Sun 4 Oct 2015
JONATHAN LEWIS: Stories I’m Reading — WILLIAM SAMBROT “Island of Fear.”
Posted by Steve under Science Fiction & Fantasy , Stories I'm Reading[10] Comments
WILLIAM SAMBROT “Island of Fear.†Originally published in The Saturday Evening Post, 18 January 1958. Reprinted in Island of Fear and Other Science Fiction Stories (Pocket, paperback, May 1963).
William Sambrot (1920-2007) wrote and published over 50 science fiction stories. Many of them first appeared in the pages of The Saturday Evening Post, not the most traditional market for speculative fiction, but the place where he found a home. He also wrote for such publications as Playboy and Blue Book Magazine. Fourteen of his short stories were reprinted in Island of Fear and Other Science Fiction Stories.
The short story “Island of Fear,†is a suspenseful yarn about a man obsessed with a wall built on a Greek isle. He wants – no, he needs to know who built this wall and why. This is especially so given the fact that on the other side of this wall there appears to be a beautiful sculpture, one that has escaped the attention of the art books.
As a tale that is both atmospheric and suspenseful, “Island of Fear†isn’t so much a science fiction story as it is a horror story. It’s actually a pretty good read, yet because it’s a rather short, I’d be giving away too much if I tried to tell you too much more about the plot. Let’s just say the Greek setting is what propels the story forward, with rising tension, toward a horrific climax.
So as I ask you as readers of speculative fiction: have you ever read Sambrot’s work? Do you remember it when his fiction was first published in The Saturday Evening Post? Do you have a favorite story of his? If so, leave a comment below and let me know what you think.
October 4th, 2015 at 3:48 pm
The one story was much of Sambrot’s career, but it was a good one. Nothing else in the collection equals it.
In that era SEP published Bradbury and Heinlein. I think Kersh may have gotten in too. Sambrot’s stories are well within their post war lines.
October 4th, 2015 at 4:05 pm
Does anyone know: did Sambrot just stop writing after a certain point, because it seems that his publications slowed considerably after a while. Any biographical info?
October 4th, 2015 at 5:26 pm
All I’ve found is his entry in the SF Encyclopedia:
http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/sambrot_william
and his SF-related bibliography on ISFDb:
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?2144
His writing career ended in 1967 when he was only 47. That was a story that appeared in F&SF. The Sat Eve Post, his primary sales market, had pretty folded up by then.
He must have had a good agent. Most SF writers in the 50s and 60s could only have dreamed of appearing in the Post. Another interesting thing is that half of the stories in the Island collection were first published there.
Not that his stories were all that SFnal. I found this quote on ISFDb interesting:
” Sambrot was a strong supporter of sf and felt it should be treated with more respect, but the majority of his own stories were rarely set more than one step away from the present. Many were warning stories, feeding upon Cold War Paranoia and the nuclear threat, such as “Deadly Decision” (1958 Extension) about the President’s dilemma as to whether to press “the button”, or “Nine Days to Die” (9 July 1960 Saturday Evening Post) highlighting the problem of what happens if humans are contaminated with nuclear waste.”
I’ve owned my copy of this book for a long time, but having never heard of William Sambrot, I doubt that I’ve ever opened it. That’s probably true of most SF fans, even back then. I don’t imagine that many of them were reading the Post.
October 4th, 2015 at 5:29 pm
Here’s what a reader on Goodreads has to say:
Jeff Rausch rated it 5 of 5 stars
“This is one of the best one author collections I have ever read. While all of his stories have at least a bare minimum of science fiction, some more so than others. This is not a complaint, because it gives the entire collection a varied taste of story telling excellence. There was one story that edged out the others, for me at least. That story was ‘Creature of the Snows’ one of the best Yeti stories I have ever read.”
October 4th, 2015 at 5:34 pm
“Creature of the Snows” has been reprinted a number of times:
Creature of the Snows, The Saturday Evening Post Oct 29 1960
Sixth Annual Edition: The Year’s Best SF, ed. Judith Merril, Dell 1961
Island of Fear and Other Science Fiction, Perma Books 1963
Monster Mix, ed. Robert Arthur, Dell 1968
Reflections of the Future, ed. Russell Hill, Ginn & Co. 1975
The Ancient Mysteries Reader, ed. Peter Haining, Doubleday 1975
The Ancient Mysteries Reader Book 2, ed. Peter Haining, Sphere 1978
Creature!, ed. Bill Pronzini, Arbor 1981
Science Fiction A to Z, ed. Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg & Charles G. Waugh, Houghton Mifflin 1982
October 5th, 2015 at 12:44 am
Sambrot’s stories are in that group I think of as mainstream SF. Most could easily have been Twilight Zone or Outer Limits episodes. SF along the lines of Matheson and Beaumont or some of John Collier’s horror/fantasy.
No far out Buck Rogers stuff. Quite a few writers of the era including big names wrote similar material.
I would imagine he had trouble living on what F&SF paid per story compared to the POST when the latter folded.
October 6th, 2015 at 7:37 pm
I’ve been reading Sambrot off and on nearly all my literate life, since Robert Arthur loved to include his stories in his various “Hitchcock” anthologies, and other editors, as you demonstrate above, followed suit…I would have seen that story, for example, in the Merrill and the Pronzini as well as in my copy of THE ISLAND OF FEAR. He was of a piece with such other sf writers who didn’t sell to the sf magazines that much as David Ely and Richard Condon, among a small slew of others…even Vonnegut, much less Beaumont and Bradbury, continued to contribute sporadically to the sf/fantasy magazines in the ’60s. SEP basically crashed and burned with Curtis Publishing in 1969; it was revived no later than 1971 as the rather duller nostalgia magazine it remains today, but it’s still plugging along. (Patti Abbott remembers walking in and being handed rather quickly responsibility for OKing expense reports; that kind of whatthehell attitude, she suspects, is part of what weakened it enough to allow for takeover of Curtis Publishing and its dismemberment.) I think you overstate the case when you suggest that sf readers generally didn’t read SEP in the ’60s, as it was a pretty vital magazine, and damned near that last of its kind, perhaps a bit more middlebrow than ESQUIRE (at that time, not so much now) or THE ATLANTIC (ditto) or HARPER’S, but appealing to similar audiences, only so much larger, in part due to its huge legacy readership.
December 17th, 2020 at 9:06 am
I happened to notice that William Sambrot was born 100 years ago today (12/17/20).
August 15th, 2021 at 2:50 pm
My father had over 120 stories published in prestigious magazines over his lifetime. Slightly less than half were what could be termed “science fictionâ€. He was awarded the Freedom Foundation Award along for a war story which I believe was entitled “Those Who Cameâ€.
In a post war world not dominated by television or the internet, his stories provided much intellectual sustenance and sheer entertainment to millions of people all over the world.
August 15th, 2021 at 3:18 pm
My father was awarded the George Washington Award along with John Glenn by president Kennedy at the Palace Hotel in February 1962. I’m not sure you received my other email, so I may be repeating myself; my father published over 120 stories in prestigious magazines in the 1950s and 1960s but less than half were considered science fiction.
I believe that he earned this award for a war story entitled “Those Who Cameâ€