Clik here to view.
From 1945 to 1975, P. Schuyler Miller reviewed science fiction books for Astounding Science Fiction and Analog Science Fiction. He died in October of 1974. I stumbled upon an online PDF collection of those reviews from 1945-1967. You can download that file here. (Warning – it’s 235MB.)
Unfortunately, the individual reviews aren’t dated and the run is far from complete. However, the PDF is searchable, and you can use ISFDB.org to date an individual review. Just look up the book title, then scroll down to the Reviews section, and find the one for Miller. Someday I’d like to create a file of all of Miller’s reviews from 1945-1975.
I put this PDF on my iPad and read it like a book. It’s wonderful. The reviews start before science fiction was regularly published in book form. Whoever collected these reviews evidently picked those they thought interesting to modern readers. Collectively, they have a history of science fiction published before 1968. For example, the early reviews cover books published before science fiction was a genre. Then we started seeing books from Gnome and Fantasy Press, essentially fan publishers. After that, we slowly see big name New York publishers take chances on the genre along with the rise of mass market paperback publishers.
We get to read the original reviews of books now remembered as genre classics and books that have since been forgotten. Often I read reviews of forgotten books that sound interesting enough to track down.
The first two reviews are books by Vardis Fisher: Darkness and the Deep and The Golden Rooms (April 1945). These books imagine life when Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon coexisted. Popular writers like H. G. Wells, Jack London, and Stephen Vincent Benet, also wrote on this theme. It wasn’t considered science fiction then, but our genre has claimed that theme since.
Here’s that first review:
Clik here to view.
Clik here to view.
Clik here to view.
Clik here to view.
Most book reviews in science fiction magazines are short blurbs. Miller writes comprehensive essays. As the years progress, Miller’s reviews become more elaborate, longer, often beginning with some science fiction history. The next review is of The Time Stream by John Taine (March 1947). Miller does more than describe and react to the novel, giving the background of how that story fits in the genre, and biographical information on the author. He compares Taine’s work to A. Merritt’s, and points out how Taine’s work originally appeared in hardback, while Merritt’s stories were serialized in magazines first. I’ve not read Taine or Merritt, but I’ve often read about both in histories of science fiction. This review makes me want to try The Time Stream. These reviews also give me information about collecting original editions. (Amazon has a Kindle edition of The Time Stream for $2.99.) Here’s Miller’s review.
Clik here to view.
Clik here to view.
I decided to jump to June 1954 and read the review for The Lights in the Sky are Stars by Fredric Brown, the science fiction novel I’m currently reading. By now Miller’s columns are longer. He reviews more books each month, so each review is shorter. That’s because far more SF books are being published every month. Since October 1951, they come under the title “The Reference Library.” (That’s where I steal the image above for this post.) Miller often begins his columns with a digression exploring topics related to current publishing.
Clik here to view.
Clik here to view.
I thought I’d test Miller on something hard. This is his review for Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein from the January 1962 issue of Analog. I’m including his essay in the introduction as a sample of how he composed his columns.
Clik here to view.
Clik here to view.
Clik here to view.
Clik here to view.
Clik here to view.
Clik here to view.
Clik here to view.
That should give you enough examples to decide on downloading the entire collection of Miller’s reviews. If you’re reading on a computer with a large monitor, I have a page I’m working on that links to Miller’s reviews in issues of Astounding and Analog at Archive.org. You can read each column one at a time on screen.
P. Schuyler Miller also wrote some science fiction. I own this first edition of The Titan with a beautiful Hannes Bok cover.
Clik here to view.
Clik here to view.
James Wallace Harris, 3/5/25