THE FLAT-EYED MONSTER (August 1955) is exemplary of the story of distorted or skewed perspective which fascinated Horace Gold, the editor of GALAXY magazine. Call these “reversals” in which the use of uncommon perspective skews the material under observation into a new formulation. Here, the “alien” is human, the “predicament” is one which the aliens face in his presence and the mysterious, alien forces exerted by the protagonist are as seemingly involuntary as they are threatening. By the summer of 1955, Phillip Klass had fully asserted himself as Gold’s first-line satirist in an increasingly satirical magazine and the offhand panache of this story and its fluidity fail to mask real horror. (This was a familiar ploy of Klass’s; it is manifest in his early and perhaps most famous story, CHILD’S PLAY in the March 1947 ASTOUNDING.) The story’s predicament is a masterpiece of solipsism expressed in false omnipotence, the payoff is both utterly surprising and retrospectively inevitable. “Who is the real alien?” and “What is the true nature of alienness?” were questions which--perhaps as a product of his own severe, entrapping neurosis--obsessed Horace Gold and his magazine became a means of search toward an answer. Klass and this novelette are cunning enough to raise the possibility that its solipsistic and imprisoned protagonist is a portrait of Horace Gold, that the “aliens” he is manipulating are Gold’s contributors...and that Gold, editor and solipsist ultimately gets exactly what he deserves. “Ah, Phil,” Klass (in an essay thirty years later imagines Horace saying to him), “You were never a mere instrument.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
“William Tenn” was the pseudonym for his science fiction used by Phillip Klass (1920-2010); he is regarded as the finest satirist in the history of the field with an ingenious command of narrative. Tenn’s blend of compassion and ferocity, dark comedy and satire merged with the work of three other writers (Damon Knight, Cyril Kornbluth, Robert Sheckley) to create the characteristic voice of the magazine. After becoming a tenured Professor of English and Creative Writing at Penn State University in the middle ’60s, Klass virtually abandoned fiction writing, publishing only three short stories in his last four and a half decades. To reflect his importance to GALAXY magazine, three other William Tenn works are included among the 23 which compose the initial issue of The Galaxy Project.
ABOUT THE SERIES
Horace Gold led GALAXY magazine from its first issue dated October 1950 to science fiction’s most admired, widely circulated and influential magazine throughout its initial decade. Its legendary importance came from publication of full length novels, novellas and novelettes. GALAXY published nearly every giant in the science fiction field.
The Galaxy Project is a selection of the best of GALAXY with new forewords by some of today’s best science fiction writers. The initial selections in alphabetical order include work by Ray Bradbury, Frederic Brown, Lester del Rey, Robert A. Heinlein, Damon Knight, C. M. Kornbluth, Walter M. Miller, Jr., Frederik Pohl, Robert Scheckley, Robert Silverberg, William Tenn (Phillip Klass) and Kurt Vonnegut with new Forewords by Paul di Filippo, David Drake, John Lutz, Barry Malzberg and Robert Silverberg. The Galaxy Project is committed to publishing new work in the spirit GALAXY magazine and its founding editor Horace Gold.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
“William Tenn” was the pseudonym for his science fiction used by Phillip Klass (1920-2010); he is regarded as the finest satirist in the history of the field with an ingenious command of narrative. Tenn’s blend of compassion and ferocity, dark comedy and satire merged with the work of three other writers (Damon Knight, Cyril Kornbluth, Robert Sheckley) to create the characteristic voice of the magazine. After becoming a tenured Professor of English and Creative Writing at Penn State University in the middle ’60s, Klass virtually abandoned fiction writing, publishing only three short stories in his last four and a half decades. To reflect his importance to GALAXY magazine, three other William Tenn works are included among the 23 which compose the initial issue of The Galaxy Project.
ABOUT THE SERIES
Horace Gold led GALAXY magazine from its first issue dated October 1950 to science fiction’s most admired, widely circulated and influential magazine throughout its initial decade. Its legendary importance came from publication of full length novels, novellas and novelettes. GALAXY published nearly every giant in the science fiction field.
The Galaxy Project is a selection of the best of GALAXY with new forewords by some of today’s best science fiction writers. The initial selections in alphabetical order include work by Ray Bradbury, Frederic Brown, Lester del Rey, Robert A. Heinlein, Damon Knight, C. M. Kornbluth, Walter M. Miller, Jr., Frederik Pohl, Robert Scheckley, Robert Silverberg, William Tenn (Phillip Klass) and Kurt Vonnegut with new Forewords by Paul di Filippo, David Drake, John Lutz, Barry Malzberg and Robert Silverberg. The Galaxy Project is committed to publishing new work in the spirit GALAXY magazine and its founding editor Horace Gold.
