Category: Harry Turtledove

My Hypothetical Friend by Harry Turtledove

Posted on by Paul Fraser

My Hypothetical Friend by Harry Turtledove (Analog, January-February 2021)1 opens with Dave Markarian, CEO of Interstellar Master Traders, arriving at work to anxiously prepare for a visit by a representative of the alien Brot. During the three page wodge of exposition that follows, we learn that the Brot have the economic (and military) whip hand over humanity, and use us as an economic subject race (I guess you could view this as an extreme version of China’s relationship with many developing countries).
The middle act of the story sees Old Salty (the name given to the Brot representative by Dave) arrive in a gossamer bubble that is beyond human science or comprehension. When Dave welcomes Old Salty, the alien almost immediately tells him that this will be his last visit as he is returning to his home planet. Then they set off on a tour of the premises so Old Salty can inspect the devices that are being built there (the devices have “Made on Earth” on the base, and the workers manufacturing them have no idea of what they are, or how they work). During the visit Dave walks on eggshells—even though he is friendly with the alien, or as friendly as you can be with aliens who have, in the past, levelled a city for unfathomable reasons.
Before Old Salty leaves Dave invites the alien to have a farewell drink with him (“the Brot could handle methyl alcohol, ethyl alcohol, and isopropyl alcohol”) and, during this get together, Dave presents Old Salty with a going-away present, a set of plastic “California Raisins” toys that were originally given away with fast food meals in the 1980s:

“I see,” Old Salty said, which gave not the slightest clue about what he/she/it thought.
He/she/it picked up one of the Raisins: Beebop, the drummer. His/her/its eyestalks swung toward Beebop for a close inspection, and tentacles felt of the small plastic figure. “On the bottom of one foot I the inscription ‘Made in China’ find.”
“Yes, that’s right.” Dave nodded. “I know that, these days, China’s right up with the United States or maybe even ahead of us. That wasn’t true then, though. China was just starting to turn into a big industrial power. Peasants would come off the farms and move to the big cities to work in factories.”
“We this phenomenon on other worlds also have observed,” the Brot said.
Dave Markarian nodded again. “Yeah, I figured you would have. Some of those peasants would have made their livings painting eyes or gloves or shoes or whatever on the California Raisins, over and over again. Same with the detailwork on all of these other little plastic toys. They wouldn’t have known why the figures were supposed to look the way they did. They wouldn’t have seen the advertising campaigns or games or films the toys were based on—they lived in a faraway country that used a different language. I sometimes wonder what they thought while they painted every toy the same way while they went through their shifts day after day.”  p. 38

After more small talk, Yoda—sorry, Old Salty—leaves in his gossamer bubble.
The final act of the story (spoiler) sees Old Salty back on his home planet, and we see him visit his sister and her children. Old Salty gives each of the children one of the devices made by Dave’s company, and we learn that they are cheap junk toys for kids. Old Salty reflects that the master/peasant relationship between the Brot and humanity is similar to the one between American consumers and Chinese workers in the 1980s. The alien hopes that humanity will develop spaceflight and find races that can work for them, but doubts that will be the case.
This is a plodding, expository, and clunky story with a very old-fashioned feel and a dispiriting vision of interstellar commerce. I also note that the repeated “he/she/its” pronouns used for the alien are irritating—what is wrong with “they” and “its”?
* (Mediocre). 7,050 words. Story link.

1. This story was fourth in the Analytical Laboratory Poll for 2021 stories. There is more information about the poll finalists here.

My Hypothetical Friend by Harry Turtledove

Posted on by Paul Fraser

My Hypothetical Friend by Harry Turtledove (Analog, January-February 2021)1 gets off to a plodding start with Dave Markarian, President and CEO of Interstellar Master Traders Inc., preparing for a visit from one of the alien Brot. This involves three pages of scene setting and backstory about the alien visitors (although, given that miscommunications have previously caused them to level a city, the relationship is more complicated than that) before the alien, who Dave calls Old Salty, arrives (this is the point where the story should have started):

At 2:00:00.00, the paranymphic glider touched down on the roof. Had Dave’s phone shown the time to be a hundredth of a second earlier or later, he would have assumed it was wrong, and never mind that it took the time straight from Earth’s master atomic clock. A Brot who said two o’clock sharp meant two o’clock sharp.
Old Salty got down from the glider and walked/moved/flowed toward Dave. He/she/it looked something like a prune, something like a sea sponge, something like a slug. Several eyestalks stuck up from his/her/its front end; they looked every which way at once. The alien’s underside had lots and lots of little tiny legs.
He/she/it said something in his/her/its own language. Inside his head, Dave heard (he supposed he heard; that came closer to describing it than anything else), “I hail to you say, my hypothetical friend.” People who were able to work in Brot establishments and make Brot widgets picked up on the meaning in Brot noises. To the rest of mankind, those remained alien gibberish.
“Good to see you, Old Salty,” Dave answered. The Brot didn’t mind the nickname. He/she/it could understand the same smallish set of humans who could follow the speech and subspeech of his/her/its kind. Communication had been dicey when the aliens first landed: lots of pointing and pictures. Little by little, things got better. Not good, not yet, but better.  p. 33

The rest of the story has the same clunky delivery.
Dave quickly learns that this will be the Old Salty’s last visit (it is returning to its home world), and he then takes the alien on the scheduled tour of the premises. We see that the business makes gadgets with an unknown function for the Brot.
Throughout the story Dave walks on eggshells but, before Old Salty leaves, they have a drink together (the aliens can drink both methyl and isopropyl alcohol) and Dave presents the alien with a going away present of four plastic figures (these are California Raisin toys given away with American fast food meals in the 1980s and 90s). They have “Made in China” on the base, and Dave comments that the “peasants” who painted the toys would have had little or no comprehension of what they were. Old Salty leaves soon afterwards.
The story ends (spoiler) with the alien back on its home world. Old Salty arrives at his swarmsister’s house and gives her kids presents—the gadgets that were made by Dave’s company (“Made on Earth”). We see that these aren’t alien miracle devices like the paranymphic glider which Old Salty used to arrive at Dave’s business, but are actually cheap disposable toys. The story then makes the leaden point that humanity is to the aliens as the Chinese workers were to Western consumers in the last century, i.e. “peasants”.
The story closes with Old Salty wondering if humanity will ever spread out into space and find races that we can view and/or treat in the same way as the Brot treats humanity—but the alien doesn’t expect that will happen any time soon.
This is a dull and old-fashioned piece, and the idea of this kind of economic imperialism rolling through the galaxy is just dispiriting. I note in passing that (a) the repeated use of “he/she it” for the aliens rather than “they” or “it” is clumsy and (b) there seems to be no piece of American cultural ephemera so obscure that US writers will not shoehorn it into a story.
* (Mediocre). 7,050 words. Story link.

1. This story placed 4th in the 2021 Analog Analytical Laboratory Awards short story category.