Barry N. Malzberg: "Causation," "The Art of Fiction," "A Short Religious Novel," "Report of the Defense" and "Notes for a Novel About the First Ship Ever to Venus"

We here at MPorcius Fiction Log are reading Out From Ganymede, a 1974 collection of 21 or 22 stories by Barry N. Malzberg that bears the dedication "For Robert Silverberg: the best one."  Today we take on five stories; three...two...one...blast off!

"Causation" (1971)

In our last foray into Out From Ganymede we read two stories which were first printed in F&SF, and here's another one (the first of several today--F&SF has been a good market for Malzberg.)  "Causation" is one of those brief little stories that is really just an idea, with dialogue scenes that dramatize the idea and then a gonzo finish that, I guess, is supposed to amaze or amuse you.  The idea this time around, unfortunately, isn't all that great.  

Most of the tale's four pages depict a pitch meeting at a TV network.  The guy selling his idea for a TV show says that all the wars plaguing the world and the youth riots plaguing America are the result of people's sexual desires being stifled by social mores and psychological issues.  When the network execs protest that social science data indicates that people are having more sex than ever, the guy responds that the truth is that "Five percent of them are getting ninety-five percent of the sex," which sounds like one of the hypotheses of those incel guys.  Anyway, the guy's proposal for a TV show is to broadcast a couple having sex.  The execs approve the idea, the show is put on the air, and the broadcast garners a world-shattering response: a flight of USAF bombers goes rogue and bombs America into oblivion.

It is not clear if Malzberg means to endorse the cliched and banal ideas that all our problems are due to sexual repression and America has a puritanical anti-sex culture, or to lampoon those tired and boring propositions; either way, he doesn't present a persuasive case.  Neither does "Causation" have any compelling characters or surprises or arresting images or funny jokes, so thumbs down.

The same year that "Causation" was published, Malzberg also published "The Idea," another story that is about a TV network airing a groundbreaking program which it is hinted is a recording of a couple having sex.  Reduce, reuse, recycle.       

"The Art of Fiction" (1972)

"The Art of Fiction" comes to us as a series of letters that pass between an aspiring writer of crime fiction and the editors of a crime magazine, Slaughterhouse.  The plot and jokes are sort of obvious, but I still laughed, so I am giving the story a thumbs up.

In brief, a guy sells Slaughterhouse his first story, "Tear Her Open."  The main joke of "The Art of Fiction" is that the author is obviously a murderer and "Tear Her Open" is a description of a monstrous atrocity he has himself committed.  Subsidiary jokes of Malzberg's story are recursive "meta" reflections on what it is like to be a professional writer who sells stories to genre magazines, what it is like to be an editor at such magazines, and what those editors think of their readers.  The final joke, which I guess is a twist ending but is too predictable to really constitute a twist, are indications that, because the editors won't buy the murderer's second and third stories, the murderer is going to show up at the offices of Slaughterhouse and exact a horrific revenge.

Somewhat edgy black humor, told with gusto--"The Art of Fiction" is a keeper!  It first appeared in the Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine Annual for 1972.  

"A Short Religious Novel" (1972)

This one doesn't even fill up two pages.  A spaceman travels all the way to the other side of the Universe to consult a giant computer called "the Answerer."  When he asks the machine if there is a God, it says no, and the man has something of a nervous breakdown.  But we readers are privy to the machine's thoughts, and learn the machine lied out of pique--there is a God, but the Answerer is sick of people asking it if there is a God and so vented his irritation on the spaceman by deceiving him.  Regretting its lie, the machine tells the man the truth, but of course the man now has no trust in the machine.  The Answerer then commits suicide, shutting itself off.

The man makes to leave, but his space ship won't start.  He thinks to ask the Answerer for some technical advice, but finds it silent, and is now stranded.

An inoffensive but sterile piece of filler.  Acceptable.  Other people seem to have admired it more than I did.  After its initial appearance, in 1972 in F&SF, in 1975 Wulf Bergner included it in a German anthology of stories from F&SF, and in 2003 it was reprinted in a special Barry Malzberg issue of F&SF.   

"Report of the Defense" (1972)

Another two-pager.  This one is very New Wavey and very absurd.  I guess its "point" is similar to that of "Causation," the idea that American participation in the war in Vietnam is the result of some kind of sublimated American sexual desire.  The story also serves as a spoof of the social sciences.  

The story's text is a report of the result of an experiment conducted on a dozen people who were shown various photographs and works of art as well as tortured; they were asked their opinions of the things shown to them, and then asked their opinions of American involvement in the war in Vietnam.  At the end of the story the scientists request more grant money in order to pursue such important areas of further study as "The relationship of the highway motel to anal fixation." 

A waste of time.  "Report for the Defense" first appeared in a fanzine, Eternity.

"Notes for a Novel About the First Ship Ever to Venus" (1971) 

Six pages, eleven chapters, that debuted in Terry Carr's Universe I.  This piece covers a lot of territory we have already seen explored in Malzberg's work multiple times--the space program is an unpopular mistake, the government is incompetent, your sex life is humiliating, technology will let you down.

In 1972 the space agency was the target of very destructive riots.  Since then the agency has launched a successful political and PR campaign and by 2119 it basically controls the entire government, and is the center of a sort of religion, with the masses of people believing that their lives are bound up in the success of its explorations and colonizations.  A small proportion of the elite class think this PR campaign has gone too far, fearing that if the space program faces a setback, many people will suffer a catastrophic psychological blow that will destabilize society.  They are ignored.

Having colonized near-Earth orbit and the moon, the next mission is an elaborate mission to Venus--hundreds of people will be on the ship, including many celebrities and politicians.  The chief engineer of the ship doesn't really get along with the captain, as he and the captain's wife had an affair and the engineer proved a much more able lover than her husband (the captain has had a premature ejaculation problem.)  Also on the ship is a famous musician, who also has had an affair with the captain's wife.

The chief engineer predicts the trip to Venus will fail, that the ship will go off course and fly into the sun.  He is ignored.

The entire mission is broadcast to everybody on Earth and in those colonies, so when the ship does fly into the sun, as we knew it would, every member of the human race has a front row seat to the holocaust.

Acceptable. 

**********   

A mixed bag.  Of the group, "Notes for a Novel About the First Ship Ever to Venus" is perhaps most representative of the work for which Malzberg is famous, while "Report of the Defense" fits most snugly into our ideas of a New Wave story is, but the best piece, or at least the most fun, is the non-SF story, "The Art of Fiction."  As I have said in the past, I suspect that Malzberg's best work is his non-SF work, the sex novels like Everything Happened to Susan, Confessions of Westchester County and Horizontal Woman, and the more or less mainstream novels like Screen and Underlay, and today's batch of stories perhaps buttresses this suspicion.

In our next episode we'll finish up with Out From Ganymede.