Swank Apr '74: The Sci-Fi Special Issue: H Ellison, R Bradbury et al

Swank, a men's magazine that has been published on and off since the 1940s, in April 1974 put out an issue with a sizable special SF section that included a reprint of a story by Harlan Ellison, a profile of Ellison, an interview with Ray Bradbury, and articles about SF conventions and Forrest J. Ackerman.  All this along with an interview with Raquel Welch ("I think if the Women's Liberationists get their way the women of the future will be machines, zombies...."), book and music reviews (enthusiastic praise for The Princess Bride and Band on the Run), and page after page of topless young ladies.  Let's look at the nonfiction SF content of this issue of the magazine "for men and women in touch" and then the included Ellison story, 1972's "Kiss of Fire."

Near the front of the mag is a column and teeny photo describing The Science Fiction Shop at 56 Eighth Avenue in Greenwich Village--they have some great Lovecraft and Tolkien material!  (This store closed in 1986, like ten years before I moved to Manhattan under the guise of a graduate student in History.)  In the middle of the magazine is an article about SF conventions in general and the recent Toronto convention in particular.  There are a lot of black and white photos, including two of Larry Niven, one with a Hugo and one of him dressed up in a costume consisting of a sort of robe and a very tall square hat.  Another convention goer (her photo is much larger than the Niven photos) is dressed as "La Reine Noire"; it seems the Black Queen's customary attire leaves her breasts bare.  The article about Ackerman consists of two pages, almost entirely photos; the brief text is gushing praise.

The profile of Ellison is also characterized by gushing praise, but also some skepticism of such anecdotes as Ellison's claim of having helped black terrorists shoot at police in Newark.  The profile chronicles several incidents of Ellison getting into other people's spaces--asking a high school teacher in front of her students if she puts out, "throttling" Gardner Dozois (as a joke, presumably), spoiling panel discussions with a joke about Tinkerbell putting out.  (It is a little funny to find the phrase "puts out" twice in an article like this; I guess this was an Ellison stock phrase at the time.)  Ellison appears as a prima donna who always wants to be the center of attention and is willing to disrupt other people's comfort to do so.  And then there is the embarrassing promotion of The Last Dangerous Visions, envisioned as a two-volume boxed set due out in late 1974, and other abortive projects.  The profile is almost entirely about Ellison the personality, with no discussion I can recall of the topics of his stories or his narrative techniques...well, I guess he is called "a master of emotion."  "Master of emotion" is an interesting turn of phrase, because one of the themes of the profile is the extent to which Ellison's wild antics are an act and to what extent they are Ellison being "authentic." 

The preamble to the Ray Bradbury interview is still more effusive praise, but this article is much more substantive and powerful than any of the other SF-related non-fiction in the magazine.  Bradbury talks about his poverty as a youth, about finally making money and blowing it on a tour of Europe, and about his relationship with his father, offering the traditional advice that is so hard to follow, that human relationships are more important than things like politics and should be your main concern to which everything else is subordinated.

Alright, let's tackle the Ellison story that was reprinted in this issue of Swank.

"Kiss of Fire" (1972)

"Kiss of Fire" first saw print in Halcyon, a quarterly magazine put out by college students.  Like Swank's April 1974 issue, you can find the Spring 1972 issue of Halcyon at the internet archive, the world's greatest website.  Neither isfdb nor the Harlan Ellison website lists the Swank appearance of "Kiss of Fire," so if you have a Harlan Ellison collector in your life, let them know about it.  

"Kiss of Fire" is accompanied in Swank by an illustration by the Dillons that takes up more than a page; it is a good example of their work, and I have no idea if it ever appeared elsewhere, so check it out of you are a fan.

"Kiss of Fire" is a portrait of a future of extreme decadence, when there is almost no work to do and everyone is constantly on drugs and people are so jaded, so sated, that prostitutes have trouble getting customers and men have vaginas surgically implanted into their armpits in an effort to experience sexual stimulation.  Our main character is an artist who has the sorts of problems Ellison himself presumably had working in cinema and television--he comes up with dramatic productions and the business people he has to work for and work with don't appreciate his work and don't do what the artist considers a good job presenting his productions to the public.  These productions (reminding us a little of "Deeper Than the Darkness") consist of triggering suns into going nova so entire solar systems, once the homes of sophisticated civilizations now extinct, are destroyed.  He does this from a space liner, and so desensitized are the people who paid to be passengers on the liner that many of them sleep through the nova or play cards while the solar system on the other side of the portholes is being destroyed.  Before the planets of the systems are annihilated, the ruins of the dead civilizations are scanned so people can experience their essence through empathy machines as a form of entertainment.   

The artist is bored of life and talks about wanting to die, using the same metaphor, the same phrase, that summer is ending, again and again.  Similarly, a computer simulation of his long-dead wife repeats phrases again and again, reminding us of how the creative classes of decadent societies rehash the same plots and themes again and again.  

A beautiful alien woman comes to the artist, a woman with very small breasts, perhaps symbolizing youth and vitality.  The artist is sexually attracted for the first time in ages, and after they have sex this woman brings him what he truly wants--death.  The artist has just destroyed the native planet of her people--reminding us of "The Discarded," her ancestors were exiled because among her winged people they lacked wings, so while the planet was vacant, her civilization was not quite extinct, and, besides, her people's religion suggests that, like the phoenix, the dead would be reborn from their remains, which the artist has just annihilated.  She condemns the human race for destroying the records and remains of every other race as it dies, for, having conquered the universe and now expiring, there being nothing left to do, taking everyone else down into oblivion with them, and then gently murders the man who wants to die, his death symbolizing the coming death of the entire human race which similarly wants to die.

This is not a smooth read, especially the first quarter or so, Ellison using lots of metaphors and neologisms, and I had to reread some passages to get what was going on, but it is not too bad, and this style of overwriting--using words more oblique and esoteric than necessary, and in greater volume than necessary, to make a point--suits a story about a society which is very complex and sophisticated but at its core heartless, soulless, and weak, like a house with rotten foundations covered in garish gingerbread and rococo fripperies.  The ideas and plot are good, and I liked it once I focused and got a handle on it, so thumbs up for "Kiss of Fire."

"Kiss of Fire" in 1973 was included in the anthology edited by Thomas N. Scortia and Chelsea Quinn Yarbro entitled Two Views of Wonder, and was reprinted in the many editions of Ellison's Approaching Oblivion.  Joachim Boaz blogged about Approaching Oblivion back in 2013 (when we were young!) so go check out what he had to say about "Kiss of Fire" and the whole shebang.

**********

Well, the non-fiction stuff was kind of disappointing, leaving aside the Bradbury interview, which had some good anecdotes, but the Ellison story and Dillons illo are good, so it looks like I am recommending this issue of Swank, which I just stumbled upon by putting Ellison's name in the internet archive search field.  Keep exploring, kids!