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    Honeymoon in Hell
    Honeymoon in Hell
    Honeymoon in Hell
    Ebook71 pages

    Honeymoon in Hell

    By Fredric Brown and Paul Di Filippo

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    About this ebook

    A groundbreaking science fiction novelette from the early days of Galaxy magazine—plus a new foreword by Paul Di Filippo.
     
    Appearing in the second issue of Galaxy dated November 1950, Honeymoon in Hell showcased the magazine’s distinctive identity as opposed to other publications of its time—darker, more socially aware, sometimes sexually frank in ways that were shocking for the era. Dealing with copulation and its desired consequences, Honeymoon in Hell avoided euphemisms—and used a satirical attack that parodied magazine taboos.
     
    The covers of pulp magazines depicted monsters putting near-naked females in peril, but the narratives under the cover offered no equivalent. Brown’s hastily married couple, sent to the moon to see if they can breed a male child—all births on Earth over recent months having been female—encounter problems emotional as well as practical. This book includes both the landmark novelette and a new foreword by Paul Di Filippo.
     
    About the series:
     
    Debuting in 1950, Galaxy was science fiction’s most admired, widely circulated, and influential magazine, known for publication of full-length novels, novellas, and novelettes by giants in the field. The Galaxy Project is a selection of the best of Galaxy, with new forewords by some of today’s top writers. Initial selections include work by Ray Bradbury, Fredric Brown, Lester del Rey, Robert A. Heinlein, Damon Knight, C. M. Kornbluth, Walter M. Miller, Jr., Frederik Pohl, Robert Sheckley, Robert Silverberg, William Tenn (Philip Klass), and Kurt Vonnegut. Foreword contributors include Paul Di Filippo, David Drake, John Lutz, Barry N. Malzberg, and Robert Silverberg. The Galaxy Project is committed to publishing new work in the spirit of Galaxy magazine and its founding editor, H. L. Gold
     
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateOct 1, 2011
    ISBN9780795321207
    Honeymoon in Hell

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    Reviews for Honeymoon in Hell

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    • 3/5
      Interesting. Fun but dated.
    • 4/5
      Highly enjoyable collection of stories featuring Brown's unique sense of humor. These are the types of stories that I read when I first encountered Brown, probably in Junior High School. It was only many years later that I discovered his equally (maybe more) fascinating mystery novels, such as "The Screaming Mimi".Reading these stories is, for the most part, like sitting in the room hearing a great storyteller tell tales in person. A few writers are like that--Jack Finney, Stephen King at his best, and certainly Fredric Brown. This book features a variety of stories, some pretty serious science fiction, some of his wonderful short-short stories, one that is made up of a series of puns, and a few that fall in between. The most famous story in the book, "Arena", was the basis of the Star Trek episode where Captain Kirk must battle the alien commander one-on-one to decide the outcome of a war. Other than the basic premise, however, the Star Trek version is very different from Brown's original. Brown's alien isn't reptilian; it is a tentacled rolling thing, but I guess that might have been a little too much for the special effects crew. Brown was a prolific writer. I especially like the fact that he sold two variations of a short-short time travel story to two different magazines in the same year.Although I enjoyed it immensely, most of these stories are less than profound, however, and therefore the 3 1/2 star rating.
    • 4/5
      It's a collection of SF stories from the 1950s. I really enjoyed it, but it does have a very strong 1950s feel. Lots of atom bomb/Cold War stuff. Another reviewer described all this as dated--I prefer to think of it as "of its time". Fredric Brown has a conversational style that I particularly enjoyed.

    Book preview

    Honeymoon in Hell - Fredric Brown

    Honeymoon in Hell

    The Galaxy Project

    Fredric Brown

    Series Editor Barry N. Malzberg

    Copyright

    Honeymoon in Hell

    Copyright © 1950 by World Editions, Inc., renewed 1978 by the Estate of Fredric Brown

    eForeword

    Copyright © 2011 by Paul Di Filippo

    Jacket illustration copyright © 1954 by the Estate of Ed Emshwiller

    Cover art to the electronic edition copyright © 2011 by RosettaBooks, LLC

    Special materials copyright © 2011 by RosettaBooks, LLC

    All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

    Electronic edition published 2011 by RosettaBooks LLC, New York.

    ISBN e-Pub edition: 9780795321207

    Contents

    About Galaxy Magazine

    About Science Fiction Novelettes and Novellas

    About the Author

    About the Author of the eForeword

    About the Jacket

    eForeword

    Honeymoon in Hell

    Chapter I: Too Many Females

    Chapter II: Mission to Luna

    Chapter III: Remotely Married

    Chapter IV: Report to Earth

    ABOUT GALAXY MAGAZINE

    The first issue of Galaxy, dated October 1950, already heralded to the highest standards of the field. The authors it published regularly contributed to the leading magazine Astounding, writing a kind of elegant and humanistic science fiction which although not previously unknown had always been anomalous. Its founding editor, H. L. Gold (1914–1996), was a science fiction writer of some prominence whose editorial background had been in pulp magazines and comic books; however, his ambitions were distinctly literary, and he was deliberately searching for an audience much wider and more eclectic than the perceived audience of science fiction. His goal, he stated, was a magazine whose fiction "Would read like the table of contents of a literary magazine or The Saturday Evening Post of the 21st century, dealing with extrapolation as if it were contemporary." The magazine, although plagued by distribution difficulties and an Italian-based publisher (World Editions), was an immediate artistic success, and when its ownership was transferred with the issue of August 1951 to its printer Robert M. Guinn, it achieved financial stability for the remainder of the decade.

    Galaxy published every notable science fiction writer of its first decade and found in many writers who would become central figures: Robert Sheckley, James E. Gunn, Wyman Guin, and F. L. Wallace, among others. Galaxy revivified older writers such as Frederik Pohl and Alfred Bester (whose first novel, The Demolished Man, was commissioned and directed page by page by Gold). John Campbell fought with Astounding and remained an important editor, and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (inaugurated a year before Galaxy) held to high standards of literary quality while spreading its contents over two fields, but Galaxy was incontestably the 1950s’ flagship magazine for the acidly satiric, sometimes profoundly comic aspect of its best contributions. Galaxy had a lasting effect not only upon science fiction but upon literature itself. J.G. Ballard stated that he had been deeply affected by Galaxy. Alan Arkin, an actor who became a star after 1960 and won an Oscar in the new millennium, contributed two stories in the mid-fifties.

    At this point Gold was succumbing to agoraphobia, physical ills, and overall exhaustion (some of this perhaps attributable to his active service during WWII) against which he had struggled from the outset. (There is creditable evidence that Frederik Pohl was the de facto editor during Gold’s last years.) Gold would return some submissions with notes like: Garbage, Absolute Crap. Isaac Asimov noted in his memoir Anthony Boucher wrote rejection slips which read like acceptances. And Horace wrote notes of acceptance which felt like rejections. Despite this, the magazine retained most of its high standard and also some of its regular contributors (William Tenn, Robert Sheckley, Pohl himself). Others could no longer bear Gold’s imperiousness and abusiveness.

    ABOUT SCIENCE FICTION NOVELETTES AND NOVELLAS

    In the view of James E. Gunn, science fiction as a genre finds its peak in the novella (17,500–40,000 words) and novelette (7,500–17,500 words). Both forms have the length to develop ideas and characters fully but do not suffer from padding or the hortatory aspect present in most modern science fiction novels. The longer story-form has existed since science fictions inception with the April 1926 issue of Amazing Stories, but Galaxy developed the form to a consistent level of sophistication and efficiency and published more notable stories of sub-novel length than any other magazine during the 50s…and probably in any decade.

    The novella and novelette as forms make technical and conceptual demands greater, perhaps even greater than the novel, and Galaxy writers, under founding editor H. L. Gold’s

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