Astounding Sept '40: L R Hubbard, R Rocklynne and V Phillips

Here at MPorcius Fiction Log we are reading stories from the issues of Astounding in which L. Ron Hubbard's Kilkenny Cats stories debuted.  Today we've got the September 1940 issue, from the pages of which we will read not only Hubbard's contribution but a piece by Ross Rocklynne, even though the last time we read a Rocklynne story I denounced it as a "repetitive" and "tedious" "waste of time" consisting of "anemic jokes" (ouch) and a story by Vic Phillips, about whom I know nothing. 

(This important issue of John W. Campbell, Jr.'s magazine also features the first installment of the serialized version of A. E. van Vogt's famous Slan, and a story from Robert A. Heinlein's Future History, "Blowups Happen."  I read a book version of Slan many years ago, and may read this magazine version someday.  "Blowups Happen" I blogged about way back in 2014.  I reread "Blowups Happen" yesterday, and can't think of anything additional to say that is any more interesting than what I said back then.)

"The Kilkenny Cats" by L. Ron Hubbard

Like the first Kilkenny Cats story, "The Idealist," "The Kilkenny Cats" appears under the pseudonym Kurt von Rachen.  According to isfdb, this story has never been reprinted on its own, just in the 1980 Italian Kilkenny Cats collection I ribelli dell'universo and the 1992 small press hardcover Kilkenny Cats collection.  

At the end of "The Idealist," the leaders of the Anarchist party were captive on a starship headed for planet Sereon, having been sentenced by the newly installed communist government of Earth to exile on that mysterious planet.  (The naive anarchists had been the commies' allies in the revolution against Earth's aristocratic rulers, only to find the Reds turning on them as soon as the aristos were out of the way.)  Hubbard spends the first few pages of "The Kilkenny Cats" demonstrating somewhat comically how the starship, run efficiently when manned by the men of the old Royal Space Navy, is now being run haphazardly and lackadasically by the uneducated communist dopes who have succeeded the deposed aristocrats.  We also learn that the dictator of Earth, Fagar, has given the commander of the starship, Lars Tavish, instructions to set up the penal colony on Sereon in such a way that will foster a self-destructive fight between the disparate groups of anarchist exiles.  The two main factions are the seventeen middle-class scientists led by Jean Maucahrd and the longshoremen (375 in number) led by Dave Blacker; also in the mix are our two main characters, Colonel Stephen Gailbraith, a space navy veteran and hero of the revolution who now heartily regrets his support of the revolution and Fredericka Stalton, master propagandist and former poster child for the communist party who has been exiled along with the anarchists because Fagar worried her popularity threatened his rule, especially after she expressed misgivings about communist policy.

Lars Tavish sets up the scientists in one camp and the laborers in another, the former with all the food and high tech equipment, except for the rifles, which go to the longshoremen.  Almost immediately following the departure of the ship, the two groups are at each other's throats.  Meanwhile, Gailbraith, accompanied by Stalton, who don't get along with either Mauchard or Blacker, march off into the wilderness.  Demonstrating an iron will, a talent for command and endless resourcefulness, Gailbraith succeeds in getting Mauchard's boffins and Blacker's laborers to stop fighting each other and work together by introducing an external threat--packs of native carnivores.  Stalton, a tough and cynical girl whose ability to manipulate others carried her out of the tenements and into the top ranks of the revolution, constantly bickers with Galbraith, but as he proves his abilities and saves her life she begins to respect him.

An acceptably entertaining SF story in the classic mold, showing one clever man overcoming obstacles using logic and trickery and demonstrating how diverse social demographics need to work together to make a thriving society, though it will probably take elite manipulation to get them to do so.  Again Gailbraith's future--as the man who will overthrown the communist government--is foreshadowed.  Presumably we will see this feat in a future installment of Hubbard's Kilkenny Cats series.

"Quietus" by Ross Rocklynne

Two bird-like aliens arrive on Earth in their spherical spaceship to discover that your home planet and mine is a total wreck, having been hit by an asteroid 15 or so years ago.  Except for a few thousand square miles in North America, the Earth's surface is a barren waste punctuated by ferociously active volcanoes; but in that green strip in the Western Hemisphere lives 21-year-old Tommy and his pet crow Blacky.  Blacky can talk, and parrots things Tommy says and occasionally repeats things people said when Tommy was just a little kid, before the cataclysm that killed everyone Tommy knew, phrases Tommy can't quite understand.  (Impulsive Tommy survived the asteroid strike because he had run away from home and was hiding in a cave the night of the disaster.)

Tommy is crying because of a hunger he cannot define--we readers of course instantly recognize that Tommy's hunger is for a woman.  Tommy stumbles upon evidence that he is not the only human left on Earth, and that the other survivor is a girl!  He starts tracking her, and she, shy and skittish, evades him, but as time goes by she becomes more and more curious about him.

All the worlds love a lover, and I'd like to tell you that Tommy and whatshername live happily ever after, but, as the title of his story suggests, "Quietus" is a tragedy and Rocklynne lays a depressing twist ending on us.  The two avian aliens watch Tommy, and one of them assumes that Blacky, who rides on Tommy's shoulder and is always jabbering, is the intelligent being and Tommy a beast of burden.  Again and again, Blacky's cries and chatter startle and scare off the young woman, and eventually the emotional Tommy vents his frustration with his black-feathered friend by throwing pebbles at him.  Thinking she is saving a fellow bird-person from a mere animal, one of the aliens shoots Tommy down; the last Earthwoman emerges from cover to stand sobbing over the corpse of the last Earthman.

Not bad.

Raymond J. Healy and J. Francis McComas saw fit to reprint "Quietus" in Adventures in Time and Space (one of the most famous s-f collections of all time!) and Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg included it in the volume of their series The Great Science Fiction Stories covering 1940, which was later reprinted under the moniker Isaac Asimov Presents the Golden Years of Science Fiction.  (Don't let me hear you say life's taking you nowhere, angel.)

"Emergency" by Vic Phillips

It is the future!  Mankind has colonized the solar system, and operates under a single central government on Earth.  Human civilization relies on powerplants that can transmit energy safely and efficiently through air or vacuum to where ever it may be required.

"Emergency" begins in the chamber where the Earth's ruling council of seven men are confronting an unprecedented and bewildering crisis.  Over the last few hours, all contact with the other planets and moons of the solar system has been lost, one after the other, suggesting some alien force is travelling through the system, deactivating the power transmission infrastructure in each colony as it proceeds.  Earth's rulers have no idea what to do as whatever it was that has just silenced Mars approaches our home planet!

All machinery on Earth ceases functioning, and the capitol city goes dark.  But wait, out the window, is that a single light?  Yes, the centuries' old electric bulb on display at the museum!  The eighth man in the council chamber, the "chief liaison officer," who seems like a sort of secretary and office manager, leads the councilmembers to the museum, where he has a brain wave:

Whimhurst, Farraday, Franklin, Hertz, the ghosts of these and a dozen others of the ancient pioneers seemed to be with him at that moment....

Gathering together tools and materials from the museum, and recruiting hobbyists who have obsolete skills that have not been remunerative for hundreds of years, they labor to build a last ditch defense against the invader.

We learn what this defense is in the climax.  At the direction of the secretary, amateur technicians have generated a powerful static electricity charge using hand-cranked generators ("Taupler Haltz machines"), and stored the charge in a human "condenser," a line of thousands of hand-holding volunteers.  When the alien, a six-foot wide sphere that is absorbing all of the power generated by human civilization's powerplants and transmitting it back home, hovers close enough, the head of the line of volunteers touches it, discharging the static charge.  Fifty of the Earth's heroes are killed in the explosive discharge, but it interrupts the alien's energy piracy long enough to bring Earth's defense weapons back online so they can blast the alien.

A decent enough science gimmick story.  "Emergency" has, it seems, never been reprinted.  Sometimes we dig up the deep cuts here at MPorcius Fiction Log!

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Readers, I presume, were happy with this issue of Astounding; not only does it include the major van Vogt and Heinlein stories, but even these three lesser pieces are pretty entertaining and full of daring deeds, tragedy, life advice (don't get mixed up with commies!) and science.

More Kilkenny Cats, and more Astounding, in our next episode.