History Creator / WilliamTenn

William Tenn was the PenName of Philip Klass (May 9, 1920 – February 7, 2010), an American ScienceFiction writer best known for his numerous satirical short stories written in the 1950s and '60s. He also wrote two novels, ''Of Men and Monsters'' and ''A Lamp for Medusa''.

* AnimalIsTheNewMan: "Null P" sees dogs take over the Earth. Humans still exist, but they have given up civilization and [[FormerlySapientSpecies it isn't even clear if they are sapient]]. They are adopted as pets by the dogs [[FurryReminder for the purpose of throwing sticks]], and later go effectively extinct.

* NoNavelNovelBirth: In "Childs Play", a rather sad-sack lawyer (from the "present day", i.e., late 1940s) accidentally receives a "Bild-A-Man" kit from the future, an educational toy---a sort of futuristic home chemistry set---that allows children to create artificial living creatures, even including duplicate human beings. The protagonist eventually winds up making a ''human baby'', only to realize (after it's too late to do anything about it) that he forgot to give the kid a navel.

* AnimalIsTheNewMan: ''Null P'' sees dogs take over the Earth. Humans still exist, but they have given up civilization and [[FormerlySapientSpecies it isn't even clear if they are sapient]]. They are adopted as pets by the dogs [[FurryReminder for the purpose of throwing sticks]], and later go effectively extinct.
* BizarreAlienSexes: ''Venus and the Seven Sexes'' features a seven sexed species that passes gametes in a chain: sex "D" receives from sex "C" and transmits to sex "E." The sex of the offspring is determined by the sex of the parent which receives/completes the fully fertilized gamete. One sex is tasked with ''coordinating'' the family.
* ButterflyOfDoom: Satirized in ''Brooklyn Project'' which opens with the Acting Secretary to the Executive Assistant on Press Relations explaining to a group of journalists that the project to send a probe four billion years into Earth's past -- and then two billion, and then one billion and so forth -- is perfectly safe, that nothing that happens in the past can change the present. In brief vignettes we see the probe condensing moisture on its outer surface, the probe destroying microorganisms with its weight, the probe crushing tiny trilobites... and the story ends with the journalists [[BlobMonster dissolving themselves into liquid]] and flowing up to examine the time travel apparatus, while the Acting Secretary extends his fifteen purple blobs and assures them that nothing has changed.
* CityOfSpies: In ''Lisbon Cubed'', Earth itself turns out be a conveniently located neutral site where dozens of alien species secretly run their competing spy rings, spying on each other, while Earth remains unaware of the existence of aliens. The name is a reference to the historical role the city of Lisbon in Portugal played as a spy center during [=WWII=].
* TheDogWasTheMastermind: In ''The Servant Problem'', the ruler of a future {{dystopia}} is a SmugSnake subconsciously controlled by [[spoiler:his Education Minister, an OutGambitted [[TheChessmaster Chessmaster]] subconsciously controlled by a psychologist, who in turn was OutGambitted and controlled by a junior technician. Things go pear-shaped for this [[TheManBehindTheMan Man Behind The Man Behind The Man Behind The Man]] when it turns out that he, like everyone else in the world, was conditioned to worship the ruler; this dystopia is evidently now a dog chasing its own tail]].
* FantasticReligiousWeirdness: ''On Venus, Have We Got a Rabbi'' has an Interstellar Neo-Zionist Congress debating whether aliens can be Jewish.
* GoMadFromTheRevelation: In ''Firewater'', humanity is being observed by aliens that appear to have god-like powers, and anyone who tries too hard to understand them goes insane. [[spoiler: Near the end, it's revealed that the aliens have a similar problem with understanding humans.]]
* HumansAreUgly: In ''The Flat-Eyed Monster'', a human is accidentally teleported light-years away by some bug-eyed creatures which not only find him absolutely hideous, but terrifyingly so. Those flat eyes, and only two of them. That dry, dry skin, without a trace of slime. The absence of tentacles. And it can't even ''pmbff!'' What a monster!
* InterserviceRivalry: In ''Project Hush'' the US Army sends a team to establish a small super-secret base on the Moon. As they dig in, they discover to their surprise and horror there's already a similar camouflaged base not far away. Are they Russians, Chinese, Martians? Worse -- it's the US Navy!
* MrSmith: Inverted in ''Lisbon Cubed''. Alfred Smith's ''actual'' last name causes some alien spies to [[MistakenForSpies think he's the alien spy]] they were intending to meet, who had, of course, chosen the name Smith as a cover, and had previously occupied the same hotel room as Alfred.
* NightOfTheLivingMooks: In ''Down Among the Dead Men'', humanity is running out of resources and recruits for a BugWar that's been going for decades. [[BabyFactory All women have been removed from administrative duties to breed soldiers]], and everything is recycled including protoplasm from dead soldiers. The early 'zombies' were only good as UndeadLaborers for menial tasks and turned out to be very bad for morale. The new models are as smart as any human, but the protagonist still isn't happy about being assigned to command a squad of them. Turns out they're not happy about ''him'' either, as they've picked up on the [[FantasticRacism attitudes of 'normal' people towards them]].
* NoNavelNovelBirth: In ''Childs Play'', a rather sad-sack lawyer (from the "present day", i.e., late 1940s) accidentally receives a "Bild-A-Man" kit from the future, an educational toy---a sort of futuristic home chemistry set---that allows children to create artificial living creatures, even including duplicate human beings. The protagonist eventually winds up making a ''human baby'', only to realize (after it's too late to do anything about it) that he forgot to give the kid a navel.
* PersecutionFlip: ''Eastward Ho!'' is set in a post-nuclear-war future where Native Americans are in power, and the oppressed whites keep fleeing further and further east. Eventually they plan to sail to the land of freedom--Europe.
* RidiculouslyAverageGuy: In the short story ''Null-P'', it is discovered that a man named George Abnego happens to be statistically average in every way. This makes him a celebrity of sorts, and he ends up becoming President.

* SnipeHunt: In ''Errand Boy'', warehouse workers send an overeager boy who's hanging around to fetch polka-dotted paint. He brought some--wrong color, but polka-dotted. The boy turned out to be a naive 10-year-old time traveler with romantic ideas about 20th century businessmen, not unlike some modern depictions of [[{{Pirate}} pirates]].
* StableTimeLoop: ''The Discovery of Morniel Mathaway'' is built around a stable time loop that involves an art historian meeting the object of his research.
* TallPoppySyndrome: ''Null-P'' describes the rise and (extremely eventual) fall of a future society so afraid of individual variation that all rewards (e.g. scholarships or public office) are given to those whose performance is closest to the exact average of their group.
* WarFromAnotherWorld: In ''Liberation of Earth'', the narrator describes how an alien race "liberated" Earth, then another alien race liberates Earth from the first aliens and [[VichyEarth become the new overlords]]. Then the first alien race re-liberates Earth, and so on. In the end the whole thing was just a minor skirmish in an on-going galactic war which finally shifts to another solar system, leaving behind a handful of ragged human survivors scrabbling for survival on a pear-shaped, atmosphere-depleted, burnt-out husk of a planet.

William Tenn was the pseudonym of Philip Klass (May 9, 1920 – February 7, 2010), an American science-fiction writer best known for his numerous satirical short stories written in the 1950s and '60s. He also wrote two novels, ''Of Men and Monsters'' and ''A Lamp for Medusa''.

William Tenn was the pseudonym of Philip Klass (1920-2010), an American science-fiction writer best known for his numerous satirical short stories written in the 1950's and 60's. He also wrote two novels, ''Of Men and Monsters'' and ''A Lamp for Medusa''.

* BellyButtonless: In ''Childs Play'', a rather sad-sack lawyer (from the "present day", i.e., late 1940s) accidentally receives a "Bild-A-Man" kit from the future, an educational toy---a sort of futuristic home chemistry set---that allows children to create artificial living creatures, even including duplicate human beings. The protagonist eventually winds up making a ''human baby'', only to realize (after it's too late to do anything about it) that he forgot to give the kid a navel.

* WarFromAnotherWorld: In ''The Liberation of Earth'', the narrator describes how an alien race "liberated" Earth, then another alien race liberates Earth from the first aliens and [[VichyEarth become the new overlords]]. Then the first alien race re-liberates Earth, and so on. In the end the whole thing was just a minor skirmish in an on-going galactic war which finally shifts to another solar system, leaving behind a handful of ragged human survivors scrabbling for survival on a pear-shaped, atmosphere-depleted, burnt-out husk of a planet.

* WomensMysteries: Discussed but not actually seen in ''Literature/OfMenAndMonsters''. The protagonist, who is just coming of age himself, wonders what the girl he's attracted to will learn when she becomes an initiate of the the Female Society of his tribe, but knows he'll never be allowed to find out.

* AnimalIsTheNewMan: ''Null P'' sees dogs take over the Earth. Humans still exist, but they have given up civilization and it isn't even clear if they are sapient. They are adopted as pets by the dogs and later go effectively extinct.

* ButterflyOfDoom: Satirized in ''Brooklyn Project'' which opens with the acting secretary to the executive assistant on press relations explaining to a group of journalists that the project to send a probe four billion years into Earth's past -- and then two billion, and then one billion and so forth -- is perfectly safe, that nothing that happens in the past can change the present. In brief vignettes we see the probe condensing moisture on its outer surface, the probe destroying microorganisms with its weight, the probe crushing tiny trilobites... and the story ends with "[[BlobMonster the thing that had been]] the acting secretary to the executive assistant on press relations" spreading his tentacles and explaining that ''[[CaughtInTheRipple as they can all see]]'', nothing has changed.

* TheDogWasTheMastermind: In ''The Servant Problem"'', the ruler of a future {{Dystopia}} is a SmugSnake subconsciously controlled by [[spoiler:his education minister]], an OutGambitted [[TheChessmaster Chessmaster]] subconsciously controlled by another chessmaster [[spoiler:psychologist]], who in turn was OutGambitted and controlled by [[spoiler:a junior technician]]. Things go pear-shaped for this [[TheManBehindTheMan Man Behind The Man Behind The Man Behind The Man]] when it turns out that [[spoiler:he, like everyone else in the world, was conditioned to worship the ruler; this dystopia is evidently now a dog chasing its own tail]].
* FantasticReligiousWeirdness: ''On Venus, Have We Got a Rabbi''
* ForWantOfANail: In "Literature/BrooklynProject", the "acting secretary to the executive assistant on public relations" describes a government TimeTravel experiment to a group of journalists, explaining that some scientists were foolishly concerned that a probe sent into the past might by its very presence inadvertently change the present. But this is a ridiculous notion, of course: the story ends with the journalists dissolving themselves into liquid and flowing up to examine the time travel apparatus, while the acting secretary extends [[BlobMonster his fifteen purple blobs]] and exclaims, "Nothing has changed!"
* FromBadToWorse: "The Liberation of Earth" details how two warring groups of aliens keep trading control of the eponymous planet back and forth, causing more and more damage in the process. When the two species' battle finally shifts to another solar system, they leave behind a handful of ragged human survivors scrabbling on a pear-shaped atmosphere-depleted burnt-out husk.
* FurryReminder: In "Null-P", once the Earth is taken over by sentient dogs, the only surviving humans are pets maintained for the purpose of throwing sticks.
* GoMadFromTheRevelation: In "Firewater", humanity is being observed by aliens that appear to have god-like powers, and anyone who tries too hard to understand them goes insane. [[spoiler: Near the end, it's revealed that the aliens have a similar problem with understanding humans.]]
* HumansAreUgly: In "The Flat-Eyed Monster", a human is accidentally teleported light-years away by some bug-eyed creatures which not only find him absolutely hideous, but terrifyingly so. Those flat eyes, and only two of them. That dry, dry skin, without a trace of slime. The absence of tentacles. And it can't even ''pmbff!'' What a monster!
* InterserviceRivalry: In "Literature/ProjectHush", the US Army sends a team to establish a small super-secret base on the Moon. As they dig in, they discover to their surprise and horror there's already a similar camouflaged base not far away. Are they Russians, Chinese, Martians? Worse -- it's the US Navy!
* MrSmith: Inverted in "Lisbon Cubed": Alfred Smith's ''actual'' last name causes some alien spies to ''think'' he's the alien spy they were intending to meet, who had, of course, chosen the name Smith as a cover, and had previously occupied the same hotel room as Alfred.

* SnipeHunt: In "Errand Boy", warehouse workers sent an overeager boy hanging around to fetch polka-dotted paint. He brought some--wrong color, but polka-dotted. The boy turned out to be a naive 10-year-old time traveler with romantic ideas about 20th century businessmen, not unlike some modern depictions of [[{{Pirate}} pirates]].
* StableTimeLoop: "The Discovery of Morniel Mathaway" is built around a stable time loop that involves an art historian meeting the object of his research.
* TallPoppySyndrome: "Null-P" describes the rise and (extremely eventual) fall of a future society so afraid of individual variation that all rewards (e.g. scholarships or public office) are given to those whose performance is closest to the exact average of their group.
* VichyEarth: In "The Liberation of Earth", the narrator describes how an alien race "liberated" Earth by doing this. Then another alien race liberates Earth from the first aliens, and become the new overlords. Then the first alien race re-liberates Earth, and so on. In the end the whole thing was just a minor skirmish in an on-going galactic war, the aliens take their battle elsewhere and Earth has been reduced to a lop-sided irradiated wasteland.
* WarFromAnotherWorld: In "The Liberation of Earth", Earth is caught up in an galactic war between two advanced alien species, and nearly destroyed in the process.

* FantasticReligiousWeirdness: "On Venus, Have We Got a Rabbi"

* BellyButtonless: In his short story "Literature/ChildsPlay" a rather sad-sack lawyer (from the "present day", i.e., late 1940s) accidentally receives a "Bild-A-Man" kit from the future, an educational toy---a sort of futuristic home chemistry set---that allows children to create artificial living creatures, even including duplicate human beings. The protagonist eventually winds up making a ''human baby'', only to realize (after it's too late to do anything about it) that he forgot to give the kid a navel.
* BizarreAlienSexes: "Venus and the Seven Sexes" features a seven sexed species that passes gametes in a chain: sex "D" receives from sex "C" and transmits to sex "E." The sex of the offspring is determined by the sex of the parent which receives/completes the fully fertilized gamete. One sex is tasked with ''coordinating'' the family.
* ButterflyOfDoom: Hilariously lampshaded/satirized in "Literature/BrooklynProject", which opens with the acting secretary to the executive assistant on press relations explaining to a group of journalists that the project to send a probe four billion years into Earth's past -- and then two billion, and then one billion and so forth -- is perfectly safe, that nothing that happens in the past can change the present. In brief vignettes we see the probe condensing moisture on its outer surface, the probe destroying microorganisms with its weight, the probe crushing tiny trilobites... and the story ends with "the thing that had been the acting secretary to the executive assistant on press relations" spreading his tentacles and explaining that ''as they can all see'', nothing has changed.
* CaughtInTheRipple: "Literature/BrooklynProject" ends with an official demonstrating that the experiment had changed absolutely nothing... except that the reader is fairly certain that neither him not the audience were {{Blob Monster}}s when the demonstration started.
* CityOfSpies: In "Literature/LisbonCubed", Earth itself turns out be a conveniently located neutral site where dozens of alien species secretly run their competing spy rings, spying on each other, while Earth remains unaware of the ''existence'' of aliens. The name is a reference to the historical role the city of Lisbon in Portugal played as a spy center during [=WWII=].
* TheDogWasTheMastermind: In "Literature/TheServantProblem", the ruler of a future {{Dystopia}} is a SmugSnake subconsciously controlled by [[spoiler:his education minister]], an OutGambitted [[TheChessmaster Chessmaster]] subconsciously controlled by another chessmaster [[spoiler:psychologist]], who in turn was OutGambitted and controlled by [[spoiler:a junior technician]]. Things go pear-shaped for this [[TheManBehindTheMan Man Behind The Man Behind The Man Behind The Man]] when it turns out that [[spoiler:he, like everyone else in the world, was conditioned to worship the ruler; this dystopia is evidently now a dog chasing its own tail]].
%% * FantasticReligiousWeirdness: "On Venus, Have We Got a Rabbi"

* PersecutionFlip: "Literature/EastwardHo!" is set in a post-nuclear-war future where Native Americans are in power, and the oppressed whites keep fleeing further and further east. Eventually they plan to sail to the land of freedom--Europe.
* RidiculouslyAverageGuy: In the short story "Null-P", it is discovered that a man named George Abnego happens to be statistically average in every way. This makes him a celebrity of sorts, and he ends up becoming President.

* WarFromAnotherWorld: In "The Liberation of Earth", Earth is caught up in an interplanetary war between two advanced alien species, and nearly destroyed in the process.

* ButterflyOfDoom: Hilariously lampshaded/satirized in "Brooklyn Project", which opens with the acting secretary to the executive assistant on press relations explaining to a group of journalists that the project to send a probe four billion years into Earth's past -- and then two billion, and then one billion and so forth -- is perfectly safe, that nothing that happens in the past can change the present. In brief vignettes we see the probe condensing moisture on its outer surface, the probe destroying microorganisms with its weight, the probe crushing tiny trilobites... and the story ends with "the thing that had been the acting secretary to the executive assistant on press relations" spreading his tentacles and explaining that ''as they can all see'', nothing has changed.
* CaughtInTheRipple: "Brooklyn Project" ends with an official demonstrating that the experiment had changed absolutely nothing... except that the reader is fairly certain that neither him not the audience were {{Blob Monster}}s when the demonstration started.
* CityOfSpies: In "Lisbon Cubed", Earth itself turns out be a conveniently located neutral site where dozens of alien species secretly run their competing spy rings, spying on each other, while Earth remains unaware of the ''existence'' of aliens. The name is a reference to the historical role the city of Lisbon in Portugal played as a spy center during [=WWII=].
* TheDogWasTheMastermind: In "The Servant Problem", the ruler of a future {{Dystopia}} is a SmugSnake subconsciously controlled by [[spoiler:his education minister]], an OutGambitted MagnificentBastard subconsciously controlled by a MagnificentBastard [[spoiler:psychologist]], who in turn was OutGambitted and controlled by [[spoiler:a junior technician]]. Things go pear-shaped for this [[TheManBehindTheMan Man Behind The Man Behind The Man Behind The Man]] when it turns out that [[spoiler:he, like everyone else in the world, was conditioned to worship the ruler; this dystopia is evidently now a dog chasing its own tail]].

* ForWantOfANail: In "Brooklyn Project", the "acting secretary to the executive assistant on public relations" describes a government time-travel experiment to a group of journalists, explaining that some scientists were foolishly concerned that a probe sent into the past might by its very presence inadvertently change the present. But this is a ridiculous notion, of course: the story ends with the journalists dissolving themselves into liquid and flowing up to examine the time travel apparatus, while the acting secretary extends his fifteen purple blobs and exclaims, "Nothing has changed!"

* InterserviceRivalry: In "Project Hush", the US Army sends a team to establish a small super-secret base on the Moon. As they dig in, they discover to their surprise and horror there's already a similar camouflaged base not far away. Are they Russians, Chinese, Martians? Worse -- it's the US Navy!

* PersecutionFlip: "Eastward Ho!" is set in a post-nuclear-war future where Native Americans are in power, and the oppressed whites keep fleeing further and further east. Eventually they plan to sail to the land of freedom--Europe.

* WomensMysteries: Discussed but not actually seen in ''Of Men and Monsters''. The protagonist, who is just coming of age himself, wonders what the girl he's attracted to will learn when she becomes an initiate of the the Female Society of his tribe, but knows he'll never be allowed to find out.

* CityOfSpies: In "Lisbon Cubed", Earth itself turns out be a conveniently located neutral site where dozens of aliens species secretly run their competing spy rings, spying on each other, while Earth remains unaware of the ''existence'' of aliens. The name is a reference to the historical role the city of Lisbon in Portugal played as a spy center during [=WWII=].

%% * FantasticReligiousWeirdness: "On Venus, Have We Got a Rabbi"

* HumansAreUgly: In "The Flat-Eyed Monster", a human is accidentally teleported light-years away by some bug-eyed creatures which not only find him absolutely hideous, but terrifyingly so. Those flat eyes, and only two of them. That dry, dry skin. The absence of tentacles. And it can't even ''pmbff!'' What a monster!

'''William Tenn''' was the pseudonym of Philip Klass (1920-2010), an American science-fiction writer best known for his numerous satirical short stories written in the 1950's and 60's. He also wrote two novels, ''Of Men and Monsters'' and ''A Lamp for Medusa''.

* ButterflyOfDoom / ForWantOfANail: "Brooklyn Project"
* TheDogWasTheMastermind: "The Servant Problem"
* FromBadToWorse / VichyEarth: "The Liberation of Earth"

* GoMadFromTheRevelation: "Firewater"
* InterserviceRivalry: "Project Hush"
* FantasticReligiousWeirdness: "On Venus, Have We Got a Rabbi"
* PersecutionFlip: "Eastward Ho!"
* RidiculouslyAverageGuy: "Null-P"
* SnipeHunt: "Errand Boy"
* StableTimeLoop: "The Discovery of Morniel Mathaway"

* BizarreAlienSexes: "Venus and the Seven Sexes"

* StableTimeLoop: "The Discovery of Morniel Mathaway"

* RidiculouslyAverageGuy: "Null-A"

'''William Tenn''' was the pseudonym of Philip Klass (1920-2010), a science-fiction writer best known for his numerous satirical short stories written in the 1950's and 60's. He also wrote two novels, ''Of Men and Monsters'' and ''A Lamp for Medusa''.

* TheDogWasTheMastermind: "Servant Problem"