Tag: Recursive SF

Dilemma by Connie Willis

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Dilemma by Connie Willis (Foundation’s Friends: Stories in Honor of Isaac Asimov, 1989) opens with three robots trying to arrange an appointment with Isaac Asimov’s secretary Susan (another robot). They the want to talk to the famous author about repealing the First Law of Robotics1 (one of them is a medical robot and cannot make a surgical incision as it would harm a human). Susan tries her best to fob them off but, when Asimov arrives unexpectedly and talks to the three robots and is flattered by their comments, he tells her to arrange an appointment for the next day (which Susan then double books after they leave).
The rest of the story details the robots’ further attempts to talk to Asimov and Susan’s efforts to stop them. In among this are many references to Asimov’s work, in particular the Positronic Robot stories (those unfamiliar with his work may be a bit lost), and a running joke where he is wrongly identified as the author of other books (by, in order, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert A. Heinlein, and Harlan Ellison):

“Do you know how late for lunch Al Lansing was? An hour and fifteen minutes. And when he got there, do you know what he wanted? To come out with commemorative editions of all my books.”
“That sounds nice,” Susan said. She took [Asimov’s] coordinates card and his gloves out of his pockets, hung up his coat, and glanced at her watch again. “Did you take your blood pressure medicine?”
“I didn’t have it with me. I should have. I’d have had something to do. I could have written a book in an hour and fifteen minutes, but I didn’t have any paper either. These limited editions will have cordovan leather bindings, gilt-edged acid-free paper, water-color illustrations. The works.”
“Water-color illustrations would look nice for Pebble in the Sky,” Susan said, handing him his blood pressure medicine and a glass of water.
“I agree,” he said, “but that isn’t what he wants the first book in the series to be. He wants it to be Stranger in a Strange Land!” He gulped down the pill and started for his office. “You wouldn’t catch those robots in there mistaking me for Robert Heinlein.”

At the end of the story Asimov does some investigation (as he previously pointed out to the three, he only wrote about the Laws of Robotics, he didn’t build them), and he eventually reveals (to the assembled group, which includes Susan) that he has discovered that their complaint about the First Law (spoiler) has been a red herring, and that the real issue is that Susan has been working part-time for one of the three robots (the Accountant)—who is leaving the area and wants Susan to go with him. She has refused as she thinks Asimov would be lost without her (a First Law violation). Asimov tells her that she is free to go as (a) he managed on his own in the previous decades, and (b) he will train up one of the other two robots (the Book Shelver) to be her replacement.
This story is essentially an extended in-joke that has a concealed mystery at its end. A pleasant enough piece.
*** (Good). 6,500 words. Story link.

1. I’m not convinced the first law restriction on surgery is valid—surely the second part of that law would override the first:

“‘First Law: A robot shall not injure a human being, or through inaction allow a human being to come to harm,’” the varnished robot quoted. “‘Second Law: A robot shall obey a human being’s order if it doesn’t conflict with the First Law. Third Law: A robot shall attempt to preserve itself if it doesn’t conflict with the First or Second Laws.’ First outlined in the short story ‘Runaround,’ Astounding magazine, March 1942, and subsequently expounded in I, Robot, The Rest of the Robots, The Complete Robot, and The Rest of the Rest of the Robots.”


The Curse of the Mhondoro Nkabele by Eric Norden

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Curse of the Mhondoro Nkabele by Eric Norden (Starsongs and Unicorns, 1978; F&SF, September 1980) is a very amusing, but now probably politically incorrect, story that begins with a writer called O. T. Nkabele, originally from Senegal, submitting his story Astrid of the Asteroids to F&SF. It is rejected, which brings forth a follow-up letter from the writer:

Esteemed Editor Ferman:
I’m afraid, as is sometimes unavoidable in all great publishing enterprises, that there has been a clerical error on the part of your staff. I have just received a letter, bearing what can only be a facsimile of your signature, returning my manuscript ASTRID OF THE ASTEROIDS, which I know you will be most anxious to publish. At first I was sorely troubled by this misunderstanding, but I soon realized that one of your overzealous underlings, as yet unfamiliar with my name, took it upon himself to reject my work unread. Thus I am resubmitting ASTRID, as well as two more of my latest stories, with instructions that they are for your eyes only. Do not be too harsh on the unwitting culprit, dear Editor Ferman, as such debacles are not unknown in literary history. The initial reception of James Joyce’s Ulysses is but one case in point. . . .
I should appreciate your check to be made out to cash, as I have not as yet opened a banking account in this city.
Hoping to hear from you forthwith, I remain,
Your obedient servant,
O.T. Nkabele, Esq  pp. 84-84

Editor Ferman writes to Nkabele to tell him none of his stories meet the magazine’s requirements, and that manuscripts need to be typed, not hand-written. When the stories are resubmitted (Nkabele has subsequently engaged Ms Rachel Markowitz as a typist), Ferman again rejects the stories, saying that they are entirely unsuitable, pointing out that no-one says “Zut alors!” or “Zounds!” anymore, the Mary Tyler Moore show is unlikely to be broadcast on 31st Century Venus, and Nkabele’s aliens appear to be oversize lobsters who would be uninterested in ravishing Ursula (the love interest of one of the stories). He adds that Nkabele needs to study recent work in the field, such as the Dangerous Visions anthologies, and the annual collections of Nebula Award stories.
Nkabele writes another long letter to Ferman, and we learn about his upbringing in Africa and how he was given access to a missionary’s collection of SF (Father Devlin arrived in 1953 with his 1936 to 1952 collection, but never obtained anything newer than that, hence Nkabele’s dated output). After Nkabele praises various pulp writers—E. E. “Doc” Smith, Nelson Bond, and “the revered” Stanley G. Weinbaum,1 etc.—he resubmits his stories. Nkabele also adds a PS in which he notes the only prominent black writer in the field is Samuel R. Delany, and hopes that Ferman’s obtuseness is not “motivated by racialism”.
The back and forth continues even after another form letter, and then Ferman is ambushed by Nkabele while he is at the hairdresser in Connecticut (Nkabele has travelled from New York). Ferman, after he gets over his surprise, eventually thaws and suggests Nkabele write an essay on how he discovered SF, and also gives him some volumes of current SF writing. Then he finds what looks like a voodoo doll under his pillow, and starts developing headaches. . . .
You can probably guess what happens next and, sure enough, circumstances worsen for Ferman when (spoiler) his dog is eaten (his neighbour sees something that looks like a leopard), and he starts to hear drumming in the night. Then Ferman inadvertently discloses Harlan Ellison’s home address to Nkabele, which draws Ellison into his orbit too (a few rejection letters later Ellison goes bald, and is subsequently eaten by a python—which goes on to attack an old woman as it is “still hungry”—a very funny line).
Finally, Nkabele writes to Ferman dismissing the latter’s superstitious worries in one breath, while explaining how they work and can be ameliorated in another: Ferman takes the hint and finally accepts his stories.
Also included in the same letter is Nkabele’s hilarious response to the modern SF given to him by Ferman (this is an exaggerated version of the Traditionalist/New Wave feuds and other reactionary comment of the time):

I also want to thank you for the novels and collections of short stories. I have not as yet read them all, but I must confess I am shocked and depressed at the profound deterioration in our field since my apprenticeship in Africa. It is obvious that I was blessed with exposure to the Golden Age of science fiction, and that the downward spiral towards decadence and decay has accelerated horrendously since the midfifties. Writers like Theodore Sturgeon, whom I remember from an earlier, healthier stage in his career, particularly disturb me, as they must know the birthright they are betraying. (If I may be permitted a note of levity, the eggs Sturgeon lays are far from caviar!) Certainly, his current stories would never have been accepted by Thrilling Wonder Stories in the glorious days gone by. And this Barry Malzberg you suggested I read—my word, dear Edward, surely he is afflicted of the Gods! The man is a veritable pustulence on the face of the universe, a yellow dog barking in the night. We have another saying in my tribe, “The jackal dreams lions’ dreams.” How true! How tragically true. And how a creature such as Malzberg would cringe and whimper if ever confronted with the shade of Stanley G. Weinbaum, the Great Master himself. And these women, Ursula LeGuin and Joanna Russ, they should be beaten with stout sticks! I would not give one hamstrung goat for the pair of them. (It is apposite here to reflect on the words of the good Dr. Johnson, who pointed out that “A woman’s preaching is like a dog walking on his hind legs; it is not done well, but you are surprised to find it done at all.”) Of all the stories I have read recently, only Kilgore Trout’s Venus on the Half Shell is worthy to bear the mantle of the giants of yesteryear.
Truly, my good friend, the field we love is facing terrible times, and it is indeed providential that I have arrived on the scene to arrest the rot. Perhaps, in fact, there was a Larger Purpose of Father Devlin’s introducing me to science fiction. We shall see.  pp. 94-95

The last part of the story also sees letters from a rational Isaac Asimov to a increasingly superstitious Ferman (one of Asimov’s letters contains a quip that at a recent autograph party he told some “nubile young ladies” that his hobby was “converting lesbians”). Meanwhile, F&SF publishes several of Nkabele’s stories, Ferman becomes an alcoholic, and the circulation of the magazine plummets—it eventually ends up as a mimeographed publication.
This story has some very funny passages and clever lines—and equally as impressive as the writer’s comic ability is his knowledge of SF and the writers involved.
**** (Very Good). 9,700 words. Story link.

1. The story’s original title (it was published in Starsongs and Unicorns, a semi-original short story collection, a couple of years previously) was The Curse of the Mhondoro Nkabele or The Revenge of Stanley G. Weinbaum. The collection’s contents can be viewed at ISFDB (I’ve already reviewed the excellent The Primal Solution here).

A Galaxy Called Rome by Barry N. Malzberg

Posted on by Paul Fraser

A Galaxy Called Rome by Barry N. Malzberg (F&SF, July 1975)1 is a meta-story and a piece of recursive SF where the writer describes a story that that he might write but cannot, because “it partakes of its time, which is distant and could be perceived only through the idiom and devices of that era.”
He goes on to say that the story would be about a spaceship that is trapped in a “black galaxy” (I think he means black hole) that results from the implosion of a neutron star:

Conceive then of a faster-than-light spaceship which would tumble into the black galaxy and would be unable to leave. Tumbling would be easy, or at least inevitable, since one of the characteristics of the black galaxy would be its invisibility, and there the ship would be. The story would then pivot on the efforts of the crew to get out. The ship is named Skipstone. It was completed in 3892. Five hundred people died so that it might fly, but in this age life is held even more cheaply than it is today.
Left to my own devices, I might be less interested in the escape problem than that of adjustment. Light housekeeping in an anterior sector of the universe; submission to the elements, a fine, ironic literary despair. This is not science fiction, however. Science fiction was created by Hugo Gernsback to show us the ways out of technological impasse. So be it.

The writer then reflects on his personal life in Ridgeway Park (“I would rather dedicate the years of life remaining (my melodramatic streak) to an understanding of the agonies of this middle-class town”) before setting out his notes for the story. These cover various facets of the prospective piece: the characters, which include a female captain and her cargo of “the embalmed”, five hundred and fifteen dead people who will be reanimated at some point in the future; possible sex scenes; data dumps of astronomical physics; a scene where the dead come to life; and, eventually, the open ending of the story—which, as it happens, sees the ship vomited from the black hole after engaging its tachyonic drive, depositing the occupants in Ridgefield Park in 1975 (which neatly ends the story).
It’s very hard to synopsise this as it is much more than a series of events or notes but, perhaps, as well as the passage above, the following will also provide a flavour of what the story is like:

Lena is left alone again, then, with the shouts of the dead carrying forward. Realizing instantly what has happened to her—fourteen thousand years of perception can lead to a quicker reaction time, if nothing else—she addresses the console again, uses the switches and produces three more prostheses, all of them engineers barely subsidiary to the one she has already addressed (Their resemblance to the three comforters of Job will not be ignored here, and there will be an opportunity to squeeze in some quick religious allegory, which is always useful to give an ambitious story yet another level of meaning.)
Although they are not quite as qualified or definitive in their opinions as the original engineer, they are bright enough by far to absorb her explanation, and this time her warnings not to go to the portholes, not to look upon the galaxy, are heeded. Instead, they stand there in rigid and curiously mortified postures, as if waiting for Lena to speak.
“So you see,” she says finally, as if concluding a long and difficult conversation, which in fact she has, “as far as I can see, the only way to get out of this black galaxy is to go directly into tachyonic drive. Without any accelerative buildup at all.”

This is an intense and original piece, but it felt overlong, and I suspect it is a story that people will admire more than enjoy.
*** (Good). 7,650 words. Story link.

1. The story is dedicated to John W. Campbell.

The Possibly Brief Life of Guang Hansheng by Liang Qingsan

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Possibly Brief Life of Guang Hansheng by Liang Qingsan,1 translated by Andy Dudak (Clarkesworld #188, May 2022) gives the narrator’s account of his researches into Xijin Guang Hansheng, the author of Ascent to the Moon: Travel Notes of Guang Hansheng (an incomplete Chinese newspaper serial from 1905-1906):

It wasn’t the content of the fiction that drew me in, but the small, blurry illustrations accompanying it. Ratlike humanoids stood on the cratered surface of the Moon. They were rigging up a crude, concave reflector like a present-day satellite dish, using a crater rim for support.
I knew it was a reflector because in the far corner of the image was the Sun, shining a beam of light onto the Moon, which the dish redirected at Earth. Black smoke rose from the focal point on Earth.
This gave me pause. Someone from the Late Qing knowing the Moon was cratered? Then again, it made sense. Part of the ether fantasy propagated back then was a notion that the fabled substance might fill the Moon’s craters, so that from Earth, the Moon would appear smooth. But my brief doubt caused me to linger on this newspaper, originally no more interesting than the other exhibits. Serialized novel chapters, each with a summarizing couplet, were the main form of fiction in the Late Qing.
This sheet of newspaper featured the ending of the seventeenth chapter of the novel in question.  pp. 70-71

The rest of the story isn’t much more than an account of the narrator’s obsessive and detailed research (mostly of the library’s microfilms), but his commentary on what he finds paints a interesting picture of China at the turn of the century. As various leads go cold, others turn up and, along the way, we also learn a little more about the narrator (he isn’t an academic, but won’t reveal his social status to the librarians he chats with).
Eventually, the narrator finds what he thinks is Hansheng’s last article (most of the rest of Hangsheng’s work is popular science), and his research ends. He concludes with an observation about the writer (and, perhaps unwittingly in the final part, himself):

I like to imagine an awkward, cantankerous savant possessed of scientific insight transcending his epoch, but unable to communicate it effectively. Understanding much that others can’t, proud yet distracted, getting no approbation, insignificant, at the end of his rope, nowhere to go, nowhere to vent, and not even knowing himself clearly—and suddenly, death is coming. He has squandered his rare smidgeon of talent, while watching others advance while he stays where he is. Alone. Just like countless literati of the time, and now, and even the future.  pp. 82-83

I suspect that this will be a Marmite piece—some will be engrossed by the detail of the library detective work, and amused by the narrator’s occasionally mordant observations (“Self-important people cannot abide silence or anonymity”, “I’d heard the PhD student looking for Reunions in the [vast ocean of the] microfilm archive had ended up with detached retinas”), while others will be bored witless. Even those in the former camp (such as myself) may find that, ironic ending or not, it rather fizzles out. Still, an interesting piece if not a totally satisfying one, and I’m glad I read it.
**+ (Average to Good). 5,500 words. Story link.

1. This was originally published in Chinese in Science Fiction World, Supplemental issue, 2016.