IN THE HEART OF PENNSYLvania, at a famous university, there is a man who teaches a (full credit) course called Prophecy and Prediction. This is even more extraordinary than it sounds, because—in direct violation of all established institutional practice —Professor Philip Klass is not only peculiarly well-equipped to teach such a subject, but it was precisely because of his demonstrated ability to practice prophecy commercially that his lack of some of the more ordinary academic qualifications was considered immaterial when he was invited to join the faculty of the English Department at Penn State.

That is to say, he happens to be an outstandingly good science fiction writer—and please note I said prophet, not prophesier. He is not an Elder Statesman of Space, one of those proto-engineers who, in a sense, invented space travel and atomic power (and television, and a number of other pleasant and unpleasant facts of modern life) in the early "scientifiction" magazines. When his first story was published, in 1946, most of these items were already on—or on their way to—the drawing boards of the "real" engineers (who—like Klass—had received much of their education and inspiration from those pre-designers of the thirties and early forties). But while the Young Engineers were applying themselves to the task of turning other men's predictions into everyman's artifacts, the Young Writer, calling himself "William Tenn," set himself a course of apprenticeship in the rather more outre business of prophecy.

Professor Klass today makes a sharp distinction between the two words, and I am not at all certain that my definitions match his. I am only sure—after reading (the new and re-reading the old in) the six volumes just released by Ballantine in "celebration of William Tenn"—that by my definition he learned his trade brilliantly. I find myself as much impressed today by the accumulated work as I was twenty years ago by the marvelously inventive and richly comic young writer (who was two—light —years and nine published stories ahead of me at the time). But I am impressed now by different stories (few of them written then), and for different reasons.

The specialty s-f field—like most ingrown enclaves, I suppose —has had an unhappy history of glorifying its best writers to destruction. In 1943, William Tenn had already established himself not only as a lightning innovator and hang-up story-teller, but as one of the rarest birds on the science fiction horizon, a true humorist. (In 1949, "Venus and the Seven Sexes" set him beyond doubt in a Klass of his own.) Retrospectively, I suspect that this early image as First Funnyman of Fantasy did his later reputation—and quite possibly his writing as well —incomparable damage. Certainly, it seems probable that some of his long silences in recent years have resulted at least in part from an editorial and critical reluctance to relinquish an image long since grown constrictingly smaller-than-life. I hope, now that he seems to be producing again, that the large-but-misbegotten effort Ballantine is making to contain the old image in a—wildly, absurdly—inappropriate new one (Rediscovered Primitive) does not result in similar damage.

The six books just issued consist of Tenn's only novel, OF MEN AND MONSTERS, published in full for the first time, and five short story collections: OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS (hereafter mostly, APW) and THE HUMAN ANGLE (THA) are reissues of collections first published in 1955 and 1956; THE WOODEN STAR (TWS), THE SEVEN SEXES (Tss), and THE SQUARE ROOT OF MAN (SRM), are new selections of pieces originally published between 1946 and 1967. At a total price of $4.50 for the six books—one novel, one novella, one critical essay, nine novelettes, and 34 short stories—there is a prodigious amount of good reading here. Unfortunately, there is also an unpardonable scattering of the author's commercial apprenticeship efforts spread through all five books—unpardonable, that is, when so many of his better stories were incomprehensibly omitted ("Firewater," for instance, or "Time Waits for Winthrop"). Also—

Although the three new volumes lay claim to (a faintly discernible) thematic arrangement of material, they seem rather to have been laid out primarily so that each one would contain at least one-each of the varieties of Tenn: a time story, a space story, a gag story, a sociological story, a prophetic story, a weird-fantasy, a satire. And—

Although the set is "matched" in external appearance, it is anything but uniform in layout and internal design. One volume has title pages for each story; one starts each new title on a right-hand page; two begin each story on a new page, left or right—although with radically different type sizes and page design; and one—) Well, one would think that at 75¢ a book, Ballantine might—at least—have added a contents page to the old plates of THE HUMAN ANGLE.

Finally, there is the matter of those matched packages.

My own Rediscovery of Tenn—through these volumes—makes me want to be as charitable as possible to their publishers. But I really do not know whether it is more unkind to believe that blind editorial insensitivity or shortsighted commercial motivations were responsible for either the peculiar selection and arrangement of stories, or ridiculously misleading cover designs. Let me in any case make very clear to those who are not already familiar with his work, that William Tenn is not (and never has been) remotely related to E. R. Burroughs, E. R. Eddison, J. R. Tolkien, or any other of Ballantine's high-camp Pop-pop best-selling Reconstructed Escapist Era fantasists. Nor, despite the turn-of-century lettering and vaguely-sentimental-lurid-stained-glassy art, does he even slightly resemble Rider Haggard, Conan Doyle, Clark Ashton Smith, or Abe Merritt.

The fact is, Tenn's work, at it best (or even its high-grade median) resembles absolutely nothing written by anyone else. None of it is easy to describe, and the best impossible. One can say a few things in general: that some of the concepts and moods are so immediately contemporary as to be frightening—considering that all but a handful of these stories were written more than thirteen years ago; that the satire at its most effective is an unforgettable, nearly unforgivable, fusion of savagery and tenderness; that the pure strain of Tenn humor (as distinguished from satire, or gags) is as unique, individual, unpredictable, and irresistible as—well, there is only one modern standard for this kind of thing—CATCH-22.

One would have to add, on the debit side, that some of the best-remembered stories ("Child's Play," "Errand Boy," "The House Dutiful," all in TSS) are actually more joyously memorable than happily re-readable: that it was, apparently, the brilliance of concept rather than the excellence of execution that made these early stories so successful. Yet, long before he hit his real literary stride, Tenn's eye and ear were so acute than in even the most improbable and overplotted stories, there are always a few characters who ring so true, who feel so right, that one reading is all the story will ever need to fix it forever in mind.

Three other stories of the fourteen included (altogether) from Tenn's first five years, are equally memorable, and considerably more re-readable: "Venus and the Seven Sexes," also in TSS, somehow manages to be funnier than ever, and the razor-edged nail on the finger it points at Hollywood is, if anything, doubly sharp now that television has replicated the whole spectrum of film foolishnesses; "Brooklyn Project" (TWS) has yet to be surpassed as a time-trap story, and has rarely been equalled as satire on the Security Syndrome; and I cannot think of a president or presidential candidate, from 1952 to date, who does not show up (very much put down) in the 1950 election-year-story-for-all-election-years, "Null-P" (TWS).

In any comprehensive sense, Tenn did not hit his "literary stride" until 1954; I think "Down Among the Dead Men" (APW) from that year can stand as the story that marks (with a WOW!) the emergence of his mature powers as a writer. Several titles from the early fifties are indicative of the gathering strength, each in different ways—most notably "The Jester" (SRM) "Betelgeuse Bridge" (TWS), and "Everybody Loves Irving Bommer" (APW). Two other titles from the same period, however, can stand on their own, still, with the best work the field has seen: the (two ways) prophetic story, "Generation of Noah" (besides offering the earliest example —1951—of what Tenn could achieve as he brought all his facets into coordinated control) chilled, warmed, frightened, exalted, reminded, warned, amused, and excited me—all over again—as few stories have done since; and "The Liberation of Earth" (APW) is a tour de force every bit as effective now as when it first appeared.

If you pass up all the rest, get these two books at least: THE WOODEN STAR (with "Eastward Ho!", the controversial "The Masculinist Revolt," and five others in addition to those mentioned above) and OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS (with Tenn's thoughtful and provocative essay, "On the Fiction in Science Fiction," as well as four more short stories). On second thought—or is it third?—you cannot really bypass THE SEVEN SEXES (with "Bernie the Faust," "Sanctuary," "The Malted Milk Monster," and "Mistress Sary" all in it besides the four mentioned earlier).

Of course if you're buying four anyhow, you might as well have the set. But if the extra buck-and-a-half is too much, try to get away with reading at least "The Discovery of Morniel Mathaway" in THA, and "My Mother Was a Witch" in SRM. I mean, when you're paying for four out of six, even a newsdealer, let alone a bookstore man, ought to let you have that much lagniappe. And the sixth title is one you'll want.

OF MEN AND MONSTERS is the full story of the young man known as Eric the Eye, whose initiation rites into the adult world of Mankind (consisting of 128 people) were described in the Galaxy novelette, "The Men in the Walls," in 1963. (The original story is now the first of three parts in the novel.) It is a rich mixture of anthropology, poetry, prophecy, and adventure—the story of the turning point in the future of (what we now call) mankind, whose remnants, at the opening of the story, are scattered in degenerated tribal groupings, living a ratlike existence in the walls and floorings of the monstrous houses of alien invaders of Earth. Out of the conflicts of traditions and superstitions (Ancestor Science and Alien Science; the warriors and thieves of the Male Societies and food-processors and omen-tellers of the Female Societies; "Mankind" itself and the "Strangers": hack-burrowers, outlaws, and the legendary Aaron People) in a time of desperation, a new human society is patched together, to mount a distinctively Tennian return invasion.

The book has everything one might expect—wealth of invention, perfection of pace, solidity of structure, consistency, craftsmanship, giggles, and prophecy. If it disappointed me somewhat, it may have been just the lack of freshness stemming from the long time between the writing of the beginning and its completion—or it may have been the equally long time between my reading of the beginning and of the rest (I am a bad serial-reader, and I ordinarily take pains to avoid reading in the magazines the earlier or partial versions of anything I think I may later be called upon to review in book form).

It is, in any case, the first novel we have had from a unique, and uniquely readable, writer: as it stands, it is easily one of the best of 1968, and one hopes it is a promise of much more, soon. At the very least, the book manages to do what no more than a handful of writers—new or old—on the current scene can do: to combine narrative excitement with sophisticated, entirely contemporary, meaning.

Of that handful, one of the most distinguished, and certainly the most practiced, is Fritz Leiber, whose SWORDS OF LANKHMAR (Ace, 60¢) can no more be considered just as a "Sword and Sorcery" novel than OF MEN AND MONSTERS is simply a "catastrophe" story.

There are a number of curious parallels (and inversions) between the two books. For one thing, Leiber too has some men in the walls—but most of them are (any way you look at it) rats. Here, too, are small cooperating-while-competing tribal groups summing up in tiny numbers all of mankind: here too is an island universe in which parables enact themselves; here too is a constant contrast/comparison/questioning of the roles of science, magic, and tradition.

And, as it happens, here too the novel grew out of a comparatively remote magazine novelette—"Scylla's Daughters" in Fantastic in 1961. If it does not seem to suffer from that fact to the same extent as the Tenn book, it may be simply because Leiber has been writing about Fafhrd and Mouser so long that they have, in a sense, learned to grow along with him.

Or it might be simply that the novel is not attempting to do anything as profound and complex as OF MEN AND MONSTERS. Which is not to say there is anything superficial about SWORDS OF LANKHMAR —except its surface.

There can be very few readers by now who are not familiar to some extent with Nehwon, the bubble-universe of Lankhmar, Quarmall, Ilthmar, the Sinking Land, the Salt Marsh, and the Frozen Sea, inhabited by Fafhrd, the giant red-beard barbarian-from-the-North, and the slim swift stealthy leather-clad dirksman, the Gray Mouser, as well as a variable population of Mingols, Ghouls, sorcerers, princes, sailors, warriors, dragons, rats, cats, and other miraculous creatures, not least of which is the endless supply of beautiful maidens either in, or distributing, distress.

Well, this time there is a marvelously seductive albino rat-girl and her evil merchant father, who are leading a revolution of the rats in Lankhmar Below, plotting to seize power from the decadent sadist-effeminate Glipkerio, Overlord of Lankhmar Above. For Leiber-lovers, it is enough to say that this book bears about the same relation to the early adventures of Fafhrd and Mouser as "The Night He Cried" did to Mickey Spillane—or perhaps more accurately, THE WANDERER to a book by Louis Adamski. For anyone unfortunate enough not to know Leiber, or to those who (like myself) ordinarily avoid Swords-and-Sorcery by anybody, I can only say:

Try it. You may be surprised.

(And add, to those with weak stomachs: Forget it. You may be too surprised.)

Meantime, one can dream of the book that (after all) might come along (next year? the year after?) with Tenn's careful craftsmanship and literary balance, Leiber's vitality and lusty-gusto—and the narrative power and piercing intelligence of either one.

Or, on (what is it? fourth?) thought, there is a further factor, present in both these books, which is essential with all the rest: otherwise, Joanna Russ' PICNIC ON PARADISE (Ace, 600) might be just the brilliant combination described above. For lack of a dozen pages to discuss it, I will call it simply Prophetic Power: the binding energy that holds 'a novel of ideas together, provides the essential unity between theme, plot, and background, situates the most fantastic or unlikely characters and locales in a subjective matrix of "reality."

This is, of course, Miss Russ' first novel, and as such, it is quite startlingly superior: I cannot think when I last enjoyed so much reading anything so unconvincing.

I mean, I didn't believe anything: not the character of the protagonist, nor (except in brief flashes) any other characters; not the situation in which they were placed, the world in which it occurred, or the final outcome. I did not, and do not, believe that a battle-scarred super-annuated (twenty-six, long past her prime for her time) adventuress from ancient Tyre is likely (let alone necessarily) the psychological, physical, and moral superior of people from a civilization four millennia later where "super-diets and hybridization from seventy colonized planets had turned all humanity . . . into Scandinavian giants"—and nothing in the improbable sequence of events described convinced me of it, even temporarily. (These include the use as an expendable Special Agent—untrained and unbriefed—of the only human being ever recovered from the past by an expensive and power-consuming time probe; a limited war being fought with elaborate ground rules for possession of a planet whose only value is as a resort area— where accredited tourist/neutrals cannot be lifted off-planet from a base manned by an interplanetary agent; complete vulnerability to the effects of drugs used as common-place refreshers and tranquilizers on the part of those most habituated to their use, while the only character totally unaccustomed to them can fight off their effects—and lots more.)

The overtones in all this are an oddly-assorted and overall-agreeable admixture of Leiber and Laumer (Mouser and Retief) which combine well with the pure Russ components, but nowhere add up to the "straight science fiction" the book purports to be. And I suppose it is, actually, only its false-science-fiction front I am complaining about, because actually, while I was reading, I didn't care.

Joanna Russ writes so well, it doesn't really matter if she make sense. When it all got too much for me, I didn't stop: I just switched over to a (highly necessary) willful "suspension of disbelief," and went on reading into the small hours of the night, for the sheer pleasure of the prose, and delight in the imagery, color, and content of one vivid scene after another.

She could have made it easier for me if she had set the thing up as the fantasy it is. Or she could, with remarkably little change, have written it as a modern novel, and made me believe, easily, that a scrawny primitive battleax from, say, Peru or Viet Nam, was basically tough and earthily smarter than a tourist crew from New York. Maybe the next one— The fact is, whatever she does with the next one, be there reading. The girl can write.

And who knows? Maybe she can learn the Prophet Business too.

—JUDITH MERRIL