SF Classics selected by T Carr: Rocklynne, Brackett, Kuttner & Moore, and Wollheim

When last we met, we noted that Terry Carr (remember when we read his novel Cirque?) included Lester del Rey's odd story "The Smallest God" in his 1978 anthology Classic Science Fiction: The First Golden Age.  Let's check out some other stories Carr reprinted in that book, after of course pointing out that we have already blogged about some of his selections: A. E. van Vogt's "The Vault of the Beast,"  Eric Frank Russell and Maurice G. Hugi's "The Mechanical Mice," and Robert A. Heinlein's "--And He Built a Crooked House--."  (And that, before this blog was conjured up from the black labyrinth of my mind and began to lurk the intertubes, I read still more of them, like Theodore Sturgeon's "Microcosmic God" and Heinlein's "By His Bootstraps.")

"Into Darkness" by Ross Rocklynne (1940)

I have a poor memory, and so I wasn't sure if I had read "Into Darkness" before or not, so I dug through the archives to make certain and uncovered sobering evidence of how bad my memory really is--in 2018 I read and blogged about Rocklynne's story "Quietus," and then in 2023 I read and blogged about "Quietus" again, having totally forgotten I'd read it five years earlier.  Embarrassing!  (Is Nancy Pelosi going to engineer a campaign to have me deposed as head of this blog?)

Well, I'm pretty confident I haven't read Rocklynne's "Into Darkness" before (no, really), even though I own it in the collection Sun Destroyers (which is the other half of the Ace Double that reprinted Edmond Hamilton's A Yank at Valhalla), so let's have at it.  "Into Darkness" first saw print in Astonishing, edited by Fred Pohl.  I am reading the story, like all of today's stories, in the internet archive's scan of Classic Science Fiction: The First Golden Age, though of course I took a quick look at the magazine to see the (below average for him) Hannes Bok illo for "Into Darkness."

In his intro to the story, Carr suggests "Into Darkness" is "far out," and it definitely is an effort to blow your mind and inspire the famous "sense of wonder."  The universe is inhabited by creatures of pure energy, creatures millions of miles across, creatures that live for billions of years, creatures that absorb energy from stars, move planets about for fun, and can shift between any of the forty-seven different levels of hyperspace, each of which obeys different laws of physics.  Rocklynne's story is a sort of biography of one such creature, and we witness its early millennia, its adolescence and its growth to maturity.  Named "Darkness" by its mother, Sparkle, our main character is different than its fellows--smarter, more inquisitive, abandoning childish play earlier than others in its cohort and seeking to fulfill some purpose in its life.  (Presumably the kinds of smart kids who are thought to be the audience for science fiction, kids who love science and want to learn about the world around them and to accomplish something with their lives, are expected to identify with Darkness.)  Darkness yearns to resolve the riddle of what constitutes the meaning of life, to learn what is beyond the edge of the universe, and is not discouraged when one of the oldest of the energy beings, known as Oldster, warns such investigations lead to sadness and death! 

Darkness was named by Sparkle after the darkness at the edge of the universe, and insists on living up to its name and exploring that mysterious void.  Darkness devours a star bigger than any star it has ever seen, and with that energy breaches the edge of the universe and travels through the emptiness for millions of years.  Finally, Darkness comes to another universe much like the one it left.  There it meets another energy creature, but whereas Darkness has a purple core, this being has a green core.  Darkness falls in love, and proposes passing a life of exploration with its new acquaintance, but this creature would rather lead Darkness to a forty-eighth level of hyperspace Darkness has never heard about before and there take possession of our hero's purple core.  Darkness learns that the purpose of life is to create more life, which green-core energy creatures do by accepting into themselves purple cores...of course, without their cores, purple-core energy creatures wither and die.  (Woah, is this a story about how women will steal your life force and you should avoid having sex with them?)  Before it expires, Darkness creates a planet and seeds it with life-giving protoplasm, which I guess we are supposed to think is Earth.

I sort of expected Darkness to create the human race, but the revelation that these energy creatures reproduce sexually and that the male can only do the deed once--and that it is fatal!--was a surprise.  I'm not sure it is a good surprise, though, as the fact that they reproduce through sex makes the aliens in this story less alien and thus less mind-blowing.

"Into Darkness" is just alright; besides the somewhat disappointing ending, it feels a little long and repetitive, as we hear again and again that Darkness lives for millions of years and is millions of miles across and travels millions of miles and so on--stuff that is supposed to fill you with wonder ceases to be mind blowing with familiarity.  More conventional sense-of-wonder stories start out more or less mundane and then grow steadily more strange until the final page tries to blow you away with the idea that the universe is open to exploration and contains infinite adventure; "Into Darkness" starts out strange and by depicting life on an epic scale and actually becomes more mundane at the end (just like so many ordinary guys. the alien creature loses his heart to a girl.) 

"Into Darkness" has been reprinted in a few anthologies besides Carr's here, and was followed by three sequels, all of which can be found in that Ace Double collection I mentioned, The Sun Destroyers.

"Child of the Green Light" by Leigh Brackett (1942)

We've read a lot of science fiction and crime fiction by Leigh Brackett, wife of Edmond Hamilton and crony of Bogie and The Duke, but I don't think we've read this one before.  "Child of the Green Light" made its debut in Super Science Stories (this issue also has illustrations by Bok, images more characteristic of his work that are worth checking out) and was reprinted in a 1951 ish of Super Science and in a book I have owned since 2013, Martian Quest.  (Why do you buy these books if you don't read them?, asks my financial advisor.)   

"Child of the Green Light" is a somewhat confusing story as it depicts a crazy scenario that Brackett sketches out in a pithy style and doesn't really explain until the end, leaving me struggling at times to visualize what is going on.  Of course, the real meat of the story isn't its questionable science but themes of loyalty and sacrifice and one's relationship to his people--do you owe something to people you haven't met just because you share their blood or culture?  

A young man, naked, is living in or on a conglomeration of wrecked space ships (in Warhammer 40,000 we'd call this a "space hulk"), somehow surviving in the vacuum of space!  The space hulk is in the form of a disk or wheel, with a green light at its center.  The young man, who goes by the name of Son, is in communication telepathically with a being he calls Aona, who lives on the other side of a "Veil" with a capital "V," which is growing thinner all the time; I guess the Veil and the light are one and the same or closely related.  Aona is a female being whom he loves; though she calls him "Son" and could be said to have raised him, I guess their relationship has an erotic character or erotic potential, and they look forward to the time the Veil falls and they can be together.

Another ship appears and lands on the hulk, and from it emerges a multicultural expedition of men in space suits; some of them are Earth humans, other hail from Mars or one of the moons of Saturn. Through their dialogue we learn that that green light passed through the Solar System, attracting to it and carrying off space ships as it went and finally settling here near Mercury.  The green light is bathing the System in radiation that is radically accelerating the aging process in humans--soon civilization will collapse because nobody lives long enough to learn the science and engineering required to maintain a modern high-tech society.  This team, among whom is the last living physicist, constitutes humanity's last hope of destroying the green light before it is too late.

Son and Aona want to preserve the light, so Son stops the physicist from approaching it, killing the man in the process.  The ray guns of the humans have no effect on Son, but they are able to tie him up, however.  Through more dialogue we learn that Son is the only survivor among the passengers and crew of all the many ships brought here by the green light; he has an adult body now, but he was just a baby when his parents' ship was captured and his parents were killed five years ago.

Aona then explains more of what is going on.  She is native to another universe, where people are immortal.  Her universe suffered a cosmic cataclysm, and the resultant explosion destroyed most of her universe and threw a tiny surviving sliver of it (a sliver still big enough to include multiple planets) through the dark barrier between universes so it intersected with our universe.  Son has become a superman because his atoms are changing, starting to vibrate at the frequency of Aona's universe--currently, a fraction of his atoms are still in our dimension, while most are vibrating at the frequency of Aona's dimension.  Eventually he will join Aona's universe, I guess when all his atoms are vibrating on Aona's frequency, or maybe because the Veil has finally eroded.  This story is a bit confusing, as I said; sometimes I think we are meant to visualize universes are physically distinct with dark empty space--the "Between" with a capital "B"--separating them, like they are raisins in a cake, but other times it is suggested the different universe are parallel, inhabiting the same space but at different vibrations.

To save human civilization, the green light must be destroyed, which will separate the two universes.  The only way to destroy the green light is for Son to enter the light before he has fully transformed; the presence of alien atoms will cause the green light to expire and the universes to be separated; Son will, however, fall into the Between, forever barred from entering either our or Aona's universes.  Son, only now realizing that other living things beside he and Aona exist, and that he is the product (the "son") of a race and civilization distinct from Aona's, has to decide if he is going to destroy himself to save his people (about whom he knows almost nothing), or allow his people to expire so he can live in eternal bliss with Aona.

There is also a subplot about how a member of the expedition tries to murder all his comrades, become a superman, destroy the green light, and then become dictator of the Solar System.

"Child of the Green Light" features many themes we've seen before in Brackett's work and that of her husband--many Hamilton stories are about a planet or star whose people suffered a cosmic catastrophe and so they are moving their heavenly body into some other system, and many Hamilton stories depict radiation changing people, and I think that Brackett's novel The Big Jump, which I read before founding this blog, involved a guy stabbing people on his expedition in the back so he could bathe himself in radiation and become a superman.

This story is not bad, but I found it a little challenging to follow--Brackett provides a minimum of information, so I had to really pay attention to get what was going on, and I still am not sure it all makes sense.

"The Twonky" by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore (1942/1975)

I've read stacks of stuff by married couple Kuttner and Moore, things they produced individually as well as collaborations, but I haven't read this one; I kind of think I have been avoiding it because its title makes it sound like a joke story, and Kuttner's (many) humor pieces generally fall flat with me (sample MPorcius pans of Kuttner humor pieces: "Or Else," "The Ego Machine," and "See You Later.")  But let's give "The Twonky" a shot today.  

The publication history of "The Twonky," at least as described by Carr in his intro to the story here and by isfdb, presents a few mysteries.  Carr says "The Twonky" has always been attributed to Kuttner, but isfdb credits both Kuttner and Moore.  Carr points out that here in his book a line obliquely referring to World War II that has been left out of reprintings of the story in Kuttner collections has been restored, but isfdb lists the version here as a 1975 version first seen in the American book The Best of Henry Kuttner.  (The British book The Best of Kuttner 2, according to isfdb, reprints the 1942 version.)  I'm just going to read the version here in Classic Science Fiction: The First Golden Age and leave these mysteries to other investigators.

People in Kuttner and Moore stories are always popping in and out of different times and universes, and the first section of "The Twonky" finds us at a factory in our world that manufactures "console radio-phonograph combinations" and introduces us to a factory worker from the future who has somehow been transported to it.  Disoriented and suffering from amnesia, the man goes to a workbench and, using advanced techniques he knows instinctively, he builds a device from his native time, "The Twonky," but camouflages it so it looks exactly like the other radio-phonographs being pumped out of this mid-20th century factory.  When his mind is fully clear and he realizes how he got here, the workman travels back to the future.

A lot of Kuttner and Moore stories depict people interacting with the technology of a more advanced civilization (e. g., "Juke-Box," and "Shock,") and the second part of "The Twonky" is about a college professor who has just had a new radio-record player console delivered and is alone with it because his wife is off visiting relatives.  The console is a robot that, after scanning the prof and assessing his psychology, performs as a perfect servant, walking around the house washing dishes and lighting the prof's cigarettes and so forth.  But Carr in his intro told us that "The Twonky" is a warning about dictatorship, and, as those of us who follow the Cato Institute on Twitter are aware, a powerful entity which seems eager to help you can quickly become a tyrannical master, and the robot uses physical force to forbid the prof from listening to music or reading books or consuming food and drink of which it does not approve--the Twonky is the embodiment of the Nanny State!  And worse--it begins tinkering with people's minds so that they behave, and, if they try to dismantle it, killing them with a death ray!  

Thumbs up for "The Twonky."  The murders at the climax are a chilling surprise--because most of the story comes off as light-hearted and the characters are all likable, you don't expect them to be massacred but to have the plot resolved for them peacefully.  A good horror story.

When it first appeared in Astounding, "The Twonky" was printed under the penname often used by Kuttner and Moore, Lewis Padgett, and among the many collections and anthologies in which it has been reprinted is the 1954 Padgett collection Line to Tomorrow, which has a great Mitchell Hooks cover.

"Storm Warning" by Donald A. Wollheim (1942)

"Storm Warning," by major SF editor Donald A. Wollheim (who made a recent appearance on my twitter feed), made its first appearance in Future Fantasy and Science Fiction, where it was illustrated by another important SF editor, Damon Knight.  Editors seem to have liked the story--Groff Conklin and Robert Silverberg both included it in invasion-themed anthologies.

Today I am not on board with all these editors; "Storm Warning" is a kind of boring story full of descriptions of air movements and the movements of clouds and odd smells and temperatures.  Have to give this one a thumbs down.

Our narrator is a meteorologist living in Wyoming.  A meteor is seen landing a few miles away in the desert.  He and a fellow weatherman ride horses into the desert to see if they can find the meteorites.  The temperatures they encounter and the smells they experience feel a little off.  Also, an unusual storm seems to be brewing.  They find some hollow crystalline spheres taller than a man; no doubt that are the meteorites, and they are cracked open.  The storm hits, and the men witness what appears to be bodies of air pressing violently against each other, as if they were alive and fighting.  The meteorologists surmise that in Earth's atmosphere live invisible creatures whose bodies are akin to water vapor, and that somewhat similar alien creatures arrived on Earth in the glass globes, and that the native air creatures are fighting the invaders, who seek to remake our home planet's atmosphere in their own image.

I've told you many times that I don't like stories in which the characters are spectators instead of participants, and today I am telling you that I am not interested in descriptions of weather, either.  Another knock against "Storm Warning" is that it is repetitive--we hear about the smells and get descriptions of clouds again and again.  A weak choice from Carr; though Conklin and Silverberg disagree with me.

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The Kuttner and Moore story is the stand out, with Brackett in second place; these stories are about human beings and human relationships and the life choices we have to make, the way we have to balance our desires with our responsibilities.  Rocklynne's story is OK, but Wollheim's is like a filler story that lacks the sex and violence or twist ending that might make a filler story entertaining.  

Classic Science Fiction: The First Golden Age seems like a pretty good book.  Each story is preceded by an introduction of five or six pages which includes a list of references and not only covers biographical info on the author of the following story but tries to put his or her work in some kind of historical context and includes anecdotes about important SF people whose stories are not reproduced here, like John W. Campbell, Jr. and Hugo Gernsback; taken together these intros are like a history of SF in the period covered.  Pretty cool.