In our last episode I condemned a story Judith Merril claimed was one of the greatest of 1962. Today we shift back in time four years to look at three stories from 1958 which Merril thought worthy of her recommendation, all three of them by Gordon R. Dickson, a writer to whom I have paid limited attention. In 2014, I read Dickson's contribution to Five Fates and said I liked his themes of individualism and exploration but found his story ruinously slow and poorly written. Last year I read "Flat Tiger" and called it a "dopey waste of time." In those long past days before R.M.S. MPorcius Fiction Log set sail for its inevitable rendezvous with an iceberg, I read a few things by Dickson and I recall finding them mediocre. Dickson and I haven't clicked, but maybe my distaste for his work is an artifact of small sample size, maybe among today's three stories there will be one or more pieces that will show Dickson at his best or see him doing things which coincide with my own tastes. Cross your fingers!
"The Christmas Present"
Well, that's neither here nor there; we are not here to listen to me vent, but to talk about Gordon R. Dickson's "The Christmas Present," a story that debuted in the same issue of F&SF as Brian Aldiss' "The New Father Christmas" (we read it in 2018), Richard Matheson's "Lemmings" (we read it last month) and Theodore Sturgeon's "A Touch of Strange," which we will read when we get to Merril's 1958 "S"s. People seem to like "The Christmas Present;" it has been reprinted in at least four different anthologies and two different Dickson collections.
This is a very sappy sentimental story, like a children's Christmas TV special. A small boy and his parents have emigrated to a new planet and live on their farm by a swampy river. The boy has made friends with a native, a sort of intelligent jellyfish the size of a housecat that lives in the water near the farmhouse. This is the colonists' first Christmas on the new planet, and the little boy is sad when he sees that their Christmas tree is decorated with odds and ends and not with nice ornaments like the tree he saw last year on the colony ship. But Mom explains that Christmas is about love and so the tree is beautiful anyway because it represents their love.
The little boy and his mother explain Christmas to the jellyfish, and the little boy gives the jellyfish a gift, one of the toy spacemen his parents made him from clay and paint, the astrogator. The jellyfish wants to give a gift in return. The father of the little human family is away, travelling via boat, and due to return tomorrow. Mom is worried that a river monster will attack her husband. The jellyfish swims away to kill the river monster it knows is lurking along Dad's route--this is his gift. The jellyfish can generate electricity and so is able to kill the monster, which is like the size of a hippo or elephant or something, but is himself killed in the fight. Dickson doesn't come out and say it, but the jellyfish has sacrificed himself for others, like Jesus Christ did. The final paragraph of the story seems to be describing the jellyfish ascending into heaven, guided by the toy astrogator it clutches in its dead tentacles--the human colonists have saved the jellyfish's soul by bringing to him the good news about Jesus.
It is remarkable to see such an audaciously Christian story in a science fiction magazine--while it is true that some of the most innovative, talented and critically acclaimed SF writers, like Gene Wolfe and R. A. Lafferty, are committed Christians, most SF writers (and editors!) are either commies or libertarians who think religion is a scam that shackles people and think that missionaries are not saving the natives by teaching them about Christianity but corrupting them. "The Christmas Present" is too sappy for me, but it is well-structured and well-paced and all that, it achieves its goals, and I can't help but admire its commitment, so we'll call it acceptable.
"The Question"
Humans and humanoid aliens are engaged in a ground war over some planet, a war in which infantry men fire rifles and machine guns and throw grenades at each other perhaps reminiscent of the war underway during Dickson's own US Army service in the 1940s. It looks like the humans are doomed to be defeated and lose the planet.
As "The Question" begins, we are in an office with some high ranking aliens. The subordinate alien plays a film for his superior--the film was taken by secret cameras in a bunker or pillbox in which four human soldiers, retreating from a larger enemy force, took shelter. Most of Dickson's story describes the last stand of these humans in the redoubt, shooting out the loopholes at the attacking aliens, husbanding their resources, arguing amongst themselves, treating wounds, and their final defeat and deaths. In the end of the story it is explicitly stated that the aliens lack individuality ("Each, unlike our own race" says one of the aliens, "has his own personal philosophy") and Dickson, in the dialogue of the four humans, highlights how each man has his own personality, opinions and ways of looking at the world that are radically different from those of his fellows. One guy is a Christian and prays, while another, an atheist, curses him out for praying. One guy has a racist hatred of the aliens, calling them "animals" and objecting when another soldier offhandedly refers to them as "men," while a more open-minded soldier feels guilty over shooting down aliens and wishes he could learn more about them and their culture. At the end of the story we learn that the aliens took the film to try to figure out why humans fight so hard, despite the overwhelming odds facing them, as the aliens are contemplating trying to take over other parts of the galaxy under human control, but that the film has not given them a clear answer.
The account of the fighting is pretty entertaining, and Dickson's dialogue here is fine, so the story is a smooth read. But what is the point of "The Question"'--does Dickson suggest an answer to the aliens' questions of why humans fight so hard even when there is little hope? Maybe the point of the story is that human behavior is inexplicable, but maybe Dickson is suggesting that human beings are both individualistic and communal, that men will risk their lives and make sacrifices for other men despite religious or political differences. We might also see a Christian bias to the story, and perhaps some jibes at conventional liberal sensibilities--the Christian soldier is self-sacrificing, while the atheist soldier is the racist one and is the least effective as a fighting man and the least psychologically stable.
I can give "The Question" a mild recommendation. It hasn't been anthologized, but is included in two Dickson collections.
"Gifts"
A suburban father in mid-century America works at a pharmacy; he has a pretty wife as well as a son and a pet cocker spaniel. He hopes to one day buy the pharmacy from the boss. Aliens that more or less look like humans pay him a visit. These aliens say their civilization is much like ours, but further along in its development. They have solved many of the problems to be found on 20th-century Earth, disease and famine and so on, and they can solve ours for us if we ask them to. The junior pharmacist has been chosen at random from among the responsible people of Earth to choose whether Earth will accept or reject this alien charity. The aliens perform astonishing feats to prove they can do what they say--these feats take the form of making wishes of the pharmacist and his wife come true.
The pharmacist is given time to decide whether or not to accept the charity. He talks to his wife. He sits in his home office and thinks about the changes that will occur if the Earth suddenly receives all kinds of super technology. He takes a walk and looks at the sky and at flowers. He has dreams and nightmares. Finally he decides to reject the alien gift and tells the aliens that he feels that "we ought to get it for ourselves."
"Gifts" is competent, but not thrilling or moving or anything, partly because you assume all along that the protagonist is going to reject the charity; it feels like a filler story. We'll call it acceptable.
"Gifts" would go on to be reprinted in the Dickson collection In Iron Years and the volume of Isaac Asimov's Magical Worlds of Fantasy on wishes.
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These stories aren't bad--they are better than the Dickson stuff I've read in the past--but I'm not in love with them, either. I won't avoid Dickson in the future, but I don't think I'll be seeking him out particularly, either.
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We here at MPorcius Fiction Log are reading selected stories from the list headed "Honorable Mentions" at the back of Judith Merril's 1959 SF: The Year's Greatest Science-Fiction and Fantasy: 4th Annual Volume. The list is organized alphabetically by author name and, having today finished up the "D"s, next time we do this we'll look at some "E"s.
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