Tag: 1953

Lot by Ward Moore

Posted on by Paul Fraser

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Impostor by Philip K. Dick

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Impostor by Philip K. Dick (Astounding, June 1953) starts with the protagonist, Olham, having breakfast with his wife. During this they talk about a permanent war with the Outspacers, aliens from Alpha Centauri, and the recent development of the protec-bubbles that now surround the planet. What is also cleverly inserted into this opening section is the seemingly inconsequential mention of a fire at nearby Sutton Wood, a location that will reappear later in the story.
When Olham is later picked up to go to work by an older colleague called Nelson (they are both high ranking officials at a defence project), Olham sees there is another man in the car. The man identifies himself as Peters, says he works for security, and that he is there to arrest Olham for being an Outspace spy. The car quickly gets airborne and heads for the Moon while Peters calls his boss to tell him about the successful arrest.
The rest of the story is a fast-paced tale that sees Peters explain that an Outspace ship with a humanoid robot containing a U-bomb recently penetrated the protec-bubble surrounding Earth. Peters then states that Olham is the Outspace robot, and that they intend dismantling him on the far side of the Moon. Olham frantically tries to convince Peters and Nelson that the robot must have failed to reach him, and that he is the real Olham. However, when they land on the Moon, and Olham sees he still has not convinced them, he says he is about to explode. Nelson and Peters flee from the car (they have put their spacesuits on before landing), and Olham quickly closes the door and returns to Earth.
The final section of the story (spoiler) sees Olham return home, escape from an ambush, and eventually make his way to Sutton Wood. There he finds the remains of a burnt-out Outsider spaceship. Then, when Peters, Nelson and a security detail arrive shortly afterwards, Olham manages to convince Peters to go over and look at a body lying near the wreckage. Peters and the team look at the body and decide that it is the robot, but then Nelson pulls on what he thinks is the metal corner of the U-bomb in the robot’s body:

Nelson stood up. He was holding onto the metal object. His face was blank with terror. It was a metal knife, an Outspace needle-knife, covered with blood.
“This killed him,” Nelson whispered. “My friend was killed with this.” He looked at Olham. “You killed him with this and left him beside the ship.”
Olham was trembling. His teeth chattered. He looked from the knife to the body. “This can’t be Olham,” he said. His mind spun, everything was whirling. “Was I wrong?”
He gaped.
“But if that’s Olham, then I must be . . .”
He did not complete the sentence, only the first phrase. The blast was visible all the way to Alpha Centauri.

This suspenseful and paranoid piece has a dreamlike feel (apart from Olham’s nightmarish predicament there is the quick trip to the moon and back), and you never really know until the final moments if Olham is a robot or not.1 This, and the fast pace of the story, keeps the reader off-balance and lets the writer gloss over one or two things that might have revealed Olham’s true nature (the brief door opening on the Moon; the question of how the robot would get Olham’s memories).
An impressive piece that reflects the Reds-under-the bed fears of the time, and Philip K. Dick’s only sale to John W. Campbell (I note that the story is another exception to Campbell’s supposed Human Exceptionalism rule2).
**** (Very Good). 5,400 words. Story link.

1. Dick would return to this theme in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (which was later filmed as Bladerunner).

2. A writer remarked to me, “It’s a story where The Thing wins”.

Unready to Wear by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Unready to Wear by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.1 (Galaxy, April 1953) is set in a future where many humans are now “amphibious”, i.e. incorporeal, and when they need a human body they borrow one:

My old body, which [my wife] claims she loved for a third of a century, had black hair, and was short and paunchy, too, there toward the last. I’m human and I couldn’t help being hurt when they scrapped it after I’d left it, instead of putting it in storage. It was a good, homey, comfortable body; nothing fast and flashy, but reliable. But there isn’t much call for that kind of body at the centers, I guess. I never ask for one, at any rate.

Then the narrator later recalls the time he got conned into borrowing Konigwasser’s body (the inventor of the amphibious process) to lead the annual Pioneers’ Day Parade:

Like a plain damn fool, I believed them.
They’ll have a tough time getting me into that thing again—ever. Taking that wreck out certainly made it plain why Konigswasser discovered how people could do without their bodies. That old one of his practically drives you out. Ulcers, headaches, arthritis, fallen arches—a nose like a pruning hook, piggy little eyes and a complexion like a used steamer trunk. He was and still is the sweetest person you’d ever want to know, but, back when he was stuck with that body, nobody got close enough to find out.
We tried to get Konigswasser back into his old body to lead us when we first started having the Pioneers’ Day parades, but he wouldn’t have anything to do with it, so we always have to flatter some poor boob into taking on the job. Konigswasser marches, all right, but as a six-foot cowboy who can bend beer cans double between his thumb and middle finger.

This last passage basically summarises the thrust of the story, which is that most human bodies are unsuitable for the minds that inhabit them—an idea which is examined in a quirky way during the first part of the story (along with the advantages of not having a body, and how Konigwasser discovered the process).
The second part of the story then introduces the “enemy”, the people who have stayed behind in physical form:

Usually, the enemy is talking about old-style reproduction, which is the clumsiest, most comical, most inconvenient thing anyone could imagine, compared with what the amphibians have in that line. If they aren’t talking about that, then they’re talking about food, the gobs of chemicals they have to stuff into their bodies. Or they’ll talk about fear, which we used to call politics— job politics, social politics, government politics.

The enemy manage to trap the narrator and Madge in two bodies that they have taken from the storage centre, and the pair are subsequently tried for desertion. After some witty back and forth between the two sides at the trial, the narrator manages to bluff their way out.
This piece is more quirk and wit than story, but it has an interesting—and sometimes Laffertyesque—perspective on the subject.
*** (Good). 5,400 words. Story link.

1. There was some speculation about the Unready to Wear title when we did the group read of this in one of my Facebook groups: a composite suggestion is that the title is a play on “ready to wear”, and that either humans are either not ready (or willing) to wear bodies, or the bodies themselves are not ready for human use.
The “amphibious” description comes from a reference at the very end of the story about the lack of interest among the young for the bodies available at the storage centres:

So I guess maybe that’ll be the next step in evolution—to break clean like those first amphibians who crawled out of the mud into the sunshine, and who never did go back to the sea.

Common Time by James Blish

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Common Time by James Blish (Science Fiction Quarterly, August 1953) sees Garrard wake up in a FTL spaceship with the thought “Don’t move!” He struggles to open his eyelids, senses that something is very wrong, and does not attempt to move his body. Eventually, after further description of his physical condition and of his observations, Garrard realises that the infrequent “pock” sound he hears is the hugely slowed down ticking of the ship’s clock. He then counts seconds in his head and discovers that ship time is moving much more slowly than his subjective time—and that it will take him six thousand years to get to Alpha Centauri.
After Garrard gets over the intial shock, he thinks further about the physical ramifications (his body is subject to ship-time, and much slower than the speed his mind is working, so there will be a problem with co-ordination) and the possible mental problems (how will he occupy his time and stave off madness?) Then, as he deliberates, he notices that the clock is speeding up, and that the ship-time is accelerating. Soon, the clock is a blur, and he enters a state of “pseudo-death”.
The next stage of the story sees Garrard awake at Alpha Centauri, where he is greeted by aliens who speak to him in a incomprehensible language (although Garrard can make sense of it):

“How do you hear?” the creature said abruptly. Its voice, or their voices, came at equal volume from every point in the circle, but not from any particular point in it. Garrard could think of no reason why that should be unusual.
“I . . .” he said. “Or we—we hear with our ears. Here.”
His answer, with its unintentionally long chain of open vowel sounds, rang ridiculously. He wondered why he was speaking such an odd language. “We-they wooed to pitch you-yours thiswise,” the creature said. With a thump, a book from the DFC-3’s ample library fell to the deck beside the hammock. “We wooed there and there and there for a many. You are the being-Garrard. We-they are the clinesterton beademung, with all of love.”
“With all of love,” Garrard echoed. The beademung’s use of the language they both were speaking was odd; but again Garrard could find no logical reason why the beademung’s usage should be considered wrong.

After another page or so of Blish channelling (I presume) his inner James Joyce, Garrard sets off for Earth, and once more he experiences pseudo-death.
The final part of the story sees Garrard awake near Uranus, and he soon makes radio contact with Earth. The story then ends with a conversation between Garrard and Haertel, the inventor of the FTL drive, about various scientific and philosophical matters (how personality depends on environment, time flow, etc.). When Garrard volunteers to go out again on a new ship, Haertel refuses, saying that they need to work out why the beademung wanted him to come back to Earth.
This story has an intriguing gimmick at the beginning of the piece, and an interesting (if somewhat unintelligible) first contact situation after that. However, all this, and the dull talking heads section at the end, doesn’t really add up to anything, and you very much get the impression that the author was merely playing with a number of pet ideas as he went along.1
There are also a number of matters that don’t make much sense: (a) the interior temperature in the ship is noted as being 37° C, far too hot to be comfortable; (b) the reason he enters “pseudo death” isn’t explained (if time kept on speeding up in the last part of the journey it would appear as if he suddenly arrives at Alpha Centauri; (c) if ship time speeds up so rapidly your normal speed mind won’t be able to feed your body sufficiently, and you will starve to death during the ten month trip.
Those who like literary, or more ideational or philosophical stories, may get something out of this, but I suspect many will be perplexed.
** (Average). 8,150 words. Story link.

1. The story was commissioned by Robert A. Lowndes to accompany a previously painted cover:



The details of this commission are discussed in Robert Silverberg’s anthology, Science Fiction 101, where the he recounts what the cover suggested to Blish:

Blish, early in 1953, was handed a photostat of a painting that showed a draftsman’s compasses with their points extended to pierce two planets, one of them the Earth and the other a cratered globe that might have been the Moon. A line of yellow string also connected the two worlds. In the background were two star-charts and the swirling arms of a spiral nebula. Blish later recalled that the pair of planets and their connecting yellow string reminded him on some unconscious level of a pair of testicles and the vas deferens, which is the long tube through which sperm passes during the act of ejaculation. And out of that—by the tortuous and always mysterious process of manipulation of initial material that is the way stories come into being—he somehow conjured up the strange and unforgettable voyage of “Common Time,” which duly appeared as the cover story on the August, 1953, issue of Science Fiction Quarterly.  p. 282

If Blish were older at the time he would presumably have identified the exploding sun in the background as the prostate.
Silverberg adds:

I failed to notice, I ought to admit, anything in the story suggesting that it was about the passage of sperm through the vas deferens and onward to the uterus. To me in my innocence it was nothing more than an ingenious tale of the perils of faster-than-light travel between stars. Damon Knight, in a famous essay published in 1957, demonstrated that the voyage of the sperm was what the story was “really” about, extracting from it a long series of puns and other figures of speech that exemplified the underlying sexual symbolism of everything that happens: the repeated phrase “Don’t move” indicates the moment of orgasm, and so forth. Blish himself was fascinated by that interpretation of his story and added a host of embellishments to Knight’s theory in a subsequent letter to him. All of which called forth some hostility from other well-known science fiction writers, and for months a lively controversy ran through the s-f community. Lester del Rey, for example, had no use for any symbolist interpretations of fiction. “A story, after all, is not a guessing game,” del Rey said. “We write for entertainment, which means primarily for casual reading. Now even Knight has to pore through a story carefully and deliberately to get all the symbols, so we can’t really communicate readily and reliably by them. To the casual reader, the conscious material on the surface must be enough. Hence we have to construct a story to be a complete and satisfying thing, even without the symbols. . . . If we get off on a binge of writing symbols for our own satisfaction, there’s entirely too much temptation to feel that we don’t have to make our points explicitly, but to feel a smug glow of satisfaction in burying them so they only appear to those who look for symbols.”  pp. 282-283

Knight’s analysis of the sexual symbols in the story can be found—if, like him, you appear to have too much time on your hands—in Chapter 26 of In Search of Wonder.

Shape by Robert Sheckley

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Shape by Robert Sheckley (first published as Keep Your Shape, Galaxy, November 19531) sees a spaceship of shape-shifting Glom arrive in Earth orbit; they are on a mission to place a displacer in one of Earth’s atomic reactors to open up a wormhole for an invasion. Previous expeditions have failed.
Before they descend to the surface, the commander of the ship, Pid, addresses his crewmates Ger and Ilg:

“A lot of hopes are resting on this expedition,” he began slowly. “We’re a long way from home now.”
Ger the detector nodded. Ilg the radioman flowed out of his prescribed shape and molded himself comfortably to a wall.
“However,” Pid said sternly, “distance is no excuse for promiscuous shapelessness.”
Ilg flowed hastily back into proper radioman’s shape.
“Exotic shapes will undoubtedly be called for,” Pid went on. “And for that we have a special dispensation. But remember—any shape not assumed strictly in the line of duty is a device of The Shapeless One!”
Ger’s body surfaces abruptly stopped flowing.

This sets up the story’s conflict, which is that, although the aliens on Glom can assume any shape they want, there are strict caste rules which determine those they are allowed to adopt in society—and Pid has learned before his departure that his two crewmates may not be reliable in this respect:

“Ger, your detector, is suspected of harboring alterationist tendencies. He was once fined for assuming a quasi-hunter shape. Ilg has never had any definite charge brought against him. But I hear that he remains immobile for suspiciously long periods of time. Possibly, he fancies himself a thinker.”
“But sir,” Pid protested, “if they are even slightly tainted with alterationism or shapelessness, why send them on this expedition?”
The chief hesitated before answering. “There are plenty of Glom I could trust,” he said slowly. “But those two have certain qualities of resourcefulness and imagination that will be needed on this expedition.” He sighed. “I really don’t understand why those qualities are usually linked with shapelessness.”

After the three of them land on Earth they dissolve the ship (spoiler), and it isn’t long (there are some episodes that play out beside the reactor) before Ilg and Ger disappear. Pid later discovers that Ilg has become a tree and a thinker, and Ger a dog and hunter. Worse, Pid learns that another dog Ger was chasing earlier is a member of a previous Glom expedition.
The final section sees Pid eventually manage to get inside the reactor building, where the alarm is raised and he is pursued by guards. Then, plagued by thoughts about freedom of shape, and just as he is almost able to activate the displacer, he looks out a nearby window:

It was really true! He hadn’t fully understood what Ger had meant when he said that there were species on this planet to satisfy every need. Every need! Even his!
Here he could satisfy a longing of the pilot caste that went even deeper than piloting.
He looked again, then smashed the displacer to the floor. The door burst open, and in the same instant he flung himself through the window.
The men raced to the window and stared out. But they were unable to understand what they saw.
There was only a great white bird out there, flapping awkwardly but with increasing strength, trying to overtake a flight of birds in the distance.

This is a great finish to a good story, and puts this on my list of Sheckley’s best stories (Specialist, Pilgrimage to Earth, etc.).
One of the things that particularly struck me about this piece was how concisely and clearly written it is and, although there is a message here about social conformity, we aren’t continually bludgeoned with it (I shudder to think what a modern day, MFA’d version of this story would look like).
**** (Very Good). 4,550 words. Story links (see footnote 1).

1. The version of the story I read was in The Arbor House Book of Modern Science Fiction, but the original version in Galaxy magazine (as Keep Your Shape) is longer (5,900 words) and has a completely different ending (and one that makes it a much weaker and more pedestrian story).
In the latter version (the story changes from “He studied himself for a moment, bared his teeth at Ger, and loped toward the gate.” on p. 16 of Galaxy, section break bottom right/p. 67 of the Arbor House anthology) Pid first turns into a dog, and then a man, but can’t stand either shape, so eventually changes into a sparrow. As Pid flies towards the reactor building he is attacked by a hawk and, after slipping through its grasp, changes into a bigger hawk and scares it away. Then Pid drops the displacer and flies after the attacking hawk to find how it hovered in the air.
Theodore Sturgeon used to say something along the lines of, “Horace Gold could turn an average story into a good story, and an excellent story into a good story”. One wonders if this is an example.
Story link (Shape, Arbor House, recommended version).
Story link (Keep Your Shape, Galaxy).

The Golden Apples of the Sun by Ray Bradbury

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Golden Apples of the Sun by Ray Bradbury (The Golden Apples of the Sun, 19531) is one of his prose poem stories, I suppose you would call them—tales where there is no particular story, but where a vivid, poetic image is developed. Here, that image is fire and ice:

“Temperature?”
“One thousand degrees Fahrenheit!”
The captain stared from the huge, dark-lensed port, and there indeed was the sun, and to go to that sun and touch it and steal part of it for ever away was his quiet and single idea. In this ship were combined the coolly delicate and the coldly practical.
Through corridors of ice and milk-frost, ammoniated winter and storming snowflakes blew. Any spark from that vast hearth burning out there beyond the callous hull of this ship—any small fire-breath that might seep through—would find winter slumbering here, like all the coldest hours of February.

As the temperature rapidly increases, a crewman falls to the floor dead (a faulty space-suit). There is more drama:

Their icicle was melting.
The captain jerked his head to look at the ceiling. As if a motion-picture projector had jammed a single clear memory-frame in his head, he found his mind focused ridiculously on a scene whipped out of childhood.
On spring mornings as a boy, he had leaned from his bedroom window into the snow-smelling air to see the sun sparkle on the last icicle of winter. A dripping of white wine, the blood of cool but warming April, fell from that clear crystal blade. Minute by minute, December’s weapon grew less dangerous. And then at last the icicle fell with the sound of a single chime to the gravelled walk below.
“Auxiliary pump’s broken, sir. Refrigeration. We’re losing our ice!”

After they resolve this problem they eventually begin their mission, which is to extend a cup out of the spaceship to gather a sample of the Sun:

And here is our cup of energy, fire, vibration, call it what you will, that may well power our cities and sail our ships and light our libraries and tan our children and bake our daily breads and simmer the knowledge of our universe for us for a thousand years until it is well done. Here, from this cup, all good men of science and religion, drink! Warm yourselves against the night of ignorance, the long snows of superstition, the cold winds of disbelief, and from the great fear of darkness in each man. So we stretch out our hand with the beggar’s cup . . .

Insert smart comment about the relative ease of solar panels here.
One of Bradbury’s better efforts at this kind of thing.
*** (Good). 2,350 words.

1. The The Golden Apples of the Sun collection was first published in March 1953. The first magazine appearances were in Planet Stories, November 1953, and Argosy, July 1955 (the UK pocketbook magazine, not the US pulp).

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).

Eye for Iniquity by T. L. Sherred

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Eye for Iniquity by T. L. Sherred (Beyond, July 1953) opens with a man called McNally showing his wife that he can produce a perfect copy of a ten dollar bill from an original. They use it to buy food, and then later on he creates another to buy parts for their car. After this the couple sit down to discuss whether there are any relatives of his with similar powers, but the conversation is inconclusive. They go on to talk about how they can use his new found ability to escape their straightened circumstances.
The next morning McNally gives up his job:

The next morning I was up before the kids, which, for me, is exceptional. The first thing I did after breakfast was to call up my boss and tell him what he could do with his job. An hour after that his boss called me up and hinted that all would be forgiven if I reported for work on the afternoon shift as usual. I hinted right back for a raise and waited until he agreed. Then I told him what he could do with his job.  p. 202 (The Dark Mind, edited by Damon Knight, 1965)

After creating a pile of money the couple then go on a spending spree, something that continues until McNally sees a counterfeit warning notice in a bar. He is considerably more cautious thereafter, and starts duplicating different notes of various denominations. The family’s prosperity continues to grow however, and this eventually leads to a new house and the good life.
The second half of the story sees a neighbour, who is in the IRS, tip off McNally that he is being investigated and that it would be better to go and see the IRS before they visit him. McNally does so, and tells the agent interviewing him that he has no income, as well as generally mouthing off. For the next year or so the IRS leave him in peace, but it doesn’t last, and during a later interview he is accused of being a bookie. When they say he can’t be “getting money out of thin air” he pulls out a wad of identical notes and tells them that if they want to know where he gets them from they should come to his house the next day.
When FBI and Secret Service agents turn up at McNally’s house the following morning he demonstrates his ability to them, and eventually their boss comes into the house. He then manages (spoiler) to fool them into thinking they can all duplicate money too (when they are willing the duplicates into existence so is McNally). When McNally suggests that the power isn’t in him but in the old coffee table the money is sitting on, they destroy it and leave. The narrator moves on to duplicating rare books, coins, cars, etc.
This piece has a neat central gimmick, and an entertaining story which is told by a larger than life/smart-aleck narrator. If I have a slight criticism it is that the coffee table misdirection in the final scene is slightly confusing, although I figured it out by the story’s end.
***+ (Good to Very Good). 9,750 words.

Who’s Cribbing by Jack Lewis

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Who’s Cribbing by Jack Lewis (Startling Stories, January 1953) is one of the short-shorts we’re currently group reading in my Facebook group1 from the 1963 anthology Fifty Short Science Fiction Tales, edited by Isaac Asimov & Groff Conklin. I’m not sure I’d want to review all fifty of those here (most are inconsequential squibs) but I really liked this one, so thought I’d mention it.
The story is written as a series of letters between Lewis, a budding writer, and the editors of various SF magazines. The correspondence begins with this:

Mr. Jack Lewis
90-26 219 St.
Queens Village, N.Y.
Dear Mr. Lewis:

We are returning your manuscript THE NINTH DIMENSION.
At first glance, I had figured it a story well worthy of publication. Why wouldn’t I? So did the editors of Cosmic Tales back in 1934 when the story was first published.
As you no doubt know, it was the great Todd Thromberry who wrote the story you tried to pass off on us as an original. Let me give you a word of caution concerning the penalties resulting from plagiarism.
It’s not worth it. Believe me.

Sincerely,
Doyle P. Gates
Science Fiction Editor
Deep Space Magazine  p. 83

Lewis writes an indignant reply wherein he protests his innocence, and further states he has never heard of Thromberry in the ten years he has been reading the field. This is met by a world weary letter from Gates stating that he realises there are overlapping plots and ideas in SF stories, but not word for word replicas.2 Lewis cancels his subscription.
This back and forth continues with various other editors and fans, during which Lewis finds out that Thomberry’s works are very hard to come by, and that the writer specialised in electronics. More rejections follow, and Lewis (spoiler) eventually suggests to Gates (who he has contacted again) that the chances of him accidentally producing several stories similar to Thromberry’s are astronomical, and suggests that maybe Thromberry used his electronics expertise to travel through time to steal his manuscripts. He gets a short, blunt reply to this, and the final act has Lewis submit his letters and the responses he received in the form of a story to Sam Mines at Startling Stories—with the inevitable response.
This is a clever and amusing piece, and it is also pitch perfect (apart from the tone of both Lewis’s and the various editor’s letters, there are other neat touches like Lewis stating in one cover note that, because of the extensive research that went into a story, he must “set the minimum price on this one at not less than two cents a word.”)
This is one I’d probably use in my Best for 1953 (although, if I recall correctly, there is a lot of competition from that year).
***+ (Good to Very good). 1300 words.

1. Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Short Fiction is the name of the Facebook group.
2. Talking of word for word replicas, someone recently tried to sell a copy of Arthur C. Clarke’s The Nine Billion Names of God to Clarkesworld.