Immodest Proposals

This book is the first volume of a two-book project that will bring back into print all of the science fiction and fantasy of William Tenn. This first volume, Immodest Proposals, contains the majority of William Tenn's short science fiction. It includes such classic stories as "Child's Play," "Time in Advance," "Down Among the Dead Men," and "On Venus, Have We Got a Rabbi."

The next volume in the series, Here Comes Civilization, will contain the remainder of his short science fiction, the novel Of Men and Monsters, and the short novel A Lamp for Medusa. A volume of his non-fiction, Dancing Naked, was published in September 2004.

Tenn has long been considered one of the major satirists in the field. The Science Fiction Encyclopedia calls him "one of the genre's very few genuinely comic, genuinely incisive writers of short fiction." Theodore Sturgeon had the following to say:

"It would be too wide a generalization to say that every SF satire, every SF comedy and every attempt at witty and biting criticism found in the field is a poor and usually cheap imitation of what this man has been doing since the '40s. [But] his incredibly involved and complex mind can at times produce constructive comment so pointed and astute that the fortunate recipient is permanently improved by it. Admittedly the price may be to create two whole categories for our species: humanity, and William Tenn. For each of which you must create your ethos and your laws. I've done that. And to me it's worth it."

Contents:

Bernie the Scheheradze (Introduction by Connie Willis)

Aliens, Aliens, Aliens:

• Firewater
• Lisbon Cubed
• The Ghost Standard
• The Flat-Eyed Monster
• The Deserter
• Venus and the Seven Sexes
• Party of the Two Parts

Immodest Proposals:

• The Liberation of Earth
• Eastward Ho!
• Null-P
• The Masculinist Revolt
• Brooklyn Project

Some Odd Ones:

• Child's Play
• Wednesday's Child
• My Mother Was a Witch
• The Lemon-Green Spaghetti-Loud Dynamite Dribble Day
• The Tenants
• Generation of Noah
• Down Among the Dead Men

The Future:

• Time in Advance
• The Sickness
• Servant Problem
• A Man of Family
• The Jester
• Project Hush
• Winthrop Was Stubborn

Out There:

• The Dark Star
• Consulate
• The Last Bounce
• Venus Is a Man's World
• Alexander the Bait
• The Custodian
• On Venus, Have We Got a Rabbi

Between them, the collections will include all the stories that appeared in the Tenn collections published in the 1950s and 1960s by Ballantine (The Human Angle, Of All Possible Worlds, The Seven Sexes, The Square Root of Man and The Wooden Star. They will also include the contents of Time in Advance as well as a number of stories that have never before been included in any Tenn collections (such as "On Venus, Have We Got a Rabbi") and the novel Of Men and Monsters.