Horace Gold’s editorial persona at GALAXY magazine was devoted to the proposition that the only way to tell the truth was through the back door and in costume; PARTY OF THE TWO PARTS (August 1954) is the most savage meditation on and destruction of pornography and its industry which had been published at the time it appeared, but William Tenn made sure that it was so funny that it could slide by as wicked comedy. By mid-1954 Philip Klass, the purveyor of this pseudonym, had settled fully into his role as the deadliest and most effective satirist of that group of satirists (Kornbluth, Knight, Sheckley) who had been nurtured by Gold into the central voices of his magazine. The hapless alien merchant of this novelette, an entrapped ameboid alien fugitive, deliberately circulates photographs of ameboid reproduction to Terran publishers of biology textbooks. For Terran schoolchildren the photographs are instruction, to the Cosmic Cops they are the most graphic and prurient of pornography and they seek his extradition. “Not pornography on Earth!” the alien’s lawyers protest, “Absolute pornography on his home planet!” respond the Cosmic Cops. The legal complexities and tirades expand. Seven years before LADY CHATTERLEY was hauled into the Supreme Court, Tenn’s portrayal of the matter is more expansive. “One of the twenty greatest science fiction stories and surely the funniest” ENGINES OF THE NIGHT notes.

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.

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