Unearthly Visions from W M Miller, R Z Gallun and C D Simak

In our last episode we read the 1956 version of Eric Frank Russell's story "Legwork."  "Legwork" would be reprinted in 1965 in the Groff Conklin anthology 5 Unearthly Visions, a copy of which I acquired down in Lexington, Kentucky in April of 2016.  5 Unearthly Visions also reprints Damon Knight's "Dio," a story I read in a Knight collection back in 2018 under the title "The Dying Man."  So, two unearthly visions down, three to go--let's finish out the anthology by spending the day reading the included visions by Walter M. Miller, Jr., Raymond Z. Gallun, and Clifford D. Simak.

Fellow SF fan "Petie," we salute you.

"Conditionally Human" by Walter M. Miller, Jr. (1952/1980)

Already my plan to read from my paperback copy of 5 Unearthly Visions is going off the rails.  isfdb indicates that the version of "Conditionally Human" in Conklin's 1965 anthology is substantially different from versions in other volumes, including Everett Bleiler and T. E. Dikty's Year's Best Science Fiction Novels: 1953, which purports to print texts speciallh revised by the authors.  I can't find a scan of the Bleiler and Dikty book, so I am going to read the version of "Conditionally Human" in an internet archive scan of 1980's The Best of Walter Miller, Jr., which I can see from the first line deviates from the text of the 1965 Conklin version.

It is the 2060s, the socialistic future in which the government gives you a test and tells you what job you get.  Our hero, Terry Norris, has been assigned a job his new wife Anne finds abhorrent, a job which he describes as being that of an "up-to-date dog catcher."  You see, the government, because of overpopulation concerns, also gives you a test to see if you are worthy of reproducing, and only the most impressive specimens are permitted to have a biological child.  Some of those denied parenthood by the government are permitted to own a genetically engineered artificial life form in a ploy to satisfy their desire to be parents, to experience a simulacrum of the love shared between parents and children.  For example, there are cat-things and dog-things that have the intelligence of a human baby and can understand and speak simple words of baby-talk English.

The most advanced of these artificial creatures are the "neutroids;" as their name suggests, these are sexless beings that look almost like a real human child.  A neutroids' physical development ceases before it reaches what in a sexed being would be puberty; depending on what model you can afford and have a license for, your neutroid might top out at three or five or whatever, with the limit at about ten years of age.  (As for intelligence, the neutroids are what I as a kid would have called "retarded" but now call "developmentally disabled.")  Couples who do well enough on the tests to merit neutroid ownership get special treatment--government doctors shoot the female member of the couple up with drugs to give her some of the experience of being pregnant, like odd cravings, weight gain, and lactation.  One of the story's little jokes is that before a couple receives delivery of their neutroid the wife goes to a hospital and the husband is expected to pretend to be nervous, to smoke cigarettes and pace back and forth in the maternity ward waiting room.  

Norris's job is to manage all these artificial creatures that inhabit his 200-mile-square sector of suburban housing; his most onerous duty is catching and destroying any of the artificial creatures that prove defective or somehow become ownerless.  Because the neutroids have something like an immature human's intelligence and personality, and, except for a little tail and lack of gonads, look kinda like human children, Anne thinks of her new husband, who has to toss neutroids into the handy gas chamber (complete with attached crematorium) in his back yard, not as a dog catcher but a baby-killer!

The various interwoven plot threads of "Conditionally Human" demonstrate the terrible psychological and sociological costs of the severe government limitations on childbirth and pubic policies that aim to fulfill women's maternal desires via Frankensteinian means.  A batch of neutroids is suspected of being defective, and Norris has to wrest them from the arms of their loving "parents," and some put up a fight.  Anne decides she wants to have a real child with Norris even though they are just class C, and doing so would risk separation and demotion to laborer status.  When Anne becomes acquainted with one of the defective neurtroids--its "defect" is that it is almost a normal human girl, with intelligence within typical human parameters and a body with gonads that will go through puberty and be able to bear children--she becomes attached to it and determined to make sure it is not destroyed.  (This story probably deserves a feminist analysis--women are its moral core, but they pursue traditional goals like wanting to care for and give birth to children.)

One theme Miller addresses is complicity.  In one subplot, Norris goes along with a corrupt superior's rule-breaking, and when this misbehavior leads to a broken-hearted woman committing murder, Norris recognizes that he is partly to blame for the carnage and regrets going against the rules.  But Norris also recognizes that he bears guilt for following the rules of the immoral government of which he is an agent.  In the climax of the story Norris tries to sabotage the system, taking a risky first step that he hopes will set off a chain of events that will result in the end of the government's intrusive and oppressive reproductive policies.

Religion is another of Miller's themes, as it often is in his work, and a clergyman plays a role in the story in the end, and in the closing pages of the story Anne reads from the Bible.

Miller is a good writer, and tackles serious, compelling topics in "Conditionally Human," as he did in other stories of his I liked, like "Crucifixius Etiam," "Death of a Spaceman," "I Made You" and "No Moon for Me."  Miller's work feels mature in part because it is ambiguous, it doesn't offer easy answers and doesn't feel like propaganda.  "Crucifixius Etiam" and "Death of a Spaceman" tell you that conquering space is a worthwhile goal, but fully admit it is going to entail horrendous sacrifice.  "Conditionally Human" portrays the government's population control measures as bad, but in Miller's story the population problem is real, not an illusion pushed by goofball activists or exploited as an excuse by government tyrants in their pursuit of greater power.  

Thumbs up, then for "Conditionally Human," another success from a consistently good writer.  I do have some criticisms of the story's structure and length, though.  It does feel a little long, and the climax at the end, when Norris decides to rebel and murders a fellow government employee, is less shocking and less climactic than the murder in the middle of the story.  I have to wonder if maybe the other versions of the story, in Galaxy and/or in 5 Unearthly Visions, might be tighter.

"Stamped Caution" by Raymond Z. Gallun (1953)

"Stamped Caution" debuted in Galaxy, in an issue with a cover story by MPorcius punching bag J. T. McIntosh.  In the lore of MPorcius Fiction Log, Gallun is the opposite of McIntosh (AKA M'Intosh AKA MacIntosh); Gallun is a guy whose work I almost always like.  (See a list of links to Gallun-related blog posts here.)  So I embark on reading "Stamped Caution" with a spring in my step.

"Stamped Caution" is a well-written effort to construct a realistic account of Earth people's reaction to the first landing of Martians here on Earth, and then reaction of Martians to the first landing of Earthers on the Red Planet.  Gallun strives to be optimistic as well as realistic, and perhaps to ignore or subvert some of the commonplaces of adventure fiction--people do get captured and do escape, but both humans and the aliens are trying to avoid war and build a relationship based on trade and friendship rather than conquest, and they actually succeed!

In brief, a Martian ship crashes on Earth and all the crew die except for an egg.  The narrator is given the job of incubating the egg and studying the creature that emerges from it, which turns out to be a tentacled thing with eyestalks, not a mere animal but an intelligent being able to use tools and learn English.  Gallun's descriptions of the alien's form and behavior and the human efforts to study it and educate it are entertaining.

By the time the Martian is an adult the people of Earth have built their own ship capable of going to Mars and the narrator and the Martian he raised form part of the crew that go there.  The humans of the crew are captured by the Martians and their experience is somewhat parallel to that of their Martian friend--they are studied and tested and, eventually, the people of Earth and Mars take some first steps on the road to a mutually profitable relationship characterized by peace.

I like it.  Gallun's good record here at MPorcius Fiction Log endures.        

The Swedish translation of 5 Unearthly Visions, Spionen utifran, contains only the three
stories "Legwork," "Stamped Caution" and "Shadow World."

"Shadow World" by Clifford D. Simak (1957)

Simak seems like a good guy and he's a good writer, but sometimes his sentimentality can get too sappy, and sometimes his anti-urban, anti-modern schtick gets on my nerves, though he's not as bad as Chad Oliver.  So I never know when I start a Simak story if I am going to like it.  Let's roll the dice again, peeps.

Looks like we rolled a 4 or 5*--"Shadow World" is a long and unsatisfying twist-ending joke story.  It has as minor themes imperialism, colonialism and exploitation of the environment, but its major theme is the danger of addictive entertainment.

*We might say 6, 7 and 8 would represent the various ranges of "acceptable;"  9 or more would be good or better, with 11 and 12 Gene Wolfe, Jack Vance, Thomas Disch and Tanith Lee territory.

Earth is sort of overcrowded, and so men have been searching the galaxy for Earth-like worlds to colonize.  One such world is Stella IV.  The survey team that discovered it found no evidence of native intelligent life, just some mysterious "cones" that could only be seen from a distance.

The narrator is a member of the outfit building the colony on Stella IV.  He tells us that mankind has learned its lesson and Stella IV will have a carefully planned economy, that there won't be individuals taking risks as they try to strike it rich on a frontier, but rather a systematic and orderly progression that won't waste natural resources.  I couldn't tell if Simak was seriously advocating a planned economy or if he was being sarcastic, employing an unreliable narrator strategy here, i part because this political economy/environmentalist stuff was incidental to the plot. 

When the team of which the narrator is a member arrived on Stella IV they were immediately met by what they took to be native life forms, forms of an inexplicable, even supernatural, type they dubbed "shadows."  Each man found he had a particular shadow who kept close to him at all times.  These beings are humanoids who lack any facial features save for a single eye, have no sexual characteristics, and no clothes save a harness that holds a large jewel on its wearer's chest and a bag near the waist--the bag jingles like it is full of small hard objects.  The shadows do not talk, or breathe, or eat.  If you try to touch a shadow's jewel the creature simply vanishes and returns later.

The shadows do not seem hostile or dangerous, but it appears that, in a mysterious and oblique way, they are slowing down the building of the colony.  Every morning the bulldozers and cranes and things the human engineers and technicians need to build the colony are found to be "gummed up," and they have to be disassembled and cleaned before they can be put to use.  The men are thus able to only put in a half day of productive work each day, slowing progress severely, and there is panic when the colony builders receive a message warning them an inspector is on his way to Stella IV.  If the inspector finds they are behind schedule and have no idea how to resolve the problem caused by the shadows they are all likely to be fired!

The narrator figures out what is going on by employing an illicit device.  Simak portrays some of the men among the builders as jerks, and one of the jerks is the cook, who goes by the name "Greasy."  Greasy has an illegal device called a peeper.  As I said, Simak is a good writer and he uses various clever strategies in constructing "Shadow World" that make it mysterious, generating suspense and conveying a sense of strangeness.  One of these strategies is mentioning peepers on the story's opening page and then not explaining clearly what a peeper is until like page 19.  A peeper is what we might call a virtual reality device that looks like a pair of binoculars that you can strap to your face; it has 39 knobs that can each be set from zero to 39--each knob sets a parameter for the fantasy world in which you can live through the device.  The peeper is extremely addictive, and is illegal.

The shadows are very inquisitive--it appears they are sabotaging the machines at night in some undetectable way to provide themselves an opportunity of observing their disassembly and repair.  The narrator, the only person who knows about Greasy's peeper, steals the contraband device and risks addiction himself to figure out how to set the peeper so that it will take a viewer on such a horrible trip that it will knock him unconscious.  As he expected, his shadow looks into the peeper at the first opportunity and duly collapses.  The shadow then decomposes in short order, leaving behind only a cone--the base of which was its eye--and the jewel and the bag of items.  The jewels are a sort of 3D camera and they have been producing little miniature models of the Earthmen's equipment; these models represent, in exhaustive and precise detail, both the surface and the inner workings of the men's machines and tools.  Among the little models of his equipment in his expired shadow's bag the narrator discovers a little model of himself.

It turns out that the shadows are just mobile platforms for the two super high tech cameras, the cones that transmit video and sound to the hidden lair of their owners and the jewels that create perfect models.  The hidden masters appear soon after the narrator solves the mystery of the cones and shadows.  These highly advanced aliens are addicted to entertainment, and have been enjoying watching the humans through the cones.  They want to pay for the fascinating show the humans have unwittingly been putting on for them, and offer as payment perfect full-sized working duplicates of the Earthmen's machines and supplies those little miniature models serve as blueprints for the aliens' duplicating machines.  It seems these aliens can also duplicate raw materials like steel, which will make building the colony a snap.  But when the humans realize the aliens have also created living duplicates of themselves they are outraged and horrified, and the narrator scrambles to acquire 500 peepers from Earth--it is not clear if he intends to use these as weapons against the aliens or as a radical psychiatric palliative treatment for the stress of living in a maddening new world of duplicate humans.

Simak's writing style is smooth and "Shadow World" is well-structured as a mystery story.  Unfortunately, the story isn't actually fun and doesn't generate human feeling in the reader, and I don't care for mystery stories that are merely a puzzle and lack any human drama or emotion.  "Shadow World" doesn't really work for me as a science fiction story, either, as it lacks compelling ideas--the alien cones and duplicating machines and the human peepers are simply not believable; they are props for use in a satire, not elements of a sincere speculation about life in the future or an alternative milieu; as for the satire and the jokes--I guess about being addicted to TV--they are not insightful or funny.  Marginal thumbs down for "Shadow World," I am afraid, though I can see other people liking it because it is well-put together on a technical level.

"Shadow World" was first printed in Galaxy, where it was illustrated by the Dillons.  (Here's a note for all you fans of Diane and Leo who don't follow me on twitter: recently I stumbled upon a text book with a cover by the Dillons at an antique store.)  "Shadow World" would be reprinted in a few Simak collections, including some British and French ones, and a 21st-century Baen anthology edited by Hank Davis of stories depicting unfortunate first contacts titled Worst Contact.

Off-Planet's cover depicts one of the shadows from "Shadow World"

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The last page of my copy of 5 Unearthly Visions is an ad for Monsters Galore, a paperback anthology of stories about monsters edited by Bernhardt J. Hurwood, a man with a varied career that included not only editing books of horror stories but penning TV and movie tie-ins, non-fiction books about torture and unexplained phenomena, and sex manuals.  The ad claims Monsters Galore is illustrated, but the one review of the book on Amazon casts doubt on this assertion.