny" stories, but these are far outweighed by the level of quality displayed in most of the other tales here.
For the most part this shows that Kornbluth's body of work was a huge success. I think several of these stories actually rank among my favourite short pieces, in any genre. Kornbluth could elucidate better than almost anyone the futility of many pursuits and ways of life, and he'd do it with a joke more often than not. The whole of "The Marching Morons" is like a massive, sick joke played on the central character, the world at large, and even the reader, and it's hilarity is all the more effective because the more you think about it the more uncomfortable it makes you feel. Genuinely great stuff, this.
Not many of these tales are very standard if you ask me; while he got his start within pulp strictures and even wrote stories based on guidelines in the 30s, Kornbluth was clearly a visionary with plenty to say and a huge amount of talent and ability. Maybe, in the end, too cynical to keep plugging on; probably very disillusioned and almost certainly clinically depressed. Many of these stories are startling in their depictions of reality and their observations about humankind. No exuberant one-sided boyish wonder here; for Kornbluth there may well be plenty of great advancements to come, but the future looks kind of grimy and crooked. There are also some fine tales of the present, sometimes with just a hint of the otherworldly lurking beneath the surface. At times I was reminded of Harlan Ellison, but Kornbluth seems a bit less cocky and, to me at least, a bit more enjoyable to read.
Most of the strongest tales in the anthology come from Kornbluth's post-war period, specifically, the 1950s. This makes it all the sadder that Kornbluth died so young as he was obviously climbing to a real pinnacle of artistic craftsmanship. There are still plenty of early gems though, and I found it interesting to notice how under various pseudonyms Kornbluth would tell a different sort of tale with a different sort of voice, depending on what kind of audience he thought he was writing for. There are two or three "occult" stories, written in the 40s, that I found very interesting. The Cecil Corwin stories are very lighthearted and silly, but immensely entertaining.
Some of these ideas seem far ahead of their time to me. "The Marching Morons" is classic; I think everyone should read it. Sure, Idiocracy is fun, but this is far cleverer, far more biting, and will really have you thinking by the end on what it implies. "The Mindworm" is an unusual take on vampirism and is a very dark story, especially as it basically puts the destructive eponymous creature in the role of protagonist. "Two Dooms" concerns a physicist taking a very special kind of psychedelic mushrooms because he is agonising over the ethical problem of the atom bomb, and being transported to an alternate world where the Nazis won World War II. "The Silly Season" is the story of a somewhat disreputable newspaperman struggling to be on the scene and report a number of weird events that are happening...nobody listens to him, and the whole thing is kind of funny until the last line, which is so sudden and packs such an unexpected sting that I laughed out loud. "The Events Leading Down to the Tragedy" reminded me of Poe's more sly and humorous stories because of the way it plays with its audience, and turns out to be a brilliant display of misdirection that reveals a lot about Kornbluth's trickster-like nature. There are even a couple of stories in here about struggling young artists that don't really have any normal SF trappings at all, and in which Kornbluth seems to be coming very close to revealing the stark pain of his inner soul. These are not necessarily the best pieces in the anthology, but they're very surprising coming from a writer most would dismiss as a "pulp hack" without even having read a word of him.
Kornbluth does his best to portray a wide variety of characters and situations and make you feel for most of them. There's some blusteringly anti-Asiatic sentiments on display in a couple of the stories, but all told it's not too alarmist, and they were written immediately in the aftermath of World War II, so they kind of seem like natural products of their time. A few stories show Kornbluth appearing to struggle with the format he was forced to work in, as reading them I got a bizarre, powerful sense that he really, really wanted to take things in better, more interesting directions but was held back by the strictures of some of the magazines who were supplying his paycheque. No more is this evident than in "The Slave", which starts out remarkably and bursting with interesting ideas. Kornbluth even goes through some trouble to show the alien antagonists as being individuals and possessing their own culture, which he tries to elucidate a bit before turning the whole thing off in a quick ending battle and sending everybody home. It was rather disappointing and almost felt like someone else had stolen Kornbluth's typewriter before he could finish the thing. There are a couple of inconsequential pieces, too; one even hinging upon a bad pun, in the manner of Roger Zelazny's "I woke up this morning and then I made a funny" stories, but these are far outweighed by the level of quality displayed in most of the other tales here.
For the most part this shows that Kornbluth's body of work was a huge success. I think several of these stories actually rank among my favourite short pieces, in any genre. Kornbluth could elucidate better than almost anyone the futility of many pursuits and ways of life, and he'd do it with a joke more often than not. The whole of "The Marching Morons" is like a massive, sick joke played on the central character, the world at large, and even the reader, and it's hilarity is all the more effective because the more you think about it the more uncomfortable it makes you feel. Genuinely great stuff, this.
Want to read
November 2, 2023Contains the stories:
That Share of Glory
The Adventurer
Dominoes
The Golden Road (as by Cecil Corwin)
The Rocket of 1955 (as by Cecil Corwin)
The Mindworm
The Education of Tigress McCardle
Shark Ship (a.k.a. Reap the Dark Tide)
The Meddlers
The Luckiest Man in Denv (as by Simon Eisner)
The Reversible Revolutions (as by Cecil Corwin)
The City in the Sofa (as by Cecil Corwin)
Gomez
Masquerade (as by Kenneth Falconer)
The Slave
The Words of Guru (as by Kenneth Falconer)
Thirteen O'Clock (as by Cecil Corwin)
Mr. Packer Goes to Hell (as by Cecil Corwin)
With These Hands
Iteration
The Goodly Creatures
Time Bum
Two Dooms
Passion Pills
The Silly Season
Fire-Power (as by S. D. Gottesman)
The Perfect Invasion (as by S. D. Gottesman)
The Adventurers
Kazam Collects (as by S. D. Gottesman)
The Marching Morons - 4/5 - explores the inverse relationship between procreativity and IQ
The Altar at Midnight
Crisis! (as by Cecil Corwin)
Theory of Rocketry
The Cosmic Charge Account
Friend to Man
I Never Ast No Favors
The Little Black Bag - 5/5 - time traveling medicine bag
What Sorghum Says (as by Cecil Corwin)
Ms. Found in a Chinese Fortune Cookie
The Only Thing We Learn
The Last Man Left in the Bar
Virginia
The Advent on Channel Twelve
Make Mine Mars
Everybody Knows Joe
The Remorseful
Sir Mallory's Magnitude (as by S. D. Gottesman)
The Events Leading Down to the Tragedy
Early "to spec" stories:
King Cole of Pluto (as by S. D. Gottesman)
No Place to Go (as by Edward J. Bellin)
Dimension of Darkness (as by S. D. Gottesman)
Dead Center (as by S. D. Gottesman)
Interference (as by Walter C. Davies)
Forgotten Tongue (as by Walter C. Davies)
Return from M-15 (as by S. D. Gottesman)
The Core (as by S. D. Gottesman)
That Share of Glory
The Adventurer
Dominoes
The Golden Road (as by Cecil Corwin)
The Rocket of 1955 (as by Cecil Corwin)
The Mindworm
The Education of Tigress McCardle
Shark Ship (a.k.a. Reap the Dark Tide)
The Meddlers
The Luckiest Man in Denv (as by Simon Eisner)
The Reversible Revolutions (as by Cecil Corwin)
The City in the Sofa (as by Cecil Corwin)
Gomez
Masquerade (as by Kenneth Falconer)
The Slave
The Words of Guru (as by Kenneth Falconer)
Thirteen O'Clock (as by Cecil Corwin)
Mr. Packer Goes to Hell (as by Cecil Corwin)
With These Hands
Iteration
The Goodly Creatures
Time Bum
Two Dooms
Passion Pills
The Silly Season
Fire-Power (as by S. D. Gottesman)
The Perfect Invasion (as by S. D. Gottesman)
The Adventurers
Kazam Collects (as by S. D. Gottesman)
The Marching Morons - 4/5 - explores the inverse relationship between procreativity and IQ
The Altar at Midnight
Crisis! (as by Cecil Corwin)
Theory of Rocketry
The Cosmic Charge Account
Friend to Man
I Never Ast No Favors
The Little Black Bag - 5/5 - time traveling medicine bag
What Sorghum Says (as by Cecil Corwin)
Ms. Found in a Chinese Fortune Cookie
The Only Thing We Learn
The Last Man Left in the Bar
Virginia
The Advent on Channel Twelve
Make Mine Mars
Everybody Knows Joe
The Remorseful
Sir Mallory's Magnitude (as by S. D. Gottesman)
The Events Leading Down to the Tragedy
Early "to spec" stories:
King Cole of Pluto (as by S. D. Gottesman)
No Place to Go (as by Edward J. Bellin)
Dimension of Darkness (as by S. D. Gottesman)
Dead Center (as by S. D. Gottesman)
Interference (as by Walter C. Davies)
Forgotten Tongue (as by Walter C. Davies)
Return from M-15 (as by S. D. Gottesman)
The Core (as by S. D. Gottesman)
July 20, 2025
This is, as the cover says, the complete collection of C.M. Kornbluth’s shorter SFF works written solo. As is always with ‘complete’ collections, the quality of individual pieces very, but overall they give a picture of a very talented SFF author, who sadly passed away rather young. I read it for a few months at ORBIT – Otherworldly Reads, Bold Ideas, and Tales. SF & F Short Stories and Novelettes group. Here follows the reviews of individual pieces.
Cyril (1997) essay by Frederik Pohl - Pohl tells about Futurians, Kornblut, their co-authorship, his life and untimely death. I knew that he died young from the intro to his award-nominated story but I thought it was cancer...
Editor's Introduction (1997) essay by Timothy P. Szczesuil how the editor collected these works, a lot of which were written under pen names.
That Share of Glory (1952) novelette an interesting setting: a young adept Alen just finished the College and Order of Heralds, the organization I guess influenced by the Foundation - only they learn languages to unite the galaxy. He is sent with a trader to be his translator/negotiator about after several successes and failures, he is told the truth 4*
The Adventurer (1953) short story two parallel lines, one follows President Folsom XXIV of the Republic (assumedly the USA), another - a young boy from Io (which is split between the Republic's New Pittsburgh and Soviet's Nizhni-Magnitogorsk), abused by his dad. While this future USA is de facto monarchy with secret police shooting suspected opposition and ever more stupid presidents, the boy rises in the Navy ranks for he is "the men's man", finally facing the dictator. The final reveal was totally unexpected and the final words are thrilling 4*
Dominoes (1953) short story a stockbroker is sure that the crash is near, so he finds an inventor, who builds him a time machine to jump two years ahead. He successfully discovers the date and sells before the crash, but when dominoes start falling... 3*
The Golden Road (1942) short story a mystic piece, a man, Colt, in the Kyrgyz part of the Pamir Mountains, joined a caravan. Other people there are diverse and strange. Soon, he finds out that . It hasn't worked for me at all. 2*
The Rocket of 1955 (1939) short story a flash-fic about launching a rocket, clearly affected by the start of WW2 3*
The Mindworm (1950) short story a boy grows up in an orphanage, he can hear what people think, he runs away and finds his other powers 3.5*
The Education of Tigress McCardle (1957) short story a parody of a yellow menace story plus overpopulation fears. The USA is turned into a monarchy, introducing the Parental Qualifications Program, a mechanical infant is given to prospective parents. Some risque for the period hints at sexual habits, but the main idea is 3*
Shark Ship (1958) novelette multigenerational naval ships browse the ocean, never entering ports. They ate all the large predator fish and sea mammals to be at the top of the food pyramid. Now, the ship lost its net and has no other choice but to land a party to see what's going on there. Here, the tone shifts to a satire... 4*
The Meddlers (1953) short story weather is regulated, and those who try to direct rain to them are prosecuted. I guess it was written for a punchline 3.5*
The Luckiest Man in Denv (1952) short story Denv[er] and LA are two hive cities in war with each other for generations. At Denv, the society is segregated by floor, upper floors for the rich and powerful. May's man Reuben, of the eighty-third level, Atomist, desires to move higher, so when he finds himself a part of an enemy's plot, he takes an opportunity. 3.5*
The Reversible Revolutions (1941) short story the first of the two stories about a soldier for hire, as he is introduced in the 1st paragraph: J. C. BATTLE, late of the Foreign Legion, Red Army, United States Marines, Invincibles De Bolivia and Coldstream Guards, alias Alexandre de Foma, Christopher Jukes, Burton Macauly and Joseph Hagstrom— ne Etzel Bernstein This time a beautiful (of course!) woman hires him to murder a mad scientist. It turns out that there is a feud between two mad scientists, each about to launch his version of utopia. An easy read, but forgettable. 3*
The City in the Sofa (1941) short story now J.C. Battle is to investigate a sofa at the Billionaire club, which affects the minds of people close to it. He shrinks to find an alien city in the sofa... 3*
Gomez (1954) novelette a journalist's story about a 15-year-old guy from Puerto Rico, who appears to be a physics genius. US military gets him, but as he works more, he may discover a new paradigm, but is the world ready for it? 3.25*
Masquerade (1942) short story a narrator tells about his collage friend (whose ashes are mentioned at the start), who married and became a teacher (a nice quote: Whenever quarrels come I demonstrate by the calculus of symboic logic that she's wrong and I'm right, and that settles the matter. Theoretically, at least.). Recently, he was accused of molesting his pupil and he comes to the narrator to tell his version. The final twist was so-so. 3*
The Slave (1957) novelette a special agent turned hobo is brought back to the force (FSI) to complete a mission too deadly for other agents. Meanwhile, an English professor is offered a cure for cancer and is kidnapped by unknown agents. This is a classic adventure, maybe not too deep but a nice quick escapism. 3.25*
The Words of Guru (1941) short story a young boy learnt words from Guru, which can instantly kill... There are other powers, and as the boy grows, he demands more... 3*
Thirteen O'Clock [Thirteen O'Clock] (1941) novelette a man calculates that his grandfather's house has a secret room. There if find a clock for 13 hours. Winding it up, he is transferred to a fantasy world and a witch needs his help to overthrow the local usurper... There is satire of the US party machine and other problems. So far, the best fantasy by the author. 3.75*
Mr. Packer Goes to Hell [Thirteen O'Clock] (1941) novelette a character from the previous story remains in the fantasyland, but tries to reform it in line with the New Deal. He is prosecuted and has to run away, but not before he grabs a pretty witch just a few inches tall. She is his Deus Ex Machina for the rest of the story. a-ok one time read what fantasy was like before Tolkien. 3*
With These Hands (1951) novelette a very relevant piece for the GenAI craxe. Here, an artist cannot feed himself with his trade, because there is a cheaper, even if inferior, substitute. 3.5*
Iteration (1950) short story a man works on mass producing soap operas and is tired of its cliches. He is warned that the current immersive will mass affect housewives into thinking in line with the script. 3.5*
The Goodly Creatures (1952) short story a story of a successful copyrighter, who dreamt to be an artist in his youth. Now a new employee, who reminds him of himself, joined the team. His current project is to back the International Spacemen's Union and its importance 3.25*
Time Bum (1953) short story a man says that he has found a new con. Then the story shifts to a man who discovers that a person he met is from the future, where gold and diamonds are cheap. He blackmails the time traveler 3*
Two Dooms (1958) novella the longest piece in this collection. It is the middle of WW2 and Dr. Edward Royland works for the Manhattan Project. He just discovered the way to make A-bomb possible within a reasonable time frame, but his conscience grarls him. He visits a fellow, who feeds him a dose of hallucinogens. Royland wakes up in the future, where Nazi and Imperial Japanese won. There are a few interesting twists. 3.5*
Passion Pills (1958) short story Richard Claxton Hanbury III isn't handsome at all, but as a student, he wants to get laid. He was (by mistake) assigned to biochemistry, so he attempted to create a love potion. a silly, humorous piece. 3*
The Silly Season (1950) short story narrated by an editor of the World Wireless Press Service, each Summer there is no news season, so when strange shining domes appear in Arkansas, they are all the craze. However, the only journalist in place hasn't confirmed them, and his peculiarity is that he is blind (but he feels close objects from air movements, etc.) The domes disappeared and are forgotten. The following summer, giant black balls appear and again (another) blind man is the only one saying there is nothing... 3*
Fire-Power (1941) novelette the first of two pieces about Intelligence Wing Commander Bartok and his assistant/secretary Babe MacNeice. The attitudes of the time toward behavior expected from each gender are cringy nowadays, but overall a fine piece. The Navy decided to capture the power as only ones with guns. "Brainpower versus fire-power," is the motto the Navy intelligence uses to overcome the insurgents. It is a bit more like spies in space than 'pure' mil-SF. 3*
The Perfect Invasion (1942) novelette the 2nd of two pieces about Intelligence Wing Commander Bartok. Now a new, unknown invader takes a sector after another. People are shocked - "They can't do this to us! They simply can't—why, we're the invaders; we always have been!" :) Bartok sends Babe on a mission behind enemy lines... 3*
The Adventurers (1955) short story a club of adventurers from different times (like a man who remembers Capt. Cook), a space pilot is applied, but he says, it is just work, no adventure... 3*
Kazam Collects (1941) short story a policeman Detective Fitzgerald investigates a cult leader Joseph Kazam, suspecting a fraud, for Kazam got a large diamond as a charity. After curing the Detective from a curse and telling him that he thinks of himself as an occult engineer, they travel through dimensions to Kazam's arch-enemy. I wasn't impressed. 2.5*
The Marching Morons (1951) novelette the most well-known and controversial work of the author. By accident, a cunning but not clever tradesman John Barlow is transported from 1988 to the far future to find out a new society - a overwhelming majority of morons, and a few of clever men, who keep the world running. while you and your kind were being prudent and foresighted and not having children, the migrant workers, slum dwellers and tenant farmers were shiftlessly and shortsightedly having children—breeding, breeding. My God, how they bred!”... Your intelligence was bred out. It is gone. Children that should have been born never were. The just-average, they’ll-get-along majority took over the population. The average IQ now is 45.” Barlow (in those time by the way I sold ten thousand acres of Siberian tundra—through a dummy firm, of course—after the partition of Russia.) request a grand castle and dictatorial powers, in return solving the problem. He so reminded me of Trump it is frightening. 5*
The Altar at Midnight (1952) short story a narrator drinks in a bar, when he sees a young man with a lot of damage ("Broken veins on his cheeks, too, and the funny eyes."). The man is a space pilot and the narrator decides to take him to a better place, where they meet more characters with problems... a strong, poignant story with an unexpected twist. 5*
Crisis! (1942) short story starts as a humor piece, but quickly add caustic satire to it. A Martian is in a bad mood, so she chews (figuratively) a Venusian ambassador, who in turn makes warlike noises at Earth. Earth interplanetary mission is headed by stupid and arrogant, so flares rise fast and there are ultimatums... 3.75*
Theory of Rocketry (1958) short story a Hugo nominee, read by me just a few months ago. I gladly re-read it, marvelling at so many details for such a short piece. A teacher supports a promising pupil, who works himself out trying to become an astronaut. 4*
The Cosmic Charge Account (1956) novelette a narrator and a German doctor travel across the zombie land, periodically frightening each other and doing strange movements. It seems that a woman with too strict rules (no meat, no chemicals in agriculture, etc.) enslaved the minds of people around... 3.5*
Friend to Man (1951) short story written in a weird narration, there is a story of a man, who earned his money by blackmail, after he almost died, hides in a cave, where an alien lives. The alien cares for him, and the man is almost ready to 3*
I Never Ast No Favors (1954) short story a letter from a LatinX juvenile delinquent to a local wiseman. The court sent him on probation in a village where strange things are happening. A light piece, even if maybe the portrait of the youth is outdated. 2.75*
The Little Black Bag (1950) novelette this is one story I've read (and liked) before. Now I see that it is in the same world as Morons. A former doctor and now a drunk finds a 'black doctor's bag' from the future, where the majority of the population is so low in intellect that the brainy superelite made doctor's bags, which practically operate themselves. This turned the fortune of the protagonist, who, with the help of a savvy young woman, opens a beauty parlor, where he uses the bag to heal people. 4*
What Sorghum Says (1941) short story a redneck gets to the Ancient Rome with some of his 120% proof moonshine, where it helps to boost confidence and courage... a silly humorous pirece. 3*
MS. Found in a Chinese Fortune Cookie (1957) short story, almost a meta-story, for it is supposedly notes addressed to C. M. Kornbluth from his fellow writer, Corwin, who found "The Answer" , and he isn't the first writer to do so. I'm curious, who are the writers mentioned in the story? 3.5*
The Only Thing We Learn (1949) short story a lecturer gives his "Archaeo-Literature 203" course, which mixed futuristic ideas and old-style rhymes, like:
Then battle broke
And high the blinding blast
Sight-searing leaped
While folk in fear below
Cowered in caverns
From the wrath of Remd—
Meanwhile, a starship on a mission of fighting rebels and the ship's archivist tells the captain classified info he knows because 'history repeats... 3*
The Last Man Left in the Bar (1957) short story a weird story I haven't completely understood. A possible messiah (?) sits in the bar, while people come and leave, including ones in need of the Seal (of apocalypse?)... I should re-read it, maybe it is pure genius, but for now 2*
Virginia (1958) short story a man named Bunny suddenly inherits billions, and other billionaires take him to their secret cabal with strict rules. He violates one of them and is punished, but the punishment is a stupid joke 2.5*
The Advent on Channel Twelve (1958) short story Hugo-nominated satire of Disney money grab. 4*
Make Mine Mars (1952) novelette a journalist wakes up after just another night of drinking, and his editor in order to 're-educate' him, sends him to a far-away cold agricultural planet to replace a recently deceased colleague. The journalist understands that the only way out is sensational material and starts to dig. A solid story. 3.5*
Everybody Knows Joe (1953) short story a journalist used to impress a girl with his supposed knowledge of stuff till she tested him. not a SFF. 3*
The Remorseful (1953) short story the last man wanders the Earth, Visitors arrived, with different biology, investigate the planet, see him and run away . An unexpected twist. 3.25*
Sir Mallory's Magnitude (1941) novelette a near future (1950s), wars in Europe on and off. People meet in Brussels to create something akin to the UN. One delegate (Mallory from the title) has an allergic attack, but is saved by a US delegate. They travel to Basq country, where a new metropolis grew from nothing in a few years... it is interesting to see the alt-history before the USA actually entered the war. 3.5*
Continued in comments
Cyril (1997) essay by Frederik Pohl - Pohl tells about Futurians, Kornblut, their co-authorship, his life and untimely death. I knew that he died young from the intro to his award-nominated story but I thought it was cancer...
Editor's Introduction (1997) essay by Timothy P. Szczesuil how the editor collected these works, a lot of which were written under pen names.
That Share of Glory (1952) novelette an interesting setting: a young adept Alen just finished the College and Order of Heralds, the organization I guess influenced by the Foundation - only they learn languages to unite the galaxy. He is sent with a trader to be his translator/negotiator about after several successes and failures, he is told the truth 4*
The Adventurer (1953) short story two parallel lines, one follows President Folsom XXIV of the Republic (assumedly the USA), another - a young boy from Io (which is split between the Republic's New Pittsburgh and Soviet's Nizhni-Magnitogorsk), abused by his dad. While this future USA is de facto monarchy with secret police shooting suspected opposition and ever more stupid presidents, the boy rises in the Navy ranks for he is "the men's man", finally facing the dictator. The final reveal was totally unexpected and the final words are thrilling 4*
Dominoes (1953) short story a stockbroker is sure that the crash is near, so he finds an inventor, who builds him a time machine to jump two years ahead. He successfully discovers the date and sells before the crash, but when dominoes start falling... 3*
The Golden Road (1942) short story a mystic piece, a man, Colt, in the Kyrgyz part of the Pamir Mountains, joined a caravan. Other people there are diverse and strange. Soon, he finds out that . It hasn't worked for me at all. 2*
The Rocket of 1955 (1939) short story a flash-fic about launching a rocket, clearly affected by the start of WW2 3*
The Mindworm (1950) short story a boy grows up in an orphanage, he can hear what people think, he runs away and finds his other powers 3.5*
The Education of Tigress McCardle (1957) short story a parody of a yellow menace story plus overpopulation fears. The USA is turned into a monarchy, introducing the Parental Qualifications Program, a mechanical infant is given to prospective parents. Some risque for the period hints at sexual habits, but the main idea is 3*
Shark Ship (1958) novelette multigenerational naval ships browse the ocean, never entering ports. They ate all the large predator fish and sea mammals to be at the top of the food pyramid. Now, the ship lost its net and has no other choice but to land a party to see what's going on there. Here, the tone shifts to a satire... 4*
The Meddlers (1953) short story weather is regulated, and those who try to direct rain to them are prosecuted. I guess it was written for a punchline 3.5*
The Luckiest Man in Denv (1952) short story Denv[er] and LA are two hive cities in war with each other for generations. At Denv, the society is segregated by floor, upper floors for the rich and powerful. May's man Reuben, of the eighty-third level, Atomist, desires to move higher, so when he finds himself a part of an enemy's plot, he takes an opportunity. 3.5*
The Reversible Revolutions (1941) short story the first of the two stories about a soldier for hire, as he is introduced in the 1st paragraph: J. C. BATTLE, late of the Foreign Legion, Red Army, United States Marines, Invincibles De Bolivia and Coldstream Guards, alias Alexandre de Foma, Christopher Jukes, Burton Macauly and Joseph Hagstrom— ne Etzel Bernstein This time a beautiful (of course!) woman hires him to murder a mad scientist. It turns out that there is a feud between two mad scientists, each about to launch his version of utopia. An easy read, but forgettable. 3*
The City in the Sofa (1941) short story now J.C. Battle is to investigate a sofa at the Billionaire club, which affects the minds of people close to it. He shrinks to find an alien city in the sofa... 3*
Gomez (1954) novelette a journalist's story about a 15-year-old guy from Puerto Rico, who appears to be a physics genius. US military gets him, but as he works more, he may discover a new paradigm, but is the world ready for it? 3.25*
Masquerade (1942) short story a narrator tells about his collage friend (whose ashes are mentioned at the start), who married and became a teacher (a nice quote: Whenever quarrels come I demonstrate by the calculus of symboic logic that she's wrong and I'm right, and that settles the matter. Theoretically, at least.). Recently, he was accused of molesting his pupil and he comes to the narrator to tell his version. The final twist was so-so. 3*
The Slave (1957) novelette a special agent turned hobo is brought back to the force (FSI) to complete a mission too deadly for other agents. Meanwhile, an English professor is offered a cure for cancer and is kidnapped by unknown agents. This is a classic adventure, maybe not too deep but a nice quick escapism. 3.25*
The Words of Guru (1941) short story a young boy learnt words from Guru, which can instantly kill... There are other powers, and as the boy grows, he demands more... 3*
Thirteen O'Clock [Thirteen O'Clock] (1941) novelette a man calculates that his grandfather's house has a secret room. There if find a clock for 13 hours. Winding it up, he is transferred to a fantasy world and a witch needs his help to overthrow the local usurper... There is satire of the US party machine and other problems. So far, the best fantasy by the author. 3.75*
Mr. Packer Goes to Hell [Thirteen O'Clock] (1941) novelette a character from the previous story remains in the fantasyland, but tries to reform it in line with the New Deal. He is prosecuted and has to run away, but not before he grabs a pretty witch just a few inches tall. She is his Deus Ex Machina for the rest of the story. a-ok one time read what fantasy was like before Tolkien. 3*
With These Hands (1951) novelette a very relevant piece for the GenAI craxe. Here, an artist cannot feed himself with his trade, because there is a cheaper, even if inferior, substitute. 3.5*
Iteration (1950) short story a man works on mass producing soap operas and is tired of its cliches. He is warned that the current immersive will mass affect housewives into thinking in line with the script. 3.5*
The Goodly Creatures (1952) short story a story of a successful copyrighter, who dreamt to be an artist in his youth. Now a new employee, who reminds him of himself, joined the team. His current project is to back the International Spacemen's Union and its importance 3.25*
Time Bum (1953) short story a man says that he has found a new con. Then the story shifts to a man who discovers that a person he met is from the future, where gold and diamonds are cheap. He blackmails the time traveler 3*
Two Dooms (1958) novella the longest piece in this collection. It is the middle of WW2 and Dr. Edward Royland works for the Manhattan Project. He just discovered the way to make A-bomb possible within a reasonable time frame, but his conscience grarls him. He visits a fellow, who feeds him a dose of hallucinogens. Royland wakes up in the future, where Nazi and Imperial Japanese won. There are a few interesting twists. 3.5*
Passion Pills (1958) short story Richard Claxton Hanbury III isn't handsome at all, but as a student, he wants to get laid. He was (by mistake) assigned to biochemistry, so he attempted to create a love potion. a silly, humorous piece. 3*
The Silly Season (1950) short story narrated by an editor of the World Wireless Press Service, each Summer there is no news season, so when strange shining domes appear in Arkansas, they are all the craze. However, the only journalist in place hasn't confirmed them, and his peculiarity is that he is blind (but he feels close objects from air movements, etc.) The domes disappeared and are forgotten. The following summer, giant black balls appear and again (another) blind man is the only one saying there is nothing... 3*
Fire-Power (1941) novelette the first of two pieces about Intelligence Wing Commander Bartok and his assistant/secretary Babe MacNeice. The attitudes of the time toward behavior expected from each gender are cringy nowadays, but overall a fine piece. The Navy decided to capture the power as only ones with guns. "Brainpower versus fire-power," is the motto the Navy intelligence uses to overcome the insurgents. It is a bit more like spies in space than 'pure' mil-SF. 3*
The Perfect Invasion (1942) novelette the 2nd of two pieces about Intelligence Wing Commander Bartok. Now a new, unknown invader takes a sector after another. People are shocked - "They can't do this to us! They simply can't—why, we're the invaders; we always have been!" :) Bartok sends Babe on a mission behind enemy lines... 3*
The Adventurers (1955) short story a club of adventurers from different times (like a man who remembers Capt. Cook), a space pilot is applied, but he says, it is just work, no adventure... 3*
Kazam Collects (1941) short story a policeman Detective Fitzgerald investigates a cult leader Joseph Kazam, suspecting a fraud, for Kazam got a large diamond as a charity. After curing the Detective from a curse and telling him that he thinks of himself as an occult engineer, they travel through dimensions to Kazam's arch-enemy. I wasn't impressed. 2.5*
The Marching Morons (1951) novelette the most well-known and controversial work of the author. By accident, a cunning but not clever tradesman John Barlow is transported from 1988 to the far future to find out a new society - a overwhelming majority of morons, and a few of clever men, who keep the world running. while you and your kind were being prudent and foresighted and not having children, the migrant workers, slum dwellers and tenant farmers were shiftlessly and shortsightedly having children—breeding, breeding. My God, how they bred!”... Your intelligence was bred out. It is gone. Children that should have been born never were. The just-average, they’ll-get-along majority took over the population. The average IQ now is 45.” Barlow (in those time by the way I sold ten thousand acres of Siberian tundra—through a dummy firm, of course—after the partition of Russia.) request a grand castle and dictatorial powers, in return solving the problem. He so reminded me of Trump it is frightening. 5*
The Altar at Midnight (1952) short story a narrator drinks in a bar, when he sees a young man with a lot of damage ("Broken veins on his cheeks, too, and the funny eyes."). The man is a space pilot and the narrator decides to take him to a better place, where they meet more characters with problems... a strong, poignant story with an unexpected twist. 5*
Crisis! (1942) short story starts as a humor piece, but quickly add caustic satire to it. A Martian is in a bad mood, so she chews (figuratively) a Venusian ambassador, who in turn makes warlike noises at Earth. Earth interplanetary mission is headed by stupid and arrogant, so flares rise fast and there are ultimatums... 3.75*
Theory of Rocketry (1958) short story a Hugo nominee, read by me just a few months ago. I gladly re-read it, marvelling at so many details for such a short piece. A teacher supports a promising pupil, who works himself out trying to become an astronaut. 4*
The Cosmic Charge Account (1956) novelette a narrator and a German doctor travel across the zombie land, periodically frightening each other and doing strange movements. It seems that a woman with too strict rules (no meat, no chemicals in agriculture, etc.) enslaved the minds of people around... 3.5*
Friend to Man (1951) short story written in a weird narration, there is a story of a man, who earned his money by blackmail, after he almost died, hides in a cave, where an alien lives. The alien cares for him, and the man is almost ready to 3*
I Never Ast No Favors (1954) short story a letter from a LatinX juvenile delinquent to a local wiseman. The court sent him on probation in a village where strange things are happening. A light piece, even if maybe the portrait of the youth is outdated. 2.75*
The Little Black Bag (1950) novelette this is one story I've read (and liked) before. Now I see that it is in the same world as Morons. A former doctor and now a drunk finds a 'black doctor's bag' from the future, where the majority of the population is so low in intellect that the brainy superelite made doctor's bags, which practically operate themselves. This turned the fortune of the protagonist, who, with the help of a savvy young woman, opens a beauty parlor, where he uses the bag to heal people. 4*
What Sorghum Says (1941) short story a redneck gets to the Ancient Rome with some of his 120% proof moonshine, where it helps to boost confidence and courage... a silly humorous pirece. 3*
MS. Found in a Chinese Fortune Cookie (1957) short story, almost a meta-story, for it is supposedly notes addressed to C. M. Kornbluth from his fellow writer, Corwin, who found "The Answer" , and he isn't the first writer to do so. I'm curious, who are the writers mentioned in the story? 3.5*
The Only Thing We Learn (1949) short story a lecturer gives his "Archaeo-Literature 203" course, which mixed futuristic ideas and old-style rhymes, like:
Then battle broke
And high the blinding blast
Sight-searing leaped
While folk in fear below
Cowered in caverns
From the wrath of Remd—
Meanwhile, a starship on a mission of fighting rebels and the ship's archivist tells the captain classified info he knows because 'history repeats... 3*
The Last Man Left in the Bar (1957) short story a weird story I haven't completely understood. A possible messiah (?) sits in the bar, while people come and leave, including ones in need of the Seal (of apocalypse?)... I should re-read it, maybe it is pure genius, but for now 2*
Virginia (1958) short story a man named Bunny suddenly inherits billions, and other billionaires take him to their secret cabal with strict rules. He violates one of them and is punished, but the punishment is a stupid joke 2.5*
The Advent on Channel Twelve (1958) short story Hugo-nominated satire of Disney money grab. 4*
Make Mine Mars (1952) novelette a journalist wakes up after just another night of drinking, and his editor in order to 're-educate' him, sends him to a far-away cold agricultural planet to replace a recently deceased colleague. The journalist understands that the only way out is sensational material and starts to dig. A solid story. 3.5*
Everybody Knows Joe (1953) short story a journalist used to impress a girl with his supposed knowledge of stuff till she tested him. not a SFF. 3*
The Remorseful (1953) short story the last man wanders the Earth, Visitors arrived, with different biology, investigate the planet, see him and run away . An unexpected twist. 3.25*
Sir Mallory's Magnitude (1941) novelette a near future (1950s), wars in Europe on and off. People meet in Brussels to create something akin to the UN. One delegate (Mallory from the title) has an allergic attack, but is saved by a US delegate. They travel to Basq country, where a new metropolis grew from nothing in a few years... it is interesting to see the alt-history before the USA actually entered the war. 3.5*
Continued in comments
December 16, 2017
Despite his death at a tragically young age, Cyril M. Kornbluth was one of the greats from the "golden age" of science fiction. One of the members of the "Futurians" fan club of the 1930s (a group that counted Frederick Pohl, Isaac Asimov, and Damon Knight among its members), he went on to co-author the classic novel The Space Merchants and write a number of short stories that are among the finest of the genre. These stories have been brought together in this collection, from his earliest work to such greats as "The Mindworm" and "The Marching Morons" (a sure influence on Mike Judge's more gentle take on a similar premise in Idiocracy). This is a must-have collection for fans of golden-age science fiction, one that captures the wonder of the works of the era.
July 8, 2016
Time and memory being what they are, Kornbluth is unfortunately probably fated to go down amongst most general SF fans as an "and" person, simply a name that got tacked on in collaboration with someone who is more well known today, although given that a lot of the names he collaborated with are probably also fading into the mists of people's memories as glitzier TV shows and flashier book series take more prominence in people's attention that it wouldn't be surprising if pretty much everything he's done is a bit hazy. These days it wouldn't be too surprising if people thought Isaac Asimov was the guy who wrote the adaptation for that Will Smith movie (and were probably very upset when it didn't seem to match what was happening on screen).
The most well known Kornbluth involved work is probably his novel with Frederick Pohl, "The Space Merchants", a rather savage satire on advertising and consumerism for the time that was considered a classic then and still is now (I read it years and years ago but I remember it being very good). He did several other works with Pohl (who only died about three or four years ago at the ripe age of ninety plus and did a lot ot keep the memory of his old writing partner alive), among other writers and was widely admired among his peers as being a kind of prodigy. Unfortunately, and this has a lot to do with the reasons he's not well remembered today, his experiences in WWII didn't leave him in the most robust of health and combined with a certain lack in taking care of himself led to his extremely early death by heart attack at the age of thirty-four in 1958. He left a decent amount of work behind but unless you're well versed in SF writers of the early days, chances are you aren't really going to come across him.
This collection attempts to go a ways toward fixing that. Between the covers it collects fifty plus short stories that Kornbluth wrote, pretty much all his solo SF (he wrote a couple novels alone but everything else was with collaborators) over the course of his career under a variety of names. Having so much gathered in one place does go a ways toward making a good case for him being far more well known than he is, if only to prove how consistent he was (even when he was really just hacking it out . . . the last handful of stories in the collection are what was known as "spec work", literally banged out for the money and even though they lack bite and focus of his better works, they are still entertaining stories), so consistent in fact that I can't really detect a huge difference in stories that were written earlier in his mature career and ones that were written toward the end of his life (the collection jumbles them up, which some folks wanting to track his development might quibble with but it didn't really bother me).
To that end, all the big guns you'd expect are here and they do kind of form the core of the collection. You get finely imagined future scenarios like "That Share of Glory", where negotiation has become a kind of religion as a merchant hires out a herald to assist him on a tough deal, only to encounter a bit of a twist as it winds on. You get the other big classic, the so-true-to-today its scary "The Marching Morons" which postulates a future where a relatively small group of smart people have to concoct ways to save the world from the masses of sheer idiocy that now comprises most of the population (actually given today's climate it might be optimistic as you wonder who the smart people that are going to save us are). Those two stories alone are strong enough to cement Kornbluth's legacy, emerging as fully formed slices of alternate reality that bristle with a brisk intelligence and a sharp eye for satire, taking current trends of the time and extrapolating them into areas of ridiculousness that doesn't feel dated at all today and in fact feel somewhat prescient at times.
Surrounding those stories are equally strong tales, notably stuff like "The Little Black Bag" where an alcoholic doctor discovers a medical bag from the future and uses it to get some redemption (this one was made into TV episodes of several SF anthology series, although I can't imagine how the ending would have been shot without scaring the crap out of people). And time and again that's what Kornbluth does, taking scenarios that are interesting on their own and finding unusual angles on them ("The Education of Tigress McCardle", which should be required reading for anyone who wants to be in "Teen Mom", still makes me laugh every time I read it). "The Mindworm" postulates a scenario that Theodore Sturgeon would have taken into realms of both horror and love, while Kornbluth lets it play out with overlapping thoughts until the ending sneaks up on you from nowhere. "Two Dooms" sounds a call for a nuclear free world and basically writes "The Man in the High Castle" in a tenth of the space and with about half of Dick's sometimes off-putting oddness. And when Kornbluth did decide to be weird, the results are generally charming, like "MS Found in a Chinese Fortune Cookie" which is amazingly about exactly what the title says it is, but doesn't overstay its welcome. I also had a fondness for the journalist SF tale "Make Mine Mars", probably because he manages to transplant a detailed feel of how a newspaper runs into the future.
What strikes in story after story is how seriously accomplished Kornbluth was, and how much more he could have done if his health had allowed him to stick around a little longer. Would he have found ripe subjects in the culture of the 1960s? Could we even say he had peaked? For all we know he was getting ready to enter his prime, which really speaks to the tragedy of his early death. In the meantime, we have these and so much else, which feels like a lot and a little at the same time. Few of the stories have a note out of place and even decades later its often clear what he's satirizing. He rarely pulls punches and so the stories lack the sometimes sappy sentimentality that even a genius like Sturgeon could let trickle in. But rarely are they cold either, his characters are full of pluck and even if the boy-girl stuff isn't that daring for the time more often than not he manages the dual feat that only the best of SF of that time could pull off: entertaining you with a plausible future (at least as seen from the 1940s) while making you think about the ramifications of that future. With all the old masters gone or nearly gone (are there any big guns from that era left?) and their works gradually beginning the slow fade in the eyes of a general reading population that only likes old stuff when its linked to a amber haze of nostalgia or repurposed for the sake of being new, there's something to be said for reading a story written over fifty years ago and still being able to sense what the author was thinking, to find it just as passionate or poignant as any story written today, to not make apologies or excuses for its embarrassing moments, to enjoy it simply for what is, a well told tale told well, written by a major talent who unfortunately only stuck around long enough to tease us with how talented he was.
The most well known Kornbluth involved work is probably his novel with Frederick Pohl, "The Space Merchants", a rather savage satire on advertising and consumerism for the time that was considered a classic then and still is now (I read it years and years ago but I remember it being very good). He did several other works with Pohl (who only died about three or four years ago at the ripe age of ninety plus and did a lot ot keep the memory of his old writing partner alive), among other writers and was widely admired among his peers as being a kind of prodigy. Unfortunately, and this has a lot to do with the reasons he's not well remembered today, his experiences in WWII didn't leave him in the most robust of health and combined with a certain lack in taking care of himself led to his extremely early death by heart attack at the age of thirty-four in 1958. He left a decent amount of work behind but unless you're well versed in SF writers of the early days, chances are you aren't really going to come across him.
This collection attempts to go a ways toward fixing that. Between the covers it collects fifty plus short stories that Kornbluth wrote, pretty much all his solo SF (he wrote a couple novels alone but everything else was with collaborators) over the course of his career under a variety of names. Having so much gathered in one place does go a ways toward making a good case for him being far more well known than he is, if only to prove how consistent he was (even when he was really just hacking it out . . . the last handful of stories in the collection are what was known as "spec work", literally banged out for the money and even though they lack bite and focus of his better works, they are still entertaining stories), so consistent in fact that I can't really detect a huge difference in stories that were written earlier in his mature career and ones that were written toward the end of his life (the collection jumbles them up, which some folks wanting to track his development might quibble with but it didn't really bother me).
To that end, all the big guns you'd expect are here and they do kind of form the core of the collection. You get finely imagined future scenarios like "That Share of Glory", where negotiation has become a kind of religion as a merchant hires out a herald to assist him on a tough deal, only to encounter a bit of a twist as it winds on. You get the other big classic, the so-true-to-today its scary "The Marching Morons" which postulates a future where a relatively small group of smart people have to concoct ways to save the world from the masses of sheer idiocy that now comprises most of the population (actually given today's climate it might be optimistic as you wonder who the smart people that are going to save us are). Those two stories alone are strong enough to cement Kornbluth's legacy, emerging as fully formed slices of alternate reality that bristle with a brisk intelligence and a sharp eye for satire, taking current trends of the time and extrapolating them into areas of ridiculousness that doesn't feel dated at all today and in fact feel somewhat prescient at times.
Surrounding those stories are equally strong tales, notably stuff like "The Little Black Bag" where an alcoholic doctor discovers a medical bag from the future and uses it to get some redemption (this one was made into TV episodes of several SF anthology series, although I can't imagine how the ending would have been shot without scaring the crap out of people). And time and again that's what Kornbluth does, taking scenarios that are interesting on their own and finding unusual angles on them ("The Education of Tigress McCardle", which should be required reading for anyone who wants to be in "Teen Mom", still makes me laugh every time I read it). "The Mindworm" postulates a scenario that Theodore Sturgeon would have taken into realms of both horror and love, while Kornbluth lets it play out with overlapping thoughts until the ending sneaks up on you from nowhere. "Two Dooms" sounds a call for a nuclear free world and basically writes "The Man in the High Castle" in a tenth of the space and with about half of Dick's sometimes off-putting oddness. And when Kornbluth did decide to be weird, the results are generally charming, like "MS Found in a Chinese Fortune Cookie" which is amazingly about exactly what the title says it is, but doesn't overstay its welcome. I also had a fondness for the journalist SF tale "Make Mine Mars", probably because he manages to transplant a detailed feel of how a newspaper runs into the future.
What strikes in story after story is how seriously accomplished Kornbluth was, and how much more he could have done if his health had allowed him to stick around a little longer. Would he have found ripe subjects in the culture of the 1960s? Could we even say he had peaked? For all we know he was getting ready to enter his prime, which really speaks to the tragedy of his early death. In the meantime, we have these and so much else, which feels like a lot and a little at the same time. Few of the stories have a note out of place and even decades later its often clear what he's satirizing. He rarely pulls punches and so the stories lack the sometimes sappy sentimentality that even a genius like Sturgeon could let trickle in. But rarely are they cold either, his characters are full of pluck and even if the boy-girl stuff isn't that daring for the time more often than not he manages the dual feat that only the best of SF of that time could pull off: entertaining you with a plausible future (at least as seen from the 1940s) while making you think about the ramifications of that future. With all the old masters gone or nearly gone (are there any big guns from that era left?) and their works gradually beginning the slow fade in the eyes of a general reading population that only likes old stuff when its linked to a amber haze of nostalgia or repurposed for the sake of being new, there's something to be said for reading a story written over fifty years ago and still being able to sense what the author was thinking, to find it just as passionate or poignant as any story written today, to not make apologies or excuses for its embarrassing moments, to enjoy it simply for what is, a well told tale told well, written by a major talent who unfortunately only stuck around long enough to tease us with how talented he was.
March 9, 2018
Well I didn't enjoy this one very much. I am not sure if it was the dated writing of the stories or just the writer's style. Either way I struggled to get this one read. If you are looking for a new classic Golden era SiFi writer and you like short stories then give this one a try otherwise it's not recommended
July 27, 2017
Cyril Kornbluth was a very bright child. His brother Lewis shared a family story about Cyril (quoted in C. M. Kornbluth: The Life and Works of a Science Fiction Visionary by Mark Rich):
A neighbor lady came up to talk with my mother, and put her hand on the baby carriage, at which Cyril said, "Get your hands off my baby carriage."
Mother said, "Don't pay attention. He's just a child."
Cyril: "I am not the baby you think I am."
He began getting his science fiction and fantasy stories published when he was very young. Some of the stories in this collection feel like they were written by a gifted teenager because they were written by a gifted teenager. Kornbluth was born in 1923 and 22 of the 56 stories in ths book were published by 1942. Some of these are quite poor; some, notably "The Words of Guru," are good.
There are no stories in this book with a copyright date from 1943 to 1949. Part of this was because of Kornbluth's World War II service. Also, Kornbluth was branching into other kinds of writing.
When the science fiction stories resume in 1950, they are, for the most part, much better than the earlier ones. There are still some really poor stories: "The Slave" and "Virginia," for example, both from 1958, are pretty bad. But he also published some good to excellent stories. My favorites are "I Never Ast No Favors" and Kornbluth's most acclaimed story,"The Little Black Bag." Other good stories would include "Gomez," "With These Hands," "Two Dooms," "The Altar at Midnight," "The Silly Season," "Theory of Rocketry," and "The Cosmic Charge Account."
Kornbluth died of a heart attack in 1958 when he was only 35 years old.
A neighbor lady came up to talk with my mother, and put her hand on the baby carriage, at which Cyril said, "Get your hands off my baby carriage."
Mother said, "Don't pay attention. He's just a child."
Cyril: "I am not the baby you think I am."
He began getting his science fiction and fantasy stories published when he was very young. Some of the stories in this collection feel like they were written by a gifted teenager because they were written by a gifted teenager. Kornbluth was born in 1923 and 22 of the 56 stories in ths book were published by 1942. Some of these are quite poor; some, notably "The Words of Guru," are good.
There are no stories in this book with a copyright date from 1943 to 1949. Part of this was because of Kornbluth's World War II service. Also, Kornbluth was branching into other kinds of writing.
When the science fiction stories resume in 1950, they are, for the most part, much better than the earlier ones. There are still some really poor stories: "The Slave" and "Virginia," for example, both from 1958, are pretty bad. But he also published some good to excellent stories. My favorites are "I Never Ast No Favors" and Kornbluth's most acclaimed story,"The Little Black Bag." Other good stories would include "Gomez," "With These Hands," "Two Dooms," "The Altar at Midnight," "The Silly Season," "Theory of Rocketry," and "The Cosmic Charge Account."
Kornbluth died of a heart attack in 1958 when he was only 35 years old.
February 28, 2013
CM Kornbluth (with or without Pohl) was one of the finest and most prolific of the fifties sf writers. His biting wit (especially later on) and sardonic turn on events reminded me of Twain or Swift, although his subject matter wasn't the same (of course). See "the Little Black Bag", probably his most famous. Or search out the story that ends "here they come with an insulting thick rope.." No, you gotta read it to find out which one. Or "I know a word that will explode this planet like a stick of dynamite in a rotten apple". Great command of language and dovetailing character to subject matter-way ahead of his time.
July 29, 2025
This is a great package. Editor Timothy Szczesuil and NESFA deserve all kinds of credit for producing it, in 1997, and making it available. I just bought my copy from NESFA few months ago.
Kornbluth was one of the major American science fiction writers of the 1940s and 50s and the level of quality of the stories here is generally very high, though some are a great deal more ambitious and accomplished than others. Even most of the unpretentious pseudonymous pulp stories have their moments.
I will want to revisit some of the stories, “Two Dooms” and “The Last Man Left in the Bar” in particular because in their different ways they left questions in my mind, others just because they’re very good.
5 stars, absolutely.
Kornbluth was one of the major American science fiction writers of the 1940s and 50s and the level of quality of the stories here is generally very high, though some are a great deal more ambitious and accomplished than others. Even most of the unpretentious pseudonymous pulp stories have their moments.
I will want to revisit some of the stories, “Two Dooms” and “The Last Man Left in the Bar” in particular because in their different ways they left questions in my mind, others just because they’re very good.
5 stars, absolutely.
June 19, 2023
C.M. Kornbluth was something of a prodigy in the science fiction field in the 1940s-1950s. His career ended, unfortunately, in 1958 when he died of a heart attack before he was 35 years old. This is a mammoth collection of stories -- many written when he was still a teenager. There are some truly excellent ones here ("The Marching Morons" and "The Little Black Bag" to name but two) and some that didn't quite resonate with me (mostly the early stories, many of which were written to spec). In all, it is an impressive collection.
August 16, 2023
Great format for getting to know an author. I wish the stories had been in chronological order, but the early stories were much weaker so I can see why they were included at the end instead.
June 17, 2025
Some classics mixed with some lesser works.
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November 24, 2014His Share of Glory:
The Complete Short Science Fiction of C. M. Kornbluth
NESFA Press 1997
$27.00; 670 pages
ISBN 0-915368-60-9
I picked up this volume because I had read the [almost] titular short story "That Share of Glory" in Jerry Pournelle's Imperial Stars: The Stars at War. I was pleasantly surprised at how much I liked just about every story contained within. I suppose I shouldn't be. Jerry Pournelle remains among my all time favorite writers, and I trust his judgment about other interesting authors.
This book comes in at 670 pages, and it only represents the scfi short fiction of Kornbluth. Not his novels, and not short fiction in any other genre. That is an impressive corpus of writing for a man who only lived to be 34. As Tom Lehrer almost said, by the time Kornbluth was my age he was dead.
Some of Kornbluth's short stories are famous. "That Share of Glory", "The Little Black Bag", and "The Marching Morons" are his best, and best known works. Another in this collection that I especially liked was "Gomez", the tale of an unlikely nuclear physicist who finds and then loses great power. The stories I didn't like as much, I still liked a lot. I even liked the stories the in back, set in a smaller font, that came with a warning that they were early works written quickly to fill space in pulp magazines. You have to be damn good to write stories that way that anyone wants to read 75 years later, and Kornbluth was.
While most of these stories are scifi, there were a couple that reminded me a bit of Lovecraft and Howard: uncanny and disturbing. Judging by their frequency, this wasn't his specialty, but I enjoyed them nonetheless. His specialty seemed to be journalism. Stories like "The Silly Season" and "Make Mine Mars" show marks of Kornbluth's time as a wire-service reporter in Chicago. This is important, since I'm always interested in what makes a given author's work "hard" scifi.
While Kornbluth wrote some space opera featuring technology nigh unto magic, most of the works in this volume focused on reasonable extrapolations from Kornbluth's encyclopedic knowledge. I mean that literally, since Kornbluth acquired his facts by reading an encyclopedia front to back. However, it isn't really the technology that makes this hard scifi. Kornbluth displayed a keen insight into human motivations, combined with a reporter's cynicism for the tawdriness of ordinary life. Sometimes scifi can be rightly castigated for incomplete or wooden characterization. This is not true of Kornbluth; he understood the human condition, and wrote about it with the authority of a jaded confessor.
Kornbluth was taken from us too soon; he might have been a yet more remarkable author had he lived longer. What might have been is a fit subject for another story. In the meanwhile, you just need to read Kornbluth. This is what the golden age of science fiction is all about.
The Complete Short Science Fiction of C. M. Kornbluth
NESFA Press 1997
$27.00; 670 pages
ISBN 0-915368-60-9
I picked up this volume because I had read the [almost] titular short story "That Share of Glory" in Jerry Pournelle's Imperial Stars: The Stars at War. I was pleasantly surprised at how much I liked just about every story contained within. I suppose I shouldn't be. Jerry Pournelle remains among my all time favorite writers, and I trust his judgment about other interesting authors.
This book comes in at 670 pages, and it only represents the scfi short fiction of Kornbluth. Not his novels, and not short fiction in any other genre. That is an impressive corpus of writing for a man who only lived to be 34. As Tom Lehrer almost said, by the time Kornbluth was my age he was dead.
Some of Kornbluth's short stories are famous. "That Share of Glory", "The Little Black Bag", and "The Marching Morons" are his best, and best known works. Another in this collection that I especially liked was "Gomez", the tale of an unlikely nuclear physicist who finds and then loses great power. The stories I didn't like as much, I still liked a lot. I even liked the stories the in back, set in a smaller font, that came with a warning that they were early works written quickly to fill space in pulp magazines. You have to be damn good to write stories that way that anyone wants to read 75 years later, and Kornbluth was.
While most of these stories are scifi, there were a couple that reminded me a bit of Lovecraft and Howard: uncanny and disturbing. Judging by their frequency, this wasn't his specialty, but I enjoyed them nonetheless. His specialty seemed to be journalism. Stories like "The Silly Season" and "Make Mine Mars" show marks of Kornbluth's time as a wire-service reporter in Chicago. This is important, since I'm always interested in what makes a given author's work "hard" scifi.
While Kornbluth wrote some space opera featuring technology nigh unto magic, most of the works in this volume focused on reasonable extrapolations from Kornbluth's encyclopedic knowledge. I mean that literally, since Kornbluth acquired his facts by reading an encyclopedia front to back. However, it isn't really the technology that makes this hard scifi. Kornbluth displayed a keen insight into human motivations, combined with a reporter's cynicism for the tawdriness of ordinary life. Sometimes scifi can be rightly castigated for incomplete or wooden characterization. This is not true of Kornbluth; he understood the human condition, and wrote about it with the authority of a jaded confessor.
Kornbluth was taken from us too soon; he might have been a yet more remarkable author had he lived longer. What might have been is a fit subject for another story. In the meanwhile, you just need to read Kornbluth. This is what the golden age of science fiction is all about.
February 10, 2017
Seventy-four million of us voted for one of the ten candidates other than trump, who received only forty-six percent of the popular vote. His surprising and disappointing victory drove me to search "idiocracy" as we enter this new era. That search lead me to a film of that name released eleven years ago. I watched it, saving you the bother. Positioned as a dystopian social satire set five hundred years in the future, it is a crude and humorless film.
Although it receives no credit as inspiration, the film story parallels a science fiction short story by C.M. Kornbluth, included in this anthology .
"The Marching Morons" takes place two thousand years in the future. Geneticists bred intelligence out of the population for generations, abandoning words for deeds, leaving three million smart people on earth ruling five billion stupid people. These are morons, born suckers, writes Kornbluth. Barlow, our antagonist, wallowed in "a world dictatorship with me as dictator. ... A shrewd operator does not need to compromise."
"The Marching Morons" published less than a year after another Kornbluth short story. "The Little Black Bag," which appeared in nineteen-fifty, centers on a physician's kit bag that arrived from the future. Kornbluth's editor liked that story and asked him to turn it around, to write a piece about present-day people set in the future, which is how he got to the morons.
Of the two related stories, I prefer the earlier one, "The Little Black Bag," which seemed more vivid and intriguing.
An aging physician pawned his kit bag. Suddenly, a kit bag appeared, from four hundred years in the future. The instruments seemed vaguely familiar, they caused no pain and left no scars. It was impossible to do harm.
Cyril Kornbluth attended the University of Chicago before becoming a wire service reporter, which he quit to become a full-time writer.
Although it receives no credit as inspiration, the film story parallels a science fiction short story by C.M. Kornbluth, included in this anthology .
"The Marching Morons" takes place two thousand years in the future. Geneticists bred intelligence out of the population for generations, abandoning words for deeds, leaving three million smart people on earth ruling five billion stupid people. These are morons, born suckers, writes Kornbluth. Barlow, our antagonist, wallowed in "a world dictatorship with me as dictator. ... A shrewd operator does not need to compromise."
"The Marching Morons" published less than a year after another Kornbluth short story. "The Little Black Bag," which appeared in nineteen-fifty, centers on a physician's kit bag that arrived from the future. Kornbluth's editor liked that story and asked him to turn it around, to write a piece about present-day people set in the future, which is how he got to the morons.
Of the two related stories, I prefer the earlier one, "The Little Black Bag," which seemed more vivid and intriguing.
An aging physician pawned his kit bag. Suddenly, a kit bag appeared, from four hundred years in the future. The instruments seemed vaguely familiar, they caused no pain and left no scars. It was impossible to do harm.
Cyril Kornbluth attended the University of Chicago before becoming a wire service reporter, which he quit to become a full-time writer.
August 5, 2013
C.M. Kornbluth is my favorite author of all time. How often do you hear that? I first read him when I was around twelve years old. Probably 1956, or 1957. I'll never forget NOT THIS AUGUST.
HIS SHARE OF GLORY is a collection of his work, excepting only the novel-length pieces. They're all worth reading.
He had a way of sneaking up on you with his humor, I suppose I should call it satire, that I always enjoyed.
One of the best short stories in this volume is "The Little Brown Bag." Start with that one if you want to see him at his best. Then enjoy all the rest, too.
Cyril Kornbluth died in 1958 at only 35 years of age. What a shame.
HIS SHARE OF GLORY is a collection of his work, excepting only the novel-length pieces. They're all worth reading.
He had a way of sneaking up on you with his humor, I suppose I should call it satire, that I always enjoyed.
One of the best short stories in this volume is "The Little Brown Bag." Start with that one if you want to see him at his best. Then enjoy all the rest, too.
Cyril Kornbluth died in 1958 at only 35 years of age. What a shame.
December 30, 2009
Highly recommended collection of short sci fi pieces. Kornbluth died early and his work is often forgetten in sci fi conversation. But many of the pieces here that have had re-incarnations in the current age (Mike Judge's Idiocracy, for example, is much indebted to stories like The Little Black Bag and The Marching Morons). Definitely worth checking out.
March 13, 2009
This book contains my all-time favorite short story (The Medicine Bag). I discovered C.M. Kornbluth as a teen-ager. I searched for other works by him and found that he died young and wrote very little. What a waste.
July 30, 2012
Picked this up after a discussion about the film Idiocracy, in which someone recommended Kornbluth's tale The Marching Morons. And, from what I have read in this, the man does have quite a way with words.
July 25, 2007
A bitter, bitter man with a sharp tongue for satire. Marching Morons and That Share of Glory are amazing stories, just to start.
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August 22, 2008His Share of Glory: The Complete Short Science Fiction of C.M. Kornbluth by C. M. Kornbluth (1997)
May 12, 2009
Wonderful short fiction from a man who died too young.
March 18, 2013
This set of stories includes "The Marching Morons." For that reason alone it's worth the read. Just watch the Kardasians some time and see if you agree.
May 13, 2016
What a wonderful writer of short stories. Too bad he only lived to 35. What a wealth of novels and stories are unwritten.
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