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Robots Have No Tails
Hounded by creditors and heckled by an uncooperative robot, binge-drinking inventor Galloway Gallegher must solve the mystery of his own machines before his dodgy financing and reckless lifestyle catch up with him! This complete collection of Kuttner's five classic "Gallegher" stories presents the author at the height of his imaginative genius.
Time Locker - When the spoils of a huge confidence scam disappear into a mysterious locker that opens a window into the future, a drunk inventor and a crooked lawyer must track down the loot before time runs out.
The World is Mine - Three soft-spoken, fuzzy Martians declare their intentions to conquer Earth while Gallegher attempts to solve his own murder.
The Proud Robot - Vox-View Pictures and Sonatone are at war over new technology, and only Galloway Gallegher and his harebrained new robot Joe hold the key to unlocking the secret of Audience Appeal.
Gallegher Plus - Three mysterious jobs, one crazy invention, an alphabetical drinking contest, and two versions of the inventor who played by ear - Galloway Gallegher and his remarkable drunken genius alter-ego, Gallegher Plus!
Ex Machina - When a client goes missing with 50,000 credits, the law comes calling for Galloway Gallegher. A binge drinking session is just the thing to allow Gallegher's brilliant subconscious to emerge and save the day, but what weird critter keeps stealing all the liquor?
Time Locker - When the spoils of a huge confidence scam disappear into a mysterious locker that opens a window into the future, a drunk inventor and a crooked lawyer must track down the loot before time runs out.
The World is Mine - Three soft-spoken, fuzzy Martians declare their intentions to conquer Earth while Gallegher attempts to solve his own murder.
The Proud Robot - Vox-View Pictures and Sonatone are at war over new technology, and only Galloway Gallegher and his harebrained new robot Joe hold the key to unlocking the secret of Audience Appeal.
Gallegher Plus - Three mysterious jobs, one crazy invention, an alphabetical drinking contest, and two versions of the inventor who played by ear - Galloway Gallegher and his remarkable drunken genius alter-ego, Gallegher Plus!
Ex Machina - When a client goes missing with 50,000 credits, the law comes calling for Galloway Gallegher. A binge drinking session is just the thing to allow Gallegher's brilliant subconscious to emerge and save the day, but what weird critter keeps stealing all the liquor?
160 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1952
72 people are currently reading
776 people want to read
About the author
Henry Kuttner
678books197followersHenry Kuttner was, alone and in collaboration with his wife, the great science fiction and fantasy writer C.L. Moore, one of the four or five most important writers of the 1940s, the writer whose work went furthest in its sociological and psychological insight to making science fiction a human as well as technological literature. He was an important influence upon every contemporary and every science fiction writer who succeeded him. In the early 1940s and under many pseudonyms, Kuttner and Moore published very widely through the range of the science fiction and fantasy pulp markets.
Their fantasy novels, all of them for the lower grade markets like Future, Thrilling Wonder, and Planet Stories, are forgotten now; their science fiction novels, Fury and Mutant, are however well regarded. There is no question but that Kuttner's talent lay primarily in the shorter form; Mutant is an amalgamation of five novelettes and Fury, his only true science fiction novel, is considered as secondary material. There are, however, 40 or 50 shorter works which are among the most significant achievements in the field and they remain consistently in print. The critic James Blish, quoting a passage from Mutant about the telepathic perception of the little blank, silvery minds of goldfish, noted that writing of this quality was not only rare in science fiction but rare throughout literature: "The Kuttners learned a few thing writing for the pulp magazines, however, that one doesn't learn reading Henry James."
In the early 1950s, Kuttner and Moore, both citing weariness with writing, even creative exhaustion, turned away from science fiction; both obtained undergraduate degrees in psychology from the University of Southern California and Henry Kuttner, enrolled in an MA program, planned to be a clinical psychologist. A few science fiction short stories and novelettes appeared (Humpty Dumpty finished the Baldy series in 1953). Those stories -- Home There Is No Returning, Home Is the Hunter, Two-Handed Engine, and Rite of Passage -- were at the highest level of Kuttner's work. He also published three mystery novels with Harper & Row (of which only the first is certainly his; the other two, apparently, were farmed out by Kuttner to other writers when he found himself incapable of finishing them).
Henry Kuttner died suddenly in his sleep, probably from a stroke, in February 1958; Catherine Moore remarried a physician and survived him by almost three decades but she never published again. She remained in touch with the science fiction community, however, and was Guest of Honor at the World Convention in Denver in 198l. She died of complications of Alzheimer's Disease in 1987.
His pseudonyms include:
Edward J. Bellin
Paul Edmonds
Noel Gardner
Will Garth
James Hall
Keith Hammond
Hudson Hastings
Peter Horn
Kelvin Kent
Robert O. Kenyon
C. H. Liddell
Hugh Maepenn
Scott Morgan
Woodrow Wilson Smith
Charles Stoddard
Their fantasy novels, all of them for the lower grade markets like Future, Thrilling Wonder, and Planet Stories, are forgotten now; their science fiction novels, Fury and Mutant, are however well regarded. There is no question but that Kuttner's talent lay primarily in the shorter form; Mutant is an amalgamation of five novelettes and Fury, his only true science fiction novel, is considered as secondary material. There are, however, 40 or 50 shorter works which are among the most significant achievements in the field and they remain consistently in print. The critic James Blish, quoting a passage from Mutant about the telepathic perception of the little blank, silvery minds of goldfish, noted that writing of this quality was not only rare in science fiction but rare throughout literature: "The Kuttners learned a few thing writing for the pulp magazines, however, that one doesn't learn reading Henry James."
In the early 1950s, Kuttner and Moore, both citing weariness with writing, even creative exhaustion, turned away from science fiction; both obtained undergraduate degrees in psychology from the University of Southern California and Henry Kuttner, enrolled in an MA program, planned to be a clinical psychologist. A few science fiction short stories and novelettes appeared (Humpty Dumpty finished the Baldy series in 1953). Those stories -- Home There Is No Returning, Home Is the Hunter, Two-Handed Engine, and Rite of Passage -- were at the highest level of Kuttner's work. He also published three mystery novels with Harper & Row (of which only the first is certainly his; the other two, apparently, were farmed out by Kuttner to other writers when he found himself incapable of finishing them).
Henry Kuttner died suddenly in his sleep, probably from a stroke, in February 1958; Catherine Moore remarried a physician and survived him by almost three decades but she never published again. She remained in touch with the science fiction community, however, and was Guest of Honor at the World Convention in Denver in 198l. She died of complications of Alzheimer's Disease in 1987.
His pseudonyms include:
Edward J. Bellin
Paul Edmonds
Noel Gardner
Will Garth
James Hall
Keith Hammond
Hudson Hastings
Peter Horn
Kelvin Kent
Robert O. Kenyon
C. H. Liddell
Hugh Maepenn
Scott Morgan
Woodrow Wilson Smith
Charles Stoddard
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 54 reviews
March 26, 2012
Originally released in 1952 by the early sci-fi/fantasy publisher Gnome Press, the meaninglessly titled "Robots Have No Tails" collects the five stories that Henry Kuttner wrote featuring the drunken inventor Galloway Gallegher. (As to that title, in the book's original introduction by Kuttner's equally celebrated wife, C.L. Moore, she tells us that her husband was at a loss for an appropriate name for this collection, and so told the publisher, "I can't think of one. Call it anything you like. Call it 'Robots Have No Tails' if you want to.") The stories here all originally appeared in the most celebrated sci-fi magazine of the era, John W. Campbell's "Astounding Science-Fiction," and despite the fact that most of Kuttner and Moore's output after their 1940 marriage was written in collaboration, Moore reveals that these Gallegher stories--four from 1943 and one from 1948--were written by Kuttner alone, under one of the team's many pen names, Lewis Padgett. Combining hard sci-fi with a large dose of slapstick, anarchic humor, these Gallegher tales have proven to be some of Kuttner's most enduring and popular creations. In each of them, the sodden scientist invents some kind of miraculous gadget while he is swizzled, and upon sobering up, cannot for the life of him remember what the device is good for. And this leads to all kinds of outrageous situations with the customers for whom the devices were commissioned in the first place!
The collection kicks off with what is probably the least of the tales, "Time Locker" (from the Jan. '43 "ASF"). In this one, Gallegher's latest gizmo--a storage cabinet that tucks objects away a few million years in the future--is used by a crooked lawyer to cache some purloined bonds. But things get a little out of hand, in this short but decidedly loopy story, and capped by one mindblower of a finale. In "The World Is Mine" (June '43 "ASF"), Gallegher's new time machine accidentally brings to Earth the Lybblas: small, furry, button-nosed, milk-and-cookie-scarfing creatures from Mars' future who want to conquer the Earth! And if this isn't enough to keep Gallegher busy, he must also contend here with a steady stream of Gallegher corpses from the future, whom the authorities promptly charge him with murdering! This is easily the zaniest story of the bunch; crazy and witty as can be, it also introduces us to Gallegher's Grandpa, a hilarious old coot who is almost as big a tippler as Gallegher himself. "The Proud Robot" (Oct. '43 "ASF") presents the reader with the character of Joe for the first time; a narcissistic, obnoxious mechanical "man" who spends most of "his" time admiring itself before a mirror and being generally unhelpful. In this tale, Gallegher is hired by a movie studio whose main source of income--what is, in essence, cable television--is being threatened by the "bootleg" movie palaces of its competitor. Probably the most oft anthologized of all the Gallegher stories, this hilarious tale presciently foresees the movie vs. television rivalry of a good decade hence. In what is perhaps the most complexly plotted story of the five, "Gallegher Plus" (Nov. '43 "ASF"), Gallegher learns, after a particularly intensive bender, that he has apparently created a dirt-guzzling contraption that also sings "St. James Infirmary"! But why he created this contraption, and what it's good for, and for which of his three increasingly irate current customers, the hungover Gallegher has no clue. This tale features some tense moments for the alcoholic genius and a narrow escape from a gang of nasty thugs...as well as an alphabetical drinking contest! Remember that old episode of "The Prisoner," the one called "The Girl Who Was Death," in which Number 6, to purge himself after drinking poison, orders a brandy, followed by "Whiskey. Vodka. Drambuie. Tia Maria. Quatro. Grand Marnier"? Well, that's nothing compared to what Gallegher does here, trying to keep up with a crooked alderman who is boozing alphabetically: absinthe, brandy, Cointreau, daiquiri, etc., all the way to the letter "Y." Who else but Gallegher could possibly keep up? The collection ends with a tale called "Ex Machina" (April '48 "ASF"), in which Gallegher, Grandpa and Joe all return one more time for another way-out adventure. In this one, Gallegher sobers up again, only to find an invisible speed drinker in his house, as well as a metallic gizmo with blue eyes staring at him. (This orbed object may bring to mind the blue-eyed doorknob from Kuttner and Moore's extremely psychedelic novella "The Fairy Chessmen," from 1946.) Here, Gallegher is commissioned by a safari expedition company to come up with a way of minimizing the inherent danger to its customers. The story finds Joe discovering philosophy for the first time, has Gallegher once again accused of murder by the dim-witted authorities, and provides another wacky explanation for all the preceding mishegas.
Unfailingly inventive and often laugh-out-loud funny, the Gallegher stories might be considered some kind of perfect entertainment. Kuttner seemed to improve every year that he wrote (starting with 1936's "The Graveyard Rats"), and his work here, hastily written as it was, remains most impressive. He flubs on occasion--such as when he tells us that the uncertainty principle was Planck's, rather than Heisenberg's, and when he suggests in one tale that Gallegher is living in the early 21st century, and in another mentions that musician Larry Adler lived "hundreds of years ago," making it more like the 22nd century--but most readers will be having too much of a good time to notice. And really, how can any book with a line like "Grandpa, a wizened little man with a brown face like a bad-tempered nutcracker" be anything BUT amusing? Fans of Golden Age sci-fi and vintage screwball comedies will most likely read these stories hungrily and with great enjoyment...just like Joe with one of his philosophy books....
The collection kicks off with what is probably the least of the tales, "Time Locker" (from the Jan. '43 "ASF"). In this one, Gallegher's latest gizmo--a storage cabinet that tucks objects away a few million years in the future--is used by a crooked lawyer to cache some purloined bonds. But things get a little out of hand, in this short but decidedly loopy story, and capped by one mindblower of a finale. In "The World Is Mine" (June '43 "ASF"), Gallegher's new time machine accidentally brings to Earth the Lybblas: small, furry, button-nosed, milk-and-cookie-scarfing creatures from Mars' future who want to conquer the Earth! And if this isn't enough to keep Gallegher busy, he must also contend here with a steady stream of Gallegher corpses from the future, whom the authorities promptly charge him with murdering! This is easily the zaniest story of the bunch; crazy and witty as can be, it also introduces us to Gallegher's Grandpa, a hilarious old coot who is almost as big a tippler as Gallegher himself. "The Proud Robot" (Oct. '43 "ASF") presents the reader with the character of Joe for the first time; a narcissistic, obnoxious mechanical "man" who spends most of "his" time admiring itself before a mirror and being generally unhelpful. In this tale, Gallegher is hired by a movie studio whose main source of income--what is, in essence, cable television--is being threatened by the "bootleg" movie palaces of its competitor. Probably the most oft anthologized of all the Gallegher stories, this hilarious tale presciently foresees the movie vs. television rivalry of a good decade hence. In what is perhaps the most complexly plotted story of the five, "Gallegher Plus" (Nov. '43 "ASF"), Gallegher learns, after a particularly intensive bender, that he has apparently created a dirt-guzzling contraption that also sings "St. James Infirmary"! But why he created this contraption, and what it's good for, and for which of his three increasingly irate current customers, the hungover Gallegher has no clue. This tale features some tense moments for the alcoholic genius and a narrow escape from a gang of nasty thugs...as well as an alphabetical drinking contest! Remember that old episode of "The Prisoner," the one called "The Girl Who Was Death," in which Number 6, to purge himself after drinking poison, orders a brandy, followed by "Whiskey. Vodka. Drambuie. Tia Maria. Quatro. Grand Marnier"? Well, that's nothing compared to what Gallegher does here, trying to keep up with a crooked alderman who is boozing alphabetically: absinthe, brandy, Cointreau, daiquiri, etc., all the way to the letter "Y." Who else but Gallegher could possibly keep up? The collection ends with a tale called "Ex Machina" (April '48 "ASF"), in which Gallegher, Grandpa and Joe all return one more time for another way-out adventure. In this one, Gallegher sobers up again, only to find an invisible speed drinker in his house, as well as a metallic gizmo with blue eyes staring at him. (This orbed object may bring to mind the blue-eyed doorknob from Kuttner and Moore's extremely psychedelic novella "The Fairy Chessmen," from 1946.) Here, Gallegher is commissioned by a safari expedition company to come up with a way of minimizing the inherent danger to its customers. The story finds Joe discovering philosophy for the first time, has Gallegher once again accused of murder by the dim-witted authorities, and provides another wacky explanation for all the preceding mishegas.
Unfailingly inventive and often laugh-out-loud funny, the Gallegher stories might be considered some kind of perfect entertainment. Kuttner seemed to improve every year that he wrote (starting with 1936's "The Graveyard Rats"), and his work here, hastily written as it was, remains most impressive. He flubs on occasion--such as when he tells us that the uncertainty principle was Planck's, rather than Heisenberg's, and when he suggests in one tale that Gallegher is living in the early 21st century, and in another mentions that musician Larry Adler lived "hundreds of years ago," making it more like the 22nd century--but most readers will be having too much of a good time to notice. And really, how can any book with a line like "Grandpa, a wizened little man with a brown face like a bad-tempered nutcracker" be anything BUT amusing? Fans of Golden Age sci-fi and vintage screwball comedies will most likely read these stories hungrily and with great enjoyment...just like Joe with one of his philosophy books....
September 9, 2009
We owe it to Erik Mona and Pierce Watters that five of Henry Kuttner’s terrific stories about a bibulous inventor and a narcissistic robot (well, technically, only three of the five feature the robot, but who’s counting?) are back in print. Robots Have No Tails was the May, 2009 offering of Planet Stories, a strange amalgam of magazine crossed with reprint anthology published by Mona and distributed by Watters under the Paizo imprint. The entire anthology has typesetting and illustration reminiscent of those great old Street & Smith, Ziff-Davis, and Argosy titles of that golden age of fiction factories. It was an age that I just missed with characters I discovered in derivative media (old radio programs, movies rebroadcast on television, and recreated for comic books). It was an age that sometimes feels more comfortable to me than the modern age (for all I love my personal computer).
The great thing about Kuttner’s short stories (and I’m not a guy who particularly likes short stories) is that he takes the familiar tropes of time travel, aliens, robots, and extraordinary inventions and turns them upside-down. Instead of the time machine story orbiting around the “grandfather paradox,� it mixes a “gangster� yarn with a concept of a shrinking universe (in the future). Instead of awesomely powerful, prodigious aliens with infinite abilities, the “invasion� story offers confused “bunny� aliens and more misdirection than the old “wishbone� offense at Nebraska. Instead of the purely logical robot who solves riddles with flawless computing and inhuman dedication, the problems in another story are compounded by the self-indulgent narcissism of the robot. Rather than having the protagonist solve problems little by little and Kuttner guiding the readers through step-by-step in the inventor’s version of a police procedural, Gallegher has already solved the problem in a drunken state (called Gallegher Plus because the neurons fire smoother and faster when he’s intoxicated) and much of the story hinges on trying to determine what he’s done and why.
Sadly, in today’s era of multi-volume story lines of “novels as tomes,� short story writers like Kuttner and Avram Davidson don’t garner much attention. Thankfully, there are a few stalwarts around like Mona and Watters to bring them to our attention.
The great thing about Kuttner’s short stories (and I’m not a guy who particularly likes short stories) is that he takes the familiar tropes of time travel, aliens, robots, and extraordinary inventions and turns them upside-down. Instead of the time machine story orbiting around the “grandfather paradox,� it mixes a “gangster� yarn with a concept of a shrinking universe (in the future). Instead of awesomely powerful, prodigious aliens with infinite abilities, the “invasion� story offers confused “bunny� aliens and more misdirection than the old “wishbone� offense at Nebraska. Instead of the purely logical robot who solves riddles with flawless computing and inhuman dedication, the problems in another story are compounded by the self-indulgent narcissism of the robot. Rather than having the protagonist solve problems little by little and Kuttner guiding the readers through step-by-step in the inventor’s version of a police procedural, Gallegher has already solved the problem in a drunken state (called Gallegher Plus because the neurons fire smoother and faster when he’s intoxicated) and much of the story hinges on trying to determine what he’s done and why.
Sadly, in today’s era of multi-volume story lines of “novels as tomes,� short story writers like Kuttner and Avram Davidson don’t garner much attention. Thankfully, there are a few stalwarts around like Mona and Watters to bring them to our attention.
October 16, 2018
Gallagher is an inventor who can only create when drunk. When sober, he doesn't remember or understand whatever he invented. And he has a narcissistic robot as a side-kick. From this description I expected lots of witty dialog like in the "His Girl Friday" movies from that time (early 40's). There is some, but these stories would need a lot more editing to make them sparkle like those films. Since he was paid by the word, there was no incentive to do so. [Even in between the first and second story he forgot the main character's name, changing it from Galloway to Gallagher. Later patched that up by claiming his name was Gallagher Galloway, or the other way around.]
Laughing at alcoholics isn't considered as funny now as it was then, but even by the standards of the 40's, Gallagher's drinking was unbelievable. In one story he gets rip-roaring drunk then goes out to meet some guy. That guy is drinking his way through the alphabet -- Absinthe, Bourbon, ..., Whiskey, eXtra whiskey -- and Gallagher joins him. Then he gets taken to police interrogation, where they give him more whiskey. Geez! It isn't that extreme in the other 4 stories, but still a lot.
He even has a "cocktail organ", an idea which may have inspired the similar contraption in by in 1947. (I wouldn't mind having one of those organs!) (Edit: It now seems more likely that both were inspired by the "mouth organ" of Joris-Karl Huysmans's story "À Rebours".)
Despite the fanciful cover, the robot doesn't drink or serve cocktails. He mostly sings and admires himself in the mirror.
Overall, amusing, but not as much as I'd hoped.
Laughing at alcoholics isn't considered as funny now as it was then, but even by the standards of the 40's, Gallagher's drinking was unbelievable. In one story he gets rip-roaring drunk then goes out to meet some guy. That guy is drinking his way through the alphabet -- Absinthe, Bourbon, ..., Whiskey, eXtra whiskey -- and Gallagher joins him. Then he gets taken to police interrogation, where they give him more whiskey. Geez! It isn't that extreme in the other 4 stories, but still a lot.
He even has a "cocktail organ", an idea which may have inspired the similar contraption in by in 1947. (I wouldn't mind having one of those organs!) (Edit: It now seems more likely that both were inspired by the "mouth organ" of Joris-Karl Huysmans's story "À Rebours".)
Despite the fanciful cover, the robot doesn't drink or serve cocktails. He mostly sings and admires himself in the mirror.
Overall, amusing, but not as much as I'd hoped.
January 6, 2019
Tak se mi zdá, že Kuttner se sám při psaní těchto povídek napojil na Gallegherovy alkoholické varhany a zaexperimentoval si s mícháním koktejlů. Je to vážně zábava, navíc takový ten elektronkový "analogpunk", inu je to z padesátých let. Gallegherovy kocoviny doprovázené zmateným zjišťováním "co jsem to zas postavil" jsou kouzelné a můj oblíbenec robot Joe je praotec všech těch Marvinů, C3P0 a podobných. Budete se bavit, slibuju :)
June 24, 2019
This book is both excellent and disappointing. Clearly this is a statement that will require some explanation!
When I was younger and I read a lot more science fiction than I do now, I was quite au fait with 'Golden Age' SF (the period from about 1936 to 1946). Some of it I enjoyed and some of it was less than edifying. I recall reading one anthology full of stories from that era which were all bad with the exception of one and that one good story was by a writer named Henry Kuttner (I had never heard of him before). His story was on a higher level in terms of both prose style and ideas. In the years that followed I occasionally read a Kuttner piece and found it highly enjoyable.
But this is the first time I have actually taken the trouble to read an entire Kuttner book all the way through. And what do I find? A couple of surprises. Firstly, it seems that this book was partly written by his wife C.L Moore (whose 'Jirel of Joiry' stories I mostly enjoyed in the Gollancz Masterworks series). Secondly, the prose style isn't as accomplished as I remembered. Yet it is serviceable enough, so I mustn't complain too much.
The fact is that of the five linked stories in this book, four were published in 1943 (the other was published in 1948) and they really are ahead of most other SF of the time (I need to stress the words 'most other'). There is a wildness in the plotting, a plethora of strange ideas, a hurly burly of situations and twists, and welcome attempts at wit and humour (even though these don't always stand up I was grateful for them).
The title story is the first in the book (I don't think they are in the order they were originally written or published) and is the most disappointing. Galloway Gallegher is an inventor who invents best when he is drunk, but he can never remember what he has invented when he sobers up and he has to work out its purpose while he is suffering from a hangover. One of these inventions is a robot that likes to stand in front of a mirror and admire itself. This might sound odd but I haven't made up my mind yet as to whether this robot is mildly irritating or genuinely amusing. Maybe it is both.
The following stories are better. 'Ex Machina' is distasteful to me personally because it advocates the hunting of animals for sport, but that's not only what the story is about and the accelerated metabolism conceit turns out to be clever. My favourite tale is the very last one, 'Time Locker', which is partly about the fourth spatial dimension (although in fact this isn't what it really is) and involves a truly bizarre and original twist at its conclusion. Also the robot, Joe, doesn't appear in this tale. It is cleaner somehow and less contrived.
The antics of Gallagher and his equally drunken grandfather are entertaining, without doubt, but the main impression I got from the book is how difficult it is even for clever speculative minds to create a near future that is at all accurate. The future world depicted here is a weird amalgam of 1940s decor and speech patterns and the technology of the same decade extrapolated until it becomes delightfully absurd. Not that this matters at all: science fiction isn't about predicting the future.
When I was younger and I read a lot more science fiction than I do now, I was quite au fait with 'Golden Age' SF (the period from about 1936 to 1946). Some of it I enjoyed and some of it was less than edifying. I recall reading one anthology full of stories from that era which were all bad with the exception of one and that one good story was by a writer named Henry Kuttner (I had never heard of him before). His story was on a higher level in terms of both prose style and ideas. In the years that followed I occasionally read a Kuttner piece and found it highly enjoyable.
But this is the first time I have actually taken the trouble to read an entire Kuttner book all the way through. And what do I find? A couple of surprises. Firstly, it seems that this book was partly written by his wife C.L Moore (whose 'Jirel of Joiry' stories I mostly enjoyed in the Gollancz Masterworks series). Secondly, the prose style isn't as accomplished as I remembered. Yet it is serviceable enough, so I mustn't complain too much.
The fact is that of the five linked stories in this book, four were published in 1943 (the other was published in 1948) and they really are ahead of most other SF of the time (I need to stress the words 'most other'). There is a wildness in the plotting, a plethora of strange ideas, a hurly burly of situations and twists, and welcome attempts at wit and humour (even though these don't always stand up I was grateful for them).
The title story is the first in the book (I don't think they are in the order they were originally written or published) and is the most disappointing. Galloway Gallegher is an inventor who invents best when he is drunk, but he can never remember what he has invented when he sobers up and he has to work out its purpose while he is suffering from a hangover. One of these inventions is a robot that likes to stand in front of a mirror and admire itself. This might sound odd but I haven't made up my mind yet as to whether this robot is mildly irritating or genuinely amusing. Maybe it is both.
The following stories are better. 'Ex Machina' is distasteful to me personally because it advocates the hunting of animals for sport, but that's not only what the story is about and the accelerated metabolism conceit turns out to be clever. My favourite tale is the very last one, 'Time Locker', which is partly about the fourth spatial dimension (although in fact this isn't what it really is) and involves a truly bizarre and original twist at its conclusion. Also the robot, Joe, doesn't appear in this tale. It is cleaner somehow and less contrived.
The antics of Gallagher and his equally drunken grandfather are entertaining, without doubt, but the main impression I got from the book is how difficult it is even for clever speculative minds to create a near future that is at all accurate. The future world depicted here is a weird amalgam of 1940s decor and speech patterns and the technology of the same decade extrapolated until it becomes delightfully absurd. Not that this matters at all: science fiction isn't about predicting the future.
April 7, 2012
This book is a collection of 4 Galloway Gallagher short stories, a drunken scientist who is brilliant inventor only when he is drunk, lets his brilliant subconscious take control of him. When he is sober he barely knows what protons,neutrons are. The stories are usually puzzles dealing with things that his brilliant self has invented that gets him in trouble with people because he can't remember what he did. It sounds different our times to make fun of a drunk but these stories are wacky humorous SF. You can't be politically correct about humor like this.
The first story "Time Locker" was fairly weak because of uneven prose, the main character was not the funny Gallegher but some lawyer. "World is Mine" the second story starts the collection for real with great humor, weird aliens, Gallagher being the wacky main character. All the stories have ingenious solutions to his problems,twists that i never really saw coming. The humor,jokes is so unpredictable, very weird sense of humor.
As SF stories set in the future they are pretty dated to 1940s when they were written but the storytelling is clearly cares more about the humor so it didn't matter. The world building, far future culture was not so important to the writer.
Gallagher himself and his proud, vain Robot who thinks he is a so beautiful made me laugh so much. I don't know what Kuttner other SF is like but he is a quality storyteller of humor stories set in SF setting.
The first story "Time Locker" was fairly weak because of uneven prose, the main character was not the funny Gallegher but some lawyer. "World is Mine" the second story starts the collection for real with great humor, weird aliens, Gallagher being the wacky main character. All the stories have ingenious solutions to his problems,twists that i never really saw coming. The humor,jokes is so unpredictable, very weird sense of humor.
As SF stories set in the future they are pretty dated to 1940s when they were written but the storytelling is clearly cares more about the humor so it didn't matter. The world building, far future culture was not so important to the writer.
Gallagher himself and his proud, vain Robot who thinks he is a so beautiful made me laugh so much. I don't know what Kuttner other SF is like but he is a quality storyteller of humor stories set in SF setting.
April 2, 2015
I don't handle this sort of humor very well, and it doesn't help that Kuttner's Galloway Gallagher is, even sober, a distinctly unlikable character. And while I can appreciate the dilemmas posed in trying to unravel the actions of someone not exactly limited by linear and rational thinking, this book wants me to laugh at a man with an obvious if non-traditional drinking problem.
So what we have here is a man with a possibly codependent and certainly dysfunctional relationship...with himself.
So what we have here is a man with a possibly codependent and certainly dysfunctional relationship...with himself.
November 13, 2017
Nice batch of short stories about a mad, drunken, Irish-American inventor, who is mad all the time, but only invents when he is drunk. Many of the stories involve his trying to reconstruct the night before through the fog of his hangover ... and who hasn't had some semblance of that experience? I was particularly charmed by his machine that sings Saint James Infirmary. Definitely good fun.
September 13, 2021
I read the first three of the five stories, and may finish this at some point (which is why I didn't say DNF). Right now, I have to say, yes, my friend is right, this seems like a precursor to Rick & Morty, the animated series. It is dated, but not unreasonable, and goofy but just clever enough. I wouldn't be surprised to learn alcohol was involved. :)
#1 "Time Locker" got a 'well yes of course' snort, at the appropriate moment, so that's a success.
#2 "The World is Mine" is silly and predictable, with bits of clever.
#3 "The Proud Robot" (my friend's favorite) I found it fairly cleverly plotted, but I got bored and had to push to the end, so of these three, I enjoyed the first one best.
Haven't read:
#4 "Ex Machina"
#5 "Ex Machina" (same friend said this one was meh)
#1 "Time Locker" got a 'well yes of course' snort, at the appropriate moment, so that's a success.
#2 "The World is Mine" is silly and predictable, with bits of clever.
#3 "The Proud Robot" (my friend's favorite) I found it fairly cleverly plotted, but I got bored and had to push to the end, so of these three, I enjoyed the first one best.
Haven't read:
#4 "Ex Machina"
#5 "Ex Machina" (same friend said this one was meh)
May 25, 2018
Idee on ju vahva ja töötab... aga ainult algses formaadis, s.t. üksikute lugudena ajakirjades. Viis üksteist kordavat juttu ühes raamatus on paras piin ja seetõttu kulus ka aega, et neist läbi närida. Või siis oleks autor võinud neist ühe arvestatava lühiromaani kokku kirjutada.
February 15, 2024
Funny and inventive collection with a neat formula explored comprehensively. Would love to see an adaptation of this.
Read
May 22, 20243:49
June 5, 2018
This is a collection of short stories about a guy who becomes a brilliant mad scientist when he's drunk. The stories are meant to be humorous, but they are badly dated. I found them slightly amusing at best.
June 14, 2014
The stories in this collection are just as fun as I had hoped, while Kuttner's writing is a wonderful surprise. I dig the way he writes dialog and his take on a future Manhattan. The first story, "The Proud Robot," is by far the strongest, due to its brilliant wit and a story that is (almost shockingly) topical. The latter reminded me, in fact, of the prescience that Piers Anthony demonstrated when in his short novel, "Steppe."
I experienced a single, sour note when I finished this collection--and that was the fact that I finished the collection! Five tales about Gallagher and his drunken doings is not enough.
I experienced a single, sour note when I finished this collection--and that was the fact that I finished the collection! Five tales about Gallagher and his drunken doings is not enough.
March 24, 2009
A great and (until now) hard to find book. Its a very comedic sci -fi of 5 short stories about a scientist who is ONLY a genius when he's drunk.
The edition I have is not as nice as the pictured one above - its a very garish pinkish cover with a robot on it, and the only two copies of it I have ever seen fall apart the minute you try to read it, which is the ONLY complaint i have with this book.
I'm extremely ecstatic to know that this book has finally been republished as I will need to get a copy of it that I'll be able to read as often as I want!
The edition I have is not as nice as the pictured one above - its a very garish pinkish cover with a robot on it, and the only two copies of it I have ever seen fall apart the minute you try to read it, which is the ONLY complaint i have with this book.
I'm extremely ecstatic to know that this book has finally been republished as I will need to get a copy of it that I'll be able to read as often as I want!
March 29, 2010
Henry Kuttner was one of the masters of science fiction from the 1930s to the 1950s, when he died, way too young, of a heart attack.
This book collects his stories of Galloway Gallegher, who is an absolutely brilliant inventor -- but only when he is drunk. When he is sober, he has no memory of what he invented and must figure it out before it lands him in trouble. These stories are, of course, played for laughs. A very amusing collection.
This book collects his stories of Galloway Gallegher, who is an absolutely brilliant inventor -- but only when he is drunk. When he is sober, he has no memory of what he invented and must figure it out before it lands him in trouble. These stories are, of course, played for laughs. A very amusing collection.
May 20, 2015
Man I wanted to love it. It is five stories about an inventor who can only create amazing inventions when he's blackout drunk and when he sobers up he has no idea of the wonders he wrought. It sounds awesome and the writing is excellent, but the characters were so unpleasant and the stories felt padded a bit, which is not surprising during penny a word pulp fiction days. I am glad to have read the book, I just didn't like it too much
June 23, 2017
This wasn't for me. The main character is always in some sort of trouble, but somehow manages to fix things in the end. My favorite stories are The World is Mine and Time Locker. Time Locker put me in the mind of an old Twilight Zone episode.
I acquired my copy used for a cheap price and the binding glue is giving up it's pages because of it's age. Too many loose pages to trade at the bookstore. And I have no intention of reading this one again.
I acquired my copy used for a cheap price and the binding glue is giving up it's pages because of it's age. Too many loose pages to trade at the bookstore. And I have no intention of reading this one again.
October 5, 2009
This is a fun collection of short stories by a forgotten master of science fiction from the pulp era. It is 5 longish short stories about a scientist who could only be a genius when he is drunk, and when sober cannot remember how he invented things. The stories revolve around the discover of his drunken-self's inventions. They are very much in the style of screwball comedy.
March 7, 2021
Snažím se teď hledat spíš zábavnou četbu, ale řekla jsem si, že si dám zas nějaké sci-fi. Takže jsem vsadila na jistotu. Kuttner že nezklame. A nezklamal.
Možná je to sci-fi. Teda určitě je, ale mnohem víc je to zábava. Narcisek Joe nemá chybu. Mám ráda všechny tyhle poťouchle neposlušné roboty.
4,5* musím zaokrouhlit nahoru a doporučuji.
Možná je to sci-fi. Teda určitě je, ale mnohem víc je to zábava. Narcisek Joe nemá chybu. Mám ráda všechny tyhle poťouchle neposlušné roboty.
4,5* musím zaokrouhlit nahoru a doporučuji.
Shelved as 'xx-dnf-skim-reference'
September 22, 2020Not sure how this got on my list. First story mildly amusing, but wacky for no good reason, and I just cannot abide satire about a lush/ addict/ lost soul (whether Gallegher or anyone else; I don't read those books).
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August 25, 2010EX-LIB. 1ST BRITISH EDITION. 1ST PUBLISHED AS 'ROBOTS HAVE NO TAILS' IN USA BY LEWIS PADGETT (HENRY KUTTNER & C.L. MOORE) IN 1952.
August 17, 2022
Get drunk, invent junk
take someone's money, forget
an infinite loop.
take someone's money, forget
an infinite loop.
August 1, 2017
Henry Kuttner was one of the great writers of SF short stories. He, along with his wife, C. L. Moore, produced a lot of very good fiction in a short period, when Kuttner, far too young, died. But he produced a number of classics. (I say "he" produced though in many cases it's hard to tell what was produced by Kuttner and what by Moore, since most of their output was produced jointly. It's said that one could get up from the typewriter mid-sentence and the other could sit down and continue work. But C.L. Moore says, in the intro to Robots Have No Tails, that those stories were all Kuttner.)
Robots Have No Tails collects five stories about Gallagher, the genius inventor who can only invent when drunk. He wakes up sober with having been given an advance, having some strange gadget in his lab which he now knows nothing about, and in some sort of predicament (sometimes even accused of murder). Four of the five stories in the collection involved Gallagher working out exactly what he had produced while he was drunk and why.
In "The Proud Robot," the most famous and reprinted of the stories, Gallagher awakens, hung over, to find that he's created a transparent robot that spends all its time looking in the mirror and talking about how wonderful it looks. Why he created it, and how at the same time he solved a problem for a client related to bootleg movie theaters of sorts, makes for a very amusing story.
In "Gallagher Plus," he must figure out why he created a machine that seems only to eat dirt and sing, and what solution he came up with for three different clients. In "The World Is Mine" he wakes up to find three jovial Martians in his lab, saying they are here to rule the world. At the same time, he seems to have done something to kill future version of himself with a heat ray. In "Ex Machina," both his client and his grandfather disappear, a strange invisible creature is drinking all his liquor, and he's charged with murder. In all these stories, Kuttner demonstrates his skills in story construction, telling an amusing story that flows quickly, comes to a logical and entertaining conclusion, and whose pieces fit together perfectly.
The final story, "Time Locker," written in the same year as "The Proud Robot," is a bit different as most of it isn't told from Gallagher's point of view, but rather from the point of view of a crooked lawyer who puts Gallagher's inventions to often illegal uses. It's again a good story, well told, though not as much fun as the previous four, in large part because Gallagher is not at its center.
Kuttner is an author who deserves more attention. Later this week, I hope to read another Kuttner collection.
Robots Have No Tails collects five stories about Gallagher, the genius inventor who can only invent when drunk. He wakes up sober with having been given an advance, having some strange gadget in his lab which he now knows nothing about, and in some sort of predicament (sometimes even accused of murder). Four of the five stories in the collection involved Gallagher working out exactly what he had produced while he was drunk and why.
In "The Proud Robot," the most famous and reprinted of the stories, Gallagher awakens, hung over, to find that he's created a transparent robot that spends all its time looking in the mirror and talking about how wonderful it looks. Why he created it, and how at the same time he solved a problem for a client related to bootleg movie theaters of sorts, makes for a very amusing story.
In "Gallagher Plus," he must figure out why he created a machine that seems only to eat dirt and sing, and what solution he came up with for three different clients. In "The World Is Mine" he wakes up to find three jovial Martians in his lab, saying they are here to rule the world. At the same time, he seems to have done something to kill future version of himself with a heat ray. In "Ex Machina," both his client and his grandfather disappear, a strange invisible creature is drinking all his liquor, and he's charged with murder. In all these stories, Kuttner demonstrates his skills in story construction, telling an amusing story that flows quickly, comes to a logical and entertaining conclusion, and whose pieces fit together perfectly.
The final story, "Time Locker," written in the same year as "The Proud Robot," is a bit different as most of it isn't told from Gallagher's point of view, but rather from the point of view of a crooked lawyer who puts Gallagher's inventions to often illegal uses. It's again a good story, well told, though not as much fun as the previous four, in large part because Gallagher is not at its center.
Kuttner is an author who deserves more attention. Later this week, I hope to read another Kuttner collection.
December 20, 2023
The stories were interesting, some wordier than necessary but on the whole nice to while away some time with; not requiring a lot of thought or attention. A lot of the tech, the realistic tech not the "I made a machine that eats dirt and makes super thin wire from it" type of tech, is pretty dated. It amuses me that the 50 SF writing community failed to see miniaturization and portability in tech, ie smartphones. He accurately predicted video calling but assume it would be a giant screen mounted on a wall not a notebook sized device in everyone's pocket.
On the downside there's not any character development in the stories, Gallagher gets drunk, makes a machine, sobers up and can't remember what he made, wash, rinse, repeat.
On the downside there's not any character development in the stories, Gallagher gets drunk, makes a machine, sobers up and can't remember what he made, wash, rinse, repeat.
January 5, 2021
A collection of five short stories from the 1940s, featuring a genius inventor who can only create while inebriated: the stories all concern his hungover sober self trying to figure out what he made, and why, and for whom, often with the police or lawyers on his tail as a result.
These are a pleasing and consistently readable series of tales, mixing screwball comedy with a sort of locked room mystery, weaving in and out of politics, philosophy and law, told mostly through dialogue and diatribe. Their only fault is a basic repetitiveness and lack of polish—more the fault of the pulp era than the writer.
These are a pleasing and consistently readable series of tales, mixing screwball comedy with a sort of locked room mystery, weaving in and out of politics, philosophy and law, told mostly through dialogue and diatribe. Their only fault is a basic repetitiveness and lack of polish—more the fault of the pulp era than the writer.
October 11, 2021
This collection is a mixed bag for modern readers. These stories are inventive and clever -- they're sort of backwards detective stories, where the main character is both the detective and his own antagonist. Kuttner's an enjoyable writer, but, like most Golden Age SF, his stories read a bit stale. Joe the robot quickly turns into an annoying sidekick and the "it's funny that he's a genius when he's drunk" schtick hasn't aged well. (Would they have aged better if Gallagher's co-dependency was played tragic instead? Ask Elric.) The first couple of stories ("Time Locker" and "The World is Mine") are the best -- come back to the others later after you've had a chance to sober up.
June 25, 2023
I finished only two of the short stories in this book. The main character, Gallegher, is a scientist whose technical genius only appears when he is drunk. The constant reference to drinking and inebriation get old and and somewhat sordid very quickly. Both of the stories I read were about the complications, supposedly comical, that arise from messing around with time machines. Both stories remind me of something someone wrote while stoned, laughing hysterically at each word, but once the writer sobers up, the humor disappears. Perhaps there is niche group (juvenile, stoner, scifi nerds) who would enjoy this stuff, but not me. Kuttner is on my list of writers to avoid in the future.
July 19, 2020
This is a collection of five stories about the same drunk scientist. His genius subconscious comes out when he gets very drunk and it invents cool things. Later, when sober-ish. he cannot remember how his inventions work or why he made them. Overall: hilarious and irreverent.
Also when reading old sci-fi stories (this was published in 1952) I like to see how well the stories have stood the test of time. I’m this case it does feel like the future, even compared to today’s standards, and the references to technology did not stand out as being obsolete.
Also when reading old sci-fi stories (this was published in 1952) I like to see how well the stories have stood the test of time. I’m this case it does feel like the future, even compared to today’s standards, and the references to technology did not stand out as being obsolete.
August 16, 2020
Pure dumb fun! I would love to see somebody modernize this and do it as a cartoon for Netflix.
A couple of the stories are a bit weaker than the others but most of them are pretty funny. Despite being amusing, there’s some ways the sci-fi was darkly prescient of things to come in the future.
The only really let down is he only wrote 5 stories. Much like Elak, or Prince Raynor, Henry Kuttner created something great but not enough of it. Well, better to leave them wanting more than overstay your welcome.
Kuttner is definitely an under-appreciated pulp master.
A couple of the stories are a bit weaker than the others but most of them are pretty funny. Despite being amusing, there’s some ways the sci-fi was darkly prescient of things to come in the future.
The only really let down is he only wrote 5 stories. Much like Elak, or Prince Raynor, Henry Kuttner created something great but not enough of it. Well, better to leave them wanting more than overstay your welcome.
Kuttner is definitely an under-appreciated pulp master.
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