Birthday Reviews: Budrys, Effinger, Green, London, Silverberg, Smith

This week’s installment covers a record six birthdays which include stories of strange knowledge, strange intelligence, and sex and death. Three of the stories (those by Budrys, London, and Silverberg) are drawn from a single anthology, though that’s still less than three percent of its contents. The other three authors (Effinger, Green, and Smith) weren’t in that one and their tales are drawn from the other three books depicted.

Algis Budrys (1931-01-09/2008-06-09)

“The Man Who Always Knew” (Astounding, April 1956)

Algis Budrys is known, but not well known; he’s esteemed, but not greatly esteemed–and I don’t know why everyone doesn’t know him and think he’s among the greatest. In this, a sad, tired man has a great weight on him and finally unburdens himself to (who else?) his bartender and, after he’s taken the plunge, Budrys says, “He did look happy–happy all the way through, like a man with insomnia who suddenly feels himself drifting off to sleep.” There’s just something about that line that Budrys has written a million of and even better, but it’s just quintessentially him. Anyway, this is a bittersweet tale about a man with a very odd and special talent which results in fame, fortune, and unhappiness.

George Alec Effinger (1947-01-10/2002-04-27)

“The Aliens Who Knew, I Mean, Everything” (F&SF, October 1984)

For a very different tale about very different kind of knowledge, Effinger here gives us a very funny tale in which the President of the United States describes the day the aliens came and what happened after. These aliens, the nuhp, are very friendly and helpful (when they can be, as they are backwards in some amusing ways) but have never heard of the phrase “de gustibus non est disputandum” and their know-it-all ways result in expected transformations in human attitudes toward them and some unexpected transformations of humanity and the world beyond that. From the president asking them, “And how long do you plan to be with us?” and then lamenting to himself that he sounded like “a room clerk at a Holiday Inn” to his later conversations with the nuhp about the Joy of Bowling, this packs in many laughs and, despite being nuhp-like, I say this is a better story than hollyhocks.

Joseph Green (1931-01-14)

“The Crier of Crystal” (Analog, October 1971)

Among the last stories John W. Campbell bought before his death was an installment in Joseph Green’s series that would be fixed up into Conscience Interplanetary. The background for all the stories is that a component of international human space exploration is the Practical Philosopher Corps, which is made up of “Consciences” who try to determine if anything, no matter how bizarre, has any intelligence on the explored worlds and, if they do, those planets may be studied but not exploited. In this particular tale, the protagonist Conscience, Allan Odegaard, is on Crystal, a world of silicon-based life-forms, the strangeness and beauty of which is evoked well. He encounters a plant-like form which seems to make random noises mixed with random words on this very noisy world. Determining if it’s intelligent and trying to communicate with it may be difficult, but performing the same tasks with a human politician who wants to cancel the Consciences may be even more so!

Jack London (1876-01-12/1916-11-22)

“A Thousand Deaths” (The Black Cat, May 1899)

A man (something of a Byronic figure) is drowning (something of a Shelleyan fate) when the story opens. He quickly tells us his backstory and then loses consciousness. But we know he doesn’t die because it’s first person and, indeed, he is awakened to find himself being resuscitated by a strange mechanical contrivance. His savior happens to be his estranged father, who doesn’t recognize him. What follows is a strange bit of temporary double deception as the father imprisons and repeatedly kills the son as part of his researches into death and resuscitation until the son develops a machine of his own. This doesn’t have the strongest plot and narrating in the first person doesn’t exactly maximize any potential tension (to be fair, I think this was London’s first story or nearly so) but the echoes of the other Shelley and H. G. Wells’ island and, of course, the psychological, even mythical, elements of the story give it quite a bit of power.

Robert Silverberg (1935-01-15)

“To Be Continued” (Astounding, May 1956)

This story’s opening line (abridged) is “Gaius Titus Menenius sat in his apartment on Park Avenue” which is an excellent example of cognitive estrangement (or very mean parents) and it turns out to be the former, as he’s a two-thousand-year-old Roman who ages very, very slowly. But, oh happy day, he learns he’s aged enough to be able to reproduce and goes about trying to do so, with some surprising results which leads to another round of surprise and one more for the kicker. This is probably a pretty good example of Silverberg’s earlier work in that it has a great idea, a slick execution, and an effective ending, though it’s a little sloppy in the details of its premise and doesn’t explore it in the fullness the general concept might merit. Still, it’s a clever tale with some sense of wonder along with some ironic humor.

Clark Ashton Smith (1893-01-13/1961-08-14)

“The Weird of Avoosl Wuthoqquan” (Weird Tales, June 1932)

In this, one of Smith’s Hyperborean tales, we get the story of a money-lender who will spare nothing for a beggar and thus receives his weird from him for free: a doom which the money-lender scoffs at and forgets. Later, the time comes and quite a memorable night it is. The description of its start conveys how Smith’s 11 reverberated long enough for it to still be at least a six by the time it got to Jack Vance:

Avoosl Wuthoqquan sat in a lower chamber of his house, which was also his place of business. The room was obliquely shafted by the brief, aerial gold of the reddening sunset, which fell through a crystal window, lighting a serpentine line of irised sparks in the jewel-studded lamp that hung from copper chains and touching to fiery life the tortuous threads of silver and similor in the dark arrases. Avoosl Wuthoqquan, seated in an umber shadow beyond the aisle of light, peered with an austere and ironic mien at his client, whose swarthy face and somber mantle were gilded by the passing glory.

The form of this baroque tale is similar to many fables of retribution such as the one of Midas but the imaginative content and deft execution set it apart.

Birthday Reviews: Ballard, Foster, Jones, Swanwick

This week, I have a double shot of musical plants and one posthumous fantasy which all, in different ways, feature a man and a woman, as well as a warning about war which features the human and the inhuman. (Things came up, but apologies for the belated Ballard and for leaving only a few minutes for Jones.)

J. G. Ballard (1930-11-15/2009-04-19)

“Prima Belladonna” (Science Fantasy, December 1956)

I first read this and another Ballard story in Judith Merril’s Best of the Best many (many) years ago. They made quite an impression on me and yet it took me until relatively recently to get any Ballard books and I still haven’t read them. Anyway…

This is the tale of a sort of summer romance in the future in which people are in Recess(ion) and lazing the days away. Our narrator is a relatively industrious seller of musical plants (choro-florist) who meets an exotic golden-skinned woman with insect eyes. Its narrative approach combines the British SF authors’ fascination with vegetation and an almost Heinleinian casualness with the furniture of the future. Its prose style consists mostly of straightforward sentences composed of simple words combined in turn with some polysyllabic Latinate inventions. Together, these elements create a dreamy realism of faintly musical prose suited to the story.

That said, it is, as Hawthorne might say, very “symbolical of something” but isn’t actually particularly science fictional. Extract the science fiction and, as long as different metaphors for the psychosexual dynamics of the prima belladonna and the man who glances off her are substituted, the story doesn’t fall apart. But it is a good piece of writing, either way.

Alan Dean Foster (1946-11-18)

“Ye Who Would Sing” (Galileo, December 1976)

American Alan Dean Foster also writes a tale of musical vegetation but his orchestral orchard is quite detailed and made to seem literal and true while at the same time showing, as Congreve said, that “music has charms to soothe a savage breast.”

John Caitland is returning from an elliptically expressed job (presumably of assassination) when he’s caught in a storm and crash-lands in a remote hidden valley. The valley’s sole inhabitant is the research botanist Katie Naley who nurses him back to health. He finds that the valley is full of the last surviving Chimer trees which are worth uncountable millions after having been harvested into presumed extinction due to both their musical appeal and their inability to reproduce off-world. He greedily bides his time, learning and healing, but also changing in ways he doesn’t understand.

This is almost diametrically opposite from Ballard’s impressionist post-romanticism, with music being a classical balm in a highly structured tale in which the plot and concrete complex ecology bear much of the weight and provide much of the interest while the style is usually workmanlike but sometimes descends to saying things like “An aroma redolent of fresh bread and steaming meats impinged on his smelling apparatus.” But it is a compelling science fiction story, either way.

Raymond F. Jones (1915-11-17/1994-01-24)

“A Stone and a Spear” (Galaxy, December 1950)

After WWII, scientists continue to work on superweapons for the next war– not just of the atomic variety, but biological weapons and others. This prompts Dr. Curtis Johnson to think of the saying about not knowing what weapons WWIII would be fought with but knowing that WWIV would be fought with stones and spears. He’s on his way to try to bring Dr. Hamon Dell back to his war work after Dell had mysteriously abandoned it to become a farmer. When Johnson gets there, he encounters a strangely changed Dell who is dying in great pain and reveals part of the mystery which leads Johnson to meet with other men to learn more of the mystery which may change Johnson’s life… if it doesn’t end it.

Much like Haldeman’s Forever Peace, I don’t actually like this story in ways because I despise Rousseau’s notion of “forcing people to be free” and I also don’t like blaming science for the world’s ills. Still, it is a tense and exciting tale which raises interesting issues with no simple resolutions.

When one of the men talking to Johnson says, “Certain cells of the brain are responsible for specific characteristics. Ways of altering these cells were found” and talks about how this could be used to introduce “wholesale insanity” in “entire populations” and when they talk of countries being “committed to inhuman warfare” so that “each brutality prepares the way for the next” it seems timely. The irony is that, in my opinion, that’s just what the story seems to ultimately advocate – an inhuman peace more brutal than war.

Michael Swanwick (1950-11-18)

“Radio Waves” (Omni, Winter 1995)

Opening with “I was walking the telephone wires upside down, the sky underfoot cold and flat with a few hard bright stars sparsely scattered about it,” this posthumous technofantasy of electronic aeolian harps quickly develops a ghostly milieu with its own rules and logic, introduces us to Cobb (the tattered and mild shreds of a bad man in life), the Corpsegrinder (his nemesis), and the remains of a woman he initially knows only as Charlie’s Widow. Fighting against the impulse towards and revulsion from joining the cosmic background radiation as well as the soul-stealing Corpsegrinder, he actually finds his relationship with Charlie’s Widow to be perhaps the most significant thing.

I love posthumous fantasies in general and the freshness and power and sheer imagination of this one make it one of the best. I’m not sure how well it would fare today as we don’t seem to be capable of forgiving much these days but it’s an excellent story.

Asimov’s Centennial: Lucky Starr and the Big Sun of Mercury

Lucky Starr and the Big Sun of Mercury by Paul French (Isaac Asimov)
Hardcover: Doubleday, $2.50, 191pp, 1956

Project Light involves investigation into the nature of light in hyperspace which may have implications for energy and weather control on Earth but someone or something is sabotaging the project. Lucky Starr and John Bigman Jones are on Mercury to investigate and have to deal with several people who may be friend or foe, including a project manager who is stressed to the point of insanity, a base leader who sees menacing Sirians under his bed, and a lieutenant of a Senator bent on exposing “waste” and destroying Lucky’s employers, the Council of Science. Over the course of events, Starr and Jones will face death separately and solve the mystery together.

There are several problems with this book ranging from minor to middling which cumulatively become major. The opening behavior from the project engineer is too extreme and the lack of consequences for it is mystifying. The stress constantly laid upon Lucky’s anonymity while having everyone in the Solar System identify him is pointless and annoying. While villains are not meant to be lovable, the unmitigated repugnance of the Senator’s lackey is difficult to bear. The isolated nature of something in the old mine shafts which should be part of a system is a problem. More seriously, Lucky is made to be pretty stupid once and, though Bigman is the sidekick and still has his clever and heroic moments, he is made to be extremely stupid at least twice, if not three times.

While not exactly a problem, it’s at least odd that, with Asimov having dispensed with the unneeded “French” persona [1], he goes the opposite way and declares that all worlds in the Galaxy are settled with quadrillions of people (despite this having been and still being essentially confined to the Solar System). Further, the Sirians are now directly described, without using the word, as Spacers and (no spoiler, because it’s on more than one cover), positronic robots are introduced with the Three Laws paraphrased. In fact, there are specific echoes of “Runaround,” in which Donovan and Powell went to Mercury to see about restarting a mining operation. But only the robot really has anything to do with the plot and it’s not really necessary for it to be a positronic three-law robot.

All that said, this is an efficiently constructed tale at its core and, like the Venus adventure, has a good setting [2] that’s put to good use in Chapter 10, where readers, via Lucky and his somewhat magical inso-suit, are transported from wherever they happen to be reading to the surface of Mercury in order to experience its “big sun” in one of those exhilarating moments which are a big part of what makes science fiction so much fun.

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[1] The books continued to be published under the Paul French name though, presumably for consistency’s sake.

[2] As usual, Asimov includes a Foreword to warn the reader that, though it was published in 1956 with the best intention of being accurate, subsequent exploration has determined that Mercury does rotate rather than having one side always facing the sun. (However, unlike some stories which make tidal locking a central element with many ramifications extending from that, it’s not an overwhelming issue in this one.)

Review: The Dragon in the Sea by Frank Herbert

Cover of a 1970 Avon paperback

The Dragon in the Sea by Frank Herbert (Doubleday, 1956, hc, 192pp.)

Four men in a sub (to say nothing of the God).

During a war with the Eastern Powers, the nuclear sub Fenian Ram‘s job is to cruise into enemy territory to steal a cargo of oil. “Ensign” John Ramsey has been assigned to the four-person crew as the new electronics officer. However, he really works for “BuPsych” and his true mission is to find out why the last electronics officer went insane. As if this weren’t tense enough, the failure rate of these missions is shockingly high, the insanity may be the commanding officer’s fault, a dead body is found on the sub, and the killer spy may be one of the crew.

In the course of the mission, Ramsey struggles with both wanting and not wanting to fit in, experiences debilitating fear, has several near-death experiences, and gets to know Engineering Officer Joe Garcia, First Officer Les Bonnet, and the overtly religious and rigidly self-controlled Commander Harvey Sparrow (whose last name is likely another Biblical reference). It culminates in his getting to know himself and learning something about the nature of the world and sanity within it.

This was serialized in late 1955 in Astounding as Under Pressure (which is a good title) and has been reprinted as 21st Century Sub (which is not) but its original book publication was as The Dragon in the Sea which is taken from Isaiah 27:1. (“In that day the Lord with his hard and great and strong sword will punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent, Leviathan the twisting serpent, and he will slay the dragon that is in the sea”.)

Though it took me awhile to get around to it, I was inspired to read it after re-reading Arthur C. Clarke’s excellent The Deep Range years ago and wanting another undersea adventure. That’s really about all the two have in common, though, with this being focused on religion and particularly Freudian psychology, though it does also have the nuts and bolts of existence in a sub in wartime. It has more in common with several of Herbert’s other books which have a psycho-religious focus but something that sets it apart is its style: Herbert’s often strikes me as clotted and heavy but this was pleasantly spare and straightforward. On the other hand, an annoying aspect of the book (perhaps meant to reflect a continuous and inescapable voyage) is that there are no chapters and not even all that many blank lines dividing sections. My main reaction is that, while I can’t wholeheartedly endorse the book as it is, I could endorse the novella it should have been. With four main characters, one main objective, and one main (though complex) theme, and an atmosphere of pressure, it would have worked superbly as a “Nerves”-like novella. As a novel, it took me a long time to read because it was very easy to put down, but it has its good parts and the ending is very compelling and provocative.