C. M. Kornbluth: Profile & Bibliography
Author: Christopher B. JonesPublished on: May 9, 2001
In the late 1930s, a group of New York SF fans formed a writing group and became known as the Futurians. This group included such well-known names as James Blish, Donald Wollheim, and Richard Wilson. Another member of the Futurians was a teenager by the name of Cyril M. Kornbluth. This young man would go on to become one of the great minds of SF.
Born in 1923, Kornbluth sold his first story at the age of 16 to fellow Futurian and editor Frederik Pohl—with whom he would later collaborate on a number of short stories and novels. Of Kornbluth, Pohl said in his memoir The Way the Future Was: "Cyril Kornbluth was born with a trenchant phrase in his mouth. He was terribly young and inexperienced—around fifteen when I published his first story. But he was learning fast the technical skills of story construction, and he had never needed to learn to shape a sentence."*
Certainly Kornbluth came of age, just as Pohl indicated. Years later, another SF great and fellow Futurian, Isaac Asimov, said of him: "Cyril Kornbluth was, perhaps, the most brilliant and certainly the most erratic of the Futurians. He was, perhaps, more brilliant than I was..."
It is unfortunate and a loss to SF fans that his greatness was never allowed to reach its full potential. In 1958, at the young age of 35, C.M. Kornbluth died of a heart attack after shoveling snow and then running to catch a commuter train. As you will see from the bibliography at the end of this article, his output was prolific; and at the age of 35 there were surely many masterpieces that he was never able to write. What gems would he have bestowed upon us had he not been taken away so young?
Of this we can only speculate. But what we can talk about with certainty is what he did give us while he was alive. Several of his novels have become important pieces of the literature, most notably The Space Merchants (1953) and The Syndic (1953). Both of these novels were written in partnership with Frederik Pohl, and The Syndic was awarded the Prometheus Hall of Fame Award for Best Classic Libertarian SF Novel in 1986. The Space Merchants was originally serialized in Galaxy as "Gravy Planet." (That was in the June 1952 issue, the same issue that featured his short story "The Luckiest Man in Denv.")
In the short story arena, he counts some 76 works to his name. Of these, four were nominated for the Hugo Award: "Theory of Rocketry"; "Shark Ship"; "The Advent on Channel Twelve"; and "The Meeting." The last one, "The Meeting" (co-authored by Pohl), won the Hugo in 1973.
Collaborative writing is something that Kornbluth was very fond of, and in addition to his work with Pohl he penned a number of stories with Judith Merril (then Frederik Pohl's wife). This team, writing under the pseudonym Cyril Judd, brought us Gunner Cade (1952), Outpost Mars (1952; also published in 1961 as Sin in Space). The partnership didn't last however. When Merril and Pohl got divorced, custody of Kornbluth went to Frederik.
If you like pen names, there are more where that one came from. Writing under an alias was something that many of the Futurians were fond of, and Kornbluth was no exception. In addition to Cyril Judd, he wrote under the following names: Gabriel Barclay, Arthur Cooke (shared with Donald Wollheim), Cecil Corwin, Simon Eisner, Kenneth Falconer, S. D. Gottesman (shared), Warren F. Howard, Scott Mariner, Charles Satterfield, & Allen Zweig. (Some were used for genres other than SF.)
They say that experience makes the man. When we look at the work of C.M. Kornbluth, we find a sardonic, grim style that is distrustful of government and often foretells a dark future in which the best of mankind does not come out. Surely there was some event that turned a 15-year-old SF writer into a mature author with such an outlook. Indeed there was, and that event was World War II.
The war interrupted Kornbluth's attempts at higher education (he attended the University of Chicago for a while), and he eventually took part in the Battle of the Bulge. For this action he received the Bronze Star. After returning from combat he was more mature and confident, and less combative (he once punched Forry Ackerman in the stomach at the first World Con in New York City for writing inane ideas in prozine letter columns), but he was also perhaps a bit jaded and less trusting. Frederik Pohl said of his friend: "(he) strained his heart carrying a machine gun during the Battle of the Bulge."
In the end, Kornbluth made extensive contributions to the field of SF, even though he was with us for only a short time. We can go on endlessly thinking about what magnificent creations could have come from the mind of this great writer, but there is plenty of wonderful material that he did leave us with which we can journey into the depths of humanity. Thank you Cyril for your gifts.
Bibliography
Novels:
Gunner Cade (1952; as Cyril Judd)
Outpost Mars (1952; as Cyril Judd)**
Takeoff (1952)
The Space Merchants (1953; with Frederik Pohl)
The Syndic (1953)
Search the Sky (1954; with Frederik Pohl)
Gladiator-at-Law (1955; with Frederik Pohl)
Not This August (1956)***
Wolfbane (1957; with Frederik Pohl)
Collections:
The Explorers (1954)****
The Mindworm (1955)
A Mile Beyond the Moon (1958)
The Marching Morons (1959)
The Wonder Effect (1962; with Frederik Pohl)
Thirteen o'Clock and Other Zero Hours (1970)
The Best of C. M. Kornbluth (1976)
Critical Mass (1977; with Frederik Pohl)
Before the Universe (1980; with Frederik Pohl)
Our Best: The Best of Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth (1987; with Frederik
Pohl)
His Share of Glory: The Complete Short Science Fiction of C. M. Kornbluth
(1997)
Short Stories:
"Nova Midplane" (1940; with Frederik Pohl)
"Vacant World" (1940; with Frederik Pohl)
"King Cole of Pluto" (1940)
"The City in the Sofa" (1941; as Cecil Corwin)
"Dead Center" (1941)
"Dimension of Darkness" (1941)
"Fire-Power" (1941)
"Forgotten Tongue" (1941)
"Interference" (1941)
"Kazam Collects" (1941; as S. D. Gottesman)
"Mr. Packer Goes to Hell" (1941)
"No Place to Go" (1941)
"Return from M-15" (1941)
"The Rocket of 1955" (1939; as Cecil Corwin)
"The Reversible Revolutions" (1941; as Cecil Corwin)
"Sir Mallory's Magnitude" (1941)
"Thirteen O'Clock" (1941; as Cecil Corwin)
"What Sorghum Says" (1941; as Cecil Corwin)
"The Words of Guru" (1941; as Kenneth Falconer)
"Best Friend" (1941; as S. D. Gottesman with Frederik Pohl)
"Mars-Tube" (1941; as S. D. Gottesman with Frederik Pohl)
"The Extrapolated Dimwit" (1942; with Frederik Pohl)
"The Core" (1942)
"Crisis!" (1942; as Cecil Corwin)
"The Golden Road" (1942; as Cecil Corwin)
"Masquerade" (1942)
"The Perfect Invasion" (1942)
"The Only Thing We Learn" (1949)
"Iteration" (1950)
"The Little Black Bag" (1950)
"The Mindworm" (1950)
"The Silly Season" (1950)
"Friend to Man" (1951)
"The Forgotten Tongue" (1951; as Walter C. Davies)
"The Marching Morons" (1951)
"With These Hands" (1951)
"The Altar at Midnight" (1952)
"The Goodly Creatures" (1952)
"The
Luckiest Man in Denv" (1952; as Simon Eisner)
"Make Mine Mars" (1952)
"That Share of Glory" (1952)
"The Adventurer" (1953)
"Dominoes" (1953)
"Everybody Knows Joe" (1953)
"The Meddlers" (1953)
"The Remorseful" (1953)
"Time Bum" (1953)
"The Mask of Demeter" (1953; as Cecil Corwin with Donald A. Wollheim)
"The Remorseful" (1953)
"Gomez" (1954)
"I Never Ast No Favors" (1954)
"The Adventurers" (1955)
"The Cosmic Expense Account" (1956)*****
"The Education of Tigress McCardle" (1957)
"The Last Man Left in the Bar" (1957)
"Ms. Found in a Chinese Fortune Cookie" (1957)
"The Slave" (1957)
"The Events Leading Down to the Tragedy" (1957)
"The Advent on Channel Twelve" (1958; Hugo nominee)
"Passion Pills" (1958)
"Shark Ship" (1958; Hugo nominee)******
"Theory of Rocketry" (1958; Hugo nominee)
"Nightmare with Zeppelins" (1958; with Frederik Pohl)
"Two Dooms" (1958) "Virginia" (1958)
"Virginia" (1958)
"A Gentle Dying" (1961; with Frederik Pohl)
"A Hint of Henbane" (1958; with Frederik Pohl)
"The Quaker Cannon" (1961; with Frederik Pohl)
"The World of Myrion Flowers" (1961; with Frederik Pohl)
"Critical Mass" (1962; with Frederik Pohl)
"The Meeting" (1972; with Frederik Pohl; Hugo winner)
"The Gift of Garigolli" (1974; with Frederik Pohl)
"Mute Inglorious Tam" (1974; with Frederik Pohl)
"The Engineer" (1987; with Frederik Pohl)
"Trouble in Time" (1987; as S. D. Gottesman with Frederik Pohl)
"Interplane Express" (1988; with Donald A. Wollheim)
*NOTE: Frederik Pohl and Donald Wollheim, with whom Kornbluth often collaborated, completed a number of unfinished stories after Kornbluth's death. This accounts for the large number of works listed after 1958.
Awards:
Hugo Best Short Story nominee (1959): "Theory of Rocketry"
Hugo Best Novellette nominee (1959): "Shark Ship"
Hugo Best Short Story nominee (1959): "The Advent on Channel Twelve"
Hugo Best Short Story winner (1973): "The Meeting" Prometheus Hall of Fame Award
for Best Classic Libertarian SF Novel (1986): The Syndic
ENDNOTES:
* Quoted from The Road to Science Fiction, Volume 4: From Here to Forever. James Gunn. 1982. Borealis, Clarkston. (p. 36)
** Outpost Mars was also published in 1961 with the title Sin in Space. Before being released as a novel, it was serialized in 1951 in Galaxy as "Mars Child."
*** Not This August was also published in 1956 in the UK with the title Christmas Eve.
**** The Explorers was published in 1955 in the UK with the title The Mindworm and Other Stories.
***** "The Cosmic Expense Account" is also known as "The Cosmic Charge Account."
****** "Shark Ship" is also known as "Reap the Dark Tide."
If you'd like to read more articles at Science Fiction & Society, please make use of our index system to locate the information you're looking for:
|
Newsletter (Coming Soon)
|
If you'd like to put your name on the recipient list for our upcoming newsletter, please sign our guestbook using the link below.
View
My Guestbook
Sign
My Guestbook