Category: Allegory

Out of the Silent Planet, by C.S. Lewis (Clive Staples Lewis) – 1956 (1938) [Everett Raymond Kinstler] – Avon # T-27

C.S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy – Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength – has had a long and continuous publishing history, extending from the appearance of the series’ “first” novel in 1938, through the HarperOne / HarperCollins  release of the three novels in a single volume as recently as 2013.  (And of course, now in ebook format.)

Among the series’ many imprints over the past eight-odd decades, perhaps the most immediately “recognizable” – in terms of duration of publication and (therefore!) especially cover art – has been the Macmillan edition.  Published from 1967 through 1979, all Space Trilogy books with that imprint bore cover illustrations by Bernard Symancyk, about whose career little information is available – albeit Terence E. Hanley at TellersofWeirdTales presents a brief biography at “From Things To Come into The Space Trilogy-Part One“. 

Well, Macmillan wasn’t alone.  In 1949, 1956, and 1960, Avon Books released its own edition of the Space Trilogy, with unique cover art for each “set”, and within each set, the cover illustrations having been created by different artists.

Certainly the art of the Space Trilogy is varied, but even moreso is the vast commentary the books have engendered across the decades.  While the Trilogy can ostensibly be categorized as science fiction, the tropes associated with that literary genre are far secondary to the ideas actually animating the books.  These are theological, though not purely couched in the verbiage of theology (the books’ ethos is clearly expressed in a allegorical manner), and concern the nature of good and evil; collectivism versus the worth of the individual as an individual; the nature, exercise, and temptation of power – whether that power be technological, biological, or governmental; the destiny of men as individuals and humanity as a civilization. 

Well…  The above sentences merely superficially (and ever so tangentially!) scratch the surface of depths vastly deeper.   

Well…  I can recommended these two discussions concerning the final novel of the series – That Hideous Strength (Avon’s awkward title The Tortured Planet) – at ChicagoBoyz, both by David Foster.  They are “Summer Rerun – Book Review: That Hideous Strength” (September 15, 2017), and, “Summer Rerun – Lewis vs. Haldane” (August 31, 2019).  These discussions can also serve as a sort-of-segue to the Trilogy’s other two novels. 

As a matter of fact, these two ChicagoBoyz posts are what let me to read the first two novels.  That Hideous Strength is in my “queue”, for the “world” depicted in Lewis’ final Space Trilogy novel has striking resonance with the world of 2020. 

And perhaps – depending on the winds of history and the choices of men – alas, beyond.

Oh, yes, as for cover art?

Here are the covers, front and back, of the 1956 edition of Avon’s first novel in the trilogy – Out of the Silent Planet – by artist Everett Raymond Kinstler. 

You can view the cover of Macmillan’s 1965 edition of Out of the Silent Planet here.

Here’s a brief excerpt from Out of The Silent Planet:  A conversation between the hero of both “this” first novel of the trilogy and the second, Perelandra: Between Dr. Elwin Ransom, and his (our?) nemesis, “Dr. Weston”, whose religion (if any) seems to be a variation on the theme of what is known to us as “scientism” – not science, which is altogether a thing quite different.

Or, put it another way, deification of rationality.  

Thus:

Weston: “…We are only obeying orders.”

Ransom: “Whose?”

There was another pause.
“Come,” said Weston at last,
“there is really no use in continuing this cross-examination. 
You keep on asking me questions I can’t answer;
in some cases because I don’t know the answers,
in other because you wouldn’t understand them. 
It will make things very much pleasanter during the voyage
if you can only resign your mind to your fate and stop bothering yourself and us. 
It would be easier if your philosophy of life
were not so insufferably narrow or individualistic. 
I had thought no one could fail to be inspired
by the role you are being asked to play:
that even a worm, if it could understand, would rise to the sacrifice. 
I mean, of course, the sacrifice of time and liberty, and some little risk. 
Don’t misunderstand me.”

“Well,” said Ransom, “You hold all the cards, and I must make the best of it.
I consider your philosophy of life raving lunacy.
I suppose all that stuff about infinity and eternity means
that you think you are justified in doing anything
– absolutely anything –
here and now,
on the off chance
that some creatures or other descended from man as we know him
may crawl about a few centuries longer in some part of the universe.”

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Note: December 2, 2020 – Having created this post only six days ago, I was happily surprised to discover Dr. Pedro Blas González’ essay, “Good and Evil in C.S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy“, at NewEnglishReview. 

Franz Kafka – The Complete Stories – 1983 [Anthony Russo] and 1971 (1946) [Klaus Gemming]

There are many ways to “illustrate” a story, without literally illustrating the story. 

For example, you can depict characters, events, and settings, either literally or symbolically.  You can portray physical objects or places; moods and expressions, or, reactions and emotions.  

Another way to present an image of a story is by displaying the very text of the story.  A nice example of this appeared as the cover of Shocken Books’ 1971 edition of Franz Kafka – The Complete Stories, which was originally published in 1946.  The 1971 edition of the book shows a page of the handwritten text of one of Kafka’s stories, though (!) I don’t know the particular story – or perhaps novel – to which the text pertains, and neither the cover flaps nor title page reveal this information.  But, for a book cover of a collection of a writer’s writings, Klaus Gemmings’ cover “works”.

As stated on the cover flap, “FOR THE FIRST TIME, all the stories of Franz Kafka – one of the great writers of the twentieth century – are collected here in one comprehensive volume.  With the exception of the three novels, the whole of his narrative work is included.  The remarkable depth and breadth of his shorter fiction, the full scope of his brilliant and probing imagination become even more evident when the stories are seen as a whole. 

The collection offers an astonishing range of insights into the writer’s world: his war of observing and describing reality, the dreamlike events, his symbolism and irony, and his concern with the human condition.  The simplicity, precision, and clarity of Kafka’s style are deceptive, and the attentive reader will be aware of the existential abyss opening beneath the seemingly spare surface of a tale.

An irresistible inner force drove Kafka to write: “The tremendous world  have in my head.  But how free myself and free it without being torn to pieces.  And a thousand times rather be torn to pieces than retain it in me or bury it!”  For him, writing was both an agonizing and a liberating process: “God does not want me to write, but I – I must write!”  Kafka’s work was born from this tragic tension.”

The book’s 1983 softcover edition (with a foreword by John Updike) takes a different approach:  Like other compilations of Kafka’s works published by Shocken in the 1980s, the cover displays a small, square-format, untitled, symbolic illustration by Anthony Russo.  Perhaps the interpretation of the image is meant to be enigmatic; perhaps left to the reader.  If so (I think so), I think the composition of an anonymous man staring through a window – or door? – yes, a door – with two open doors behind him, represents “Before The Law”, the full text of which is given below…

Before The Law

Before the Law stands a doorkeeper.
To this doorkeeper there comes a man from the country and prays for admittance to the Law. 
But the doorkeeper says that he cannot grant admittance at the moment.
The man thinks it over and then asks if he will be allowed in later. 
“It is possible,” says the doorkeeper, “but not at the moment.” 

Since the gate stands open, as usual, and the doorkeeper steps to one side,
the man stoops to peer through the gateway into the interior. 
Observing that, the doorkeeper laughs and says:
“If you are so drawn to it, just try to go in despite of my veto. 
But take note: I am powerful.
And I am only the least of the doorkeepers. 
From hall to hall there is one doorkeeper after another, each more powerful than the last. 
The third doorkeeper is already so terrible that even I cannot bear to look at him.” 

These are difficulties the man from the country has not expected;
the Law, he thinks, should surely be accessible at all times and to everyone,
but as he now takes a closer look at the doorkeeper in the far corner,
with his big sharp nose and long, thin, black Tartar beard,
he decides that it is better to wait until he gains permission to enter. 

The doorkeeper gives him a stool and lets him sit down at one side of the door. 
There he sits for days and years. 
He makes many attempts to be admitted, and wearies the doorkeeper by his importunity. 
He doorkeeper frequently has little interviews with him,
asking him questions about his home and many other things,
but the questions are put indifferently,
as great lords put them, and always finish with the statement that he cannot be let in yet. 

The man, who has furnished himself with many things for his journey,
sacrifices all he has, however valuable, to bribe the doorkeeper.
The doorkeeper accepts everything, but always with the remark:
“I am only taking it to keep you from thinking you have omitted anything.”
During these many years the man fixes his attention almost continuously on the doorkeeper.
He forgets the other doorkeepers,
and this first one seems to him the sole obstacle preventing access to the Law.
He curses his bad luck;
in his early years boldly and loudly;
later, as he grows old, he only grumbles to himself.
He becomes childish,
and since in his yearlong contemplation of the doorkeeper
he has come to know even the fleas in his fur collar,
he begs the fleas as well to help him and to change to doorkeeper’s mind.

At length his eyesight begins to fail,
and he does not know whether the world is really darker or whether his eyes are only deceiving him.
Yet in his darkness he is now aware of a radiance
that streams inextinguishably from the gateway of the Law.
Now he has not very long to live.
Before he dies, all his experiences in these long years gather themselves in his head to one point,
a question he has not yet asked the doorkeeper.

He waves him nearer, since he can no longer raise his stiffening body. 
The doorkeeper has to bend low toward him,
for the difference in height between them has altered much to the man’s disadvantage. 
“What do you want to know now?” asks the doorkeeper; “you are insatiable.” 
“Everyone strives to reach the Law,” says the man,
“so how does it happen that for all these many years no one buy myself has ever begged for admittance?” 

The doorkeeper recognizes that the man has reached his end,
and, to let his failing senses catch the words, roars in his ear:
“No one else could ever be admitted here, since this gate was made only for you. 
I am now going to shut it.”

(Translated by Willa and Edwin Muir)

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Here are four other stories by Kafka, the page number of each denoting the softcover edition.  In terms of depth (upon depth, upon depth, upon…) each tale is stunning in its own way.

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The Next Village (404)

My grandfather used to say, “Life is astoundingly short. 
To me, looking back over it, life seems so foreshortened that I can scarcely understand,
for instance,
how a young man can decide to ride over to the next village without being afraid that –
not to mention accidents –
even the span of a normal happy life may fall far short of the time needed for such a journey.”

(Translated by Willa and Edwin Muir)

Prometheus (432)

There are four legends concerning Prometheus.
According to the first
he was clamped to a rock in the Caucasus for betraying the secrets of the gods to men,
and the gods sent eagles to feed on his liver, which was perpetually renewed.
According to the second
Prometheus, goaded by the pain of the tearing beaks,
pressed himself deeper and deeper into the rock until he became one with it.
According to the third
his treachery was forgotten in the course of thousands of years,
forgotten by the gods, the eagles, forgotten by himself.
According to the fourth
everyone grew weary of the meaningless affair. 
The gods grew weary, the eagles grew weary, the wound closed wearily.
There remained the inexplicable mass of rock. 
The legend tried to explain the inexplicable. 
As it came out of the substratum of truth it had in turn to end in the inexplicable.

(Translated by Willa and Edwin Muir)

A Little Fable (445)

“Alas,” said the mouse, “the world is growing smaller every day. 
At the beginning it was so big that I was afraid, I kept running and running,
and I was glad when at last I saw walls far away to the right and left,
but these long walls have narrowed so quickly that I am in the last chamber already,
and there in the corner stands the trap that I must run into.” 
“You only need to change your direction,” said the cat,
and ate it up.

(Translated by Willa and Edwin Muir)

The Departure (449)

I ordered my horse to be brought from the stables.
The servant did not understand my orders. 
So I went to the stables myself, saddled my horse, and mounted. 
In the distance I heard the sound of a trumpet, and I asked the servant what it meant. 
He knew nothing and had heard nothing. 
At the gate he stopped me and asked, “Where is the master going?” 
“I don’t know,” I said, “just out of here, just out of here. 
Out of here, nothing else, it’s the only way I can reach my goal.” 
“So you know your goal?” he asked. 
“Yes,” I replied, “I’ve just told you. 
Out of here – that’s my goal.”

(Translated by Tania and James Stern)

A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller, Jr. – October, 1959 (February, 1961) [Unknown Artist]

“Maybe you’ve always thought of war as a business for the tough and the unimaginative.
It has been said that the best soldier leaves his emotions at home;
that pre-battle training is a period calculated to harden both mind and body.
But what of the boy who cannot harden?
What of the lad who cannot put his sensitivity in a suitcase and store it for the duration?
Walter Miller tells us.”
– Introduction to “Wolf Pack”, by Walter M. Miller, Jr., Fantastic, September-October, 1953

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If the spirit of an age – its dreams and moods; fancies and wonders; fears and hopes – is reflected in its literature, then a prime example of such remains Walter M. Miller., Jr.’s 1959 novel, A Canticle for Leibowitz.  Based on and derived from three short stories published in the mid-1950s – the first of which shares and perhaps inspired the novel’s title – only a decade after the development of atomic weapons and amidst the (first?) Cold War, Miller’s tale was one of many works of science-fiction that presented a vision of the world, and particularly man’s place within that world, subsequent to a global nuclear war. 

In this context, I strongly recommend the recent (October, 2020) essay about Miller’s Canticle by Pedro Blas González, “A Canticle for Leibowitz and Cyclical History“.  Therein, Dr. Gonzalez discusses Miller’s novel through the lens of Catholicism (to which Miller converted after the war), viewing the novel as an expression of Miller’s interpretation and understanding of the nature of history.  As implied (albeit not specifically mentioned) within Dr. González’s essay, and moreso readily understood through a reading of the Canticle, Miller did not view human history as being “progressive” – and thus not having an “arc” in any direction – but instead, as being cyclical, even if those cycles would occupy great intervals of time.  

Though doubtless inspired by technological developments and geopolitics of the mid-twentieth century, the two animating ideas of Miller’s novel extend well beyond science fiction, for they represent chords of thought embedded deep within the psyche of men, nations, and civilizations.  These are the idea of an apocalypse, and, the gradual and tenuous rebirth of civilization after centuries during which the collective knowledge of the past (perhaps our present?…) has become myth at best, and utterly forgotten at worst.  However, rather than concluding upon a note of redemption, the book’s final chapters leave the reader with a sense of deep ambivalence, for the novel suggests that the currents of history are by nature cyclic.

Despite the novel’s origin during the Cold War, Miller’s inspiration for A Canticle for Leibowitz seems to have arisen from something simpler, immediate, and intensely personal: His military service during the Second World War, during which he served as an aerial gunner and radio operator in the United States Army Air Force.  Specifically, the impetus for his creation of the stories and novel was his participation in a combat mission during which his bomb group participated in the destruction of the hilltop abbey of Monte Cassino.  As discussed in academic and popular literature (see Alexandra H. Olsen’s paper in Extrapolation, William Roberson’s Reference Guide to Miller’s life and fiction, and Denny Bowden’s essay at Volusia History) on a fundamental level Miller world-view was profoundly affected, if not irrevocably altered, by the experience.

Though most sources (at least, web sources) about Miller describe his military service in general terms, Roberson’s Reference Guide specifically identifies Miller’s military unit: The 489th Bombardment Squadron.  The 489th was one of the four squadrons of the 340th Bomb Group (its three brother squadrons having been the 486th, 487th, and 488th), a unit of the Mediterranean-based 12th Air Force which flew B-25 Mitchell twin-engine medium bombers.  During the time that Miller was a member of the 489th (probably late 1943 through mid-1944) the squadron was stationed at the Italian locales of San Pancrazio, Foggia, Pompeii, and the Gaudo Airfield.

The 489th’s evocative unit insignia, which doubtless adorned the leather flight jackets of many of its officers and men, is shown below…

The best resource on the web (certainly better than anything in print!) for information about the 489th and 340th is the website of the 57th Bomb Wing Association.  This resource, covering the 57th’s four bomb groups (the 310th, 319th, 321st, and 340th) gives access to an enormous amount of information, as original Army Air Force Group and Squadron histories and Mission Reports, (many of which are transcribed as PDFs), and, a plethora of photographs.  Typical of Army Air Force WW II military records, there’s a degree of variation in the quantity and depth of this information from group to group, and, squadron to squadron:  Records for some (most?) combat units are complete, though there are inevitable gaps, “here and there”.

In documents pertaining to the 489th, I’ve discovered three references to Miller’s military service.

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First, Timing: A record of combat missions flown by the 489th during the February of 1944.  For the fifteenth of that month, the record – like that for all other missions – is unsurprisingly laconic: “Benedictine Monastery, Italy.  6 planes.”

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Second, Identification: Miller’s name appears within a list of airmen who, already having received the Air Medal (for completing five combat missions), had been awarded two Bronze Oak Leaf Clusters, thus signifying the completion – by the end of February – of up to fifteen combat missions.  His name is listed eleventh from the top in the “upper” list…

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Third, Verification:  This “third” document – also found at 57th Bomb Wing – is what’s known in the parlance of the WW II Army Air Force as a “Loading List”, meaning that it lists the names of crewman assigned to specific planes during a combat mission or sortie, on an aircraft-by-aircraft basis.  This Loading List, covering 489th Bomb Squadron aircraft and crews which participated on the Cassino mission of February 15, 1944, shows that seven of the Squadron’s B-25s took part in the mission. 

Each plane is denoted by a three-digit number, which represents the last three digits of the B-25s Army Air Force serial number.  This is followed by the number “9” and a letter, the “9” representing the 489th Bomb Squadron, and the adjacent letter – a different letter for every plane in the squadron – uniquely identifying each B-25 in the squadron.  Each such number-letter combination was painted on the outer surface of the twin vertical tails of the squadron’s planes, a practice shared by the 340th’s other three squadrons.  This is followed by information about the planes’ bomb loads, which – in all cases but one – were three or four thousand-pound demolition bombs.

Then, we come to the crews themselves, which follow the same general sequence: P (Pilot), CP (Co-Pilot), B (Bombardier), R (Radio Operator), G (Aerial Gunner / Flight Engineer), and TG (Tail Gunner).

Where was Walter M. Miller, Jr.?  He’s there:  He was a radio operator in the aircraft commanded by J.M. Kirtley, B-25 “#141”, or, “9X”. 

As the 57th Bomb Wing includes Loading Lists for other missions flown by the 489th (and the 340th Bomb Group’s three brother squadrons), doubtless Miller’s name appears in these documents, as well.  But, this will suffice for now. 

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The image below may be akin to the view seen by Miller on February 15, 1944:  Captioned,”Formation of North American B-25s of the 340th Bomb Group enroute to their target – Cassino.  March 15, 1944,” the picture is United States Army Air Force photo “68261AC / A22901”, and can be found within the (appropriately) entitled collection “WW II US Air Force Photos“, at Fold3.com.  The planes are aircraft of the 488th Bomb Squadron, the “give-away” being the “8C” (“8”, for 488th) code on the vertical tail of the aircraft in the left center. 

But, Walter Miller did not participate on the day’s mission, for his name is absent from the 489th’s Loading List for March 15….

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The results of war: A view of the remnants of the town of Cassino (foreground), and the hilltop abbey (upper center), in Army Air Force Photograph 62093AC / A25003.  Curiously, the caption on the rear of the photo states, “Bomb damage to Monte di Cassino  Abbey, Cassino, Italy, after bombing attacks by Allied planes.  The centuries-old monastery had been used by the German defenders as a strong point to block the Allied drive on Rome,” but the words “Monte di Cassino Abbey” are crossed out. 

The image is undated, but it was received by the Army Air Force or War Department in November of 1944.

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As mentioned in the Wikipedia entry for the novel, and, discussed by Alexandra H. Olsen, A Canticle for Leibowitz, published in October of 1959, was created by melding and altering elements, characters, concepts, and plot devices from his three previously published post-cataclysmic stories (all having appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction) into a single work, and, adding passages in Latin. 

The three stories which formed the basis of the novel were:

“A Canticle for Leibowitz”, published in April of 1955 (pp. 93-111)
“And the Light Is Risen”, published in August, 1956 (pp. 3-80)
“The Last Canticle”, published in February, 1957 (pp. 3-50)

A final tale in the series, “God Is Thus”, appeared in Fantasy & Science Fiction in November of 1997 (pp. 13-51), thirty-eight years after the novel’s publication. 

But… 

…though the motivation for the ultimate creation of Canticle of 1955 was Miller’s participation in the bombardment of Monte Cassino, evidence for the emotional impact of that is clearly evident in an earlier story of a vastly different literary nature:  This was “Wolf Pack”, which appeared in the September-October, 1953, issue of Fantastic.  Among the thirty-eight works of short fiction listed in Miller’s biographical profile at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database, “Wolf Pack” was the 26th, while “Secret of the Death Dome”, published in Amazing Stories in 1951, was the first.  “Wolf Pack” appeared two years before “A Canticle for Leibowitz’s” publication, in the 1955 The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. 

Though I’ve thus far barely (!) skimmed the story, it seems to belong entirely to the realm of fantasy as opposed to science fiction, for it relates a combat flyer’s confrontation with his conscience – himself? – on levels symbolic, psychological, and perhaps supernatural.

Do you want to read the story?  Here’s a PDF version of “Wolf Pack”. 

As for the artistic aspects of the Fantastic story – visual art, that is! – here’s the two-page opening illustration for the tale…

…and here’s an accompanying illustration, showing representations of a B-25 bomber (viewed from above) and a bombardier peering through a generic “black box” looking bombsight (not quite a Norden bombsight!), both visual elements being surrounded by symbolic vignettes of villages.  Both pieces are by Bernard Krigstein, whose work is much more strongly associated with comic books than pulps. 

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Continuing on a theme of art, here’s the cover of Bantam Books’ 1961 paperback edition of the novel, which shows a monk against a backdrop of a destroyed city’s skyline.  Though the artist’s name isn’t listed, perhaps he was Paul Lehr, given the era of the book’s publication, and, the visual style of the composition.

In terms of Miller’s use of Latin, here’s the prayer uttered by Brother Francis Gerard of The Albertian Order of Saint Leibowitz, which appears very early in the novel’s first part (“Fiat Homo”), during the Brother’s exploration of the remains of a fallout shelter somewhere in the American Southwest.  The allusions to the actuality and legacy of nuclear war are explicit and vivid, and – recited in the format of prayer rather than prose, with each of the three central groups of verses being thematically linked – powerfully expressed and visually evocative. 

A spiritu fornicationis,
Domine, libera nos.
From the lighting and the tempest,
O Lord, deliver us.

From the scourge of the earthquake,
O Lord, deliver us.
From plague, famine, and war,
O Lord, deliver us.

From the place of ground zero,
O Lord, deliver us.
From the ruin of the cobalt,
O Lord, deliver us.
From the rain of the strontium,
O Lord, deliver us.
From the fall of the cesium,
O Lord, deliver us.

From the curse of the Fallout,
O Lord, deliver us.
From the begetting of monsters,
O Lord, deliver us.
From the curse of the Misborn,
O Lord deliver us.
A morte perpetua,
Domine, libera nos.

Peccatores,
te rogamus, audi nos.
That thou wouldst spare us,
we beseech thee, hear us.
That thou wouldst pardon us,
we beseech there, hear us.
That thou wouldst bring us truly to penance,
te rogamus, audi nos.
(pp. 14-15)

(In just a moment, Brother Gerard will discover a relic from the life of Saint Leibowitz…)

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Of the larger folded papers, one was tightly rolled as well,
and it began to fall apart when he tried to unroll it;
he could make out the words RACING FORM, but nothing more. 
After returning it to the box for later restorative work,
he turned to the second folded document;
its creases were so brittle that he dared inspect only a little of it,
by parting the folds slightly and peering between them.

A diagram, it seemed, but – a diagram of white lines on dark paper!

Again he felt the thrill of discovery. 
It was clearly a blueprint
– and there was not a single original blueprint left at the abbey,
but only inked facsimiles of several such prints. 
The originals had faded long ago from overexposure to light. 
Never before had Francis seen an original,
although he had seen enough hand-painted reproductions to recognize it as a blueprint,
which, while stained and faded,
remained legible after so many centuries because of the total darkness and low humidity in the abbey.  He turned the document over – and felt brief fury:
What idiot had desecrated the priceless paper? 
Someone had sketched absent-minded geometrical figures and childish cartoon faces all over the back.  What thoughtless vandal-

The anger passed after a moment’s reflection.
At the time of the deed, blueprints had probably been as common as weeds,
and the owner of the box the probably culprit.
He shielded the print from the sun with his own shadow while trying to unfold it further.
It the lower right-hand corner was a printed rectangle containing,
in simple block-letters, various titles, dates, “patent numbers”, reference numbers, and names.
His eye traveled down the list until it encountered:
“CIRCUIT DESIGN BY: Leibowitz, I.E.”

He closed his eyes tightly and shook his head until it seemed to rattle. 
Then he looked again. 
There is was, quite plainly:

“CIRCUIT DESIGN BY: Leibowitz, I.E.”

He flipped the paper over again. 
Among the geometric figures and childish sketches,
clearly stamped in purple ink,
was the form:

The name was written in a clear feminine hand,
not in the hasty scrawl of the other notes. 
He looked again at the initialed signature of the note in the lid of the box,
I.E.L. – and again at “CIRCUIT DESIGN BY …” 
And the same initials appeared elsewhere throughout the notes.

(Proof of the Saint’s existence!  Here’s the “Circuit Design Form” bearing his signature, from page 23 of the Bantam paperback.  Absent from “Canticle” in the 1955 edition of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, in book form, it really catches the reader’s attention.) 

There had been argument, all highly conjectural,
about whether the beautiful founder of the Order, if finally canonized,
should be addressed as Saint Isaac or as Saint Edward.
Some even favored Saint Leibowitz as the proper address,
since the Beatus had, until the present, been referred to by his surname.

“Beate Leibowitz, ora pro me!” whispered Brother Francis. 
His hands were trembling so violently that they threatened to ruin the brittle documents.

He had uncovered relics of the Saint.  (pp. 22-24)

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Given the novel’s success, it’s unsurprising that it was adapted for radio broadcast.  It’s available via Archive.org, at The Classic Archives Old Time Radio Channel, and Old Time Radio Downloads. 

Created in 1981, the play is comprised of fifteen segments, each of roughly a half-hour duration.  The informational blurb at Archive.org states, “The radio drama adaptation by John Reed, and produced at WHA by Carl Schmidt and Marv Nunn.  The play was directed by Karl Schmidt, engineered by Marv Nunn with special effects by Vic Marsh.  Narrator – Carol Collins and includes Fred Coffin, Bart Hayman, Herb Hartig and Russel Horton.  Music was by Greg Fish and Bob Budney and the Edgewood College Chant Group.”

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These are covers of the three 1950’s issues of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in which appeared the three stories from which were derived Miller’s novel, and, the cover of Fantasy & Science Fiction in October-November of 1997, which was the venue for the last story in the series.  Ironically, none of the four issues feature cover art actually pertaining to Miller’s stories or novel.  Much the same was so for 1951 issue of Galaxy Magazine in which appeared Ray Bradbury’s “The Fireman”, later published in book form as Farhenheit 451:  That issue featured cover art by Chesley Bonestell.

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The cover of the April, 1955 issue features a close-up from Chesley Bonestell’s stunning panorama “Mars Exploration”.  Notice that the painting shows a strip of green – vegetation – at the base of weathered background hills.  Well, this was the mid-1950s, over a decade before Mariner probes revealed the true nature of the Martian surface.  Then again, maybe Mars is “green”, but a deeper, below-the-surface kind of green?

“A Canticle for Leibowitz”
April, 1955

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“Mars Exploration”, by Chesley Bonestell

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“And the Light Is Risen”
August, 1956

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“The Last Canticle”
February, 1957

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“God Is Thus”
October-November, 1997

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References, Readings, and What-Not…

57th Bomb Wing, at 57thBombWing.com

340th Bomb Group History, at 57thBombWing.com

489th Bomb Squadron History, at 57thBombWing.com

489th Bomb Squadron History for February, 1944 (PDF Transcript), at 57th BombWing.com

489th Bomb Squadron insignia, at RedBubble.com

Bernard Krigstein, at Wikipedia

Walter M. Miller, Jr., at Wikipedia

Walter M. Miller, Jr., at Internet Speculative Fiction Database

“A Canticle for Leibowitz”, at Wikipedia

“Mars Exploration” (painting), by Chesley Bonestell, at RetroFuturism (subreddit)

The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (covers for April, 1955, August, 1956, and October-November, 1997), at Pulp Magazine Archive (Archive.org)

Bond, Harold L., Return to Cassino, Pocket Books, Inc., New York, N.Y., March, 1965

Bowden, Denny, Secret Life / Death of the Author of the Greatest Science Fiction Novel – Born in New Smyrna, Died in Daytona Beach, at VolusiaHistory.com

Majdalany, Fred, The Battle of Cassino, Ballantine Books, Inc., New York, N.Y., 1957

Olsen, Alexandra H., Re-Vision: A Comparison of Canticle for Leibowitz and the Novellas Originally Published, Extrapolation, Summer, 1997

Piekalkiewicz, Janusz, Cassino – Anatomy of the Battle, Orbis Publishing, London, England, 1980

Roberson, William H., Walter M. Miller, Jr.: A Reference Guide to His Fiction and His Life, McFarland and Company, Inc., Jefferson, N.C., 2011

Webley, Kayla, Top Ten Post-Apocalyptic Books: A Canticle for Leibowitz, Time, June 7, 2010

The Nightmare of Reason – A Life of Franz Kafka, by Ernst Pawel – 1985 (1984) [Nancy Crampton]

Unlike Anthony Russo’s cover illustrations for the series of Schocken Books titles covering the works of Franz Kafka (published from the late 1980s through the early 1990s), the cover art of Ernst Pawel’s highly praised 1984 biography of Kafka, The Nightmare of Reason – A Life of Franz Kafka (Farrar – Straus – Giroux), is an illustration of a different sort:  Jacket designer Candy Jernigan used a photographic silhouette of Prague Castle to symbolize the physical, social, and psychological “world” of Franz Kafka’s writing.  Perhaps the image was made from a color negative, with the color saturation of the final image having been enhanced during printing.  Or, perhaps the picture is simply an accurate representation of the colors of the Prague skyline at dusk. 

Either way, the combination of black-clouded yellow-orange sky, with the castle in the distance, is quite striking. 

By way of comparison, this September, 2014 photograph, from Park Inn at Radisson, shows a sunset view of the Castle from the Charles Bridge.

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Some of Ernst Pawel’s other works include: From the Dark Tower, In The Absence of Magic, Letters of Thomas Mann 1889-1955 (selected and translated from the German by Richard and Clara Winston), Life in Dark Ages: A Memoir, The Island in Time (a novel), The Labyrinth of Exile: A Life of Theodor Herzl, The Poet Dying : Heinrich Heine’s Last Years in Paris, and, Writings of the Nazi Holocaust. 

He passed away in 1994.  

This is his portrait, by Nancy Crampton, from the book jacket.

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Ernst Pawel, 74, Biographer, Dies

The New York Times
Aug. 19, 1994
Section A, Page 24

Ernst Pawel, a novelist and biographer, died on Tuesday at his home in Great Neck, L.I.  He was 74.

The cause was lung cancer, his family said.

Mr. Pawel’s 1984 biography of Franz Kafka, “The Nightmare of Reason,” won several prizes, including the Alfred Harcourt Award in biography and memoirs, and was translated into 10 languages.  In a review for The New York Times, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt called the work “moving and perceptive.”

Mr. Pawel was also the author of “The Labyrinth of Exile,” a biography of Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism.  He had recently finished a book about the German poet Heinrich Heine and at the time of his death was working on his own memoirs, “Life in the Dark Ages.”  Both books are to be published posthumously, his family said.

He was born in 1920 in Breslau, then under German rule but now part of Poland, and fled Nazi Germany with his family in 1933, settling first in Yugoslavia and four years later immigrating to New York City.  After serving as a translator for Army intelligence during World War II, he received a bachelor’s degree from the City University of New York.

He was the author of three novels, “The Island of Time” (1950), “The Dark Tower” (1957) and “In the Absence of Magic” (1961), and numerous essays and book reviews.  Fluent in a dozen languages, he worked for 36 years as a translator and public relations executive for New York Life Insurance.  He retired in 1982.

He is survived by his wife of 51 years, Ruth; a son, Michael, and a daughter, Miriam, both of Manhattan, and a granddaughter.

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A Nightmare of Reason was published by Vintage Books in 1985, in trade paperback format.  (Unfortunately, I don’t know the cover artist’s name!)  

Galaxy Science Fiction – October, 1962 (Featuring “The Ballad of Lost C’Mell”, by Cordwainer Smith) [Virgil Finlay] [Updated post…]

The images below present Virgil Finlay’s interpretation of Cordwainer Smith’s character C’Mell, from the wonderful tale “The Ballad of Lost C’Mell”, as depicted on the cover and as the lead interior illustration of the October, 1962, issue of Galaxy Science Fiction.     

“This” post being one of my earlier (earliest?) at WordsEnvisioned (dating back to April of 2017 – hey, time not only flies, it accelerates!), I thought it worthy of revision. 

So, I perused the web for other images of C’Mell, of which there are many, inevitably varying in style, quality, and appeal. 

And, I found what I was searching for. 

One of the most interesting interpretations of C’Mell can be viewed at BlueTyson’s Cordwainer Smith (ology).  The site features an imaginative and subtle portrait of Smth’s character, which – with a kind of animae look – strikingly emphasizes C’Mell’s cat origin, specifically via brilliantly green feline eyes.  (Pointed cat ears? – not so much!)  The portrait, created by artist Lia Chan, appears (?) to have been created using a combination of colored pencils and water color.       

Lia Chan’s depiction of C’Mell has been appended to this post, and appears below Finlay’s black & white interior illustration from Galaxy. 

Scroll on down… 

She got the which of the what-she-did,
Hid the bell with a blot, she did,
But she fell in love with a hominid.
Where is the which of the what-she-did?

(Cordwainer Smith)

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Illustrations by Virgil Finlay

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Preliminary sketch for cover art.  Source unknown – possibly (!) from “Virgil Finlay-Beauty (& occ. beast)“, at pinterest.

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Image from “Tomorrow & Beyond – Images from other worlds, other dimensions and other times.”

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The finished product, published as the cover of Galaxy Science Fiction, October, 1962.

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C’mell: page 9

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C’Mell, by Lia Chan

The Humanoids, by Jack Williamson – 1954 [Edmund A. Emshwiller]

One of the forty-six Galaxy Science Fiction novels published between 1950 and 1961, The Humanoids includes and was based upon Jack Williamson’s tale “With Folded Hands…”, which appeared in the July, 1947 issue of Astounding Science Fiction, with cover art by William Timmins.

The Pilgrim’s Progress, by John Bunyan (Edited and Introduced by Rex Warner) – 1951 (1678) [Tate Smith]

(The cover of Airmont’s 1969 edition of The Pilgrim’s Progress is very different from that of 1951 Pocket Books’ edition…)

References

John Bunyan, at…

…Wikipedia

The Pilgrim’s Progress, at…

…Wikipedia

…Brittanica.com

2/12/19RR

Franz Kafka – Letters to Milena (Translated and with an Introduction by Philip Boehm) – 1990 [Anthony Russo]

(Friday, June 11, 1920)

It’s only in my dreams that I am so sinister.

Recently I had another dream about you,
it was a big dream, but I hardly remember a thing.
I was in Vienna, I don’t recall anything about that,
next I went to Prague and had forgotten your address,
not only the street but also the city, everything,
one the name Schreiber kept somehow appearing,
but I didn’t know what to make of that.
So I had lost you completely.
In my despair I made various very clever attempts,
which were nevertheless not carried out –
I don’t know why –
I just remember one of them.
I wrote on an envelope: M. Jesenski and underneath
“Request delivery of this letter,
because otherwise the Ministry of Finance will suffer terrible loss.”
With this threat I hoped to engage the entire government in my search for you.
Clever?
Don’t let this way you against me.
It’s only in my dreams that I am so sinister.

(September, 1920)

But here the transmutability came into play…

Yesterday I dreamt about you.
I hardly remember the details,
just that we kept on merging into one another,
I was you,
you were me.
Finally you somehow caught fire;
I remembered that fire can be smothered with cloth,
took an old coat and beat you with it.
But then the metamorphoses resumed and went so far
that you were no longer even there;
instead I was the one on fire and I was also the one who was beating the fire with the coat.
The beating didn’t help, however,
and only confirmed my old fear that things like that can’t hurt a fire.
Meanwhile the firemen had arrived and you were somehow saved after all.
But you were different than before,
ghostlike,
drawn against the dark with chalk,
and you fell lifeless into my arms,
or perhaps you merely fainted with joy at being saved.
But here the transmutability came into play:
maybe I was the one falling into someone’s arms.

Franz Kafka – The Sons (Introduction by Mark Anderson) – 1989 [Anthony Russo]

…because you once mentioned in passing that I too might be called to the Torah. 
That was something I dreaded for years. 
But otherwise I was not fundamentally disturbed in my boredom,
unless it was by the bar mitzvah,
but that demanded no more than some ridiculous memorizing,
in other words,
it led to nothing but some ridiculous passing of an examination…  (p. 147)

Marrying,
founding a family,
accepting all the children that come,
supporting them in this insecure world
and perhaps even guiding them a little,
is, I am convinced, the utmost a human being can succeed in doing at all.
That so many seem to succeed in this is no evidence to the contrary;
first of all, there are not many who do succeed,
and second, these not-many usually don’t “do” it,
it merely “happens” to them;
although this is not that utmost,
it is still very great and very honorable
(particularly since “doing” and “happening” cannot be kept clearly distinct).
And finally, it is not a matter of this utmost at all,
anyway, but only of some distant but decent approximation;
it is, after all, not necessary to fly right into the middle of the sun,
but it is necessary to crawl to a clean little spot on Earth
where the sun sometimes shines and one can warm oneself a little.  (p. 156)