Tag: 2*

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

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).

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.

No, No, Not Rogov! by Cordwainer Smith

Posted on by Paul Fraser

No, No, Not Rogov! by Cordwainer Smith (If, February 1959) is supposedly one of his ‘Instrumentality of Mankind’ stories, although the connection seems to be limited to a brief prologue where a golden dancer performs some sort of rapturous dance in the year AD 13,582. The bulk of the story, however, concerns itself with two Soviet scientists who are undertaking a highly secret project to develop a telepathic helmet. The pair are a married couple, Rogov (the husband) and Cherpas (the wife), who have two minders, Gausgofer (a woman who is in love with Rogov) and Gauck (a constantly expressionless man).
Their work takes place during the reigns of Stalin and Khrushchev, and they have early success in using the device to see through other people’s eyes, although the pair are never entirely sure who they are looking through or where they are. The experiment comes close to a conclusion when Rogov has a needle inserted into the top of his own head to get direct access to his optic nerve (Gauck ordering the execution of the prisoners they experiment on after a week of use has hitherto limited what they can achieve). Of course (spoiler), when the machine is connected and switched on, we see that the device operates through time as well as space, and Rogov sees the dancer in the future and goes mad:

He became blind to the sight of Cherpas, Gausgofer, and Gauck. He forgot the village of Ya. Ch. He forgot himself. He was like a fish, bred in stale fresh water, which is thrown for the first time into a living stream. He was like an insect emerging from the chrysalis. His twentieth-century mind could not hold the imagery and the impact of the music and the dance.
But the needle was there and the needle transmitted into his mind more than his mind could stand.
The synapses of his brain flicked like switches. The future flooded into him.
He fainted.
Cherpas leaped forward and lifted the needle. Rogov fell out of the chair.  p. 61 (The Year’s Best SF #5, edited by Judith Merril, 1961)

Rogov is subsequently examined by doctors but cannot be roused, nor is he later when a deputy minister from Moscow arrives with more experts. Gausgofer suggests repeating the experiment to see if she can learn something that will help recover Rogov, but is similarly affected—and she also stands up at the moment of contact, altering the needle’s position in her brain which kills her. Cherpas subsequently tells the minister that she eavesdropped on Rogov’s connection using the old equipment, and that her husband saw something unbelievably hypnotic in the far future.
The story concludes with Gauck telling the minister that the experiment is over (which I didn’t find entirely convincing, i.e. a functionary telling a Soviet deputy minister what to do).
There is probably a reasonable mainstream story about Soviet era scientists and secret police buried in this piece, but the SF parts seem like an afterthought, and the idea of someone going mad because they watch the AD 13,582 version of Strictly Come Dancing seems rather fanciful.
** (Average). 6,500 words.

The Shoreline at Sunset by Ray Bradbury

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Shoreline at Sunset by Ray Bradbury (F&SF, March 1959) begins with two men on the beach prospecting for lost change. We discover that they share a house, and watch as their discussion turns to the stream of women (and unsuccessful relationships) that have passed through their lives. Tom suggests to Chico that they may have more romantic success if they live apart, just before they are interrupted by a boy saying that he has found a mermaid. The men soon find themselves looking at a seemingly alive but unconscious creature that is half woman, half fish:

The lower half of her body changed itself from white to very pale blue, from very pale blue to pale green, from pale green to emerald green, to moss and lime green, to scintillas and sequins all dark green, all flowing away in a fount, a curve, a rush of light and dark, to end in a lacy fan, a spread of foam and jewel on the sand. The two halves of this creature were so joined as to reveal no point of fusion where pearl woman, woman of a whiteness made of creamwater and clear sky, merged with that half which belonged to the amphibious slide and rush of current that came up on the shore and shelved down the shore, tugging its half toward its proper home. The woman was the sea, the sea was woman. There was no flaw or seam, no wrinkle or stitch; the illusion, if illusion it was, held perfectly together and the blood from one moved into and through and mingled with what must have been the ice-waters of the other.  p. 72 (The Year’s Best SF #5, edited by Judith Merril, 1961)

Chico decides that they can sell the creature to an exhibition or a carnival, and rushes off to get a truck full of ice; Tom is more ambivalent, and (spoiler) stays behind to watch over the creature—but does nothing when the waves gradually wash the mermaid back into the sea.
I thought perhaps the mermaid was a metaphor for the women or the relationships that the men can’t keep but, whatever the story is about, it is typical of later Bradbury, i.e. more a prose poem than a story.
** (Average). 3,350 words.

Multum in Parvo by Jack Sharkey

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Multum in Parvo by Jack Sharkey (The Gent, December 1959)1 isn’t actually a short story but a quartet of vignettes that each end in a pun (or two, or have them all the way through)—Feghoots, as I believe they are called in the SF field.2
The first, Robots, is a fairly straightforward piece involving the construction of a card-playing robot in 1653, which builds to a decent single pun ending; the second, Aircraft, has Icarus flying towards the sun with a double pun ending, both of which are both okay; the third, Vampirism, really goes for it, and has eight puns (maybe more) on the way through—this is the best of the four by country mile; the last one, Atomic Fission, has a decent single pun ending and a coda about fallout that I didn’t get (the Vampirism one would have made for a stronger finish).
I’m not big on puns but this was okay, with the third section having considerably more bite than the others. Boom, tish.

1. In The Great SF Stories 21 (1959), edited by Isaac Asimov & Martin H. Greenberg (which includes this story), the editors report on two further ‘Pavro’ stories in Gent magazine (which are not listed on ISFDB): Son of Multum in Parvo and Son of Multum in Parvo Rides Again.

2. The Wikipedia article on Feghoots.

The Other Wife by Jack Finney

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Other Wife by Jack Finney (Saturday Evening Post, January 30th, 1960) starts with a fairly stereotypical husband-wife encounter—she’s prattling on about her knitting and he’s day-dreaming about a sports car—which eventually devolves into a mild spat. During the early stages of this encounter the husband discovers a 1958 Woodrow Wilson coin in his change: this becomes significant later.
The next part of the story sees the husband transported to an alternate world where, after seeing a “Coco-Coola” sign, he notices other changes (the cars are all black, and they are of different makes) before discovering the most significant difference on his arrival back at his apartment—which is that he is married to another woman.
He later realises that she is an ex-girlfriend of his, although this takes some time, and after some slight hesitation he picks up where he left off. He subsequently enjoys a honeymoon period with his other wife and during this also has the pleasure of finding new books that exist in this world but not in his own:

There on the revolving metal racks were the familiar rows of glossy little books, every one of which, judging from the covers, seemed to be about an abnormally well-developed girl. Turning the rack slowly I saw books by William Faulkner, Bernard Glemser, Agatha Christie, and Charles Einstein, which I’d read and liked. Then, down near the bottom of the rack my eye was caught by the words, “By Mark Twain.” The cover showed an old side-wheeler steamboat, and the title was South From Cairo. A reprint fitted out with a new title, I thought, feeling annoyed; and I picked up the book to see just which of Mark Twain’s it really was. I’ve read every book he wrote—Huckleberry Finn at least a dozen times since I discovered it when I was eleven years old.
But the text of this book was new to me. It seemed to be an account, told in the first person by a young man of twenty, of his application for a job on a Mississippi steamboat. And then, from the bottom of a page, a name leaped out at me. “‘Finn, sir,’ I answered the captain,” the text read, “‘but mostly they call me Huckleberry.’”
For a moment I just stood there in the drugstore with my mouth hanging open; then I turned the little book in my hands. On the back cover was a photograph of Mark Twain; the familiar shock of white hair, the mustache, that wise old face. But underneath this the brief familiar account of his life ended with saying that he had died in 1918 in Mill Valley, California. Mark Twain had lived eight years longer in this alternate world, and had written—well, I didn’t yet know how many more books he had written in this wonderful world, but I knew I was going to find out. And my hand was trembling as I walked up to the cashier and gave her two bits for my priceless copy of South From Cairo.  pp. 25-26 (The Year’s Best SF #5, edited by Judith Merril, 1961)

This part of the story, and his realisation about what the odd coins in his change do—see below—is probably the best of it.
In a few months, of course, the shine eventually comes off his new relationship and, while checking his change one night, he finds a Roosevelt coin. He realises that it was the Woodrow Wilson one which transported him to this world—and that the Roosevelt will let him return.
The story ends with him back in his own world where no time has passed. He has a second honeymoon period with his first wife and then, later, finds another Woodrow Wilson coin in his change . . . .
I guess, overall, this story is okay, but it’s essentially shallow New Yorker froth where a bigamous husband has his cake and eats it. A pity, because there is a better story here about how the shine comes off of new relationships and marriages, and of the possibilities of the road not taken. (And hopefully a story which explains the reason there isn’t already a husband in the alternate world.)
** (Average). 5,850 words.

How Beautiful with Banners by James Blish

Posted on by Paul Fraser

How Beautiful with Banners by James Blish (Orbit #1, 1966) begins with Dr Ulla Hillstrøm on the surface of Titan wearing a molecule thick “virus space-bubble”. After some description of this space suit, her environment (which includes a view of the rings of Saturn), and of an alien “flying cloak,” the latter hits her in the small of the back and knocks her over.
The second chapter of the story sees her recover consciousness, and which point she starts thinking about a post-divorce affair that she had at a Madrid genetics conference. There is another page or so of background which, in part, focuses on her generally unhappy love life.
In the third chapter she realises that her suit isn’t working correctly but can’t remember what happened. Then she realises that the alien cloak creature has wrapped itself around her, and may have bonded with her suit, but this doesn’t stop further self-absorption:

And suppose that all these impressions were in fact not extraneous or irrelevant, but did have some import—not just as an abstract puzzle, but to that morsel of displaced life that was Ulla Hillstrøm? No matter how frozen her present world, she could not escape the fact that from the moment the cloak had captured her she had been simultaneously gripped by a Sabbat of specifically erotic memories, images, notions, analogies, myths, symbols and frank physical sensations, all the more obtrusive because they were both inappropriate and disconnected. It might well have to be faced that a season of love can fall due in the heaviest weather—and never mind what terrors flow in with it or what deep damnations. At the very least, it was possible that somewhere in all this was the clue that would help her to divorce herself at last even from this violent embrace.  p. 58

The final part of the story has her notice another of the flying creatures in the distance and, thinking that it might attract the one that surrounds her, she goes to the thermal beneath which it is soaring. She blocks up the vent, the creature descends, and then the cloak surrounding her departs, along with her spacesuit. She has time to think “You philanderer—” but not to realise that she has started a long evolution in the cloaks that will end sixty million years later.
This is a complete muddle of various parts, some of which are quite good (Ulla’s character is much more three-dimensional than usual for the time; there is some good descriptive writing; and there is a sense-of-wonder-ish ending) but some of it is awful (who wakes up from an attack on an alien and starts relationship navel gazing? What on Earth is the silly “philanderer” comment about?) None of this works as a coherent whole. God only knows what Blish was trying to achieve here.
** (Average). 3,800 words.

The Disinherited by Poul Anderson

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Disinherited by Poul Anderson (Orbit #1, 1966) starts with two starship pilots in orbit around a planet called Mithras, where a human science expedition landed a century before. Their discussion provides various bits of background information, most pertinently that all interstellar travel is to be stopped.
After this setup the bulk of the story is from the viewpoint of Thrailkill, who is the son of one of the science team, and we join him as he returns from expedition upriver of Point Desire, the only city on the planet. With him are his wife, child, and an indigenous alien called Strongtail, a kangaroo-like creature with long arms and a head like a bird. When they arrive at an inn in Point Desire they are greeted with the news of the starship’s arrival, and that the arriving crew “say you can now go home”.
The remainder of the story focuses on the plan to remove the science mission, which leads Thrailkill and the other colonists to realise that they want to stay. In amongst all this, there is some good description of the planet and Thrailkill’s life there:

When he and Tom Jackson and Gleam-Of-Wings climbed the Snowtoothe, white starkness overhead and the wind awhistle below them, the thunder and plumes of an avalanche across a valley, the huge furry beast that came from a cave and must be slain before it slew them. Or shooting the rapids on a river that tumbled-down the Goldstream Hills, landing wet and cold at Volcano to boast over their liquor in the smoky-raftered taproom of Monstersbane Inn. Prowling the alleys and passing the lean temples of the Fivedom, and standing off a horde of the natives’ half-intelligent, insensately ferocious cousins, in the stockade at Tearwort. Following the caravans through the Desolations, down to Gate-of-the-South, while drums beat unseen from dry hills, or simply this last trip, along the Benison through fogs and waterstalks, to those lands where the dwellers gave their lives to nothing but rites that made no sense and one dared not laugh. Indeed Earth offered nothing like that, and the vision-screen people would pay well for a taste of it to spice their fantasies.  p. 73

Eventually Kahn, the starship captain, assembles all the humans and speaks to them while he waits for his men to arrive. He tells them that their colony isn’t a viable size, and they cannot be allowed to stay because, if they do, they will expand their numbers and overwhelm the planet and the aliens who live there. During his speech he refers to some of the indigenous populations of Earth’s past (Native Americans, etc.) who were overwhelmed by new arrivals. Then a shuttle from the starship arrives, armed men enter, and the story ends.
This is a picturesque story, but it poses a false dichotomy1 and the last scene resembles one of those didactic Analog story-lectures. It also ends far too abruptly, and feels like the beginning of a longer, better story.
** (Average). 5,500 words.

 1. The ending of this piece made me realise that a lot of stories probably have simplistic either/or endings for dramatic reasons—in this case it means you can either finish the story as above (armed arrest), or you could have a “resistance and independence” ending (in what would be a longer story). A more pragmatic, fudged solution, where the humans covenant with the aliens to limit the size of their colony, for instance, probably wouldn’t be as satisfying.