It’s Smart to Have an English Address by D. G. Compton (SF Impulse #12, February 1967) sees Paul Cassavetes, a celebrated 84 year old pianist on his way to visit Joseph Brown, a composer he knows. As Cassavetes is driven there we see (his driver is doing 130mph in the slow lane, among other things) that we are in a near-future world.
When Cassavetes arrives at Brown’s house he is taken into a soundproof room (the need for such security seems odd to Cassavetes), and Brown plays his new sonata. Afterwards, as two men discuss the work, it becomes apparent that the piece is only an excuse for Brown to see Cassavetes about another matter, and another visitor joins them. Dr McKay, who works with XPT (experiential recordings of brain waves which are then superimposed onto another person to let them relive the experience of the person providing the recording), tells Cassavetes that they want to “record” him playing Beethoven. Cassavetes isn’t keen but before he can explain this to them (spoiler) he suffers a cerebral haemorrhage.
This is a very descriptive story (it takes three pages for Cassavetes to drive to the house), and better characterised than other SF of the time, but I just don’t see the point of it all.
* (Mediocre). 5,750 words.
The Number You Have Reached by Thomas M. Disch
The Number You Have Reached by Thomas M. Disch (SF Impulse #12, February 1967) begins with a man called Justin on the fourteenth floor of a deserted tower block. He is obviously stressed and inadvertently tears the bannister off his landing, watching it fall to the ground below. The next day sees Justin move boxes of canned food and books from the lobby up to his apartment, while doing some OCD number counting (there are 198 steps, and there are various other arithmetical episodes throughout the tale). The impression given is that this is a ‘last man on Earth’ piece.
Justin then receives a phonecall from a woman. During their conversation we learn that he is an ex-astronaut, his (dead) wife’s name is Lidia, and that he isn’t sure whether or not the woman calling him is real or whether he is going mad. Later we learn that her name is Justine, so what with (a) the feminine form of his name (b) the fact he hasn’t spoken to anyone in a very long time, and (c) all the counting—more likely the madness.
Further conversations see Justine accuse Justin of being responsible for the apocalypse:
“What about the millions—”
“The millions?” he interrupted her.
“—of dead,” she said. “All of them dead. Everyone dead. Because of you and the others like you. The football captains and the soldiers and all the other heroes.”
“I didn’t do it. I wasn’t even here when it happened. You can’t blame me.”
“Well, I am blaming you, baby. Because if you’d been ordered to, you would have done it. You’d do it now—when there’s just the two of us left. Because somewhere deep in your atrophied soul you want to.”
“You’d know that territory better than me. You grew up there.”
“You think I don’t exist? Maybe you think the others didn’t exist either? Lidia—and all the millions of others.”
“It’s funny you should say that.”
She was ominously quiet.
He went on, intrigued by the novelty of the idea. “That’s how it feels in space. It’s more beautiful than anything else there is. You’re alone in the ship, and even if you’re not alone you can’t see the others. You can see the dials and the millions of stars on the screen in front of you and you can hear the voices through the earphones, but that’s as far as it goes. You begin to think that the others don’t exist.”
“You know what you should do?” she said.
“What?”
“Go jump in the lake.” p. 163 (World’s Best Science Fiction 1968, edited by Donald A. Wollheim & Terry Carr)
After some more background material about the automated world continuing on after the neutron bomb war, Justine phones him again and says she is coming over. When she (supposedly) knocks on the door (spoiler), he jumps off the balcony.
This isn’t badly done, but a ‘last man’ story which ends with a suicide makes for pretty pointless and nihilistic reading. Very new wave.
* (Mediocre). 3,350 words.
See Me Not by Richard Wilson
See Me Not by Richard Wilson (SF Impulse #12, February 1967) begins with the narrator, Avery, waking up and discovering he is invisible:
He lay on his back for a few minutes, looking at the ceiling. There was something different about the way it looked. No, it wasn’t the ceiling that was different, but his view of it. A perfectly clear, unobstructed view. Then he realized that what was missing was the fuzzy, unfocused tip of nose which had always been there, just below the line of vision, and which became a definite object only when he closed one eye.
Avery closed one eye. No nose. His hand came up in alarm and felt the nose. It was there, all right. That is, he could feel it. But he couldn’t see the fingers or the hand. p. 9 (World’s Best Science Fiction 1968, edited by Donald A. Wollheim & Terry Carr)
The next seven pages describe his attempts to avoid his wife (who has just sent the kids off to school), but she eventually corners him in the shower. After she gets over her initial shock at his condition she calls Dr Mike.
This introductory section rather exemplifies the story’s main problem, which is that it is done at too great a length (and its mostly inconsequential light comedy produces few real laughs). That said there are one or two neat bits in this sequence—the inability to see his nose, his wife wanting to join him in the shower (more risqué than normal for genre SF of the time), and the fact he looks like a ghost when she sees his invisible body with water vapour coming off it). Slim pickings for seven pages though.
The next part of the story sees Dr Mike arrive, and some doctor-patient banter between him and Avery. Then Avery’s son turns up (more chatter), followed by his daughter (she faints). Then, when the family are having dinner that evening, they see what is happening to the food Avery is eating and he is forced to dress (apparently he has been wandering around naked because he is invisible). We are now twenty pages into the story.
The second half of this sees: Avery visible again the next morning; a disastrous trip out for breakfast where he becomes invisible again; crowds and the media following them home and waiting outside; an ill-judged attempt by Avery to go out and torment the crowd (which sees him caught before the police arrive to free him); the arrival of a specialist from a drug company called Lindhof, who manages to make part of Avery visible; and then a (baffling) argument between Avery and Dr Mike about the former’s refusal to see the specialist again. This all ends with his wife going to Lindhof—and when she returns she is invisible too. Avery changes his mind (and it later materialises that his invisibility was caused by the Lindhof-made pills he took the day before becoming invisible).
This story reminded me of one of those corny 1940’s movies or 1950’s sitcoms and, even though it is breezily told, it’s based on dumb science and is hugely bloated, mostly with endless and sometimes pointless conversations (the argument between Avery and Mike). If this was edited down to about three quarters of its length there might be a half-decent story here, but I got quite irritated with its flabbiness on the way through. More patient readers may have better luck.
* (Mediocre). 13,850 words.