But first, a quick glance at Pohl's editorial and Algis Budrys' book column. Pohl praises the recently deceased Hugo Gernsback and brags about Hugos recently won by If and by Jack Vance and Jack Gaughan for work that appeared in Galaxy. Budrys takes the occasion of the publication of a new edition of In Search of Wonder and of the second Orbit anthology to talk a lot about Damon Knight. Knight is usually discussed in worshipful terms, so it is interesting to hear Budrys' criticisms of the man. Budrys also savages some poor bastard Joe Ross for his anthology Best of Amazing, not only attacking Ross' selections but the man's command of English grammar. Ouch! On the other hand, Budrys likes the stories in The Playboy Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy, though he finds the arrogance and self-importance of the Playboy staff repellent and has something condemnatory but oblique to say about Arthur C. Clarke's relationship with Playboy which I am not getting. Budrys comes off as pretty harsh in this column.
"Outpost of Empire" by Poul Anderson
"Outpost of Empire" takes place on planet Freehold, a world on the very edge of the Terran space empire of 100,000 planets. Freehold was colonized by humans several hundred years ago, but for reasons Anderson describes at some length, has remained sparsely populated and has limited intercourse with the rest of the Empire. Today Freehold is in trouble, as a minority of bird-like aliens whose ancestors immigrated to the colony as well as renegade humans who live like semi-nomadic barbarians are rising up against the urban populace that is loyal to Terra, and the Empire has so many problems it doesn't have many resources to spare to pacify Freehold. The main character of the story is a Terran xenologist, charged by the Imperial government with collecting information on the mess Freehold is in and who had to make his way to Freehold as a passenger on private commercial space ships.
Besides following the xenologist as he talks with various people about the astronomy and geography and history of Freehold, Anderson's narrative follows two leaders of the barbarian humans who live in the forests of Freehold. Anderson spends almost no time describing the inhabitants of the nine cities on Freehold who are loyal to Terra--it is the barbarians whom he seeks to render sympathetic and interesting. These forest people, in fact, are more like a violent strain of hippies than actual barbarians. Over the centuries of human habitation of Freehold, many people have abandoned the nine cities for a host of reasons, and these renegades have built a whole civilization that is largely a secret from the city dwellers. The forest people live closely with nature, and their complex culture is based largely on specialized breeding of various plants and animals--plants and animals take the place in their society that machines have in ours. Quite a few of the forest people have actually been educated off Freehold, unbeknownst to the cities and the Empire, and have an extensive trade relationship with the bird-people, and so the tree-huggers know far more about the Empire than the Empire knows about them, and while they hate machines, they can use high tech devices if they feel the need. The renegades have still another secret advantage over the city peeps: a significant number of their women have special powers--some can control atmospheric humidity and generate camouflaging fog, some can temporarily alter their body chemistry so they are briefly super strong, and still others can control the release of their pheromones and thusly seduce men and make them do anything they want--even betray their comrades!
Even though they don't have many blasters, by using war beasts and the women's special powers the human renegades are able to capture one of the nine cities by storm. They order the city evacuated and then use captured nukes to obliterate the place. The xenologist was in this city at the time and is taken captive by the forest people. Recognizing his Terran origin and social status as a college professor, the two renegade leaders keep him close at hand, thinking that if they can open his eyes to the virtues of their tree-hugging way of life he will help them negotiate some kind of settlement with the Empire. The xenologist comes to sympathize with these characters; after all, the city folk have been racist to the bird-people and have been trying to despoil the environment, and, incidentally, one of the two rebel leaders is a beautiful and sexually available woman!
A Terran Imperial space cruiser lands and the forest people's war animals and the witch powers prove up to the task of capturing it. They proceed to order the eight surviving cities evacuated and then use the cruiser's weapons to raze them. The xenologist then acts as a go-between in the negotiations between the Empire and the forest people, and eventually the Empire recognizes the rule of the tree huggers over Freehold and compensates the city folk for their losses and resettles them on some other planet.
Though "Outpost of Empire" has sex and violence elements, it is mostly a story of ideas that are conveyed through the characters' conversations and private thoughts. Anderson comes up with a pretty complicated history for Freehold that fits into the larger history of Terran expansion into space that is described in all the many Van Rjin and Flandry and Falkayn stories, and he comes up with a whole culture and all sorts of organic-based technologies and witch-powers for the Freehold renegades, and we learn all about it. This is all mildly interesting and entertaining, and impressive I guess on an intellectual level, but not really emotionally engaging. One problem that I in particular had that maybe other people won't is that I found it hard to sympathize with the forest-dwelling renegades over the city folk--I don't want to live in a forest like a nomadic savage hanging around with beasts, I want to live in a downtown apartment on a bustling street and hang at the library and the art museum, and to me it felt more like a tragedy that nine centuries-old cities full of art and architecture and memories got annihilated and their populations dehoused than that some tree somewhere got chopped down.
The French edition of Galaxy printed "Outpost of Empire" as a two-part serial in 1972. Otherwise, the story has reappeared in three different Anderson collections, The Long Night, Captain Flandry: Defender of the Terran Empire, and Question and Answer. Gray Morrow fans should check out the US magazine version, as it features four full-page action-oriented illustrations by Morrow.
"Handicap" is well-done traditional science fiction that glorifies science, technological innovation, and the risk-taking businessman and describes lots of weird alien species and futuristic technology in a convincing and fun way.
The narrator of the story is the youngest in a long line of businessmen who design and manufacture prosthetic devices that serve as hands for intelligent beings who lack hands; the canonical example are Earth dolphins, which in Niven's Known Space setting are an intelligent species. (Like Anderson's "Outpost of Empire," Niven's "Handicap" is a component of the author's elaborate future history of a galactic civilization, the "Known Space" series, and is full of little references to this broader universe.) The narrator has a hunch that the strange immobile creatures of planet Down known as grogs are, secretly, just such a species and thus a market opportunity, and the story relates his investigations. The twist of the plot is that the grog race is psychic, and has been manipulating the human colonists on Down in order to keep its intelligence and powers a secret, and has similarly manipulated the narrator in order to pave the way for a business deal with him.
Classic science fiction stories like this often portray paradigm shifts and strive to impart a sense of wonder in the reader in their conclusions, and Niven does both. A business relationship and personal friendships between humans and grogs revolutionizes grog life, the ecosystem and economy of Down, and political life on the human space empire, all for the better, and the last line of the story holds out the possibility that in the vastness of space, humanity is likely to meet even more amazing alien beings. Niven also adds a little touch of Lovecraftian cosmic horror to this generally sunny story, I think. We are told that in ancient times the galaxy was ruled by a race of slavers who used psychic powers and genetic engineering to dominate all other races; one of the intelligent species who are the narrator's customers are the product of this slaver race and are somewhat reminiscent of H. P. Lovecraft's shoggoths. The grogs are the degenerated descendants of the slavers (racial degradation and devolution are of course typical Lovecraftian themes) and the narrator recognizes the possibility that the grogs could take over Down and maybe all of human civilization and humans would never know it.
Thumbs up! Above I compared Niven's Known Space project to Anderson's Technic History, but in terms of style and tone the men's writing is quite different, Niven's style feeling smooth and sprightly compared to Anderson's sometimes laborious prose. And while I stressed above the note of cosmic horror, the tone of the story is light and optimistic, with camaraderie and fellowship being pervasive themes and all parties benefiting in the end, a contrast to the sense of tragedy we get from Anderson.
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| In the two years between publication of these two editions Niven got a promotion and Roger Zelazny suffered a demotion; SF is a tough business! |
"The Fairly Civil Service" by Harry Harrison
It is the socialistic bureaucratized future in which the government tells you where to live and whether you can have children! Our protagonist is a postal clerk, and as we watch he has to deal with a stream of irrational, irate, demanding, and even dangerous customers. The customers are way over the top slapstick caricatures, like an old woman who needs help filling out the forms that are a prerequisite to her receiving her pension and she rants and raves, threatening to kill herself then and there if she doesn't get the help she needs, a stick up man, and a young woman who tries to use sex appeal to get the clerk to bend the rules for her. At the end of the story, as has been foreshadowed, we learn this ordeal is not exactly real, but a simulated post office experience--the main character is wearing a hypno helmet and sitting for an exam (for the twelfth time in as many years) to see if he is qualified to be a postal clerk.
This is sort of a filler story, but it moves quickly and I did laugh at the old woman's shrieking and at her gushing blood when she followed through on her suicide threats, so I guess I have to give it a thumbs up. Some stories, like Anderson's "Outpost of Empire," deserve more respect than they inspire pleasure, and other stories, like "The Fairly Civil Service," demand little respect but trigger enjoyment even against the will of the reader.
"The Fairly Civil Service" has been anthologized in some foreign publications and has reappeared in Harrison collections like Prime Number under the title "A Civil Service Servant."
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All three of these stories are pretty entertaining; we have to congratulate Fred Pohl and everybody involved for producing here a pretty satisfying issue of Galaxy. I have to admit that all three of these tales have me thinking I should read more stories from the period by Anderson, Niven and Harrison; it seems that The Long Night, Neutron Star and Prime Number are all available at internet archive, so maybe we will make that happen.
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