Tag: F&SF

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.

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.

Salvador by Lucius Shepard

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Salvador by Lucius Shepard (F&SF, April 1984)1 opens with a scene that will be familiar to anyone who has seen any of the many Vietnam War movies that were released from the late 1970s onwards2—except that in this case the conflict is in Central America, and the soldiers use combat drugs to enhance their abilities and supress their fear:

The platoon was crossing a meadow at the foot of an emerald-green volcano [. . .] when cap-pistol noises sounded on the slope. Someone screamed for the medic, and Dantzler dove into the grass, fumbling for his ampules. He slipped one from the dispenser and popped it under his nose, inhaling frantically; then, to be on the safe side, he popped another — “A double helpin’ of martial arts,” as DT would say — and lay with his head down until the drugs had worked their magic. There was dirt in his mouth, and he was very afraid. Gradually his arms and legs lost their heaviness, and his heart rate slowed. His vision sharpened to the point that he could see not only the pinpricks of fire blooming on the slope, but also the figures behind them, half-obscured by brush. A bubble of grim anger welled up in his brain, hardened by a fierce resolve, and he started moving toward the volcano. By the time he reached the base of the cone, he was all rage and reflexes. He spent the next forty minutes spinning acrobatically through the thickets, spraying shadows with bursts of his M-18; yet part of his mind remained distant from the action, marveling at his efficiency, at the comic-strip enthusiasm he felt for the task of killing. He shouted at the men he shot, and he shot them many more times than was necessary, like a child playing soldier.  p. 8

After this we learn more about DT (presumably the platoon’s psychotic NCO) and see his craziness at first hand when he throws a young prisoner (who says his father is a “man of power”) out of the chopper on the way back to base.
The next section sees Dantzler (whose anthropologist father did field work in Salvador) talking to his buddy Moody about the spirit world of the local Sukias (magicians). When Moody asks why the Sukias aren’t helping the natives, Dantzler tells him that they don’t believe in interfering in worldly affairs. However, after the platoon raze a village to the ground and kill all the occupants, Dantzler has a supernatural experience that proves this isn’t quite correct—as the men camp for the night in a cloud forest, a dark shape comes towards him and a voice says that Dantzler killed his son. Dantzler realises that it is the Sukia from the young man’s village, and he opens fire indiscriminately; the blackness disappears, and he sees he has killed several members of his platoon. Then he notices a girl in the golden light that has replaced the darkness and, after she speaks to him for a while, she asks him to “let them know about the war” when he returns home. Dantzler subsequently comes upon Moody and DT, shoots the former and drowns the latter:

Darttzler planted a foot in the middle of his back and pushed him down until his head was submerged. DT bucked and clawed at the foot and managed to come to his hands and knees. Mist slithered from his eyes, his nose, and he choked out the words “…kill you….” Dantzler pushed him down again; he got into pushing him down and letting him up, over and over. Not so as to torture him. Not really. It was because he had suddenly understood the nature of the ayahuamaco’s laws, that they were approximations of normal laws, and he further understood that his actions had to approximate those of someone jiggling a key in a lock. DT was the key to the way out, and Dantzler was jiggling him, making sure all the tumblers were engaged.
Some of the vessels in DT’s eyes had burst, and the whites were occluded by films of blood. When he tried to speak, mist curled from his mouth. Gradually his struggles subsided; he clawed runnels in the gleaming yellow dirt of the bank and shuddered. His shoulders were knobs of black land floundering in a mystic sea.
For a long time after DT sank from view, Dantzler stood beside the stream, uncertain of what was left to do and unable to remember a lesson he had been taught. Finally, he shouldered his rifle and walked away from the clearing. Morning had broken, the mist had thinned, and the forest had regained its usual coloration. But he scarcely noticed these changes, still troubled by his faulty memory. Eventually, he let it slide — it would all come clearer sooner or later.  p. 20-21

The last part of the story (spoiler) takes place back in the United States, and the final scene sees Dantzler entering a night club with a knife after popping two combat ampules:

[He] felt a responsibility to explain about the war. More than a responsibility, an evangelistic urge. He would tell them about the kid falling out of the chopper, the white-haired girl in Tecolutla, the emptiness. God, yes! How you went down chock-full of ordinary American thoughts and dreams, memories of smoking weed and chasing tail and hanging out and freeway flying with a case of something cold, and how you smuggled back a human-shaped container of pure Salvadorian emptiness. Primo grade. Smuggled it back to the land of silk and money, of mindfuck video games and topless tennis matches and fast-food solutions to the nutritional problem. Just a taste of Salvador would banish all those trivial obsessions. Just a taste. It would be easy to explain.  p. 23

This is an immersive story, an impressively descriptive and atmospheric piece which also manages, unusually, to combine its near future SF setting (the combat drugs, etc.) with supernatural events to produce an effective anti-war/revenge fantasy.
***+ (Good to Very Good). 7,450 words. Story link.

1. This story won the Locus and SF Chronicle (both SF news magazines) polls for Best Short Story; it also placed 4th in the Hugo Award for that year and was a Nebula Award finalist too.

2. Military Times’ 10 Best Vietnam War Movies.

Stepsister by Leah Cypress

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Stepsister by Leah Cypress (F&SF, May-June 2020) opens with King Ciar’s friend, “Lord” Garrin, telling tales of his youth in a tavern. During this we get a chunk of backstory about his royal castle upbringing and, in particular, the story of how Garrin was once whipped for hitting the prince too hard (they were practise-sparring with wooden posts). We also learn that Garrin is a potential claimant for the throne. Then, towards the end of this scene, he is summoned by King Ciar and told to go and retrieve the Queen’s stepsister.
We don’t actually see Garrin set off on his quest but instead see a twisty plot set in motion, during which we learn that (a) the Queen had a cruel step-family who tortured her, and that she ordered them stoned to death after she got married, (b) the King intervened and ordered Garrin to take one of the step-sisters, Jacinda, far away and hide her from the Queen, and (c) that Garrin once danced with Jacinda after meeting her as she fled from the castle on the night of the Fae Ball:

We all grew up knowing that we shared our world with the fae. They lent magic and wonder to our grinding lives, favored us with the occasional sprinkle of miracle or tragedy, and all they asked in return was for us to dance. Once at midsummer and once at the winter solstice: a grand ball, for royalty and commoners alike, where the dancing gets wilder all through the night and our movements shimmer with beauty and abandon. Nights when the ugly appear beautiful and the beautiful transcendent, when the melancholy turn joyful and the happy go insane, when romance turns into a solid reality and princes fall in love with peasant girls.

I knew her name by then: Jacinda. And I had seen and recognized the token tucked into the bodice of her gown, a lock of golden hair bound with silver thread. Ciar gave one like it to every girl he fancied.
But she had left Ciar and danced with me, and though I knew I should not have allowed it, I was filled with a tender joy. It was the music and the magic strumming through my skin, turning my mind inside out and making me forget the rule my safety was built around: You must never take anything from Ciar.
But she was so fierce and so real, and for the first time in my life, I wanted something so badly I didn’t think about the consequences. (A foolish mood, not a brave one. The consequences, like the morning, would come anyhow.) I reached for her hand and pulled her closer, and her dark eyes watched me, then slowly closed as I bent my head to hers.
Our lips barely touched. She made a small, pained sound and stepped back.
“Oh,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

Jacinda subsequently explains that what he is feeling isn’t love but fae magic (she has enchanted her glass slippers with her own “blood and pain, to ensnare a suitor of royal blood”). After she leaves Garrin remains smitten.
All of this, and more that follows, has led many commentators to refer to this as a Cinderella story, but you could change some of the previous details (the step-sisters, the glass slippers, etc.) and you’d pretty much have the same story—one which, if you are looking for literary comparisons, probably has more in common with Game of Thrones given its tale of bastards, royal succession, and palace intrigue.
The rest of the tale (spoiler) further complicates the story, and sees Garrin get a note from Jacinda asking him to stay away, and the Queen’s maid trying to stab him to prevent him going on his journey. Then the Queen tries to get Garrin to betray the King while the latter is in earshot. Garrin manages to avoid this trap, and listens outside the door as the King and Queen argue about her inability to conceive and how they need to go to Jacinda to undo a fae curse.
The last scene sees the King and Queen, Garrin, and Amelie the Queen’s maid go to Jacinda’s cottage (and before they leave Amelie reveals to Garrin that she is fae and tells him how Queen Ella got her own enchanted slippers).
At the cottage they find that Jacinda has a baby boy, which is obviously King Ciar’s child—but Garrin saves the boy’s life by claiming it as his own.
This is a readable piece with well-drawn characters (Garrin’s endless vigilance is particularly well done) and a satisfyingly twisty plot. The fae magic and the Cinderella references are also well integrated into the story and don’t distract from the main thrust of the tale.
***+ (Good to Very Good). 14,000 words.

A Feast of Butterflies by Amanda Hollander

Posted on by Paul Fraser

A Feast of Butterflies by Amanda Hollander (F&SF, March-April 2020) opens with a constable, in a far-flung outpost of what seems to be an Asian empire, summoned to see one of the village elders called the “Judge”. When he arrives the constable is told that five boys have gone missing (one of them is the Judge’s grandson), and that a young woman who lives on the other side of the mountain may be responsible.
When the constable later arrives at the village where the boys went missing he speaks to an old woman who subsequently takes him to “the girl who eats butterflies” (a habit she acquired after her brother died in suspicious circumstances, possibly involving roving young men):

The young woman was crouched by a large spider web stretched between whorls in the tree bark. She did not appear to notice them. But could she even see them, he wondered, for butterflies of every color of the rainbow fluttered around her hands and face, some even trying to alight on her eyelashes. They beat the air with light wings. The young woman’s attention, though, was intensely focused on the lines of the spider web. Near the web’s center, a butterfly struggled against the threads that bound it. The young woman’s delicate fingers pulled the creature’s quivering body from the sticky strands. The insect beat its crimson wings furiously as the girl plucked its legs free, one by one. She examined the lines of red and black, glowing in the afternoon sun. Then, as gently as she removed the insect from the web, she folded it into her mouth. Her sharp teeth bit into the butterfly. The wings twitched fiercely, then not at all. Legs crunched and divided between the river stones of her teeth. Antennae hung over her lip. She looked up and saw them watching her. Her tongue slipped out to catch the ends of the legs and swept them into her mouth. She chewed for a moment, then swallowed.

Further developments (spoiler) see the constable (a) read his predecessor’s report about the brother’s death, which indicates there were signs of foul play, (b) surreptitiously observe the woman and see her turn into a spider, (c) get punched in the mouth by the Judge when the latter runs out of patience, and (d) write a letter to the woman (who reads it and then nods to him).
Finally, the Judge, his servants, and the constable go to the woman’s house. When they finally force their way into the building they see five cocooned bodies hanging from the ceiling. The woman vanishes, the servants take the bodies back to the village, and the Judge is bitten by a snake and dies.
The final scene sees the constable kill a rat that he has seen once before in his office:

The constable shifted in his seat. His muscles coiled and he sprang across the room, his teeth sinking into the fur and flesh. Venom quickly stilled the rodent’s twitching. The constable withdrew his fangs and tried to take the paralyzed creature into his mouth. It didn’t fit. He unhinged his jaw and swallowed the animal whole, the tail the last bit to slip past his lips and down his gullet.

This piece gets off to an intriguing start but eventually devolves into a fairly standard were-animal/shapechanger story, and one with an ending that pretty much comes out of nowhere (there are, at best, a couple of vague suggestions that the constable is a were-snake). I also have reservations about were-animal or shape-changer stories that don’t adhere to conservation of mass principles (I know this will sound daft, but I can suspend disbelief if a person turns into a person-sized spider or snake, but not if the creature is much smaller).
** (Average). 6,050 words.

Spirit Level by John Kessel

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Spirit Level by John Kessel (F&SF, July-August 2020) opens with Michael, the story’s middle-aged and maritally separated narrator, waking in his parents’ house in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. On his way he sees the ghost of his wife Lauren—who asks why he left her after twenty-eight years, and demands the truth. She then walks into the living room and disappears:

He touched his hand to his head. He took a deep breath.
Yes, he was awake. He went to the bathroom, relieved himself, then returned to the bedroom.
He told himself it was some vivid fantasy, but lying on the air mattress, hearing the furnace turn on and then off, he felt a bone-deep uneasiness. Lauren was not dead. She was alive and living in the house they had lived in for the last twenty years.  p. 53

The rest of the story sees Michael haunted by the ghosts of other failed or troubled relationships: the first is his (dead) father, who ends up striking Michael with a spirit level; then his (live) teenage son Trevor, whose ghost visits just after Michael has sex with his current girlfriend, says, “I smell her on you . . . You stink of her” before fleeing.
Alongside these encounters we get more backstory about the failure of Michael’s marriage and his unhappy relationship with his father, and we also come to see that most of Michael’s relationships are unsuccessful (we see this at his work, with his current girlfriend, and with the care staff where his senile mother lives—and whom he hardly ever sees). We begin to realise that Michael is part of the problem, something put in sharp focus when he dumps on his girlfriend Donna about a troubling visit to his mother:

Donna sighed. “I think you need to ask yourself a few questions, Michael. Is this about your mother or is it about you? If you can’t stop beating yourself about the head and shoulders, you shouldn’t expect someone else to stop you. You certainly shouldn’t expect them to give you sympathy for something you’re doing to yourself. Your mother’s situation is tragic, but it’s what happens. If you wanted to visit her more, you would, though I doubt it would make much difference.”
“That’s cold.”
“I don’t mean to be cold. You know I like you. You’re not a bad guy. But I can’t solve your problems for you. I’m sorry about your mother. At least you can be with her at the end, if you want to be.”
He looked her in the eyes; she took a sip of coffee.
“I don’t think we ought to keep seeing each other,” Donna said.  p. 72

Eventually, Michael’s late-life crisis worsens (as well as the previous events, he starts taking drugs he has found in his parent’s home), and (spoiler) the climactic scene sees him entering his parents’ house to find himself in his childhood home, his mother still in her mid-thirties, and his father’s spirit-level lying beside an unfinished doorway (the spirit level is obviously some sort of symbol, as it appears on a number of occasions throughout the story).
This is fundamentally a literary short story about late life problems and angst (the spirit level, the references to Moby Dick, etc.) with a few fantasy tropes thrown in. For the most part this works pretty well—there is a lot of good observational writing—but the problem the story has is that the genre features are not used consistently, i.e. we go from ghostly apparitions to an ending where the protagonist is apparently transported back in time to his childhood home. This (perhaps dying fantasy) makes for a dissonant and inconsistent ending (I can see why he may want to return to when he was younger and start over, but why to his parents? And how does this ending flow from ghostly apparitions?)
I think this piece will mostly appeal to males in later life, who may recognise some of the situations and appreciate the story’s insights1—but, even if the ending doesn’t throw them, they may tire of a disgruntled protagonist who seems to be unable to get out of his own way.
**+ (Average to Good). 9,700 words.

1. Re the story’s observations, a couple of passages that struck me:

Nobody had a soul, Michael knew. All you had was the face you prepared to show to other people. Your character was a performance, a persona you put on; by the time you were a teenager, under the pressure of other people’s expectations, you worked out who you were supposed to be. You lived your invented self to the point where you imagined that was who you were. Everybody thought they knew you—you thought you knew yourself. Until something happened, like Michael walking out on Lauren, to reveal that there was nothing inside you but a few desires and an echo chamber.  p. 71

He couldn’t blame anybody, and he realized that the sadness overwhelming him was not a result of things he had done or failed to do. It was the result of the simple passage of time. Things changed. When you were young, you thought the past could be recovered, or if not, corrected by the future. When you were old, the silent, inexorable slide of now into then, and its associated accumulation of losses, small and large, crushed any future.  p. 76

(Emet) by Lauren Ring

Posted on by Paul Fraser

(Emet) by Lauren Ring (F&SF, July-August 2022)1 opens with Chaya in her countryside home watching a golem dig up dandelions in her garden—these creatures of Jewish folklore are created daily by Chaya and linked to her home network:

After a few false starts, Chaya has the bestowal of life down to a science. Each morning at dawn, she molds assistants from clay, connects them to her wireless network just like any smart watch or Bluetooth dongle, and passes them the day’s variables: a list of chores, with each step painstakingly defined. The golem in charge of the dandelions finished early, but there are others of various sizes lumbering about the yard, carrying eggs from Chaya’s chicken coop and clearing loose stones from her long, winding driveway.  p. 67

We learn that Chaya is a teleworker for Millbank Biometrics, a company that is developing facial recognition software. Then, after some backstory about how Chaya’s mother taught her how to make golems and the generalities of Chaya’s job, Chaya virtually attends a company meeting where she and the other employees are given a list of thirty-six protestors that law enforcement want to track:

Confusion spreads across the faces on Chaya’s monitor. If her camera was on, she is sure that she would see the same expression reflected in her own frown. Tracking protesters isn’t exactly what she signed up for when she applied to Millbank. Sure, it’s what their software was ultimately going to be used for, but she wasn’t supposed to have to do it.
“Are there any questions?”
Chaya expects someone to ask what crimes these people committed, or what is going to happen to them when the information is turned over to the police, even though she already knows the dark answer to that. She expects questions about ethics and precedent and nondisclosure. At the very least, she expects someone to ask how they are supposed to check every partial match from every instance of every client’s software without neglecting all their other work.
No one asks any questions, though, not even her manager, so Chaya stays in line and keeps quiet. She sets the thirty-six faces to display on one of her monitors and returns to her code. What else can she do? She’s only one person, after all.  pp. 72-72

The next section of the story sees, among other things: (a) Chaya remember a childhood incident when a black friend was arrested on a false positive match (Chaya’s family didn’t do anything before the child was eventually released); (b) Chaya spot one of the thirty-six protestors in a local shop (when they talk to each other, Chaya is told about a surveillance protest in a couple of weeks); (c) Chaya garble the code for one of her golems—this makes it create another one, which in turn creates one more (“like a line of self replicating code”); (d) Chaya’s mother’s death due to cancer and health algorithms; and (e) Chaya realise, when she receives another dubious request from her company, that she is little better than a golem herself.
The story ends (spoiler) with Chaya’s long simmering rebellion, which sees her create self-replicating golems with the same faces as the target individuals, something designed to overload Millbank’s servers (she is helped with this by the man from the shop, who she meets again at the protest, and who gets the dispersing protesters to take a self-replicating golem with them to increase the area where Millbank will record sightings).
I found this story interesting but something of a mixed bag. On the plus side, the gimmick (golems controlled by computer code) is original, and the story is more multi-layered and complex than most but, on the minus side, the golem/computer mix feels a bit odd (a fantasy idea mixed with science fiction), and the politics of the story (surveillance + algorithms = bad) feels a bit simplistic (look at how much surveillance data we give away willingly).
I’d also add that the very last part, where Chaya conflates her actions with the idea of “truth” (“Emet” in Hebrew) doesn’t make much sense as they seem to be more about political values or freedom. Finally, I didn’t understand why “Emet” is the word that brings the golems to life.
*** (Good). 7,800 words. Story link.

1. This won the 2022 World Fantasy Award for best short story. It was also a Nebula finalist.

The Dark Ride by John Kessel

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Dark Ride by John Kessel (F&SF, January-February 2021)1 gets off to an engrossing start at the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, where Leon Czolgosz is trying to assassinate President McKinley. When the crowds prevent Leon from getting near enough he decides to wait until the President returns to visit the Temple of Music.
To fill the time Leon wanders around the grounds of the Exposition looking at the exhibits and later decides to go on “A Trip to the Moon”. This is supposedly an aerial trip to the moon followed by an excursion to an underground city for an audience with the ruling Grand Lunar.
As Leon listens to the guide’s entertaining pre-flight briefing he wonders if McKinley has been on the ride, and thinks about the possibility of assassinating him on the surface of the Moon. Then his thoughts turn to a woman called Emma Goldman, an anarchist activist Leon has seen speaking and has briefly talked with. (Later on in the story, Leon goes to her home in an attempt to become more involved in the anarchist movement, and his infatuation with Goldman is one of the factors influencing his desire to kill the President). Eventually, after the guide has finished the briefing, Leon and the other passengers go through a set of double doors to board the airship:

As they ascended, they passed through clouds of mist. A storm arose. The wind increased, lightning flashed, thunder echoed, the airship shook. The young women clutched their boyfriends’ arms. The breeze became a gale.
Then they were past the storm and into outer space. Below, Leon could see the outline of Lake Erie shrinking until all of North America was visible. As they continued to rise, the entire Earth shrank to a disk, falling back into the distance.
It was a vision of the world that one never had. The entire human race lived on that one planet. All history, the rise and fall of nations, the great conflicts, the great achievements, had occurred on that sphere. What differences existed between human beings that could compare with the fact that they shared the Earth? Except they didn’t share it. Some people owned it, and others did not. Humans had invented ownership, and it had taken over their minds.
He observed his fellow passengers. The bourgeois man held his wife’s gloved hand and whispered something into her ear. The two couples were laughing, the fellow with his sleeves rolled up sliding his arm around the blonde’s waist.
The clouds began to clear and stars came out on all sides, bright, clear pinpoints in the blackness. Ahead, the Moon hove into view, with the grinning face of the Man in the Moon.
What hokum. Leon shifted in his seat.  p. 96

After Leon arrives on a vegetation covered Moon the story cuts to Leon outside the attraction after the trip is complete. He decides to go to the Temple of Music and join the queue to meet the President and, in the line, he gets talking to a tall, black man called Parker (Leon can’t work out why a black man wants to shake McKinley’s hand given the Republicans sold out the blacks in the election of 1896).
As Leon waits in line we also get more backstory about his family background (his mother died and his father remarried an unsympathetic woman), his involvement in labour politics (dangerous practices and strikes and black-listing), and his general disillusionment with capitalism and the church. Leon also finds a baby bottle-like nipple in his pocket but can’t remember where he got it, or what happened on the trip after they arrived at the Moon.
McKinley eventually arrives, the queue moves forward, and Leon reaches the President and shoots him twice. Leon is restrained by Parker and almost shot out of hand by a soldier shortly afterwards, but McKinley (who is injured and will die of an infection two weeks later) intervenes.
The rest of the story mostly alternates between an account of Leon’s subsequent treatment and questioning by the authorities, and flashbacks to what happened after he arrived on the Moon during his trip. During these latter scenes the trip metamorphoses from an exhibition attraction to what appears to be a pulp adventure:

Dark at first, the cave grew darker still as they advanced, and the women drew closer to their escorts. Gradually a blue light rose around them. Farther in were lights of crimson and gold. Jewels gleamed in the rough walls. The cave opened into a chamber large enough to hold all of the earthlings. Here were more Selenites, small females whose long hair draped undone over the shoulders of their glittering gowns. A couple of them played stringed instruments. All bowed their heads when the visitors were assembled.
The little males bent sideways and looked up at them. The spiky tops of their heads looked like cactus plants. They smiled and shook hands with the passengers.
All this struck a chord in Leon. Earlier that summer, lying around his rented room in West Seneca through a sweltering July, out of work, spending down his savings, Leon had passed his time reading newspapers and magazines. In Cosmopolitan he had read a scientific romance by the British writer H. G. Wells titled The First Men in the Moon, about a failed businessman named Bedford and a crazy scientist named Cavor who flew to the Moon in an antigravity ship. Wells’s moon had giant fungi on its surface and was honeycombed with caverns where lived insectile Selenites. Clearly the designers of the Trip to the Moon had read Wells’s story and turned it into this exotic music hall show.
Although these were midgets and children, and the grotto was constructed of plaster, in the blue light and the play of shadows the faux rock looked real, and out of the corner of his eye, Leon was startled when one or another of the Selenites moved in a way that no human might move. That one in the corner, bent forward, head wobbling—it looked more like a big drunken grasshopper than a person. But when Leon peered at it, he saw it was just a sideshow midget dressed up in green tights and bloomers.
To the right and left, visible between glowing stalactites, shadowed galleries ran off into darkness, giving the illusion that this complex must reach far below the Pan-American fairgrounds. The air was cool. They followed the guide and the Selenite captain through another tunnel. The floor trembled with a vibration that made Leon think of the machines in the wire mill, and in the distance he thought he heard twittering. As he passed one of the openings, he glimpsed some large, pale thing in the darkness, something like a huge slug, heaving along the floor on no legs.  pp. 104-105

The rest of the story limns Leon’s interrogation and trial, and also his escapades on the Moon. The former thread begins with Leon’s examination by two alienists (during this we learn of a infatuation with a prostitute who eventually refuses to marry him as she earns more than he does), his dissociation from the events surrounding the assassination, and then his regret at his actions (he thinks at length about the effect on his family and the on the President’s epileptic wife, “In killing her husband, Leon was killing her as surely as if he had put a bullet in her belly, too”).
Meanwhile on the Moon, Leon rescues Wilma, one of the dancing slave girls from the court of the Grand Lunar and, after Leon kills a number of pursuing Selenite warriors (“Leon’s fist broke through the thing’s skull as if it were an eggshell”), the pair descend down into the lunar tunnels. They briefly stop to eat some of the mushrooms that grow everywhere and drink the glowing water (Wilma says it glows because “it is infused with a miraculous invigorating element, radium”). Next, they arrive at a child factory, where the next generation of human slaves are grown—soon to become “cogs in the Grand Lunar’s industrial machine”. Leon is particularly horrified when he sees very young children crammed into bottles with only their arms free, a modification intended to make them more efficient machine tenders. Finally, the pair arrive at the secret chamber of the Brotherhood of Lunar Workers, where Wilma’s comrades thank Leon for her rescue. Then, after he learns more about the evil rule of the Selenites, he agrees to use his pistol to assassinate the Grand Lunar.
So far, so anti-capitalist (and, in places, anti-church). However, the last section of the story (spoiler) did not go where I thought it was going (e.g. a successful anti-capitalist uprising on the Moon as opposed to Leon’s presumed failure to change anything on Earth). Instead we see Leon’s attempt to kill the Gran Lunar fail when he is disarmed by a whip-like tentacle as he draws his pistol during another tour party visit.
Finally, as Leon argues with a priest in his cell shortly before his execution, the two threads of the story merge together:

The priest sighed. It was dark in the cell, and Leon could not make out his expression. Leon looked out of the cell into the gallery, where the sunset light had turned everything so bright that he had to squint.
“Many things you think you know are wrong,” the priest said.
His voice sounded different, sibilant and high pitched.
Leon turned to face him, and everything was changed. The cell was altered, larger, much larger. It wasn’t a cell anymore; it was a vast cavern dimly lit with blue light. His cot and his shit bucket were gone. It was foolish even to expect such things in this place, ornately decorated and suffused with a glowing blue mist. Around them stood a horde of misshapen, dark figures. The priest, too, was changed. He did not sit on the wooden stool but on a dais, and it was not the priest at all, but rather some monstrous thing with a huge head and a tiny face. Around it hovered insectile creatures carrying odd devices. One of them sprayed a cooling mist around the monster’s great dome of a skull.
“You are about to die,” the Grand Lunar said, “but before you do, we would take it as a courtesy if you would answer some questions for us.”  pp. 144-145

The next two pages sees the Grand Lunar give a spirited defence of the benefits of Lunarian society, and a critique of Leon’s ideas about freedom. Some of the Grand Lunar’s comments are sophistry, but the pair’s final exchange suggests that the story may be more about the use of political violence to achieve one’s aims rather than the shortcomings of capitalism:

The Grand Lunar said, “Your heart is full of anger. Tell me this: What happens when a free human wants something, and another wants the same thing?”
“They share.”
“Is this what happens on Earth?”
Leon would not lie. “Sometimes they fight, and one wins and the other loses.”
“So the freedom you speak of only means that people will discover reasons to fight one another.”
“They have the ability to share. No one has to own or be owned. We can preserve good things and make new ones that are equally good. We can give ourselves freely and love one another.”
“And that is why you attempted to kill me? You would bring down the order that we have created over generations, which has tamed the lunar world and created this vast number of variegated beings, in order to replace it with a teeming conflict of individuals in the hope that they will not fall to killing each other. They will ‘give themselves freely and love one another.’”
“Yes. They will.”
“Why, then, is your Earth not a paradise?”
“Not everybody can do it, yet. The powerful ones repress the others. The violent ones insist on imposing their will. There are—”
“Yes, I see. I see one such in front of me.” The Grand Lunar slowly closed his eyes and opened them again. He waved a feeble arm at one of his attendants. “Take this one to be executed.”  pp. 146-147

The last scene sees Leon back in prison and in the execution room. Then, after he is strapped in to the electric chair, the Grand Lunar gives the order to proceed (we are back on the Moon again), but Wilma and her rebels arrive to rescue him—presumably this Leon’s dying fantasy.
This a very impressive piece of work that manages to blend a historical account of a real event, the psychological study of an assassin, political commentary about capitalism and resistance to that system, and a pulp action adventure into a highly readable, entertaining and thought provoking piece (and one which, I suspect, will bear several re-readings). It also, perhaps, provides a timely examination of the use of political violence to achieve one’s ends.
****+ (Very Good to Excellent). 23,850 words. Purchase link (USA).

1. This was a finalist for the 2022 Theodore Sturgeon Award. I am really surprised that it was not on the Hugo and Nebula final ballot (especially the latter).

Piper at the Gates of Dawn by Richard Cowper

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Piper at the Gates of Dawn by Richard Cowper (F&SF, March 1976) opens1 with Peter, an old and itinerant tale-spinner, and Tom, the piper of the story, on the road to York as the third millennium approaches in a drowned, climate-changed, and post-collapse Britain.2 The pair pause by a stream to catch some dinner, which Tom apparently does by charming the fish out of the water with his pipe; while Tom plays Peter has a vision of a dragonfly, and then hears splashing when Tom successfully catches a huge salmon.
We see a further demonstration of Tom’s powers when the pair later approach a homestead which Peter lodged at years earlier:

They had passed almost through the herd before the farm dogs got wind of them. They came hurtling out from behind the stables, three lean, vicious-looking fell hounds, snarling and yelping in their eagerness to savage the intruders.
The boy stood his ground, calmly waited till the leader was but a short stone’s throw distant, then set the pipe to his lips and blew a series of darting notes of so high a pitch that the old man’s ears barely caught them. But the dogs did. They stopped almost dead in their tracks, for all the world as if they had run full tilt into a solid wall of glass. Next moment, the three of them were lying stretched out full length on the wet grass, whining, with their muzzles clasped in their forepaws and their eyes closed.  pp. 7-8

Shortly after this—once Peter tells the woman of the farm he stayed here before, and she realises he knows her husband—they are invited in. Then, when the young daughter of the house asks Tom to play, we learn that he was a pupil of Morfedd, The Wizard of Bowness, and that his pipe has been made for and also “tuned” to him. We also learn that Tom is now on his way to join the Minster Choir in York.
When the father and son return they all eat and, over dinner, we learn more about this primitive society, the “Drowning” that created it, and millennial rumours of peace and brotherhood that will soon be brought by “The White Bird of Kinship”. Then, after Peter tells a story of the times before the Drowning, Tom plays his pipe. After several tunes he plays a lament that he composed after Morfedd died:

To their dying day none of those present ever forgot the next ten minutes, and yet no two of them ever recalled it alike. But all were agreed on one thing. The boy had somehow contrived to take each of them, as it were, by the hand and lead them back to some private moment of great sadness in their own lives, so that they felt again, deep in their own hearts, all the anguish of an intense but long-forgotten grief. For most the memory was of the death of someone dearly loved, but for young Katie it was different and was somehow linked with some exquisite quality she sensed within the boy himself—something which carried with it an almost unbearable sense of terrible loss. Slowly it grew within her, swelling and swelling till in the end, unable to contain it any longer, she burst into wild sobs and buried her face in her father’s lap.  p. 18

The next day the pair leave and continue their journey, performing at various locations. Then, when the amount of money they start earning because of Tom’s playing wildly exceeds anything Peter has seen before, he tries to convince Tom to join him on the road. Tom says he must go to York because he promised Morfedd he would, and this was something his mentor had planned before Tom’s birth. Eventually, Tom’s playing (in particular a song about a “forthcoming”) begins to be linked with the millennial appearance of The White Bird of Kinship. This beings him to the attention of one of the church’s “crows”, and results in the appearance of a cross-bow bearing Church militiaman, or “Falcon”. Tom negates this threat by playing for him:

Whiteness exploded in the man’s mind. For an appalling instant he felt the very fabric of the world rending apart. Before his eyes the sun was spinning like a crazy golden top; glittering shafts of light leapt up like sparkling spears from hedgerow and hilltop; and all about his head the air was suddenly awash with the slow, majestic beating of huge, invisible wings. He felt an almost inexpressible urge to send a wild hosanna of joy fountaining upwards in welcome, while, at the same time, his heart was melting within him. He had become a tiny infant rocked in a warm cradle of wonder and borne aloft by those vast unseen pinions, up and up to join the blossoming radiance of the sun. And then, as suddenly as it had come, it was over; he was back within himself again, conscious only of a sense of desperate loss—of an enormous insatiable yearning.  p. 29

The Falcon—who is called Gyre—departs peacefully, apparently having forgotten that he heard Tom piping. Peter asks Tom what he did, and Tom says he told the man about the White Bird, something that, one day, he intends to do for everyone.
Eventually the pair arrive at York and the story’s final scenes drive the narrative to its climax: Peter bribes the Clerk to the Chapter to delay Tom’s entry to the Minster Choir so he can accrue a retirement nest-egg; the Chief Falconer of the Church Militant takes an interest in the increasing numbers of people arriving in York for the millennium, and the heretical rumours of the impending appearance of The White Bird of Kinship (one of his Marshalls tells him that the event is also referred to as ‘the forthcoming’ and it will offer humanity a another chance); Tom also meets Gyre again, and the Falcon warns him to leave York as he has had a premonitory dream about the boy three nights running.
The climactic scene sees Peter paying off the Clerk and then climbing the wall to see the bonfires outside, whereupon he hears Tom playing a lament for the White Bird of Kinship. Then, as Peter shares a transcendent experience with the crowd (“he too began to hear what Gyre had once heard—the great surging downrush of huge wings whose enormous beat was the very pulse of his own heart, the pulse of life itself”), Gyre shoots Tom with a crossbow bolt and kills him.
There is an extended postscript that reveals Gyre has no memory of his actions, and then, after the church tries to co-opt Tom’s death by burying him in the Minster, mourners at his funeral are seen to drop white feathers onto the coffin rather than earth. Meanwhile, one of the Marshalls tells the Chief Falconer that the end of the Kinship fable states that when the blood of the white bird splashes the breast of the black one, then the black bird becomes white itself. . . .
Finally, three days after the funeral, Peter rides out of the city with Gyre as his bonded man. Peter sets Gyre free and, to Peter’s surprise, Gyre takes out Tom’s pipe and starts playing it. Peter then has a number of epiphanies, including the thought that Tom may have arranged his own death. The last paragraphs suggest that Peter and Gyre will become the first preachers of this new religion:

A huge calmness descended upon him. He stretched out his arm and gripped Gyre gently by the shoulder. Then he walked down to the water’s edge and dipped both his hands into the sea. Returning, he tilted back Gyre’s head and with a wet finger drew across his forehead the sign that Tom had once drawn on a misty window of an inn—a child’s representation of a flying bird.
“Come, friend,” he said. “You and I together have a tale to tell. Let us be on our way.”  p. 51

I liked this story a lot—Cowper writes wonderful prose and tells a very readable and well characterised story, albeit a complex and symbolic one (I fear the synopsis and comments above barely plumb the depths of the piece). The story’s seemingly mythical or religious ending,3 and the apparent lack of an rational explanation, rather put me off this the first time around but it wasn’t a problem this time. I’d also add, for those who are not of a religious persuasion and are not interested in a replay of the Christ myth, or spotting the parallels, there are subtle hints that far-future technology or paranormal powers may have been deployed by Tom and his mentor Morfedd (the precognition of Morfedd, the tuning of Tom’s pipe, etc.). I can’t remember whether or not this climactic event is further explained in the trilogy4 that follows this story.
**** (Very Good). 21,100 words. Story link.

1. The story actually opens with a brief introduction from an Oxford academic in 3798 who, somewhat unconvincingly, sounds exactly like someone from our current day world.

2. I’m loathe to note the story’s mention of climate change and melting ice caps because most of the predictions SF writers make are usually wrong—but this is quite striking for a 1976 story:

The Drowning was the direct result of humanity’s corporate failure to see beyond the end of its own nose. By 1985 it was already quite obvious that the global climate had been modified to the point where the polar ice caps were affected.  p. 38

3. The writing and tone of this, along with the ambiguous ending, reminded me of Keith Roberts’ The Signaller (Impulse #1, March 1966).

4. This story, which was a Hugo and Nebula finalist, and second in the Locus Poll novella category, was followed by the “The White Bird of Kinship” trilogy: The Road to Corlay (1978), A Dream of Kinship (1981) and A Tapestry of Time (1982). The US edition of A Road to Corlay conveniently includes this story as a prologue.

The Lady and the Merman by Jane Yolen

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Lady and the Merman by Jane Yolen (F&SF, September 1976) is a fantasy about a young girl whose sea-faring father who does not love her and whose mother dies while he is away on a voyage. Her father remains distant as the girl, who is called Borne, grows up. Then, one day many years later, Borne is sitting on a rock by the sea when she sees a merman.
When her father subsequently sees Borne’s distraction, he tells her to “be done with it”, which prompts her to write a message to the merman on the beach. When the words are washed away by the tide, the syllables are carried down into the deeps where the merman reads them. He later comes to Borne and, when he indicates that he can only talk to her under the water (spoiler), she follows him:

Gathering her skirts, now heavy with ocean spray and tears, Borne stood up. She cast but one glance at the shore and her father’s house beyond. Then she dove after the merman into the sea.
The sea put bubble jewels in her hair and spread her skirts about her like a scallop shell. Tiny colored fish swam in between her fingers. The water cast her face in silver, and all the sea was reflected in her eyes.
She was beautiful for the first time. And for the last.  p. 39

There is no particular plot here, but the story’s prose, dreamlike progression, and last line are consolations.
** (Average). 1,250 words. Story link.