Tag: Startling Stories

The Wheel by John Wyndham

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Wheel by John Wyndham (Startling Stories, January 1952) opens with an old man dozing at a farm wake up to see his grandson appear with a box that is riding on four improvised wheels. Before he can say anything the mother appears and screams, which brings the rest of the family. The mother then orders the boy, Davie, into the barn. When she tells the grandfather that she would never expected that sort of behaviour from her son, he says that if she hadn’t screamed no-one would have had to know. She is scandalized.
The reason for this puzzling behaviour becomes obvious when the grandfather subsequently goes to talk to Davie. He asks the boy to say his Sunday prayers:

“There,” he said. “That last bit.”
“Preserve us from the Wheel?” Davie repeated, wonderingly. “What is the Wheel, gran? It must be something terrible bad, I know, ’cos when I ask them they just say it’s wicked, and not to talk of it. But they don’t say what it is.”
The old man paused before he replied, then he said: “That box you got out there. Who told you to fix it that way?”
“Why, nobody, gran. I just reckon it’d move easier that way. It does, too.”
“Listen, Davie. Those things you put on the side of it—they’re wheels.”
It was sometime before the boy’s voice came back out of the darkness. When it did, it sounded bewildered.
“What, those round bits of wood? But they can’t be, gran. That’s all they are—just round bits of wood. But the Wheel—that’s something awful, terrible, something everybody’s scared of.”  p. 118

The grandfather’s further explanations to Davie make it apparent that they are living in a post-nuclear holocaust world, and one where there is a religious prohibition on technology. The grandfather explains that the priests see devices like the wheel as the work of the Devil, his way of leading mankind astray, and, when they find such inventions, they not only burn them but their inventors too. He then tells Davie that when the priests question him the following day, he must tell them he didn’t make the wheels but that he found them. Then, after a final observation about progress being neither good nor evil, the grandfather gives the boy a hug and leaves.
The final section (spoiler) sees the priests arrive to find the grandfather busily making two more wheels. They are horrified, the box is burnt, and the grandfather is taken away. The ending is nicely understated:

In the afternoon a small boy whom everyone had forgotten turned his eyes from the column of smoke that rose in the direction of the village, and hid his face in his hands.
“I’ll remember, gran. I’ll remember. It’s only fear that’s evil,” he said, and his voice choked in his tears.  p. 120

A short piece but a solid one.
*** (Good). 2,700 words. Story link.

Christmas on Ganymede by Isaac Asimov

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Christmas on Ganymede by Isaac Asimov (Startling Stories, January 1942)1 opens with Olaf Johnson hanging decorations in the colony’s dome when he and all the other men are summoned to a meeting with their boss: they learn that, thanks to Johnson, the native Ossies (who are the colony’s labour force) have learned about Christmas and will go on strike unless Santa Claus visits. Johnson is nominated to be Santa.
The rest of the story sees the conversion of an anti-grav sled into a sleigh, the capture and sedation of Ganymedean spineybacks for use as reindeer, and the costuming of Johnson:

“I’m not going anywhere in this costume!” he roared, gouging at the nearest eye. “You hear me?”
There certainly was cause for objection. Even at his best, Olaf had never been a heartthrob. But in his present condition, he resembled a hybrid between a spinie’s nightmare and a Picassian conception of a patriarch.
He wore the conventional costume of Santa. His clothes were as red as red tissue paper sewed onto his space coat could make it. The “ermine” was as white as cotton wool, which it was. His beard, more cotton wool glued into a linen foundation, hung loosely from his ears. With that below and his oxygen nosepiece above, even the strongest were forced to avert their eyes. p. 88

Johnson’s perilous flight to the Ossies’ camp is made even more dangerous when the spineys wake up en route, but he eventually gets there safely. The Ossies get Christmas tree ornaments for presents (they think the globes are “Sannyclaws eggs”), and then demand a visit every year—which to them is a seven-day revolution around Jupiter.
This is an early work by Asimov that’s longer than it needs to be and whose characters are rather cartoonish (one of the prospectors—sorry, colonists—chews tobacco). But it’s a pleasant enough piece that produced a couple of smiles.
** (Average). 5,450 words. Story link.

1. This was published around the same time as Nightfall and the first ‘Foundation’ stories (late 1941 to mid-1942), but was written a year or so earlier, as Asimov notes in The Early Asimov:

The success of “Reason” didn’t mean that I was to have no further rejections from Campbell.
On December 6, 1940, influenced by the season and never stopping to think that a Christmas story must sell no later than July in order to make the Christmas issue, I began “Christmas on Ganymede.” I submitted it to him on the twenty-third, but the holiday season did not affect his critical judgment. He rejected it.
I tried Pohl next, and, as was happening so often that year, he took it. In this case, for reasons I will describe later, the acceptance fell through. I eventually sold it the next summer (June 27, 1941, the proper time of year) to Startling Stories, the younger, sister magazine of Thrilling Wonder Stories.

Mistake Inside by James Blish

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Mistake Inside by James Blish (Startling Stories, March 1948) opens with an astronomer called Tracey, who is about to confront a cheating wife (he is in the process of breaking down a door, gun in hand), suddenly finding himself in another time, possibly Elizabethan England. However, two bystanders identify Tracey as a “transportee” and tell him that he has arrived in the “Outside”, a country ruled during the Fall season by a man called Yeto. Tracey is advised by the two to find a thaumaturgist if he wants to get back to his own world.
The next part of the story sees Tracey wandering around the anachronistic town on his search (during which he is warned that Yeto is arresting transportees), before eventually coming upon a parade. There he sees Yeto (who looks identical to man whose door he was about to break down) sitting beside his wife.
After this event a wizard tells Tracey that to “pivot” back to his own world (the “Inside”) he will needs to find two avatars. One of these is a cat that features earlier on in the story and the other is a man in a top-hat. The latter’s half-visible shade turns up at the foot of Tracey’s bed the next morning, whereupon he tells Tracey that (spoiler) he is in Purgatory, and will need to work out what his failings are or he will end up permanently damned.
The last section of the story sees Tracey find a dog for a boy and, in return, he is given a divining rod which leads him on a chase through the town. Eventually he finds a pair of glass spheres (the avatars, I presume), and is returned to his own world where he crashes through the door to find his wife in the non-carnal company of an astrologer.
If this sounds like a particularly badly written synopsis, it is partly because this story reads like it was made up as the writer went along, and minimally revised. I really should read it again. Notwithstanding this it’s a passable enough Unknown-type tale if you don’t expect the plot to make much sense.
** (Average). 7,750 words.

Who’s Cribbing by Jack Lewis

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Who’s Cribbing by Jack Lewis (Startling Stories, January 1953) is one of the short-shorts we’re currently group reading in my Facebook group1 from the 1963 anthology Fifty Short Science Fiction Tales, edited by Isaac Asimov & Groff Conklin. I’m not sure I’d want to review all fifty of those here (most are inconsequential squibs) but I really liked this one, so thought I’d mention it.
The story is written as a series of letters between Lewis, a budding writer, and the editors of various SF magazines. The correspondence begins with this:

Mr. Jack Lewis
90-26 219 St.
Queens Village, N.Y.
Dear Mr. Lewis:

We are returning your manuscript THE NINTH DIMENSION.
At first glance, I had figured it a story well worthy of publication. Why wouldn’t I? So did the editors of Cosmic Tales back in 1934 when the story was first published.
As you no doubt know, it was the great Todd Thromberry who wrote the story you tried to pass off on us as an original. Let me give you a word of caution concerning the penalties resulting from plagiarism.
It’s not worth it. Believe me.

Sincerely,
Doyle P. Gates
Science Fiction Editor
Deep Space Magazine  p. 83

Lewis writes an indignant reply wherein he protests his innocence, and further states he has never heard of Thromberry in the ten years he has been reading the field. This is met by a world weary letter from Gates stating that he realises there are overlapping plots and ideas in SF stories, but not word for word replicas.2 Lewis cancels his subscription.
This back and forth continues with various other editors and fans, during which Lewis finds out that Thomberry’s works are very hard to come by, and that the writer specialised in electronics. More rejections follow, and Lewis (spoiler) eventually suggests to Gates (who he has contacted again) that the chances of him accidentally producing several stories similar to Thromberry’s are astronomical, and suggests that maybe Thromberry used his electronics expertise to travel through time to steal his manuscripts. He gets a short, blunt reply to this, and the final act has Lewis submit his letters and the responses he received in the form of a story to Sam Mines at Startling Stories—with the inevitable response.
This is a clever and amusing piece, and it is also pitch perfect (apart from the tone of both Lewis’s and the various editor’s letters, there are other neat touches like Lewis stating in one cover note that, because of the extensive research that went into a story, he must “set the minimum price on this one at not less than two cents a word.”)
This is one I’d probably use in my Best for 1953 (although, if I recall correctly, there is a lot of competition from that year).
***+ (Good to Very good). 1300 words.

1. Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Short Fiction is the name of the Facebook group.
2. Talking of word for word replicas, someone recently tried to sell a copy of Arthur C. Clarke’s The Nine Billion Names of God to Clarkesworld.