NOT THIS AUGUST This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. NOT THIS AUGUST Copyright © 1955 by C. M. Kornbluth All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form. First Tor printing: December 1981 Second printing: November 1986 A TOR Book Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc. 49 West 24 Street New York, N.Y. 10010 Cover art by Tom Kidd ISBN: 0-812-54318-1 CAN. ED.: 0-812-54319-X Printed in the United States of America 0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Introduction: NOT THIS AUGUST FREDERIK POHL In the mid-1950s, The New York Sunday News had close to the largest circulation of any newspaper in the world. It was, accordingly, edited for a lowest common denominator of taste and sophistication. Lots of sports. Lots of pictures. Lots of short, simple sentences, with lots of one-syllable words. The News paid little attention to books, least of all to science-fiction books. Nevertheless, on August 14th, 1955, News readers opening to the editorial page were confronted with a photograph of a science-fiction writer named C.M. Kornbluth, and a full-length lead editorial devoted entirely to "a new novel which we think you'll find hard to put down once you've started it: 'Not This August,' by C.M. Kornbluth .... We hope that it may have the widest possible circulation." The editorial is unsigned, but whoever wrote it obviously liked the book; the column is sprinkled with phrases like "masterly skill" and compares Not This August with 1984—to the disadvantage of 1984. As far as I know, the News has never since given so much attention to a science-fiction novel, and of course it took an unusual sort of science-fiction novel to bring it about then. Not This August is cautionary science fiction, in the great tradition of 1984—and of Brave New World, On the Beach and many others. It is not meant as prediction. It is only meant as a warning. It doesn't say what will happen, positively, but what may happen, if… Not This August was first published a quarter of a century ago and, until this new edition was in preparation, I had not read it since it first came out. I didn't know if it would stand up after all those years; but when I took it up again it gripped me from the first page, and kept me turning pages until the end, and left me wishing for more when it was done. History did not go the way Cyril Kornbluth outlined in this book when he was writing in the gritty, mean 1950s. But the essence of the novel is still true. Reading this novel about a future that might have happened, but didn't, leaves a bittersweet taste in my mouth. Cyril Kornbluth was my close friend, valued collaborator and esteemed author of a disproportionate share of the best science fiction being written in the years around 1950. The bitterness rises from the fact that his career came to an abrupt end not long after Not This August appeared. When Cyril was twenty he went off to fight in World War II. He carried a 50-caliber heavy machine-gun around the battle of the Ardennes Forest and did himself permanent harm. His heart was stretched past its capacity to heal, and in 1958 he died of it. I think he might have lived to be the greatest of us all, because he was certainly heading in that direction. But when he died—at the age of 34!—he left a handful of books of his own, a few more written in collaboration with Judith Merril or with me, a few dozen short stories and novelettes—and a lasting regret. He was just beginning to hit his stride. Cyril Kornbluth was born in New York City in 1923, narrowly escaped crib death in his first year, at the age of five was rescued by his brother while attempting to make revolver cartridges go bang with a hammer, and then, while still a high-school student, discovered the world of science fiction. We met when Cyril became a member of the New York Futurians, the sf-fan-cum would-be writer group that produced Isaac Asimov, James Blish, Damon Knight and a good many others who made a mark in science fiction. Cyril was probably the youngest Futurian in 1938, and very likely the most talented: short, plump, unathletic, cynical, he fit right in. Cyril was one of the brightest people I have ever known, but not much of that quick intelligence showed up academically. At fifteen, he was already beginning to write. By sixteen he was beginning to sell, and likely enough he could not see much relevance in what he was studying in George Washington High School to the life of a novelist that was beginning to seem possible. Likely enough he was right. Novelists need to know a great many things, but not very many of them are taught in schools. One teacher made an impression. Her name was Mary J. J. Wrinn, a poet herself, who had published a text on poetry called The Golden Treasury. Cyril carried the book around to read on the long subway trips from Inwood, last Manhattan outpost south of the Bronx, to Flatbush, where the Futurians usually met in Brooklyn, and when I saw it I begged to borrow it. It described every formal verse form, from the sestina to the chant royale, and for a month or two Cyril and I competed in writing sonnets and villanelles—an exercise I still recommend to any would-be writer. It was Mary Wrinn's hope that Cyril would become a major poet, and I think it might have happened if he had not preferred science fiction. Partly economics were involved. Cyril's father was a Civil Service court attendant. It was a good job and a responsible one, but not calculated to create a family fortune. It was clear to Cyril that whatever he did with his life he would have to support himself at it. In those terms, science fiction held a more promising future. (Considering the minute space rates science-fiction writers earned in the 1930s, think of how much that says about the lot of the poet!) At any rate, Cyril's grades were not distinguished, by the standards of George Washington High School. In his senior year he applied for entrance to City College and was turned down because of his grades. His father diagnosed the situation easily enough—not lack of ability, simple lack of incentive—and so he offered Cyril $5 to take a special entrance examination and pass it, which, of course, Cyril did with ease. Cyril's school record was not nearly as impressive as that of his straight-A schoolmate, young Heinz Kissinger—but all Kissinger grew up to be was Secretary of State. In preparing Not This August for its new publication I have taken the liberty of making a few textual changes. This is not done to deceive, only to eliminate some jarring anachronisms. What the book has to say is unchanged. One could object to Not This August as a failed prediction, but of course it was never meant that way. That is one of the great virtues of cautionary science fiction. The story need not come true to be valuable—in fact, no one wants it to come true, the author least of all. What Cyril Kornbluth wanted us to know when he wrote Not This August was that there were grave dangers in the world—there still are, and much the same dangers; and that averting or rectifying those dangers presented graver dangers still, as the ending shows. And those, too, are unfortunately still present, and still need to be guarded against. But it is not for the heuristic and normative values of science fiction that most people read it—thank heaven! We read it for fun, especially for the ironical, surprising insights that illuminate the world we live in. Cyril Kornbluth was about as good at giving us those startling insights as any science-fiction writer who ever lived. Not This August is vintage Kornbluth—witty, powerful and illuminating—and I am more pleased than I can say to see it available once more. —Frederik Pohl "Not this August, nor this September; you have this year to do what you like. Not next August, nor next September; that is still too soon ... But the year after that or the year after that they fight." Ernest Hemingway Notes on the Next War BOOK 1 CHAPTER ONE The blackest day in the history of the United States started like any other day for Billy Justin. Thirty-seven years old, once a free-lance commercial artist, a pensioned veteran of Korea, he was now a dairy farmer, and had been during the three years of the war. It was that or be drafted to a road crew—with great luck, a factory bench. He rose, therefore, at five-fifteen, shut off his alarm clock, and went, bleary-eyed, in bathrobe and slippers, to milk his eight cows. He hefted the milk cans to the platform for the pickup truck of the Eastern Milkshed Administration and briefly considered washing out the milking machine and pails as he ought to. He then gave a disgusted look at his barn, his house, his fields—the things that once were supposed to afford him a decent, dignified retirement and had become instead vampires of his leisure—and shambled back to bed. At the more urbane hour of ten he really got up and had breakfast, including an illegal egg withheld from his quota. Over unspeakably synthetic coffee he consulted the electricity bulletin tacked to his kitchen wall and sourly muttered: "Goody." Today was the day Chiunga County rural residents got four hours of juice—ten-thirty to two-thirty. The most important item was recharging his car battery. He vaguely understood that it ruined batteries to just stand when they were run down. Still in bathrobe and slippers he went to his sagging garage, unbolted the corroded battery terminals, and clipped on the leads from the trickle charger that hung on the wall. ...
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