Three books by Eric Frank Russell

I’ve read Men, Martians and Machines, and another Ace Double with Six Worlds Yonder and The Space Willies. many times since I was a child. The unifying theme here is: written by English sci fi humorist Eric Frank Russell.

I’m pretty sure I got Men, Martians and Machines at a garage sale. I vaguely recall getting two books for a quarter, but I can’t for the life of me remember what the other book was. I’m now 64, I’ve still got that crappy, garage sale paperback.

The cover art is ridiculous. The spaceship is modeled on Wernher von Braun’s Moonship. What I identified as spacesuits are modeled after medieval knight’s armor. Russel imagines interstellar, faster than light, spaceships as needing a largish crew, the titular “men” and “martians”. The crew of his starships are not only multi-racial, but multi-planetary. The “machine” part is Jay Score (or “J20”), the first officer of the starship, apparently some kind of humanoid robot. The grim, militaristic mood of the cover doesn’t match EFR’s dry, sardonic stories at all.

The book is a collection of pulp stories with thematic similarities, and continuity of characters. They’re not bad, outside of the FTL starship. This book was my childhood introduction to “dry” English humor. As a child, I did not “hear” the characters speak in English accents, but as an adult, I recognize the characters refusal to be flustered or acknowledge confusion or fear as one of those “ideals” of pre-WW2 British culture. I definitely should have heard some or all of the characters in a variety of UK accents.

Russel wasn’t as good with non-human, sentient beings as Frank Herbert was. His Martians are hastily sketched characters. As a culture, they have a fascination with human chess, which is mainly played for laughs.

The other two books are kind of a cheat. They were published together as an Ace Double. Ace Doubles consisted of two smaller novels bound back-to-back and upside down relative to each other.

I got the double volume from the NMSU student union bookstore. I have a recollection this was after a webelos Cub Scout meeting, so I would have been 10 or 11 years old. My mom believed that I and this other kid, David Stokes, were supposed to get a ride home with my dad. My dad either believed otherwise, or more likely, forgot. It was a bizarre evening for me, trying to find my father on the NMSU (now Truman State) campus where he worked, then convince him that he needed to drive David Stokes home. Calling my dad a creature of habit would be immensely understating things. He had no sense of direction, nor could he follow driving directions. I have a very faint belief that my father bought me this book to buy me off, keep me from explaining to my mom what a debacle the evening was.

Six short stories set in a literary universe where humans are expanding through the galaxy aided by non-relativistic, faster-than-light interstellar travel. Difficulties with cross-species communication and the limits of information theory are the sources of conflict.

This book is a master class in depicting insubordinate military characters, a small scale rival of Catch 22. It was really eye-opening for a midwestern kid. I only had the nerve to try surrealist backtalk on peer bullies. I wonder if it would have worked on teachers or Vice Principals in charge of giving swats with a wooden paddle.

Apparently there were multiple editions of the Space Willies story, of different lengths, with different titles. I’ve only read this one.

A true sci fi humor classic.