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You and Whose Army? by Greg Egan

Posted on by Paul Fraser

You and Whose Army? by Greg Egan (Clarkesworld, October 2020) gets off to a fairly leisurely start with Rufus meeting a woman who knows Linus, his brother: it materialises that Rufus and Linus share memories, and that he has disappeared. We also learn, later on in the story, that there are four brothers (the others are Caius and Silus), and that they were originally part of a cult that biologically modified them as a part of an attempted hive-mind project that was later shut down by the authorities (we find most of this out when Rufus consults a PI called Leong about his brother’s disappearance):

Leong paused expectantly, giving him a chance to explain what he meant, but when he remained silent she tried prompting him. “You live in Adelaide, right? So do you meet up in person regularly?”
“Not in person.” Rufus clenched his fists and inhaled slowly. “We have neural links. All four of us. We share each other’s memories. They took us off the boat when we were eight.”
Leong was clearly thrown for a moment, but she retained a professional demeanor. Rufus guessed she was in her early forties, so mid-twenties when the story broke. Unless she’d been living in a cult of her own, she’d know exactly what he was talking about.
“You were born on the Physalia?”
“That’s right.” Rufus had to give her full marks for not only recalling the name, but pronouncing it correctly.
“And you and Linus are quadruplets?”
“Yes. The others are overseas, studying.” No idiotic blather confusing them with “clones.” Rufus’s experience had set the bar low, but he felt entitled to a small celebration at every sensible word that came out of her mouth.
“Forgive me if I’m not clear on exactly how this works,” Leong said. “When you say you share each other’s memories . . . ?”
“We wake up recalling what the other three did,” Rufus replied. “When we sleep, as well as consolidating our own experience into long-term memory, we receive enough data to do the same with the others’. We remember being them, as well as ourselves.

The rest of this piece is, essentially, a missing person story. When Leong produces a picture of Linus leaving Sydney airport the brothers don’t have the money to fund a worldwide search, so they create a social media app that scans submitted photographs for evidence of their brother in the background. Eventually (spoiler), they track him down to a college in France where he has won a scholarship. Further investigation reveals that Linus is being sponsored by an aging billionaire called Guinard (who may have part-funded the Physalia project).
Caius flies to France to question Linus (the point of view moves through all the four brothers during the story), and discovers that Guinard is sharing his memories with Linus and grooming him to become his successor (this is portrayed as a form of immortality for Guinard).
Events then see the three brothers attempting to kidnap Linus when they can’t convince him to spend some time on his own, unconnected to either them or Guinard—so Linus can learn to be himself, neither in their shadow, as he complains, nor as a receptacle for Guinard.
The kidnapping attempt fails when it is stopped by Guinard’s security, and the story ends with Linus thinking to himself that he doesn’t intend to be a receptacle for Guinard, only his protégé, and that he cannot reveal this deception to his brothers until the billionaire dies.
This is pretty good in parts—there is commentary about personhood, and some dry humour—and it is generally interesting, but the ending doesn’t really convince, and a lot of the story is taken up with inter-brother relationship tensions. Although this is a solid story, it struck me as Egan on cruise-control.
*** (Good). 13,050 words. Story link.

Blood Music by Greg Bear

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Blood Music by Greg Bear1 (Analog, June 1983) opens (after a short and essentially irrelevant passage) with a doctor called Edward meeting an old university friend called Vergil, an odd-ball whiz kid who, among other japes, “wired door knobs, [and] gave us punch that turned our piss blue”. After some social chit-chat, and discussion of some of Vergil’s changed physical characteristics (he’s fitter and more tanned), Edward learns that his friend has been working for a company called Genetron developing medical microchips. Edward also learns that Vergil was fired, but has been continuing his research outside the lab. Virgil then tells Edward he wants him to put him through a thorough physical exam.
When Edward conducts the examination, he finds that Vergil has a lot of very odd physical characteristics:

“Look at my spine,” he said. I rotated the image in the video frame. Buckminster Fuller, I thought. It was fantastic. A cage of triangular projections, all interlocking in ways I couldn’t begin to follow, much less understand. I reached around and tried to feel his spine with my fingers. He lifted his arms and looked off at the ceiling.
“I can’t find it,” I said. “It’s all smooth back there.” I let go of him and looked at his chest, then prodded his ribs. They were sheathed in something tough and flexible. The harder I pressed, the tougher it became. Then I noticed another change.
“Hey,” I said. “You don’t have nipples.” There were tiny pigment patches, but no nipple formations at all.
“See?” Vergil asked, shrugging on the white robe. “I’m being rebuilt from the inside out.”

Vergil explains that the changes are a result of his work with Genetron which, essentially, was to do with designing nano-biotechnology (although this phrase isn’t used). He explains how he injected the company’s smart proteins into bacteria, which could then repair themselves, compare memories, and evolve:

“By God, you should have seen some of the cultures a week later! It was amazing. They were evolving all on their own, like little cities. I destroyed them all. I think one of the Petri dishes would have grown legs and walked out of the incubator if I’d kept feeding it.”

So far, so Microcosmic God,2 and Vergil goes on to explain that, by the time he exponentially improved his cell cultures, the company had discovered what he was doing and forced him to destroy his work. Before that Vergil injected himself with some of his own altered white blood cells, and they have since been modifying his body. Vergil then tells Edward he is worried that the cells will eventually cross the blood-brain barrier and “find him”—so he wants them destroyed.
The rest of the story (spoiler) sees Edward run more tests but, by the time visits Vergil a few days later, his friend says he can hear the cells talking to him—“blood music”. By this time they know who he is, that they are inside his body, and they are trying to understand the concept of space. On a later visit Edward finds out that Vergil has been examined a second time by a Dr Bernard, an associate of Vergil’s old company, and also that Vergil’s physical changes have become more pronounced. Edwards asks Vergil to tell the cells to slow down the changes:

“You’re . . . you can talk to them, tell them to slow down,” I said, aware how ridiculous that sounded.
“Yes, indeed I can, but they don’t necessarily listen.”
“I thought you were their god or something.”
“The ones hooked up to my neurons aren’t the big wheels. They’re researchers, or at least serve the same function. They know I’m here, what I am, but that doesn’t mean they’ve convinced the upper levels of the hierarchy.”
“They’re arguing?”
“Something like that. It’s not all that bad. If the lab is reopened, I have a home, a place to work.” He glanced out the window, as if looking for someone. “I don’t have anything left but them. They aren’t afraid, Edward. I’ve never felt so close to anything before.” Again the beatific smile. “I’m responsible for them. Mother to them all.”

Edward thinks Vergil is more of a host than a mother (or “super-mother” as Vergil later refers to himself) and arranges to meet Dr Bernard to see if he can help.
When Edward next visits Vergil he finds him sitting in a bath tinged pink with his blood—“astronauts” sent out by the cells to explore the exterior environment. When Vergil goes to pull the plug and release them the world, Edwards ends his agonising about the threat that Vergil poses (this dilemma has played out in parallel to the above in scenes where Edward has been sleeping—“Vergil Ulam is turning himself into a galaxy”—or with his wife), and he throws an electric sunlamp into the bath killing Virgil and the cells.
The last act of the story sees Edward go home. He and his wife subsequently fall ill, and Edward deduces that Dr Bernard infected him (from the damp handshake he received). The white cells take over Edward and his wife’s bodies, communicate with them, and then meld the pair together biologically. The organism created then grows to fill the apartment, and spreads out beyond it: mankind is doomed.
This is a very good piece of work which manages a tour de force combination of several SF tropes including scientist-as-God/messiah, alien body horror, the end of mankind, and, ultimately, the Fermi Paradox (why is there no sign of other intelligent life in the Universe?) The last two transform the story from one that begins on a microscopic level to one that eventually has cosmic implications.
****+ (Very good to Excellent). 8,750 words.

1. This was expanded into a novel of the same name published in 1985.

2. Microcosmic God by Theodore Sturgeon (Astounding Science-Fiction, April 1941) is reviewed here.

Kitecadet by Keith Roberts

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Kitecadet by Keith Roberts (Interzone #6, Winter 1983) is the second in his series of ‘Kiteworld’ stories, all of which are set in a post-holocaust world where Kitemen fly patrols in huge kites over the radioactive badlands which surround the Realm: this one opens with a newly graduated Kitecadet called Raoul getting on a transport to go to Middlemarch, the Realm’s main settlement.
During Raoul’s preparations to leave, and his journey to the city, we see the day to day detail of a Kitecadet’s life, and learn that (a) Raoul is newly qualified (despite not having completed his first operational flight) and (b) that he and another cadet called Olsen bear a serious grudge against each other.
Later in the journey, Raoul gets his first sight of Middlemarch:

Far off, the mountains of the Westguard loomed in silhouette, like pale holes knocked in the sky. To right and left, as far as the eye could reach, the land rose to other heights; while below, dwarfed by the vast bowl in which it lay yet still it seemed stretching endlessly, lay Middlemarch, greatest city in all the Realm.
Somebody whooped; and abruptly the spell was broken. The Cadets fell to chattering like magpies as the Transports began their slow, cautious descent. Raoul joined in, pointing to this and that wonder; the Middle Lake, the great central parkland where on the morrow the Air Fair would begin, the pale needle-spires of Godpath, Metropolitan Cathedral of the Variants. The sprawling building beside it, he knew from his books and lectures, was the Corps headquarters; beyond was the Mercy Hospital, the Middle Doctrine’s chief establishment. Beyond again loomed other towers, too numerous to count; while in every direction, spreading into distance, were the squares and avenues, the baths and libraries and palaces of that amazing town. To the south Holand, the industrial suburb, spread a faint, polluting haze, but all the rest was sparkling; clear and white, like a place seen in a dream.  p. 29

The next day the cadets go to the Air Fair and see a character from the first story, the legendary kiteman Canwen, make a record breaking altitude attempt. Then they attend a ceremonial dinner attended by another first story character, Kitemaster Helman. After this they go out on the town and, at one bar, Raoul starts chatting up one of the local barmaids. Later, when a drunk Olsen steams in and starts pawing her, a violent fight breaks out between Raoul, Olsen and some of the others, leaving Olsen badly beaten. The barmaid takes Raoul to her place before the Variant police arrive, and there she attends to his wounds before they later make love. Raoul leaves to return to base the next day.
After this the structure of the story becomes quite choppy—the next scene leaps forward in time to Raoul’s second visit to Middlemarch and the barmaid, where he is obviously traumatised by something that has happened to him. Then the story flashes back to his first operational flight (which presumably occurs between their first and second encounters). During this (spoiler), and as a result of the sabotage of his kite by Olsen, Raoul crashes in the badlands and has an encounter with one of the creatures that live there:

The shouts carried to him. ‘The basket, the basket. . . .’ He understood, at last; it was tilted to one side, carrying far too much weight. He grabbed the pistol from its wicker holster, but he was too late; the thing that had boarded him already had his wrist. It was no bigger, perhaps, than a three or four year child, and its skin was an odd, almost translucent blue. It was mature though, evidently; he saw that it was female. Dreadfully, appallingly female. The gun went off, wildly; then it was jerked from his hand. The basket rebounded again; but the other didn’t relax its grip. He stared, in terror. What he saw now in the eyes was not the hate he’d read about, but love; a horrifying, eternal love. She stroked his arm, and gurgled; gurgled and pleaded, even while he took the line axe, and struck, and struck, and struck. . .  p. 42

The last short scene sees Raoul fleeing from the barmaid in some distress.
This is a story that, although I enjoyed its separate parts, doesn’t work structurally. Part of the reason for this is the change of pace and time that occurs in the last part—for most of its length it is a slow-moving piece that describes the character’s world and his place in it; at the end the climactic scenes jump about in time and the kite accident section is much faster paced. I’d also add that the first time I read this piece I had no idea that the blue creature was a mutant and not some other demon or monster. There is probably be an argument for this story and the third one, Kitemistress, being combined into a longer piece, but I’ll perhaps come back to that with the next story.
**+ (Average to Good). 7,900 words. Story link.

The Roots of our Memories by Joel Armstrong

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Roots of our Memories by Joel Armstrong (Asimov’s Science Fiction, January-February 2022) takes place in a strange graveyard of the future, where the memories of the dead can be accessed:

That morning I’m overseeing a burial. It’s going to be a scorcher, another record year, the meteorologists keep saying. For now a moist warmth hangs from the hemlock trees, the sky a foggy, rainless gray. I meet the cranial arborist at the open grave, where he’s exposed the roots and fungal mycelia needed to wire the body into the cemetery network. The things done to the body aren’t for the family to see, so we’re the only two present as we remove the corpse from the portable cryofridge and place it in the steel casket. Liam performs most of our corporeal insertions, and I’ve gotten to know him well over the years. I can never decide if it’s sacrilegious or fitting that we end up talking about family while he treats the roots with chemical binder and makes the incisions to thread the mycelia into the body’s brain stem and arteries. He asks how my daughter likes second grade; I ask if his wife’s finally found a new job. Liam injects probiotic and anticoagulant cocktails to encourage clean sap circulation, and then we seal the casket. He’ll return in a few days to make sure the insertion takes, but after that most corpses only need a yearly checkup.  p. 82

Into the narrator’s world comes Pamela, a young woman who initially wants to search her father’s memories but, when she is told they are embargoed for a year after death, decides instead to ask for access to her grandmother’s.
The rest of the story is a slow burn which sees Pamela, to the surprise of the archivist, repeatedly return to use the computers to access her grandmother’s memories. During these visits she is very tight-lipped about what she is learning, but nevertheless develops a growing friendship with the narrator and the regular researchers. We also learn about climate change effects which have caused an insect infestation threat to the hemlock trees that power the network (and if the trees die, her father’s memories will be lost).
At the end of the tale Pamela is more forthcoming with the narrator, and she tells him about her grandmother and the old woman’s attitude to life. There is no big reveal here, but it’s an engagingly strange and quietly effective piece.
*** (Good). 4,600 words.

Unmasking Black Bart by Joel Richards

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Unmasking Black Bart by Joel Richards (Asimov’s Science Fiction, January-February 2022) starts off with 43-year-old Connor on his way to a class reunion in the near-future. As he drives there the story’s plot devices are revealed—holo-masks, and a robber called Black Bart:

Connor couldn’t wear a mask at work. He was a police psychologist [. . .] and cops weren’t permitted to wear masks on duty. Transparency and accountability in law enforcement had mandated that exception to the libertarian and libertine ethos of the times wherein everyone had the right to represent his/her self as they wanted.
And many did, playing what role they wished.
Fantastical figures abounded. Historical personages, too, so long as they were dead. It was unlawful to represent as someone else still living. . . perhaps while robbing a bank or assaulting a neighbor.
Not that bank robbers had stopped robbing banks. Some who did masked themselves as John Dillinger or Jesse James or Bonnie and Clyde. A recent and active robber in these parts presented as Black Bart, augmenting his flour sack mask with Bart’s long duster coat, billycock derby hat, and penchant for leaving poems at the scenes of his exploits.  pp. 88-89

The rest of the story is basically a readable, if long-winded, piece about going to a high school reunion and all that entails—personalities, relationships, success, ageing, etc. Embedded in this is a thin plot thread which sees Connor socialise with another of the attendees, Harry, and (spoiler) sees him discover evidence that Harry may be Black Bart. The story closes with a third party account that makes this more probable.
It’s all a bit pointless, and this feels like a mainstream story in SF drag.
* (Mediocre). 6,300 words.

We Have Forever by Redfern Jon Barrett

Posted on by Paul Fraser

We Have Forever by Redfern Jon Barrett (ParSec #1, Autumn 2021) opens with one of the two narrators, Petra (her husband Felix is the other), meeting a man called Lorenzo at a party with what she thinks is his young mistress. When she objects (Petra knows Lorenzo’s wife) it materialises that the younger woman is his wife—she has had rejuvenation treatment.
The rest of the story alternates between Petra agonising about having the treatment herself (Felix is keen) and backstory about how the two came to meet before the fall of the Wall in East Germany (and eventually have kids). After an amount of this (spoiler), Petra and Felix have the treatment but she leaves him and ends up living with their son. The last line is:

I have a thousand lives ahead, and no more time to waste.  p. 45

Is suspect that the rejuvenation treatment is probably a metaphor for later-life couples growing apart and separating, but I was not convinced at all the hand-wringing that Petra does about whether or not to proceed (wait till you are in your sixties and you will see what I mean). Also, the arc of the story is quite slight.
This isn’t bad, but it’s essentially a mainstream story in drag.
** (Average). 3,350 words.

Fasterpiece by Ian Creasey

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Fasterpiece by Ian Creasey (Asimov’s Science Fiction, January-February 2022) opens with the wife of an artist watching him at work:

As Elaine harvested plums, carrying them from the garden to the kitchen, she glanced through the large windows of Barnaby’s studio. She could barely see her husband: only a blur as he moved with superhuman rapidity, augmented by the Alipes system. He flitted between three separate canvases, executing portraits simultaneously in watercolors, oils, and pastels. Today’s client sat at the far end of the studio, her stillness emphasized by the contrast with Barnaby’s whirlwind. Elaine disliked these Alipes-assisted commissions, but many customers appreciated the shorter modeling time.  p. 124

It turns out that the husband, Barnaby, has some sort of time-acceleration device fitted (similar in effect, I guess, to Gully Foyle’s commando wiring in The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester).
His wife is not happy, however, for two reasons, (a) he isn’t using the time saved to spend more time with her and (b) she fears that, with so many using the Alipes system, the market will be saturated with artwork. After discussing the latter problem with Barnaby (she is his agent), he decides to head off to the Birmingham Wipe (the site of a nanotech accident that has turned a large swathe of terrain into glass) to see if an artists’ collective he knows of can produce something special—and saleable—before the art bubble bursts. After he leaves Elaine goes to see her sister, who is living as a refugee in a half-drowned London.
So far, so good: there is a novel SF gimmick, interesting characters, and an intriguing background. Unfortunately, however, the rest of the story sees Elaine head up to Birmingham to find her husband (Barnaby is spending too much subjective time away from her), at which point (spoiler) all the Alipes time-acceleration stuff is jettisoned and the story devolves into a bland fantasy adventure in a virtual reality populated with charismatic queens, dragons, etc. (and this latter part is not much improved by worthy discussions about art or mentions of Picasso’s Guernica). Very much a game of two halves.
** (Average). 9,100 words. Asimov’s SF store.

The Santa Claus Planet by Frank M. Robinson

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Santa Claus Planet by Frank M. Robinson (The Best Science-Fiction Stories: 1951) opens with a spaceship landing on a planet to celebrate Christmas; two of the crew are later sent to a nearby village to greet the humans that settled there previously and invite them to the ship.
En-route the pair are met by the natives, who proffer gifts, and a voice from the sleigh tells them to destroy the gifts and hand over their pistols. After some reluctance the two crew members do so, whereupon the natives break the pistols into pieces. Then they discover that the man who spoke is a recent arrival called Reynolds, who they subsequently take back with them.
The rest of the story consists (apart from another bookend to finish the story) of Reynolds telling of how he came to be on the planet, which starts with him arriving after he damaged his spaceship tubes. While he was trying to repair his ship the natives arrived, and he was drawn into their strange gift giving custom (which is later explained by a friendly female tribe member called Ruth):

She thought for a minute, trying to find a way to phrase it. “We use our coppers and furs in duels,” she said slowly. “Perhaps one chief will give a feast for another and present him with many coppers and blankets. Unless the other chief destroys the gifts and gives a feast in return, at which he presents the first chief with even greater gifts, he loses honor.”
He was beginning to see, Reynolds thought. The custom of conspicuous waste, to show how wealthy the possessor was. Enemies dueled with property, instead of with pistols, and the duel would obviously go back and forth until one or the other of its participants was bankrupt—or unwilling to risk more goods. A rather appropriate custom for a planet as lush as this.
“What if one of the chiefs goes broke,” he said, explaining the term.
“If the winning chief demands it, the other can be put to death. He is forced to drink the Last Cup, a poison which turns his bones to jelly. The days go by and he gets weaker and softer until finally he is nothing but a—ball.” She described this with a good deal of hand waving and facial animation, which Reynolds found singularly attractive in spite of the gruesomeness of the topic.

This unlikely gimmick works through a few gift-exchange plot loops until (spoiler) Reynolds runs out of potential gifts, and also realises that Ruth is also going to be poisoned for helping him. He avoids this unpleasant end by giving the impression that he is going to destroy the planet with fire (I think) after they destroy his rocket. The chief concedes before the oil fire Reynolds previously set burns out.
There is another twist revealed at the end (when Reynolds is once again on the visiting ship): Reynolds married Ruth and became the wealthiest man on the planet because they had 15 children, each of which attracted ever-increasing dowries.
This story revolves around an unconvincing and contrived gimmick, the ending is a fudge, and the last twist just adds even more nonsense to what has come before (and seems to be the only reason the sections that book-end the piece are there). Why Bleiler and Dikty (the editors of the ‘Best of the Year’ anthology where this first appeared) thought it a good idea to use this original story beats me (and I can only assume Terry Carr reprinted it1 for Towering Inferno2 name recognition).
* (Mediocre). 8,500 words.

1. Terry Carr used this story in his Christmas SF anthology, To Follow a Star (1977).

2. The Glass Inferno by Thomas N. Scortia and Frank M. Robinson (1974) was made into a big-budget disaster film called The Towering Inferno (1974), more here.

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

Posted on by Paul Fraser

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (A Christmas Carol in Prose: Being a Ghost Story of Christmas, 1843) is a story that I suspect everyone in the Western Hemisphere knows but, if you don’t, here is a recap of the five staves:
Stave One (19 pp.) sees a miserly old businessman called Scrooge visited in his ill-heated office by his nephew, who is full of Xmas spirit; Scrooge Bah Humbugs him:

‘If I could work my will,’ said Scrooge indignantly, ‘every idiot who goes about with “Merry Christmas” on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He should!’

After the nephew leaves Scrooge then repels two chuggers who visit wanting donations for the poor and destitute (Scrooge asks, “Are there no workhouses [. . .] prisons?” etc.). Finally, Scrooge reluctantly gives his clerk, Bob Cratchit, Christmas Day off before going home.
Later that night Scrooge is disturbed by (his ex-business partner) Marley’s Ghost and his clanking chains. Marley tells Scrooge that he is condemned to wander the Earth because he didn’t involve himself with the affairs of men when he was alive, but that Scrooge can avoid the same fate if he pays attention to the three ghosts that will visit him.
There are some nice turns of phrase in this stave (when Scrooge thinks Marley is a figment of his indigestion, he says, ‘There’s more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!’), but there is also some padding/rambling too.
Stave Two (18 pp.) sees the arrival of The Ghost of Christmas Past (which has a jet of light shooting out of its head), and Scrooge is taken back to his past. We see Scrooge at school; his sister arriving to take him home; as an apprentice at Fezziwig’s, who is a generous and genial boss; and breaking up with his fiancé. Last of all we see him watching the latter and her future family—and at one point her husband returns home with the news that he saw Scrooge working in his office when Marley was on the point of death.
Eventually Scrooge begs the ghost to stop the visions and, when he pulls the ghost’s cap onto its head, the light is extinguished and he slips back to sleep. Even though the ghosts’ visits have just begun, it is already clear that Scrooge has already begun to crack and will duly reform his character.
This section is probably the baggiest of them all, and I didn’t entirely understand some of the references or scenes.1
Stave Three (23 pp.) sees the Ghost of Christmas Present arrive and take Scrooge through the bustling town to Bob Cratchit’s house (the level of detail provided on their journey is very suggestive of the time and place). There, Scrooge watches Bob’s family have their Xmas dinner, and sees Tiny Tim, Cratchit’s crippled son, for the first time. Later, Scrooge learns of the boy’s fate:

‘A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us!’ Which all the family re-echoed.
‘God bless us every one!’ said Tiny Tim, the last of all.
He sat very close to his father’s side upon his little stool. Bob held his withered little hand in his, as if he loved the child, and wished to keep him by his side, and dreaded that he might be taken from him.
‘Spirit,’ said Scrooge, with an interest he had never felt before, ‘tell me if Tiny Tim will live.’
‘I see a vacant seat,’ replied the Ghost, ‘in the poor chimney-corner, and a crutch without an owner, carefully preserved. If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, the child will die.’
‘No, no,’ said Scrooge. ‘Oh, no, kind Spirit! say he will be spared.’
‘If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, none other of my race,’ returned the Ghost, ‘will find him here. What then? If he be like to die, he had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.’
Scrooge hung his head to hear his own words quoted by the Spirit, and was overcome with penitence and grief.

Directly after this exchange, Cratchit proposes a toast to Scrooge—against the protestations of his wife—and a temporary pall is cast over the feast.
The ghost takes Scrooge away to see the Christmases taking place in a miners’ hut and a lighthouse before they arrive at Scrooge’s nephew’s family dinner. Yet again Scrooge hears himself talked about—this time in pitying terms—but once more there is a toast to his health.
At the end of Scrooge’s foray the Ghost of Christmas Present reveals two children hiding under his shroud:

They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread.
Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude.
‘Spirit! are they yours?’ Scrooge could say no more.
‘They are Man’s,’ said the Spirit, looking down upon them. ‘And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!’ cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. ‘Slander those who tell it ye! Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And abide the end!’
‘Have they no refuge or resource?’ cried Scrooge.
‘Are there no prisons?’ said the Spirit, turning on him for the last time with his own words. ‘Are there no work-houses?’

The moral of the story, I suppose: give generously to relieve want.
Stave 4 (15 pp.) is the shortest—and perhaps eeriest—of the three ghostly visits, and begins with the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come showing Scrooge a group of businessmen talking about someone who has died (during this encounter and the subsequent ones (spoiler), the person referred to is obviously Scrooge, but he does not realise this until the final revelation). After this the ghost and Scrooge go to the home of a fence who is appraising goods stolen from the house of a dead man (which include the fine shirt that a woman has taken off his corpse). Next, they see the body, whose face is covered, before going on to Bob Cratchit’s house: there, we learn that Tiny Tim has also died.
Finally, the ghost takes him to a graveyard, where Scrooge sees an untended grave and realises it is his own—Scrooge breaks down and asks the ghost whether it is possible for him to change the future.
Stave 5 (7 pp.) sees Scrooge wake in his own bed on Christmas morning—and he quickly sets about changing his ways. First he sends a big turkey to Bob Cratchit’s, then he goes to his nephew’s house for Christmas lunch. The next day, after teasing Cratchit about his late arrival, he gives Bob a pay rise and promises to help his family (Scrooge promises to discuss these matters in the afternoon, “over a Christmas bowl of Smoking Bishop”2).
In conclusion, I enjoyed this story a lot more than I thought I would, especially given (a) my overfamiliarity with the plot and (b) a distant memory of it being written in old-fashioned prose. Generally, though, the writing didn’t feel like that at all, and the story moves along reasonably slickly with some stand-out scenes (the Cratchit’s Christmas dinner, the scene in the fence’s house, etc.). If I do have a reservation it is about the moral of the story which, superficially, seems to be an exhortation to rich people to give to the poor—but only so they will be thought well of by others and not forgotten (I presume that nowadays Scrooge would do some politically correct messaging on Twitter instead). For me, however, the more admirable behaviour in the story is that of Bob Cratchit and Scrooge’s nephew: the kind things they have to say about their antithesis at their Christmas dinners is a properly non-transactional form of altruism.
**** (Very Good). 30,200 words. Story link.

1. One part of the story which lost me was a passage which refers to Ali Baba and various other childhood characters. Footnote 31 (in the Oxford edition) explains these various references, including the information that “Valentine . . . and his wild brother, Orson: [are] the heroes of a fifteenth century French romance, The History of two Valyannte Brethren, Valentyne and Orson, which became a popular English children’s story.”

2. Footnote 90 explains that “smoking bishop [is] a mulled wine drink composed of wine, oranges, sugar, and spices, so called for its rich purple colour.”
There is a recipe here, and I was, in a moment of misplaced seasonal enthusiasm (Bah Humbug), going to try it—but it seems a bit of a faff.

Christmas on Mars by William Morrison

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Christmas on Mars by William Morrison (Thrilling Wonder Stories, December 1941) is an early piece1 by the author of the reasonably well-known Country Doctor (Star Science Fiction Stories, 1953).2 This one perhaps gets off to a more realistic and gritty start than other works of the period with Kel, the leader of a group of four ragged youths, sharpening his knife for an impending robbery:

“I ain’t gonna cut nobody up,” Kel grunted. “Not if they come across, I ain’t. But if they’re wise guys”—his arm flashed out suddenly and the jovite blade glittered in the air—“I’ll slash ’em to pieces. That’s what I’ll do. That’s what my old man would have done.”
They were silent, impressed by the mention of Kel’s father. Buck Henry was the first to recover.
“Hey, fellows,” he piped, “you know what night this is? Just before Christmas. It’s a holiday.”
Monk, proud of his changing voice, growled: “You’re nuts. Christmas comes in winter. This is right in the middle of summer.”
“Are you a dope!” Skinny put in. “Everybody knows the seasons on Earth ain’t the same as here. It’s winter on Earth, or at least on one hemisphere—eastern or western, I forget which. That’s what counts.”
“They say a big, fat guy called Santa Claus,” Buck Henry offered uncertainly, “gets all dressed up in a red suit and comes around handing out presents.”  p. 84

After Kel ridicules Buck for offering up this children’s tale, the group prepare to rob the next passerby—but that turns out to be the local cop, who suggests they go to the Martin Rescue Home for a free meal, but that they should move along in any event. Later, they hear the sound of whistling, and the four leap out to rob the man they have heard—who quickly disarms and restrains them, and reveals himself to be Michael Diston of the Interplanetary Police. He tells them that he sees no point in handing them over to the local police, but that he can’t set them free to rob someone else—so he asks the group if they would like to go for a meal and to see Santa Claus:

“Save that stuff,” Kel growled. “We ain’t babies.”
“Yeah,” said Skinny. “A guy gets dressed up in red, puts a pillow next to his stomach and makes believe he came down a chimbley. You can’t kid us.”
“I wouldn’t dream of trying,” the man drawled, “but it’ll be some swell dinner.”
He couldn’t lose them after that.  p. 87

Dilston takes them back to his mother’s house where, after they get cleaned up, they wolf down Christmas dinner. During the meal we learn about the kids’ troubled domestic situations—mostly parental sickness, addiction or absence, but we also get confirmation of earlier comments that Kel’s father is the Black Pirate. Afterwards, the kids are invited to go through to the living room, where they find a Xmas tree that wasn’t there previously. Then they see it is snowing outside (impossible on Mars) and someone starts coming down the chimney. Santa appears, and gives each of the four kids a present that particularly suits them. Then, exhausted, they go to bed.
Afterwards (spoiler) Dilston tells his mother that Santa was really the unused robot butler he got for her some time previously, the snow was from a machine on the roof that he installed last year and, finally, the presents were originally intended for the neighbourhood kids, but he discovered what would suit each of the four as he listened to them over dinner. Dilston then asks his mother to sort out the kids and their dysfunctional families (Dilston has to return to work the next day).
The story finishes with Dilston listening to a news report where he is mentioned as the one who has just finished hunting down the remanants of the Black Pirate’s gang, and who also killed the Black Pirate—Kel’s father—in hand-to-hand combat several years earlier.
This is better than a lot of stories from the period—gritty start, sentimental Xmas section, and a bittersweet ending which offsets what has come before. I thought it much better than the recent Asimov Christmas story I recently read.
*** (Good). 6,200 words. Story link.

1. This was the author’s seventh SF story from his first year of publishing.

2. I reviewed Country Doctor here.