Nostr notes by James Harris (Unofficial)

Setting Your Science Fiction Story on Venus Our reading group ...

2026-10-23T03:50:00Z

Setting Your Science Fiction Story on Venus

Our reading group recently read a story set on Venus. I don’t want to mention it specifically because this essay isn’t about criticizing such stories, but I want to discuss science fiction set on Venus in general.
Before we knew what Venus was like, science fiction writers often used that planet. In the 1930s, Edgar Rice Burroughs began a series of books set on Venus. The first novel was called The Pirates of Venus. This series was never as famous as his Mars and Tarzan stories, or even his Pellucidar books. Burroughs’ used Venus to satirize communism. He imagined it as a watery world.
C. S. Lewis started his Space Trilogy in 1938. The second volume, Perelandra, is set on Venus. Like Burroughs, Lewis makes his Venus a watery world. Lewis used his story to explore religion.
Ray Bradbury was famous for his Mars stories, but he wrote short stories set on Venus, too, one where it never stopped raining. Bradbury and Leigh Brackett wrote a famous planetary romance, “Lorelei of the Red Mist” set on Venus. Venus was often seen as a location for pirates and rogues.
I first read science fiction set on Venus in Heinlein’s novels Space Cadet, Between Planets, and Podkayne of Mars. Like many science fiction writers, Heinlein imagined Venus as a hot jungle world. This was in 1964. Heinlein wrote Podkayne of Mars just before December 14, 1962, when NASA’s Mariner 2 flew by.
I use Mariner 2 and 4 as demarcations that divide science fiction. I call the time before Pre-NASA Science Fiction. After Mariner 2, science fiction writers had to deal with the reality of Venus as described by Wikipedia:
The atmosphere is composed mostly of carbon dioxide and has a thick cloud layer of sulfuric acid that spans the whole planet. At the mean surface level, the atmosphere reaches a temperature of 737 K (464 °C; 867 °F), making it the hottest planet in the solar system and also a pressure 92 times greater than Earth’s at sea level, turning the lowest layer of the atmosphere into a supercritical fluid.
In Pre-NASA SF, Mars was always the favorite planet. When the average citizen thought of aliens from space, they mostly thought of Martians. But Venusians were fairly popular with science fiction writers. According to Wikipedia, it’s been a popular fictional destination since the Civil War.
The reality of Venus didn’t stop some writers from using the planet in their planetary romances. Roger Zelazny’s “The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth” (1965) is a great early example. In 2015, Gardner Dozois published an anthology of such stories, Old Venus.
If science fiction is science-based, shouldn’t stories about Venus work with what we know about Venus? If that’s the case, then imagining any kind of human settlement on Venus is insane. Even imagining a manned mission to Venus is crazy. Sure, some writers have tried to avoid the hell of the surface by imagining floating cities, or even terraforming Venus. Those writers worked to stay scientific. Other writers, hoping to come up with a believable mission to Venus invented massive tank-like suits.
What if science fiction isn’t science-based? I have friends who believe SF has never been about science. If that’s the case, Venus can be any kind of fantasyland you want. When I was growing up, the rationale for reading science fiction over fantasy is science fiction used science. If that’s not the case, what’s the point?
Of course, if we were completely scientific, and realistic, we’d accept that space isn’t for humans. For some people, it’s important to some people that humans explore space. Science fiction provides the sacred texts the promote that philosophy. If science fiction rationalizes the final frontier, shouldn’t it be as realistic as possible? If it isn’t, isn’t space no more realistic than Heaven or Valhalla?
In Pre-NASA SF, all the planets, moons, and asteroids of the Solar System were considered as possible destinations for human exploration. In Post-NASA SF, science fiction has mostly considered the Moon, Mars, asteroids, and maybe Titan. Venus is off the table. Yet, writers still consider it.
I have to wonder if we’re moving into an anti-science age. A large segment of the public is anti-science. Scientific research is losing funding. And science fiction has become far less about science. It feels like many people want reality to be belief-based rather than fact-based. Many people advocate for returning to a pre-scientific age. Of course, that mostly comes from religious folks, but not entirely. There’s a hankering to repeal The Enlightenment and Liberal philosophy.
If that trend continues, those thinkers will see Venus and the rest of the Solar System portrayed in stories that resemble Pre-NASA SF. I already feel Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are spending their billions to build a 1950s vision of science fiction.
We need to ask if science fiction hasn’t brainwashed several generations. Venus is a kind of sanity test. Any contemplation of visiting Venus, whether fictional or explorational, should stress our scientific awareness. That’s also true of the Moon and Mars. Currently, both scientists and science fiction writers think we know enough to utilize both locations.
I believe both of those off-Earth prime locations will be impractical. But we won’t know that until we spend trillions and explore both thoroughly. I believe space probes in the 1960s significantly changed science fiction. But I also believe SpaceX will eventually become another shaper of science fiction. Just not the way people picture it now.
If science fiction is just another flavor of fantasy, everything I’ve said doesn’t matter. But if science fiction is an art form that speculates about the possibilities of science, then it does.
What’s funny is I can still read and enjoy science fiction published before Mariner 2, when Venus is a romantic jungle world. I can even read modern science fiction that attempts to recapture Pre-NASA in a kind of retro-SF. But it disappoints me if serious modern science fiction ignores the real Venus.
James Wallace Harris, 10/22/26

https://classicsofsciencefiction.com/2026/10/23/setting-your-science-fiction-story-on-venus/

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THE END OF EVERYTHING by M. John Harrison The End of Everything ...

2026-10-19T03:01:25Z

THE END OF EVERYTHING by M. John Harrison

The End of Everything by M. John Harrison is a hard book to describe. Many people will want to read it because it’s a finalist for the 2026 Booker Prize. At around 200 pages, it’s a quick read in print, and just under four hours on audio. However, before buying, I highly recommend reading the sample offered by Amazon. I also recommend reading the reviews in Locus Magazine and The New York Times. The writing is clear and excellent, but the story is surreal, metaphorical, and ambiguous.
The End of Everything might be a science fiction novel about an alien invasion, but I’m not sure if science fiction fans will like it. The End of Everything might be an allegorical literary novel about our decaying society, but literary types might think it’s too science-fictional.
While listening to this novel, I was often reminded of The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells. The settings are similar, and readers learn about the alien invasion from the personal perspective of the two main protagonists. Philip, 38, finds an alien artifact on the beach while staying with his aunt, Marnie, 70. Readers follow them separately and together, absorbing details about the aliens and the invasion along the way.
The aliens aren’t from outer space. They might be from Earth. At first, they are blobs of protoplasm. Eventually, grow larger, begin to resemble people, and even speak English. People wonder if they are from another dimension, the astral plane, a manifestation of spirits, etc.
Readers struggle to decide if they are actual invaders or metaphors for the problems of our times.
My initial reaction was to think about writing science fiction. The genre has a long history of alien invasion stories. Science fiction writers are hard-pressed to come up with new ways for Earth to be invaded. As a long-time science fiction reader, I felt Harrison found inspiration from The War of the Worlds, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and Roadside Picnic.
If you’re a science fiction reader, you can take The End of Everything literally. However, if you’re the kind of reader who reads Booker Prize novels, The End of Everything can be deliciously ambiguous.
While reading The End of Everything, I was constantly reminded of books by J. G. Ballard and Brian Aldiss, especially the New Wave SF of the 1960s. I’m pretty sure Michael Moorcock would have proudly published The End of Everything in New Worlds back then.
The End of Everything has given M. John Harrison far more recognition than he ever got from science fiction readers. But this is at a time when many literary writers are selling lots of books by using science fiction themes. Turnabout is fair play, I guess.
I have a hard time reading modern science fiction. It’s just not that good. Young science fiction writers should study Harrison. I’ll use the hybrid SACD disc as an analogy. It can play standard-definition music on a CD player, but high-definition music on a SACD player. Harrison has written a hybrid novel, half science fiction, half literary. It will work with a science fiction reader or a literary reader.
My recommendation to would-be science fiction writers is to stop reading science fiction magazines and webzines and look for inspiration in novels like The End of Everything, What We Can Know by Ian McEwan, Annie Bot by Sierra Greer, Exit Party by Emily St. John Mandel, and other literary works.
Modern science fiction seems inspired by movies, television shows, comics, and video games. Great science fiction shouldn’t be inspired by older science fiction. It makes everything feel recycled. Find writing inspiration in literary bestsellers and the annual volume of The Best American Short Stories. But study everything going on in the real world today for inspiration for new science fiction themes.
Science fiction needs a new New Wave to stir things up.
If you love modern science fiction, you might find The End of Everything to be a downer. But then, back in the 1960s and 1970s, many SF readers found New Wave fiction a bummer. I’m not advocating writing dreary stories. Both Station Eleven and Annie Bot end up positive. And as bleak as The Handmaid’s Tale gets, it still has a powerful positive message.
Sadly, I didn’t walk away from The End of Everything feeling upbeat. I can’t tell if I missed Harrison’s hint of optimism in the end or if it’s just not there. The book might be saying we’re going down the tubes and we just have to learn to survive, and maybe something better will come along. Is he suggesting that AI might do a better job on Earth than we have? Assuming AI is one of the possible metaphors for the artifacts.
James Wallace Harris, 10/18/26

https://classicsofsciencefiction.com/2026/10/18/the-end-of-everything-by-m-john-harrison/

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“Give Me English,” by Ai Jiang (江艾) Screenshot Story #4 ...

2026-10-16T03:26:23Z

“Give Me English,” by Ai Jiang (江艾)

Screenshot
Story #4 of 31: The Best Science Fiction of the Year 8, ed. by Neil Clarke
Part of a series: Reading Science Fiction at 75. The first essay.
“Give Me English,” by Ai Jiang, is a metaphor for understanding languages and what it means to become an immigrant. The story feels like science fiction because everyone in this future has a language database (Langbase) in their head, and words are the universal monetary unit. Poor people have to sell their words to pay rent, and some eventually become mute because they run out of words in their langbase.
Gillian lives in New York. She is an immigrant from China. Gillian came to America because she couldn’t compete in the Chinese education system. That’s a real practice today. Because Gillian needs to learn English, she sells off her Chinese words to buy English words. But to survive in expensive New York, she eventually needed to sell her newly acquired English words too. Her friend Jorry is well off because he gambles with words and wins. Jorry offers to help Gillian, but she doesn’t want his help.
For a deeper appreciation of why Ai Jiang wrote this story, read Ray Naylor’s interview with her. Naylor, a science fiction writer who works in the Foreign Service and has taught English abroad. Naylor admired Jiang’s story, and the interview is very insightful. I highly recommend reading it.
“Give Me English” is a fine story. It was nominated for the Nebula and a finalist for the Locus Award.
However, I want to use this story to discuss something else. It’s not really about “Give Me English,” but about me being 75 and trying to find the kind of science fiction I grew up reading. I feel the stories in volume 8 of Clarke’s anthology take a different approach to science fiction. However, “Give Me English” could have been published in Galaxy or F&SF in the 1950s, and maybe even New Worlds in the 1970s. Even back then, science fiction was never consistently one thing.
Is “Give Me English” really science fiction? If it were published in The New Yorker or a literary magazine, would readers call it science fiction? Humans will never use words for money or have a language database in their heads, so it can seriously be considered speculation or extrapolation.
The story is a metaphor or allegory about language. It’s not realistic, but it uses a “what if…” thought experiment to place Gillian and Jorry in a fictional setting. “Give Me English” is included in a science fiction anthology because the genre has become a catch-all for oddball stories. Mostly, this is true because science fiction and fantasy periodicals are venues open to new writers. Would-be writers think that if they write stories with weird elements, they are writing science fiction. But is that the real essence of science fiction?
I’m not saying “Give Me English” is a bad story; it’s not. It’s a good story. But it’s not the kind of fiction I want to read when I’m in the mood for science fiction. Of course, my definition of science fiction is now in the minority. I’m not sure if my definition of science fiction was ever in the majority.
When I was growing up, science fiction was a type of writing challenge: explore possible futures. Generally, it was: if we can build this kind of technology, it will allow this kind of future. Even when the technology is scientifically impossible today, we hope future discoveries will make such technology possible.
Most science fiction writers, even in the past, didn’t try very hard to play this game. They often used recycled ideas as settings for their stories. Many classic science fiction concepts are recycled for endless fictional possibilities. To me, bad science fiction was stories that had comic book-level science. You know, radiation makes mutants with superpowers.
So far, the first four stories in The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume 8 don’t seem to believe in the future. They are set in the future, but not believable futures. Have writers and readers given up on the future? Science fiction has become this fantasy world where any kind of make-believe goes.
I want science fiction to seriously imagine possible futures. When 21st-century science fiction imagines the future, it most often utilizes old futures science fiction imagined in the past. I want SF in the 2020s to use the reality of the 2020s to speculate about the future.
I didn’t write about story #3, “The Ship Cat of the Suzaku Maru” by S. L. Huang. It’s obviously set in the future. It’s set in a traditional science fiction setting – a spaceship. John W. Campbell would have published that story in 1941, in Astounding Science Fiction. It would have done well in AnLab. But as nostalgic as I am for old pulp science fiction, that setting is now the past. Star Trek in 1966 is 1939 science fiction. Star Wars in 1977 is 1941 Astounding.
I want science fiction to speculate about the future, but I don’t want it to be recycled futures. In 1966, the year Star Trek came out, Samuel R. Delany published Babel-17. It redefined science fiction. Peter Watts did it in 2006 with Blindsight. Kim Stanley Robinson did it in 2015 with Aurora.
Take Mars, for example. We’ve learned a tremendous amount about Mars in recent decades. Plus, we have Elon Musk and SpaceX. And we have the reality of AI. Even in 2011, Andy Weir’s The Martian isn’t up to date. Mark Watney couldn’t have survived with what we knew even then.
Back in the 1960s, when I was in high school, my buddies and I would discuss science fiction stories. We’d argue over whether or not they could possibly happen. Even the silly stuff. We knew science fiction was far from scientific, but stories needed a certain amount of believability.
We wanted to grow up and see far-out speculation come true. Has science fiction become a kind of fantasy playground in our minds because we no longer have any hope for reality in the future?
Even if we think the future sucks, shouldn’t we still speculate about it?
Of course, I’m being naive here. Science fiction has seldom pursued the ideal I hope to find. Maybe I can’t find the kind of science fiction I want to read because I’ve changed.
JWH

https://classicsofsciencefiction.com/2026/10/10/give-me-english-by-ai-jiang-%e6%b1%9f%e8%89%be/

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