Barry N. Malzberg: "The Wonderful All-Purpose Transmogrifier," "Chained," and "Time-Tracker"

As you know, we here at MPorcius Fiction Log are fascinated by the work and career and views of Barry N. Malzberg.  As I sift through isfdb and the internet archive, looking at the tables of contents of anthologies and magazines, I often come across stories by Malzberg that have yet to be included in a Malzberg collection, stories I have forgotten about or never heard of.  Today let's read three such stories that you can readily access at the internet archive, stories from the 1970s and '80s.

"The Wonderful All-Purpose Transmogrifier" (1974)

"The Wonderful All-Purpose Transmogrifier" made its debut in Final Stage, an anthology Malzberg edited with Ed Ferman and which has a crazy history.  Basically, a woman at the publisher thought the stories poorly written and heavily edited some of them for hardcover publication; when the paperback came out it was with texts restored to match the original conceptions of the authors.  I own a paperback copy of Final Stage, and back in 2016 I blogged about the included stories by Poul Anderson, Brian Aldiss, Joanna Russ and Harlan Ellison.  For whatever reason I didn't get around to reading the Malzberg story, and today I make good that gap in my knowledge of the Malzbergian canon.

Malzberg has written quite a few stories in which a guy puts on a hypnohelmet and experiences virtual reality; as with mind-altering drugs, while such interactive dreams are prescribed by those in authority as a therapy, patients do run some risk of becoming dangerously addicted, while some people seek to access the  treatments as mere recreation.  (I've blogged about several such stories: "Battered-Earth Syndrome," an environmentalist one; "At the Institute," one about murder; "Tapping Out," more murder; "Going Down," murder plus incest, and "On Ice," still more murder and more incest.)

"The Wonderful All-Purpose Transmogrifier" is another of these stories.  In this one a major theme is that the government permits use of the hypnohelmet interactive dream system, available for purchase by private citizens for use in the home, as a means of keeping passive the populace, what we might call an "opiate of the masses."

Haverford hates his wife Ruth and finds her unattractive; they live in an overpopulated world in which there is so much pollution it is unsafe to even leave the apartment.  To escape all this he employs the hypno dream device, in this story called the transmogrifier.  In virtual reality Haverford finds Ruth attractive, and he dominates her, winning arguments against her and raping her.  But he uses the device too frequently, more than recommended by the manufacturer and despite his wife's desperate advice, and it begins damaging his brain.

The twist ending is that the narrative we have just read, of Haverford overusing the device to experience a relationship with his wife in which he is the master and as a result suffering brain damage, may not be real, but a virtual reality simulation played out by Ruth in the role of Haverford!  Ruth, it seems, enjoys being in her husband's shoes as he lives out his (alleged?) desires to dominate her and then suffers a humiliating comeuppance (suffering the delusion that he has been turned into a duck!) for his addiction.  We have to wonder about Ruth's own strange desires if she enjoys raping herself and/or experiencing her husband's (likely fictional?) mental illness from the inside. 

Not bad.

Final Stage was translated into Italian and German, and "The Wonderful All-Purpose Transmogrifier" also appeared as the cover story of the Croat magazine Sirius in 1984, in an issue with a cover illustration from 1959 by Virgil Finlay.  

"Chained" (1982)

"Chained" first appeared in the anthology Specters!, edited by Malzberg's friend and oft-time collaborator Bill Pronzini.  It later would be included in 100 Great Fantasy Short Short Stories, edited by Isaac Asimov, Terry Carr and Martin H. Greenberg.

"Chained" is written in the voice of Hamlet's father, and we listen to him as he rehashes the plot of Hamlet and comments upon it.  In the end of the story he is reunited with his treacherous brother and wife after they die, and we are given the idea that they are going to enjoy themselves, interacting with other supernatural characters from other Shakespeare plays.

A gimmicky waste of time; if you are unfamiliar with the plot of Hamlet you won't know what is going on, and, if you are familiar with Hamlet, this story, mostly a summary of that play that contributes little, offers you little.

"Time-Tracker" (1989)   

"Time-Tracker" has only ever appeared in the paperback anthology Phantoms edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Rosalind M. Greenberg.  

I have read Hamlet multiple times, but I have limited familiarity with The Phantom of the Opera and almost none with Carmen, so I'm afraid "Time-Tracker" is largely lost on me.  (Remember when Gilligan and the rest of the castaways staged a musical version of Hamlet with music based on that from Carmen?  TV used to be fun!)

Some guy, a failed actor or singer or something, is hiding in secret rooms and passages in the opera house of Paris.  A policeman is after him, and after years of searching, has finally figured out his quarry is in the opera house.  On the evening in which the cop begins searching the opera house, as Carmen is performed on the stage, a young woman blunders into the phantom guy's secret room, and the phantom guy moves to rape her.  She screams and another woman enters the room to save her, and a moment later the cop comes in and thus ends the main plot of the story.

Malzberg employs a number of gags in this story.  All the characters have the initials O. P.  He uses the words "sinister" and "bitter" again and again as some kind of joke or allusion.  There is a deja vu and alternate universes element to the story, the suggestion that the characters have been involved in an adventure like this before, and will be involved in such an adventure again, but their roles will be mixed up--sometimes the man who now is the cop will be the crook and the man who is currently the policeman will be the criminal.  I guess this is all a reference to how actors perform in the same plays again and again but sometimes as different characters.  A related theme in "Time-Tracker" is how art is so often derivative; we are reminded multiple times of how operas are often based on earlier dramas.  Another theme, one that adds an additional note of sadness and anger to the tone of this unhappy story, is artists and art lovers who are forced to work on and/or intimately experience art they hate, or as the text puts it "loathe;" one of several examples is a singer (who, I will point out as an aside, has a scar on her face she hides by wearing a mask, like the title character of The Phantom of the Opera) who "loathes" Carmen and has to perform in it as a member of the chorus.

There is a lot going on in this story, though I fear my ignorance of various cultural touchstones is hampering my appreciation of it.  I like it and I'm giving it a thumbs up, but maybe the 130 million people whom wikipedia is telling me saw Andrew Lloyd Weber's stage musical of The Phantom of the Opera since its 1986 debut would get more out if it than I have.

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After drafting the above I got out my copy of The Best of Barry N. Malzberg and reread the aforementioned "Going Down" and "On Ice" and was pleased to find I still really enjoyed them.  These two stories have a lot going for them: the in-your-face disgustingness and outrageous humor of the violence and twisted sex may be the most prominent and thus attractive or repulsive thing about them, but there is also their critique of things like Kennedy worship, the drug culture, the role of the medical establishment and the role of the state in our lives, our views of money and freedom, and our relationships with family members and sex partners.  I recommended "Going Down" and "On Ice" to you back in 2016, and in 2022 I recommend them to you again. 

I have not yet satisfied my current urge to grimace at the horror and guffaw at the humor of Malzberg's crazy visions, so more Malzberg in our next episode!