Month: February 2021

The Sword Against the Stars by A. F. Hall

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Sword Against the Stars by A. F. Hall1 (New Worlds #159, February 1966) begins pretty much as it goes on:

Dated the 42nd year of our exile
The earth this year is death and stinking rubble, a pall of broken glass and rusted, empty cans. The earth this year is a thousand blasted cities, bleak and broken skylines, skeletons of buildings connected with crazy paving. There are some parts of our city which still burn with sporadic fires; a water main bursts and somewhere a stray dog howls. The earth this year is scarred and seared to wasteland, a planetary ghetto where all that’s left is dying, crawling to its slow, inevitable ending. The earth this year is sick of a million plagues, gaunt famines and a mad child’s crying.  p. 101

This initially appears to be a post-nuclear holocaust tale but we later discover that the devastation is the result of an alien invasion. The rest of the story is mostly description, and there is very little incident: a “dust priest” turns up at the narrator’s settlement; the group go scavenging in a city; the narrator finds a sword (which prompts much speculation about why there are red jewels in the handle):

The seven rubies must represent the stars—but why are the stars red? The sun is made of gold and the moon is silver but the stars glow with an angry light. When I was very young I used to think that the stars were white diamonds scattered on black velvet, I would have made the stars out of diamonds if the sword had been mine. It was only the forger of the sword who knew better, he must have known that the stars were hostile and he set seven red stones in his sword, red for the colour of war. He chose red stones so that those who came after him should remember when they saw his warning—but we who came after, we forgot. How did he know?  p. 109

Although the description is well enough done, there is far too much of it: this makes for a dull piece.
* (Mediocre). 4,200 words.

1. This is Hall’s only SF story, according to ISFDB.

Temporary Resident by Philip E. High

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Temporary Resident by Philip E. High (New Worlds #159, February 1966) opens with a Terran representative called Savaran almost rammed by another car on a planet called Spheriol. Savaran continues his journey but, further down the road, he sees his own car being towed—it appears to have side impact damage. Matters become even odder when he arrives at his Embassy to find it staffed by people he doesn’t know. The next morning he wakes up to see a doctor standing by his bedside who explains that he is in “transition”, and is on another “plane of existence”.
Later he meets people from his life who he thought were long dead, and discusses Terran defence plans with one of them. At this point (spoiler) the story cuts to a Spheriol minister talking to a man called Detrick, who is explaining that Savaran’s experience is all a ruse (he is at a false location which is staffed with actors) set up to let them defeat the anti-interrogation brain psychographing he has undergone.
The final twist, which has Savaran turning up at the building where the Minister and Detrick are holding their meeting, sees Savarand fade out of existence after he arrives there. The Minister then reveals to Detrick that he is the one experiencing a plane of existence shift, but a real one, and not a pretence like Savaran. Or something like that—it’s one of those stories whose endings can lose you.
This doesn’t convince, and it’s essentially the same old Terran spy nonsense that had been appearing in the magazines for decades already. And a Phil Dick-ian twist at the end doesn’t improve it much.
* (Mediocre). 5,250 words.

Scherzo with Tyrannosaur by Michael Swanwick

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Scherzo with Tyrannosaur by Michael Swanwick (Asimov’s SF, July 1999) opens with the supervisor of a time travel event called The Cretaceous Ball, which is held in the past, describing the family at one of the tables. The wealthy couple seated there have a daughter, Melusine, who is eyeing Hawkins, the young palaeontologist assigned to their table. They also have a son called Phillipe, who is wildly enthusiastic about dinosaurs.
Later on, and after the supervisor is called back to the future to deal with an incident (TSOs—Time Safety Officers—have busted a couple of waiters for trying to pass information from the future to the past), he returns and is accosted by Hawkins, who reports that Melusine has been hitting on him. Matthews begs to be relieved of his hosting duties, and the supervisor tells him to write a memo about the incident and avoid his tent for the rest of the evening.
The supervisor subsequently takes over as the family’s host, and he gives Phillipe a serrated dinosaur tooth just before an aging T. Rex called Satan is drawn to the enclosure in front of the protected dining area by a blood lure. Satan subsequently charges the armoured glass and the boy is hugely impressed. After the supervisor has finished talking to the boy about his job ambitions, he recovers a fallen napkin for Melusine and gives it to her—inside there is a promotional leaflet with a note saying to meet at a specific tent later—but signed not with the supervisor’s name but with Matthews’.
The final piece of the setup takes place shortly afterwards, when the supervisor sleeps with Melusine in Matthews’ dark tent; she is unaware of who she is with. Meanwhile the supervisor, thanks to a note from his future self, thinks about Matthews outside the compound—where he is about to be killed by Satan.
The denouement of the story unwinds the setup (spoiler), and this begins when the supervisor reads Hawkins’ memo later on. This reveals that Hawkins is the grown up Phillipe, and that he isn’t Melusine’s brother but her son, who was transported back in time so the grandparents could bring up him and Melusine as sister and brother. Then the supervisor realises that he is Phillipe’s father—that the boy is the result of the encounter he has just had with Melusine—and he sits down to send a note to himself in the past that will prevent his son’s death. However, before he can do that, a much older version of himself turns up and advises against his intended actions (saying, among other things, that the mysterious “Unchanging” will remove humanity’s ability to time travel). The older man finally hands the supervisor a version of the memo that simply tells of Hawkins’ death, and the story closes with the supervisor making a decision about which one to send.
This is a very cleverly plotted and inventive story but it is also a little unengaging. This is maybe because the supervisor is an unlikeable character, and it’s hard to care what his decision will be, and also, perhaps, that the story is pretty tightly packed and everything seems to rush by (which makes Swanwick’s stories the mirror image of much of today’s bloat).
Although it’s a good enough story it wouldn’t have been my choice for the 2000 Hugo Award for Best Short Story. 1
*** (Good). 4,550 words.

1. The story’s other award nominations can be seen on its ISFDB page. It seems to have been fighting it out with another Swanwick story, Ancient Engines (Asimov’s SF, February 1999).

Hi, Sancho! by Paul Jents

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Hi, Sancho! by Paul Jents (New Worlds #159, February 1966) starts with a fugitive in the future making a perilous crossing of one road (with high-speed traffic) to get to another, northbound, one that will take him to the city. After he manages to hitch a lift he ends up at an old flame’s house and, after a night with her, later ends up with a black man who wants to stage a bombing. Worried about the loss of innocent life, the fugitive hides the explosives and calls security.
The story then cuts to the fugitive’s interrogation, which involves a data dump about camps in Africa and a forced eugenics program. He escapes again, and takes the explosive back to the institution where he was being imprisoned. In the closing passage there is some reference to Don Quixote that I didn’t get (and the character thus named refers to the fugitive as Sancho).
This is fast-paced, readable stuff, but it seems little more than a series of random episodes linked together.
* (Mediocre). 4,650 words.

Ripples in the Dirac Sea by Geoffrey A. Landis

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Ripples in the Dirac Sea by Geoffrey A. Landis (Asimov’s SF, October 1988) is about a time traveller who spends most of his time in 1965 San Francisco with a hippy friend called Dancer, and a woman called Lisa:

[Dancer] never locked the door. “Somebody wants to rip me off, well, hey, they probably need it more than I do anyway, okay? It’s cool.” People dropped by any time of day or night.
I let my hair grow long. Dancer and Lisa and I spent that summer together, laughing, playing guitar, making love, writing silly poems and sillier songs, experimenting with drugs. That was when LSD was blooming onto the scene like sunflowers, when people were still unafraid of the strange and beautiful world on the other side of reality. That was a time to live. I knew that it was Dancer that Lisa truly loved, not me, but in those days free love was in the air like the scent of poppies, and it didn’t matter. Not much, anyway.  p. 93

Woven around this central relationship thread (which eventually ends with Dancer’s premature death) are various other snippets of information and narrative: the Dirac science (or hand-wavium) that enables the time travelling device’s operation; other trips the narrator undertakes (the San Francisco earthquake in 1906, the crucifixion of Christ—where he almost dies); imaginary lectures that answer questions about time paradoxes; and so on.
This plods along until the climax of the story, which sees the narrator in a hotel room the night before he is due to unveil the time travel device to a group of scientists. However, before that can happen (spoiler), he wakes up to find his room is on fire, and we learn that he only has thirty seconds left to live—and that he has been using (and extending) that time by continually travelling to the past. He now has about ten seconds left.
I thought this was okay, and certainly improved by the climactic gimmick, but I don’t think it’s worth an Nebula Award (it won the 1990 award for short story).1 I can only assume that the 1960’s hippie nostalgia vibe did it for some readers.
I also note in passing that it is a gloomy piece, which was fairly typical of Asimov’s SF during this period if I remember correctly.
** (Average). 5,400 words.

1. The story was second in the annual Asimov’s Reader’s Poll, third in the Hugo, and 11th in the Locus list. More information on ISFDB.

Entry from Earth by Daphne Castell

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Entry from Earth by Daphne Castell (New Worlds #159, February 1966) gets off to a colourful start at a music festival on the alien planet of Pigauron. After this setup, the story cuts to Lord D’aon Auwinawo, a visiting cultural minister from Tren who is bored with the event and returns to his tents, only to be unexpectedly visited by Mirilith tak, an Assistant Secretary for the Festival, and Slok, a bulldog-like alien. The latter is the “Personal Complainant” to another of the attendees, and is there with a grievance about the noise D’aon’s slaves are making by singing during the night.
D’aon stays awake that evening to listen to them, and then orders them entered into the festival where they are received politely. After their performance, D’aon talks to one the slaves about their history, and this reveals a pattern of enslavement. The story (spoiler) subsequently ends with them singing “The Rivers of Babylon” revealing them to be Jewish slaves captured from Earth.
This has a colourful start, and an okay idea, but you can see the end coming from a mile off, even without the foreshadowing.
** (Average). 3,050

A Two-Timer by David I. Masson

Posted on by Paul Fraser

A Two-Timer by David I. Masson (New Worlds #159, February 1966) is the second of five stories that he would produce for the magazine this year, and it begins with a man in 1637 noticing an unusual occurrence:

. . . I was standing, as it chanc’d, within the shade of a low Arch-way, where I could not easily be seen by any who shou’d pass that way, when I saw as it were a kind of Dazzle betwixt my Eyes and a Barn that stood across the Street. Anon this Appearance seem’d as ’twere to Thicken, and there stood a little space before the Barn a kind of a clos’d Chair, but without Poles, and of a Whiteish Colouring, and One that sate within it, peering out upon the World as if he fear’d for his life. Presently this Fellow turns to some thing before him in the Chair and moves his Hands about, then peeps he forth again as tho’ he fear’d a Plot was afoot to committ Murther upon his Person, and anon steps gingerly out of one Side, and creeps away down the Alley, looking much to right and to left. He had on him the most Outlandish Cloathes that ever I saw. Thinks I, ’tis maybe he, that filch’d my Goods last Night, when I had an ill Dream.  p. 6-7

The rest of the story continues in the same style (you soon get used to it) and sees the man watching take the machine and end up in 1966. Much of the first quarter of the story is taken up by his learning how to further operate the machine.
He soon finds that he has arrived in the ground floor flat of a modern building and, after one or two unproductive encounters with the neighbours (he can’t understand them), he tries to get out of the front door to investigate the outside world, but fails. He then learns that the machine can be made to move in space as well as time, and moves in stages to the middle of a road in nearby suburb. There he strikes up a conversation of sorts with a man washing his car, moves the machine to his driveway, and eventually accepts an invitation to stay with the man and his wife.
The next part of the story sees the traveller settle in with the couple, who later suggest that he go back in time to recover some of his possessions so he can sell them to fund his stay in the present. When he travels back to his own house he comes upon himself sleeping in bed—there is a strange shimmering motion over his face, and a strange attraction drawing him towards himself. He flees back to the present.
At this point in the story (about halfway) the traveller goes into town with his host to sell his belongings, and what was an interesting and novel time-travel piece becomes a more satirical and observational affair with a near-continual description of, and commentary on, what he sees and experiences. Some of this is tartly observed, and some of it is particularly affecting; I could quote pages of it:

You will wonder especially, what sort of People they were indeed, that I was fallen among; and tho’ it took many Weeks in the Learning, yet I shall make bold to take only as many Minutes, in the Telling it. They spoke much then, of the Insolence of Youth, which they thought new, but it seem’d to me, that there was nothing new but Wealth and Idleness, that feed this Insolence.  p. 28

But the Spring of this, is in the Wives, for these own no Man’s Controul, not even in Law, but manage all things equally with ’em, and take all manner of Work, as bold as Men (for they are as well school’d), and High and Low dress them selves in Finery, and leave their Children to bring them selves up (so that many run wild), and are fix’d upon Folly and Mancatching, as I saw from a Journal, made in Colours (and more like a great Quarto, then a Journal) that is printed for Women alone. They go bare-legg’d or with Legs cover’d in bright Stockings but marvellous fine, and closefitting ; and their Legs shewing immodestly above the Knee. In this Journal I saw all manner of sawcy Pictures.  p. 28

They have great Safety, in the Streets and in the Fields, so that Thefts and Violence to the meanest Person are the cause of News in the Courants; but they slaughter one another with their Cars for that they rowl by so fast, and altho’ they are safe from Invasion, by their Neighbour Nations in Europe, yet they are ever under the Sword of Damocles from a Destruction, out of the other End of the Earth, by these same Air-Craft, or from a kind of Artillery, that can shoot many Thousands of Leagues, and lay wast half a Countrey, where it’s Shot comes to ground, or so they wou’d have me believe.  p. 29

In their Punishments they have no Burnings, no Quarterings, no Whippings, Pilloryings, or Brandings, and they put up no Heads of Ill-doers. Their Hangings are but few, and are perform’d in secret; and there are those in the Government that wou’d bring in a Bill, to put a stop even to that, so that the worst Felon, shou’d escape with nothing worse, then a long Imprisonment.  p. 30

Yet do they have a sweeter and a quieter Living, than any we see. I saw few Persons diseas’d or distemper’d, or even crippled. The King’s Evil, Agues, Plagues and Small Pox, are all but gone. Not one of a Man’s Children die before they come of age, if you can believe me; and yet his House is never crowded, for they have found means, that their Women shall not Conceive, but when they will. This seem’d to me an Atheistical Invention, and one like to Ruin the People; yet they regard it as nothing, save only the Papists and a few others.  p. 29

Yet in truth they are a Staid, and Phlegmatick Folk, that will not easily laugh, or weep, or fly in a passion, and whether it be from their being so press’d together, or from the Sooty-ness of the Air, or from their great Hurrying to and from work, their Faces shew much Uncontent and Sowerness, and they regard little their Neighbours. All their Love, is reserv’d to those at Home, or their Mercy, to those far off; they receive many Pleas, for Money and Goods, that they may send, for ailing Persons, that they never knew, and for Creatures in Africa and the Indies, whom they never will see. Every Saturday little Children stand in the Streets, to give little Flags an Inch across, made of Paper, in return for Coyns, for such a Charity. As for their Hatred, ’tis altogether disarm’d, for none may carry a Sword, or Knife, a Pistol, or a Musquet, under Penalty, tho’ indeed there be Ruffians here and there, that do so in secret, but only that they may committ a Robbery impunedly upon a Bank, or a great Store of Goods, and so gain thousands of Pounds in a moment.  p. 31

In truth, this goes on for a little too long but, as I was reading it, it struck me as an excellent effort at reproducing the thoughts our ancestors might have about the current time. Normally in time travel stories we see people from our time go to the past or future and comment upon what they see, or we have people from the future come to our time—I can’t think of many time travel stories with this perspective shown in this one, and certainly not done as well.
The story ends (spoiler) with the narrator and the wife becoming close as they use the time machine together on short trips (initially to check the weekend weather). Later they are found on the bed kissing by the husband, and the narrator hastily departs for his own time. He arrives shortly after he left, and goes back to his house to stock up on things to sell in the future, but by the time he returns to the machine it is gone. This may be seen by some as a fairly perfunctory ending, but at the very least it provides the witty title.
A very good story, and one I’d have in my ‘Best Of’ for 1966 (probably along with last issue’s The Mouth of Hell).
**** (Very good). 15,700 words.

The Orbs by John Watney

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Orbs by John Watney1 (New Worlds SF #159, February 1966) begins with the female narrator, Julia, telling of the appearance of huge floating “orbs,” (think of a much larger, longitudinal version of the spaceships in the movie Arrival) that appeared decades previously over certain parts of the Earth. After an initial period, where they provided better weather as well as a sense of general well-being for the humans below, they descended and sucked up all the people and other loose debris underneath them. This was repeated at intervals thereafter.
Julia’s tells of her grandfather’s memories of this day, and how one woman fell back down onto a tree, living long enough to describe what had happened to her:

“She screamed. ‘There’s no-one there,’ she said, ‘just cold invisible hands, taking your clothes off, hanging you upside down, and the water swishing at you from all sides. I slipped off the hook. I don’t know how. I lay in a sort of gutter. The water was swishing over me all the time. I could hardly breathe.
I was being pushed along by the water. The bodies were above. They were being split open like fish by invisible knives. Everything was falling down on top of me. The bodies swung away on the line. I fell down a chute’.”
The woman died. But there have always been a few survivors, and their accounts, incoherent though they have been, have always been much the same: the invisible hands and knives, the continuous water, the bodies swinging emptily away into the interior of the Orb. Of course, the accounts come only from the early days when the victims were not anaesthetised, when indeed no-one knew the rhythm of the Orbs and were not able to calculate in advance the exact moment they would descend in search of their prey.  p. 51

The final part of the story (spoiler) reveals that Julia has been selected as part of the next sacrificial group, and we learn of the system that developed after Earth’s initial failed resistance. The story closes with Julia’s calm participation in a sacrifice ceremony.
The weakest part of this is the alien abattoir part in the middle of the story, a silly idea that should probably have been left in the 1930’s pulp magazines. But the beginning of this is okay, as is the ending which describes human society’s adaptation (beauty contests are one of the ways the best are selected for the orbs). Julia’s dutiful acceptance of her fate is a particularly interesting (and novel) aspect of the story.
** (Average). 5,050 words.

1. This was John Watney’s only story, although it looks from his ISFDB page that he wrote a biography or book about Mervyn Peake (who may possibly have been his connection to Michael Moorcock, the editor of New Worlds).

The Dreamsman by Gordon R. Dickson

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Dreamsman by Gordon R. Dickson (Star Science Fiction #6, 1959) begins with a Mr Willer shaving, until:

[He] poises the razor for its first stroke—and instantly freezes in position. For a second he stands immobile. Then his false teeth clack once and he starts to pivot slowly toward the northwest, razor still in hand, quivering like a directional antenna seeking its exact target. This is as it should be. Mr. Willer, wrinkles, false teeth and all, is a directional antenna.  p. 78 (The Year’s Best SF #5, edited by Judith Merril, 1961)

Shortly afterwards, Willer goes to a house and confronts the couple who live there, stating that they are telepaths who are transmitting. After he manages to win their confidence (admitting in the process that he is almost two hundred years old) he tells the couple that he can take them to a colony of similarly talented people. They then drive to a military base and, after Willer has hypnotised his way past the soldiers and guards, reach a spaceship that will supposedly take the couple to Venus.
At this point (spoiler) a man dressed in silver mesh arrives and reveals that Willer routinely disposes of psi-capable people so Earth people won’t evolve and be admitted into Galactic Society (of which the silver-mesh man is a representative). The reason? Mr Willer likes things the way they are.
An unconvincing squib that is a collection of worn out clichés.
* (Mediocre). 2,850 words.

No Fire Burns by Avram Davidson

Posted on by Paul Fraser

No Fire Burns by Avram Davidson (Playboy, July 1959) opens with a Mr Melchior and his personnel manager, Mr Taylor, driving to lunch with a psychologist, Dr Colles. Melchior tells Colles about an otherwise normal man who murdered a rival just to secure a promotion, and goes on to ask Colles to produce a test that will weed out such individuals from his company.
Inserted into this strand of the narrative is a section about an employee of Melichor’s called Joe Clock, who has borrowed money from a workmate but, as we see, has no intention of paying it back. Joe later completes the psychological screening test that Colles develops:

There are lots worse crimes than murder. Probably . . . Sure. Lots worse. The average person will do anything for money. Absolutely right they would. Why not, if you can get away with it? Sure. And the same way, that’s why you got to watch out for yourself.
There are worse things than losing your home. What? Catching leprosy?
And then the way to answer the question changed. Now you had to pick out an answer. Like, Most people who hit someone with their car at night would (a) report to the police first (b) give first aid (c) make a getaway if possible. Well, any damn fool would know it was the last. In fact, anyone but a damn fool would do just that. That’s what he did that time. (c)
Now, a dope like Aberdeen: he’d probably stop his car. Stick his nose in someone else’s tough luck. Anybody stupid enough to lend his rent money—  p. 38-39 (The Year’s Best SF #5, edited by Judith Merril, 1961)

The story develops further (spoiler) when Colles notices, having completed the work some weeks before, problematic mentions of Melchior and his ex-employees in the newspapers. He then discovers that nearly all the company men shown by the test to have psychopathic tendencies are still employed.
Colles confronts Melchior with this information—and then asks to work for him (there are a couple of earlier hints in the story that Colles is fairly amoral). The story finishes with a biter-bit ending where the personnel manager Taylor (another one of the story’s many psychopaths) has Melchior and Colles shot by Joe Clock and another man.
This is well enough told, and interesting enough, but the idea is barely credible. And some will see where the plot is going, or be unsurprised when they get there.
** (Average). 6,350 words.