Reading these ratty Dell pocket paperbacks, well, they’re not the same books I read at the age of eight or nine. Back then I was a bored kid on summer vacation, who wondered what the world and the future would hold. This summer I see these stories aren’t really about the future. They’re about the past; specifically, about each of their author’s past. On the surface they depict corn-fed Midwest young men who’ve dipped a toe into space travel and lived to tell about. Some of the stories show us robots banding together for a mission. As a kid that was my take-away.
This summer I see these stories are thinly veiled “Dangerous Writing,” as Tom Spanbauer would call it. They’re stories told by recently returned WWII vets who are still young men, but are now burdened with horrors no one wants to hear about. The fictional narrators are troubled heroes who don’t want to inflict their pain on the folks at home. That these shell-shocked authors are casting themselves as damaged spacemen trying to cope with civilian life makes it all doubly moving. They’re simultaneously trying to entertain the kiddies—me—with adventure, while they process their own wartime crap.
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