Tag: 1956

The Man Who Came Early by Poul Anderson

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Man Who Came Early1 by Poul Anderson (F&SF, June 1956) opens with the narrator, a late 10th Century Icelander/Viking called Ospak Ulfsson, telling a visiting Christian priest about a strange man he once came across. He tells how he and his clansmen found the strangely dressed man on the beach and how, after questioning him, they discovered that the man was Sergeant Gerald Roberts, an MP in the United States Army who had slipped through time:

“I was crossing the street, it was a storm, and there was a crash and then I stood on the beach and the city was gone!”
“He’s mad,” said Sigurd, backing away. “Be careful . . . if he starts to foam at the mouth, it means he’s going berserk.”
“Who are you?” babbled the stranger. “What are you doing in those clothes? Why the spears?”
“Somehow,” said Helgi, “he does not sound crazed—only frightened and bewildered. Something evil has happened to him.”
“I’m not staying near a man under a curse!” yelped Sigurd, and started to run away.
“Come back!” I bawled. “Stand where you are or I’ll cleave your louse-bitten head!”
That stopped him, for he had no kin who would avenge him; but he would not come closer. Meanwhile the stranger had calmed down to the point where he could at least talk evenly.
“Was it the aitchbomb?” He asked. “Has the war started?”
He used that word often, aitchbomb, so I know it now, though unsure of what it means. It seems to be a kind of Greek fire. As for the war, I knew not which war he meant, and told him so.
“There was a great thunderstorm last night,” I added. “And you say you were out in one too. Perhaps Thor’s hammer knocked you from your place to here.”  p. 6-7

The rest of the story mostly tells of Roberts’ (unsuccessful) attempts to fit into this society, which begin with him helping to sacrifice a horse by shooting it in the head with his service pistol. Ulfsson is not impressed however, “as the beast quivered and dropped with a hole blown through its skull, wasting the brains.” Matters do not improve with Roberts’ subsequent attempts to repair two spearheads (he ruins them and almost sets the forge on fire) or mend a nearby bridge (he cannot master the primitive carpentry tools). Roberts manages to partially redeem himself by winning a wrestling match with one of the warriors by using his Judo skills, but a further suggestion about manufacturing a cannon and gunpowder are rebuffed:

Gerald said something about making a gun like his own. It would have to be bigger, a cannon he called it, and could sink ships and scatter armies. He would need the help of smiths, and also various stuffs. Charcoal was easy, and sulfur could be found in the volcano country, I suppose, but what is this saltpeter?
Also, being suspicious by now, I questioned him closely as to how he would make such a thing. Did he know just how to mix the powder? No, he admitted. What size would the gun have to be? When he told me—at least as long as a man—I laughed and asked him how a piece that size could be cast or bored, even if we could scrape together that much iron. This he did not know either.
“You haven’t the tools to make the tools to make the tools,” he said. I don’t know what he meant by that.
“God help me, I can’t run through a thousand years of history all by myself.”  p. 16

It’s hard not to see the above passage as a direct rebuttal of the premise of L. Sprague de Camp’s novel Lest Darkness Fall—whose can-do narrator produces a constant stream of inventions to prevent the onset of the Dark Ages in sixth century Rome. (And de Camp’s hero also goes back in time during a lightning storm.)
The final part of the story (spoiler) details a fateful boat trip: Roberts is no sailor; his suggestions for a bigger ship with different sails, a keel and cabins are picked apart; and one of the other men’s open contempt for Roberts ends in violence when Roberts challenges the man, Ketill, to a fight. Roberts quickly finds out that they won’t be using fists but swords and shields and then, during the fight, he barely holds his own. After being wounded multiple times, Roberts draws his pistol and shoots Ketill in the head.
The aftermath of this killing provides a fascinating insight into the customs of the time: an allegation of witchcraft is made; payment of weregild to Ketill’s kin is suggested; and Ulfsson’s daughter (who has a crush on Roberts) asks her father to pay it. This then leads Ketill’s father (who is also on the voyage) to ask if Ulfsson’s family stands with Roberts. If so, that will mean a blood feud between the two familes. Ulfsson, fearing his kin’s death (especially his son) in any later fighting, withdraws his protection from Roberts and tells him that the Thing (a Viking council) will decide on the matter at midsummer but he had best leave Iceland before then. Roberts departs into the darkness.
There is a postscript where Ulfsson tells the priest that Roberts was later found at another settlement but, because he did not tell them of the killing, they expel him when Ketill’s kin track him down:

At the end, when they had him trapped, his weapon gave out on him. Then he took up a dead man’s sword and defended himself so valiantly that Ulf Hjalmarsson has limped ever since. It was well done, as even his foes admitted; they are an eldritch race in the United States, but they do not lack manhood.
When he was slain, his body was brought back. For fear of the ghost, he having perhaps been a warlock, it was burned, and all he had owned was laid in the fire with him. That was where I lost the knife he had given me. The barrow stands out on the moor, north of here, and folk shun it though the ghost has not walked. Now, with so much else happening, he is slowly being forgotten.
And that is the tale, priest, as I saw it and heard it. Most men think Gerald Samsson [Roberts] was crazy, but I myself believe he did come from out of time, and that his doom was that no man may ripen a field before harvest season.  p. 23

This is a very good piece, both for its take on a man out of time and also for its impressive authenticity which latter, through the voice of Ospak Ulfsson, firmly puts you not only in the society of that period, but in the head of one of its inhabitants.
**** (Very Good). 10,300 words. Story link.

1. I think A Man Out of Time would have been a better title as it would have worked in three ways: (a) Roberts physically leaves his own time; (b) he is unable to integrate into that society; and (c) he ends up dying prematurely.

Brightside Crossing by Alan E. Nourse

Posted on by Paul Fraser 1 Comment on Brightside Crossing by Alan E. Nourse

Brightside Crossing by Alan E. Nourse (Galaxy, January 1956)1 opens in James Baron’s club, with him meeting an unknown man who asks if he is planning a Brightside Crossing. We learn in fairly short order that (a) Baron’s crossing will be across the sunward facing side of Mercury2 when it is at its closest point to the sun (perihelion) and (b) the stranger is Peter Claney, the only survivor of an earlier failed attempt. Claney insists that Baron has no chance of making a successful crossing, and proceeds to tell Baron about his team’s failed attempt.
In the central part of the story we learn how Claney was approached by a Major Tom Mikuta to join the expedition and how they were later joined by two other men, Jack Stone and Ted McIvers. The latter man, an adventurer described by Claney as a “kind of a daredevil”, arrives late at their start point—a lab in the twilight zone—presaging problems that will arise later in the story.
After they depart the base station, McIvers’ restlessness soon manifests itself and, after swapping roles with Stone and driving one of the flanking scout vehicles rather than the supply sledge at the back, he is soon asking to replace Claney as point, wanting to go five or ten miles ahead of the rest of the team to reconnoitre their route. Mikuta refuses, stating that they need to stay together, but McIver becomes ever more wayward and, during one of his side trips, he finds the wreckage and bodies of a previous expedition. Tensions increase as the story continues to unfold—the physical conditions are gruelling, Stone is becoming increasingly scared, and they are arguing about falling behind schedule. This all comes to a climax when Claney baulks at crossing a shelf he considers unsafe, and McIver charges ahead:

I started edging back down the ledge. I heard Mclvers swear; then I saw his Bug start to creep outward on the shelf. Not fast or reckless this time, but slowly, churning up dust in a gentle cloud behind him.
I just stared and felt the blood rushing in my head. It seemed so hot I could hardly breathe as he edged out beyond me, farther and farther—I think I felt it snap before I saw it. My own machine gave a sickening lurch and a long black crack appeared across the shelf—and widened. Then the ledge began to upend. I heard a scream as Mclvers’ Bug rose up and up and then crashed down into the crevasse in a thundering slide of rock and shattered metal.

They learn that McIvers isn’t dead but has smashed his vehicle and broken his leg. Mikuta and Stone descend into the crevasse to save him but (spoiler) are killed in a subsequent quake. Claney turns back.
The last part of the story, like the first, takes place in Baron’s club, and sees Baron (and probably most readers) observe that McIvers was the wrong kind of person to have in the team. Claney rebuts that, suggesting that McIvers was right to do what he did as they needed to keep to their schedule or they all would have died. Finally, after Claney makes an impassioned last attempt to talk Baron out of continuing his expedition, he asks him, “When do you leave, Baron? I want you to take me along.”
Although this story superficially looks like hard SF, it is really a character study about the type of men who are explorers, and how they are driven to do what they do.
This is a pretty good piece which is further improved by its closing line.
**** (Very Good). 7,850 words. Story link.

1. This story was a finalist for the 1956 Hugo Award for Best Novelette.

2. At the time the story was published it was thought that Mercury was tidally locked and that only one side of the planet faced the sun (i.e. Mercury rotated once for every orbit around the sun). Subsequently, Mercury was discovered to rotate three times for every two orbits, so all parts of the planet receive sunlight at some point.

Sole Solution by Eric Frank Russell

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Sole Solution by Eric Frank Russell (Fantastic Universe, April 1956)1 opens with a being trapped in a dark void where only he exists. He realises that the only resources available to overcome his predicament are “secreted within himself” and that he must “be the instrument of his own salvation”.
Eventually, after further exploration of his environment, and much thought, he conceives of a solution that will provide what he wants:

He created a mighty dream of his own, a place of infinite complexity schemed in every detail to the last dot and comma. Within this he would live anew. But not as himself. He was going to dissipate his person into numberless parts, a great multitude of variegated shapes and forms each of which would have to battle its own peculiar environment.
And he would toughen the struggle to the limit of endurance by unthinking himself, handicapping his parts with appalling ignorance and forcing them to learn afresh. He would seed enmity between them by dictating the basic rules of the game. Those who observed the rules would be called good. Those who did not would be called bad. Thus there would be endless delaying conflicts within the one great conflict.
When all was ready and prepared he intended to disrupt and become no longer one, but an enormous concourse of entities. Then his parts must fight back to unity and himself.

If this (spoiler) doesn’t give the game away, then the neat payoff lines, “‘Let there be light.’ And there was light.” confirm his identity.
I’d read this story before and remembered the ending, but I still thought it was pretty good: adroitly laid out, and the last lines bootstrap the story to another level. I’d also add that I was quite taken, even though I’m an atheist, with the conceit that we are all parts of a disassembled God trying to distract himself.
***+ (Good to Very Good). 700 words. Story link.

1. This is the first story in Brian W. Aldiss’s anthology Penguin Science Fiction, which is a group read starting in one of my Facebook groups today, 27th November 2023 (private group, so you will have to join).

The Last Question by Isaac Asimov

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Last Question by Isaac Asimov (Science Fiction Quarterly, November 1956)1 is a one of his “Multivac” stories about a giant computer. In this tale, after the computer has been running for several decades, it finally develops a system that provides unlimited solar power for humanity. After this achievement, we then see the Multivac’s two attendants, who are hiding from the publicity in an underground chamber, having a drink and relaxing. Later, an argument develops when one of the two, Adel, contends that that the solar power supply will last forever:

Lupov cocked his head sideways. He had a trick of doing that when he wanted to be contrary, and he wanted to be contrary now, partly because he had had to carry the ice and glassware. “Not forever,” he said.
“Oh, hell, just about forever. Till the sun runs down, Bert.”
“That’s not forever.”
“All right, then. Billions and billions of years. Twenty billion, maybe. Are you satisfied?”
Lupov put his fingers through his thinning hair as though to reassure himself that some was still left and sipped gently at his own drink. “Twenty billion years isn’t forever.”  p. 8

This back and forth continues until Lupov points out that when entropy eventually reaches a maximum (i.e The Heat Death of the Universe, when the temperature everywhere in the Universe is the same), no more free energy will be available. Adell suggests that it may be possible to “build things up again someday”. Lupov disagrees, and so they ask Multivac if it will ever be possible to decrease the amount of entropy in the universe: the computer replies “INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR MEANINGFUL ANSWER”.
The rest of the story telescopes through time until the end of the Universe, with many changes taking place during the various sections: Multivac becomes a much smaller machine, and eventually exists in hyperspace (by this point it is called the “Cosmic AC”); meanwhile, humans become immortal, spread throughout the Galaxy and the Universe, turn into disembodied beings, and later merge into one consciousness. At the end of every section someone asks the same question that Adell and Lupov asked and get the same answer.
Finally, ten trillions years later, just before the last man fuses with AC, the question is asked one last time with the same result. Then, in the timeless interval afterwards (spoiler), AC learns how to reverse the direction of entropy:

But there was now no man to whom AC might give the answer of the last question. No matter. The answer—by demonstration—would take care of that, too.
For another timeless interval, AC thought how best to do this. Carefully, AC organized the program.
The consciousness of AC encompassed all of what had once been a Universe and brooded over what was now Chaos. Step by step, it must be done.
And AC said, “LET THERE BE LIGHT!”
And there was light—  p. 15

The cosmic and temporal sweep of the story is quite well done but the ending is a gimmick better appreciated at age 12. I’d also suggest the story has a religious or mythological ending rather than a proper sense of wonder one.2 Still, not bad I guess.
*** (Good). 4,450 words. Story link.

1. I assumed that this story had bounced from Astounding, Galaxy and F&SF to Science Fiction Quarterly (a much lower-budget publication) but then I found this in Asimov’s autobiography, In Joy Still Felt:

On June 1, 1956, I received a request from Bob Lowndes for another story. I was already thinking about writing another story about Multivac (“Franchise,” which had been the first, had been written as a direct consequence of my introduction to Univac in the 1952 election).
I had worked out ever greater developments of Multivac, and eventually was bound to consider how far I could go; how far the human mind (or, anyway, my human mind) could reach,
So as soon as I got Bob’s letter I sat down to write “The Last Question,” which was only forty-seven hundred words long, but in which I detailed the history of ten trillion years with respect to human beings, computers, and the universe. And, in the end—but no, you’ll have to read the story, if you haven’t already.
I wrote the whole thing in two sittings, without a sentences hesitation. On June 4 I sent it off, and on June 11 I got the check from Lowndes at four cents a word.
I knew at the instant of writing it that I had become involved in something special. When I finished it, I said, in my diary, that it was “the computer story to end all computer stories, of, who knows, the science-fiction story to end all science-fiction stores.” OF course, it may well be that no one else agrees with me, but it was my opinion at the time, and it still is today.  p. 59

2. Tacking on a religious or mythological ending to provide a sense of wonder is not uncommon, e.g. Arthur C. Clarke’s The Nine Billion Names of God.

Happy Birthday, Dear Jesus by Frederik Pohl

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Happy Birthday, Dear Jesus by Frederik Pohl (Alternating Currents, 1956) is, partially, an “if this goes one” satire about the commercialisation of Christmas, and begins with the story’s narrator, Mr Martin, recruiting a young woman called Lilymary Hargreave for his department at Heinemann’s store. Her job is to gift-wrap and label shoppers’ Christmas purchases, and it’s here where we get the first dose of satire (apart an earlier mention that this Christmas rush is happening in early September):

[Lilymary] called me over near closing time. She looked distressed and with some reason. There was a dolly filled with gift-wrapped packages, and a man from Shipping looking annoyed. She said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Martin, but I seem to have done something wrong.”
The Shipping man snorted. “Look for yourself, Mr. Martin,” he said, handing me one of the packages.
I looked. It was wrong, all right. Heinemann’s new wrinkle that year was a special attached gift card—a simple Yule scene and the printed message:

The very Merriest of Season’s Greetings
From …………………………………
To ……………………………………
$8.50

The price varied with the item, of course. Heinemann’s idea was for the customer to fill it out and mail it, ahead of time, to the person it was intended for. That way, the person who got it would know just about how much he ought to spend on a present for the first person. It was smart, I admit, and maybe the smartest thing about it was rounding the price off to the nearest fifty cents instead of giving it exactly. Heinemann said it was bad-mannered to be too precise—and the way the customers were going for the idea, it had to be right.

When Lilymary says she can’t complete the job as she needs to go home to her father, Martin does it himself. Then, when she doesn’t come in the day after, Martin goes to her house. There he finds that the father, Lilymary, and the other three daughters are Sabbath observant.
The rest of the story sees Martin romantically pursue Lilymary, which provides a clash-of-cultures situation between him and the family, who have just returned to the United States after a long time in Borneo as religious missionaries. Consequently, they don’t have a TV or dishwasher or any mod-cons, or any interest in them. They also provide their own entertainment and, during an after dinner session, when Martin sings a particularly commercialised version of ’Tis the Season of Christmas (“Come Westinghouse, Philco! Come Hotpoint, G.E.! Come Sunbeam! Come Mixmaster! Come to the Tree!”), the atmosphere sours. Then, when he later arranges for the visit of a Santa Claus and the Elves sales team to the house, the relationship breaks down completely. Eventually (spoiler), at the suggestion of his boss, Martin proposes to Lilymary (“Why not marry her for a while?”), she rejects him, and then he finds out the family is leaving once again for Borneo, so he tries again. He eventually succeeds when he tracks them down to a church service, prays with Lilymary, and then gets religion.
This is okay I guess, but it would have been a more interesting piece if it had concentrated on the Christmas satire and not the boy-wants-girl story.
** (Average). 8, 250 words.

Stranger Station by Damon Knight

Posted on by Paul Fraser 2 Comments on Stranger Station by Damon Knight

Stranger Station by Damon Knight (F&SF, December 1956) opens with Paul Wesson arriving at a space station built far from Earth for the purpose of interacting with visiting members of an alien species whose proximity causes humans mental distress.
For the first month of Wesson’s six month stay he is alone, apart from an AI/computer network he calls “Aunt Jane”, who he quizzes about various matters while he waits for the alien to arrive—What do the aliens look like? Can he see a picture of them? How did the previous incumbents of the station cope with their tour of duty, etc.? But Aunt Jane won’t answer most of his questions, saying that it isn’t permitted. The computer does, however, read to him an account of the first contact with the aliens on Titan:

We gained access to the alien construction by way of a large, irregular opening . . . The internal temperature was minus seventy-five degrees Fahrenheit; the atmosphere appeared to consist of methane and ammonia . . . Inside the second chamber, an alien creature was waiting for us. We felt the distress which I have tried to describe, to a much greater degree than before, and also the sense of summoning or pleading . . . We observed that the creature was exuding a thick yellowish fluid from certain joints or pores in its surface. Though disgusted, I managed to collect a sample of this exudate, and it this was later forwarded for analysis . . .  p. 6

The rest of the month sees Wesson become slightly stir-crazy but then, one day when he is on a spacewalk to the much larger sector two of the station (built to house the alien), he starts to feel fearful, and then there is a booming sound—the alien visitor has arrived. Wesson now feels the same distress as the original contact team:

It was the scent of danger, hanging unseen up there in the dark, waiting, cold and heavy. It was the recurrent nightmare of Wesson’s childhood—the bloated unreal shape, no-color, no-size, that kept on hideously falling toward his face. . . . It was the dead puppy he had pulled out of the creek, that summer in Dakota . . . wet fur, limp head, cold, cold, cold. . . .
With an effort, Wesson rolled over on the couch and lifted himself to one elbow. The pressure was an insistent chill weight on his skull; the room seemed to dip and swing around in slow circles.  p. 11

During this part of the story we also learn that the alien’s golden fluid provides humans with increased longevity, and that Wesson’s bosses want him to ask the aliens if they intend continuing their twenty year visits. Then Wesson realises he can sense the position of the alien, and realises that it may be suffering too. Eventually he pressures Aunt Jane into showing him a video image of the alien, which precipitates a realisation (“When two alien cultures meet, the stronger must transform the weaker with love or hate.”). Wesson concludes (spoiler) that, while he and the alien are in close proximity, his mind is being changed so that he (and others like him) will be able to peacefully co-exist with them. When he explains all this to Aunt Jane however, he discovers that he can no longer understand her or speak, read or write English.
The last section sees Wesson decide to resist the emanations coming from the alien, which then causes it such pain that it breaches its sector and wrecks the station. There is a long description of the death throes and, before Wesson dies, his final realisation is that his actions will cause humanity to come into conflict with the aliens.
If the plot of this story sounds like it doesn’t makes much sense, that is because it doesn’t: I think Knight was writing a brooding psychological horror here, and hadn’t really thought through the internal logic. Now, if readers are happy to just immerse themselves in the descriptive writing and atmospherics, they will probably enjoy it—if you have an analytical mind, however, you will be distracted by many questions (Why does Masson have to be unconscious when he arrives at the station? Why does he spend a month there on his own before the alien arrives? How does humanity manage to get enough immortality fluid for everyone if the aliens only visit every twenty years? How did they discover that the fluid could be used for this purpose in the first place? Why do the aliens think they can affect humanity as a whole if they only “convert” one station keeper every twenty years? Why must the two races have a love/hate relationship, can’t they peacefully co-exist or ignore each other? Why does the last sentence have Aunt Jane sounding as if it loves Wesson?) Also on the debit side of the story is the fact that a lot of the writing is long-winded description (whereas the conversation Wesson has with his boss about a possible fluid shortage—and why he doesn’t have a cat on board with him—isn’t even that, it’s just padding). The final nail in the coffin is that a couple of major plot developments come from Wesson having realisations or intuitions about things, always a weak way of advancing a story.
Not one for the left-brained (analytical/methodical).
** (Average). 9,400 words.