Reading THE CIA BOOK CLUB: The Secret Mission to Win the Cold War With Forbidden Literature by Charlie English felt profoundly unsettling. Despite the title, this is primarily a history of Poland’s solidarity movement and Communist Poland, particularly when they try to break the resistance foreshadows what we’re seeing in the US today: ruthless repression, detention, constant monitoring and spying, intolerance for anyone questioning the state, a desire to control everything the people read, learn or watch. Against this we have a resistance that refuses to stop and struggles to keep pushing for freedom and reporting on what the regime is really doing.
(There’s a school of thought that objects it’s not enough to compare Republicans to tyrants, you have to pick the right tyrants — Jim Crow states a century ago, the banana republics America propped up in Latin America rather than looking at Nazi Germany or the Communist Bloc. I think they now resemble all these things and I’ll use whichever comparison works in a given post).
The title refers to the CIA program spreading banned literature in Poland and other Soviet-dominated states (1984 was very popular) and helping underwrite the Poles’ own underground newspapers and publishing efforts. This program is fascinating, and largely ignored even in the CIA’s own histories; English suggests it’s because the agency prefers seeing itself as James Bond, not Barnes and Noble. Still the emphasis is so much on Poland I suspect that was English’s real interest and he highlighted the CIA purely for an American hook. It’s a good book, regardless.
ROBOTS HAVE NO TAILS collects Henry Kuttner’s stories (in the introduction CL Moore confirms they’re 100 percent her husband’s work rather than one of their many collaborations) of Galloway Gallegher, an inventor who does his best work when he’s too drunk to know that what he’s creating is impossible (if you find heavy drinking and alcoholism inappropriate for humor this is not the book for you). In one story he wakes up from an alcoholic blackout to find he has three clients demanding the miracle solution to their problems he promised; the only thing he’s invented is a machine that disintegrates dirt and sings drinking songs.
In my favorite story “This World Is Mine,” Gallagher discovers he’s built a time machine that’s brought three cuddly, rabbit-like Martians to Earth from the future; having read lots of science fiction they know it’s their destiny to conquer Earth with their terrifying superweapons, would he please build them one? Oh, and the time machine also keeps materializing his murdered corpse on the lawn … Kuttner seems to have as much fun with the future’s byzantine legal system as he does the SF but it’s funny stuff regardless.
All rights to images remain with current holders. Don’t know either cover artist.
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