From James H. Schmitz, Henry Kuttner, and Harlan Ellison: stories about being hunted!

In 1988 Baen Books published an anthology edited by David Drake, Things Hunting Men (a companion to another anthology, Men Hunting Things.)  Let's check out stories from this volume by three writers whose work we have talked about in the past here at MPorcius Fiction Log, James H. Schmitz (remember his stories about the female secret police of the future?), Henry Kuttner (remember his novel of a dangerous criminal who masterminds revolutionary change on Venus?) and Harlan Ellison (remember when he physically attacked Charles Platt?)

Things Hunting Men and the three magazines these stories first appeared in are all available for free at the internet archive; being a fan of classic SF is an inexpensive hobby.

"Greenface" by James H. Schmitz (1943)

In his intro to the story in Things Hunting Men, Drake reminds us that this is Schmitz's first published story, and suggests that he prefers it to Schmitz's interstellar espionage and psychic powers capers.  "Greenface" was printed originally in John W. Campbell, Jr.'s Unknown, and has appeared in numerous anthologies and collections, including ones edited by Ray Bradbury and Martin H. Greenberg, as well three different books from Baen--the people at Baen must really think it is a winner!

Hogan Masters is a small businessman just trying to make it in this world of ours!  It is the first season of his venture, Hogan Fishing Camp, a collection of cabins on Thursday Lake he rents to anglers and an ice house in which to store the fish they catch.  Hogan hopes that this inaugural season will be successful enough that he'll be able to get together enough money to marry his girlfriend, Julia Allison.  But one day (by coincidence, the day he decided to drink a few beers in the early afternoon--oh, Hogan, you know that's not good business!) he sees a sort of green blob of protoplasm with tentacles devour a garter snake.  A few weeks later the creature reappears, larger and more menacing, and Hogan is not the only one to see it, proving it's not just the booze messing with him!

"Greenface" is a solid and fun horror/thriller story.  We follow the course of Hogan's Ahab-like weeks-long effort to hunt down the steadily-growing monster, a duel which turns Hogan into a drunk, ruins his business, and wrecks his relationships with Julia and Julia's father.  (Damn you, Greenface!)  Schmitz does a good job with the SF monster stuff (as we expect in an old SF story, Hogan learns all about the monster's idiosyncratic biology and tries to use that knowledge to defeat the creature), the action scenes, and the more psychological character-based guy-who-ruins-his-life stuff.  (Spoiler: John W. Campbell, Jr. told Barry Malzberg that "mainstream literature is about failure" but science fiction is about heroes, success and discovery,* and "Greenface" has an un-Ahab-like happy ending.)

Thumbs up!

*See Malzberg's essay "John W. Campbell: June 8, 1910 to July 11, 1971."

"Happy Ending" by Henry Kuttner (1948)

Here in Things Hunting Men, and when it first appeared in Thrilling Wonder, "Happy Ending" was credited solely to Kuttner, but isfdb credits Kuttner's wife C. L. Moore as a co-author.  "Happy Ending" seems to have been well-received by the SF community--it was included in Bleir and Dikty's The Best Science Fiction Stories: 1949 and by Damon Knight in the oft-republished anthology Beyond Tomorrow, as well as other publications.  In his intro to "Happy Ending" in Things Hunting Men, Drake laments that many SF writers fail to grow--their late work is no better than their early work.  Drake says that Kuttner, whose early work was "crude," grew better and better over the course of his career; as a case in point, he notes the structure of "Happy Ending," which is a little unconventional, starting with the ending and then filling us in on how the protagonist got there via flashbacks that ultimately turn upside down our beliefs about what was going on.

(Drake also praises C. L. Moore's Jirel stories, and admits that his own first published story, 1967's "Denkirch," a Lovecraftian thing, was not good.)

"Happy Ending" is a story that, like so many old SF tales, romanticizes science and logic and quick thinking, presents a world-shaking paradigm shift, and strives to give us that old sense of wonder at the boundless possibilities of technology and the future.  And it works!

It is 1949 and James Kelvin is a Chicago journalist spending some time in the warm air of California in an effort to relieve his sinus problems.  He meets a time-travelling robot who tells an unbelieving Kelvin that it needs gold to repair its time travel mechanism--the robot wanted to travel to 1970 but accidentally ended up in 1949.  In exchange for the gold plate from his watch, the robot gives Kelvin a device that can enable him to establish a rapport with the mind of a man in the far far future; people in the future have evolved super intelligence, so by transmitting his problems into a future man's mind Kelvin can receive answers to them.  If he can pose just the right questions to this future brain, Kelvin can become a rich man!  Unfortunately, on his first try the device malfunctions (user error!) and a being called Tharn becomes alerted to Kelvin's temporal mental probing.  The robot warns Kelvin that Tharn is a dangerous android and will now hunt the journalist down!

Much of the story follows Kelvin's use of the device to escape Tharn, who has seven fingers on each hand and wears a turban.  The device works as advertised, allowing Kelvin to read the mind of some guy in the far future and learn how to, for example, teleport or breathe while underwater, very useful skills when you are trying to escape from a relentless android!  As the story proceeds to its mind-blowing conclusion we are forced to revise our assumptions about the motives and even identities of all the characters in this crazy drama.

"Happy Ending" is a fun story, chalk up another success for Kuttner (and Moore?)

"Blind Lightning" by Harlan Ellison (1956)

Iowa-native Drake uses his intro to "Blind Lightning" to brag about how awesome Iowa is and to tell us how he first became acquainted with Harlan Ellison's writing--when a high school English teacher shared with him a copy of Ellison's 1961 collection Gentleman Junkie and Other Stories of the Hung-up Generation, which Drake calls "a stunning volume."

"Blind Lightning" was first published in Fantastic Universe.  When I looked briefly at the scan of the June 1956 issue of Fantastic Universe it was obvious that the version of "Blind Lightning" there was different than the version in Things Hunting Men, with paragraphs in different order, some different word choices, etc.  Hmm....  "Blind Lightning" was included in Robert Silverberg's 1966 anthology Earthmen and Strangers and the 1971 Ellison collection Alone Against Tomorrow; I own paperback editions of both (my 1979 copy of Alone Against Tomorrow is signed by Ellison--envy me, Ellison collectors!) and decided to read the version in Alone Against Tomorrow on the theory that that is the version in my possession most likely to be the one preferred by the author.

Xenoecologist Ben Kettridge, an old man (he's in his fifties!) is alone, exploring a jungle on planet Blestone; his comrades from star ship Jeremy Bentham will pick him up in six hours.  He gets captured by Lad-nar, a nine-foot-tall native barbarian--this monster's species is intelligent, with a language and a religion, but no tools or clothes or buildings.  Blestone is plagued by periodic electrical storms of terrible ferocity, and the natives must hide in their caves during these storms or be killed by lightning.  The storms are of long duration, so the natives typically capture some game to bring into their caves with them, and Kettridge is brought to Lad-nar's cave to serve just this purpose.  Kettridge learns all this because Kettridge and the native can communicate telepathically, to the surprise of both.

While waiting to be eaten Kettridge thinks back to earlier in his career, when he was on a research team which developed some chemical.  The chemical got loose or something and killed 25,000 people.  Kettridge feels guilty about this, and decides to earn some kind of redemption by helping Lad-nar's race, which Kettridge believes to be in terminal decline.  Kettridge is killed by lightning because he gives Lad-nar his elastic lightning-proof space suit so Lad-nar can walk outside the cave.  As he dies Kettridge instructs Lad-nar in how to contact the human exploration team and we readers are led to believe that Lad-nar's race will get help from the humans and not go extinct after all.

This story is just OK.  It is sentimental and melodramatic and the verbiage is a little extravagant, a bit loud and long-winded.  In my experience Ellison doesn't create characters in his fiction; it is always Ellison telling some story that is meant to hammer some idea into you or wring some emotion out of you, and when I read an Ellison story I always hear Ellison's voice in my head, and he is always yelling or snarling sarcastically or putting on some maudlin voice.  (This is where I confess that I don't really like Ellison as a person, and I am afraid it is an obstacle to my appreciating his work.)

I guess the interesting thing about "Blind Lightning" is the prominence of religion; Lad-nar considers the lightning to come from one god and is convinced that the human explorers are even greater gods, while Kettridge prays for help, and is himself a sort of Christ-figure--his walking in the deadly storm (providing a demonstration of the utility of his space suit to Lad-nar) is kind of like Jesus walking on water, and Kettridge dies while showing a race of people how to live without fear and how to get to the heavens.  In the scene in which Lad-nar and Kettridge inexplicably communicate telepathically, we are told that "To Kettridge it seemed there was a third being in the cave.  The hideous beast before him, himself...and a third" and I couldn't help but think the third might be God, trying to build a bridge between these two alien races and give Kettridge a chance to redeem himself.  Of course, I just recently read Gene Wolfe's 1,100 page The Wizard Knight and was just yesterday talking to my wife about U2's October and so have gotten into the habit of turning over every sentence to look for Christian messages, even where you wouldn't expect them, like in Ellison's writing.

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Three worthwhile stories.  More old SF tales in the next episode of MPorcius Fiction Log!