Tag: short story

The Star by Arthur C. Clarke

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Star by Arthur C. Clarke (Infinity, November 1955)1 consists of the chief astronomer of an expedition to an ancient supernova give an account of their completed mission. Their key discovery is that the solar system around the star was home to an advanced civilisation and, before the latter were destroyed, they managed to build a vault on the outermost planet of their system—a memorial to their species. This provides a wealth of information to the expedition.
The discovery also sees the chief astronomer—who is also a Jesuit—struggle with his religious faith from the very start of the story: why would God destroy a whole people in this way? Is this a question a religious person should even ask, etc.?
The story’s final twist (spoiler) comes when the expedition’s calculations reveal that the supernova was the star that shone over Bethlehem over two thousand years ago.
The brooding thoughts of the priest, which are set against the cosmic background of the supernova remnants, make this much more than what would otherwise be a clever gimmick story. That said, and however well done the character study, it is the surprise ending that provides most of the impact—and that’s obviously less effective on re-reading. Still, I wouldn’t quibble with this being described as one of the genre’s classics.
**** (Very good). 2,450 words.

1. This won the 1956 Hugo for Best Short Story (against what looks like a fairly weak list of finalists).

The Hades Business by Terry Pratchett

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Hades Business by Terry Pratchett (Science Fantasy #60, August 1963) opens with its protagonist, Crucible, arriving home and finding smoke in the hallway of his house. When he takes a bucket of water to the source of the fire in the study and charges the stuck door, it opens suddenly and he flies through the air. He ends up unconscious in the fireplace and then, when he comes around, finds the Devil leaning over him.
During their subsequent conversation the Devil tells Crucible that no-one has arrived in the Other Place for almost two thousand years, and that he wants to hire Crucible to head up an advertising campaign. After the Devil leaves, Crucible thinks about the offer and concludes he wants the money—but doesn’t want Lucifer running around. So he visits his local church.
The next part of the story involves Crucible’s journey to a (dilapidated) Hell:

A battered punt was moored by the river. The Devil helped Crucible in and picked up the skulls—pardon me—sculls.
“What happened to what’s-his-name—Charon?”
“We don’t like to talk about it.”
“Oh.”
Silence, except for the creaking of the oars.
“Of course, you’ll have to replace this by a bridge.”
“Oh, yes.”
Crucible looked thoughtful.
“A ha’penny for them.”
“I am thinking,” said Crucible, “about the water that is lapping about my ankles.”  p. 70

The rest of the story (spoiler) sees the Devil do a lot of advertising appearances in an effort to promote Hell as a tourist destination, and the Other Place soon resounds to the general bedlam of humanity: the sounds of its many visitors’ jazz and pop music, their motorcycles, the click of slot machines, etc.
After a few weeks of this the Devil has had enough, at which point God appears out of a thunderstorm and asks him if he wants to come back up to Heaven. The Devil accepts the offer.
God then thanks Crucible, who has planned the whole endeavour with this outcome in mind.
This is a cutesy story, but it’s neatly and amusingly done—and it is a particularly impressive debut for a 14 year old. I wonder what became of this writer.1
** (Average). 3,650 words.

1. Yes, joking: Terry Pratchett’s ISFDB page. I got about twenty books into the Discworld series (about half way through) before the increasingly bloated size of some of the volumes started wearing me out (he always seemed to be incapable of efficiently wrapping up the story). Still, I must go back and re-read some of the better ones.

Same Time, Same Place by Mervyn Peake

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Same Time, Same Place by Mervyn Peake (Science Fantasy #60, August 1963) is one of two stories that appeared in the magazine that year as a result, I believe, of Michael Moorcock’s friendship with the writer (Moorcock brought them to Ted Carnell’s attention, and also provided a short essay on Peake in the same issue in which this piece of fiction appears).
The story itself begins with a description that evokes the grimness of post-war Britain:

That night, I hated father. He smelt of cabbage. There was cigarette ash all over his trousers. His untidy moustache was yellower and viler than ever with nicotine, and he took no notice of me. He simply sat there in his ugly armchair, his eyes half closed, brooding on the Lord knows what. I hated him. I hated his moustache. I even hated the smoke that drifted from his mouth and hung in the stale air above his head.
And when my mother came through the door and asked me whether I had seen her spectacles, I hated her too. I hated the clothes she wore; tasteless and fussy. I hated them deeply. I hated something I had never noticed before; it was the way the heels of her shoes were worn away on their outside edges—not badly, but appreciably. It looked mean to me, slatternly, and horribly human. I hated her for being human—like father.  p. 57

When the narrator’s mother starts nagging him he feels suffocated, and leaves the house, getting on a bus to The Corner House restaurant in Piccadilly. There he befriends a woman, and he goes back to meet her on subsequent nights (although he wonders why she is always already there when he arrives, and remains seated when he leaves). Eventually, they arrange to marry.
The final section provides (spoiler) a nightmarish denouement—when his bus arrives late at the registrar’s office he sees, from the upper floor of the vehicle, a group of freakish individuals in the room where he is to be wed:

To the right of the stage (for I had the sensation of being in a theatre) was a table loaded with flowers. Behind the flowers sat a small pin-striped registrar. There were four others in the room, three of whom kept walking to and fro. The fourth, an enormous bearded lady, sat on a chair by the window. As I stared, one of the men bent over to speak to her. He had the longest neck on earth. His starched collar was the length of a walking stick, and his small bony head protruded from its extremity like the skull of a bird. The other two gentlemen who kept crossing and re-crossing were very different. One was bald. His face and cranium were blue with the most intricate tattooing. His teeth were gold and they shone like fire in his mouth. The other was a well-dressed young man, and seemed normal enough until, as he came for a moment closer to the window I saw that instead of a hand, the cloven hoof of a goat protruded from the left sleeve.
And then suddenly it all happened. A door of their room must have opened for all at once all the heads in the room were turned in one direction and a moment later a something in white trotted like a dog across the room.
But it was no dog. It was vertical as it ran. I thought at first that it was a mechanical doll, so close was it to the floor. I could not observe its face, but I was amazed to see the long train of satin that was being dragged along the carpet behind it.
It stopped when it reached the flower-laden table and there was a good deal of smiling and bowing and then the man with the longest neck in the world placed a high stool in front of the table and, with the help of the young man with the goat-foot, lifted the white thing so that it stood upon the high stool. The long satin dress was carefully draped over the stool so that it reached to the floor on every side. It seemed as though a tall dignified woman was standing at the civic altar.  p. 63

The narrator stays on the bus and, after riding around for a while, eventually goes home. He now loves his mother and father, and never goes out again.
I wondered if this was an allegory about leaving home, only to see horror in the outside world (he variously refers to members of the group he saw as “malignant” and “evil”), and then wanting to return to an earlier time (Peake was among the first British civilians to witness the horrors of the Nazi concentration camp at Belsen).
An interesting piece, but perhaps rather too dream-like to be completely satisfying.
** (Average). 3,500 words.

1. Mervyn Peake’s Wikipedia page.

Little Free Library by Naomi Kritzer

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Little Free Library by Naomi Kritzer (Tor.com, April 8th, 2020)1 begins with Meigan building a “Little Free Library” and mounting it on a post outside her house. She puts her unwanted books in it and leaves instructions to “take a book, return a book”. For a short while things proceed as expected, until one day she notices all the books have gone.
Meigan leaves a note to the person concerned pointing out what the rules are. Then, at the end of the same day, she notices that on this occasion only one book has been taken but, rather than leaving a book in exchange, there is a hand-carved whistle on top of the shelves. This object is the first of a series of (increasingly otherworldly) items that are left in exchange for the Meigan’s books: strangely coloured feathers, a green leaf (in February) that looks like a Maple but isn’t, a “carved stone animal too abstract to identify”, etc.
Simultaneous with this the mysterious borrower starts leaving notes (asking if there is a sequel to The Fellowship of the Ring, apologising for the day they took all the books, etc.), and a correspondence develops between the two.
Then (spoiler), Meigan leaves out a book titled Defending Your Castle:

That book was gone the next day.
And a day later, a tiny, glinting gold coin was left behind, with another letter.

To the librarian,
I do not know what I did to deserve the favor of the Gods, but I am grateful, so grateful, for your kindness to me. I believed our cause to be lost; I believed that I would never have the opportunity to avenge what was done to my family; now, suddenly, I have been gifted with a way forward.
Blessings on you.
It you can bring me more such books, I will leave you every scrap of gold I can find.

The gold coin was a tiny disk, the size of a dime but thinner. There was an image of a bird with spread wings stamped into one side; the other showed either a candelabra or a rib cage, Meigan wasn’t sure. Meigan’s kitchen scale thought the coin weighed four grams, which-if it was actually gold-was over $100 worth of gold. Of course, most gold-colored metal items weren’t actually gold, but … it was noticeably heavy for its tiny size, and when she tried a magnet, it was most definitely not magnetic. In theory she could have bitten it, but she didn’t want to mess up the pictures stamped in.
For the first time, she felt a pang of uncertainty.

The borrower (who appears to live in another world) later reveals that their Queen has been usurped, and that, with Meigan’s help (a series of books on warfare), they are going to attempt to regain her throne.
Meigan subsequently provides a series of useful books and accumulates a supply of gold coins in return—and then her correspondent falls silent, before communicating once more at the end of the story to say their cause is lost. The final object they leave is a wooden box, and a request that she keeps the contents safe:

She opened the box.
Nestled inside the wood was a straw lining—and an egg.
It was large—not enormous like an ostrich egg but it filled the palm of her hand. It was silvery green in color, with markings that looked almost like scales.

The egg is the Queen’s child.
This is a well done and charming piece that crams a lot into its short length, but it was too open-ended for me (although I thought the ending quite clever). I wonder if there will be further stories revealing what happened next.
Overall *** (Good). 2,500 words.

1. This story came top of the Locus Poll for Best Short Story and was a Hugo finalist.

The Liberation of Earth by William Tenn

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Liberation of Earth by William Tenn (Future Science Fiction, May 1953) gets off to an intriguing start:

This, then, is the story of our liberation. Suck air and grab clusters. Heigh-ho, here is the tale.
August was the month, a Tuesday in August. These words are meaningless now, so far have we progressed; but many things known and discussed by our primitive ancestors, our unliberated, unreconstructed forefathers, are devoid of sense to our free minds. Still the tale must be told, with all of its incredible place-names and vanished points of reference.
Why must it be told? Have any of you a better thing to do?
We have had water and weeds and lie in a valley of gusts. So rest, relax, and listen. And suck air, suck air.  p. 29

After this the (far-future Earth) narrator tells his audience of the arrival of a large, cigar-shaped alien spaceship over France many years previously. We learn of the efforts made by the UN to communicate with the visitors, the Dendi, and how, after an Indian member of the secretariat notices a similarity between a Bengali dialect and their language, a breakthrough is made.
However, once the humans begin communicating with the Dendi, they find out in fairly short order that (a) Earth is considered a backwater by their Galactic Federation (and has been subject to benevolent ostracism), (b) the Dendi are at war with the rebel Troxxt (the reason they have broken the embargo on Earth is to use the planet as a communications hub for their military), and, finally, (c) the Dendi don’t want any help from humanity. This latter notwithstanding, the Dendi later order everyone to move out of Washington as they want to use area to build a large hall. Subsequently the Americans discover that the building is to be used as a Dendi recreation centre, and that their esteemed visitors are the equivalent of a patrol squad led by the equivalent of an NCO.
The satire intensifies when the Dendi’s Troxxt enemies are detected elsewhere in the solar system and proceed to invade Earth. During this millions of humans are killed, and the Dendi retreat from the planet. The victorious Troxxt abduct and train translators, and humanity is informed that the Dendi are actually the bad guys and that Earth has been liberated! The Troxxt go on to tell their side of the story, purge the collaborators who assisted the Dendi, and proceed to use those humans that are left as slave labour. Many more die.
Then the Earth is re-liberated by the Dendi, during which Australia is disintegrated and vanishes into the Pacific (and Venus is also destroyed, which affects the Earth’s orbit).
A few more “liberations” later the Earth has become a pear-shaped lump with hardly any atmosphere left, and is barely habitable. The narrator’s mordant final observation is:


“Looking about us, we can say with pardonable pride that we have been about as thoroughly liberated as it is possible for a race and a planet to be!”  p. 40

This supposed classic was apparently written in response to the Korean War and, according to the author, was difficult to place because of its politics1—presumably this is why it ended up in the poorly paying Future magazine.
I wonder, however, if the reason it struggled to sell was because is a bit of a mixed bag: while the last third or so is a blackly humorous satire, the first half is a slightly dull and probably overlong First Contact story. As to the supposedly troublesome political content, I note that Horace Gold published an anti-McCarthy story in the same year that this was published (Mr Costello, Hero by Theodore Sturgeon, Galaxy, December 1953). Whatever the reason, the idea of liberating armies as a bad thing must have seemed rather peculiar so soon after the end of WWII.
*** (Good). 6650 words.

1. Tenn apparently mentions this in Immodest Proposals: The Complete Science Fiction of William Tenn, Volume 1 (2001).

Party Piece by Steve Hall

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Party Piece by Steve Hall (Science Fantasy #60, August 1963) begins with some prefatory material about the President of the Midnight Club, Vance Seaton, organising the entertainment for the members’ Xmas dinner.
When the club’s science fiction, fantasy and horror writer members finally meet, and after they have finished their meal, Seaton introduces the first act—a magician called Levito and his daughter/assistant Gloria. After a series of tricks Levito finishes the act with his daughter floating in mid-air: the magician then moves his arms with a complicated flourish and she disappears.
Levito soon makes it clear to Seaton that Gloria wasn’t supposed to vanish, so Seaton gets the other act, a hypnotist, to go on while he and Levito discuss the matter. Seaton then conducts an examination:

Under Seaton’s directions, [Levito] gradually lowered the lighter from a point well above the warped space, where it was clearly visible to Seaton on the other side, until it moved into eclipse behind it. For a moment the flame seemed to wink out of existence, then it abruptly re-appeared and extended itself into a flaring, flickering curtain, as if distorted by some grotesque lens.
“Walk behind it yourself,” instructed [Seaton].
As Levito traversed the full length of the uncanny region, which was about waist high, the mid-section of his body seemed to expand and contract in an eye-wrenching fashion; at times it disappeared altogether, leaving his torso and legs to continue, apparently unconnected.
“Light doesn’t go through it,” muttered Seaton clinically, “it goes around it. I think I know what we’ve got here.”
“What is it?”
“It’s something like a Klein Bottle.”  p. 81-82

Further discussions suggest that the enclosed space is a form of three dimensional Möbius strip (I think), and that Gloria may quickly run out of air or overheat.
When the Seaton finally reveals the dilemma to the club members, and asks for suggestions on how to free her, one of them suggests (spoiler) that Levito should move his arms in the opposite manner to unlock the space. However, when the magician tries to do this he cannot remember exactly what he did. Enter the hypnotist, who puts Levito into a trance . . . .
When Gloria finally reappears there is rapturous applause (some of the members think it is part of the act), and she reveals that virtually no time at all had passed inside the space (Seaton observes in passing that you probably can’t distort Space without affecting Time).
This probably sounds like a fairly slight piece, and a contrived one too—but it’s well told, and the hypnotist idea is a neat one.
*** (Good). 3,400 words.

50 Things Every AI Working With Humans Should Know by Ken Liu

Posted on by Paul Fraser

50 Things Every AI Working With Humans Should Know by Ken Liu (Uncanny, November-December 2020) takes the form of a futuristic article written about a Dr Jody Reynolds Tran and the neural network (essentially an AI) she creates called WHEEP-3. Tran later publishes a best-selling book about WHEEP-3, and subsequently causes a controversy when she reveals that the neural network was the author. There is more fuss later on when “seeds” of prose supposedly written by WHEEP-3 are found to be authored by Tran.
The story finishes with a reprint of one of WHEEP-3’s seeds, the “50 things” referred to in the title, a mix of statements that range from the obscure to the observational:

25. “I never expected to sell my rational numbers.”
26. Accepting that most humans will never get the joke.
27. That they cannot visualize more than three dimensions.
28. That they cannot manipulate time by slowing down or
speeding up.
29. That they are trapped, but think of themselves as trappers.
30. That they are free, but believe themselves imprisoned.

A moderately interesting look at how future AIs may behave and communicate—but ultimately a slight, fragmentary piece.
** (Average). 1,900 words. Story link.

The Writhing Tentacles of History by Jay Werkheiser

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Writhing Tentacles of History by Jay Werkheiser (Analog, September/October 2020) opens with two eight-tentacled creatures (we later learn they are evolved squids or octopuses) examining a human hip-bone discovered long after an far-future extinction event for humanity. The dominant one of the pair, Mottled-Brown (they communicate by skin colour changes) is worried about the prospect of his archaeological dig being shut down, and he is due to appear before the Ruling Octet who will decide whether or not this will be the case.
When Mottled Brown appears before the Octet his female nemesis, Blue-Ripples, is also there. During their testimony Blue Ripples states that—despite the human hip-bone Mottled-Brown has just found—his theories are ridiculous, and that the dig is a waste of resources and should be shut down. The Octet decide to have further debate and analysis the next day.
After the adjournment Blue-Ripples approaches Mottled-Brown and tells the archaeologist of her further plans for him:

“One fossil won’t save you,” Blue-ripples said. Her words were tinged with black. “And your conclusion is ridiculous. Two arms indeed.”
Mottled-Brown concentrated on keeping his skin a neutral gray-brown. He wouldn’t let her goad him into a confrontation again. “Well see the words tomorrow.”
He turned to leave, but Blue-Ripples stopped him. “I’ve filed a reproduction claim on you,” she said.
He froze in place, his arms writhing. He felt his skin turn black. “It’ll never be approved. I’m still at the height of my career.”
“And if the octet closes your dig?” Her words shifted blue. “A fossilized historical scientist with little hope of any further contribution? They’ll give you to me before your third heart can finish a beat.”
“Slug slime! My contributions have been—”
“In the past. The only thing you have left to contribute to the next generation is your flesh. Our eggs will grow strong on it.”
He involuntarily pulled himself into an upright fighting posture, an instinct remaining from the presentient past. “The Ruling Octet will see the value of my dig. History is on my side.”
“The writhing tentacles of history have slashed many of your kind,” she said. Her arms began slipping through the port and out of the hall. Her mantle flashed one last thought. “You will be delicious.”
As the last of her mantle slipped through the port, he saw her skin turn bright blue.  pp. 135-136

The rest of the story sees Mottled-Brown talk to his assistant Gray-Ring about the day’s events—and the sexual encounters of his youth. Then, the next day, he appears again in front of the Octet where (spoiler), in an extended debate, he manages to use Blue-Ripples’ own mathematical models against her to suggest that humans may have been tool users and are therefore worthy of further research.
Most of this piece is talking heads (in some respects it’s a bit like an Isaac Asimov story), but the clever debate and conversation between the various players is well done, and I found it an engaging read (having one of the characters threatening to lay their eggs in the other is a novel type of jeopardy!) The only thing that slightly spoiled this for me is the last section, where Mottled-Brown and his assistant Gray-Ring discuss the extinction events that caused the demise of the humans and the reptiles before them. The closing mention of an asteroid impact is obviously meant to mean something, but I couldn’t work out what the point of the comment was. The story is better than my final rating for the most part, and probably would have scored higher but for this.
*** (Good). 5,050 words.

Rover by A. T. Sayre

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Rover by A. T. Sayre (Analog, March-April 2020) opens with an AI rover prospecting on Mars: we learn that it hasn’t had any instructions from Earth for some considerable time and that it has been evolving during that period:

It had changed somewhat since its creation, as it had needed to take parts of other machinery left on Mars to keep going. A new wheel from the Russian probe, an optic lens to replace its own cracked one, a processor from another to subsidize its own when its performance had started to lag. It had taken solar panels from a Chinese machine with more receptive photovoltaic cells and mounted them alongside its original array to improve energy collection. It added another set of arms from an Indian rover, much better at gripping than its original four, connected by an extension of its chassis that it took from an American probe at the edge of the Northern ice cap.
And as always from the probes, landers, other rovers, it took the processors and data storage units, to keep pace with the increasing sophistication of its system. It grew smarter, more resourceful, capable of more and more complex problem solving and decision making. The rover had learned so much, had grown so much, it was barely recognizable as the simple machine that had touched down on the red planet so long ago.  pp. 171-172

While later traversing a ridge the rover falls over and damages a strut. After the vehicle reboots, it then decides to proceed to a location 90km away, where it hopes to find a replacement part on an abandoned vehicle. During this slow and arduous journey, the rover picks up a signal from what it thinks may be a human-manned ship and diverts course, but when the rover finally arrives at the site it finds a damaged ship and the body of one of the crew. The rover eventually manages to hoist itself up and into the vessel.
The last section of the story (spoiler) has the rover repair itself in the ship’s well-equipped workshop; it then contacts Earth, only to find that all Mars missions have been permanently suspended. Now that it is free to do as it wishes the rover converts itself into a drone, and the final scene sees it launch itself out of the ship to endlessly fly over the surface of Mars.
This is a well enough done piece, but I got the vague feeling that (for me, anyway) there was something missing. Maybe I just prefer stories where there is more focus on the personality of the AI.
*** (Good). 6,100 words.

The Chrysalis Pool by Sean McMullen

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Chrysalis Pool by Sean McMullen (Analog, September-October 2020)1 has as its protagonist a lab technician called Lucian, and who gets a request from a psychologist called Alice Marshall to make a wearable device for Leo Hawker, one of her patients: Hawker apparently sees a naked water nymph whenever he goes near bodies of water. Lucian subsequently constructs a portable electroencephalograph for Hawker to wear but, against Marshall’s express wishes, he also includes a concealed camera to record what Hawker sees when he is having his hallucinations.
The next part of the story details a test run of the device and also gives us more information about the three characters. Then, when Lucian and Marshall are out for dinner one night, Lucian gets a notification that Hawker has gone out on one of his regular runs. Lucian leaves Marshall and goes back to his lab to watch the camera, and subsequently hears Hawker talk to someone who isn’t visible on the video feed. Lucian then sees Marshall fall face first into the pool and rushes to the location to save him, whereupon he briefly sees a woman dressed in a lab coat standing waist deep in the water. Later, when Lucian examines the ECG and the film, he sees no sign of a woman, and realises that what he saw does not match what Hawker has described seeing.
Four weeks after his near-drowning Hawker resigns from his job, sets up an investment consultancy, and starts associating with a more glamourous set of people; he also refuses Marshall’s requests for further brain scans. This change in Hawker’s behaviour (spoiler) prompts Lucian to speculate that there was another personality lying dormant within Hawker—one that revealed itself by the nymph hallucinations, and which was born during the period of oxygen starvation. This prompts Lucian go back to the pond to meet his own lab-coat dressed “nymph,” which he believes will birth, as it did with Hawker, the dormant chrysalis within him. However, Lucian turns away at the last moment, and nevertheless becomes successful anyway.
The problem with this story is that Lucian’s speculation about the chrysalis idea isn’t convincing, it is introduced too late, and ends up essentially unrelated to his concluding personal development (although there is a note of ambiguity at the end). That said, Lucian—a sly, unethical, and slightly chippy character—makes for an interesting narrator. So, in conclusion, a well told story based on an unlikely and/or unconvincingly framed idea.
** (Average). 6,450 words.

1. Rather surprisingly this story won the 2020 Analog Readers’ Poll (Analytical Laboratory) for Best Short Story. Or maybe not a surprise, given SF readers’ penchant for latent supermen stories (Slan, etc.)