Month: November 2023

Brightside Crossing by Alan E. Nourse

Posted on by Paul Fraser 1 Comment on Brightside Crossing by Alan E. Nourse

Brightside Crossing by Alan E. Nourse (Galaxy, January 1956)1 opens in James Baron’s club, with him meeting an unknown man who asks if he is planning a Brightside Crossing. We learn in fairly short order that (a) Baron’s crossing will be across the sunward facing side of Mercury2 when it is at its closest point to the sun (perihelion) and (b) the stranger is Peter Claney, the only survivor of an earlier failed attempt. Claney insists that Baron has no chance of making a successful crossing, and proceeds to tell Baron about his team’s failed attempt.
In the central part of the story we learn how Claney was approached by a Major Tom Mikuta to join the expedition and how they were later joined by two other men, Jack Stone and Ted McIvers. The latter man, an adventurer described by Claney as a “kind of a daredevil”, arrives late at their start point—a lab in the twilight zone—presaging problems that will arise later in the story.
After they depart the base station, McIvers’ restlessness soon manifests itself and, after swapping roles with Stone and driving one of the flanking scout vehicles rather than the supply sledge at the back, he is soon asking to replace Claney as point, wanting to go five or ten miles ahead of the rest of the team to reconnoitre their route. Mikuta refuses, stating that they need to stay together, but McIver becomes ever more wayward and, during one of his side trips, he finds the wreckage and bodies of a previous expedition. Tensions increase as the story continues to unfold—the physical conditions are gruelling, Stone is becoming increasingly scared, and they are arguing about falling behind schedule. This all comes to a climax when Claney baulks at crossing a shelf he considers unsafe, and McIver charges ahead:

I started edging back down the ledge. I heard Mclvers swear; then I saw his Bug start to creep outward on the shelf. Not fast or reckless this time, but slowly, churning up dust in a gentle cloud behind him.
I just stared and felt the blood rushing in my head. It seemed so hot I could hardly breathe as he edged out beyond me, farther and farther—I think I felt it snap before I saw it. My own machine gave a sickening lurch and a long black crack appeared across the shelf—and widened. Then the ledge began to upend. I heard a scream as Mclvers’ Bug rose up and up and then crashed down into the crevasse in a thundering slide of rock and shattered metal.

They learn that McIvers isn’t dead but has smashed his vehicle and broken his leg. Mikuta and Stone descend into the crevasse to save him but (spoiler) are killed in a subsequent quake. Claney turns back.
The last part of the story, like the first, takes place in Baron’s club, and sees Baron (and probably most readers) observe that McIvers was the wrong kind of person to have in the team. Claney rebuts that, suggesting that McIvers was right to do what he did as they needed to keep to their schedule or they all would have died. Finally, after Claney makes an impassioned last attempt to talk Baron out of continuing his expedition, he asks him, “When do you leave, Baron? I want you to take me along.”
Although this story superficially looks like hard SF, it is really a character study about the type of men who are explorers, and how they are driven to do what they do.
This is a pretty good piece which is further improved by its closing line.
**** (Very Good). 7,850 words. Story link.

1. This story was a finalist for the 1956 Hugo Award for Best Novelette.

2. At the time the story was published it was thought that Mercury was tidally locked and that only one side of the planet faced the sun (i.e. Mercury rotated once for every orbit around the sun). Subsequently, Mercury was discovered to rotate three times for every two orbits, so all parts of the planet receive sunlight at some point.

The Short-Short Story of Mankind by John Steinbeck

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Short-Short Story of Mankind by John Steinbeck (Lilliput, November 1955)1 opens with two cavemen moaning about the youth of the day, problems with the neighbouring tribe, etc.:

Joe came into the cave all scratched up and some hunks of hair torn out and he flopped down on the wet ground and bled—Old William was arguing away with Old Bert who was his brother and also his son, if you look at it one way.
[. . .]
‘Where’s Al?’ one of them asked and the other said, ‘You forgot to roll the rock in front of the door.’
Joe didn’t even look up and the two old men agreed that kids were going to the devil. ‘I tell you it was different in my day,’ Old William said. ‘They had some respect for their elders or they got what for.’
After a while Joe stopped bleeding and he caked some mud on his cuts. ‘Al’s gone,’ he said.
Old Bert asked brightly, ‘Sabre tooth?’
‘No, it’s that new bunch that moved into the copse down the draw. They ate Al.’
‘Savages,’ said Old William. ‘Still live in trees. They aren’t civilized. We don’t hardly ever eat people.’
Joe said, ‘We got hardly anybody to eat except relatives and we’re getting low on relatives.’
Those foreigners!’ said Old Bert.
‘Al and I dug a pit,’ said Joe. ‘We caught a horse and those tree people came along and ate our horse. When we complained, they ate Al.’

The rest of this rambling non-sf story charts, in a similar tone, the progress of humanity from cavemen to hunter gatherers to farmers to citizens of larger states. The effects of religion and technology and military force are also considered. The concluding observation is that people nowadays are not stupider than cavemen, but exactly as stupid as cavemen. This strikes me as overly simplistic, and it is not an observation I would agree with. I doubt that even cavemen were as stupid as they are portrayed here.2
I’ve read quite a lot of Steinbeck and would count The Grapes of Wrath among my favourite top ten books, but this is pretty weak stuff.
* (Mediocre). 2,200 words. Story link.

1. This story was reprinted in Playboy (April, 1957) using the title above. The original Lilliput publication was titled We Are Holding Our Own.

2. One of my Facebook group referred to this story as “The Cranky View of Human History”.

Sole Solution by Eric Frank Russell

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Sole Solution by Eric Frank Russell (Fantastic Universe, April 1956)1 opens with a being trapped in a dark void where only he exists. He realises that the only resources available to overcome his predicament are “secreted within himself” and that he must “be the instrument of his own salvation”.
Eventually, after further exploration of his environment, and much thought, he conceives of a solution that will provide what he wants:

He created a mighty dream of his own, a place of infinite complexity schemed in every detail to the last dot and comma. Within this he would live anew. But not as himself. He was going to dissipate his person into numberless parts, a great multitude of variegated shapes and forms each of which would have to battle its own peculiar environment.
And he would toughen the struggle to the limit of endurance by unthinking himself, handicapping his parts with appalling ignorance and forcing them to learn afresh. He would seed enmity between them by dictating the basic rules of the game. Those who observed the rules would be called good. Those who did not would be called bad. Thus there would be endless delaying conflicts within the one great conflict.
When all was ready and prepared he intended to disrupt and become no longer one, but an enormous concourse of entities. Then his parts must fight back to unity and himself.

If this (spoiler) doesn’t give the game away, then the neat payoff lines, “‘Let there be light.’ And there was light.” confirm his identity.
I’d read this story before and remembered the ending, but I still thought it was pretty good: adroitly laid out, and the last lines bootstrap the story to another level. I’d also add that I was quite taken, even though I’m an atheist, with the conceit that we are all parts of a disassembled God trying to distract himself.
***+ (Good to Very Good). 700 words. Story link.

1. This is the first story in Brian W. Aldiss’s anthology Penguin Science Fiction, which is a group read starting in one of my Facebook groups today, 27th November 2023 (private group, so you will have to join).

Dilemma by Connie Willis

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Dilemma by Connie Willis (Foundation’s Friends: Stories in Honor of Isaac Asimov, 1989) opens with three robots trying to arrange an appointment with Isaac Asimov’s secretary Susan (another robot). They the want to talk to the famous author about repealing the First Law of Robotics1 (one of them is a medical robot and cannot make a surgical incision as it would harm a human). Susan tries her best to fob them off but, when Asimov arrives unexpectedly and talks to the three robots and is flattered by their comments, he tells her to arrange an appointment for the next day (which Susan then double books after they leave).
The rest of the story details the robots’ further attempts to talk to Asimov and Susan’s efforts to stop them. In among this are many references to Asimov’s work, in particular the Positronic Robot stories (those unfamiliar with his work may be a bit lost), and a running joke where he is wrongly identified as the author of other books (by, in order, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert A. Heinlein, and Harlan Ellison):

“Do you know how late for lunch Al Lansing was? An hour and fifteen minutes. And when he got there, do you know what he wanted? To come out with commemorative editions of all my books.”
“That sounds nice,” Susan said. She took [Asimov’s] coordinates card and his gloves out of his pockets, hung up his coat, and glanced at her watch again. “Did you take your blood pressure medicine?”
“I didn’t have it with me. I should have. I’d have had something to do. I could have written a book in an hour and fifteen minutes, but I didn’t have any paper either. These limited editions will have cordovan leather bindings, gilt-edged acid-free paper, water-color illustrations. The works.”
“Water-color illustrations would look nice for Pebble in the Sky,” Susan said, handing him his blood pressure medicine and a glass of water.
“I agree,” he said, “but that isn’t what he wants the first book in the series to be. He wants it to be Stranger in a Strange Land!” He gulped down the pill and started for his office. “You wouldn’t catch those robots in there mistaking me for Robert Heinlein.”

At the end of the story Asimov does some investigation (as he previously pointed out to the three, he only wrote about the Laws of Robotics, he didn’t build them), and he eventually reveals (to the assembled group, which includes Susan) that he has discovered that their complaint about the First Law (spoiler) has been a red herring, and that the real issue is that Susan has been working part-time for one of the three robots (the Accountant)—who is leaving the area and wants Susan to go with him. She has refused as she thinks Asimov would be lost without her (a First Law violation). Asimov tells her that she is free to go as (a) he managed on his own in the previous decades, and (b) he will train up one of the other two robots (the Book Shelver) to be her replacement.
This story is essentially an extended in-joke that has a concealed mystery at its end. A pleasant enough piece.
*** (Good). 6,500 words. Story link.

1. I’m not convinced the first law restriction on surgery is valid—surely the second part of that law would override the first:

“‘First Law: A robot shall not injure a human being, or through inaction allow a human being to come to harm,’” the varnished robot quoted. “‘Second Law: A robot shall obey a human being’s order if it doesn’t conflict with the First Law. Third Law: A robot shall attempt to preserve itself if it doesn’t conflict with the First or Second Laws.’ First outlined in the short story ‘Runaround,’ Astounding magazine, March 1942, and subsequently expounded in I, Robot, The Rest of the Robots, The Complete Robot, and The Rest of the Rest of the Robots.”


Sober Noises of Morning in a Marginal Land by Brian W. Aldiss

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Sober Noises of Morning in a Marginal Land by Brian W. Aldiss (SF: Authors’ Choice 3, 1971) opens with the narrator, who has been brutally interrogated, being taken back to his room. After he recovers a little he manages to escape through a trapdoor in the roof—only to be recaptured some time later by three horsemen.
As this story unfolds we discover that (a) this is set in a 38th Century Kazakhstan (although his surroundings are little different from today’s); (b) there is One State ruling the Earth; (c) the narrator has actually booked into this prison for a one month course of suffering (apparently he has “a tendency towards guilt”); and (d) that mankind is in the process of developing a shared consciousness:

“The State recognises that human consciousness is changing. That a quantal step is being taken by the human animal. That we are coming into a period when more and more individuals—finally the whole race—will . . . evolve into a being with a greater capacity for consciousness.”
The word eluded me. Then I got it out in a whisper. “Supermen?”
“It’s not a term I would use. We know there are different levels of awareness. Not just the conscious. The below-conscious as well, with more than one level. They are merging into a new integrated consciousness.”
“. . . And the State wants individuals with such awareness to be on its side. . . . “
“It wants to be on their side.”

There is further discussion about this concept, and also the divisions that separate individuals from one another—but it’s all rather gnomic. The point of the story remained unclear.
** (Average). 6,600 words. Story link.

Of Death Deserved We Will Not Die by Bennett North

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Of Death Deserved We Will Not Die by Bennett North (Lightspeed #162, November 2023) has a narrator who helps his mother make bread outside a city that has closed its gates. Various other snippets of information are presented as the narrator wanders the area gathering supplies—he practises climbing the city walls, there has been a plague and many have been locked outside the city, the narrator’s mother is paid for her bread with “broken chairs and baby clothes and sacks of bones”, etc. (I got the vague feeling the bones were what they ground down to make the bread).
This very short piece never coheres into anything more than a dream fragment.
* (Mediocre). 700 words. Story link (available 23rd November).

A Review: The Reunion of the Survivors of Sigrún 7 by Lars Ahn

Posted on by Paul Fraser

A Review: The Reunion of the Survivors of Sigrún 7 by Lars Ahn (Lightspeed #162, November 2023) takes the form of a review of a documentary about a Mars mission that went wrong. We subsequently learn that Riveria, the maker of the film, locked the four remaining survivors in a room and interviewed them about the mission and the circumstances surrounding the commander’s death:

Mission commander Ruben Corto had died in a tragic accident and his remains had been left in space, per his wishes. That was all the surviving members were willing to say, and nothing else could be drawn out of them. Speculations ran wild, not helped by Dieter Hamilton’s suicide a few months after the return. Was Corto’s death really an accident? Had there been a mutiny onboard? Was Corto to blame for the ship going off course? Did the crew eat him when they ran out of supplies? (Riviera shoots that rumor down by documenting that Sigrún 7 had plenty of food in storage.)

The central mystery is never explained so, interestingly oblique approach aside, the story is ultimately slight and unsatisfying.
** (Average). 1,450 words. Story link (available 16th November).

Dr Seattle Opens His Heart by Winston Turnage

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Dr Seattle Opens His Heart by Winston Turnage (Lightspeed #162, November 2023) is a short, two page fragment about a cruel and arbitrary superhero called Dr Seattle. We learn about the thousand faces people see when they look at him, his damaged body, and how he deals ruthlessly with a terrorist incident at an internet company building (“Detonate it”).
A notion, not a story.
* (Mediocre). 650 words. Story link (available 23rd November).

Confession #443 (Comments open) by Dominica Phetteplace

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Confession #443 (Comments open) by Dominica Phetteplace (Lightspeed #162, November 2023) begins with the narrator describing how he and his friends are being haunted by internet images of a Professor Mangleman. It materialises that the group startled the Professor on a hiking trail the day before, whereupon he fell into a canyon and subsequently died—they did nothing to help him for fear of being blamed by the police.
The narrator later learns more about the Professor:

His death was ruled an accident. He liked to go hiking wearing complicated earbuds that messed with his vestibular system. He had fallen down trails before. Apparently, his colleagues had been begging him to stop hiking on skinny trails with his weird earbuds. He had multiple concussions from past falls.
The earbuds were his own invention. They connected directly to his brain via an implanted neural interface. He was mapping his own connectome with the goal of merging it with an AI.

Eventually (spoiler), one of the group can’t bear the constant images anymore and goes to the cops—who already know that the narrator and his friends have violated the Good Samaritan law:

I asked my Lawyerbot why they didn’t just arrest us as soon as they knew. Why did they instead sic each of us with a haunting algorithm? Seems mean. Well, you weren’t rated as flight risks, she said. But really, it’s cheaper this way. The haunting algorithm follows you around the internet confronting you with your crime until one of you confesses and narcs on the others. It cuts down on prosecution costs.

We eventually discover that the account we are reading is the narrator’s court statement (“rated by a sentiment algorithm for both remorse and honesty”).
This is an entertaining and quirky piece that crams quite a lot into its short length.
*** (Good). 1,300 words. Story link (available 23rd November).