I’ve always wanted to visit the future — but what if the future visited me? “Vintage Season” by Lawrence O’Donnell (C. L. Moore and Henry Kuttner) is about people from the future visiting the present. We don’t know when and where this story takes place, but we identify with it as now. The sense of wonder “Vintage Season” generates comes from imagining visitors from the future and why they would hang with us.

Science fiction’s foundation is built on four pillars: space travel, time travel, aliens, and robots. Two stories get closest to the heart of time travel. The first is, “The Time Machine,” by H. G. Wells. The second is “Vintage Season.” I’m not sure any other time travel story even comes close.

There is a mystery about “Vintage Season” — who wrote it — Moore or Kuttner or both. Does it really matter? Can’t we consider the couple one creative god and let it go at that? I have read accounts of how Catherine and Henry would leave a story in a typewriter and either one of them would stop and work on it. I’m not sure if I believe that myth, or at least how it stands.

In writing classes, they talk about two kinds of writers: pantsers and plotters. Pantsers write by the seat of their pants just letting stories unfold and go where they want. Plotters are writers who outline before they start writing. “Vintage Season” was written by a plotter. It’s a three-dimensional puzzle that depends on every piece fitting together perfectly, and it does. Leaving a story in a typewriter for whomever to finish is a pantser technique. Generally, when I read Kuttner stories they feel like a pantser story. When I read a Moore story, they feel like a plotter story. It reminds me of Moore’s “No Woman Born” and maybe “Greater Than Gods”

“Vintage Season” is story #51 of 52 from The World Treasury of Science Fiction edited by David G. Hartwell (1989), an anthology my short story club is group reading. Stories are discussed on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. “Vintage Season” was first published in Astounding Science-Fiction (September 1946).

“Vintage Season” is an outstanding story. To me, it’s the absolute best science fiction story from the Golden Age of Astounding Science-Fiction in the 1940s. I’ve read it many times over many decades. I also consider “Vintage Season” one of the best science fiction stories ever written.

I love listening to the narration of it from the audiobook edition of The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, v. 2a. In fact, I feel sorry for anyone who hasn’t listened to that audio edition of “Vintage Season” — it was pitch perfect. As I listened to it, I marveled at how “Vintage Season” was so damn well-written.

One of the hardest things to write in science fiction is what readers can’t know — what the future is like, how an alien thinks, or how an artificial mind will relate to us. Science fiction writers must make those things up. This is why I believe Moore and Kuttner were so successful in “Vintage Season.” Start reading with “Oliver was searching” and read until “The music broke off.” Oliver goes into Kleph’s room where she’s playing a work of art composed by a fellow time traveler. We need to remember this was written in 1946 and most people did not know about most science fiction concepts. Moore, and I believe she wrote most of “Vintage Season,” especially the parts about people’s emotions. Think of this passage as someone trying to describe an LSD trip, and how hard it would be to put it into words. Moore does a fantastic job.

Few science fiction writers attempt anything like this. Everything in the story led to Oliver being able to experience that moment. It’s also key to the ending. Everything in the story is built to support every other part. We need Oliver’s experience with the euphoria tea. We need the tension over Sue wanting Oliver to sell the house. We need all the clues Oliver is picking up. We need Oliver to be attracted to Kleph. Every bit of this story leads up to the ending.

And if Kuttner wrote the last story I reviewed, “The Proud Robot” by himself, it shows nothing of that kind of writing. Kuttner wrote a series of scenes, each one a little battle of wits. He keeps giving us scenes with conflicts and solving them. Eventually, he wraps things up. He tells us Gallegher invented Joe the robot as a can opener. It fits with the other scenes, but the other scenes don’t require that ending. And almost any scene could be removed, and the story would still work. That’s how pantser plotting works.

I wish I had the time and psychic energy to mind map “Vintage Season” and show how tightly connected every element of the story is with the other elements. But such an effort could take days. Just read the story.

I wish I had the time and psychic energy to be more of a literary scholar. I could spend weeks analyzing “Vintage Season.” Instead, I write these essays over a couple of hours hoping to say just enough to get people to read the story. I write these essays to focus my mind and organize my thoughts about a story. If I didn’t exercise my mind this way, I think it would deteriorate.

When I listened to “Vintage Season” this time the reading experience was something significant. I wish I could put that into words. Reading science fiction has been an essential part of my life, but not all science fiction reading is essential. Most of it is a waste of time. “Vintage Season” is not. Understanding why would tell me something. Maybe I’ll write about that someday.

James Wallace Harris, 8/31/23