{"id":4011,"date":"2022-05-17T10:46:59","date_gmt":"2022-05-17T10:46:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=4011"},"modified":"2022-05-17T10:47:02","modified_gmt":"2022-05-17T10:47:02","slug":"the-shadow-of-space-by-philip-jose-farmer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=4011","title":{"rendered":"The Shadow of Space by Philip Jos\u00e9 Farmer"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Shadow of Space<\/em><\/strong> by Philip Jos\u00e9 Farmer (Worlds of If<\/em>, November 1967)1<\/sup> opens with a woman rescued from a wrecked spaceship barricading herself into the engine-room of the experimental FTL craft Sleipnir<\/em>. She then accelerates the Sleipnir<\/em> beyond light speed.
When Grettir, the captain of the ship, learns that the woman will only talk to him, he goes down to speak to her. He gives instructions to MacCool, his engineering officer, to blast his way in if he is incapacitated or killed. Grettir then talks to the woman, during which she confuses Grettir with her dead husband Robert (she has been delusional since she has been rescued) before shooting at him. When Grettir recovers consciousness he discovers that MacCool has blasted his way in, and that the woman stripped off all her clothes and went out the airlock. Grettir also learns that they are now in a strange, unknown zone of space.
After this fast-paced and Van Vogtian start to the story, it becomes something much more weird and trippy. Grettir sees that they are in a grey space filled with grey spheres and, after much speculation, he concludes that they have entered a \u201csuper universe\u201d, and that the sphere behind them is their universe (there is some 1930s-ish atom-and-electron-worlds hand-wavium at this point). As they manoeuvre back to where they think they entered the super-universe, they fly past the woman\u2019s now huge dead body.
The next part of the story sees the various attempts made by the Sleipnir<\/em>\u2019s crew to re-enter their own universe, during which, on one failed attempt, they have burning coal-like objects shoot through the bridge:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grettir picked up his cigar, which he had dropped on the deck when he had first seen the objects racing toward him. The cigar was still burning. Near it lay a coal, swiftly blackening. He picked it up gingerly. It felt warm but could be held without too much discomfort.
Grettir extended his hand, palm up, so that the doctor could see the speck of black matter in it. It was even smaller than when it had floated into the bridge through the momentarily \u201copened\u201d interstices of the molecules composing the hull and bulkheads.
\u201cThis is a galaxy<\/em>,\u201d he whispered.
Doc Wills did not understand. \u201cA galaxy of our universe,\u201d Grettir added.
Doc Wills paled, and he gulped loudly.
\u201cYou mean . . . ?\u201d
Grettir nodded.
Wills said, \u201cI hope . . . not our . . . Earth\u2019s . . . galaxy!\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The story becomes even more bizarre when they later fly into the woman\u2019s body, start overheating, and only just make it out again (you get the impression that in a more permissive age they would have been birthed out of her womb\/vagina, but, if I recall correctly, they come out of her mouth). After this they prepare for a final attempt to get back into their own universe.
This has a fast-paced start, but the bulk of the story, although sometimes entertaining, is arbitrarily bizarre and goes on too long. The ending also fizzles out.
** (Average). 10,200 words. Story link<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. From the Philip Jos\u00e9 Farmer website<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Farmer tried to sell this as a possible Star Trek<\/em> episode (before the show ever aired I think). He later decided that it would not have worked. Just what is waiting for us at the edge of the universe?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Shadow of Space by Philip Jos\u00e9 Farmer (Worlds of If, November 1967)1 opens with a woman rescued from a wrecked spaceship barricading herself into the engine-room of the experimental FTL craft Sleipnir. She then accelerates the Sleipnir beyond light speed.When Grettir, the captain of the ship, learns that the woman will only talk to […]<\/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_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":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[947],"tags":[10,17,951,939,173,7,949,948],"class_list":["post-4011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-philip-jose-farmer","tag-10","tag-17","tag-atom-and-electron-universes","tag-ftl-drive","tag-if","tag-novelette","tag-other-realities","tag-philip-jose-farmer"],"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\/4011","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=4011"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4011\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4031,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4011\/revisions\/4031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}