Tag: 1955

The Short-Short Story of Mankind by John Steinbeck

Posted on by Paul Fraser

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

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

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

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

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

Hunting Problem by Robert Sheckley

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Hunting Problem by Robert Sheckley (Galaxy, September 1955) opens with Drog arriving late at a meeting of Soaring Falcon Patrol (Drog “hurtles down from the ten thousand foot level”). Drog is chastised by his Patrol Leader, who then recites the Scouter Creed to the assembled scouts:

“We, the Young Scouters of the planet Elbonai, pledge to perpetuate the skills and virtues of our pioneering ancestors. For that purpose, we Scouters adopt the shape our forebears were born to when they conquered the virgin wilderness of Elbonai. We hereby resolve—”
Scouter Drog adjusted his hearing receptors to amplify the Leader’s soft voice. The Creed always thrilled him. It was hard to believe that his ancestors had once been earthbound. Today the Elbonai were aerial beings, maintaining only the minimum of body, fueling by cosmic radiation at the twenty thousand-foot level, sensing by direct perception, coming down only for sentimental or sacramental purposes. They had come a long way since the Age of Pioneering. The modern world had begun with the Age of Submolecular Control, which was followed by the present age of Direct Control.
“. . . honesty and fair play,” the Leader was saying. “And we further resolve to drink liquids, as they did, and to eat solid food, and to increase our skill in their tools and methods.”  p. 36

Drog is then told by his Patrol Leader that, if he wants to get his first-class scouter award before a forthcoming Jamboree (Drog is the only second-class scout in the patrol), he needs to bring back the pelt of a Mirash, a “large and ferocious animal”. The Patrol Leader states that three of these previously thought extinct animals have been spotted to the north. The story point of view then switches to three human prospectors who have recently landed on the planet—they are the Mirash that are going to be hunted by Drog.
The next part of the story sees Drog stalking the humans, a task which does not begin well when one of the prospectors tells his colleague that he saw a tree move—and one of them subsequently blasts it:

Slowly Drog returned to consciousness. The Mirash’s flaming weapon had caught him in camouflage, almost completely unshielded. He still couldn’t understand how it had happened. There had been no premonitory fear-scent, no snorting, no snarling, no warning whatsoever. The Mirash had attacked with blind suddenness, without waiting to see whether he was friend or foe.
At last Drog understood the nature of the beast he was up against.1  p. 40

There are a couple more conventional efforts by Drog to trap the humans (these include a steak dinner waiting when they arrive back at camp—they avoid the tangle-grass and rising disc of earth—and then the sounds of a damsel in distress—which they ignore). Drog (spoiler) finally catches one of the humans by using “ilitorcy” (the use of a thick mist, essentially). The story then closes with both first-class scout Drog flying the pelt of a Mirash at the Jamboree and all three humans escaping alive in their spaceship. The pelt turns out to be an environmental suit that one of the men was wearing.
I suppose this is a moderately enjoyable, if slight, YA piece. The ending may provide more of an uplift to others than it did for me.
** (Average). 3,950 words. Story link.

1. Robert Sheckley’s stories often have mordant asides about the nature of humanity, e.g. his description of humans as “pushers” in the superior Specialist (Galaxy, May 1953)—if you want a piece that has a YA feel but which also works for adults (and has a great sense of wonder ending), I’d read that instead.

The Gift of Gab by Jack Vance

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Gift of Gab by Jack Vance (Astounding, September 1955)1 is set on the oceans of an alien planet called Sabrina, and begins with Sam Fletcher, an employee of Pelagic Recoveries (a metals extraction company) looking for Carl Raight to take over his shift. After Fletcher unsuccessfully searches the large raft they use for processing (barnacles for tantalum, sea slugs for rhenium, and coral for rhodium) and gets no useful information from his co-workers, he takes the launch over to the nearby collecting barge. It is also deserted, and Fletcher comes to the conclusion that Raight must have fallen overboard. Then, as Fletcher fills up the holds before returning to the raft, he is attacked by the tentacle of an alien life form that coils around his leg and tries to pull him overboard. Fletcher only just manages to avoid this by cutting the tentacle with a nearby tool. Then, when Fletcher then looks over the side of the barge he sees another alien creature, a ten-armed, one-eyed dekabrach, swimming nearby. Fletcher takes the barge back to the raft and tells the rest of the crew what has happened.
Fletcher then gets together with a scientist called Damon and they go through their (non-computerised!) card index machine to try to identify the creature that attacked him. They find a lifeform called a monitor, which may have been the creature responsible, and also look at the dekabrach records. It is obvious that that parts have been deleted, and Fletcher learns from Damon that Chrystal—an ex-employee who has set up his own private company and is working nearby—did the initial capture and dissection of the dekabrachs. Fletcher video-phones Chrystal and warns him about what has happened, and asks him about deletions on the dekabrach records: Chrystal is hazy on the details.
These events set up much of what happens in the rest of the story, which begin with another man going missing, and Fetcher being attacked again, which leads him to take a submarine down into the deeps to explore (the first of two trips he will make); meanwhile Damon catches a dekabrach.
When Fletcher returns later he has a tale of the dekabrachs’ social organisation and coral houses; then he learns from Damon that the dekabrachs’ bodies may be worth processing for niobium. This information, along with the doctored records, point the finger of suspicion at Chrystal, so Fletcher goes to visit him. After an argument about the sentience of the dekabrachs, Fletcher sees a catch of the creatures landed in the middle of a hail of sea darts fired from the sea. There is some gunplay, and Fletcher arrests Chrystal.
The last part of the story sees Fletcher and Damon learn how to communicate with the captive Dekabrach so they can prove its intelligence to a planetary inspector who will arrive shortly. When the inspector lands on the planet and starts his investigation, there is a melodramatic episode where Chrystal breaks free and tries to poison the dekabrach with acid. Fletcher and Damon manage to save the creature, and it then identifies Chrystal as its attacker. Chrystal isn’t finished yet though, and pulls out his recovered gun, although his attempt to shoot the dekabrach is foiled by Fletcher, who takes the bullet.
The story closes with (the recovered) Fletcher and Damon deciding to stay on the planet rather than shipping out. They release the captive Dekabrach with a plea to bring others of its kind back for language training—and it does.
I rather liked this piece for a number of reasons: first, it is set in an exotic ocean environment, but one made realistic by the industrial process at work there; second, the story is an interesting and absorbing one (although you can see the obvious bad guy a mile off); finally, the piece slowly morphs from a whodunit into a first contact story as it progresses. That said, it has a few problems: I’ve already mentioned the bad guy (who is obviously dodgy, and spends more time than is convincing causing havoc); the two trips that Fletcher makes to the deeps are not experienced directly by the reader but are recounted by him later (this also involves a slightly disorientating point of view change—the only one in the story—while he is away on the first trip); the communication section and its code table makes for a dull read (I’d put serious money on that latter having been inserted by a meddling John W. Campbell); and there are probably other things as well, such as the dekabrachs readily forgiving the mass murder of their people, etc. Still, it is an enjoyable alien ecology story—a good yarn I suppose you could say—with an uplifting, slightly sense-of-wonderish ending that just puts it into the star category below.
***+ (Good to Very Good). 17,650 words. Story link.

1. This was part of a group read on one of my Facebook groups. One commenter said, “It’s one of the least characteristic Vance stories I know, and of all those probably the best. (What I mean is, the other uncharacteristic ones strike me as potboilers, but this is pretty good.)”. Others added, “A surprisingly science-fictiony story by Vance”, “Atypical Vance but still good”, “A great story that isn’t very Vancian”, etc.

Grandpa by James H. Schmitz

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Grandpa by James H. Schmitz (Astounding, February 1955) opens with a fifteen-year-old called Cord anesthetising and examining bugs on an alien planet called Sutang. He is then interrupted by Grayan, an older female friend who warns him that, if he doesn’t start behaving in accordance with the colony’s rules and expectations, he is likely to be sent off-planet.
After this YA setup to the story, the next part sees Cord, Grayan, Nirmond (the regent of the planet), and a young woman called Dane (head of the visiting Colonial Team) set off on a tour of the Bay Farms. To travel there they use one of the planetary life-forms:

Three rafts lay moored just offshore in the marshy cove, at the edge of which Nirmond had stopped the treadcar. They looked somewhat like exceptionally broad-brimmed, well-worn sugarloaf hats floating out there, green and leathery. Or like lily pads twenty-five feet across, with the upper section of a big, gray green pineapple growing from the center of each. Plant animals of some sort. Sutang was too new to have had its phyla sorted out into anything remotely like an orderly classification. The rafts were a local oddity which had been investigated and could be regarded as harmless and moderately useful. Their usefulness lay in the fact that they were employed as a rather slow means of transportation about the shallow, swampy waters of the Yoger Bay. That was as far as the team’s interest in them went at present.

They then go looking for “Grandpa”, a bigger raft they’d rather use but, when they eventually find it, Cord sees that it has moved from where he last left it. They also find that Grandpa’s head (a cone shaped protuberance in the middle of the raft) now has red buds on the top, and has also sprouted vines. Cord attempts to warn the others about using the raft as they have never seen this phenomenon before, but he is fobbed off.
The rest of the story sees an uneventful passage until they pass a group of yellowheads (“vaguely froggy things, man-sized and better”) clinging to tall reeds when, uncharacteristically, one of them slips down into the water and swims underneath Grandpa. Shortly after this event they lose control of the raft (it won’t respond to the heat from their guns) and then there is a convulsion that sees all of them except Cord trapped by the vines. Cord is subsequently forced, after a brief conversation with Dane, to relieve their pain by using his gun’s anaesthetic darts.
The rest of the story sees Grandpa travel far out to sea while Cord observes the creature’s behaviour. Eventually (spoiler) Cord manages to distract Grandpa (it has been swiping at various forms of life that pass before feeding on the smaller ones), and he jumps into the sea ahead. Cord then swims underneath the creature and manages to access a hollow space inside the central cone: there he finds the yellowhead symbiotically attached to Grandpa.
After fighting and killing the yellowhead, Cord slips back into the water and emerges to the rear of a now stationary raft. When he gets on board again it responds to his heat gun and the raft heads towards the shore.
For most of its length this reads like a rather dull YA biology puzzle, but it improves with an exciting climax. I’d note, however, that there is little indication of what Cord is about to do before he goes into the water (I can’t remember any description of him thinking about the yellowhead, or what he plans to do). This is rather too straightforward a piece, I think (especially for its length).
** (Average). 9,050 words. Story link.

Jessica Ann by F. E. Ellwood

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Jessica Ann by F. E. Ellwood (Argosy (UK), July 1955) introduces us to Ely, an apothecary to the seven witches in his area, and a man who is who is tempted by Jessica, a young witch who has recently arrived in the area and who suggests that they do away with the others. Ely agonises about the matter:

Ely looked at her solemnly. Her cheeks were pink, and her eyes were, after all, brighter than the speedwells . . .
“And old Mother Peasgood,” said Jessica. “She cured Margie Boss’s baby of her hacking cough o’ nights, and then she saw their little dog. She gave it one look out of her evil eye and it started to run backwards, and backwards-way forwards it’s been ever since. Now why, Ely, why?”
“The sabbath,” said Ely absently. “They beat them.”
“They?” said Jessica.
“The demons,” said Ely, “at the Meeting. They beat the witches who cure the coughs and charm the warts. The ones who do the mischief, now, they’re all right. But the ones who like a bit of both, like ours, they have to be careful. They daren’t not touch the goat if they’ve done something they’re going to be ashamed of. Things like mending young Tom’s back or giving the mixture for Margie Boss’s baby’s cough.”
[. . .]
“Think of it, Ely,” said Jessica, encouraged. “The medicines for the sick and the poor. The secret recipes of the witches. We could burn the wicked ones, Ely. Just the two of us and no more of the witching. And we could be married, Ely. In the church, with a real wedding, and Parson saying words over us. Think of it now, Ely.”
“Yes . . .” said Ely, and he stopped, aghast. Reforming zeal and the lengths to which the zeal will go were new to Ely. He looked at Jessica anxiously, but she was still the same Jessica, and still very beautiful.  p. 103

Of course (spoiler), after Ely poisons the other witches he finds that Jessica is no better than they were and, after some more agonising, decides if you can’t beat them, join them. He picks up a copy of Sorcerie for Ye Verie Begynner, and she takes down his Apothecary sign.
Minor but okay.
** (Average). 3,050 words.

Mahoussian Beast by Jacques Perret

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Mahoussian Beast by Jacques Perret, translated by D. H. R. Brearley (Argosy (UK), July 1955), is a story from the 1951 Prix Interallié winner that starts with a small boy called Leon walking beside a marsh where a legendary beast lives. He subsequently arrives home late, whereupon his uncle scolds him and sets him to his homework. Eventually, Leon tells his uncle Emile that he was detained by the beast in the marsh, which, from his description, appears to be a female dragon. Leon also passes along her complaint about the drainage works that are going on at the marsh. Emile is initially disbelieving, but Leon passes on other details about the dragon, and also mentions that it intends to disrupt the Prefect’s forthcoming visit to the site.
Emile later finds a footprint and droppings in the marsh, and so goes to see the Mayor. The latter doesn’t believe what he is told but, after talking to the boy, agrees to go and meet the dragon. During their subsequent encounter the dragon displays its fire breathing capabilities—but the Mayor doesn’t seem much impressed, so the dragon decides to leave the marsh.
The last part of the story sees Leon accompany the dragon on her journey and, when they get to the Seine, the boy rides the dragon as its swims along the river. Eventually, after some minor adventures (at one point the dragon takes part in a fireworks display), she reaches the sea and disappears (although there is a suggestion at the end of the story that she has metamorphosed into a butterfly).
This is a pleasant enough piece, but it’s essentially a plotless, wandering piece of whimsy (why set up the conflict between the dragon and the town’s politicians if she is just going to wander off?)
** (Average). 8,750 words.

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).

Nellthu by Anthony Boucher

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Nellthu by Anthony Boucher (F&SF, August 1955) is a page and a half long squib that sees a man meet a woman from his schooldays. Although she was originally homely and untalented, she now has it all: wealth, beauty, talent, etc. When a servant brings the man coffee he realises it is a demon, and quizzes the creature on how she managed to get so much from three wishes. It turns out (spoiler) she did it with one—she made the demon fall “permanently and unselfishly” in love with her. A notion, not a story.
* (Mediocre). 450 words.

The Golem by Avram Davidson

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Golem by Avram Davidson (F&SF, March 1955) opens with an android arriving at the porch of an elderly Jewish couple and sitting down on one of their chairs. As he tries to deliver his apocalyptic warnings the pair variously kvetch, interrupt and ignore him:

The stranger spoke. His voice was harsh and monotonous.
“When you learn who—or, rather, what—I am, the flesh will melt from your bones in terror.” He bared porcelain teeth.
“Never mind about my bones!” the old woman cried. “You’ve got a lot of nerve talking about my bones!”
“You will quake with fear,” said the stranger. Old Mrs. Gumbeiner said that she hoped he would live so long. She turned to her husband once again.
“Gumbeiner, when are you going to mow the lawn?”
“All mankind—” the stranger began.
“Shah! I’m talking to my husband. . . . He talks eppis kind of funny, Gumbeiner, no?”
“Probably a foreigner,” Mr. Gumbeiner said, complacently.
“You think so?” Mrs. Gumbeiner glanced fleetingly at the stranger. “He’s got a very bad color in his face, nebbich, I suppose he came to California for his health.”
“Disease, pain, sorrow, love, grief—all are nought to—”
Mr. Gumbeiner cut in on the stranger’s statement.
“Gall bladder,” the old man said. “Guinzburg down at the shule looked exactly the same before his operation. Two professors they had in for him, and a private nurse day and night.”
“I am not a human being!” the stranger said loudly.
“Three thousand seven hundred fifty dollars it cost his son, Guinzburg told me. ‘For you, Poppa, nothing is too expensive—only get well,’ the son told him.”
“I am not a human being!”
“Ai, is that a son for you!” the old woman said, rocking her head. “A heart of gold, pure gold.” She looked at the stranger. “All right, all right, I heard you the first time.  pp. 113-114 (The Dark Mind, edited by Damon Knight, 1965)

Later the android says something rude to the wife and the man slaps it across the face and breaks it. Then the couple talk about golems, and the man sorts the internal wiring exposed when he hit the creature. The golem is more submissive when it is repaired, and the man tells it to mow the grass.
This is quite amusing to start with but it tails off at the end.
*** (Good). 1,800 words.