"Lucy Comes to Stay"
"The Man Who Murdered Tomorrow"
"Block that Metaphor"
"The Strange Flight of Richard Clayton"
"The Man Who Murdered Tomorrow"
"Block that Metaphor"
"The Strange Flight of Richard Clayton"
--and the calculator is telling me that that leaves us with twelve stories selected by our clog-hopping tulip-growing friends over there in the Netherlands that we have yet to read. We all know the Dutch as pioneers in the development of the market economy as well as tolerance of mind-altering substances and prostitution, so who better to guide us in exploring the huge body of work of the guy who created Norman Bates? Today we'll get a start on those twelve Dutch-approved tales of science fiction and horror by reading three more stories that appear in Troost me, mijn robot, "The Proxy Head," "The Girl from Mars," and "Method for Murder."
"The Proxy Head" (1953)
The protagonist of "The Proxy Head" is a robot built by aliens to look exactly like a handsome young Earth man. The aliens, few in number, are hovering in their ship a hundred miles above, in constant contact with the robot, directing it and analyzing the data it collects as it explores an American city. E. T. needs to know if human beings would seriously contest an alien invasion--the native Earthers far outnumber the aliens in the ship, and if mankind showed spirit and put up a fight Earth would likely prove unconquerable, so the aliens are striving to assess the human race's susceptibility to fear and propensity for aggressive resistance.
The robot holds two guys up at gunpoint, attends a boxing match, observes a speech given by an aged crackpot to assembled senior citizens. The human race, the machine's controllers high above sense, is full of fear and susceptible to mass hysteria.
Eventually the robot investigates teenagers at a penny arcade by the beach. The youth are not full of fear as are the adults. In a sort of recursive moment, the robot observes four young people at the magazine rack talking about a science fiction magazine, sort of playfully arguing over who should pay for the latest issue. The aliens above want to look at the magazine, and direct the robot to buy it, arousing the ire of the kids, there being only one copy of it left.
As the robot has moved hither and thither through the town, Bloch has been reminding us again and again that it is very vulnerable to water--even high humidity is liable to cause it to malfunction. So, when one of the teens shoots the robot with a water pistol it begins to act erratically; it is not long before it has fallen off a pier to its total destruction. The aliens decide the human race has a core population of fearless individuals--teenagers--and the ability to think outside the box and discover alien weakness and so they abandon their scheme of conquering Earth.
"The Proxy Head" is pretty well-written; the tone and pacing are fine, with Bloch including a portion of his signature social commentary and unsubtle jokes while not overdoing it, but the plot poses some real problems. For one thing, doesn't the behavior of a crowd at a boxing match demonstrate not that humans are fearful but that they are violent and passionate? Worse, Bloch accidentally suggests in the end of the story that the aliens are afraid of water, though in the start of the story he told us that while the robot must avoid water, the aliens have no need to fear moisture, a blunder Bloch or the editor of Science-Fiction Plus, science fiction pioneer Hugo Gernsback, or managing editor Moskowitz, should have caught. (We'll ignore the fact that people who could build a space warship that can cross the distance between the stars must be able to make a waterproof robot--their space craft must be airtight, right?)
We'll call "The Proxy Head" acceptable--maybe it doesn't hold together, but it is a smooth pleasant read.
Ace is the not exactly scrupulous owner of a traveling carnival complete with freak show. His girlfriend was part of the freak show as "The Girl From Mars" but she just ran out on him with the show's magician, so Ace is in a bad way both romantically and financially and so starts drinking. The weather is bad so there is no business so he can't help but spot the gorgeous blonde with a fantastic body, unusual clothes and odd sort of expression on her face when she approaches the carnival.
This curvaceous babe speaks somewhat broken English with a weird accent and seems to think she is from Mars--the banner advertising "The Girl from Mars" is what attracted her to the carnival in the first place. Ace figures she is a nutcase, but she is so spectacularly sexy he decides she will fill in nicely as both his girlfriend and his "Girl From Mars." He gets her into a dark tent with promises of food--the blonde keeps saying she is hungry, the space ship that brought her here having crashed and she being the sole survivor and all that. Ace starts putting the moves on the blonde and she doesn't resist his touch but the joke is on him because, when they are in a clinch, he learns the hard way that Martians are strictly carnivorous and prefer their meat to be as fresh as possible.
An entertaining little story that has a certain amount of titillating lasciviousness (there is a lot of verbiage about the Martian's body, and the abortive sex scene appeals to non-consent and exhibitionist fetishes) but maintains a surface level of conventional moral integrity by portraying a horndog who objectifies women suffering a horrible punishment for trying to take advantage of an apparently vulnerable woman.
I read "The Girl from Mars" in a scan of its original appearance in Fantastic Adventures, but is has been reprinted in multiple Bloch collections and Peter Haining included it in his oft-reprinted anthology Freak Show, which you can find in German as well as English.
"Method for Murder" (1962)
This is a weak gimmicky story--forgettable filler. Charles is a fat writer of suspense novels with a contract to produce four books a year, so he is always busy in his study. His wife Alice is sick of him and one day, when Charles shows her sketches of the characters in his next novel, she has a brain wave. The murderer in the next novel, a strangler, looks kind of like Alice's boyfriend, a Method actor. So, she has the boyfriend dress up as the fictional killer and terrorize Charles; Alice pretends she can't see the strangler, hoping to make Charles think he is insane. Eventually the boyfriend is assaulting and even killing people and he and Alice are trying to frame Charles for the crimes, but what if the boyfriend gets too deep into the role and forgets he is Alice's lover and starts to think he is Charles' fictional strangler?
We're rating "Method for Murder" barely acceptable.
Of today's stories, "The Girl from Mars" is probably the most successful but the somewhat more ambitious, though flawed, "The Proxy Head" is perhaps my fave. As for "Method for Murder," I can't say it is bad but it is pretty mundane and pedestrian. All in all, not a bad batch.
More Bloch soon, and more short stories from the 1950s, though from a different famous author, in the next exciting episode of MPorcius Fiction Log.
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