{"id":4796,"date":"2022-07-11T20:43:38","date_gmt":"2022-07-11T20:43:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=4796"},"modified":"2022-07-11T20:43:41","modified_gmt":"2022-07-11T20:43:41","slug":"a-galaxy-called-rome-by-barry-n-malzberg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=4796","title":{"rendered":"A Galaxy Called Rome by Barry N. Malzberg"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A Galaxy Called Rome<\/em><\/strong> by Barry N. Malzberg (F&SF<\/em>, July 1975)1<\/sup> is a meta-story and a piece of recursive SF where the writer describes a story that that he might write but cannot, because \u201cit partakes of its time, which is distant and could be perceived only through the idiom and devices of that era.\u201d
He goes on to say that the story would be about a spaceship that is trapped in a \u201cblack galaxy\u201d (I think he means black hole) that results from the implosion of a neutron star:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conceive then of a faster-than-light spaceship which would tumble into the black galaxy and would be unable to leave. Tumbling would be easy, or at least inevitable, since one of the characteristics of the black galaxy would be its invisibility, and there the ship would be. The story would then pivot on the efforts of the crew to get out. The ship is named Skipstone<\/em>. It was completed in 3892. Five hundred people died so that it might fly, but in this age life is held even more cheaply than it is today.
Left to my own devices, I might be less interested in the escape problem than that of adjustment. Light housekeeping in an anterior sector of the universe; submission to the elements, a fine, ironic literary despair. This is not science fiction, however. Science fiction was created by Hugo Gernsback to show us the ways out of technological impasse. So be it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The writer then reflects on his personal life in Ridgeway Park (\u201cI would rather dedicate the years of life remaining (my melodramatic streak) to an understanding of the agonies of this middle-class town\u201d) before setting out his notes for the story. These cover various facets of the prospective piece: the characters, which include a female captain and her cargo of \u201cthe embalmed\u201d, five hundred and fifteen dead people who will be reanimated at some point in the future; possible sex scenes; data dumps of astronomical physics; a scene where the dead come to life; and, eventually, the open ending of the story\u2014which, as it happens, sees the ship vomited from the black hole after engaging its tachyonic drive, depositing the occupants in Ridgefield Park in 1975 (which neatly ends the story).
It\u2019s very hard to synopsise this as it is much more than a series of events or notes but, perhaps, as well as the passage above, the following will also provide a flavour of what the story is like:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lena is left alone again, then, with the shouts of the dead carrying forward. Realizing instantly what has happened to her\u2014fourteen thousand years of perception can lead to a quicker reaction time, if nothing else\u2014she addresses the console again, uses the switches and produces three more prostheses, all of them engineers barely subsidiary to the one she has already addressed (Their resemblance to the three comforters of Job will not be ignored here, and there will be an opportunity to squeeze in some quick religious allegory, which is always useful to give an ambitious story yet another level of meaning.)
Although they are not quite as qualified or definitive in their opinions as the original engineer, they are bright enough by far to absorb her explanation, and this time her warnings not to go to the portholes, not to look upon the galaxy, are heeded. Instead, they stand there in rigid and curiously mortified postures, as if waiting for Lena to speak.
\u201cSo you see,\u201d she says finally, as if concluding a long and difficult conversation, which in fact she has, \u201cas far as I can see, the only way to get out of this black galaxy is to go directly into tachyonic drive. Without any accelerative buildup at all.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This is an intense and original piece, but it felt overlong, and I suspect it is a story that people will admire more than enjoy.
*** (Good). 7,650 words. Story link<\/a>.

1. The story is dedicated to John W. Campbell.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Galaxy Called Rome by Barry N. Malzberg (F&SF, July 1975)1 is a meta-story and a piece of recursive SF where the writer describes a story that that he might write but cannot, because \u201cit partakes of its time, which is distant and could be perceived only through the idiom and devices of that era.\u201dHe […]<\/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":[1147],"tags":[1149,24,1148,1150,25,960,1151,7,1006],"class_list":["post-4796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-barry-n-malzberg","tag-1149","tag-3-2","tag-barry-n-malzberg","tag-black-holes","tag-fsf","tag-meta-fiction","tag-neutron-stars","tag-novelette","tag-recursive-sf"],"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\/4796","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=4796"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4796\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4806,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4796\/revisions\/4806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}