The Very Best of Barry N Malzberg. 2013
THE VERY BEST OF BARRY N. MALZBERG
RATED 72% POSITIVE. STORY SCORE 3.5 OF 5
37 STORIES : 3 GREAT / 19 GOOD / 9 AVERAGE / 5 POOR / 0 DNF
I read most of these stories more than a month ago and put off writing this review in favor of my 2025 Hugo Reading. When I sat down to finally write this review, I discovered that most of the stories had completely escape all memory. Not a very good sign.
I read this book solely because of a YouTube video - “Remembering the Most Inexcusably Neglected Science Fiction Author of All Time - RIP Barry Malzberg” by Bookpilled. Bookpilled is one of the best science fiction BookTuber/Reviewer on the internet and his videos are essential viewing for any 21st Century science fiction fan.
Unfortunately, Barry Malzberg’s style doesn’t seem to work for me. He seems to be stuck in a bubble of political and literary indulgence with out the escape pod of a good story. The stories often are opaque and seem to require a cultural or historical understanding that I do not possess. A bit too much navel gazing. A bit too much assumption that the cultural biases of Malzberg’s generation will be universal and won’t need explanation.
This was a drag to work through. Even the stories that I rated as Great are Great with admiration, but not enjoyment.
Three Stories Make My All-Time Great List:
Police Actions • (1991) • short story by Barry N. Malzberg. Searing look at privilege, imperialism, and utopianism. A group of tourists visit a defeated city and later return home to try a create a utopian metropolis free of class distinctions.
Corridors • (1982) • short story by Barry N. Malzberg. The internal monologue of an aging science fiction writer who has finally achieved a level of small success. Bleak and sad, the author thinks about the personal and emotional costs of ‘wasting your life’ as a scifi writer.
Out from Ganymede • (1972) • short story by Barry N. Malzberg. The perfect fusion of Malzberg’s social and political commentary with science fiction. A man is sent in orbit around Ganymede, where he is met by two aliens who no one knew existed. They tell him to leave and he has no problem with that. The problem is getting the command and control bureaucrats to listen to anything he has to say. This is intercut with the sexual dysfunction of his relationship back on earth.
THE VERY BEST OF BARRY N. MALZBERG
37 STORIES : 3 GREAT / 19 GOOD / 9 AVERAGE / 5 POOR / 0 DNF
A Galaxy Called Rome • (1975) • novelette by Barry N. Malzberg
Good. Recursive meta-fiction about science fiction. Why people write it and why other people read it.
Agony Column • (1971) • short story by Barry N. Malzberg
Good. A series of letters to politicians and magazine editors. The responses show that they don’t understand him at all.
Final War • (1968) • novelette by Barry N. Malzberg
Good. Biting and ironic anti-war story. Two sides are fighting over one estate without either side making any real progress. The balance of power is shifted when one side accidentally bombs their own soldiers. Also, one man keeps trying to get accepted for leave and is rebuffed.
The Wooden Grenade • (2013) • novelette by Barry N. Malzberg (variant of The Sense of the Fire 1967)
Good. A government worker goes into slums to remind people of their obligations. He carried a wooden grenade. We flashback to his military service to learn why the grenade is tragically important to him.
Anderson • (1982) • short story by Barry N. Malzberg
Poor. Barely remembered story of a president and potential nuclear war.
As Between Generations • (1970) • short story by Barry N. Malzberg
Good. Sons ritually ride carts pulled by their fathers. Does it humiliate the fathers or the sons?
Death to the Keeper • (1968) • novelette by Barry N. Malzberg
Good. An actor commits suicide while reenacting an assassination for a investigation tv show.
State of the Art • (1974) • short story by Barry N. Malzberg
Good. Simulations of famous writers like Hemingway, Tolstoy, and Shakespeare meet in the simulation of a Paris café. The situation spirals out of control.
The Only Thing You Learn • (1994) • short story by Barry N. Malzberg
Average. Very short vignette of an (assassin?) who targets someone with the use of a coin in a bar..
Leviticus: In the Ark • (1975) • short story by Barry N. Malzberg
Good. A man losing his faith has to spend time inside of the ark of the covenant. Interesting and unusual.
Police Actions • (1991) • short story by Barry N. Malzberg
Great. Searing look at privilege, imperialism, and utopianism. A group of tourists visit a defeated city and later return home to try an create a utopian metropolis free of class distinctions.
Report to Headquarters • (1975) • short story by Barry N. Malzberg
Poor. A glossary of terms used by the X'Thi race written by an explorer crashed on the planet and facing death.
The Shores of Suitability • (2013) • short story by Barry N. Malzberg (variant of Last Word (Omni, June 1982) 1982)
Good. A writer takes a class about his own novel, which has been canonized, but he can’t deal with the academic analysis of it.
Hop Skip Jump • (1988) • short story by Barry N. Malzberg
Good. Two fundamentalist (angels?) have second thought about destroying millions of lives with holy fire.
To Mark the Times We Had • (1984) • short story by Barry N. Malzberg
Good. Ultra short short that turns on the last line. An actor takes an impersonation job. Written as a play.
What I Did to Blunt the Alien Invasion • (1991) • short story by Barry N. Malzberg
Good. Short and silly story of all the ineffectual and madcap things “done to blunt the alien invasion.”
Shiva • (1999) • short story by Barry N. Malzberg
Good. A time traveler tries to change the past by talking to political figures like Charles DeGaule and Pol Pot, but isn’t believed.
Rocket City • (1982) • short story by Barry N. Malzberg
Good. A family takes their adult son to a museum/theme park about space travel and he spends all his time in the optimistic simulator.
Tap-Dancing Down the Highways and Byways of Life, etc. • (1986) • short story by Barry N. Malzberg
Average. A man repeated fails an urban mugging simulator when he won’t just quietly hand over his money.
Coursing • (1982) • short story by Barry N. Malzberg
Good. A felon is partners with a sexy female ai voice to petition the self-styled “King of the Universe” to be merciful.
Blair House • (1982) • short story by Barry N. Malzberg
Average. Aliens have landed in front of the White House and demand to be given control of Earth. Harry S Truman visits them to negotiate.
Quartermain • (1985) • short story by Barry N. Malzberg
Poor. A man chooses to enact a simulation of Jesus - with himself as Jesus - in the desire that he will have cult leader status after it. Also a very unfulfilling ending.
Playback • (1990) • short story by Barry N. Malzberg
Poor. Mediocre meta-fiction built around Raymond Chandler’s unflattering critique of science fiction.
Corridors • (1982) • short story by Barry N. Malzberg
Great. The internal monologue of an aging science fiction writer who has finally achieved a level of small success. Bleak and sad, the author thinks about the personal and emotional costs of ‘wasting your life’ as a scifi writer.
Icons • (1981) • short story by Barry N. Malzberg
Average. Many people own a Hemingway (clone?) and they keep killing themselves.
Something from the Seventies • [Decades] • (1993) • short story by Barry N. Malzberg
Good. Aliens interrogate a human captive and can’t really believe what he is saying about the 1960s and 70s.
Le Croix • (1980) • novelette by Barry N. Malzberg (variant of Le Croix (The Cross))
Average. Well written prose but overlong and the destination is not worth the drive. In a technocratic future, a man lives out the lives of religious figures including Jesus and a persecuted muslim cleric, but the procedure is having deleterious effects on his sanity and relationships.
The Men's Support Group • (2003) • short story by Barry N. Malzberg
Good. A serious of madcap stories of adultery, death, disease, and sex told by various men at a support group. Interesting in the reality tv, Jerry Springer, style of schadenfreude.
Out from Ganymede • (1972) • short story by Barry N. Malzberg
Great. The perfect fusion of Malzberg’s social and political commentary with science fiction. A man is sent in orbit around Ganymede, where he is met by two aliens who no one knew existed. They tell him to leave and he has no problem with that. The problem is getting the command and control bureaucrats to listen to anything he has to say. This is intercut with the sexual dysfunction of his relationship back on earth.
Kingfish • (1992) • short story by Barry N. Malzberg
Good. Alternate history where Huey Long isn’t assassinated and beats FDR for the presidency as Hitler is coming to power in Germany.
Morning Light • (1991) • short story by Barry N. Malzberg
Poor. A man hops around time and space meeting poets in the moment of their suicide.
The Men Inside • (1972) • novelette by Barry N. Malzberg
Average. A newly graduated Messenger enters a terrifying and bureaucratic medical institute where cancer treatment has become both ritual and violation. He slowly loses his grip on morality, memory, and identity, becoming something more, or less, than human.
Standing Orders • (1993) • short story by Barry N. Malzberg
Average. A man in undergoing some kind of therapy where he cycles though being President and other high-ranking jobs.
Most Politely, Most Politely • (1992) • short story by Barry N. Malzberg
Average. In a fragmented future where clones, cyborgs, and nanotech have blurred the lines of identity and guilt, a series of citizens write increasingly unhinged letters
Moishe in Excelsis • (1994) • short story by Barry N. Malzberg
Average. A reimagined purgatory as jewish/christian bureaucracy
Heliotrope Bouquet Murder Case • (1997) • short fiction by Barry N. Malzberg
Average. In a slow, fevered march through early 20th-century America, Scott Joplin confronts both his declining health and the diminishing legacy of his music.
The Lady Louisiana Toy • (1993) • short story by Barry N. Malzberg
Good. A broken man-detective-hero wanders the galaxy to rescue Lady Louisiana Toy from the Possessors - and in the process transforms the entire universe.
