Tag: Fiction

Reading at 13 vs. 73

By James Wallace Harris, 10/19/25

At thirteen, I read books entirely differently than I do now at seventy-three. I think everyone does, but it’s not apparent why. Our memory gives us the illusion that we’ve always been the same person. But if we think about it, there is plenty of evidence that we couldn’t have been.

I’ve been thinking about the difference between my younger reading self and my older reading self while writing a review of The Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov for my other blog. Every so often, I reread a book I read as a teenager. For some books, it’s a nostalgic return to a familiar, comfortable place. For most books, it’s just vague recollections.

My first realization from trying to reconstruct my reading mind at age 13 was to remember that I read very fast. I consumed books like potato chips. Reading was like casually watching TV. Words just flowed past my eyes, and I didn’t always pay attention to every word. I just read to find out what happened.

I have a fond memory of reading The Foundation Trilogy, but a limited one. I liked the idea of a galactic empire in decline. However, the only chapter I can remember is the first one, “The Psychohistorians.” It wasn’t until decades later that I learned that the trilogy was a fix-up novel based on nine stories running from short stories to novellas.

Thinking about it now, I realize that most of the ideas in the book didn’t mean much to me at 13. I had not studied or read about the Roman Empire, Asimov’s inspiration. Actually, I probably didn’t know what an empire was either. Nor did I understand all the references to nobility, aristocracy, and politics.

As a teenager, I mostly read science fiction books. I did read some popular science books too. My awareness of the world and my vocabulary were limited. However, I didn’t know that. And I wasn’t the kind of person who looked up words I didn’t know. What’s weird is that I was a kind of know-it-all.

One way to judge my teenage brilliance was that my favorite TV show at the time was Gilligan’s Island. When I catch that show today, I can only assume I was brain-dead back then.

I’ve tried to reread The Foundation Trilogy twice now. The first time was in 2015, and now in 2025. In both cases, I could only finish the first book of the trilogy. I loved the first story, but with each additional story, I detested them more.

At first, I thought that Asimov’s most famous books were just bad. But I’ve known people smarter than me, and just as old, who say they still loved the Foundation series. One woman in our reading group said the Foundation stories were a great comfort to reread. And I recently heard that twenty million copies of the series have been sold.

Not only was my current reading self different from my younger reading self, but I’m out of step with millions of readers. This got me thinking about the different modes of reading.

I think the most basic mode is just to let fiction flow over you. You read whatever pleases you. And you don’t think about why.

Then, as we age, we become more judgmental. We learn more about life and reading. We develop a process of natural selection by rejecting what we don’t like. We don’t think much about why we don’t like what we don’t like. We just evolve into a reading machine that knows what it likes.

Two other reading modes are: English teachers or literary critics. These are very critical modes, and often they take the fun out of reading. I think as I’ve gotten older, my reading habits have taken on a bit of these two modes. While in them, it’s all too easy to shoot Asimov down.

However, I’ve discovered another mode recently when I read “Foundation” for the fourth time. “Foundation” was the first story published in the series in 1942. While reading this story yet again, I kept admiring Asimov for where he succeeded and not where he failed.

In my rereadings, I’ve always come to the series wanting to love it. And I’ve always been disappointed by how much I didn’t. But with this reading, I worked to think like Asimov. What was he trying to do, and how did he go about doing it?

I’m in the process of documenting this for my other blog, Classics of Science Fiction. I’m writing this now because the other post is going to take a long while to complete.

I never would have put this much effort into reading a story when I was a teen. Or any time before I was 73.

One reason I dislike this story in recent years is my skepticism. I don’t believe humans will ever travel to the stars, much less form a galactic empire. Another reading mode I’m trying to develop is to read with the mind of a person from when the story was first published.

Trying to read like Asimov thought and how science fiction fans felt in 1942 is difficult. I’m reminded of Samuel R. Delany’s concepts of simplex, complex, and multiplex that he described in his story Empire Star. I started out as a simplex reader and eventually evolved into a complex one. Now I’m moving into a multiplex reader.

Multiplex thinking often involves holding contradictory viewpoints. I really dislike the Foundation stories. But if I work at it and look at them in just the right way, I can like them too. It’s hard. It’s a Sisyphean struggle learning to admire something that triggers so many annoyances, but I’m working on it.

JWH

My Attachment to Old Magazines

by James Wallace Harris, 9/6/25

I’ve always loved magazines. I worked six years in the periodicals department of a university library. As a kid, I loved all kinds of magazines. Even before I could read, my sister and I found a pile of old magazines in the attic of the house my parents were renting. The pile was as high as we were. It was old picture magazines, like Life and Look. Becky and I loved looking at the pictures. Magazines were like television, showing us people and places we’d never seen.

Later on, when I had a few coins, I’d buy magazines like Popular Science and MAD. Eventually, I discovered science fiction magazines. My favorite was The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, but I also loved Galaxy, Analog, Amazing, and Fantastic. I eventually subscribed to the first three around 1968. I also loved finding old issues at used bookshops for a dime or quarter.

By 1975, I had collected more than three-fourths of F&SF’s back issues. By then, I had also acquired pulps going back to 1928. Holding those magazines made me feel like I owned a piece of the past. I loved that. But in 1975, I had to sell my magazine collection.

Then in the 2010s, I started collecting those old magazines again through eBay. I eventually found 90% of the issues of F&SF published before 1975, and about 30% of those published after that. I also picked up about 95% of Galaxy.

Today, I started thinking about selling those old magazines. I took down the December 1961 issue of F&SF and read the beginning of each story. Every story hooked me, but I didn’t keep reading. I have this tremendous attachment to these old magazines, but I also feel a great need to have fewer possessions.

I have scans of all these magazines that I read on my tablet. In fact, it’s easier to read the scans than the original paper copies. The paper copies are becoming fragile. They are collector items, and I don’t want to hurt them.

I considered donating my magazine collection to the Friends of the Library, but I worry they won’t receive the love they deserve. I’m arranging to sell them on eBay. That way, a collector will acquire them. But it’s disturbing me to do this.

When I held the December 1961 issue of F&SF, it triggered a wave of nostalgia. It hurt me to imagine parting with it. I don’t value things. My truck is 26 years old. My watch cost $15. My clothes are Amazon Basics. I see no point in gold or diamonds. There’s nothing I own that’s expensive or trendy. If I’m not using something, I give it away.

If I had the choice between having the Mona Lisa on my wall or a complete run of F&SF, I’d pick the magazines.

Why am I so attached to these old magazines? It’s not the content because I have digital copies of all of them.

The best answer I can think of is this: Holding them recalls the past that no longer exists. If I didn’t have them, I wouldn’t have that connection to the past. Their covers are like photographs that remind me of who I used to be. Buying them on eBay was like buying back part of me that no longer exists.

I need to let them go. I feel like the kid in an old movie who has to free a wild animal they rescued. I rationalize to myself that whoever buys them will love them in the same way I have.

Over the last decade, since I’ve been retired, I’ve been trying to recapture my past by buying things I once owned. But I don’t want to be some old boomer dude living in the past.

Psychologically, I didn’t think I’d live this long. Now that I’m 73, I’m wondering, what if I live another decade or two? I don’t want to waste all that time living in the past.

I wonder if we recall who we were when it feels like the end is approaching. I’m not feeling that now. I wonder if I will buy another run of F&SF when I’m 88?

JWH

Do You Trust What You Read?

by James Wallace Harris, 8/4/25

Yesterday I tried to remember what I thought about as a young kid. I recall a few incidents when I was three, but I don’t start having many memories until I was around twelve or thirteen. The earliest age I can recall being philosophical is from that same period. Before twelve, I can’t remember thinking about things. I probably did. Very young kids are notorious for asking why.

But then I thought of something. It was around age eleven or twelve that I started reading books. The first books I chose were nonfiction about airplanes, space travel, dinosaurs, submarines, cars, and other things that boys like in the fourth and fifth grades. Fourth grade was 1960-1961. I turned ten in late 1961. In the fifth grade (1961-1962), I discovered fiction. Especially, the Oz books by L. Frank Baum and the Tom Swift, Jr. series. In the sixth grade (1962-1963), I got hooked on biographies and a few science fiction books.

It seems obvious that reading inspires thinking.

It was around the sixth grade, or the beginning of the seventh grade, that I can remember thinking about the world. During the seventh grade, and into the eighth, I became an atheist. I remember agonizing over that issue. What I heard in church and from my mother didn’t match what I was experiencing. Nor did it match what I was learning in school or what I was reading. I didn’t read any books on religion or against religion. All the ideas I consumed, especially from books, made me think.

Here’s the kicker. I read a lot of crappy books with crappy ideas, and they infected me. Ideas about flying saucers, reincarnation, ESP, and remembering past lives, like in Bridie Murphy. Most of this came from my uncles, my father’s two brothers.

After rejecting religion, I eventually rejected the occult, spiritualism, and psychic abilities. I rejected them because I read more science books and science fiction. I was skeptical of what was in the science fiction books, but I wanted to believe many of SF’s stupid speculations about the future. The genre promised a more exciting reality that competed with religion.

I didn’t become truly skeptical until many years later. Maybe when I encountered the magazine, The Skeptical Inquirer.

The point I’m trying to make, with this long introduction, is to explain how I was overwhelmingly influenced by what I read. Even after a lifetime of skepticism, I’m easily swayed by concepts I got through books and magazines.

Of course, I’m also susceptible to ideas from my peers, television, and the Internet. Whenever I hear about a neat concept, one that sounds like it helps explain reality, I want to embrace it. I’m easily persuaded by intellectuals and studies that claim to be scientific.

Decades ago, I decided that science was the only cognitive tool humans had developed to explain reality in any consistent fashion. Science is statistical. It doesn’t offer conclusive answers. To truly understand science requires a great deal of science and mathematics. I don’t have those skills. I depend on popular science, and that isn’t the same thing. Accepting an idea based on popular science is similar to being religious and taking a theological concept on faith.

The only way to be scientifically minded without being a scientist is to look for the most consensus among scientific authorities. And this is true for understanding everything that doesn’t fit under the scientific microscope, such as politics, law, ethics, and creating a sustainable society.

Since 2016, I’ve decided that humans are all delusional, including myself. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of ways to be deluded. I decided I couldn’t trust the Internet or television. That I would only trust quality periodicals that had solid editorial policies. Unfortunately, such magazines and newspapers are going out of business.

People no longer want to pay for information. Television and the Internet have conditioned Americans to consume free information. And if you can’t see how that is destroying us, then that’s another delusion you are suffering from.

Humans eagerly embrace untrue concepts that support their desires. We even have labels for that delusion: confirmation bias, wishful thinking, motivated reasoning, and cognitive dissonance reduction.

I’m reminded of what the Jeff Goldblum character said in the movie, The Big Chill. “I don’t know anyone who could get through the day without two or three juicy rationalizations. They’re more important than sex.”

I want to separate myself from my rationalizations. The only way I can think to do that is by reading significant research. What I think depends on what I read. That means being extra careful with selecting my reading.

It also means I need to support the periodicals doing the best job of explaining reality.

JWH

The Young Adult Novels That Shaped My Childhood

by James Wallace Harris, 7/22/25

I’ve been amazed by how fanatical young people have become over their favorite pop cultural icons. My wife and I watch Jeopardy every day, and the clues are often based on successful pop culture franchises. Comics and young adult novels dominate, especially at the movie theater. Billions of dollars are spent by their fans, and children and young people often identify with certain characters.

At first, I thought all of this was new. The Beatles had worldwide fame, but I can’t think of any fictional characters that were as popular in the 1960s as those that have emerged in the 21st century. Star Trek and Star Wars fandoms began to evolve in the 1970s, but it wasn’t until the advent of the World Wide Web that they achieved pop culture universality.

Many consider science fiction fandom the first. It began in the late 1920s and by 1939 had its first World Convention. However, we’re only talking hundreds. I considered myself a science fiction fan in junior high, but it wasn’t until the 10th grade that I met another fan in person. That was 1967.

Looking back, I realize it was YA novels that made me a fan, too. At seventy-three, I wonder if I would have had a different life if I had discovered the works of another author first.

I realize now that reading books was my way of coping with the stress of growing up. Just after JFK’s assassination in November 1963, my family began to fall apart. In 1963-1964, I attended three different 7th-grade schools, and two 8th-grade schools, in two states, and lived in four different houses. My parents became obvious alcoholics, their marriage began to unravel, and my dad had his first heart attack. Somehow, I remained a happy kid.

Just before I turned thirteen, when I began the 8th grade in September 1964, I discovered the young adult novels of Robert A. Heinlein. They didn’t use the term young adult back then, but called them books for juveniles. Juvenile delinquency was also a common phrase back then. Before that, they were called books for boys. There were also books for girls. Gender roles were specific back then. This was when newspapers divided job listings into “Men Wanted” and “Women Wanted.”

Discovering Robert A. Heinlein and science fiction gave me a positive outlook on life and my future. I especially identify with the Heinlein juveniles. I remember at the time believing Heinlein would have a literary reputation similar to Mark Twain by the time the 21st century rolled around. That hasn’t happened. Heinlein is often shunned by modern readers of science fiction. I accept much of the criticism regarding his adult novels published after 1960, but I still embrace his young adult novels and other work published before 1960.

Charles Scribner’s Sons, famous for publishing Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Thomas Wolfe, first published the twelve Heinlein juveniles between 1947 and 1958. The Heinlein juveniles were highly regarded by librarians and schools. I discovered them because my 8th-grade teacher put them on her approved reading list. She required our class to read three novels, three magazine articles, and three newspaper articles every six weeks. If we didn’t, she lowered our grade one letter. If we read five of each, she raised our letter grade by one letter. I always read the five of each because I’m terrible at diagramming sentences and understanding grammar. That upped my C to a B each report card.

For over sixty years now, I have been grateful to this teacher. Sadly, I can’t remember her name.

I keep hoping YouTube book reviewers will read Heinlein’s juveniles and reevaluate their judgment on Heinlein. Over the decades, I’ve read memoirs by scientists, writers, and astronauts about how they loved the Heinlein juveniles when they were young, and the impressions the books made on them.

I’ve been meaning to reread all the Heinlein juveniles again and judge them without the influence of nostalgia. Has sentiment clouded my perspective? I fear my love of these books is similar to how people embrace religion when young. Ideas often brainwash us in youth, and it’s almost impossible to deprogram ourselves. Our species suffers from delusions. No one is free of being fooled by beliefs. For every individual, it’s a matter of how delusional.

At seventy-three, I’m taking a hard look at what science fiction did to my mind and personality. I’m starting with the Heinlein juveniles because I believe they were at the Big Bang of my becoming self-aware.

Before I got into science fiction, I consumed the Oz books by L. Frank Baum. I read an article in my thirties about how some libraries pulled the Oz books off their shelves because the librarians worried they gave children unrealistic expectations about life. At the time, I thought that was silly. However, I realized I had grown up with many unrealistic beliefs about life. At the time, I believed the Heinlein juveniles had made me more realistic. Four decades later, I know that was wrong too.

When I took computer programming classes, they taught us the term GIGO – garbage in, garbage out. Have all the pop cultural fantasies we’ve consumed caused our delusional adult beliefs? Humans have always been susceptible to religious fantasies. Haven’t we just replaced those with pop cultural fantasies?

I love the Heinlein juveniles. Why? If I understood why, would I still love them?

JWH

Should I Overcome My Prejudice Against the Undead?

by James Wallace Harris, 6/24/25

I truly dislike vampires. Ditto for zombies. (Although I sometimes like ghosts.)

My short story reading group is discussing the stories from The Best Fantasy Stories from Fantasy and Science Fiction, edited by Edward L. Ferman. I must admit I also have a prejudice against fantasy in general. On the other hand, I want to participate in the group. I want to be positive in my comments. I don’t want to constantly whine about my annoyance with the common themes of the genre.

The second story up is “My Dear Emily” by Joanna Russ. It was first published in the July 1962 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. (You can read the story online.) F&SF provided my favorite genre magazine reading while growing up. I’m so fond of this periodical that I’ve collected an almost complete run of issues from 1949 to 1980. So, how can I be so prejudiced against fantasy?

I imprinted on science fiction when I first discovered reading. I consider science the only cognitive tool for understanding reality. Fantasy is based on magic and the love of the magical. Magic and science are polar opposites. I’ve never understood why people love fiction about beings that never existed. I will admit that science fiction is about beings that might exist, but are probably no more realistic than fantasy creatures.

My first impulse after reading “My Dear Emily” was to post this comment to the group: “Mediocre vampire story obscured by dense prose.” But would that be fair? Joanna Russ is a well-respected writer, even outside of science fiction. Within the genre, she is known for writing such classic feminist SF as The Female Man. Does “My Dear Emily” anticipate second-wave feminist themes in this 1962 story?

The story is set in 1880s San Francisco. Emily is returning from school in the east and bringing her friend Charlotte with her. Russ says, “They had loved each other in school.” Russ was a lesbian, but the story doesn’t appear to go in that direction at first, although in 1962, we might have been only expected to read between the lines. Emily and Charlotte do sleep in the same room.

Emily has returned to San Francisco to her father and Will, a man she is engaged to marry. Charlotte laughs at Emily’s endearing words about Will, and Emily wonders if God will strike her down for being a hypocrite.

However, Emily comes under the influence of Martin Guevara, a vampire. Why bring in the undead? We have the beginning of a good story with hints that Emily loves Charlotte but must marry Will in 19th-century America. My standard theory about why there are fantasy elements in literary stories is that it was easier to sell to genre magazines than get published in literary magazines. Literary magazines paid in free copies, but were usually a dead end for a story. “My Dear Emily” has been frequently reprinted in genre anthologies, earning additional payments and readers. In other words, would-be writers had a strong incentive to add fantasy or science-fictional elements to their stories.

Would I even be writing this essay, or have read “My Dear Emily,” if it hadn’t had a vampire in it? However, does Joanna Russ intend Martin Guevara to be meaningful in this story or just an in with the editor at F&SF?

Martin Guevara offers to get Emily out of her engagement to Will, but he exerts power over Emily, taking physical control of her. Emily already seems to know that Martin is a vampire. Did she know him before she left for school? And she leaves her house and finds me. How did she know where he lived?

On my second reading, this story seemed less murky, but it suggests things that aren’t explained. Emily tries to kill Martin with a silver cross, but he isn’t vulnerable to the power of that symbol. In fact, he isn’t affected by several of the classic defenses used against vampires. Martin tells Emily, “We’re a passion!” about his kind, and “Life is passion. Desire makes life.” He says desire lives when nothing else does.

The story becomes more about vampirism. But is it really? Russ’s prose is far from explicit. Is the story a vampire fantasy or one of lesbian liberation? Are Will and Martin two poles of masculine power?

This story did not need a vampire. But to get published in F&SF, it did. Fantasy obscured the real intent of this tale.

Why does pop culture love the undead? Do they really add anything valuable to fiction? Or, are they just popular stock characters? At best, they might be symbolic, but isn’t that symbolism usually ignored?

JWH