My fave humorists of science fiction’s Golden Age

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:00]So, I think most people, when they think of science fiction humorists, and especially from the Golden Age of Science Fiction or a little bit after, tend to think of Douglas Adams, and especially Hitchhiker's Guide, which, interestingly, I have the second and third book, but not the first book, and I'm wondering if I took the first book from my father, and that's at my mother's house. Cuz these were books that I took from my father's house after he died that I hadn't taken as a teenager. But anyways, Douglas Adams is fine. He's very memeable. I don't find him, honestly, particularly funny, but there are other science fiction writers from the Golden Age who I do find funny.

[00:00:31]And a lot of them I actually found through this book, which I didn't realize my father had a copy and I got from the library, which is 50 science fiction short shorts. So, they are stories that are under a thousand words, I think, and a lot of them are under 500. And I found several interesting writers through this, some of whom didn't really have anthologies or didn't really write more humor. And as a result of that, I ended up getting five Nesfa Press collections, partly based on these stories, partly based on other collections that I read that had good humorous stories. So, I wanted to go over those, as well as another writer who I'm not completely sure if he's Golden Age, and I need to cover up part of the cover for censorship purposes, but this is John Sladek. And he was best known for doing parodies of other science fiction writers, which may not land if you don't know who they are, but if you know who they are, they're hilarious. And I think some of them are in here. I actually have the full collection, which is print-on-demand, but I could not find my copy, so I pulled this, which was in my father's collection, which has at least some of those parodies. But I will link I have Amazon affiliate links in my description, and I will link the Sladek book, assuming it's still in print, which it should be, there. And then Nesfa Press. So, as I said, there were five of these writers who had complete short story collections who wrote a lot of humorous stories. And the first of these is Anthony Boucher, complete Boucher, because he didn't write a lot.

[00:01:44]He was best known as an editor of one of the big science fiction magazines. And the story in this collection, which was partially edited by Asimov, but of course, Asimov is pretty prolific, was a story about a mission to the moon, which I believe is inhabited by werewolves if I'm remembering correctly. And there's another story in that same universe here and just a number of these stories are quite humorous. And then next up we have Fredric Brown, who is best known for two of his stories that ended up in a lot of best of collections. And one of them is so short that I should be able to actually read it. It's a couple of paragraphs, but it's still under one page. And so this is one of his best known stories. So I'm going to read the whole thing.

[00:02:20]Dwar Ev ceremoniously soldered the final connection with gold. The eyes in a dozen television cameras watched him and the sub-ether bore throughout the universe a dozen pictures of what he was doing. He straightened and nodded to Dwar Rein, then moved to a position beside the switch that would complete the contact when he threw it.

[00:02:36]The switch that would connect all at once all of the monster computing machines of all the populated planets in the universe, 96 billion planets, into the super circuit that would connect them all into one super calculator, one cybernetics machine that would combine all the knowledge of all the galaxies.

[00:02:50]Dwar Rein spoke briefly to the watching and listening trillions. Then after a moment's silence, he said, "Now, Dwar Ev."

[00:02:57]Dwar Ev threw the switch. There was a mighty hum, the surge of power from 96 billion planets. Lights flashed and quieted along the miles-long panel. Dwar Ev stepped back and drew a deep breath.

[00:03:07]"The honor of asking the first question is yours, Dwar Rein."

[00:03:11]"Thank you," said Dwar Rein. "It shall be a question of which no single cybernetics machine has ever been able to answer." He turned to face the machine.

[00:03:18]"Is there a god?"

[00:03:20]The mighty voice answered without hesitation, without the clicking of a single relay.

[00:03:24]"Yes.

[00:03:25]Now there is a god."

[00:03:28]Sudden fear flashed on the face of Dwar Ev. He leaped to grab the switch. A bolt of lightning from the cloudless sky struck him down and fused the switch shut.

[00:03:36]So this is more of a horror story than a humorous story, although I think there is kind of humor in it.

[00:03:41]Especially now, it gets to a lot of concerns people have over AI, which I think are overblown. But that is his best known piece and it's as you can see it's short. And I also have have collection of novels, but I haven't read any of them. When I was younger, I was sure I would at some point. Now, I don't know if I will, but I have read all of the stories in here at least once and several of them twice. And a lot of his stuff is not humorous, but there's a lot that are humorous, too, especially stories dealing with like printing presses, which back when you actually had physical printing presses.

[00:04:07]And so, maybe not my absolute favorite science fiction humorist, but still an interesting writer with a lot of good stories in here. And I might talk about reference some of these stories in the future. One of my favorites from here, which I got someone to read and they weren't terribly impressed, was the short story The New One from 1942, so the height of World War II.

[00:04:24]And I don't want to spoil it. And person who read it was like, I kind of saw this coming, but I didn't, so I liked it.

[00:04:29]And then next, we have Eric Frank Russell, who one of the stories in here is the only science fiction story I've read that like had me non-stop laughing out loud for minutes with the punchline. And it's one of his best-known stories.

[00:04:42]So, this is the collection of his short stories. And his best-known short story, which I'm not going to read, is the very first one in here, Allamagoosa.

[00:04:50]And then his next best-known short story is the second one in here, And Then There Were None, which is less humorous and it can be seen as sort of a work of libertarian or anarchist literature.

[00:05:00]But I like that one, too, although it's not humorous. But he has a number of short stories. He's also known for a novel he wrote, Wasp, about espionage, which I have read. And it was reasonably humorous. Wasn't laugh-out-loud funny for me, but it might have been if I'd had experience with some of that stuff.

[00:05:14]And then the last two are my absolute favorites on this list. And so, first, we have William Tenn. This and then his second book together have all of his science fiction.

[00:05:22]And best-known story is Project Hush on 441 of this.

[00:05:27]And that's in a number of anthologies.

[00:05:29]And then my personal favorite is the story On Venus Have We Got a Rabbi, which is the final story in here and it comes from a collection of Jewish science fiction.

[00:05:36]And I find it not as humorous as some of his stories, but it's, you know, humorous enough.

[00:05:41]And Tenn mostly wrote humorous science fiction. And he is probably my second favorite Golden Age humorous science fiction writer. And then my absolute favorite, who unfortunately it is hard to get all of his works. A lot of his stuff is in public domain on Project Gutenberg, but not most of his best stuff. And so this tries to get what they think is his best short stories, and I've got a lot of his other collections from my father and myself, but I still don't think I have everything he wrote. And so that is Robert Sheckley, and Sheckley is interesting because remember Douglas Adams? So Douglas Adams was reportedly asked what was the difference between him and Sheckley, and Adams reportedly responded that Sheckley was the better writer, although Adams was more meme-able. And honestly, I have his novels too, and I've read the one that is most often compared to Hitchhiker's Guide, and honestly, even though I like Sheckley better as a short story writer and humorist overall, I think that Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide is the better novel of those two, at least now.

[00:06:33]Although actually I should go back and reread it cuz I was trying to read it as a humorous story, but it's also a critique of bureaucracy, which as I thought more about that today, I wonder if I would appreciate it more.

[00:06:43]But a lot of Sheckley's stories are hilarious and they make me laugh.

[00:06:47]And a lot of his best stories are in this book. So anyways, five Nesfa Press books.

[00:06:52]And then also honorable mention to John Sladek for his parodies of other science-fiction writers, which if you don't know them might not work so well.

[00:06:59]And there's a lot of plant fiction writers from that time who wrote stories that were to some degree humorous. I could easily have done C.M. Kornbluth, who I've talked about before, who was sort of often darkly humorous, or my favorite writer Jack Vance, but I focused on the writers who I think were best known as humorists, or at least their best known stories were often humorous, and that was the focus. And so wanted to talk about that. Thanks for watching.

[00:07:21]I'm Magpie, and I'll see y'all next one.