Rocket Summer 2026 a Reading Report Extra

from Jeff Baker

The cover depicts “Git Along” by De Camp. The lizard on top is wearing a cowboy hat…

“Rocket Summer” is being done by a lot of Book Tubers on You Tube, a reading event started by Michael K. Vaughn where this year we are reading Science Fiction, usually the classic stuff, especially from the Fifties and before. I don’t always do these reading events, but this time I am, mainly to read some things I haven’t but should. So, I decided to finally read L. Sprague de Camp’s collection “The Continent Makers,” his stories of the “Viagens Interplanetarias” which I got about 25 years ago. (NOTE: Written in the ‘50s it is basically ‘30s-style Sword-and-Planet Space Opera with hints of sex. My copy came out in the 70s and the blurb calls it “One of the great mind-blowing SF flights of all time.” As well as “Destination: Future Shock!” Promising a 70s mind-trip, which is like promising them “The Monkees” and showing them “The People’s Choice.” These stories are good but they aren’t 60s trippy stuff!)

And I couldn’t find my copy of the paperback at first! So I looked up ISFD and grabbed a couple of books I had that have a couple of the stories and read from them!

First off: The Galton Whistle” (by de Camp.) Great fun, perfect descriptions of the alien world. I thought I knew where the plot was going (I’ve read a lot of de Camp!) but I was wrong! The hero has a clever plan (very scientific of course!) and then there is some derring do and swordplay.

And I read the story in Gardner Dozois’ 1990s anthology “The Good Old Stuff” which has a Murray Leinster story I’ve been meaning to read, so that is fortuitous!

Out of “The Best Of L. Sprague de Camp” I read “The Inspector’s Teeth,” another Viagens tale. This is a more deliberate college comedy set in the late 2000s but feeling like the 1920s-College era.

From the paperback of “The Continent Makers,” (Which I finally found!) I read de Camp’s “Summer Wear.” Think of it as a 1930s black and white movie set on a spaceship instead of a train. It involves the fashion industry, their representatives and some skulduggery with sample cases. All going to the Planet Osiris. (All at less-than-light-speed with no hyperspace because de Camp didn’t believe in that. Which actually enhances these stories!) The science-fictional touches involving 21^st Century locks are nice touches and there’s an additional surprise at the end. Enlivened with de Camp’s humor the stories (he later set some novels in this world) are his only real science fiction/science fantasy series. The attitudes towards women are right out of the 1940s/’50s, the time these stories were written.

There’s a lot of variety in these de Camp stories and he cited “Git Along” as a favorite when he picked it for a Derleth Author’s Choice anthology (“The Outer Reaches,” 1951.) Like “The Sheriff Of Canyon Gulch” (see below) it’s a riff on the then very-popular Western genre, This time the cowboy emulation is instigated by Darius Koshay who has fled arrest from Sol’s solar system to the planet Osiris in the Procyon system.

Here I will mention in a brief Author’s Note to the book, de Camp quickly and concisely explains the well-thought-out background to his Future History.

Koshay figures he has a perfect scam going but then the man he impersonates shows up and I won’t spoil it for you! Again, the avoidance of faster-than-light travel helps the plot along and the comedy works perfectly. (“The Western United States is as civilized as any place! I know because I have been there! They have plumbing, libraries…”) Blended with de Camp’s typical use of foreign words and phrases to make it seem truly like an alien world. (I kept imagining actor John Banner playing Koshay’s rival in this!)

Also from “The Good Old Stuff” I read a Murray Leinster story I’ve been meaning to read: “Exploration Team.” After the two de Camp stories I missed de Camp’s humor in this one initially. And the story was slow going at the beginning but the pace picked up as it went along and I really got into it. An inhospitable planet, an explorer who shouldn’t be there, friendly mutant Kodiak Bears who double as fierce warriors, (and they are needed!) An indescribable and truly alien menace and then a visiting member of a Colonial Survey wondering where the colony went. This leads to a harrowing, adventureous and well-done journey through dangerous territory on a rescue mission.

Leinster was called “the Dean of Science Fiction Writers,” and here he shows why. Fine worldbuilding, entertaining characters a frightening menace and some clever touches make it an entertaining read.

More bears now but of a different kind. Read Poul Anderson and Gordon R. Dickenson’s “The Sheriff Of Canyon Gulch,” the first of their “Hoka” stories. Amazingly, I’ve never read them! I laughed out loud in a couple of places! Every possible stereotype of cowboys and (so help me) “injuns.” But the cowboys are teddy-bear aliens and the indians are lizard people with shootin’ irons on the planet Toka. Courtesy of Earth explorers who left behind western movies and books (long before “Star Trek’s” episode about gangsters.)

In the middle of it all is a hapless Earthman who gets assigned to be their contact with the “Interbeing League.”

It’s all in “The Sound And the Furry: The Complete Hoka Stories,” that SFBC put out 20 years or so ago. Great fun!

And I finally sat down and read Nathaniel Hawthorne’s story “Rappaccini’s Daughter.” It counts as early science fiction (1844!) and is very much Gothic Romance/Horror and was great! Even if I kind of already knew the plot!

And I polished off “Rocket Summer” by reading some more early science-fiction: Guy De Maupassant’s legendary story “The Horla,” in an excellent translation from the French where the prose flows and the descriptions are beautiful.

Contrasting with the story which is a tale of terror as our narrator is shadowed by an invisible something. Or is he delusional? The story never specifies, and it is the human actions in the finale that are really terrifying!

I’ll list the translators in the book, not sure who did “The Horla.” They are: M. Walter Dunne, Dora Knowlton Ranous and W. Bob Holland. My highest regards for their work on this volume.

The book is M. Grant Kellermeyer’s fine Oldstyle Press edition of “The Horla And Others.” https://www.oldstyletales.com/