Frank Herbert
Whipping Star a novel
Once, long centuries past, con-sentients with a psychological compulsion to "do good" had captured the government. Unaware of the the writhing complexities, the mingled guilts end self-punishments, beneath their compulsion, they had eliminated virtually all delays and red tape from government. The great machine with its blundering power over sentient life had slipped into high gear, had moved faster and faster. laws had been conceived and passed in the same hour. Appropriations had flashed into being and were spent in a fortnight. New bureaus for the mos improbable purposes had leaped int existence and proliferated like some insane fungus.
Government had become a great destructive wheel without a governor, whirling with such frantic speed that it spread chaos wherever it touched.
In desperation, a handful of sentients had conceived the Sabotage Corps to slow that wheel. There had been bloodshed and other degrees of violence, but the wheel had been slowed. In time, the Corps had become a Bureau, and the Bureau was whatever it was today--a organization headed into its own corridors of entropy, a group of sentients who preferred subtle diversion to violence. . . but were prepared for violence when the need arose.
This, of course, goes against conventional wisdom which insists that slow, inefficient governments, those that are bound up with red tape, are bad governments. It even suggests that slow and inefficient governments provide more freedom for its citizens than do fast and efficient governments. It's an interesting question to meditate on.
So what keeps the BuSab from turning into a juggernaut? Their
promotion policy. The way you get promoted is to sabotage your
boss. The Bureau of Sabotage therefore slows itself down and makes itself more inefficient by regularly replacing its management.
The Whipping Star is one of two novels that feature the exploits of Jorj X. McKie, Saboteur Extraordinary. The other novel is The Dosadi Experiment, one of my favorite novels by Frank Herbert, second only to Dune. In addition, there are two short stories: "A Matter of Traces" and "The Tactful Saboteur." While none of the stories are sequels, they are all set in Herbert's ConSentiency Universe, which include a galactic government in which humans and aliens are equal, something a bit unusual for a story first published in the late 50s and early 60s.
Jorj X. McKie is the protagonist in all four stories, and he clearly is not the typical handsome heroic Anglo-Saxon hero found in most SF at that time.He is described as a "squat little man, angry red hair, face like a disgruntled frog." If a film were to be made of one of these stories, I wonder who would play McKie.
The sentient races of the ConSentiency Universe have been blessed by the appearance of the Calebans, an alien race that apparently looks like or possibly inhabits something like a beach ball. Yet, this race provides the sentient races with a means of travel, the jump doors, that ignores the limitations posed by the speed of light. What is most surprising is that, as best as anyone can figure, there are only 83 of them. Well, there were 83 when they were first encountered, but they have disappeared lately so that now only one remains. McKie's assignment is to track down the last one and find out why the others have disappeared.
This sounds simple except for several minor details. The last Caleban has signed a contract with Mliss Abnethe, a woman who has an obsession with whipping things. Since she is one of the richest people in the galaxy, she was able to escape imprisonment for capturing and whipping other humans, but she had to agree to sin no more. She took that to mean that she couldn't go around whipping humans, but there was no mention of aliens. So, she decided to practice her obsession on a Caleban.
The other minor detail is that Calebans can't communicate too well with other sentients. In fact, nobody is certain that there's any communication at all. The parts I enjoyed most in the novel occurs when McKie meets up with the remaining Caleban and attempts to question him? her? it? about the fate of the other 82 Calebans. When the Caleban speaks, I can't help but wonder if those really are coherent rational statements or words that were just randomly assembled.
When McKie finally locates the last Caleban, he learns that the situation is much worse than he thought. The whipping in some way reduces the Caleban's life force. In fact, another five to ten whippings will destroy it, the last Caleban. When that happens every being who has ever used the Caleban's jump doors will die. Since everybody uses the jump doors regularly, including McKie, this means the end of sentient life in the Galaxy, or perhaps the Universe.
What I enjoyed also was something that didn't appear. Herbert didn't spend several chapters going into Mliss Abnethe's obsession, in other words a long-winded treatise how this obsession related to certain traumatic events in her childhood, something many contemporary writers find it necessary in order to expand the length of the story. Nor did he provide us with pages of excruciating detail on why McKie had racked up over 50 divorces so far. These were givens. This is an SF novel and not a psychoanalytical case study.
I think you might enjoy the story as long as you don't spend too much time trying to understand the pseudoscience.
Showing posts with label SF short stories. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SF short stories. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 5, 2017
Wednesday, December 23, 2015
Jack Finney: About Time (short stories)
Jack Finney
About Time
About Time is a collection of short stories, many of which, unsurprisingly, focus on time. It is a quiet, relaxing collection of tales, some tragic, some arguing that this really is a just universe, and others with a more cheerful resolution, but all entertaining.
"The Third Level"
This may be his most well-known short story or at least it's the one I most often remember reading in various anthologies.
The presidents of the New York Central and the New York, New Haven and Hartford railroads will swear on a stack of timetables that there are only two. But I say there are three, because I've been on the third level at Grand Central Station."
I think you can extrapolate from these opening lines the nature of the tale. It's something many, including me, have indulged in, what the psychiatrist later in the tale tells him is a "waking-dream wish fulfillment." It's a very enjoyable tale, which I never skip whenever I encounter it, unlike so many other tales, even though I know the twist at the end.
=====
"I Love Galesburg in the Springtime"
Something strange is happening in Galesburg, Illinois. A business man from Chicago came to town to build a factory, which would have meant tearing down some very old buildings and increasing traffic along some quiet residential streets. He had the town council's promise to make the necessary zoning changes and was ready to build. Then, one night, he goes for a walk down a quiet street and almost gets run down by a streetcar, or so he says. The problem is that there are no longer any streetcar tracks because the streetcars disappeared years ago. Was he drunk? Hallucinating? In any case, the deal is off. No factory will be built, by him anyway.
And, what about the old, old mansion that didn't burn down because the fire was put out by someone, only no one will claim credit for it. However, a neighbor who was obviously dreaming at the time tells a story that the fire was put out by the fire department which used horse-drawn fire engines. Of course, those engines had been retired years ago. It's unfortunate that the place didn't burn down, says local developer, because if it had, he would buy the property and get it rezoned for an apartment building. But, now, it would cost too much to tear it down, almost as much as to restore it, in fact.
And, those fine old elms on Cedar Street won't be cut down after all, or at least not for some time, because the man who had the power saw and had planned to cut them down is in the hospital with a broken leg. He was run down by a car that hadn't been made for many decades. It's appearance is so striking, the police are sure they will find the car involved in the hit-and-run accident very soon.
Perhaps. . .
=====
"Such Interesting Neighbors"
This is one of the classic themes in time travel stories. Anyone who has read a number of time travel stories will figure this one out within the first couple of paragraphs. New neighbors appear: they seem to lack knowledge of the simplest things, they have a strange accent, and they are vague about where they came from. They also have some interesting ideas about what the future will be like.
Enuf said?
=====
"The Coin Collector"
Ever wonder what would have happened if you had made a different decision, such as not going to college or going to college, or married someone else. "The Coin Collector" suggests one way of handling the problem--find an alternative universe. Finney later expanded this into a novel titled The Woodrow Wilson Dime.
Al's marriage is suffering a bit--loss of interest on his part--and his wife is getting upset at the way he seemingly pays her little or no attention. An ad about the fun and profit that can result from coin collecting intrigues him for a time. After making a routine purchase of a paper at the newsstand, he finds himself in a slightly different universe. It was the coin that triggered the transfer--well, the coin and his recognition of it as being different somehow.
Fortunately, habit guides him to his home which is in a different location. There he discovers that something else is different--his wife. She is someone he never met in the other world, and she is gorgeous. His interest in her reawakens her interest in him--same problem as in his other world. His gradual lack of interest (the honeymoon is over, he told his first wife) caused her to react the same way his first wife did.
However, after a brief period, his interest begins to wane and . . . and then . . .
=====
"Of Missing Persons"
What happened to Judge Crater and Ambrose Bierce? Charlie Ewell thinks he found out. What seems fascinating and possible after a couple of beers and late in the evening seems quite different in the bright light of the next day. But, Charlie is curious, so he decides to visit the Acme Travel Bureau anyway. If they decide he's the "right type," they will bring out a folder from beneath the counter, a folder they just made up as a joke. It's about a trip, one-way, to a planet called Verna. Why go to Verna?
Life is simple there, and it's serene. In someways, the good ways, it's like the early pioneering communities here in your country, but without the drudgery that kill people young. There is electricity. There are washing machines, vacuum cleaners, plumbing, modern bathrooms, and modern medicine, very modern. but there are no radios, television, telephones or automobiles. Distances are small. and people live and work in small communities. They raise or make most of the things they use. Every man builds his own house, with all the help he needs from his neighbors. Their recreation is their own, and there is a great deal of it, but there is no recreation for sale, nothing you buy a ticket to. They have dances, card parties, wedding, christenings, birthday celebrations harvest parties. There are swimming and sports of all kinds. There is conversation, a lot of it, plenty of joking and laughter. There is a great deal of visiting and sharing of meals and each day is well filled and well spent. There are no pressures, economic or social, and life holds few threats. Every man, woman,and child is a happy person.
It almost sounds too good to be true, and that's what bothers Charlie.
=====
"Lunch-Hour Magic"
Ted likes to go prowling around the various little shops in the vicinity during his lunch hour. Then, one day, he discovers a little store he hadn't seen before--The Magic Shop. Inside, he finds the usual merchandise expected in a "magic shop,". . . except for a pair of magic glasses. These glasses allow one to see through one layer of cloth. With them he can see people outside walking around in their underwear. Naturally he asks if there are stronger glasses, one that could see through two or three layers of clothing. The store owner says that he gets a lot of requests for those glasses, and he will ask the salesman the next time he comes in.
On subsequent trips Ted discovers other "helpful" items, and he tries them out on his fellow employees, who are helpless against the power of those talismans. All goes well, until Ted discovers that Frieda, a fellow employee, is also a lunchtime prowler and has discovered The Magic Shop.
=====
"Where the Cluetts Are"
Harry is an architect, who has some strange ideas about houses--they have souls--and he doesn't work with clients who really aren't interested in working with him in designing their home. The Cluetts are rich and have decided there are no limits on the cost of building their new home.
The problem is that the Cluetts are not interested that much in building a home, but in building a showpiece for their yacht-building business. They will live mostly in New York City and only spend time in the house, throwing grand parties for the rich and influential. In this way, they hope to make an impression on the rich and influential so that when they are interested in getting a yacht, they will remember the Cluetts.
Harry has just about decided that he's not going to take them on as clients when Ellie Cluett discovers a set of blueprints for a Victorian era house designed by Harry's grandfather. Sam and Ellie fall in love with the house instantly and tell Harry to build it, regardless of the cost.
All goes well and the house is built, but then. . .
I think the title is wrong.
=====
"The Face in the Photo"
Inspector Ihren is a very determined and persistent police officer. So, when a number of petty crooks, suspects in various crimes, can't be found, he gets upset. What upsets him most is that they seem to have completely disappeared and for a long period of time. Inspector Ihren knows that they have hiding places and can stay hidden for a while, but for many months? Not a clue, whisper, rumor, gossip? Something is wrong.
Then, one day, he discovers an old photograph with a familiar face and acting on a hunch, he begins viewing old films about sporting events and discovers another face. But this suggests something that is inconceivable. However, the projectionist makes an offhand comment about someone else who just viewed that film--a Professor Weygand from the university. A bit of nosing around and the Inspector discovers the good professor gave a paper recently about some aspects of time, and while he didn't understand most of the paper, the inspector got the idea that the professor thought time travel might be possible.
Perhaps it was time to talk to the professor.
=====
"I'm Scared"
Unlike Charles Fort who collected information about strange and inexplicable happenings that seemed unconnected and that had no apparent effect on the world, the anonymous narrator in this story finds that his collection of odd and anomalous events may point to something far more serious. It almost seems as though people and events sometimes come loose from their appointed place in time and appear elsewhen, sometimes with tragic results. And, they are happening more often lately.
=====
"Home Alone"
Charley is home alone as his wife and daughter are off somewhere. On the sixth day he glances upwards and sees a hawk in the sky, motionless as it lays on the updraft from the warm concrete below. Suddenly Charley wants to do just that: not fly in a powered plane but just hang there quietly and see what's below. And, the only way to do that is with a balloon. So, Charley begins to study up on balloons and then decides to make one.
Sometimes one's dreams do come true . . .
=====
"Second Chance"
The anonymous narrator is a young man who is obsessed with a classic automobile: the Jordan Playboy. He finds one, battered and beaten, and spends most of his time (left over from school, chores, and part-time job) restoring it. Finished, he takes it out for a drive along a deserted stretch of an old two-lane road that's been bypassed by the new four lane highway. And, then some strange things begin to happen. But, the strangest doesn't happen until months later, long after his first (and ultimately last) jaunt in the restored Jordan Playboy.
It's too bad the universe isn't really like this.
=====
"Hey, Look At Me!"
Peter Marks may have discovered why some people come back as ghosts.
This is not a book to be raced through and then put aside. It is best taken in small doses and savored before moving on to the next tale, a few days or weeks later. It has a long shelf life and won't spoil if ignored for a day or two or three. Read each story and then let your mind play with it for a while.
About Time
About Time is a collection of short stories, many of which, unsurprisingly, focus on time. It is a quiet, relaxing collection of tales, some tragic, some arguing that this really is a just universe, and others with a more cheerful resolution, but all entertaining.
"The Third Level"
This may be his most well-known short story or at least it's the one I most often remember reading in various anthologies.
The presidents of the New York Central and the New York, New Haven and Hartford railroads will swear on a stack of timetables that there are only two. But I say there are three, because I've been on the third level at Grand Central Station."
I think you can extrapolate from these opening lines the nature of the tale. It's something many, including me, have indulged in, what the psychiatrist later in the tale tells him is a "waking-dream wish fulfillment." It's a very enjoyable tale, which I never skip whenever I encounter it, unlike so many other tales, even though I know the twist at the end.
=====
"I Love Galesburg in the Springtime"
Something strange is happening in Galesburg, Illinois. A business man from Chicago came to town to build a factory, which would have meant tearing down some very old buildings and increasing traffic along some quiet residential streets. He had the town council's promise to make the necessary zoning changes and was ready to build. Then, one night, he goes for a walk down a quiet street and almost gets run down by a streetcar, or so he says. The problem is that there are no longer any streetcar tracks because the streetcars disappeared years ago. Was he drunk? Hallucinating? In any case, the deal is off. No factory will be built, by him anyway.
And, what about the old, old mansion that didn't burn down because the fire was put out by someone, only no one will claim credit for it. However, a neighbor who was obviously dreaming at the time tells a story that the fire was put out by the fire department which used horse-drawn fire engines. Of course, those engines had been retired years ago. It's unfortunate that the place didn't burn down, says local developer, because if it had, he would buy the property and get it rezoned for an apartment building. But, now, it would cost too much to tear it down, almost as much as to restore it, in fact.
And, those fine old elms on Cedar Street won't be cut down after all, or at least not for some time, because the man who had the power saw and had planned to cut them down is in the hospital with a broken leg. He was run down by a car that hadn't been made for many decades. It's appearance is so striking, the police are sure they will find the car involved in the hit-and-run accident very soon.
Perhaps. . .
=====
"Such Interesting Neighbors"
This is one of the classic themes in time travel stories. Anyone who has read a number of time travel stories will figure this one out within the first couple of paragraphs. New neighbors appear: they seem to lack knowledge of the simplest things, they have a strange accent, and they are vague about where they came from. They also have some interesting ideas about what the future will be like.
Enuf said?
=====
"The Coin Collector"
Ever wonder what would have happened if you had made a different decision, such as not going to college or going to college, or married someone else. "The Coin Collector" suggests one way of handling the problem--find an alternative universe. Finney later expanded this into a novel titled The Woodrow Wilson Dime.
Al's marriage is suffering a bit--loss of interest on his part--and his wife is getting upset at the way he seemingly pays her little or no attention. An ad about the fun and profit that can result from coin collecting intrigues him for a time. After making a routine purchase of a paper at the newsstand, he finds himself in a slightly different universe. It was the coin that triggered the transfer--well, the coin and his recognition of it as being different somehow.
Fortunately, habit guides him to his home which is in a different location. There he discovers that something else is different--his wife. She is someone he never met in the other world, and she is gorgeous. His interest in her reawakens her interest in him--same problem as in his other world. His gradual lack of interest (the honeymoon is over, he told his first wife) caused her to react the same way his first wife did.
However, after a brief period, his interest begins to wane and . . . and then . . .
=====
"Of Missing Persons"
What happened to Judge Crater and Ambrose Bierce? Charlie Ewell thinks he found out. What seems fascinating and possible after a couple of beers and late in the evening seems quite different in the bright light of the next day. But, Charlie is curious, so he decides to visit the Acme Travel Bureau anyway. If they decide he's the "right type," they will bring out a folder from beneath the counter, a folder they just made up as a joke. It's about a trip, one-way, to a planet called Verna. Why go to Verna?
Life is simple there, and it's serene. In someways, the good ways, it's like the early pioneering communities here in your country, but without the drudgery that kill people young. There is electricity. There are washing machines, vacuum cleaners, plumbing, modern bathrooms, and modern medicine, very modern. but there are no radios, television, telephones or automobiles. Distances are small. and people live and work in small communities. They raise or make most of the things they use. Every man builds his own house, with all the help he needs from his neighbors. Their recreation is their own, and there is a great deal of it, but there is no recreation for sale, nothing you buy a ticket to. They have dances, card parties, wedding, christenings, birthday celebrations harvest parties. There are swimming and sports of all kinds. There is conversation, a lot of it, plenty of joking and laughter. There is a great deal of visiting and sharing of meals and each day is well filled and well spent. There are no pressures, economic or social, and life holds few threats. Every man, woman,and child is a happy person.
It almost sounds too good to be true, and that's what bothers Charlie.
=====
"Lunch-Hour Magic"
Ted likes to go prowling around the various little shops in the vicinity during his lunch hour. Then, one day, he discovers a little store he hadn't seen before--The Magic Shop. Inside, he finds the usual merchandise expected in a "magic shop,". . . except for a pair of magic glasses. These glasses allow one to see through one layer of cloth. With them he can see people outside walking around in their underwear. Naturally he asks if there are stronger glasses, one that could see through two or three layers of clothing. The store owner says that he gets a lot of requests for those glasses, and he will ask the salesman the next time he comes in.
On subsequent trips Ted discovers other "helpful" items, and he tries them out on his fellow employees, who are helpless against the power of those talismans. All goes well, until Ted discovers that Frieda, a fellow employee, is also a lunchtime prowler and has discovered The Magic Shop.
=====
"Where the Cluetts Are"
Harry is an architect, who has some strange ideas about houses--they have souls--and he doesn't work with clients who really aren't interested in working with him in designing their home. The Cluetts are rich and have decided there are no limits on the cost of building their new home.
The problem is that the Cluetts are not interested that much in building a home, but in building a showpiece for their yacht-building business. They will live mostly in New York City and only spend time in the house, throwing grand parties for the rich and influential. In this way, they hope to make an impression on the rich and influential so that when they are interested in getting a yacht, they will remember the Cluetts.
Harry has just about decided that he's not going to take them on as clients when Ellie Cluett discovers a set of blueprints for a Victorian era house designed by Harry's grandfather. Sam and Ellie fall in love with the house instantly and tell Harry to build it, regardless of the cost.
All goes well and the house is built, but then. . .
I think the title is wrong.
=====
"The Face in the Photo"
Inspector Ihren is a very determined and persistent police officer. So, when a number of petty crooks, suspects in various crimes, can't be found, he gets upset. What upsets him most is that they seem to have completely disappeared and for a long period of time. Inspector Ihren knows that they have hiding places and can stay hidden for a while, but for many months? Not a clue, whisper, rumor, gossip? Something is wrong.
Then, one day, he discovers an old photograph with a familiar face and acting on a hunch, he begins viewing old films about sporting events and discovers another face. But this suggests something that is inconceivable. However, the projectionist makes an offhand comment about someone else who just viewed that film--a Professor Weygand from the university. A bit of nosing around and the Inspector discovers the good professor gave a paper recently about some aspects of time, and while he didn't understand most of the paper, the inspector got the idea that the professor thought time travel might be possible.
Perhaps it was time to talk to the professor.
=====
"I'm Scared"
Unlike Charles Fort who collected information about strange and inexplicable happenings that seemed unconnected and that had no apparent effect on the world, the anonymous narrator in this story finds that his collection of odd and anomalous events may point to something far more serious. It almost seems as though people and events sometimes come loose from their appointed place in time and appear elsewhen, sometimes with tragic results. And, they are happening more often lately.
=====
"Home Alone"
Charley is home alone as his wife and daughter are off somewhere. On the sixth day he glances upwards and sees a hawk in the sky, motionless as it lays on the updraft from the warm concrete below. Suddenly Charley wants to do just that: not fly in a powered plane but just hang there quietly and see what's below. And, the only way to do that is with a balloon. So, Charley begins to study up on balloons and then decides to make one.
Sometimes one's dreams do come true . . .
=====
"Second Chance"
The anonymous narrator is a young man who is obsessed with a classic automobile: the Jordan Playboy. He finds one, battered and beaten, and spends most of his time (left over from school, chores, and part-time job) restoring it. Finished, he takes it out for a drive along a deserted stretch of an old two-lane road that's been bypassed by the new four lane highway. And, then some strange things begin to happen. But, the strangest doesn't happen until months later, long after his first (and ultimately last) jaunt in the restored Jordan Playboy.
It's too bad the universe isn't really like this.
=====
"Hey, Look At Me!"
Peter Marks may have discovered why some people come back as ghosts.
This is not a book to be raced through and then put aside. It is best taken in small doses and savored before moving on to the next tale, a few days or weeks later. It has a long shelf life and won't spoil if ignored for a day or two or three. Read each story and then let your mind play with it for a while.
Monday, February 9, 2015
Some Great Books Read in 2014
The following are books that I really enjoyed reading during the past year, and, if granted time, there's a good chance I will read them again.
Anthony Powell: A Dance to the Music of Time, Movements 1 and 2.
--We start with Nick Jenkins as a school boy just after WWI and follow him and his friends and acquaintances up to just before the outbreak of WWII. A fascinating look at English life between the two world wars.
--Movements 3 and 4 will probably cover WWII and after. I've got them and they're just waiting for some free time.
--Link to post
http://tinyurl.com/lbyystr
Adrian McKinty: The Cold Cold Ground and I Hear the Sirens in the Streets
--the first two of McKinty's four mysteries set in the Time of the Troubles in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Books 3 and 4 are on my TBR list. It's 1981, and Sean Duffy is one of the few Roman Catholics in the predominantly Protestant police force in Belfast and is viewed with suspicion by both Catholics and Protestants. Complex plots and local color set against a background of a city at war with itself in an undeclared civil war make this a must read series.
--the first two of McKinty's four mysteries set in the Time of the Troubles in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Books 3 and 4 are on my TBR list. It's 1981, and Sean Duffy is one of the few Roman Catholics in the predominantly Protestant police force in Belfast and is viewed with suspicion by both Catholics and Protestants. Complex plots and local color set against a background of a city at war with itself in an undeclared civil war make this a must read series.
M John Harrison: Light, Nova Swing, and Empty Space: A Haunting, the Kefahuchi trilogy
--a space adventure that ranges from the late 20th century to the 25th century. Strange things happen, and some of them never get explained, especially those involving aliens.
--The three novels are relatively independent of each other, but I would recommend reading them in the published order.
--Humans in space, in Harrison's trilogy (in fact in most of his novels), encounter aliens that are truly alien, not just humans in Halloween costumes, as are so many in other works involving aliens. Some are harmless, some helpful, some dangerous (some deliberately and some ??), and many inexplicable.
If you're looking for something different, try this series.
.
Michael Stanley: Death of the Mantis and Deadly Harvest.
--Books 3 and 4 of the cases of Detective "Kubu" of the Botswana Police. Good mysteries, good plots, interesting characters, and fascinating lore about the people of Botswana and southern Africa in general. Waiting now for Book 5. The novels are independent of each other, so they can be read out of order. If you can read only one, then choose Death of the Mantis.
--Books 3 and 4 of the cases of Detective "Kubu" of the Botswana Police. Good mysteries, good plots, interesting characters, and fascinating lore about the people of Botswana and southern Africa in general. Waiting now for Book 5. The novels are independent of each other, so they can be read out of order. If you can read only one, then choose Death of the Mantis.
Shirley Jackson: The Haunting of Hill House
--the best haunted house novel I have ever read.
--see post on Oct. 31, 2010, made the first time I read it. The post also contains some comments about the 1963 film.
http://tinyurl.com/mkoy6qj
Gregory Benford: Anomalies
--a great collection of short stories, covering a wide variety of topics: adventures involving time travel, black holes, cryogenics, high tech warfare, a mix of science and religion, and several cosmological theories.
Link to a number of posts about the stories.
http://tinyurl.com/nf3tjja
David Brin: Existence
--Brin's most recent novel. A new look at the First Contact theme and its possible threats.
--he uses multiple narrators to provide a variety of viewpoints responding to the first contact.
--link to post
http://tinyurl.com/on9w5vq
Loren Eiseley: The Night Country
--I joined the Time Reading Program after seeing an ad about the program which featured one paragraph from another of his books. After reading that one, The Immense Journey, I searched for everything and anything written by him.
--See link to various posts about this work.
http://tinyurl.com/k4g9muh
--he uses multiple narrators to provide a variety of viewpoints responding to the first contact.
--link to post
http://tinyurl.com/on9w5vq
Loren Eiseley: The Night Country
--I joined the Time Reading Program after seeing an ad about the program which featured one paragraph from another of his books. After reading that one, The Immense Journey, I searched for everything and anything written by him.
--See link to various posts about this work.
http://tinyurl.com/k4g9muh
Kobo Abe': The Face of Another
--a man whose face is terribly scarred from an industrial accident creates a lifelike mask, that seems to take on a life of its own when he wears it.
--a man whose face is terribly scarred from an industrial accident creates a lifelike mask, that seems to take on a life of its own when he wears it.
The following link leads to posts about the novel and the film
http://tinyurl.com/pvdmbjt
Franz Werfel: Star of the Unborn
--little known and mostly ignored SF novel about a man who dies and is resurrected 100.000 years in the future and presented as a wedding gift.
--fascinating picture of future humans and their culture
--stuffy and somewhat pompous narrator adds to the fun. He reminds me of the narrator in Thomas Mann's Dr. Faustus.
--link to posts about the novel
http://tinyurl.com/o3dr7vdhttp://tinyurl.com/pvdmbjt
Franz Werfel: Star of the Unborn
--little known and mostly ignored SF novel about a man who dies and is resurrected 100.000 years in the future and presented as a wedding gift.
--fascinating picture of future humans and their culture
--stuffy and somewhat pompous narrator adds to the fun. He reminds me of the narrator in Thomas Mann's Dr. Faustus.
--link to posts about the novel
Saturday, January 17, 2015
Gregory Benford: the last of the Anomalies
These are the last stories from Greg Benford's latest collection of short stories, Anomalies.
"Gravity's Whispers"
A CETI Tale: A scientist with LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory--a real institution sponsored by CalTech and MIT) has detected a gravity wave fluctuation and sent it to a mathematician to see if there's something there. There is, but it's an artificial pattern, obviously created by someone? And, there's a problem. To be able to create a gravitational wave with a signal requires the ability to "sling around neutron stars and make them sing in code." Do we really want to open communication with a race so powerful?
"Ol' Gator"
Evolution seems to be the focus of this strange little story. It's a narrative told by a GI in Iraq. He alternates between what's happening to him during the conflict with Saddam Hussein's troops and memories of his childhood days in the South. It was that part of Iraq that had been swampland and then partially drained that brought back those memories, for the crocs in the swamp reminded him of the gators back home and his grandpa's war with the patriarch of the swamp--Ol' Gator.
At one point in the story the narrator is separated from his unit and finds a very large contingent of Iraqi insurgents headed his way. However he finds he's not alone, for he has some very unusual companions. Rather than spoil the fun, I'll just quote Loren Eiseley, the eminent anthropologist and essayist: "The world is fixed, we say: fish in the sea, birds in the air. But in the mangrove swamps by the Niger, fish climb trees and ogle uneasy naturalists who try unsuccessfully to chase them back into the water. There are things still coming ashore." from The Immense Journey.
"The Champagne Award"
According to a Note provided by Benford, this is a satiric look at the government and population control. As the general population seems unwilling or unable to control the birth rate, the government steps in with its own program. People are issued KidCred cards which gives each person the right to bear a child. They can use the credit themselves or can transfer it to someone else. Or they could offer it in a lottery in which they get the proceeds. That could turn out to be in the millions of dollars, if offered at the right time. The parents of children born illegally, to those without KidCred or who have used up their KidCred, are fined heavily, and the children receive no social benefits and no education. There is even some talk about prison sentences for those who bear children without KidCred.
"Mercies"
Inter-dimensional travel. As I think I mentioned in an earlier post, one common theme in SF is the time travel story in which there is an attempt to go back in time to prevent some great evil or catastrophe: assassinating Hitler is a favorite among writers. This story doesn't involve time travel but a different method of preventing some evil.
Set some time in the future, Warren has become rich and uses his wealth to bring his dream to fruition. He has hated serial killers since he first learned of them as a teenager. It's too late to do something about those in the world in the dimension in which he resides, so he decides to do something about those in worlds in other dimensions, especially those so "close" that there's only a very small difference between them and his world.
He has the people who work for him research these other worlds for those who appear to be the counterparts of serial killers in his world. He decides to kill them, and to kill them before they've started killing. In other words, Warren has decided on a pre-emptive strike, since these people have not yet harmed anyone. There's a problem though, something Warren did not take into account, but he eventually encounters it.
The moral question one might consider is Warren's justification for killing these people: they haven't harmed anyone at the point he is to kill them. Is this justifiable?
"Doing Lennon"
This is another cryonics tale. It was written in 1975, some five years before John Lennon was killed in 1980. Henry Fielding has chosen "the long sleep" before he really needed it. When he awakes in the 22nd century, he claims to be John Lennon and that he was "fleeing political persecution." This is why he used the alias.
In his real life, Henry Fielding had been a broker who had done quite well financially, along with surreptitiously dipping into several accounts belonging to others. He was a devoted follower of the Beatles, collecting records, memorabilia, and gossip about them, as well as memorizing the lyrics to all of their songs. On his vacations, he haunted Liverpool, picking up the local colour and accents and visiting places important to the Beatles legend. Now he was going to put all that knowledge to work.
Things go well for a while for him in the future: his singing and guitar playing are accepted by all. Then things get complicated. First, he is told that the corpsicle of Paul McCartney has been discovered, and everybody is breathlessly awaiting their reunion. Then, he discovers Henry Fielding the Real. Who then is he?
Afternotes
Brief comments by Gregory Benford about each of the stories.
"Gravity's Whispers"
A CETI Tale: A scientist with LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory--a real institution sponsored by CalTech and MIT) has detected a gravity wave fluctuation and sent it to a mathematician to see if there's something there. There is, but it's an artificial pattern, obviously created by someone? And, there's a problem. To be able to create a gravitational wave with a signal requires the ability to "sling around neutron stars and make them sing in code." Do we really want to open communication with a race so powerful?
"Ol' Gator"
Evolution seems to be the focus of this strange little story. It's a narrative told by a GI in Iraq. He alternates between what's happening to him during the conflict with Saddam Hussein's troops and memories of his childhood days in the South. It was that part of Iraq that had been swampland and then partially drained that brought back those memories, for the crocs in the swamp reminded him of the gators back home and his grandpa's war with the patriarch of the swamp--Ol' Gator.
At one point in the story the narrator is separated from his unit and finds a very large contingent of Iraqi insurgents headed his way. However he finds he's not alone, for he has some very unusual companions. Rather than spoil the fun, I'll just quote Loren Eiseley, the eminent anthropologist and essayist: "The world is fixed, we say: fish in the sea, birds in the air. But in the mangrove swamps by the Niger, fish climb trees and ogle uneasy naturalists who try unsuccessfully to chase them back into the water. There are things still coming ashore." from The Immense Journey.
"The Champagne Award"
According to a Note provided by Benford, this is a satiric look at the government and population control. As the general population seems unwilling or unable to control the birth rate, the government steps in with its own program. People are issued KidCred cards which gives each person the right to bear a child. They can use the credit themselves or can transfer it to someone else. Or they could offer it in a lottery in which they get the proceeds. That could turn out to be in the millions of dollars, if offered at the right time. The parents of children born illegally, to those without KidCred or who have used up their KidCred, are fined heavily, and the children receive no social benefits and no education. There is even some talk about prison sentences for those who bear children without KidCred.
"Mercies"
Inter-dimensional travel. As I think I mentioned in an earlier post, one common theme in SF is the time travel story in which there is an attempt to go back in time to prevent some great evil or catastrophe: assassinating Hitler is a favorite among writers. This story doesn't involve time travel but a different method of preventing some evil.
Set some time in the future, Warren has become rich and uses his wealth to bring his dream to fruition. He has hated serial killers since he first learned of them as a teenager. It's too late to do something about those in the world in the dimension in which he resides, so he decides to do something about those in worlds in other dimensions, especially those so "close" that there's only a very small difference between them and his world.
He has the people who work for him research these other worlds for those who appear to be the counterparts of serial killers in his world. He decides to kill them, and to kill them before they've started killing. In other words, Warren has decided on a pre-emptive strike, since these people have not yet harmed anyone. There's a problem though, something Warren did not take into account, but he eventually encounters it.
The moral question one might consider is Warren's justification for killing these people: they haven't harmed anyone at the point he is to kill them. Is this justifiable?
"Doing Lennon"
This is another cryonics tale. It was written in 1975, some five years before John Lennon was killed in 1980. Henry Fielding has chosen "the long sleep" before he really needed it. When he awakes in the 22nd century, he claims to be John Lennon and that he was "fleeing political persecution." This is why he used the alias.
In his real life, Henry Fielding had been a broker who had done quite well financially, along with surreptitiously dipping into several accounts belonging to others. He was a devoted follower of the Beatles, collecting records, memorabilia, and gossip about them, as well as memorizing the lyrics to all of their songs. On his vacations, he haunted Liverpool, picking up the local colour and accents and visiting places important to the Beatles legend. Now he was going to put all that knowledge to work.
Things go well for a while for him in the future: his singing and guitar playing are accepted by all. Then things get complicated. First, he is told that the corpsicle of Paul McCartney has been discovered, and everybody is breathlessly awaiting their reunion. Then, he discovers Henry Fielding the Real. Who then is he?
Afternotes
Brief comments by Gregory Benford about each of the stories.
Monday, December 29, 2014
Gregory Benford: Still more from Anomalies
More stories from Gregory Benford's latest short story collection: Anomalies
Comes the Evolution"
The characters talk, endlessly, about "revolution," but the title of the story refers to evolution, a gradual change that takes place, when one species slowly becomes another. Note the names of the characters: Lenin, Trotsky, Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, and Emma Goldman. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the 20th century.
They see themselves as revolutionaries, but their plans show them to be something quite different. Eventually they all come together to rejuvenate the Cause, but their plans, however, have evolved into 21st century versions whose new focus is not on changing governments but upon finding a safe haven where they can create a utopia.
------------------------------------------------------------------
"Anomalies"
Another of Benford's short stories that plays with the theme of religion and science. An amateur astronomer has discovered that the moon is a few minutes ahead of schedule. It's still in its proper orbit, but it appears to have somehow been transported to an advanced position. This is impossible, of course. Later it is discovered that several stars are also not in their proper position and appeared to have suddenly moved within an hour of the time the moon had jumped ahead. This also was impossible.
One of the characters theorizes that the universe is a computer program and the sudden movements were the result of a bug in the program. This, of course, brings up the question of the identity of the programmer. Also, computer programs are normally debugged, here on earth anyway. Will this program be debugged? What effect will this possible bug have on earth and how will the debugging take place? Will it also affect earth? Eventually a new field of study emerges: one that is a combination of science, philosophy, and religion--the field of Empirical Theology.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
"Caveat Time Traveler"
This is a short story about time travel and some facts about human nature. The title says it all: Let Time Travelers Beware. Human nature doesn't change.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Lazarus Rising"
This is a tale of cryonics. Carlos Forenza is 87 years old. He has come in for his medical checkup. If they find something that can't be cured or is extremely expensive to cure, they would put him into cryonic sleep and let the future decide when it was ready to deal with his problem. They wouldn't even wake him to inform him of the situation. But, something has gone wrong for he is awake, with his senses disconnected. Clearly he has returned to consciousness before the process of putting him into cold sleep has been codmpleted. Now, he has to regain control of his body and let them know that something had gone wrong.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Isaac From The Outside"
This is a poem that brings in a number of SF writers, one of whom, obviously, is Isaac Asimov. The theme is simple: one shouldn't make assumptions about a person from that person's writings. The poem points out some inconsistencies between what these SF authors write about and how they live their own lives.
One topic covered is cryonics, about which many of these authors have written in various short stories and novels. But, the poem goes one to ask the following: how many actually went beyond treating cryonics simply as a story element and looked into it as something they might actually consider for themselves?
The next question should be the reader's question. I've always considered cryonics simply as a story element. But today there are companies in existence that will perform this service. What about you? Are you interested?
Hmmmm. . . I wonder how much it costs.
Comes the Evolution"
The characters talk, endlessly, about "revolution," but the title of the story refers to evolution, a gradual change that takes place, when one species slowly becomes another. Note the names of the characters: Lenin, Trotsky, Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, and Emma Goldman. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the 20th century.
They see themselves as revolutionaries, but their plans show them to be something quite different. Eventually they all come together to rejuvenate the Cause, but their plans, however, have evolved into 21st century versions whose new focus is not on changing governments but upon finding a safe haven where they can create a utopia.
------------------------------------------------------------------
"Anomalies"
Another of Benford's short stories that plays with the theme of religion and science. An amateur astronomer has discovered that the moon is a few minutes ahead of schedule. It's still in its proper orbit, but it appears to have somehow been transported to an advanced position. This is impossible, of course. Later it is discovered that several stars are also not in their proper position and appeared to have suddenly moved within an hour of the time the moon had jumped ahead. This also was impossible.
One of the characters theorizes that the universe is a computer program and the sudden movements were the result of a bug in the program. This, of course, brings up the question of the identity of the programmer. Also, computer programs are normally debugged, here on earth anyway. Will this program be debugged? What effect will this possible bug have on earth and how will the debugging take place? Will it also affect earth? Eventually a new field of study emerges: one that is a combination of science, philosophy, and religion--the field of Empirical Theology.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
"Caveat Time Traveler"
This is a short story about time travel and some facts about human nature. The title says it all: Let Time Travelers Beware. Human nature doesn't change.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Lazarus Rising"
This is a tale of cryonics. Carlos Forenza is 87 years old. He has come in for his medical checkup. If they find something that can't be cured or is extremely expensive to cure, they would put him into cryonic sleep and let the future decide when it was ready to deal with his problem. They wouldn't even wake him to inform him of the situation. But, something has gone wrong for he is awake, with his senses disconnected. Clearly he has returned to consciousness before the process of putting him into cold sleep has been codmpleted. Now, he has to regain control of his body and let them know that something had gone wrong.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Isaac From The Outside"
This is a poem that brings in a number of SF writers, one of whom, obviously, is Isaac Asimov. The theme is simple: one shouldn't make assumptions about a person from that person's writings. The poem points out some inconsistencies between what these SF authors write about and how they live their own lives.
One topic covered is cryonics, about which many of these authors have written in various short stories and novels. But, the poem goes one to ask the following: how many actually went beyond treating cryonics simply as a story element and looked into it as something they might actually consider for themselves?
The next question should be the reader's question. I've always considered cryonics simply as a story element. But today there are companies in existence that will perform this service. What about you? Are you interested?
Hmmmm. . . I wonder how much it costs.
Wednesday, December 10, 2014
Gregory Benford: more from Anomalies
Here are several more stories from Greg Benford's latest short story collection: Anomalies
"Twenty-Two Centimeters"
This story plays with one of the present theories of the universe-- the membrane theory. I'll quote from the story itself, as one of the characters expresses her problem with the theory, which is the same as mine.
"She did not really follow the theory; she was an astronaut. It was hard enough to comprehend the mathematical guys when they spoke English. For them, the whole universe was a sheet of space-time, called 'brane' for membrane. And there were other branes, spaced out along an unseen dimension. Only gravity penetrated between those sheets. All other fields, which meant all mass and light, was stuck to the branes."
The "physics guys" discovered another brane just twenty-two centimeters away from our universe, in another dimension, and signals emanating from it. They developed a portal into the other universe and Julie and Al, being astronauts, and not having to understand the theory or the mathematics, were chosen to pop through the portal and take a look. And discover the source of those signals. This is a first contact tale, rather unique I thought. It also has a vivid description of the Counter-Earth and its inhabitants.
"Applied Mathematical Theology"
Benford here plays with an important astronomical discovery that plays an important role in the present theory regarding the formation of the universe. It is not a story with characters, but a journal article or something similar that gives an account of "(t)he discovery that the Cosmic Microwave Background has a pattern buried within it (which) unsettled the entire world."
The temperature of this 2.7 K. emission left over from the Big Bang varies across the sky. Temperature ripples can be broken into angular- co-ordinate Fourier components, and this is where radio astronomers found a curious pattern--a message, or at least, a pattern. Spread across the microwave sky there was room in the detectable fluctuations for about 10,000 bits, or roughly a thousand words."
Naturally considerable controversy raged about the message, its creator(s) (if one), and implications to be drawn from this. At first, the most disputed issue was its nature:was it a real message or just a random collection of fluctuations?
"One insight did come from this, however. Benford's Law (not the author, and a real law), which states that the logarithms of artificial numbers are uniformly distributed, did apply to the tiny fluctuations. This proved that the primordial microwaves were not random, and so had been artificially encoded, perhaps by some even earlier process. So there was a massage, of sorts."
It's a short article, almost three pages long and possesses a rather tongue-in-cheek resolution, which leaves everybody happy.
"The Man Who Wasn't There"
This is a high-tech action story set a few decades in the future. Islamic extremists are trying to reconquer Europe through the use of terrorist tactics and the courts. Fully aware of the West's ability to intercept electronic communications, they have gone to a low-tech solution--human memory. All plans and strategies are now committed to memory and communicated by certain Masters. And, these masters are fully prepared to commit suicide rather than be captured.
The anti-terrorist squad has learned that one of these masters is now living in a compound in one of the suburbs of Paris. They are preparing to attack the compound and have a few surprises in store for the terrorists. One is an invisibility suit, comprised of optical fibers which transferred light waves around the suit. However, it was still dangerous because it affected light only, not an actual object, such as a bullet. They also had one other surprise for the terrorist.
To get in and get the information, they have to be fast and efficient.
"The Final Now"
With a stretch, one might see this tale as a sequel to the earlier story,"Applied Mathematical Theology," a story about a message that seemed to be encoded within the Cosmic Microwave Background." The message's existence had been thoroughly documented, but three questions still remained: who left the message, why was the message left, and what was the message.
The story begins:
He suddenly thought that they had not seen anyone for quite a while. Amid the vast voyages, adventures, striking vistas--and yes, while basking in symphonies of sensation--they had not needed company.
Even as twilight closed in. But now--
"Do you recall--?" He asked, turning to Her, and could not recall an ancient name. Names were unimportant, mere symbols, yes. . .but He did remember that names had existed to distinguish between multitudes. When? First task: to name the beasts. When had He and She said that?
. . .
They were, of course, the two who gave tension to this finite, bounded existence. This universe. Duality was fundamental, as was helicity itself, which necessarily had to be included in this exponentially expanding space-time.
Creativity seems to require two--male and female. They had also brought forth the Others, short-lived and limited creatures, but who yet had consciousness and intelligence. These, however, were not completely separate beings for the Others were, in a sense, part of the He and the She. They were brought forth to "To summon up insights that lie within the two of us, but that we cannot express overtly. To be vast meant having parts of yourself that you could not readily find.
He and She now realize that the universe is running down. They call forth one of the Others and tell him that the end time is near. Upon hearing this, the Other said strongly, "I do not accept this." At last, the point. She said with love and deep feeling, "Then strive to alter."
Perhaps this story provides the answers to the earlier story in the collection as "The Final Now" was published four years after "Applied Mathematical Theology."
Perhaps not.
Your thoughts?
"Twenty-Two Centimeters"
This story plays with one of the present theories of the universe-- the membrane theory. I'll quote from the story itself, as one of the characters expresses her problem with the theory, which is the same as mine.
"She did not really follow the theory; she was an astronaut. It was hard enough to comprehend the mathematical guys when they spoke English. For them, the whole universe was a sheet of space-time, called 'brane' for membrane. And there were other branes, spaced out along an unseen dimension. Only gravity penetrated between those sheets. All other fields, which meant all mass and light, was stuck to the branes."
The "physics guys" discovered another brane just twenty-two centimeters away from our universe, in another dimension, and signals emanating from it. They developed a portal into the other universe and Julie and Al, being astronauts, and not having to understand the theory or the mathematics, were chosen to pop through the portal and take a look. And discover the source of those signals. This is a first contact tale, rather unique I thought. It also has a vivid description of the Counter-Earth and its inhabitants.
"Applied Mathematical Theology"
Benford here plays with an important astronomical discovery that plays an important role in the present theory regarding the formation of the universe. It is not a story with characters, but a journal article or something similar that gives an account of "(t)he discovery that the Cosmic Microwave Background has a pattern buried within it (which) unsettled the entire world."
The temperature of this 2.7 K. emission left over from the Big Bang varies across the sky. Temperature ripples can be broken into angular- co-ordinate Fourier components, and this is where radio astronomers found a curious pattern--a message, or at least, a pattern. Spread across the microwave sky there was room in the detectable fluctuations for about 10,000 bits, or roughly a thousand words."
Naturally considerable controversy raged about the message, its creator(s) (if one), and implications to be drawn from this. At first, the most disputed issue was its nature:was it a real message or just a random collection of fluctuations?
"One insight did come from this, however. Benford's Law (not the author, and a real law), which states that the logarithms of artificial numbers are uniformly distributed, did apply to the tiny fluctuations. This proved that the primordial microwaves were not random, and so had been artificially encoded, perhaps by some even earlier process. So there was a massage, of sorts."
It's a short article, almost three pages long and possesses a rather tongue-in-cheek resolution, which leaves everybody happy.
"The Man Who Wasn't There"
This is a high-tech action story set a few decades in the future. Islamic extremists are trying to reconquer Europe through the use of terrorist tactics and the courts. Fully aware of the West's ability to intercept electronic communications, they have gone to a low-tech solution--human memory. All plans and strategies are now committed to memory and communicated by certain Masters. And, these masters are fully prepared to commit suicide rather than be captured.
The anti-terrorist squad has learned that one of these masters is now living in a compound in one of the suburbs of Paris. They are preparing to attack the compound and have a few surprises in store for the terrorists. One is an invisibility suit, comprised of optical fibers which transferred light waves around the suit. However, it was still dangerous because it affected light only, not an actual object, such as a bullet. They also had one other surprise for the terrorist.
To get in and get the information, they have to be fast and efficient.
"The Final Now"
With a stretch, one might see this tale as a sequel to the earlier story,"Applied Mathematical Theology," a story about a message that seemed to be encoded within the Cosmic Microwave Background." The message's existence had been thoroughly documented, but three questions still remained: who left the message, why was the message left, and what was the message.
The story begins:
He suddenly thought that they had not seen anyone for quite a while. Amid the vast voyages, adventures, striking vistas--and yes, while basking in symphonies of sensation--they had not needed company.
Even as twilight closed in. But now--
"Do you recall--?" He asked, turning to Her, and could not recall an ancient name. Names were unimportant, mere symbols, yes. . .but He did remember that names had existed to distinguish between multitudes. When? First task: to name the beasts. When had He and She said that?
. . .
They were, of course, the two who gave tension to this finite, bounded existence. This universe. Duality was fundamental, as was helicity itself, which necessarily had to be included in this exponentially expanding space-time.
Creativity seems to require two--male and female. They had also brought forth the Others, short-lived and limited creatures, but who yet had consciousness and intelligence. These, however, were not completely separate beings for the Others were, in a sense, part of the He and the She. They were brought forth to "To summon up insights that lie within the two of us, but that we cannot express overtly. To be vast meant having parts of yourself that you could not readily find.
He and She now realize that the universe is running down. They call forth one of the Others and tell him that the end time is near. Upon hearing this, the Other said strongly, "I do not accept this." At last, the point. She said with love and deep feeling, "Then strive to alter."
Perhaps this story provides the answers to the earlier story in the collection as "The Final Now" was published four years after "Applied Mathematical Theology."
Perhaps not.
Your thoughts?
Saturday, October 18, 2014
Gregory Benford: Anomalies
Gregory Benford
Anomalies
a collection of short stories (1975-2012)
The following are three of the short stories found in Gregory Benford's latest short story collection, Anomalies. The stories focus on a wide variety of topics, from wormholes to AIs to string theory. I will post brief reviews of the other stories in the collection over the next few weeks.
"A Worm in the Well"
Claire, the pilot/owner of an independent freighter, is deep in debt, so much so that she about to lose the freighter to her creditors. She more or less controls the ship with the aid of Erma, a wisecracking AI. Erma knows that she really runs the ship.
Claire takes on a high-paying but dangerous job--dropping down into the sun's corona to take photos of a wormhole that has suddenly appeared. The scientific community is seriously bothered by the appearance of a wormhole so close to the sun and need the photos and other data gathered by her close encounter by the sun in order to determine what the dangers are.
Once there, however, she decides to do a career change from "nature photographer" to a "bring 'em back alive" hunter. The photos and data still won't bring in enough money to pay off all of her debts, but capturing and bringing back a wormhole, something that has never been done before, will give the scientists an unparalleled opportunity to study and even experiment with a wormhole. Claire figures that she can negotiate a much bigger fee. Erma, of course, has her doubts.
The story naturally is heavy on the science, but the information is handled very nicely in the arguments (discussions) between Claire and Erma.
"The Worm Turns"
It's several years later and Claire and Erma are still broke and about to lose the ship again. This time they are forced to take on a hazardous job: it's either that or lose the ship. Since Claire transported the wormhole away from the sun, earth scientists have meddled with it and enlarged it. It now is more likely to be dangerous to anything in the neighborhood, the solar system for example.
Claire's task is now to fly through the wormhole, check out the other side, and then report back. However, life (or a wormhole) is never that simple, so life gets exciting again. And, what she finds at the other end is something neither she nor Erma nor the scientists expected.
"The Semisent"
In literary criticism, a Bildungsroman,[a] novel of formation, novel of education, or coming-of-age story is a literary genre that focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood, and in which, therefore, character change is extremely important (from the Wikipedia entry on Bildungsroman).
What's unusual about this short story is that it's a bildungsrom or coming-of-age story, not about a human being but an AI. The AI begins as a small box and by the end of the story it has evolved into a tall distinguished gentleman with sorrowful blue eyes. And there's also a human involved.
Anomalies
a collection of short stories (1975-2012)
The following are three of the short stories found in Gregory Benford's latest short story collection, Anomalies. The stories focus on a wide variety of topics, from wormholes to AIs to string theory. I will post brief reviews of the other stories in the collection over the next few weeks.
"A Worm in the Well"
Claire, the pilot/owner of an independent freighter, is deep in debt, so much so that she about to lose the freighter to her creditors. She more or less controls the ship with the aid of Erma, a wisecracking AI. Erma knows that she really runs the ship.
Claire takes on a high-paying but dangerous job--dropping down into the sun's corona to take photos of a wormhole that has suddenly appeared. The scientific community is seriously bothered by the appearance of a wormhole so close to the sun and need the photos and other data gathered by her close encounter by the sun in order to determine what the dangers are.
Once there, however, she decides to do a career change from "nature photographer" to a "bring 'em back alive" hunter. The photos and data still won't bring in enough money to pay off all of her debts, but capturing and bringing back a wormhole, something that has never been done before, will give the scientists an unparalleled opportunity to study and even experiment with a wormhole. Claire figures that she can negotiate a much bigger fee. Erma, of course, has her doubts.
The story naturally is heavy on the science, but the information is handled very nicely in the arguments (discussions) between Claire and Erma.
"The Worm Turns"
It's several years later and Claire and Erma are still broke and about to lose the ship again. This time they are forced to take on a hazardous job: it's either that or lose the ship. Since Claire transported the wormhole away from the sun, earth scientists have meddled with it and enlarged it. It now is more likely to be dangerous to anything in the neighborhood, the solar system for example.
Claire's task is now to fly through the wormhole, check out the other side, and then report back. However, life (or a wormhole) is never that simple, so life gets exciting again. And, what she finds at the other end is something neither she nor Erma nor the scientists expected.
"The Semisent"
In literary criticism, a Bildungsroman,[a] novel of formation, novel of education, or coming-of-age story is a literary genre that focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood, and in which, therefore, character change is extremely important (from the Wikipedia entry on Bildungsroman).
What's unusual about this short story is that it's a bildungsrom or coming-of-age story, not about a human being but an AI. The AI begins as a small box and by the end of the story it has evolved into a tall distinguished gentleman with sorrowful blue eyes. And there's also a human involved.
Monday, May 5, 2014
Ray Bradbury: "Kaleidoscope"
Spoiler Warning: I reveal the ending,
This story was an eye opener for me. I read it back when I was very young. Up to that time, I had read many SF short stories, most of which were problem stories. Something dangerous was happening, there was a threat to humans in space or on other planets, but humans always were successful at the end. When I started reading it, I assumed this would end happily, for several of the crew members anyway, and Hollis especially.. The opening lines should have prepared me for something different, but I noticed nothing.
"The first concussion cut the rocket up the side with a giant can opener. The men were thrown into space like a dozen wriggling silverfish. They were scattered into a dark sea; and the ship, in a million pieces, went on, a meteor swarm seeking a lost sun.
. . . . .
They fell. They fell as pebbles down wells. They were scattered as jackstones are scattered from a gigantic throw. And now instead of men there were only voices--all kinds of voices, disembodied and impassioned, in varying degrees of terror and resignation."
In the story we see Hollis and the rest of the crew attempting to come to grips with their fate. Death is certain: unlike many SF stories I had read up to this time, it appears as though there will be no last minute rescue.
As the story unfolds we see the way Hollis and the various crew members react to the shock of the loss of the ship and then the full realization of their situation. All this is conveyed over the radios found in each space suit. The captain makes an attempt to "rally" the crew but soon learns what some crew members really think of him.
Bitter antagonisms and feelings among the crew which had been repressed for so long finally emerge as various members of the crew decide now is the time to tell others what they think of them. It is not pretty: this is not a shining example of the stiff upper lip and heroic behavior found so often in films and stories. As time passes, some regret their outbursts and try to make amends by taking back what they had said in panic and fear. Eventually they do reach the point where the anger and fear has passed and they are resigned.
As I posted the first lines of the story, it's only appropriate that I post the last lines:
"The small boy on the country road looked up and screamed, 'Look, Mom, look! A falling star!'
The blazing white star fell down the sky of dusk in Illinois.
"Make a wish,' said his mother. 'Make a wish.'"
As so frequently happens in Bradbury's tales, the ending is ironic. Whenever I look up at the stars at night and see a falling star, I can't help but think of "Kaleidoscope."
This story was an eye opener for me. I read it back when I was very young. Up to that time, I had read many SF short stories, most of which were problem stories. Something dangerous was happening, there was a threat to humans in space or on other planets, but humans always were successful at the end. When I started reading it, I assumed this would end happily, for several of the crew members anyway, and Hollis especially.. The opening lines should have prepared me for something different, but I noticed nothing.
"The first concussion cut the rocket up the side with a giant can opener. The men were thrown into space like a dozen wriggling silverfish. They were scattered into a dark sea; and the ship, in a million pieces, went on, a meteor swarm seeking a lost sun.
. . . . .
They fell. They fell as pebbles down wells. They were scattered as jackstones are scattered from a gigantic throw. And now instead of men there were only voices--all kinds of voices, disembodied and impassioned, in varying degrees of terror and resignation."
In the story we see Hollis and the rest of the crew attempting to come to grips with their fate. Death is certain: unlike many SF stories I had read up to this time, it appears as though there will be no last minute rescue.
As the story unfolds we see the way Hollis and the various crew members react to the shock of the loss of the ship and then the full realization of their situation. All this is conveyed over the radios found in each space suit. The captain makes an attempt to "rally" the crew but soon learns what some crew members really think of him.
Bitter antagonisms and feelings among the crew which had been repressed for so long finally emerge as various members of the crew decide now is the time to tell others what they think of them. It is not pretty: this is not a shining example of the stiff upper lip and heroic behavior found so often in films and stories. As time passes, some regret their outbursts and try to make amends by taking back what they had said in panic and fear. Eventually they do reach the point where the anger and fear has passed and they are resigned.
As I posted the first lines of the story, it's only appropriate that I post the last lines:
"The small boy on the country road looked up and screamed, 'Look, Mom, look! A falling star!'
The blazing white star fell down the sky of dusk in Illinois.
"Make a wish,' said his mother. 'Make a wish.'"
As so frequently happens in Bradbury's tales, the ending is ironic. Whenever I look up at the stars at night and see a falling star, I can't help but think of "Kaleidoscope."
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
IN MEMORIAM Ray Bradbury
Ray Bradbury: August 22, 1920 to June 5, 2012
We shall not see his like again.
Novels
The Martian Chronicles
Fahrenheit 451
Dandelion Wine
The Illustrated Man
Some Short Stories
"The Fog Horn"
"There Will Come Soft Rains"
"A Sound of Thunder"
"All Summer in a Day"
"Kaleidoscope"
"The Pedestrian"
"The Crowd"
"The Playground"
"The Veldt"
"The Murderer"
Poet nightingale . . .
Will I hear your later verses
In the vale of death?
-- Anon --
We shall not see his like again.
Novels
The Martian Chronicles
Fahrenheit 451
Dandelion Wine
The Illustrated Man
Some Short Stories
"The Fog Horn"
"There Will Come Soft Rains"
"A Sound of Thunder"
"All Summer in a Day"
"Kaleidoscope"
"The Pedestrian"
"The Crowd"
"The Playground"
"The Veldt"
"The Murderer"
Poet nightingale . . .
Will I hear your later verses
In the vale of death?
-- Anon --
Monday, August 22, 2011
Ray Bradbury: August 22, 1920,
Spoiler Warning: I will discuss significant plot elements and events.
Here are three short tales by Ray Bradbury, whose birthday we celebrate today. I had read only one of them before, “The Crowd,” and possibly I might even have seen a TV dramatization of it. When I think of the story, an image comes to mind. The camera, if that’s what it is, is on the ground facing up and one can see faces all around, just as if one were lying on the ground with a crowd gathered about. The other two stories are new to me, but also enjoyable, if one can take a touch of horror along with some greed.
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“The Coffin”
Charles Braling was old. His brother Richard was younger. Charles was rich, and almost everything he did made him richer. Richard was poor, except for what Charles gave him. Everything Richard did had been a failure. Charles was dying; he had perhaps only several weeks to live. That was why he was in such a hurry to complete his latest invention—“The Braling Economy Casket.” Richard wasn’t dying, which meant there were two reasons for him to be happy: one was that he wasn’t dying and the other was that Charles was. In spite of their many differences, the two brothers did share something—a mutual hatred.
Richard, along with greed, possessed one more characteristic: curiosity. Curiosity may not always be fatal, but it’s certainly much deadlier when paired off with greed. That was why, when Charles died, he ignored Charles’ last wish, to be buried in his special casket, which he had finished minutes before he died. Richard wanted to find out just what this coffin could do. Perhaps it might be marketable. It was his brother’s idea after all, and those had been remarkably profitable. So, he called the funeral parlor, and gave his orders: “Ordinary casket . . . No funeral service. Put him in a pine coffin. He would have preferred it that way—simple. Good-by.”
Now, Richard thought, to find out about the coffin. It was approximately twelve feet long, with a central open section about six feet in length. It had two covered sections, one at the head and one at the foot, each about three feet in length. The casket lid was transparent at the head position. The casket was also extraordinarily wide, perhaps three feet wide on each side of the central chamber for the body. Richard could see no openings or hatches or buttons or any way of getting inside those compartments, at least from the outside. So, he decided to get in the casket and test it. There were ventilating holes around the sides, and just to be safe, he told the gardener to come upstairs in about fifteen minutes to make sure all was well.
So, he crawled inside and looked around. He could see nothing that would give him access to the compartments. Suddenly the lid slammed shut and locked. He panicked at first, but then relaxed. There was enough air in the casket, along with the ventilating holes, and the gardener would soon be along. He might as well relax.
Then . . .
“The music began to play.
It seemed to come from somewhere inside the head of the coffin. It was green music. Organ music, very slow and melancholy, typical of Gothic arches and long black tapers. It smelled of earth and whispers. It echoed high between stone walls. It was so sad that one almost cried listening to it. It was music of potted plants and crimson and blue stained-glass windows. It was late sun at twilight and a cold wind blowing. It was a dawn with only fog and a faraway fog horn moaning.
. . . . .
The sermon began.
The organ music subsided and a gentle voice said:
‘We are gathered together, those who loved and those who knew the deceased, to give him our homage and our due—‘
‘Charlie, bless you, that’s your voice!’ Richard was delighted. ‘A mechanical funeral, by God. Organ music and lecture. And Charlie giving his own oration for himself!’
The voice continued:
“We who knew and loved him are grieved at the passing of Richard Braling.”
Richard thought he had misheard the voice. That should have been Charles Braling.
And then Richard found out just how complete the funerary arrangements were that Charles had built into the Braling Economy Casket.
I felt a bit sorry for Richard, for after all, he hadn’t really done anything that wrong. But, if he had followed Charles’s wishes, and if he hadn't been so greedy and curious, none of this would have happened.
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“The Crowd”
I had read this story long ago and, as I mentioned earlier, may even have seen a dramatized version of it. It’s a quiet little story based on observable facts, something we have all seen, but, as far as I know, only Ray Bradbury wondered about it and gave us this little gem. We’ve all seen this: an accident happens and a crowd forms. Where did all these people come from? Who were they? The sidewalks and entrances may have been empty before, but let an accident happen and a crowd forms.
Mr. Spallner had been in an accident—lots of noise, tumbling motions, and then silence.
‘The crowd came running. Faintly, where he lay, he heard them running. He could tell their ages and their sizes by the sound of their numerous feet over the summer grass and on the lined pavement, and over the asphalt street; and picking through cluttered bricks to where his car hung half into the night sky, still spinning its wheels with a senseless centrifuge.
. . . .
Where the crowd came from he didn’t know. He struggled to remain aware and then the crowd faces hemmed in upon him, hung over like the large glowing leaves of down bent trees. There were a ring of shifting, compressing changing faces over him, looking down, looking down, reading the time of his life or death by his face, making his face into a moon-dial, where the moon cast a shadow from his nose out upon his cheek to tell the time of breathing or not breathing any more ever.”
Several weeks later, Spallner was released from the hospital and eventually returns to his office. While talking with a colleague, he hears the sound of a crash from the street below.
“Spallner walked to the window. He was very cold and as he stood there, he looked at his watch, at the small minute hand. One two three four five seconds – people running—eight nine ten eleven twelve – from all over, people came running –fifteen sixteen seventeen eighteen seconds – more people, more cars, more horns blowing. Curiously distant, Spallner looked upon the scene as an explosion in reverse, the fragments of the detonation sucked back to the point of implosion. Nineteen, twenty, twenty-one seconds and the crowd was there, Spallner made a gesture down at them, wordless.
The crowd had gathered so fast.”
Spallner gathers his evidence and decides to take it to the police. Perhaps they might make something of it. But, he never makes to the police station.
“He was rather shocked, but not surprised, somehow, when the truck came rolling out of an alley straight at him. He was just congratulating himself on his keen sense of observation and talking out what he would say to the police in his mind, when the truck smashed into his car.
. . . . .
The crowd was there. . .
He hadn’t felt much at the impact, his spine was hurt. He didn’t dare move. . .
Someone said, ‘Give me a hand. We’ll roll him over and lift him into a more comfortable position. . .”
Lucky Spallner. Thanks to his curiosity and his keen sense of observation, he is now going to get the answers to all his questions about The Crowd.
--------------------------
The Scythe
This is a horror story, about a man who has just hit bottom, and thinks that it can’t get worse. He should have talked to my grandmother, a cheerful soul; one of her favorite sayings was “Things are never so bad they can’t get worse.” I guess that was meant to cheer us up, but somehow it never quite succeeded.
Drew Erickson was out of work, out of money, and out of gas. That he was also lost didn’t make much difference since he couldn’t go anywhere even if he did know where to go. With him were his wife Molly and their two children.
Off in the distance he could see a golden wheat field, ripe enough for the scythe. And, beyond that, a small farmhouse. Hoping for help, trading work for food and perhaps shelter, he went to the farmhouse. He got no answer when he knocked and called, so he went in. He found the occupant upstairs in the bedroom.
“The paper lay open on the pillow beside the old man’s head. It was meant to be read. Maybe a request for burial, or to call a relative. Drew scowled over the words, moving his pale, dry lips.
To him who stands beside me at my death bed:
Being of sound mind, and alone in the world as it has been decreed, I, John Buhr, do give and bequeath this farm, with all pertaining to it, to the man who is to come. Whatever his name or origin shall be, it will not matter. The farm is his, and the wheat; the scythe, and the task ordained thereto. Let him take them freely, and without question – and remember that I, John Buhr, am only the giver, not the ordainer. To which I set my hand and seal this third day of April, 1938.
[Signed] John Buhr, Kyrie eleison!
A scythe leaned on the wall beside the bed. “Words were scratched on the blade: Who wields me – wields the world!”
Their luck had changed: food in the refrigerator, shelter, a bull and several cows, and a farm that was theirs.
Several days later, Drew decides to go to work. The wheat needs cutting. He went out with the scythe. At the end of the day, he was puzzled. The golden wheat he cut down began immediately to rot and disintegrate as he watched it. Secondly, it was a huge field but only a small portion was ripe for cutting, a portion that he could do in one day. On the second day, he could see green shoots already springing up where he had cut down the ripe stalks, and another portion of wheat that had been green yesterday was now ripe for cutting.
Eventually Drew tries to stop cutting the wheat for it rotted away too quickly to be harvested. Cutting the wheat, therefore, was a waste of time. But, when he tried to stop, he felt some force working on him, forcing him eventually to go out there.
While cutting a ripe section of wheat one day, he swore he could hear his mother’s voice cry out as he cut a stalk. He became convinced that he had killed his mother. And the rest of the wheat? Were they also people. He sent off a telegram and got word several days later that his mother had died, approximately at the same time he had cut that stalk.
Drew now understood the meaning of the words on the scythe; he was Death. The true horror of what he was doing struck home when he encountered stalks that he knew were his wife Molly and his two children.
Spoiler Warning: I reveal the ending of the story at this point.
“And then, sobbing wildly, he rose above the grain again and again and hewed to the left and right and to left and to right and to left and to right. Over and over and over! Slicing out huge scars in green wheat and ripe wheat, with no selection and no care, cursing, over and over, swearing, laughing, the blade swinging up in the sun and falling in the sun with a singing whistle! Down!
Bombs shattered London, Moscow, Tokyo.
The blade swung insanely.
And the kilns of Belsen and Buchenwald took fire.
The blade sang, crimson wet.
And mushrooms vomited out blind suns at White Sands, Hiroshima, Bikini, and up through, and in continental Siberian skies.
The grain wept in a green rain, falling.
Korea, Indo-China, Egypt, India trembled; Asia stirred, Africa woke in the night…
And the blade went on rising, crashing, severing, with the fury and the rage of a man who has lost and lost so much that he can no longer cares what he does to the world.
. . . . .
“Once in awhile during the long years a jalopy gets off the main highway, pulls up steaming in front of the charred ruin of a little white house at the end of the dirt road, to ask instructions from the farmer they see just beyond, the one who works insanely, wildly, without ever stopping, night and day, in the endless fields of wheat.
But they got no help and no answer. The farmer in the field is too busy, even after all these year; too busy slashing and chopping the green wheat instead of the ripe.
And Drew Erickson moves on with his scythe, with the light of a blind suns and a look of white fire in his never-sleeping eyes, on and on and on . . . ”
I wonder: is it more comforting, after reading the daily headlines and studying the history of the human race, to think that what we do is caused by madmen, rather than by sane, ordinary people.
A thought just occurred to me. Could Drew be symbolic of weapons makers and inventors or creators of weapons--possibly nuclear weapons?
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Combination Plate 18
Warning: I will discuss significant plot elements and endings.
Mike Ashley, ed. The Mammoth Book of Perfect Crimes and Impossible Mysteries, a collection of short mystery stories
Somtow Sucharitkul, Mallworld, a fix-up SF Novel
Fantasias and Trons: clones by Disney
Death Race (2008), SF film
Bernard Knight, "The Crowner John" series
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Mike Ashley, ed. The Mammoth Book of Perfect Crimes and Impossible Mysteries
Carroll and Graf
This collection contains thirty short stories that focus on perfect crimes, supposedly those so well planned out that the perps couldn't be identified, and those that couldn't possibly have happened, such as the man in a glass telephone booth, in plain sight, who was killed by an ice pick or a man who entered a cable car alone and is found dead when the car reaches the bottom even though the car was visible the entire route.
Some of the authors are Mike Ashley, Richard A. Lupoff, Bill Pronzini (author of the Noname Detective novels), Peter Tremayne (author of the Sister Fidelma historical mysteries), Barry Longyear, and Bernard Knight (author of the great "Crowner John" historical mystery series).
I knew Richard A. Lupoff and Barry Longyear from their SF stories and wasn't aware they wrote mysteries also.
This is a great collection to have when there's only short periods available for reading.
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Somtow Sucharitkul, Mallworld, a SF novel?
Sucharitkul's Mallworld, although marketed as a novel, really is a collection of short stories that could have been published separately in SF magazines and are loosely connected by a frame. Earth has been quarantined by a galactic federation because humans are too violent and unpredictable. The entire solar system out to Saturn has been enclosed in a small pocket universe. Humans can't get out, but tourists can visit the reservation. The linking is simple: every so often, a member of the federation government comes to observe humans to determine if they have matured enough to be allowed back into the universe. The stories, therefore, represent examples of human behavior upon which the Observer will make his decision.
All stories take place on Mallworld, a huge shopping mall the size of a planet built out around Saturn's orbit. It's the biggest shopping center ever built and has over 20,000 shops and claims to have over a million visitors every day. It was built after the quarantine was imposed. Apparently, the humans decided that if they couldn't explore the universe, they could at least go shopping.
The stories tend toward the comic and the bizarre. One of the establishments at the mall is a suicide parlor where one can select from a list of over three hundred types of suicide. One of the most popular choices is "death by vampire." Another store is Storkways, Inc. where one can order a custom-made baby. But, miss a payment and the repo team is dispatched.
This is also a great book for those times when only short periods are available for reading. One can ignore the interlinear links, and each story is independent, although a few characters do appear in more than one story.
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Fantasias and Trons
In 1940 Disney presented the world with Fantasia. To call it simply another cartoon is to grossly devalue the film. It was, and still is as far as I'm concerned, a revelation in Light, Color, Motion, and Sound. It is Disney's creative staff strutting their stuff, saying "Look at what we can do." It's a perfect marriage of the visual and the audio sensory worlds. It's one of my favorite films, and one which I view regularly.
Forty-two years later, in 1982, Disney gave the viewers something new and exciting--Tron. With the use of SFX, Disney opened up the world of cyberspace. He used the new special effects techniques to show us a possible view of what the inside world of those techniques might look like. The story line was acceptable, but the SFX made the film a very enjoyable viewing experience. I immediately thought of Disney's earlier masterpiece Fantasia. All Tron lacked, I thought, was the blending of Sound to Color, Motion, and Light at the level of Fantasia.
Then, inexplicably, in 1999, Disney comes out with Fantasia 2000--almost sixty years after the first film and seventeen years after Tron, which was a celebration of newer techniques. It, sadly, was just a remake of the original film with different music and visuals. It added nothing that hadn't been already accomplished in the original film. I was disappointed. It was good, but I found it nowhere as creative or innovative as the 1942 Fantasia.
In 2010, as should have been expected, Disney produced a second clone, Tron: Legacy. The plot was very similar to the first one (and the first one wasn't really that terrific). Surprisingly, I thought the 1982 version seemed to be more typical of a digital world than the 1999 version. Since I've never experienced the "digital world" of cyberspace, I'm obviously only guessing at this. But, it seemed to me that Tron: Legacy seemed to be in a more organic world than its predecessor. It frequently seemed to lack the sharpness of light and color, and the objects found there were rounder? softer? --characteristics I would associate more with the organic/analogue world than the digital world of cyberspace. Obviously, I'm not too sure of what I mean here and I'm really groping for the right words.
I don't know why the clones were produced, unless it was simply for profit. There's a psychological principle known as the Recency Principle which states that people remember best what they experienced last. That means that my memories of Fantasia and Tron have now been overlaid by the memories of the clones. That's sad. I think that the most effective cure would be to see Fantasia (1940) and Tron (1982) again.
--------------------
Death Race
This version came out in 2008. It is based on an earlier film, Death Race: 2000, which appeared in 1975. I don't remember seeing the earlier version, but the IMDB listing says that this is a new script, so it may be quite different.
The plot--well, it does have one. Jensen Ames, in a economically depressed US, sometime around 2015 loses his job and is framed for the murder of his wife. He ends up in Terminal Island, a privately run prison. He is persuaded to take part in the Death Race, a televised special that has high ratings. The drivers are prisoners who take part because one who wins five races gets released.
It's a throwback to the days of the Roman games, specifically the chariot races, when blood, carnage, and death were the main attractions. In fact, one of the encounters in this film comes directly from the famous chariot race in the film Ben Hur. In this modern version, the cars are heavily armored and armed with 50 cal. machine guns and whatever else they can scare up. Generally the survival rate is around 60%. The powers-that-be decided one race wasn't enough to take up the 90 minutes, so it's held in three heats.
Acting skills are minimal, except for the Coach, who is played by Ian McShane. His laid back attitude contrasts with the rest of the cast who specialize in macho-a-macho glowering throughout most of the film, and that includes Hennessy, the female warden played by Joan Allen, who must have seen too many Nazi concentration camp films during her formative years. Coach just looks around and smiles, possibly the only person in the cast who realizes how silly all this is.
Overall Reaction: recommended for those who enjoy demolition derby "races" featuring armed and armored vehicles.
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Bernard Knight "The Crowner John" Series
Historical mystery, technical detective category
Earlier, when I discussed the collection of stories about impossible crimes, I mentioned Bernard Knight, the author of the superb "Crowner John" series. I first encountered Knight in a novel by Priscilla Royal, Wine of Violence. It was an enjoyable read, and one of the most interesting characters in the novel was the crowner, an king's appointee who served as the king's representative for that area. Royal at the end of the novel stated that she based the character of the crowner on Bernard Knight's "Crowner John" series. So, I went looking, found them fascinating, and am now busy reading my way through the series, which now includes fourteen novels.
He has also begun a new series, featuring a forensic pathologist who sets up a private practice in England in 1955. Knight has spent many years as a practicing forensic pathologist in England and is past president of the Forensic Science Society.
The "Crowner John" series is set during the late twelfth and early thirteenth century in Exeter. Sir John de Wolfe has been appointed to his position by Richard the Lion-Hearted and is one of the first individuals to hold that position. His responsibilities include protecting the king's interests, mostly financial, by recording "all serious crimes, deaths and legal events for the King's judges." The quotation comes from the six page glossary provided by Knight.
Sir John de Wolfe, therefore, is the first coroner in Exeter. He is the second highest law officer in the area, second to the sheriff. Unfortunately the sheriff, Sir Richard de Revelle, is also his brother-in-law who strongly resents de Wolfe's presence in the area for two reasons. One is that he doesn't like someone looking over his shoulder; it cramps his grasping for ill-gotten wealth. The second is that de Wolfe is a strong supporter of King Richard, while de Revelle has thrown his support to Prince John and has been involved in several schemes that bordered on treason. Because of the marital relationship, de Wolfe kept quiet about what he knew of de Revelle's part in several plots to overthrow King Richard.
Those who enjoyed Ellis Peters' "Brother Cadfael" series will like this one. Both Sir John de Wolfe and Brother Cadfael are survivors of the various European conflicts and crusades. Both have gained considerable knowledge of wounds and injuries and the types of weapons that might be responsible. And, both, after long years in the military, have picked up considerable knowledge about diseases and possible cures.
Knight has also gathered several interesting characters as de Wolfe's aides. His assistant is Gwyn of Polruan, a huge Cornishman, who had been de Wolfe's bodyguard and friend for many years on the battlefield. His battlefield experience helps de Wolfe in various ways, from various incidents involving hand-to-hand combat to the simple autopsies that were possible at that time. Since neither he nor Gwyn could write, de Wolfe relies on Thomas de Peyne, a defrocked priest to keep the necessary records. His knowledge of Church rituals, rites, and rules also comes in handy at times, as is his ability to work his way into the confidence of the local clergy, most of whom are unaware of his disgraced status.
The first book in the series is Sanctuary Seeker. I found it surprising just how involved the whole procedure of claiming sanctuary really was. While each novel does stand alone, I would recommend reading them chronologically as the relationships among the characters--de Wolfe, his wife, the sheriff, de Wolfe's mistress, Gwyn, and de Peyne--do vary a bit.
Overall Reaction: a great series, one of the best historical series I have found--especially recommended to those who liked the Brother Cadfael series.
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Theodore Sturgeon: February 26, 1918--May 8. 1985
I have just discovered great news for those who, like me, think Ted Sturgeon is one of the great American short story writers--regardless of genre. North Atlantic Books is finished with its monumental project--The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon--which will include all of the short stories of Ted Sturgeon, including a number of unpublished tales. What started out as a projected ten volume series is now complete--in thirteen volumes.
I have the first volume: The Ultimate Egoist: Volume 1. It contains over 40 short stories, plus forewords by Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, and Gene Wolfe, all of whom have a few great stories of their own out there. At the end of the volume are some thirty pages of story notes on many of the stories. In the "Editor's Note," Paul Williams writes, "The volumes and the stories within the volumes are organized chronologically by order of composition (in so far as it can be determined). The earliest volume (The Ultimate Egoist) contains stories written between the end of 1937 and the beginning of 1940. Some are being published here for the first time; many others are appearing for the first time in book form." The copyright date for Volume 1 is 1994, seventeen years ago; this clearly has not been a rushed assignment.
I am looking forward to spending a few years slowly working my way through the series, reacquainting myself with such favorites as "Bianca's Hands," "Thunder and Roses," "Killdozer," "The Microcosmic God," "A Saucer of Loneliness," "The Silken-Swift," and "A Way of Thinking," and becoming acquainted with many that I've never read or have read so long ago that it will be like reading them for the first time.
The web site for the publisher of the series is http://tinyurl.com/6hry854.
In addition, Vintage Books is bringing out Sturgeon's major novels.
A great feast is in store for us.
I have the first volume: The Ultimate Egoist: Volume 1. It contains over 40 short stories, plus forewords by Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, and Gene Wolfe, all of whom have a few great stories of their own out there. At the end of the volume are some thirty pages of story notes on many of the stories. In the "Editor's Note," Paul Williams writes, "The volumes and the stories within the volumes are organized chronologically by order of composition (in so far as it can be determined). The earliest volume (The Ultimate Egoist) contains stories written between the end of 1937 and the beginning of 1940. Some are being published here for the first time; many others are appearing for the first time in book form." The copyright date for Volume 1 is 1994, seventeen years ago; this clearly has not been a rushed assignment.
I am looking forward to spending a few years slowly working my way through the series, reacquainting myself with such favorites as "Bianca's Hands," "Thunder and Roses," "Killdozer," "The Microcosmic God," "A Saucer of Loneliness," "The Silken-Swift," and "A Way of Thinking," and becoming acquainted with many that I've never read or have read so long ago that it will be like reading them for the first time.
The web site for the publisher of the series is http://tinyurl.com/6hry854.
In addition, Vintage Books is bringing out Sturgeon's major novels.
A great feast is in store for us.
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Three by Bradbury
I will discuss significant elements and the endings of these stories.
These three stories appear in a number of collections and anthologies. I am taking them from a collection of Bradbury's stories titled Twice 22, which includes all of the stories from two other collections: The Golden Apples of the Sun and A Medicine for Melancholy.
"The April Witch"
This is one of those stories that I first read and then dismissed as being lightweight with little substance. Several days later I was still thinking about it, and I began to realize that perhaps it really isn't that lightweight.
It's a tale about Cecy, who, at the age of seventeen, told her folks that she wanted "to be in love."
Her parents responded, "Remember, you're remarkable. Our whole family is odd and remarkable. We can't mix or marry with ordinary folk. We'd lose our magical powers if we did. You wouldn't want to lose your ability to 'travel' by magic, would you? Then be careful. Be careful!"
Cecy's way of traveling was unique, as least for normal humans anyway. She could "sleep in moles through the winter, in the warm earth." She could "live in anything at all--a pebble, a crocus, or a praying mantis." She could leave her "plain, bony body behind" and enter into anything she wanted. She then decides that if she can't be in love in her own body, then she will be in love in someone else's body, sort of a courtship by proxy , I guess.
She enters the mind of Ann Leary, a young woman, and influences her to go to the dance with a handsome young man. The poor fellow becomes confused because while Cecy is in control, she appears to want to be with him, but when Cecy relaxes, Ann takes control and behaves as though she wishes he would go away.
It's clear that Cecy isn't happy being Cecy with magical powers. She just wants to be like everybody else. She'd give up her powers if only he would love her.
It's a "grass is greener on the other side" story. But, what is on her side? She has the power to travel freely without restriction, to enter into the minds of all possible creatures on this planet, and that includes non-living creatures also. She is willing to give that up for love with a normal human being. I wonder how many readers would make this deal. One point isn't clear to me: why does she, for some reason, exclude those of her own kind. After all, her parents have magical powers also. Perhaps it's because she wants "to be in love" now, and there are none of her kind in the vicinity.
Is there something immature in wanting simply "to be in love"? Shouldn't being in love come as a consequence of meeting that special person? Does she really understand what is meant by being in love?
Another part of the story seems to be the lesson that one can't have it all, in spite of the advertisements, self-help gurus, and political pundits who promise everything for everybody. To quote another SF writer, "TANSTAAFL" That's Robert A. Heinlein's famous dictum, "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch."
There's yet another point I wonder about. Does she realize what's she's giving up? I wonder how many readers would be willing to give up this power "to travel."
The story, of course, is a fantasy. As far as I know, nobody has had such powers. Or . . .
On the other hand, if one looks at what she can do, is it so impossible for us to even come close to this?
In the past month or so, I've been in the mind of a detective chief inspector at Scotland Yard and
in the minds of a late Victorian family that is slowly disintegrating and
in the mind of a young woman who is in a tournament in which winner is the last one alive and
in the mind of a young woman who can visit other minds and
in the mind of a disgraced Chinese detective who manages to get out of a Tibetan work camp and live with Buddhist monks in the almost inaccessible mountains of Tibet and
in the mind of a Prussian magistrate who is forced to cooperate with officers in Napoleon's army of occupation in investigating a series of murders and
in the minds of people and beings from the far past and the distant future and in galaxies far away.
I'm not an April Witch: I'm an Avid Reader.
__________________________
"The Flying Machine"
"In the year A. D. 400, the Emperor Yuan held his throne by the Great Wall of China, and the land was green with rain, readying itself toward the harvest, at peace, the people in his dominion neither too happy nor too sad."
A man invents a flying machine and has the bad luck to have it observed by the Emperor. The Emperor orders his execution after finding out that he has told no one of his invention. The man, not understanding why, pleads for his life, saying:
"I have found beauty. I have flown on the morning wind. I have looked down on all the sleeping houses and gardens. I have smelled the sea and even seen it, beyond the hills, from my high place. I have soared like a bird; ;oh, I cannot say how beautiful it is up there, in the sky, with the wind about me, the wind blowing me here like a feather, there like a fan, the way the sky smells in the morning! And how free one feels! That is beautiful, Emperor, that is beautiful too!"
The Emperor sadly responds, "But there are times . . .when one must lose a little beauty if one is to keep what little beauty one already has. I do not fear you, yourself, but I fear another man."
. . . . .
"Who is to say that someday just such a man, in just such an apparatus of paper and reed, might not fly in the sky and drop huge stones upon the Great Wall of China?"
This story was published prior to 1953, less than a decade after the two atom bombs were dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Considering that and all the lives lost and damage created by "conventional" bombs, what would you do if you had a time machine that could go back to a certain day at Kitty Hawk in December 1903?
--------------------
"The Golden Kite, The Silver Wind"
The crisis!
"They build their wall," said the Mandarin, "in the shape of a pig! Do you see? Our own city wall is built up in the shape of an orange. That pig will devour us, greedily!"
"Life was full of symbols and omens. Demons lurked everywhere. Death swam in the wetness of an eye, the turn of a gull's wing meant rain, a fan held so. the tilt of a roof, and, yes, even a city wall was of immense importance. Travelers and tourists, caravans, musicians, artists, coming upon these two towns, equally judging the portents, would say, 'the city shaped like an orange? No! I will enter the city shaped like a pig and prosper, eating all, growing fat with good luck and prosperity!"
The Mandarin's daughter suggested rebuilding the city walls in a shape of a club which would drive the pig off. Kwan-Si's people responded by rebuilding their walls in the shape of a giant bonfire which would burn up the club, which was followed by a lake to put out the fire . . . a mouth to drink the lake dry . . . a needle to sew up the mouth . . .a sword to cut the needle . . .a scabbard to sheath the sword. . .
"Sickness spread in the city like a pack of evil dogs. Shops closed. The population, working now steadily for endless months upon the changing of the walls, resembled Death himself, clattering his white bones like musical instruments in the wind. Funerals began to appear in the streets, though it was the middle of summer, a time when all should be tending and harvesting."
Finally the two Mandarins met. "This cannot go on . . . Our people do nothing but rebuild our cities to a different shape every day, every hour. They have no time to hunt, to fish, to love, to be good to their ancestors and their ancestor's children."
The Solution:
"You, Kwan-Si, will make a last rebuilding of your town to resemble nothing more nor less than the wind. And we shall build like a golden kite. The wind will beautify the kite and carry it to wondrous heights. And the kite will break the sameness of the wind's existence and give it purpose and meaning. One without the other is nothing. Together, all will be beauty and co-operation and a long and enduring life."
"And so, in time, the towns became the Town of the Golden Kite and the Town of the Silver Wind. And harvestings were harvested and business tended again, and the flesh returned, and disease ran off like a frightened jackal. And on every night of the year, the inhabitants in the Town of the Kite could hear the good clear wind sustaining them. And those in the Town of the Wind could hear the kites singing, whispering, rising, and beautifying them."
Pure Fantasy! Escapism! Terrible stuff to waste time on. We should get back the real world and its problems. Yet, back when this story was written and for several decades afterwards, the the East and the West were engaged in building nuclear weapons that would give each superiority over the other. Each increase by one side would result in an increase by the other. This was called the Arms Race. If one side had enough weaponry to destroy its enemy twice over, then the other had to have enough to destroy them three times over.
In the story their Walls Race was destroying them. At present, we are trying to insure that our Arms Race doesn't destroy us. Perhaps a little "escapist" co-operation might not be a bad idea, after all.
Saturday, January 16, 2010
THREE BY THEODORE STURGEON
Those who don't read SF and Fantasy probably have never had the chance to become acquainted with two of the finest short story writers in the English language: Ray Bradbury and Theodore Sturgeon. Their tales range from the outright fantastic to horror to everyday life. I've discussed some of Bradbury's tales already, mostly in conjunction with film versions, and there are many others which I want to bring up. Today, though, I want to discuss briefly three of Sturgeon's stories that are favorites of mine. One, not only is a favorite, but it forced me to think about some of my attitudes and eventually changed my way of thinking.
Warning: I will bring up significant plot elements and even the endings for some of the stories.
"Bianca's Hands"
This is a horror story, I think. It might even be a love story. Perhaps it's both. I'm not sure what to call it for it's one of the strangest stories I've ever read, and it has stayed with me ever since I first read it decades ago. See for yourself. I will quote the opening paragraphs and let it speak for itself.
"Bianca's mother was leading her when Ran saw her first. Bianca was squat and small, with dank hair and rotten teeth. Her mouth was crooked and it drooled. Either she was blind or she just didn't care about bumping into things. It didn't really matter because Bianca was an imbecile. Her hands . . ."
This is a strange way to begin a love story, the story of an overwhelming passion that eventually leads to a tragedy. At least, I think it's a tragedy. But it gets stranger when one reads the last words of the paragraph which leads into the second paragraph--"Her hands . . ."
"They were lovely hands, graceful hands, hands as soft and smooth and white as snowflakes, hands whose color was lightly tinged with pink like the glow of Mars on Snow. They lay on the counter side by side, looking at Ran. They lay there half closed and crouching, each pulsing with a movement like the the panting of a field creature, and they looked. Not watched. Later, they watched him. Now they looked. They did, because Ran felt their united gaze , and his heart beat strongly."
Ran rents a room and moves in with Bianca's mother and Bianca, or rather, to be realistic, Bianca's hands. He then begins to court, not Bianca, but her hands. Or, perhaps it was the reverse: they began to court? seduce? him.
"Bianca was alone in the room, and Ran went to her and sat beside her. She did not move, nor did her hands. They rested on a small table before her, preening themselves. This, then, was when they really began watching him. He felt it, right down to the depths of his enchanted heart. The hands kept stroking each other, and yet they knew he was there, they knew of his desire. They stretched themselves before him, archly, languorously, and his blood pounded hot. Before he could stay himself he reached and tried to grasp them. He was strong, and his move was sudden and clumsy. One of the hands seemed to disappear, so swiftly did it drop into Bianca's lap. But the other--"
As I read the story, I gradually realized that this tale could not, would not have a "happy ending"--or, at least an ending that I would call "happy." Ran couldn't see that something here was wrong. The horror increases as Ran becomes more and more infatuated with her hands. Finally, he seals his fate when he asks Bianca's mother for permission to marry Bianca (no, I will not give in and say he asks for her hand.)
Is there a moral here? Perhaps. It does point out the danger of focusing on only one aspect of the beloved and not the whole person.
What makes this story so memorable is Sturgeon's language. He manages to make those hands the real focus of the story. They are alive and independent; Bianca's body is simply the means of transporting those hands. He imbues them with a consciousness that is both real and grotesque at the same time.
Overall Rating: a quiet little horror tale that deserves far more attention than it gets.
---------------------------------------------
"The Silken-Swift"
I guess one could call this one a fantasy, mostly anyway. The title refers to a unicorn, a mythical beast, except that in this story it isn't mythical. This story looks at an obsession, sexual naturally, but one that seems more natural than in the previous tale. It's also the story of the eternal triangle: two women and one man. One woman uses him and abuses him, while the second woman is abused by him. It takes a unicorn to resolve the confusion. However, I'm not too sure about the ending. I have some problems with it, and it would be interesting to hear what others think about it.
Briefly, Rita is the daughter of the richest man in the village. She is beautiful and selfish and skilled in the use of potions that manipulate people's feelings. In this way, she has made fools of many men without ever giving them what they think she promises.
One night, she torments a new man, Del, in this way, and left him temporarily blinded by one of her drugs. Barbara, another woman from the village, one who has been quietly in love with him, finds him and attempts to help him. Del, still blind, thinks it's Rita and takes his revenge on her now that he has her within reach. Barbara never tells him of his mistake.
Rita, learning of the presence of the unicorn, has a golden bridle made and gets Barbara to lead them to the pond where the unicorn--the Silken-Swift-- comes to drink. Rita will prove that she is still a virgin for only virgins are able to catch a unicorn.
The pond, even though in the midst of a swamp, was special: "It was a place without hardness or hate, where the aspens trembled only for wonder, and where all contentment was rewarded. Every single rabbit there was the champion nose-twinkler, and every waterbird could stand on one leg the longest, and proud of it. Shelf-fungi hung to the willow-trunks, making that certain, single purple of which the sunset is incapable , and a tanager and a cardinal gravely granted one another his definition of 'red.'"
However, the unicorn ignores the myth and rejects Rita in front of a large crowd of villagers and comes to Barbara. But, there is a price to be paid as the unicorn flips Rita's golden bridle into the pond.
"And the instant it touched the water, the pond was a bog and the birds rose mourning from the trees.
. . .
Barbara said, 'For us, he lost his pool, his beautiful pool.'
And Del said 'He will get another. He must.' With difficulty he added, 'He couldn't be . . . punished . . . for being so gloriously Fair.'"
Strange ending: Rita wrongly is believed to not be a virgin. Del gets the girl whom he raped and the Unicorn loses its beautiful pond. Should Del be rewarded? Why did the Silken-Swift lose its pond? Was it really "for being so gloriously Fair."?
Overall Rating: well-written, as is typical of a Sturgeon tale, but it leaves some disquieting questions unanswered, for Sturgeon has taken a few liberties with the myth.
-------------------------------------------
"Thunder and Roses"
This is the story that caused me to reconsider some of my beliefs many years ago. It didn't change them immediately, but it stayed with me and influenced me so that I no longer think the way I did then. The story was published in 1947, at the beginning of the Cold War, when many people feared that a nuclear war was imminent. The two most strident reactions were generally all one heard: "Better Red than Dead" shouted one side, while the other side screamed "Better Dead than Red." Sturgeon's story suggested there were other options and other, better ways to think. One way was to see all of us as part of humanity.
In "Thunder and Roses," the horror has happened. A surprise nuclear attack has virtually destroyed the US, wiping out the government and military so quickly that no retaliation could be made. The story is set on a small obscure military post that escaped being wiped out. However, those there know their time is short, days for some, a week or two or maybe even a month for most. The North American continent is uninhabitable.
However, the enemy will not escape either, for the amount of radiation released by the attack is so great that within a year or two, it will blanket the northern hemisphere, and as one of he characters says, "They have killed us, and they have ruined themselves."
One of the survivors discovers that the post has a secret backup control system for launching a retaliatory strike, if the first line system has been knocked out. His immediate reaction is that he now has a chance to destroy those who have destroyed the US.
The issue is not that simple. In the story, there is a level of radiation that would eventually destroy all of humanity and almost all of the other species we share this planet with. It's the scenario set up in Nevil Shute's On the Beach. So far, that limit hasn't been reached, yet. It will be, though, if the US retaliates. This is the conflict: revenge vs a concern for all life.
Sturgeon has one of his characters tell us:
"A disease made other humans our enemies for a time, but as the generations march past, enemies become friends and friends enemies. The enmity of those who have killed us is such a tiny, temporary thing in the long sweep of history!'
. . .
'And even if this is the end of humankind, we dare not take away the chances some other life-form might have to succeed where we failed. If we retaliate, there will not be a dog, a deer, an ape, a bird or fish or lizard to carry the evolutionary torch. In the name of justice, if we must condemn and destroy ourselves, let us not condemn all other life along with us. Mankind is heavy enough with sins. If we must destroy, let us stop with destroying ourselves!'"
This was a philosophy that I hadn't heard before. It argues that we look beyond our family, our clan, our city, our nation, even beyond our own species. Of course, today, while this is not accepted by even a sizable minority, it is prevalent, even if only to be derided by the "wise" and the practical. In 1947, at least in my immediate universe, it was a radical thought, and one I had to struggle with. What's unfortunate is that I can't tell Theodore Sturgeon that he succeeded in convincing me and, possibly, many others also.
Who knows? Maybe in a century or two, someone will read this story and wonder why it was necessary to argue such an obvious way of thinking about our place here.
Any thoughts?
Warning: I will bring up significant plot elements and even the endings for some of the stories.
"Bianca's Hands"
This is a horror story, I think. It might even be a love story. Perhaps it's both. I'm not sure what to call it for it's one of the strangest stories I've ever read, and it has stayed with me ever since I first read it decades ago. See for yourself. I will quote the opening paragraphs and let it speak for itself.
"Bianca's mother was leading her when Ran saw her first. Bianca was squat and small, with dank hair and rotten teeth. Her mouth was crooked and it drooled. Either she was blind or she just didn't care about bumping into things. It didn't really matter because Bianca was an imbecile. Her hands . . ."
This is a strange way to begin a love story, the story of an overwhelming passion that eventually leads to a tragedy. At least, I think it's a tragedy. But it gets stranger when one reads the last words of the paragraph which leads into the second paragraph--"Her hands . . ."
"They were lovely hands, graceful hands, hands as soft and smooth and white as snowflakes, hands whose color was lightly tinged with pink like the glow of Mars on Snow. They lay on the counter side by side, looking at Ran. They lay there half closed and crouching, each pulsing with a movement like the the panting of a field creature, and they looked. Not watched. Later, they watched him. Now they looked. They did, because Ran felt their united gaze , and his heart beat strongly."
Ran rents a room and moves in with Bianca's mother and Bianca, or rather, to be realistic, Bianca's hands. He then begins to court, not Bianca, but her hands. Or, perhaps it was the reverse: they began to court? seduce? him.
"Bianca was alone in the room, and Ran went to her and sat beside her. She did not move, nor did her hands. They rested on a small table before her, preening themselves. This, then, was when they really began watching him. He felt it, right down to the depths of his enchanted heart. The hands kept stroking each other, and yet they knew he was there, they knew of his desire. They stretched themselves before him, archly, languorously, and his blood pounded hot. Before he could stay himself he reached and tried to grasp them. He was strong, and his move was sudden and clumsy. One of the hands seemed to disappear, so swiftly did it drop into Bianca's lap. But the other--"
As I read the story, I gradually realized that this tale could not, would not have a "happy ending"--or, at least an ending that I would call "happy." Ran couldn't see that something here was wrong. The horror increases as Ran becomes more and more infatuated with her hands. Finally, he seals his fate when he asks Bianca's mother for permission to marry Bianca (no, I will not give in and say he asks for her hand.)
Is there a moral here? Perhaps. It does point out the danger of focusing on only one aspect of the beloved and not the whole person.
What makes this story so memorable is Sturgeon's language. He manages to make those hands the real focus of the story. They are alive and independent; Bianca's body is simply the means of transporting those hands. He imbues them with a consciousness that is both real and grotesque at the same time.
Overall Rating: a quiet little horror tale that deserves far more attention than it gets.
---------------------------------------------
"The Silken-Swift"
I guess one could call this one a fantasy, mostly anyway. The title refers to a unicorn, a mythical beast, except that in this story it isn't mythical. This story looks at an obsession, sexual naturally, but one that seems more natural than in the previous tale. It's also the story of the eternal triangle: two women and one man. One woman uses him and abuses him, while the second woman is abused by him. It takes a unicorn to resolve the confusion. However, I'm not too sure about the ending. I have some problems with it, and it would be interesting to hear what others think about it.
Briefly, Rita is the daughter of the richest man in the village. She is beautiful and selfish and skilled in the use of potions that manipulate people's feelings. In this way, she has made fools of many men without ever giving them what they think she promises.
One night, she torments a new man, Del, in this way, and left him temporarily blinded by one of her drugs. Barbara, another woman from the village, one who has been quietly in love with him, finds him and attempts to help him. Del, still blind, thinks it's Rita and takes his revenge on her now that he has her within reach. Barbara never tells him of his mistake.
Rita, learning of the presence of the unicorn, has a golden bridle made and gets Barbara to lead them to the pond where the unicorn--the Silken-Swift-- comes to drink. Rita will prove that she is still a virgin for only virgins are able to catch a unicorn.
The pond, even though in the midst of a swamp, was special: "It was a place without hardness or hate, where the aspens trembled only for wonder, and where all contentment was rewarded. Every single rabbit there was the champion nose-twinkler, and every waterbird could stand on one leg the longest, and proud of it. Shelf-fungi hung to the willow-trunks, making that certain, single purple of which the sunset is incapable , and a tanager and a cardinal gravely granted one another his definition of 'red.'"
However, the unicorn ignores the myth and rejects Rita in front of a large crowd of villagers and comes to Barbara. But, there is a price to be paid as the unicorn flips Rita's golden bridle into the pond.
"And the instant it touched the water, the pond was a bog and the birds rose mourning from the trees.
. . .
Barbara said, 'For us, he lost his pool, his beautiful pool.'
And Del said 'He will get another. He must.' With difficulty he added, 'He couldn't be . . . punished . . . for being so gloriously Fair.'"
Strange ending: Rita wrongly is believed to not be a virgin. Del gets the girl whom he raped and the Unicorn loses its beautiful pond. Should Del be rewarded? Why did the Silken-Swift lose its pond? Was it really "for being so gloriously Fair."?
Overall Rating: well-written, as is typical of a Sturgeon tale, but it leaves some disquieting questions unanswered, for Sturgeon has taken a few liberties with the myth.
-------------------------------------------
"Thunder and Roses"
This is the story that caused me to reconsider some of my beliefs many years ago. It didn't change them immediately, but it stayed with me and influenced me so that I no longer think the way I did then. The story was published in 1947, at the beginning of the Cold War, when many people feared that a nuclear war was imminent. The two most strident reactions were generally all one heard: "Better Red than Dead" shouted one side, while the other side screamed "Better Dead than Red." Sturgeon's story suggested there were other options and other, better ways to think. One way was to see all of us as part of humanity.
In "Thunder and Roses," the horror has happened. A surprise nuclear attack has virtually destroyed the US, wiping out the government and military so quickly that no retaliation could be made. The story is set on a small obscure military post that escaped being wiped out. However, those there know their time is short, days for some, a week or two or maybe even a month for most. The North American continent is uninhabitable.
However, the enemy will not escape either, for the amount of radiation released by the attack is so great that within a year or two, it will blanket the northern hemisphere, and as one of he characters says, "They have killed us, and they have ruined themselves."
One of the survivors discovers that the post has a secret backup control system for launching a retaliatory strike, if the first line system has been knocked out. His immediate reaction is that he now has a chance to destroy those who have destroyed the US.
The issue is not that simple. In the story, there is a level of radiation that would eventually destroy all of humanity and almost all of the other species we share this planet with. It's the scenario set up in Nevil Shute's On the Beach. So far, that limit hasn't been reached, yet. It will be, though, if the US retaliates. This is the conflict: revenge vs a concern for all life.
Sturgeon has one of his characters tell us:
"A disease made other humans our enemies for a time, but as the generations march past, enemies become friends and friends enemies. The enmity of those who have killed us is such a tiny, temporary thing in the long sweep of history!'
. . .
'And even if this is the end of humankind, we dare not take away the chances some other life-form might have to succeed where we failed. If we retaliate, there will not be a dog, a deer, an ape, a bird or fish or lizard to carry the evolutionary torch. In the name of justice, if we must condemn and destroy ourselves, let us not condemn all other life along with us. Mankind is heavy enough with sins. If we must destroy, let us stop with destroying ourselves!'"
This was a philosophy that I hadn't heard before. It argues that we look beyond our family, our clan, our city, our nation, even beyond our own species. Of course, today, while this is not accepted by even a sizable minority, it is prevalent, even if only to be derided by the "wise" and the practical. In 1947, at least in my immediate universe, it was a radical thought, and one I had to struggle with. What's unfortunate is that I can't tell Theodore Sturgeon that he succeeded in convincing me and, possibly, many others also.
Who knows? Maybe in a century or two, someone will read this story and wonder why it was necessary to argue such an obvious way of thinking about our place here.
Any thoughts?
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