Month: April 2023

The Big Flash by Norman Spinrad

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Big Flash by Norman Spinrad (Orbit #5, 1969) opens with a music club manager signing a rock group called The Four Horsemen to perform at his venue. This initial scene displays the story’s entertaining period style:

First, the head honcho, lead guitar and singer, Stony Clarke—blonde shoulder-length hair, eyes like something in a morgue when he took off his steel-rimmed shades, a reputation as a heavy acidhead and the look of a speed-freak behind it. Then Hair, the drummer, dressed like a Hell’s Angel, swastikas and all, a junkie, with fanatic eyes that were a little too close together, making me wonder whether he wore swastikas because he grooved behind the Angel thing or made like an Angel because it let him groove behind the swastika in public. Number three was a cat who called himself Super Spade and wasn’t kidding—he wore earrings, natural hair, a Stokeley Carmichael sweatshirt, and on a thong around his neck a shrunken head that had been whitened with liquid shoe polish. He was the utility infielder: sitar, base, organ, flute, whatever. Number four, who called himself Mr. Jones, was about the creepiest cat I had ever seen in a rock group, and that is saying something. He was their visuals, synthesizer and electronics man. He was at least forty, wore Early Hippy clothes that looked like they had been made by Sy Devore, and was rumored to be some kind of Rand Corporation dropout. There’s no business like show business.

In the next section of the story we hear from a Presidential advisor planning to manipulate US public opinion to accept the use of tactical nuclear weapons in Vietnam (he complacently states, “the risks, while statistically significant, do not exceed an acceptable level”). It then becomes apparent, as the story progresses, that The Four Horsemen, with their disturbing visuals, very dark, death-metal like music (“I stabbed my mother and I mugged my paw. Nailed my sister to the toilet door….”, etc.), and other subliminal effects, are a psychological operation designed to achieve that end. Later, a TV network executive is compelled to screen their show uncut, something that disturbs him and others in the network, not least because the performance climaxes with a song called “The Big Flash” (which ends with the repeated refrain, “Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it!”, and film of a nuclear explosion).
The rest of the tale mixes up scenes that involve, variously, military personnel (including two Minutemen missile operators and a Polaris Captain who are increasingly hypnotised by the band), a nuclear test at Yucca Flats, and then, finally, a climactic TV performance. Of course (spoiler), The Four Horsemen’s brain-washing has worked far better than planned, and causes the Minutemen and Polaris crews to launch their ICBMs.
This is an original piece that unusually combines rock music and nuclear weapons into an entertaining if disturbing piece. If I have one minor criticism it is that the final countdown goes on for too long.
***+ (Good to Very Good). 8,200 words. Story link.

Forty-Eight Minutes at the Trainview Café by M. Bennardo

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Forty-Eight Minutes at the Trainview Café by M. Bennardo (Asimov’s SF, November-December 2022) is set in a future where humanity has uploaded itself to a virtual reality where people spend their time experiencing a variety of simulations:

Closing his eyes, Felix took a sip of the tea, held it in his mouth, and felt its warmth diffuse through his sinuses. It was an incredible detail, just like every other detail in the place. The feeling of physical presence, of reality, of existential weight. He could not deny that the Trainview Café was utterly unlike any other simulation program he had experienced in the decades since he had left his own human body behind. But all the same, Felix couldn’t see what all of these finely turned details added up to. What was the point, except to remind him of what he no longer was?
Slowly, Felix inverted the paper cup over the edge of the platform. Steam rose hissing as the remaining tea splattered onto the gravel below, staining it dark gray. He squashed the paper cup and threw it down onto the tracks, wondering how much longer he had to wait before he would be disconnected. He vaguely recalled that the program had charged him for forty-eight minutes. It was an unusual increment of time, but it had been the only one available. And it had been expensive, too: more expensive than twelve hours in most other high-end simulations. Yet, here he was, only twenty minutes in and already bored.  p. 118

Felix eventually becomes so bored that he goes down to the tracks and lies there, waiting for the next train to come—but, before this can happen, he is asked by a woman to move. She adds that his behaviour is spoiling the simulation for everyone else and, if he doesn’t do as he is told, she will disconnect him.
Felix gets back on to the platform and ends up having a conversation with the woman, Nancy, who tries to explain to him that the simulation is not event driven but is dedicated to detail. She then takes him to see goldfinches at a birdfeeder, explaining that the birds are rendered at close to cellular level, never repeating themselves or looping as would be the case in other simulations (“Practically speaking, at every level above the size of a cell, they are real birds”). Felix doesn’t get it, but the challenge of trying to understand what other visitors are getting from the simulation breaks through the ennui he has recently been experiencing (something highlighted when he revisits the Blue Glacier climbing simulation, an experience that was thrilling the first time he made the ascent but has now lost its attraction).
Felix subsequently makes another visit to the Train Station simulation, and once again upsets the people there by banging on the window and frightening the goldfinches away. Then, on his next trip, he arranges to meet Nancy, and they have a long back and forth conversation about the simulation and the philosophy behind it. Nancy suggests that, if he wants to spend more time there, he could become an admin. Felix declines. Then Nancy offers to show him one of the hacks that she and the other admins have been working on—the ability to get on an outbound train and stay there all night until they return to the train station the next day (this enables the users to permanently stay in the simulation, which would otherwise be a very expensive proposition due to the processing power required).
There are shortcomings to this hack, however, as Felix finds out when they both set off on the “Night Train” and he is told to close his eyes and keep them closed. When he does, Felix experiences the motion and sound of the train, but (spoiler) he is unable to just lie there and enjoy the limited experience and, when he eventually opens his eyes, Felix finds himself in an unsettling low-resolution world of lines and unfilled spaces, an image that reveals the “endless nightmare” that he and (I think) all uploaded humans are trapped in.
This is a slickly told story—Bennardo has a concise and transparent style—and the concept is pretty neat. That said, I don’t think the ending is as good as the rest of it, possibly because it doesn’t clearly make its point. (Is this his personal nightmare or one for humanity? Do people really desire thrills or normal life?) Not bad at all, though, and I’ll be interested to see more work from this writer.
*** (Good). 6,950 words. Story link.

The Burning Girl by Carrie Vaughn

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Burning Girl by Carrie Vaughn (Beneath Ceaseless Skies #340, 7th October 2021) opens with three knights arriving at an abbey, and a teenage girl called Joan being brought before them:

[One] of the nuns ran back to the hall and returned with an unlit candle, one of the big beeswax ones used to light the chapel sanctuary. I knew what this meant: these knights had demanded a demonstration. At the sight of that candle, I nearly cried. I did not understand, did not want to understand, but I knew what was happening.
Ursula held the candle to me. “You must show Sir Gilbert what you are.”
“Mother Abbess, you said that I must never—”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“But you said that I would be damned—”
“Joan! If you do not do this for Sir Gilbert, the Norman army will destroy the abbey and all of us with it. Please.”
Mother Ursula did not have to beg for anything, particularly not from a low-born novice placed here out of charity and fear. A scrawny, awkward novice, coifed and shrouded in threadbare gray and carrying the Devil’s spark. But she begged now.
I held the candle before me where the Normans could see it. Its weight was potential; the wick beckoned. Already the spark rose up under my skin. Mother Ursula could not put a candle in my hand and expect I would do nothing.
I touched the wick. The candle lit, a tongue of fire flaring and settling.
“Mon Dieu.” This was whispered by the wiry, chestnut-haired man standing to Sir Gilbert’s right. The nuns made the sign of the cross.
Sir Gilbert smiled.

Joan leaves with the Sir Gilbert and the other two and, when they get back to his camp, she sees that he has gathered several other paranormals into his company: Ann (who was one of the two “knights” with Gilbert) can split the ground; Isabelle can control the weather; Ibrahim can talk to the birds; and Felix can run very quickly. The next day they travel to see William (the Conqueror) and, when Joan is presented to him, she spectacularly demonstrates her powers by setting a nearby haycart ablaze. This leads to William giving Gilbert and the paranormals the task of taking the city of York.
The last section of the story details the battle at York and (spoiler) their eventual victory. Then, afterwards, William’s men attempt to kill Gilbert and the others because of the threat they pose. However, after the group fight off the attack, Gilbert goes to see William and gets a reprieve and land in Wessex.
This is a readable enough piece but it is essentially the Norman Conquest redone with superheroes, and, like most superhero tales, the story has a number of overfamiliar elements: (a) misfits bond with other misfits; (b) there is lots of fighting; and (c) there is little sense of peril for the reader as it seems fairly obvious that the group’s powers will deliver them to safety. And, when that fails, William can always change his mind at the end of the story.
Not a bad piece, but it is somewhat formulaic and consequently a little uninvolving.
** (Average). 10,650 words. Story link.

The Station of the Twelfth by Chaz Brenchley

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Station of the Twelfth by Chaz Brenchley (Tor.com, 8th September 2021) has a long opening passage that describes a monorail on Mars and the names of the different stations. One of them is called “The Station of the Twelfth”, and people wait on the platform during an Armistice Day service to explain to visitors how it got its name. This involves the description of a steampunkish alternate world where the British and Russian Empires were at war and, in particular, of a battle on one of the moons of Mars, Deimos, where a British Empire regiment made a valiant last stand:

The Twelfth Battalion of the Queen’s Own Martian Borderers, our very own regiment: they made their stand on Deimos, while the last transports flew the last divisions away from there and brought them home. The word we had, they gathered about their colors and stood fast. Not one made a run for safety; not one has been returned to us, alive or otherwise. They would have died to the last man sooner than surrender. That much we know. And this also we know, that the Russians had no way to return them, dead. The merlins would refuse to carry bodies in an aethership; the way we treat our dead appals them deeply. Their own they eat, as a rule, or let them lie where they fell. The Charter allowed us one graveyard, one, for all the province; that is close to full now, for all its size. We think, we hope they just don’t understand our crematoria, which have proliferated now perforce all through the colony.
When challenged about the Twelfth, the Russians will say only that the matter has been attended to, with great regret. Our best guess is that they built their own crematorium for the purpose, there on Deimos. What they did with the ashes, we cannot know.
So we made this, the Station of the Twelfth: here is their last posting, this cemetery to which they can never come. Its very emptiness speaks louder than tombstones ever could, however many. It embraces the city like a mourning band, for the Twelfth were local lads, the battalion raised and barracked here.

A good mood piece.
*** (Good). 2,850 words. Story link.

Jody After the War by Edward Bryant

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Jody After the War by Edward Bryant (Orbit #10, 1972) opens with the narrator and Jody walking on a mountainside trail until they get to a picnic site overlooking Denver (one of the cities that survived a nuclear war). During this we get some backstory about the conflict, learn how the couple met, and see them discuss her PTSD and unwillingness to have children because of what she saw at one of the target cities.
Eventually, after munching through more related angst and the picnic, the narrator tells her he knows what he is letting himself in for and that he still wants marry her and move to Seattle.
A short slice-of-life/relationship fragment. Early-ish Bryant; he would do better work than this.
* (Mediocre). 2,200 words. Story link.

Lot by Ward Moore

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Lot by Ward Moore (F&SF, May 1953)1 opens with Mr Jimmon telling the rest of his family that it is time to get in the car and leave their house. For the first few paragraphs it appears as if the family is about to go on vacation—but we soon discover there is a unspecified crisis, that the water and electricity have stopped flowing, and the family station wagon is fully loaded. Then, as they set off:

He opened the door on the driver’s side, got in, turned the key, and started the motor. Then he said casually over his shoulder, “Put the dog out, Jir.”
Wendell protested, too quickly, “Waggie’s not here.”
Molly exclaimed, “Oh, David…”
Mr. Jimmon said patiently, “We’re losing pretty valuable time. There’s no room for the dog; we have no food for him. If we had room we could have taken more essentials; those few pounds might mean the difference.”
“Can’t find him,” muttered Jir.
“He’s not here. I tell you he’s not here,” shouted Wendell, tearful voiced.
“If I have to stop the motor and get him myself we’ll be wasting still more time and gas.” Mr. Jimmon was still detached, judicial. “This isn’t a matter of kindness to animals. It’s life and death.”
Erika said evenly, “Dad’s right, you know. It’s the dog or us. Put him out, Wend.”
“I tell you—” Wendell began.
“Got him!” exclaimed Jir. “Okay, Waggie! Outside and good luck.”
The spaniel wriggled ecstatically as he was picked up and put out through the open window. Mr. Jimmon raced the motor, but it didn’t drown out Wendell’s anguish. He threw himself on his brother, hitting and kicking. Mr. Jimmon took his foot off the gas, and as soon as he was sure the dog was away from the wheels, eased the station wagon out of the driveway and down the hill toward the ocean.  p. 102-103

Most of the remainder of the story consists of a long road trip where Jimmon’s internal thoughts take centre stage. These cover: (a) the crisis (there has been a nuclear war where several cities have destroyed and he is taking his family to sanctuary in a remote location); (b) the grudge he has against his wife and the life that was forced on him; (c) whether or not his family are capable of surviving in this new world order (he concludes that his wife and two sons—“parasites”—are too attached to civilization, but thinks that his daughter Erika will manage); and (d) his concern about their slow progress through the traffic they encounter. Throughout this Jimmon reveals himself to be a disagreeable mix of prepper and misanthrope.
As the journey lengthens, discontent erupts—partially for the usual reasons (they have been cooped up together for hours), and partially because of others, such as requests to stop for the toilet (which Jimmon repeatedly ignores):

By the time they were halfway to Gaviota or Goleta— Mr. Jimmon could never tell them apart—foresight and relentless sternness began to pay off. Those who had left Los Angeles without preparation and in panic were dropping out or slowing down, to get gas or oil, repair tires, buy food, seek rest rooms. The station wagon was steadily forging ahead.
He gambled on the old highway out of Santa Barbara. Any kind of obstruction would block its two lanes; if it didn’t he would be beating the legions on the wider, straighter road. There were stretches now where he could hit 50; once he sped a happy half-mile at 65.
Now the insubordination crackling all around gave indication of simultaneous explosion. “I really,” began Molly, and then discarded this for a fresher, firmer start. “David, I don’t understand how you can be so utterly selfish and inconsiderate.”
Mr. Jimmon could feel the veins in his forehead begin to swell, but this was one of those rages that didn’t show.
“But, dad, would ten minutes ruin everything?” asked Erika.
“Monomania,” muttered Jir. “Single track. Like Hitler.”
“I want my dog,” yelped Wendell. “Dirty old dog-killer.”
“Did you ever hear of cumulative—” Erika had addressed him reasonably; surely he could make her understand?
“Did you ever hear of cumulative…?” What was the word? Snowball rolling downhill was the image in his mind. “Oh, what’s the use??”  p. 110-111

The story comes to a conclusion when Jimmon finally pulls into a deserted filling station so they can refuel. Here Jimmon is overcharged by the attendant, but he cares as little for the money he hands over as he did about a traffic ticket he got earlier from a policeman for driving on the wrong side of the road. When the family come back out from the station’s toilets (spoiler), Jimmon gives his wife a wad of cash and tells her to phone the couple they know, and also gets the boys to go after their mother to get some candy bars. Then he tells Erika to get in the car and drives off without them.
I was lukewarm about this story when I first read it years ago but thought it much better this time around. The dark internal monologue of the story (a darkness which is mirrored by external events) is quite notable for the period, as are the brief mentions or allusions to childhood sex play, adultery, and abortion (there is also a faint glimmer of incest here, and I wonder if this is developed in the sequel, Lot’s Daughter2).
Finally, I was genuinely surprised by the shock ending—which I think makes the story (it seems as if something unpleasant is about to happen to the attendant but, after what happened to the dog, and given Jimmon’s opinion of his family members, I should have realised what was coming).
**** (Very Good). 9,900 words. Story link.

1. This story was published six months after another notable Ward Moore piece, the alternate world novella/novel Bring the Jubilee (F&SF, November 1952).

2. I haven’t read Lot’s Daughter (F&SF, October 1954) yet, but my suspicions about where the story may be going seem to be borne out by the biblical story of Lot.

The Wheel by John Wyndham

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Wheel by John Wyndham (Startling Stories, January 1952) opens with an old man dozing at a farm wake up to see his grandson appear with a box that is riding on four improvised wheels. Before he can say anything the mother appears and screams, which brings the rest of the family. The mother then orders the boy, Davie, into the barn. When she tells the grandfather that she would never expected that sort of behaviour from her son, he says that if she hadn’t screamed no-one would have had to know. She is scandalized.
The reason for this puzzling behaviour becomes obvious when the grandfather subsequently goes to talk to Davie. He asks the boy to say his Sunday prayers:

“There,” he said. “That last bit.”
“Preserve us from the Wheel?” Davie repeated, wonderingly. “What is the Wheel, gran? It must be something terrible bad, I know, ’cos when I ask them they just say it’s wicked, and not to talk of it. But they don’t say what it is.”
The old man paused before he replied, then he said: “That box you got out there. Who told you to fix it that way?”
“Why, nobody, gran. I just reckon it’d move easier that way. It does, too.”
“Listen, Davie. Those things you put on the side of it—they’re wheels.”
It was sometime before the boy’s voice came back out of the darkness. When it did, it sounded bewildered.
“What, those round bits of wood? But they can’t be, gran. That’s all they are—just round bits of wood. But the Wheel—that’s something awful, terrible, something everybody’s scared of.”  p. 118

The grandfather’s further explanations to Davie make it apparent that they are living in a post-nuclear holocaust world, and one where there is a religious prohibition on technology. The grandfather explains that the priests see devices like the wheel as the work of the Devil, his way of leading mankind astray, and, when they find such inventions, they not only burn them but their inventors too. He then tells Davie that when the priests question him the following day, he must tell them he didn’t make the wheels but that he found them. Then, after a final observation about progress being neither good nor evil, the grandfather gives the boy a hug and leaves.
The final section (spoiler) sees the priests arrive to find the grandfather busily making two more wheels. They are horrified, the box is burnt, and the grandfather is taken away. The ending is nicely understated:

In the afternoon a small boy whom everyone had forgotten turned his eyes from the column of smoke that rose in the direction of the village, and hid his face in his hands.
“I’ll remember, gran. I’ll remember. It’s only fear that’s evil,” he said, and his voice choked in his tears.  p. 120

A short piece but a solid one.
*** (Good). 2,700 words. Story link.

Mulberry and Owl by Aliette de Bodard

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Mulberry and Owl by Aliette de Bodard (Uncanny #42, September/October 2021) opens with Thuỷ in the cabin of the starship looking at a black hole in the centre of a nebula; Thuỷ is there to talk to an imprisoned imperial enforcer. After a flashback to a time twenty years earlier (about half the subsequent story is an account of Thuỷ’s time with her rebel comrades), we discover that the imperial enforcer is a starship called The Owl and the Moon’s Tongue, which has been imprisoned in the black hole as it is no longer needed by the new Empress (she does not want reminders of the enforcer’s atrocities).
We subsequently learn that Thuỷ wants the Owl to give her a copy of the amnesty awarded to a dead comrade so that their family can return home and live in peace; in return, Thuỷ will repair the Owl’s weapons systems. After some negotiation they come to an agreement, and Thuỷ sees vision of the pardon. Then the Owl reveals itself:

Something changed, in the mass of light in front of Thuỷ: a slight adjustment, but suddenly she could see the ship—the bulk of the hull, the sharp, sleek shape with bots scuttling over every surface, the thin, ribbed actuator fins near the ion drives at the back—the paintings on her hull, which she’d half-expected to be blood spatters but which were apricot flowers, and calligraphed poems, and a long wending river of stars in the shadow of mountains, a breathtakingly delicate and utterly unexpected work of art. Something moved: a ponderous shift of the bots, drawing Thuỷ’s eyes towards a patch of darkness at the centre of the painting, between two mountains.

The rest of the story interweaves an account of Thuỷ’s activities during the rebellion with her work repairing the Owl’s weapon system, its “scream”. Then, once Thuỷ finishes the job (spoiler), the Owl double-crosses her:

The Owl’s scream. The punishment for rebels, for the disloyal to the empire. For those who had abandoned their friends.
Thuỷ had chased atonement all the way into that nebula, and on some level she’d known, she’d always known, that she didn’t expect to come out after fixing Owl. [. . .] “Do you think it’s worth it? They’ll just dismantle it, after I’m dead.”
“Oh, child. You’re the one who saw so much, and so little. It’s my voice. It’s part of me. I’d rather scream once more in all my glory rather than leave it forever unused. It will be worth it. All of it.”
You saw much, and so little.
But on some deep, primal level, she’d seen all of it already.
The pressure was building up and up within her. Her bots popped apart, one by one, like fireworks going off—there was nothing in her ears now but that never ending whistling, that vibration that kept going and going, her bones full to bursting, her eyes and nose and mouth ceaselessly hurting, leaking fluid—and her lungs were shaking too, and it was hard to breathe, and even the liquid that filled her mouth, the blood, salt-tinged one, felt like it was vibrating too—and all of it was as it should be—

The Owl then realises that—because of her guilt about her comrades—Thuỷ will suffer more if she lives. Thuỷ returns to her ship.
I found this story’s space opera setting, with its Star Wars-lite Empresses and rebels, unengaging to start with, and I’m also not a fan of de Bodard’s style over substance writing (too much of the story is spent describing the world this is set in, or Thuỷ’s angst). However, this drew me in more as it went on, and the ending looked like it was going to be a cut above what had come before (the scream sequence starts well).The ending is a cop-out though and, if Owl was really more interested in causing suffering to its victims than killing them, it would presumably mutilate them instead (e.g. paralyse and/or deafen and/or blind them).
Almost there.
**+ (Average to Good). 7,950 words. Story link.