Advertising works! In our last blog post we saw an ad for
Science Fiction Stories' July 1957 issue in a copy of
Science Fiction Quarterly and here we are reading it just a blink of an eye later. I guess it helps that the cover of this issue, by Kelly Freas, is great, with a cool space ship, fascinating aliens, a terrific monster, and beautiful colors and composition. I guess Freas deserves those eleven Hugos.
"Neutral Planet" by Robert Silverberg
The people of Earth and the bear-like people of Rigel are at war. But new forcefield technology has rendered offensive weapons useless, so there are no space naval battles. Instead, Rigel and Terra compete over exclusive trade deals and alliances with neutral systems. As the story begins, a Terran ship crewed by a score of men is approaching a planet in the Antares system, hoping to sign a treaty with the primitive reptilian natives; the sneaky Rigelians must have a spy back on Terra who informed them of the Terran mission to Antares, because a Rigelian ship on a similar mission is right behind the Terran one.
The rival missions conduct cloak and dagger operations against each other, but the focus of the story is their competition to sign an exclusive treaty with the scaly spear-wielding Antareans. The Rigelians suffer a disaster--after being showered with gifts, the natives kill a bunch of Rigelians with their spears. The human captain figures out the psychology/sociology of the Antareans--the responded badly to the gifts because they were loathe to be indebted to strangers. The personnel of the Terran mission contrive a way of putting themselves in debt to the reptile men--they stage a starship crash and allow the natives to rescue them. Now feeling as if the humans owe them something, the Antareans have no objection to doing them the insignificant favor of signing a treaty with Terra.
I guess this story is influenced by the Cold War, in which the United States and the Soviet Union competed diplomatically and via espionage because direct warfare had been rendered prohibitive by nuclear weapons.
"Neutral Planet" feels a little contrived with its elaborate rules of indirect warfare that seem to be broken occasionally and its counterintuitive psychology, but it is an entertaining piece of work, Silverberg doing a decent job of sketching what the various fun SF elements (the weapons and electronic equipment, the various aliens) look like and how they perform.
It doesn't look like "Neutral Planet" has been anthologized, but it has appeared in several Silverberg collections, including two German publications. In its magazine appearance here it suffers from many typos, so I would suggest you read it in a book.
"Femmequin 973" by Fritz Leiber
We often find unconventional sex in stories by Leiber: underage sex, rape, incest, perversion. (See "The Sadness of the Executioner," "Beauty and the Beasts,"
"The Bait," "The Glove," "A Bad Day For Sales," "The Princess in the Tower 250,000 Miles High," "The Mind Spider," "A Rite of Spring," and probably others I am forgetting.) A title like "Femmequin 973" has me suspecting (hoping?) ol' Fritz has some more unusual sexual material for us; well, let's see.
My suspicions were well-founded--"Femmequin 973" is a story about sex robots built to order by master craftsmen for horny rich men! At the center of the story are two such crafts...people--the man, Harry Chernik, who does all the precision work building the sexbots and the woman, Rita Bruhl, who styles them, modelling their movements and voices and clothing. Leiber's descriptions of the psychology and histories of these two damaged creatives and of the whole business of designing, constructing, marketing and selling sex robots is very engaging and entertaining; he brings this whole scenario to vivid life.
Harry is unattractive and afraid of women, and for twenty years has taken his satisfaction in life from building the sex robots. Rita is a beauty, but while she enjoys flirting with men and inspiring their desire, she finds actual sexual contact sort of repulsive.
These two losers in love bear a resentment towards one John Gottschalk. Twenty years ago Harry had found a woman willing to date him, sweet and mousy Louise, and hoped to marry her. Harry and Louise would go on double dates with John and his girlfriend, Rita. John was attractive, and Rita found him a man she could actually fall in love with and have sex with. But John was afraid of women, and didn't want to marry a strong-willed beauty, and instead stole Louise from hapless Harry, Louise being the kind of timid girl he need not fear would dominate him or object to him cheating on her. John thus broke both Harry and Rita's hearts, shortly before they got their jobs in the illegal sex robot factory.
The climax of "Femmequin 973" involves Rita convincing Harry to help her build a sex robot that looks and acts exactly like her and her managing to sell it to John. The final sentence of the story revels that this Rita simulacrum has a special addition intended to inflict a terrible revenge on John--the vagina dentata.
Very good--Leiber nails all the technical stuff I sometimes talk about, pacing and images and economy and so forth, as well as doing a great job with the characters and all the speculative stuff. Five out of five cunningly cut cams! This is the best story I have read in a while.
This story is not nearly as revered as it might be; maybe people find it disturbing or sexist or something. "Femmequin 973" was reprinted in 1959 in a French magazine (oh la la!) and languished until being included in two 21st-century Leiber collections. Horror fans and people interested in attitudes about sexual relationships in SF and portrayals of women by male SF writers are encouraged to check it out.
"The Gardener" by Raymond F. Jones
"The Gardener" is one of those SF stories about how hard it is being better than everyone else, the isolation suffered by those with superior intelligence and super powers. I find this sort of thing kind of tiresome, like hearing beautiful women moan about how hard it is to be beautiful, or celebrities whine about the burden of their fame, it feels like hearing life's winners trying to get some of the sympathy generally reserved for life's losers.
Anyway, "The Gardener" is the story of Jimmy Correll, boy prodigy. Super smart, he is mustered into high school long before puberty sets in, and it looks like he'll be attending university at age ten or eleven! The fact that he is astoundingly bright is crystal clear to all, and most people's response to Jimmy is fear or repulsion, but they don't even know the half of it! Jimmy can read minds! Jimmy has microscopic vision and can see the little one-celled creatures in a drop of pond water! Jimmy has telescopic vision, and can even cast his mind to Mars and explore the ruins of the red planet's once-great civilization and frolic with the children of that civilization's lingering descendants! The boy genius keeps these super powers a secret from others, who already regard him as a freak and either avoid, ignore or make fun of him. Jimmy is lonely and wishes he was like others.
The story takes place in a period of crisis in Jimmy's young life. Wanting to be like other, ordinary kids and have ordinary friendships, he doesn't want to leave high school early and go to college, as it will be impossible to make friends there, and he finally has made a friend here at the high school, a popular athlete who asked him for help with trigonometry. Jimmy flees a big assembly put on to celebrate him and his ascension to university. But one of the few adults who has been truly kind to him, the janitor, finds him. The janitor reveals that Jimmy is not the only person on Earth with super powers, that the janitor himself has telepathy and can go to Mars and see amoebas and all that. Jimmy has not been alone at all--the adult members of his superior race are always watching, looking out for him. (Jimmy is the sprouting plant they are "gardening.")
Jimmy gets back to the school in time for the assembly being held in his honor and I guess we are expected to think Jimmy has learned how to have fulfilling relationships with the mundanes (I guess we call them "muggles" now) as well as being buoyed by the knowledge that he has a whole secret society of fellow superhumans backing him up, making sure he doesn't get into trouble.
Like one of those old novels (
Fielding?) in which a person of humble status is suddenly revealed to be a member of the elite, or all those mangas in which the lonely plain kid in class is inexplicably pursued by the school's most popular girl, "The Gardener" is a wish fulfillment fantasy in which the main character is special because of an accident of birth and his problems are abruptly resolved by the actions of others--he doesn't have to actually
do anything to succeed. Jones' story particularly appeals to the kinds of guys who are smarter than average but not good at making friends (and are perhaps overrepresented among the readers of SF magazines)--it depicts just such an individual making a friend and receiving accolades, the character's intelligence and the praise he receives all cranked up to maximum volume.
This is pedestrian, pandering filler stuff, but Jones writes it competently, so I'll call "The Gardener" acceptable.
"The Gardener" was reprinted in a bunch of Jones collections in America and Europe with wild surreal covers, including one that looks like an H. R. Giger.
"Gag Rule" by Thomas N. Scortia
Unlike the three preceding stories, "Gag Rule" has never been reprinted--if you want to read this one you have no refuge from this magazine's rampant typographical errors!
"Gag Rule" is a joke story and a logic puzzle and a total waste of the reader's time. Thumbs down!
Three salesmen are on the planet of rabbit people. (Remember those
Star Wars comics that had a rabbit man in them? That was really something, wasn't it?) The rabbit people have been addicted to practical jokes ever since they were introduced to humor by Earth people. The three salesmen represent manufacturers of such devices as exploding cigars and those flowers you wear on your lapel that spray fluid in the eyes of those who try to smell the flower. (See illustration below.) The three salesmen are meeting a rabbit man trade representative, and after the four enjoy an elaborate meal this big-eared joker presents the three salesmen with a test--he who passes the test will be rewarded a monopoly on access to the rabbit world market.
The rabbit person leaves the three salesmen locked in the room. He warns through a speaker that one, two or all of them have drunk poisoned wine and that there is a single antidote capsule available in the little box on the table. They should note, however, that the antidote is poison to anyone who hasn't already ingested the initial poison. The eyes of those who have drunk the poisoned wine will lose their color, but there is no reflective surface in the room, so no man can diagnose himself.
The rabbit man says the poisons are deadly, but after the main character has solved the puzzle and won the contract, the rabbit admits that the poisons are not in fact deadly. Wow, hilarious. The story ends with a pun: "rabbit punch."
Maybe you will like "Gag Rule" if you enjoy logic puzzles, but I wouldn't bet on it.
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| Detail of illustration for "Gag Rule" by C. A. Murphy |
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The Scortia was painful and the Jones merely competent filler, but the Leiber is great and the Silverberg good, so I have no regrets about investigating this issue.
More magazine stories next time, but it will be back to the late Thirties for us.
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