Tag: short story

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.

Hunger’s End by Robert Cheetham

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Hunger’s End by Robert Cheetham (New Worlds #171, March 1967) sees Caroline listening to Jimmy at a party. He says that physical beauty is valueless as it contributes nothing to functionality; she disagrees and, deciding that he doesn’t know what he is talking about, eventually dismisses him. As Caroline hands her glass to him so that he can get her another champagne, she notices a minute chip in it and deliberately drops it to the floor where it smashes.
The rest of the story alternates between Caroline’s adulterous affair with another man called David, who was at the party with his wife, and a sponge-like alien life-form that has been feeding on the seabed for aeons. The alien sponge is later harvested and put on sale, during which period it starts to starve. Caroline buys it (“huge, ovoid, delicately violet”).
The final scene (spoiler) has Caroline discussing her relationship with David on the phone before she goes to have a bath. She dreamily slips her finger into a hole in the sponge, and the alien bites it off. The story close with this:

“Then there’s the transiency of beauty,” said Jimmy. “Symmetry exists only so long as the apposite dimensional planes are exactly complimentary. Alter one side, change its shape by one iota, and symmetry, beauty, perfection, value—everything is gone.”  p. 126

I’m not convinced by the point the story is trying to make, or that it would stop Caroline attracting David, but I suppose it is a short and effective enough piece.
** (Average). 1,700 words. Story link.

The Empty by Ray Nayler

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Empty by Ray Nayler (Asimov’s Science Fiction, November-December 2022) opens with Sal seeing a motionless red dot on her screen—one of her remotely supervised self-driving trucks has broken down.
The rest of the first half of the story describes Sal’s uncertain unemployment (she is continually assessed by Amazon-like metrics and there are lots of other people waiting to take her job), her location (she works in a portacabin complex in the car park of an abandoned Wallmart carpark in the middle of nowhere, presumably because of the tax breaks), and her possible future (when she goes to see her supervisor about the breakdown, she learns she is about to be promoted).
When Sal subsequently uses the truck’s remote bee- and monkey-like drones to remotely inspect the damage, she sees that the truck has hit a drone:

There really wasn’t much left of that thing. Her truck must have been the third or fourth one to hit it. Something that small, it would barely register on their sensors.
The trucks weren’t going to slam on the brakes for every jackrabbit that launched itself into their grills. Sal heard the stories from the drivers who had worked their way up from the service depots: You power-washed a lot of gore off these things. Blood, bits of bone, quills, hooves, and antlers. At two hundred kilometers an hour, at least it was over quickly for the animals.
The trucks were failsafed to spot humans near the road and brake—but she’d heard things. And they weren’t going to stop for anything, human or otherwise, out here on U.S. 50. This was the Empty. Population density below the safety threshold. The trucks automatically turned the failsafe off. Whoever lived out here (did anyone live out here?) knew you’d better look both ways when you cross these roads. And look again.
White paint, though. She’d never seen that.  p. 68

Then, while she waits for the repair truck to arrive, she walks the monkey over to a deserted diner—and sees “HELP” written on the one window that isn’t boarded up, with a handprint pointing into the desert.
The rest of the second half sees Sal go to investigate, all the while worrying about the cost that she is incurring (after she has used the allotted amount of time for inspecting the damage, Sal’s company starts charging her). Eventually (spoiler), Sal finds the remaining survivor of a nearby, unattended retirement settlement (we learn that the drone the truck crashed into is actually the settlement’s medical bot).
The story ends with Sal calling for a rescue drone, and later being let go by her employers. She subsequently gets a thank-you message from the woman she saved.
This story has a very convincing near-future setting—there is a wealth of throwaway, Heinleinesque detail about this increasingly automated society—but the capitalist excesses (paying for a SAR drone, being laid off for saving someone’s life) almost stretch credulity to breaking point, as does the rescued woman’s comment about never being able to repay Sal. Well, the woman could say she was going to leave her estate to Sal for saving her life—but, of course, that would ruin the tale’s miserablist finger-wagging about dystopian capitalism. This latter spoils the story somewhat.
(**+) Average to Good. 5,600 words. Story link.

The Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered as a Downhill Motor Race by J. G. Ballard

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered as a Downhill Motor Race by J. G. Ballard (Ambit #29, 1966)1 does what the title promises:

Oswald was the starter.
From his window above the track he opened the race by firing the starting gun. It is believed that the first shot was not properly heard by all the drivers. In the following confusion Oswald fired the gun two more times, but the race was already under way.
Kennedy got off to a bad start.

The rest of this short piece provides a number of oblique observations about this historical event:

[It] has been suggested that the hostile local crowd, eager to see a win by the home driver Johnson, deliberately set out to stop [Kennedy] completing the race. Another theory maintains that the police guarding the track were in collusion with the starter, Oswald.

The final observation, “Who loaded the starting gun?”, is an effective finish.
I thought this was a striking piece when I first read it many years ago, but it is one that is bound to have less of an effect the second time around.
*** (Good). 700 words. Story link.

1. This piece (which was inspired by Alfred Jarry’s The Crucifixion Considered as an Uphill Bicycle Race) was reprinted in New Worlds #171, March 1967.

The Ersatz Wine by Christopher Priest

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Ersatz Wine by Christopher Priest (New Worlds #171, March 1967) opens with a man fleeing his pursuers and hiding from them in a building. Inside he sees a girl sitting at the bottom of a flight of stairs. She holds out her hand and takes him up to a room where they have sex. He leaves in the morning. His pursuers find him later, leaning against a pile of crates: they wonder how they can keep his batteries charged.
Inserted into this brief story are seemingly random passages:

“Two fat ladies: eighty-eight,” said the Bingo-caller.
“Three and seven: thirty-seven. Key of the door: twenty-one. On its own: number six. . . .”  p. 117

“My work,” said the Artist, “is a total expression of my soul. It relates in terms of colour and image the visual interpretation of consciousness.” His audience nodded and smiled, staring in serious awe at the canvas behind the Artist. It was daubed with shredded inner-tubes and random streaks of motor-oil.  p. 117

Some of these may have an oblique connection to the story:

“What right have we to keep this man alive?” demanded the Surgeon. “Transistors and batteries are bastardising God’s work!”  p. 118

“My life,” said the Actor, “is a constant lie.”  p. 118

A taste of what was to come in the pages of the large format New Worlds.
– (Poor). 1,650 words. Story link.

The Dragon Slayer by Michael Swanwick

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Dragon Slayer by Michael Swanwick (The Book of Dragons, 2020) begins with Olav’s backstory, and we learn that he is a wanderer and adventurer and was briefly married to a witch—until he caught her coupling with a demon and slew them both. When we catch up with him he is working as a guard for a desert caravan, which is later ambushed by brigands. Only Olav and (what he thinks is) a young boy survive. Then, when they camp that night, a demon comes out of the forest for Olav, and they only just escape after Olav sets the dry undergrowth on the periphery ablaze.
When the pair arrive at the city of Kheshem, Olav works as a cutpurse to get them the money they need:

The day’s haul was such that he bought the two of them a rich meal with wine and then a long soak in hot water at the private baths. When Nahal, face slick with grease, fiercely declared himself in no need of such fripperies, Olav lifted him, struggling, into the air and dropped him in the bath. Then, wading in (himself already naked), he stripped the wet clothes off the boy.
Which was how Olav discovered that Nahal was actually Nahala—a girl. Her guardians had chopped her hair short and taught her to swear like a boy in order to protect her from the rough sorts with whom traveling merchants must necessarily deal.
The discovery made no great difference in their relationship. Nahala was every bit as sullen as Nahal had been, and no less industrious. She knew how to cook, mend, clean, and perform all the chores a man needed to do on the road. Olav considered buying cloth and having her make a dress for herself but, for much the same reasons as her guardians before him, decided to leave things be. When she came of age—soon, he imagined—they would deal with such matters. Until then, it was easier to let her remain a boy.
At her insistence, he continued the lessons in weapons use.

Olav ends up working for a wizard called Ushted the Uncanny after Ushted materialises in their room and tells Olav that if he continues to steal purses he will be caught. The wizard explains that he can time-travel, and has talked to a condemned future-Olav in his cell. To prove his point, Ushted then takes the current Olav forward in time to show him what happened, and brings back an ashen-faced one in need of drink.
After this there are two other developments, Nahala makes a friend of her own age called Sliv (he doesn’t know she is a girl), and the demon from earlier in the story sets up a lair on a hillside near the city.
The story eventually concludes with Olav, Nahala, Ushted and Sliv going to confront the demon (the creature is terrorising the area and Ushted has volunteered his services to the city’s rulers), and the story proceeds to a busy conclusion which includes (spoilers): (a) Sliv discovering that Nahala is a girl and consequently showing his contempt; (b) Ushted the wizard making a deal with the demon (who is revealed as Olav’s witch-wife) for a time-travelling amulet; (c) Ushted giving Sliv the amulet after Sliv is revealed as the younger Ushted; (d) Nahala acquiring the amulet but being unable to use it; (e) a future-Nahala arriving and killing Ushted the wizard and the dragon-witch. After all this Nahala admires her future self, and the future-Nahala admires the unconscious Olav; she then tells the younger Nahala to tell him it was he who slew the dragon when he wakes up (“you know what a child he can be”).
If this all sounds over-complicated, it is—and it doesn’t explain why the time-travelling Ushted didn’t see what was coming. A pity, as it is reasonably entertaining story to that point.
** (Average). 6,450 words.

New-Way-Groovers Stew by Grania Davis

Posted on by Paul Fraser

New-Way-Groovers Stew by Grania Davis (Fantastic, August 1976) opens with the lesbian narrator’s description of the 1960’s Haight-Ashbury scene—which includes, atypically for the time of publication, a frank description of her elderly gay friend:

He’s always so funny, and admittedly, more swishy when he has a new lover. Not that any of them appreciate his wit, his charm, his intelligence. The old fairy usually manages to dig up some tight-assed sailor from the Tenderloin, or a motorcycle freak from one of the leather bars. He buys them new clothes, prepares lavish and tender gourmet meals, and gazes at them with sad, baggy basset-hound eyes, waiting for some small sign that some of the feeling has been appreciated, perhaps even returned. That maybe (but this is really too much to hope for) something might develop. Something permanent, a real relationship with warmth, love. But it never does.
When Jule excused himself for a brief visit to the john, his latest Chuck (or Stud) started eyeballing the prettiest girl in the room, boasting loudly, “I hate faggots, and I hate this nancy food, and the only reason I’m hanging around with that old auntie, Jule, is cause I’m temporarily short of bread. Soon as I get me a bankroll, I’m getting a big red steak, and some pretty blonde pussy. And all you queers can shove it up your ass!”  p. 62

There is a bit more about the narrators and Jule’s friendship before the story turns to the Flower Children who are beginning to converge on Haight Ashbury. We learn about the latter’s communitarian lifestyle, and how they initially coalesce around the New-Way-Groovers Free Store, an establishment which freecycles goods and also provides a daily stew, made from various scavenged foodstuffs, to all-comers.
The narrator and Jules occasionally visit with the people at the store, and Jules later gets involved in a long argument with a man called Tony, during which, among other things, they discuss morality (Tony states at one point, “The highest morality is to take care of yourself”). This idea later manifests (spoiler) when the narrator gets a note from Jules saying he has gone away, and to send all his money to his sister in Detroit. When the narrator goes to ask Tony where Jules has gone, she is given a bowl of stew that is much richer than normal and which has chunks of meat in it. Tony tells her that they stole some meat, got themselves a “fat old pig”.
This piece contains quite a good portrait of alternative life in 1960’s Haight-Ashbury but, even after the morality argument, the cannibalism ending is silly and a bit over the top. So this is a game of two halves as a horror story—but is maybe notable as an early example of one with lesbian/gay characters.
** (Average). 3,950 words. Story link.

Those We Serve by Eugenia Triantafyllou

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Those We Serve by Eugenia Triantafyllou (Interzone #287, May-June 2020)1 begins with Manoli, an artificial, putting his summer skin on his steel chassis. Manoli is an illegal copy (the real/original Manoli lives in an undersea city) and he works on an island that is a tourist destination:

For a few precious hours the island seemed to belong only to the artificials. Manoli let himself feel enchanted by the walls painted bright summer colors but also by the pure white ones, as radiant as the sun. By the calm sea and the oceanic pools (such was their architecture that they seem to pour into the sea like a tilted glass of water). As he went up the wide and curved stairs that led to a small white church, he admired its decrepit beauty, the chipped green paint of the bells. The priest, another artificial, pulled at the rope and let them boom all the way out to the sea, his long black robes and bushy beard blowing in the high wind. He greeted Manoli with a subtle nod and then crossed his hands and fixed his stare at the horizon.
How could the priest reconcile his nature with his birth memory? Did he still believe he was a God’s creature? Manoli wondered the same thing about every artificial but he always reached the same conclusion: it depended on the person they were made from. Their birth memories and the personality their human had. They could not escape it.

The rest of the piece sees Manoli looking for a woman called Amelia, who arrives later but does not seem to be aware that Manoli is an artificial. Then we see Manoli experiencing the memories of his original who, when Manoli meets him later, complains about living in the undersea city and tells Manoli that the originals are coming to take their lives back. When Amelia later arrives at the bar to join the two of them, she doesn’t recognise the original Manoli.
The piece ends with (spoiler) Manoli managing to overcome his programming and leave the island with Amelia.
This has a confusing start and the rest of it is pretty mystifying too. Even once I realised that Manoli was an artificial person, the reason for their existence never convinced (real people hiding away from the tourists in an undersea city). I also didn’t understand why Amelia was with Manoli (did she not know he was an artificial?) or why she didn’t recognise the original in the bar. This may be one of those stories that is operating on a dreamlike or allegorical or symbolic level—if so, it went over my head.
* (Mediocre). 5,800 words.

1. The writer briefly speaks about the story here.

Behind Our Irises by Tlotlo Tsamaase

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Behind Our Irises by Tlotlo Tsamaase (Africafuturism, 2020) opens with the unemployed female narrator getting a new job—but one which later has a catch:

Every eye in our firm runs surveillance programs behind its pupil. Connected through the authenticated enterprise cloud network to the central servers of the Firm. Able to detect corporate theft, infraction, abuse of work assets and more. Much more. I knew about the eyes but I only noticed the holes in our necks, stabbed into the jugular, into the carotid artery in that unsurveilled split second when my black pupils blinked silver and then back to black as the company automatically upgraded me. In that fraction of a second, when all their restraints loosened, I tried to scream.

The story charts the narrator’s journey from unemployed to intern to nanotech-injected corporate slave—an in-your-face and nuance free anti-capitalist tale (“Each one of us a well-oiled cog of the workplace machine”, etc.) which unconvincingly over-dramatizes the dystopian aspects of corporate jobs.
* (Mediocre). 4,300 words. Story link.

Lucifer by Roger Zelazny

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Lucifer by Roger Zelazny (Worlds of Tomorrow, June 1964) opens with Carlson in the middle of a deserted (presumably post-collapse/apocalypse) city on his way to a building where he used to work. When he gets there he repairs and fuels the broadcast generators that power the city, and then, for a short period of time (93 seconds), he powers up the streets and buildings:

He was staring out beyond the wide drop of the acropolis and down into the city. His city.
The lights were not like the stars. They beat the stars all to hell. They were the gay, regularized constellation of a city where men made their homes: even rows of streetlamps, advertisements, lighted windows in the cheesebox-apartments, a random solitaire of bright squares running up the sides of skyscraper-needles, a searchlight swiveling its luminous antenna through cloudbanks that hung over the city.
He dashed to another window, feeling the high night breezes comb at his beard. Belts were humming below; he heard their wry monologues rattling through the city’s deepest canyons. He pictured the people in their homes, in theaters, in bars—talking to each other, sharing a common amusement, playing clarinets, holding hands, eating an evening snack. Sleeping ro-cars awakened and rushed past each other on the levels above the belts; the background hum of the city told him its story of production, of function, of movement and service to its inhabitants. The sky seemed to wheel overhead, as though the city were its turning hub and the universe its outer rim.
Then the lights dimmed from white to yellow and he hurried, with desperate steps, to another window.  p. 84

The story ends with Carlson leaving the city and promising to himself—again—that he will never come back.
An okay mood piece, I guess, but minor Zelazny.
** (Average). 1,950 words. Story link.