{"id":1994,"date":"2021-12-12T17:44:40","date_gmt":"2021-12-12T17:44:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=1994"},"modified":"2021-12-12T17:44:44","modified_gmt":"2021-12-12T17:44:44","slug":"war-beneath-the-tree-by-gene-wolfe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=1994","title":{"rendered":"War Beneath the Tree by Gene Wolfe"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong><em>War Beneath the Tree<\/em><\/strong> by Gene Wolfe (<em>Omni<\/em>, December 1979) opens with a young boy called Robin being sent to bed:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-style-default is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>\u201cIt\u2019s Christmas Eve, Commander Robin,\u201d the Spaceman said. \u201cYou\u2019d better go to bed or Santa won\u2019t come.\u201d<br>Robin\u2019s mother said, \u201cThat\u2019s right, Robin. Time to say good night.\u201d<br>The little boy in blue pajamas nodded, but he made no move to rise.<br>\u201cKiss me,\u201d said Bear. Bear walked his funny waddly walk around the tree and threw his arms about Robin. \u201cWe have to go to bed. I\u2019ll come, too.\u201d It was what he said every night.<br>Robin\u2019s mother shook her head in amused despair. \u201cListen to them,\u201d she said. \u201cLook at him, Bertha. He\u2019s like a little prince surrounded by his court. How is he going to feel when he\u2019s grown and can\u2019t have transistorized sycophants to spoil him all the time?\u201d<br>Bertha the robot maid nodded her own almost human head as she put the poker back in its stand. \u201cThat\u2019s right, Ms. Jackson. That\u2019s right for sure.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>After Robin falls asleep, Bear leaves him and returns to the other robot toys, whereupon they prepare for a battle with an unspecified enemy. Later, Robin wakes and goes downstairs (spoiler) to see his mother, who is dressed up as Santa, put a new set of robot toys under the Christmas tree. Then, after she leaves, he watches as hostilities break out between the old toys and the new. . . .<br>I was impressed at how much Wolfe manages to pack into this short Pixar-like tale (albeit a Pixar tale with a very dark ending)\u2014apart from the story and its evocative robotic milieu, we have Bertha the servant\u2019s drift into a character like that of a black servant in a 1940s movie (Robin\u2019s mother says the new robot chauffeur will be Italian and <em>stay<\/em> Italian), and there is a final revelation to Robin about a new baby that will be arriving (with the implied threat of his own obsolescence).<br>***+ (Good to Very Good). 2,150 words. <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/omni-archive\/OMNI_1979_12\/page\/n41\/mode\/2up\">Story link<\/a>.<br><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>War Beneath the Tree by Gene Wolfe (Omni, December 1979) opens with a young boy called Robin being sent to bed: \u201cIt\u2019s Christmas Eve, Commander Robin,\u201d the Spaceman said. \u201cYou\u2019d better go to bed or Santa won\u2019t come.\u201dRobin\u2019s mother said, \u201cThat\u2019s right, Robin. Time to say good night.\u201dThe little boy in blue pajamas nodded, but [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[89],"tags":[343,217,542,90,342,537,12,543],"class_list":["post-1994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gene-wolfe","tag-343","tag-3-5","tag-christmas","tag-gene-wolfe","tag-omni","tag-robots","tag-short-story","tag-toys"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1994"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1994\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1997,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1994\/revisions\/1997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}