Birthday Reviews: Bester, Clarke, Dick, Jackson

Like a wrapped box under the tree, this week’s offerings (or last week’s if you want to get technical) include a seasonal tale secreted among tales of time travel, interstellar exploration, shoes that really go places, and a lottery.

Alfred Bester (1913-12-18/1987-09-30)

“Of Time and Third Avenue” (F&SF, October 1951)

If you could have one book from the future, what would it be? This story presents one eminently sensible choice which may be surprising to some (I’m probably one of the few people who actually still gets them) and then presents another option which may be even more surprising.

Our very odd hero has to travel back to 1950 to try to convince a young couple to part with a 1990 book they’ve just purchased (without noticing its date) and provides an economical, almost Aesopian fable which is sure to instruct and amuse.

Arthur C. Clarke (1917-12-16/2008-03-19)

“The Star” (Infinity Science Fiction, November 1955)

A Jesuit astrophysicist is part of an exploration team which has come to a supernova remnant and discovered the time capsule an extinct race has left to posterity on what was once their outermost planet. In this concise and efficient but reflective tale, he makes another discovery of his own which tests him sorely. One of the all-time classics that deserves the cliche “I envy those of you who will read this for the first time” though I greatly enjoyed the umpteenth re-read as well.

Philip K. Dick (1928-12-16/1982-03-02)

“The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford” (F&SF, January 1954)

Adding to a colorful line of crackpot (or at least slightly squirrelly) scientists and inventors which includes Weinbaum’s Professor van Manderpootz, Kuttner’s Galloway Gallegher, and Leiber’s Dr. Dragonet, Philip K. Dick brings us Doc Labyrinth, developer of the Principle of Sufficient Irritation and inventor of the Animator (and you thought it was a Dutch oven!) which results in our bewildered narrator having one of his shoes baked and that’s only the beginning.

In a way, this fairly early tale has a feel of Dick trying on other people’s stories for size but, in another, it has PKD’s usual cockeyed view of things and his fascination with the animate and inanimate. Either way, this is much lighter than his average tale and is a lot of fun.

Shirley Jackson (1916-12-14/1965-08-08)

“The Lottery” (The New Yorker, June 26, 1948)

The townsfolk have gathered in the square for the annual lottery and all is right with the world on the fine day of June 27th. What is the lottery? Well, a clue is deftly placed early, lighting the fuse without our knowing it, which burns slowly and darkens on the way to its explosive end. This is excellently executed and is thematically akin to the passage I quoted from Brackett in the last birthday review about man, the reasoning being.

Birthday Reviews: Heinlein, May, Wyndham

This week’s tales provide entertainment while also showing the good and bad that can arise when we go out there or when things come here.

Robert A. Heinlein (1907-07-07/1988-05-08)

“Columbus Was a Dope” (Startling Stories, May 1947)

A salesman is in a bar celebrating his sale of steel to a professor who wants to build a starship and he, the professor, another salesman, and the bartender get to talking about why people would build a starship. After the professor has left, they also discuss the odds of anyone on the ship surviving. At this point, the subject of Columbus, the explorer who found a New World, comes up and the salesman provides the title which is soon undercut. Without spoiling the specifics, the story ends with clever irony which reminds me of one of my favorite moments in Firefly, when Wash mockingly dismisses something by saying, “That sounds like something out of science fiction!” His wife tells him, “You live in a spaceship, dear.” Not getting her point, he replies, “So?” In a way, this is a minor story for such a major author but it has a very big theme in a small package and demonstrates many of his virtues, such as economically making the far-out and futuristic utterly common-place and believable.

Julian May (1931-07-10/2017-10-17)

“Dune Roller” (Astounding, December 1951)

In her first tale, Julian May takes us to the alien world of Lake Michigan for an adventure I can’t believe wasn’t turned into a successful 1950s sci-fi-horror movie. After an introductory scene of a meteor striking the lake long ago, we cut to Dr. Ian Thorne, who is playing in a shore pool, recording the statistics of the various critters therein, when he notices something gleaming attractively. He collects the golden elongated teardrop which sets in motion a chain of events which includes some discovery and some death and destruction. All this is told in a very understated and leisurely way (which includes some effective humor) which exhibits the storytelling confidence of a veteran (though there is a sequence where all the characters are a little too quick on the draw for plausibility). The milieu is made both concrete and vivid but also, as I said, very strange. The main character and his friends (including both a non-scientist and a fellow scientist), as well as his new girlfriend, all have their distinctiveness. Finally, this particular Thing from Another World is effective and memorable. Good stuff.

John Wyndham (1903-07-10/1969-03-11)

“The Asteroids, 2194” (New Worlds #100, November 1960)

Much of this feels like a very mainstream tale with plenty of layers in the narrative onion to peel. A journalist is visiting an island where he meets a man who seems rather odd. By way of explanation, another local tells the story of a freighter captain who collided with a derelict. He discovers three bodies in the other ship but only one is dead. The other two are not yet dead, but in cryogenic suspension, though the revival process is often fatal. And perhaps that’s a good thing for some people. Though the story features multiple characters and settings, it’s about almost none of them but actually about one person who no longer has a place and feels he has lost even more than that. Either way, the colorful and well-told layers have their intrinsic interest (and serve their thematic purpose) and it ultimately gets to its thoughtful point (whether one sympathizes with it or not).

Asimov’s Centennial: The Stars, Like Dust

The Stars, Like Dust by Isaac Asimov
Hardcover: Doubleday, $2.50, 218pp, 1951

Young Biron Farrill, the son of the Rancher of Widemos (a noble position on the world of Nephelos in the Nebular Kingdoms), is attending the University of Earth, partly to get an education and partly to find a precious document his father wants. He wakes one evening to a puzzling situation in which his room’s ventilation system, communications system, and even the door aren’t working. At first, he thinks it’s a prank but comes to realize that he’s been trapped in a room with a radiation bomb. Fortunately, Sander Jonti (an associate who is from Lingane, also in the Nebular regions), is able to break him out of his room. Through Jonti, we learn that Tyrann is a budding empire in control of fifty worlds and has imprisoned (and will soon execute) Biron’s father as a disloyal threat to them. Jonti convinces Biron to flee to Rhodia, a world ruled by the half-idiot Hinrik, to avoid being killed by Tyrannian powers like his father. After Biron is on his way, we learn that Jonti and his companion, Rizzett, are also looking for the document but that, wherever it is, it’s been stolen from Earth quite some time ago.

Biron, traveling under a false name, is recognized aboard the starship en route to Rhodia and is brought to Simok Aratap, a powerful “Commissioner” of Tyrann who seems to be both a frustrated artist and conqueror (since Tyrann has been ruling its fifty worlds for fifty years and hasn’t expanded since being checked by its “Associate” world of Lingane). He lets Biron go to see if the young man will lead him to bigger game. Biron meets Hinrik, but also his lovely daughter, Artemisia, who is facing a forced marriage to a repulsive Tyrannian lord, and Artemisia’s Uncle Gil, a man with a scientific bent who does his best to appear harmless by playing the part of a ridiculous dilettante. Determining that Biron can pilot a spacecraft, both beg him to take them away. However, acting with uncharacteristic decision with only a few hours hesitation instead of the usual days, Hinrik has already decided Biron might be a test from Tyrann and has turned him in and Aratap has already arrived. Much running and fighting follows before the trio finally do escape, stealing Aratap’s own ship (which is not the good fortune it seems to be).

Gil then relates the tale of his experience of accidentally discovering a rebel base while lost in a damaged spaceship. He doesn’t know where he actually was but he believes the rebellion may offer a refuge if he can find it again, whether it’s nearing readiness to face Tyrann or not. Believing the Autarch of Lingane to know something of the rebel world (and after Biron and Artemisia discover their affection for one another), they point the ship to Lingane where they discover something surprising about the Autarch (who also finds Artemisia appealing and isn’t above creating animosity between her and Biron). Thus begins a very uneasy alliance to search for the hidden rebel base which takes the trio’s ship and the Autarch’s into the murky depths of the Horsehead Nebula, with both crews unaware that Aratap and a fleet of Tyrann warships are right behind them. Before the deeds of this tale are done, some will be lost and much will be found, but not always what was expected.

While I remembered much of this book and even most of the twists, I had forgotten how little connected to the “future history” it is. This seems to be set about 10,000 years in the future or 40,000 years before Pebble in the Sky. There is no reference to Trantor and there is a bizarre reference to a “robot messenger,” albeit only one. Earth is radioactive just as in Pebble but in that novel, it was only assumed to be from a war and, in this, it is made explicit (which later novels ignore). On the other hand, it is known to be the birthplace of humanity at this point and there doesn’t seem to be any particular animosity to Earth – indeed, it’s got enough cachet to have noblemen send their children “abroad” for an education. The hyperspace Jump technology seems to be the same, there are blasters, neuronic whips, biwheels, and more (there is even the first visisonor), but many of Asimov’s stories re-use various bits of tech. So, at the time of this book’s release, it may have seemed very independent.

In addition to seeming less like Asimov’s other series books in terms of fitting into a future history, it also seems less like his in other senses. Unlike pudgy, bald, old Joseph Schwartz the tailor, who made for a very unusual and compelling protagonist in Pebble, Biron Farrill is a young (sometimes petulant), muscled, 6’2″ nobleman for whom violence is no last refuge. Similarly, while Artemisia seems like a nice enough girl, she’s no Arkady Darrell, but usually a “matrimonial object” and not always the brightest one. The triangle of the Autarch, Biron, and Arta also leads to a little too much soap opera in the space opera for my taste, though it may appeal to others. On the other hand, the villain of Pebble was a true foaming-at-the-mouth black hat which was unusual for Asimov (though this one has one, too, which I can’t get into for spoilers) and Aratap, who is the initial bad guy of this piece, is more like Asimov’s usual complex and not-entirely-evil villains and was more interesting than the heroes.

Some other common motifs are more problematic. Coming off of searches by the Mule and the Foundation for the Second Foundation, this search for a rebel world seems familiar and, although they are different people and Biron is providing the means of escape, Arta and Gil aboard ship feels something like Arkady and Homer. Some of the twists and turns have been used before, too.

Perhaps the biggest problem with this book is the logic. While there are the usual excellent Asimovian conversations such as that between Aratap and Major Andros on what sort of forces to deploy and Aratap also repeats a recurrent theme of Asimov’s in which a character develops a web of impeccable logic which perfectly describes events–until it doesn’t because it was a coincidental abstraction–there is also “peccable” logic. Much is made of Tyrann’s political considerations and how they can’t use all the brute force they might like, but it is overused to excuse things that really should be more direct. Further, Biron seems to swallow lies repeatedly, yet “always knew” better or comes to know without receiving additional information to explain his increased comprehension. Also, by giving us the singular subjectivity of duplicitous characters, Asimov doesn’t always seem to play fair with the readers in this one. And there is a particularly glaring issue with Gil’s eavesdropping habits combined with ignorance of certain key things.

That said, there are many things I like about this book. While there is some very dated technology (the corneal contact lens seems to be a cutting-edge invention thousands of years in the future and spaceships seem to have a lot of dials) there is also a really tremendous depiction of two ships docking and a person traveling between them which reads like science writing from the present rather than imagination over fifteen years before such things began to happen.

Early on in the book, aside from Biron’s locked-room drama, things seem to be moving toward action a lot more than being in a state of action, but the movement is interesting and, when the action kicks in, it’s engaging and entertaining.

Perhaps the best thing is the depiction of the bubbling state of the galactic region and the cultures and personalities of Tyrann, Lingane, Rhodia, Nephelos, and even Earth. The different economies, living habits, ship designs, political considerations, variations in powers, interrelations, etc., all make them almost as much characters as the individual people representing them.

At least as of 1979, this was the novel Asimov liked least of his but this was mainly due to the fact that Gold interfered editorially by making him include the “document” sub-plot. This is neither a great feature nor grave flaw to me, though. Still, considering The Foundation Trilogy, I, Robot, and Pebble in the Sky to have been written, whether they’d achieved final book form or not, I think it is actually fair to say that this is the weakest of them so far and not the first book I’d hand to someone unfamiliar with Asimov, but I still enjoyed the re-read.

Birthday Reviews: Saberhagen, Wellman

The birthday boys of the coming week bring us tales of berserkers and balladeers.

Fred Saberhagen (1930-05-18/2007-06-29)

“Starsong” (If, January 1968)

Within a powerfully grotesque framing story about a doctor determining if the brains (some vat-grown, some removed from their bodies) within a liberated berserker base are human or not (and disposing of those that aren’t), is the story of Ordell Callison, the galaxy’s greatest singer, and his new wife, Eury. When playing a mating game of ship tag, one man plays with an unwilling Eury, she flees and, like a wolf running down a sheep separated from the flock, a berserker [1] comes out of hiding and captures her. Ordell learns of this, madly tears out after her, and is also captured. However, his song powerfully affects the cyborg humans that had been under the thrall of the berserkers and he has one chance to escape the base with her.

A great virtue and vice of this story is the fact that it’s a retelling of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice in science fictional terms. The vice comes from it being an extremely faithful adaptation that provides a rote feeling to the plot along with the discordant “singing SF” element but the virtue is that it is also a naturally powerful plot, is very creatively adapted, and even does some interpretation of the myth. Even more notably, it produces a very unusual and strong flavor which, while still very different, may come closest to some of the weirdness that is Cordwainer Smith. Effective and memorable.

Manly Wade Wellman (1903-05-21/1986-04-05)

“O Ugly Bird!” (F&SF, December 1951)

To borrow from the opening line, “I swear I’m licked before I start, trying to tell you what” this story is like. John’s a traveling musician with a silver-stringed guitar on his way through the mountains to the Bottomless Pool when he meets Mr. Onselm. That unworthy turns out to be a hoodoo man keeping the few folks of the local population under his thumb with the help of an ugly bird – a purely unnatural bird, at that. Onselm is a sight, and the bird is even more so, and things are creepy enough but, when Onselm takes a notion to more thoroughly possess the shopgirl, Winnie, and gathers a small posse to run off the troublesome guitar player who’s also taken a more gentlemanly liking to the girl, things get more urgent and even creepier.

This is a hard story to describe because, on its surface, it’s very simple and very short as well, but Wellman paces things and reveals things and describes things just so, producing a really effective low-key horror combined with a winning perspective conveyed through John’s mountain voice. The one problem with this is that people seem to forget and remember a thing or two when it’s pretty convenient but the tale is a gem, otherwise, and the first of many stories and novels featuring John the Balladeer.

---

[1] If you’re not familiar with the series, berserkers are machines whose ultimate purpose is to eradicate biological life throughout the galaxy.

Birthday Reviews: Tenn, Zelazny

This week is when Galaxy‘s collide. Both stories are about lust and life but one is a semi-comic brightly-lit tale of commerce from Gold’s era and one is a semi-tragic twilight tale of romance from Pohl’s era.

William Tenn (1920-05-09/2010-02-07)

“Betelgeuse Bridge” (Galaxy, April 1951)

When alien slugs arrive on Earth, an ad man is brought in to sell them to humanity while scientists (and the ad man) try to figure out what’s going on with them, hampered by the aliens’ flowery and roundabout speech. And, as the ad man is trying to sell them, they’re trying to sell to us. When the aliens reveal they’ve got life-quintupling machines, humanity is willing to trade almost anything for them.

Many readers will probably see the main ending before it happens and some may also see the denouement as too easy, but it’s an entertaining tale with a couple of bits of neat symmetry.

Roger Zelazny (1937-05-13/1995-06-14)

“The Man Who Loved the Faioli” (Galaxy, June 1967)

This is and isn’t a science fiction story of desire and death in which John Auden is and isn’t alive and Sythia is and isn’t a woman. She is a Faioli, one of those who can only see life and who stay with men for a month before they die, and he is a twice-smitten man in a half-life…

They crossed through the Valley of the Bones, where millions of the dead from many races and worlds lay stacked all about them, and she did not see these things. She had come to the graveyard of all the worlds, but she did not realize this thing. She had encountered its keeper, its tender, and she did not know what he was, he who staggered beside her like a man drunken.

His nature gives him an interesting perspective on Sythia and all she represents with unusual results.

Like so much of Zelazny, this isn’t my kind of thing in theory but is such a well-written and effective sci-fairy tale that it is in practice.

Asimov’s Centennial: Conclusion of Phase One

It’s taken awhile but this post will complete the first phase of my Asimov Centennial Project. I’ll review three last stories which will complete the coverage of I, Robot and The Foundation Trilogy and provide an index to all the coverage of Asimov’s output from 1939-1950.

Robot and Foundation Stories

The first story to be written outside the timeframe of The Early Asimov and the final regular story to be written and included in I, Robot is “The Evitable Conflict.” In it, Stephen Byerley (who first appeared in “Evidence”) is now World Co-ordinator and dealing with a problem he wants Susan Calvin’s help with. A fascinating portrait of an Earth which has been reorganized into four Regions with Vice Co-ordinators under Byerley is painted and, in each of them, there are subtle but disturbing problems with what should be the perfect guidance of the Machines (or computers, or stationary robots, which still fall under the domain of the Three Laws which ensure no harm can come to humans). An array of impossible possibilities is presented, such as machine error (impossible by design and Law) or human error (impossible because the errors would produce other inconsistencies). Byerley believes it may have something to do with a “Society for Humanity” which is opposed to the role of machines in society. Susan determines that that is correct, but not in the way Byerley thought.

There are two problems in this successful story. A minor one is that, while the thematic fireplace element at the open and close and the trips through each of the Regions of the world demonstrates the story’s excellent structure, it’s almost too excellent – a little too deliberate and obvious. More importantly, the solution to the problem is supposed to rely on logic and it is logical at every step of the way except the sophistry involved in expanding a premise which anticipates a major, and more earned, change later in the Robot sequence. Still, the problem is suitably puzzling, Byerley and Calvin make for an interesting pair, the future world is imaginatively unusual (if a bit schematic), and there is substantial philosophical material to think about if the reader wants to, and a very good puzzle if that would be enough.

While not strictly a story, Asimov did add three or four thousand words of a framing narrative around and between the stories in I, Robot in the form of a reporter recalling, in 2064, a couple of interviews done with an elderly Susan Calvin in 2057. It rearranges the individual stories from their published order and weaves them into a narrative which describes how, after the last world war shortly before Calvin was born in 1982, the first limited robots were developed at the end of the millennium, grew in abilities, and essentially came to run the world. In the meantime, the nations of Earth coalesced first into Regions and then into the Federation of those Regions while, beyond Earth, interplanetary travel and commerce was developed, culminating in the hyper-drive and the first colonies around nearby stars.

While not dramatically plotted as an independent story, it does portray quite a future history and does powerful work in amplifying the Robot stories into a whole greater than the sum of the parts.

(This framing story is not available apart from this book. For instance, one of the weaknesses of The Complete Robot, aside from the fact that it became incomplete, is that it arranges the stories differently and drops this text. On the other hand, The Complete Robot contains two stories not otherwise available in book form.)

“The Psychohistorians” was not initially published in a magazine like the other Foundation stories, but was written to ease the reader into the series as presented in book form and to lengthen the first volume of the trilogy to something more like the subsequent volumes.

Young Gaal Dornick makes his way from his small, remote world of Synnax to the capital world of the Galactic Empire, Trantor. Still deep in sensory overload, he finds himself being questioned by a stranger and explains that he’s a mathematician who has come to Trantor to work for the psychohistorian Hari Seldon. Leaving that meeting, he returns to his room and is surprised to meet Hari Seldon, himself. He’s even more surprised when Seldon proves to him that the Empire is near death. And he’s yet more surprised the next morning, when he’s arrested by the Commission for Public Safety and finds himself on trial, along with Seldon, for being a danger to the Empire which has a chance, however slight, of resulting in his execution. A courtroom drama with twists and turns then follows.

Even as an independent story, this would be pretty good and, as an establishing piece for the stories which follow, it’s excellent. Gaal is a sort of stereotyped “country boy in the big city” but is effective and Seldon steals the show as the Obi-Wan/Yoda to his Luke. (In fact, Gaal literally tells him he stole the show in one scene.) Trantor and the Empire are suitably stupendous. The fascinating concept of psychohistory is conveyed clearly, quickly, and dramatically.

(By the way, somewhat akin to the framing story in I, Robot, this story begins with a quote from the “Encyclopedia Galactica.” In the original versions of the other stories, some have quotes from the works of a Ligurn Vier and many have none at all. The Ligurn Vier quotes were rewritten as Encyclopedia Galactica extracts and more were distributed throughout the trilogy. The Foundation stories work superbly either way but the book version does result in a different perspective on the Encyclopedia (and related issues).)

Index

In the future, I’ll be reviewing Asimov’s works more or less by the book. While, on the one hand, there were some fairly extended periods where he published no new SF novels (1959-81 saw only the novelization of Fantastic Voyage in 1966 and the original novel The Gods Themselves in 1972) and, on the other, there were no extended periods in which he didn’t publish a story in the magazines, he still shifted his focus to books generally and I think it will be better (certainly easier) to cover them that way. What has been covered so far are the contents of the following books:

• Pebble in the Sky (1950; alternate version from The Alternate Asimovs (1986))
• I, Robot (1950)
• Foundation (1951)
• Foundation and Empire (1952)
• Second Foundation (1953)
• The Early Asimov (1972; paperback version published in two volumes (1974))

Asimov’s Mysteries (1968) and Nightfall and Other Stories (1969) each include one story from this period and The Rest of the Robots (1964, paperback version containing only stories as Eight Stories from the Rest of the Robot (1966)) contained three.

They’ve been covered in the following posts:

• Asimov’s Centennial: The First Nine Stories, June 1938-May 1939
• Asimov’s Centennial: Eight Stories, June 1939-November 1940
• Asimov’s Centennial: Nine Stories, December 1940-June 1941
• Asimov’s Centennial: Eight Stories, September 1941-April 1943
• Asimov’s Centennial: Eight Stories, June 1943-May 1945 (Foundation and Empire)
• Asimov’s Centennial: Six Stories, April 1946-October 1948
• Asimov’s Centennial: Two Stories, February 1947-March 1949 (Second Foundation)
• Asimov’s Centennial: Pebble in the Sky (Two Versions)

(Half of Foundation is in “Eight Stories, September 1941-April 1943” and the other half is in “Eight Stories, June 1943-May 1945” while I, Robot and The Early Asimov are split over all the posts.)

I’ve also covered the first volume of his two-volume, 640,000-word autobiography, In Memory Yet Green: The Autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1920-1954, in the following posts:

• Asimov’s Centennial: In Memory Yet Green, Chapters 1-21
• Asimov’s Centennial: In Memory Yet Green, Chapters 22-27
• Asimov’s Centennial: In Memory Yet Green, Chapters 28-34
• Asimov’s Centennial: In Memory Yet Green, Chapters 35-41
• Asimov’s Centennial: In Memory Yet Green, Chapters 42-47
• Asimov’s Centennial: In Memory Yet Green, Chapters 48-55 (conclusion)

Review: Tomorrow and Tomorrow and The Fairy Chessmen by Lewis Padgett

This originally appeared on my old site on 2014-07-12. Other than changes related to reformatting and correcting typos (and updating a blocked youtube link), it’s unchanged. (Particular apologies for the muddled presentation in the “spoilers” section at the end).
Date: 1951
Format: Hardcover
Cat#: –
Pages: 254
Price: $2.75
Publisher: Gnome

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and The Fairy Chessmen is a 1951 Gnome collection subtitled “Two Science Fiction Novels” and credited as “By Lewis Padgett”. These days, that’s usually taken to mean “by Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore” but I don’t detect very much Moore in these – more van Vogt and premonitions of Harness and Dick, et al. Also, my estimated word count of “Tomorrow and Tomorrow” has it fall solidly in novella territory and even The Fairy Chessmen falls right on one side or the other of the 40K line which only technically defines novel length and is not anything most people today would recognize as a novel. Either way, they are very hard to find. “Tomorrow and Tomorrow” was serialized in the January and February 1947 issues of Astounding and has only appeared in book form in the Gnome edition (and a facsimile) and a 1963 UK paperback while The Fairy Chessmen was serialized in the January and February 1946 issues and renamed to The Far Reality when it appeared in a companion UK paperback and to Chessboard Planet when it appeared in a 1983 UK paperback with three other stories.

This is an interesting collection because it could be argued that the stories would be better served if they were collected separately, given their similarity. But it can equally be argued that they are companion pieces and can be usefully compared and contrasted, so make a natural collection.

Though “Tomorrow and Tomorrow” was written last, it’s presented first, so I’ll deal with it first. The essence of the story seems to be that, after WWII and an abortive WWIII, the Global Peace Commission (a sort of souped-up UN successor) has taken control of the world and enforced a stasis regarding technological and social change to avoid another war. So now, in the vicinity of July 7, 2051, Joseph Breden is a guardian of Uranium Pile One, a symbol (and, to a degree, a fact) of GPC’s power. He has been conditioned to see his job as one of the most important in the world. So, as if dreaming that shooting his coworker and causing an atomic disaster wouldn’t be disturbing enough, he lives in terror that the omnipresent all-seeing psychiatric monitors will detect that he’s no longer fit to serve. Meanwhile, Ilsa Carter and Philip Jeng are prime operatives in a conspiracy to upset the GPC’s apple cart and start the human race moving again, though it cost the lives of millions. Included in their numbers is the Freak, a radiation mutant who they believe can see the future that they are working to build where people have great technology and live for centuries. (There are other mutants about, such as Joseph’s brother, Louis, who is described as merely hyperintelligent and suffering from a minor blood disease.)

The story follows something akin to the van Vogtian method of throwing in a new character or more every chapter for the first few chapters and complicating the story at each step, sometimes shifting into overdrive via abrupt transformations, such as in the middle of chapter four. This makes the story very difficult to discuss without giving a misleading impression or giving things away. Suffice to say, there is an intense feeling of paranoia, lots of mutants and occasional acquisitions of superpowers, lots of people not being who we thought they were, conspiracies, recomplicating cosmic vistas, and more. Alas, there are van Vogtian lapses, too, such as those very superpowers leading to a “fiat plot” that still stumbles badly in at least one aspect at the end. It’s an enjoyable read and has something to say and does many things well but is significantly flawed at the same time.

(For a fuller discussion, see the spoiler sections at the end.)

While not flawless, The Fairy Chessmen is a much better story. Again, we have shrinks and bureaucracy as Robert Cameron is Civilian Director of Psychometrics. Unlike Breden, he quickly retreats to the background (although he remains important) and center stage is taken by his second, Seth Pell, and especially his third, Ben DuBrose. Again, there is madness and conspiracy, as Cameron is hallucinating and DuBrose and Pell seem to be involved in a sort of conspiracy. Again, there are permutations in which things are not quite how they seem. But this is a different scenario, in that “Tomorrow and Tomorrow” was about an imposed stasis of all-out peace and this story is about an unstable equilibrium of all-out war. Eurasia has been partly taken over by a mixture of nations and races in the aftermath of WWII and on into WWIII. They call themselves the Falangists but it’s unclear whether they’re descended from the actual group or (more likely) just adopted the name. They are at war with the US and, in order to make (apparently very weak) atomic bombs as ineffective as possible, the US has become decentralized except for vast underground war cities. From these secret warrens, which are all accessible to each other by underground trains which twist and turn so that every city is 15 minutes from every other and no one knows where they are, a war of technicians controlling robot armies is waged akin to our own cybercommands and drones and whatnot. But, of course, it’s not as simple as that. We’re shown Duds, which are giant reflective bubbles that one day appeared over the landscape and gave off mild radiation and were utterly impenetrable. Eventually, they sort of decayed but their forcefields still exist. They’re taken to be failed Falangist weapons. And a weapon that is succeeding is a magic equation that is driving all the techs and scientists who try to solve it insane. (I unfortunately can’t help thinking of Monty Python’s “Funniest Joke in the World” here.) But not just insane – it appears that people who can solve part of it or come close to doing so attain special powers and suffer special effects, such as case M-204 who levitates in a coma or the poor guy who laughed (there’s that Joke again) before collapsing to a point and dropping to the center of the earth. My favorite line comes when two men are discussing the crazy nature of the equation and the bent, fractured, illogical universe it implies.

“Two plus two make five?” DuBrose said.

“Two and whee make diddle plus,” Pastor corrected.

(One thing that does puzzle me, though, is that no one seems concerned that the attempt to solve the equation is the equation’s purpose. In other words, if you’re fighting a technical war and your enemy is destroying your best minds by making you try to solve an equation, maybe throwing all your resources into solving it is exactly what you should avoid doing. Whether this is true or not, it seems like a possibility that some character should have raised and it would even heighten the paranoia. Another stray note – despite approvingly quoting the lines above, a weakness in both stories is strangely weak dialog. It’s not hard-to-say George-Lucas-style dialog but it just doesn’t read as lively and natural speech from lively, natural people.)

Back to similarities with “Tomorrow and Tomorrow”, we again have mutants with special powers such as Billy Van Ness and his “ETP”, or extra-temporal perception – he sees the 4D timeworms of all things. And, again, things turn out to be not so simple as a war between the US and the Falangists but discussing the nature of the conflict would spoil it. Again, see below if interested.

The essence of solving the equation is given in the title. Fairy chess is an actual thing, in which chess is played with some or all of variant boards, pieces, and rules. People are going crazy because of their rigid world views crumbling in the face of this equation and it takes a Lewis Carroll-like game-playing, flexible, unorthodox mind to have the skills to solve it and the mental resilience to deal with the results.

Thus the plot, but a core thematic element is responsibility and madness, along with flexibility and inflexibility. The reason Cameron is off-stage for much of the story is that Pell and DuBrose are trying to protect him from full knowledge of the situation and a crippling sense of responsibility. But responsibility can have a wider scope and it’s not always clear who should be responsible for what. In this, I feel like the plotting (still made of high-grade van Vogtian silly putty) and the theme are much better than “Tomorrow and Tomorrow”, not to mention that the manifold weirdness of this tale is even weirder. I haven’t even mentioned that Mr. Diddle Plus becomes God, for instance. Both stories, but this most of all, are great edge cases for anyone trying to define “science fiction”. This story brilliantly anticipates the incipient Cold War and, as I’ve said, even the cyberwars of technicians of today. It’s even full of neat touches like the opening scene with its motion-sensitive “window” of a beautiful sunny field which turns out to be a video display piped from the surface while we are deep underground, yet really is a window when it slides back into the wall to reveal the nightmarish abyss of the underground city beyond. But, in the general scheme, there’s really no science here at all and it’s pure fantasy. Yet the magic equation and all the fantastic things that derive from it are approached with a purely rational, scientific world view.

Whatever genre it may be, it’s recommended.

---

Spoiler Section

Spoilers for the middle of “Tomorrow and Tomorrow”: It turns out that the Freak is not seeing the future but is seeing probability continua. Worlds that do or could exist alongside the world of this story. This world is designated Alpha while Beta has had a similar history but has gotten moving again earlier and Gamma is a place ruined by plague and other worlds have been vaporized by hyperatomic accidents and Omega is the primary continuum the Freak is in contact with. The person at the other end, bizarrely, is John Van Buren, descendant of the President. The only thing I can think of here is that Van Buren seems to have gone to great lengths to avoid war and I guess his ancestor is supposed to have learned better, but I’m not sure.

Spoilers for the end of “Tomorrow and Tomorrow”: Where the story most falls down, IMO, is that the first character we’re introduced to and who maintains the focus throughout the vast majority of the story and who is supposed to have the critical task of causing the atomic disaster and even becomes Instinct Man with mutant superpowers of his own, ends up failing in his task, sort of consciously making his mutation recessive, and being carted off by the GPC to be interrogated off-stage. So Ilsa, Louis, Jeng, and Van Buren thrash out the idea of magically setting off the disaster via a directed charge differential when Alpha and Beta’s continua are brought into contact, using the entropy differential to trigger the pile. It could be argued Kuttner was trying to make a point about “instinct is not enough” or something but I don’t really see this and it’s still a dramatic failure regarding Joseph and complete handwavium regarding the final plot solution.

Spoilers for the middle of The Fairy Chessmen: Daniel Ridgely shows up as a minion of Secretary of War Kalender but turns out to be a time traveler from an era of an even more war-oriented culture than the story’s present and he has supplied the Falangists with the equation. Incidentally, this is why Cameron is going mad: magic rays are connected to him and the Falangists are zapping him with equation madness. But even that is not the whole story.

Spoilers for the end of The Fairy Chessmen: Ridgely has given them only a partial equation and not only knows the complete equation, but has a “counterequation” as well.

Continuing to spoil the story generally, I feel this story handles the “disappearing initial character” element much better. Breden is the intro character; is almost always at the forefront; has the critical climactic mission; and fails and is removed while the real finale occurs. I can’t see this as anything but a mistake. Cameron is the intro character but quickly recedes into the background for the most part while DuBrose (along with Pell for a bit) becomes the protagonist. This is for Cameron’s protection, so makes sense, and he never completely drops out. And then the finale doesn’t involve him in a critical sense but just as part of the whole thing, and then we focus on him for thematic purposes at the very end. So this is a success in that regard. And while this is a silly putty plot, the magic equation is given through the bulk of the story and even the counterequation is introduced before the end and the ETP was in the background all along but its application is reasonably non-obvious to the characters and requires preparation which takes time to set up so it seems slightly less handwavingly preposterous compared to the last-second “should have been obvious to Van Buren” continua-charging of the Pile. And, while both stories have something interesting to say (not to mention saying it in a fascinating way) I feel like the “war as a state of being” story has even more to it than the “peace stasis” story. Ironically, we live in a world with aspects of both, but the “war” resonates more.

I do wonder who was right, though. The Fairy Chessmen ends with DuBrose maturing and viewing things flexibly and thinking perhaps the future has been changed and so it’s a “happy ending” for him. But Cameron views the future as set, sees himself as responsible for creating it, and descends into a self-triggered madness. If the future that produced Ridgely is the future we’ll have, I feel Cameron is right about his (and our) responsibility. But I can’t help but think that DuBrose is right in having the flexible attitude our story has been promoting all along. Perhaps both are necessary statements to make.