C. M. Kornbluth (1923–1958)

1952's 'The Altar at Midnight' is set in a future that's pretty much as things were in the 20th century, except we have regular space travel - at least to the moon, Mars, and Venus.

Our narrator is unnamed until the end. He's in a bar when he sees a young man disfigured by 'redlines' on his skin and hard radiation scars on his eyes. He's a spacer. They talk and drink. The narrator takes the spacer to 'Gandytown,' the place where the disabled railroad workers hang out. We meet them and learn what disabled them, as we also learn what disfigures spacers. The spacer gets lucky with one woman. The narrator and spacer take a walk. The spaceman calls out a speaker in the park. They part. The narrator sees to it that the young man gets safely to the Y.M.C.A. We learn what wrecked the narrator's life.

For such a brief story, Mr. Kornbluth managed to convey quite a bit about some of those to whom Life Has Not Been Kind.
Notes:

1. A rum blossom is a big red nose with large pores and widened blood vessals. People thought it comes from drinking alcohol too much, but rhinophyma (the medical term) can happen to people who don't drink alcohol.

2. Skid Row is the run-down part of a town or city. Alcoholics, drug addicts, and persons down on their luck (don't have much money or are in a bad situation) live there. Skid Row can be violent and dangerous.

3. In this case, a 'Boxcar Bertha' is a female hobo, not the union organizer.

4. To be on a soap box or be a soap-boxer is someone who talks to crowds in public, standing on something to raise them up.

5. To be mush-mouthed (also spelled 'mushmouthed) is to speak with a voice so low it's hard to hear or mumbling.

6. 'Miz' is Southern dialect for what we now spell as 'Ms.'

7. To be in the doghouse means to be in trouble with one's spouse or boss.… (més)

1953's 'Shark Ship' is a disturbing novelette about yet another dystopian future Earth. It's been generations since the convoys of gigantic ships, each with 20,000 inhabitants, left the land to live in the Atlantic ocean. We're dealing with the 75 ships of the Grenville Convoy, launched from Newport News, Virginia, 141 years ago. It's the southern spawning season, and everyone old enough to work is working hard. If they don't harvest enough food to last for six months (until the northern spawning season), they'll starve. Each fleet patrols two degrees of the ocean.

We learn about their way of life and their ships' construction. 20,000 persons per ship is necessary because they have to constantly search for corrosion and oil what they find. Couples are allowed two children, the replacement rate. If a ship loses its net, it and its inhabitants are abandoned by the convoy because there isn't enough material to make a new one.

Captain Salter of Ship Starboard 30 has to help his people when their net is lost in a storm. The ship makes its way to New York City. What they find there (and the flashback that tells us how it got that way) is worthy of a horror movie. I do appreciate the fact that Yeoman Jewel Flyte is the quickest and most imaginative thinker among the team.

Notes: 1. Higher ranks may be required to be celibate (unmarried) to avoid nepotism, but chasity (no sex) doesn't seem to be required since Salter had a mistress. The ships stick to a two-kids-only rule, so some form of birth control is probably available.
2. Mae Bush and Rip Torn were actors.
3. "Alien" in this case means "not from our country". (I'm the daughter of a science fiction fan. I was a senior in high school before I realized an alien could be someone from another country instead of another planet.)… (més)

1951's 'With These Hands' seems even more timely with the advent of artificially intelligence art. Poor Roald Halvorsen is a genuine artist in a post-nuclear war [Europe, anyway] era in which the public would rather have 'art' by stereopantograph, using a machine called an 'esthetikon'.

The story opens with Halvorsen losing a commission to create the Stations of the Cross in bronze because the Catholic Church has decided that stereopantograph may be used at a diocese's discretion. That leaves Halvorsen with only his pupils for a meager income.

He meets Lucretia Grumman, who wants to be a student. Her boyfriend, Austin Malone, actually buys one of his pieces. Too bad Halvorsen is faling for Lucretia.

At the end of the story, Halversen finally fulfills his wish to see Milles' Orpheus Fountain, which is real, but it's in Stockholm, Sweden, not Copenhagen Denmark (as I found when I looked it up). That isn't quite a happy ending.… (més)