Fritz Leiber: "The Haunted Future," "Damnation Morning," and "The Oldest Soldier"

I recently went to Second Story Books' huge warehouse store in Rockville, MD, fabled in story and song, and as I had a gift certificate in hand I bought some stuff I might not have under ordinary circumstances.  Here's one example, an Ace paperback edition of Fritz Leiber's The Mind Spider and Other Stories published in 1976--I could easily read its six stories online or in magazines I own, but the great black monster cover by Walter Rane won me over.  I didn't realize until like 10 minutes ago that most of the stories in this book are from Leiber's Change War series, the first component of which I have not read.  Maybe the ideal course would be to read that first part (the novel The Big Time) before exploring these stories, but I'm saying "damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!" and today reading the first three stories in this collection, "The Haunted Future," "Damnation Morning," and "The Oldest Soldier."  Based on how it goes, we'll see if I read the rest for our next blogpost, go back to The Big Time, or abandon the whole Change War saga as not for me.

"The Haunted Future" (1959)

"The Haunted Future" debuted in a special Fritz Leiber issue of Fantastic under the title "Tranquility, or Else!"  "The Haunted Future" is set in one of those utopias where the government is all up in your business every second, for your own good, of course.  It is set in a suburb of "New Los Angeles" called "Civil Service Knolls"--gross!  Everybody in town behaves because they regularly receive hypnosis that prevents them from misbehaving--you are even hypnotized to walk random routes across your lawn so you won't wear a rut in the grass!

Our main character is Wisant, a Judistrator.  Wisant is the law.  Demonstrating how corrupt and inefficient this authoritarian government really is, Wisant's wife, Beth, was one of the people whose job it is to hypnotize kids, and years ago she went crazy and started implanting traps in the kids' heads, "posyhypnotic suggestions" that they commit shocking acts.  Beth today is in a nearby insane asylum; the asylum is full to bursting, as this ostensibly utopian society drives many people bonkers, a fact tax-eating government employees like Wisant keep from the public the best they can by faking the statistics they release.

The plot of the story, which is like 53 pages here in The Mind Spider and Other Stories, has multiple interwoven threads.  One thread concerns Wisant's meeting with representatives of a business which sells tchotchkes and doodads that help people express their individuality in this conformist society, like little items of apparel or little decorations that can help make you or your air car look a little different than everybody else's.  Wisant wants to curtail or suspend this firm's activities.  The most outspoken rep of the company, Dave Cruxon, a young man who likes monster movies, argues that creating a society which prioritizes safety, including psychological safety, over all other concerns not only tramples human freedom but causes mass psychosis.  (I know, ripped from today's headlines, right?)

"As long as they're tranquil and manageable, you don't care--it's even okay by you if you have to keep 'em in flip-factories and put the tranquility in with a needle.  Government by the three Big Cs of Commission, Committee and Conference!  There's a fourth C, the biggest, and that's the one you stand for--government by Censorship!"

Another thread of the story concerns Wisant's 17-year-old daughter, Gabby, whom Dave Cruxon is seeing.  The night before the big festival where Gabby is going to be crowned Princess of Tranquility (the ball is on the same day Cruxon delivers his anti-censorship speech to Wisant), Gabby, responding to a posthypnotic suggestion implanted by mom some time ago, tears off her clothes and viciously stabs a pillow right next to where Wisant is lying in bed; Gabby ends up in the insane asylum tout suite. 

A third thread concerns people in Civil Service Knolls having what appear to be hallucinations of a flying devilish face with glowing eyes.  Some of the characters think these incidents are further examples of the growing rate of mental illness in this tyrannical America, but in the second half of the story we realize that these poor souls are seeing Dave Cruxon, who is wearing a monster mask and a high-tech invisibility cloak and employing an anti-grav device. 

In the climax, Cruxon in his superhero get-up terrorizes those assembled for the festival just when Wisant is giving a speech, driving the already stressed-out Judistrator over the edge so that he ends up in the insane asylum.  Cruxon also takes refuge there in the booby hatch.  It is implied that Dave Cruxon and Gabby Wisant will become lovers and get married, and that the Wisants, reunited, will repair their psyches and their relationship; there is a strong suggestion that in this oppressive world the safest and happiest place is inside the asylum, where the government can't enforced its strictures on you.   

Besides the anti-censorship stuff we can also see in this story a sort of goof on California New-Age silliness (or whatever they would have called it in 1952), references to Shakespeare (Leiber comes from a theatrical family, as you know), and a hint of Leiber's interest in the sexuality of teenaged girls that is more explicit in stories like "The Mer She," "The Bait," "The Sadness of the Executioner" and "A Rite of Spring."       

I have mixed feeling about "The Haunted Future."  This story has lots of expository dialogue and many scenes that consist mainly of people yakking, and of course there is a lot of psychobabble.  But of course I like the story's anti-government, anti-censorship ideology, and I admire how it is structured, the way Leiber has all the different threads work together like interlocking gears.  So, is "The Haunted Future" just acceptable or actually good?  A borderline case.

"The Haunted Future" has been anthologized in German as well as in English by Gardner Dozois, and of course appears in Leiber collections.  I don't quite get why isfdb includes it in the Change War series--typo?     

"Damnation Morning" (1959)
         

As I read "Damnation Morning" I felt like I recognized it; maybe I read it as a kid, or maybe I just read about it, or somebody told me about it.  Anyway, this reads like an introduction to the Change War series.

Our narrator is a guy who has had a tough life that has featured  service with the British Army in North Africa during World War II,  multiple divorces and an alcohol problem.  He's in a crummy hotel room, suffering the DTs, when at the door appears a woman with a brand on her forehead of a thing like an asterisk with eight arms.  To make a long story short, she explains that two opposing secret armies of time travellers, the Spiders and Snakes, flit back and forth through time, fighting each other and changing history in ways that will accrue to their profit.  The narrator is about to commit suicide, but this woman, a Spider agent, can create a branch in his lifeline right before the suicide, creating another instance of him whom she will dissuade from killing himself and  gift him with time travelling powers if he agrees to serve in the Spider army.  The shock ending of the story is that at the same time she is creating a Spider-aligned version of the narrator a Snake agent is creating yet another branch off the narrator's lifeline so that the narrator will have an identical twin with an "S" on his forehead who will be fighting for the Snakes.

This "secret cabals of peeps with superpowers controlling the world behind the scenes" business reminds one a bit of van Vogt, but van Vogt's stories generally have a sense of wonder to them, and some of the secret cabal types are trying to improve humanity's lot or achieve some lofty goal, while Leiber's story feels gritty and sordid, with no sense that the Spiders or Snakes are anything but selfish jerks, and the ending strikes a note of dread.  

Acceptable.

"Damnation Morning" appeared first in Fantastic and has mostly resurfaced in Leiber collections but would be included in a 1966 reprint magazine and a 2013 Japanese anthology of, I guess, time travel stories translated from English.

"The Oldest Soldier" (1960)

   

Our narrator, a resident of Chicago, was an anti-war liberal in the 1930s, and when the United States was dragged into World War II he worked in a munitions factory.  But after the war was over he became fascinated by military history and men of valor and read tons of books about war, history books as well as fiction like C. S. Forster's Horatio Hornblower books.  Then he sought out veterans to talk to, and found a group of vets who sat around swapping war stories at a liquor store.  Among them was a guy called Max who told vivid stories of fighting in wars in the distant past and even in the far future, apparently putting on an act. 

Our narrator realizes that Max's stories are all too true when he spots a monster (like that on the cover of The Mind Spider and Other Stories) spying on them!  The narrator, who has long wanted to demonstrate courage, gets his opportunity to do so when he has to hold off the monster while Max goes through the process of travelling out of this time to escape the beast.  Instead of relating a hand-to-hand fight or a gun battle, Leiber comes up with clever and compelling psychological and psychic trials our narrator has to go through to save his friend; "The Oldest Soldier" is more of a horror story than an action story.

A good story with an interesting character and good ideas and images, well-written and well-paced.  Leiber also includes affectionate references to Robert Heinlein and Bill Shakespeare.  Thumbs up for "The Oldest Soldier;" horror fans might particularly like it. 

"The Oldest Soldier" debuted in F&SF and has been anthologized a few times, including by Dozois and by Darrell Schweitzer and George H. Scithers in a volume collecting SF stories set in bars and other drinking places.

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"The Oldest Soldier" is very successful, and "The Haunted Future" and "Damnation Morning" are good enough that I'll read the remaining three pieces from my copy of The Mind Spider and Other Stories and tell you what I thought of them in the next episode of MPorcius Fiction Log.