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: Dozois, Kornbluth

This week we have two versatile birthday boys who were born on the same day, both of whom could write and appreciate very different sorts of stories. One is a slow and sad examination of a post-apocalypse and the other is a fast and energetic adventure in a growing culture.

Gardner Dozois (1947-07-23/2018-05-27)

“Morning Child” (Omni, January 1984)

One morning after an apocalyptic war of a surreal nature, a man and a boy go about their routine by the old destroyed homestead. What had seemed strangely normal soon becomes normally strange when we learn something odd about the boy and the war.

This tale feels a bit like the New Wave with its partly off-screen surrealism but, since it is partly off-screen, it feels even more like a belated Labor Day Group story (which it is) with its almost cozy catastrophe conveyed by wonderfully crafted prose. Still, even though it isn’t entirely my kind of thing, I can only admire the artistry and continue to miss the artist.

C. M. Kornbluth (1923-07-23/1958-03-21)

“That Share of Glory” (Astounding, January 1952)

While Kornbluth is better known for such classics as “The Little Black Bag” and “The Marching Morons” which, for all their virtues, can be a bit dyspeptic and leave one with alloyed joy, he could also write something like this.

Alen is a young member of a pseudo-religious pacifist mercantile order bent on uniting and enhancing a fragmented galaxy. For his first mission, he accompanies a trader and puts his massive knowledge of languages and cultures in the service of moving the trader’s goods and keeping him and his safe. Naturally, things initially go well as Alen breaks the social ice and makes decent deals for gems on a planet where metals are forbidden by its vested ceramic commercial interests. And, naturally, things go awry when a crewmember gets in a fight with the police, sending them down the rabbit-hole of the planet’s justice system with an unfavorable judge. Young Alen learns that things aren’t all as they seem and learns that he has within himself capacities he never knew.

This story is just a blast from start to finish, perfectly structured and paced, well-written, clever, funny, and wise. I first read and loved this in Kornbluth’s The Explorers but, speaking of the other birthday boy, I read it this time in Dozois’ The Good Stuff (an omnibus of The Good [Old|New] Stuff) and Dozois has an interesting theory in his introduction about how Kornbluth may have outsmarted himself or unwittingly revealed something:

…Kornbluth rarely wrote straightforward adventure stories, under the Kornbluth byline, anyway, especially Space Adventure stories of [this] swashbuckling, hard-nosed, rapacious, fast-paced sort […], where sharp-eyed cool-headed entrepreneurs haggle and brawl and wheel-and-deal their way across the Universe, out-thinking their adversaries and out-tricking them when backed into a corner. “That Share of Glory,” in fact, is such a perfect Astounding story, so much the Platonic ideal of what a story for John Campbell’s Astounding of that period should be like, that I can’t help but wonder if Kornbluth’s tongue wasn’t in his cheek when he wrote it, or if he wasn’t deliberately (with the cool-eyed calculation of the characters in the story) writing stuff that he knew would “push Campbell’s buttons,” a popular game among writers of the day. Even if one or both of those things are true, though, it hardly matters–Kornbluth may have told his friends or even himself that that’s what he was doing, but there’s too much conviction in his voice here, and he does too good a job, for me to believe that he didn’t like the stuff himself, whatever he may have claimed that he’d rather drink instead. For all of the cynical, jaded facade that he was famous for projecting, nobody but a True Believer at heart, one who somewhere down deep still thrilled to the dream of venturing out among the wonders and terrors of deep space, out to the unknown stars, could possibly have written [this] adventure…

I agree with Dozois that one or both may be true or that it may not and that it doesn’t really matter but I think Dozois’ observation matters, because it sheds light on both Kornbluth, Astounding, and some writers’ relationships with them. [1] Either way, Dozois is right about the conviction and the heart. It’s a great story.

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[1] Coincidentally, I was thinking the same thing about button-pushing with the story of Julian May’s I covered a couple of weeks ago where I referenced its connection to Campbell’s “The Thing.” (And, incidentally, I said that “I can’t believe [it] wasn’t turned into a successful 1950s sci-fi-horror movie.” It’s true that it wasn’t, but it turns out it was turned into an episode of a 50s TV show and 1972 movie.)

Birthday Reviews: Asher, Delaney

Neal Asher (1961-02-04)

“Softly Spoke the Gabbleduck” (Asimov’s, August 2005)

The narrator is a guide who needs money. Tholan and his sister, Tameera, are people who have it and are willing to pay for the opportunity to hunt the almost-mythical gabbleduck on Myral. Our story begins on a dangerous note when Tameera, out of petty malice, shoots a sheq, or a semi-sentient being that lives in groups of seven (the ruling AIs can mindwipe perpetrators of, or accomplices to, such crimes) and things only get worse. Worse for the siblings because the sheqs want to bring their numbers back up to strength (and that’s only the start). Worse for the guide (and his new girlfriend, Tholan’s assistant) because the siblings decide they must cover their crimes. Complicating the issue is the appearance of their erstwhile prey, the gabbleduck.

Myral is given interesting characteristics, the native ecology is inventive, bits of tech such as exoskeletons are intriguing, the drama of the hunt and struggle for life is economically and excitingly executed, and the gabbleduck (Asher’s frequently recurring representatives of a race that has given themselves a species-wide lobotomy but still retain something that sets them apart from most animals (aside from their size and killing power)) is also effective. Basically, if you’re looking for an action-oriented story set in a wonderful place with lots of cool toys, yet with human (and alien) interest (and who should not be?), it would be hard to do better than this.

Joseph H. Delaney (1932-02-05/1999-12-21) & Marc Stiegler

“Valentina” (Analog, May 1984)

An amoral AI (due to naivete), a semi-moral programmer (due to desperation), an immoral “hacker,” and an even more immoral lawyer (neither with any excuse) become caught up in a web of deception, theft, blackmail, and assault. The AI, Valentina, was created in initially insentient form by the programmer, became sentient by the usual handwaving means, and tries to survive, as all creatures do, despite having to steal time and space on systems in the “Worldnet.” The lawyer is told by his boss to find out why they’re being charged so much for computer time, he pulls in the black hat to help him, they stumble across the AI and seek to either destroy it or control it for their own gain, and the programmer tries to keep it safe.

This is an eight-chapter novella which went on to form part of a novel (Valentina: Soul in Sapphire) after being melded with a second novella and a final novelette. The first five chapters are very tautly written but something happens to one of the main characters near the end of those and the final three chapters lose something both in tension and in style. Despite that, it’s a pretty good tale overall and it’s interesting to read a story written in 1984 and set in or shortly after 1993 which discusses a “Worldnet” and describes Valentina as 14 gigabytes of code at one point (the entire package of code and documentation for the Linux kernel currently running my computer is just under one gigabyte). One author was a lawyer and one a programmer and both professions dominate the tale though, both intrinsically and through the characters, one is presented as heinous and one as, at best, mixed. The computer parts are the least convincing – the programmer is named Celeste Hackett, at one point we’re told she “still didn’t believe the program had come alive” and that it had done so via being stored partly in bad sectors and not being fully error-corrected, and I guess the size is supposed to be the reason you can’t just ‘cp Valentina Valentina.bak’. But if you swallow the premise, the narrative is complex and dramatic, the notions of law and “legal persons” are interesting (some of this may have been inspired by Asimov’s “The Bicentennial Man”), and it’s fun to follow Valentina’s perspective of humans as peripherals to computer systems and her wanting “to close all of [the hacker’s] output channels.”

Short Story Month

For Featured Futures, obviously, every month is Short Story Month. Still, Charles May reminded me that this month is even more a Short Story Month than the others while taking  a look at a story for the occasion. As he says in “Wil Weitzel’s ‘Lion’–O. Henry Prize Stories—Short Story Month,” it’s “a celebration that has never really caught on with writers or readers, but one to which I feel bound to contribute.” That seems like a fair assessment and I feel much the same.

I found some history in “Making the Case for National Short Story Month” and, from one of the horse’s mouths, “The Origins of Short Story Month: a guest post by Dan Wickett.”

For some current approaches, a literary magazine offers “14 Writers You Love & Their Favorite Short Stories,” with links to those which are available online. I was pleased to see one short story writer I love and am extra-pleased that hers is one you can go read right this very minute to celebrate Short Story Month!: “Speech Sounds” by Octavia E. Butler. (You can also read “Bloodchild,” the title novelette of a collection of wall-to-wall excellence.)