Merril-approved 1958 stories by P Ustinov, J Vance, J Vatsek and K Vonnegut, Jr.

The year: 1958.  Our mission: To explore the SF of that year.  Our guide: critical darling Judith Merril.  On the last leg of our journey through the year the Hope Diamond made its way to the Smithsonian Institution, the first communications satellite reached orbit, and the Fifth French Republic was founded, we finished off the "T" authors included on the Honorable Mentions list in the back of Merril's SF: The Year's Greatest Science-Fiction and Fantasy: 4th Annual Volume, and today we'll tackle the sole "U" on the list and the three "V"s, reading two stories by people considered important outside our beloved SF ghetto that debuted in mainstream publications, as well as a story by one of the giants of SF that debuted in a lesser pulp and a story by some woman I've never heard of that first saw print in one of the most pretentious SF periodicals.  Today we are celebrating diversity here at MPorcius Fiction Log--when the revolution comes, tell them to spare me!

But first!  A list of links to the twenty-two (!) previous stages of this epic journey!

Poul Anderson and Alan Arkin
Pauline Ashwell, Don Berry, and Robert Bloch
John Brunner, Algis Budrys, and Arthur C. Clarke
"Helen Clarkson" (Helen McCoy), Mark Clifton, Mildred Clingerman and Theodore R. Cogswell
John Bernard Daley, Avram Davidson and Chan Davis
Gordon R. Dickson 
Charles Einstein, George P. Elliot, and Harlan Ellison
Charles G. Finney, Charles L. Fontenay, Donald Franson, and Charles E Fritch
Randall Garret and James E. Gunn 
Harry Harrison, Frank Herbert, and Philip High
Shirley Jackson, Daniel Keyes, and John Kippax

Damon Knight and C. M. Kornbluth
Fritz Leiber, Jack Lewis and Victoria Lincoln
Katherine MacLean, "T. H. Mathieu" (Les Cole) and Dean MacLaughlin 
A. E. Nourse
"Finn O'Donnevan" (Robert Sheckley) and Chad Oliver
Avis Pabel, Frederik Pohl, and Robert Presslie

John T.Phillifent, Kit Reed, Mack Reynolds, and Charles W. Runyon 

Margaret St. Clair, Thomas N. Scortia and John Shepley

Robert Silverberg and Clifford Simak

Cordwainer Smith, Will Stanton, and Job Stopa

Theodore Sturgeon, William Tenn, and Walter Tevis

"The Man in the Moon" by Peter Ustinov

Ustinov is one of those guys who people say is some kind of genius, and who am I to disagree?  I barely know anything about him!  I recognize his name and face, though, I guess from Spartacus and all those Agatha Christie things my mother would watch.  

"The Man in the Moon" debuted in The Atlantic Monthly, one of those magazines smart people are always talking about, alongside a poem by John Ciardi, whose translation of the Divine Comedy I read back when I thought there was a chance I might amount to something and figured I should read real books and not just stuff about monsters and adventures to improbable locales.  You can read "The Man in the Moon" at The Atlantic's website, which is what I did; PDF scans of the original magazine are also out there in the Wild West that, for the time being, is still the internet.  The story was collected in Ustinov's Add a Dash of Pity.

Ustinov was an Englishman, though of Russian ethnicity, and some kind of activist who worked to confer upon the world the dubious blessings of world government, and "The Man in the Moon" is a tepid satire full of lame and obvious jokes the point of which is to attack British imperialism and promote world government.  Good grief!  

A British scientist with a Swiss friend develops a means of reaching other planets.  He hopes to go to America to discuss his success with other scientists.  The British government stops him from going to the US because they want to keep the ability to explore other planets in British hands with the hope of regaining the leading position in the world that Great Britain had in the 18th and 19th centuries.  In response, the scientist gives speeches in which he decries fear of the Soviet Union, insists he is not a patriotic Briton but a man of the world, makes disparaging remarks about Rudyard Kipling, denounces European imperialism and racism, compares the current British government to that of Nazi Germany, and laments that if mankind reaches other planets the result will be racism against and exploitation of aliens and war between humans, a replay of the colonialism and world wars of the period 1492-1945.

The story ends with the revelation that the English scientist has managed to get his innovation to Switzerland and so the Swiss are the first to land on the moon.

Banal politics plus tired jokes about the scientist's relationship with his wife and kids equals a story that feels like filler and offers neither entertainment nor intellectual stimulation.  "The Man in the Moon" is like a Socratic dialogue you've already heard bolted onto a hunk of bare bones sitcom humor you've already seen.  Thumbs down!  (You've probably already figured out on your own why leftist Merril, who is always trying to shoehorn mainstream figures and mainstream publications inside the SF tent as part of her project of dissolving the barriers between the literary mainstream and genre literature, felt the need to promote this mediocrity with a snooty pedigree.)

"Worlds of Origin" AKA "Coup de Grace" by Jack Vance

From one of our most reputable publications to a pulp magazine that wikipedia and the Science Fiction Encyclopedia suggest is a piece of garbage, Super-Science Fiction.  "Worlds of Origin" is one of the ten Magnus Ridolph stories and has been reprinted many times in Vance collections as well as in a few Isaac Asimov and Robert Silverberg anthologies under the title "Coup de Grace."  I own a copy of the issue of Super-Science Fiction in which the story debuted, and actually have already read the issue's Robert Silverberg, Robert F. Young and Koller Ernst stories, and it is in its pages that I will read "Worlds of Origin" today.  I'll also note that the Emsh illustration to the tale, featuring an old bearded skinny guy and an old fat balding guy and a slender elfish young lady, is quite good.

This is a fun detective story full of clever and amusing science fiction elements.  Vance with admirable economy sets a scene and describes characters and alien societies in a way that is interesting and his charming dialogue brings a smile to the face of the reader again and again.  The story also seems to push (perhaps ironically and insincerely?) what we might call a liberal or left-wing commonplace--moral relativism, the idea that each culture has its own theory of right and wrong and it is pointless to judge one theory as better than any other.  

Magnus Ridolph is on holiday in a space station hanging in interstellar space that serves the role of a resort.  There are a bunch of people in the station, among them an anthropologist who has with him three "palaeolithics" or "cavemen" he has restrained with various high tech devices.  He approaches Ridolph, saying he needs help because he is being pursued by a woman.  Ridolph, being on vacation, is not very interested in helping, and their interview is interrupted besides.

The next morning the anthropologist is found dead.  The resort space station is floating out in a region of space claimed by no government, so there are no police to solve the crime, so the resort owner enlists Ridolph the famous detective.  Lacking the scanners and analyzers that an official police force would employ to solve the crime lickety-split, Ridolph must rely on his knowledge of the cultures of the many suspects to determine who must be the killer.  Each suspect is interviewed, and Ridolph solves the case.  Because Vance comes up with a strange and fun (and by 20th-century standards, amoral or evil) culture for each of the suspects, and because the relationship between Ridolph and the resort owner is amusing, the interviews are actually fun, not the tedious blah blah blah of red herrings we get in so much detective fiction.

Thumbs up for "Worlds of Origin," a successful detective story which is also a successful humor story and which includes many entertaining science fiction elements and is, perhaps, a tricky philosophical story about moral relativism.

         

"The Duel" by Joan Vatsek

On her website, Joan Vaczek Kouwenhoven's daughter, Elizabeth Arthur, includes a bio of her mother, whose "The Duel" appeared in F&SF under the name Joan Vatsek.  Vatsek was born in the United States during World War One, the daughter of a Hungarian diplomat, and lived in Europe, Canada, Ohio and Egypt before making her career and getting married twice in the environs of New York and Washington, D.C.  Vatsek has only three credits at isfdb, but produced quite a number of mainstream (maybe some of them are thrillers?) stories, novels and plays.  As for "The Duel," it was included in one of those anthologies with Alfred Hitchcock's name on the cover that has been reprinted in numerous formats.

Laurence, a writer, grew up in a 17th-century house in Virginia, the remains of a slave plantation.  He has returned to the now lonely and remote house with his wife, Janine, who is graceful and not conventionally beautiful, but like a Durer drawing, arresting and unforgettable.  Janine doesn't like the house.  She is a superstitious sort; for example, she doesn't like it when moonlight lands on the bed.  (This is a superstition I never heard of before.)  One day, Laurence finds Janine using a makeshift ouija board; Janine's mother taught her this technique of communicating with the dead.

Janine acts as if she has developed a relationship with a soldier who died during the War of Independence and is buried on this property.  This Major Jamieson brags about his martial and sexual successes, and is jealous when Janine is intimate with her husband Laurence.  Laurence of course thinks his wife is loony, and considers taking her to a shrink, even though she seems happier than she ever has been.  But he holds off, and we get the horrible climax--Janine, in love with the ghost, helps the Major slay Laurence, but too late Janine realizes that the Major does not love her, only enjoys killing men and seducing women, he seeing other people as no more than opponents to be manipulated and defeated.  Janine goes insane.   

Of course I think Merril chose to promote this story because it was written by a woman whose work had appeared many times in mainstream venues, but "The Duel" is pretty good so I can't fault her for the choice.  The story moves along at a decent clip and has various memorable images; in particular, a fetishistic erotic scene in which Janine, who uses a wine glass as the ouija board's pointer or planchette, grasps the stem of the wine glass and touches her mouth to its rim as if she is stimulating a phallus, all while her poor husband watches. 

We might see "The Duel" as a story about gender roles.  Janine's mother worked hard to provide Janine a good education, and had hopes Janine would be a writer or painter or actress or something.  Janine took a stab at these vocations, including doing actual remunerative work at an ad agency, but was never much good at them, or at least lacked the drive to succeed at them.  This sort of broke her morale.  Major Jamieson, the 18th-century womanizer, tells Janine a woman need not be useful, merely ornamental, and this assuages her guilt--embodying pre-feminist or anti-feminist views of a woman's role makes her happier than feminist career-oriented ones have, at least on the short term.  The story not only contrasts the frustrated career-oriented Janine of New England with the ornamental Janine of Virginia, but middle-class 20th-century Laurence and 18th-century aristocratic Major Jamieson--Laurence is committed to his wife and works for money, while the ghost is a guy whose life (and afterlife) are occupied with seducing women and killing men in duels.  The differences between the way Laurence manifests manhood and the Major does seems to advantage the Major--while Laurence, working hard on his books to pay the bills, cannot spend much time with Janine, the Major, a decadent and amoral aristocrat, is with her all the time and makes her happy.  Of course, the Major ultimately cannot satisfy Janine, he being totally selfish; "The Duel" may also be about how, for women, sexual relationships with men are always unsatisfactory.  

"The Manned Missiles" by Kurt Vonnegut 

Kurt Vonnegut is one of those writers of science fiction like J. G. Ballard and Doris Lessing who has a sparkling reputation among mainstream critics, and "The Manned Missiles" debuted in the mainstream women's magazine Cosmopolitan.  (Before TV took over the culture, magazines like Cosmopolitan included lots of fiction; I will also note that it appears that, before the 1960s, Cosmopolitan was geared towards wives and mothers, not sexually-active single career women, as it has been in my lifetime.)  It is easy to see why Merril liked the story, why it is in a women's magazine, and why the mainstream critics like Vonnegut--"The Manned Missiles" is a reasonably well-written sentimental and manipulative tear jerker (the characters actually cry) and it is also one of those stories that tries to get you to believe that the Soviet Union is no worse--hell, it's better!--than the United States.  A lot of educated people seem to believe this of the USSR, like a lot of educated people purport to believe that a man who cuts off his testicles (or says he plans to someday maybe cut off his testicles) is a woman, and it is hard to tell to what extent they really believe this stuff and to what extent they say it to advance and protect their relationships and careers.  "The Manned Missiles" is also one of those stories that tells you space travel is a total waste of time, that individuals probably can't handle it and the human race probably won't benefit from it.  (Remember that Camille Paglia quote about how if women were in charge we'd all still be living in grass huts?)

"The Manned Missiles" comes to us in the form of two letters, one from a citizen of the Soviet Union and one from an American, both working-class men who had ambitious sons who became astronauts and died when their space craft, the first manned Soviet and the first manned American space craft, collided out in space.  There is a lot of room for interpretation because both writers may be considered unreliable narrators, people deceived by their governments, but on the surface it seems like the Communists put up a manned satellite to study the Earth for peaceful purposes (or maybe spy on us?) and the untrusting Americans sent a rocket up to destroy the Soviet satellite (or maybe just spy on it?)  Vonnegut makes the Russian (though maybe he is Ukrainian) sympathetic and admirable, all high-minded and wise and cute (he calls satellites "baby moons"), with a son who was some kind of genius and suffered terribly in space from nausea and so forth.  The Yankee Vonnegut makes sympathetic but pathetic, a religious rube whose son was a single-minded and selfish square who was ambitious because of psychological problems.

Like Ustinov's story, "The Manned Missiles" is what you expect a story that employs science fiction devices but appears in a mainstream outlet to be, a rehash of lame left-wing politics married to family dynamics drama.  Vonnegut at least makes a go at writing in the voices of diverse characters and showing why space travel is stupid and the commies in the East are no worse than the hypocritical liberal market societies of the West instead of just speechifying about it like Ustinov, and Vonnegut tries to make you cry by portraying parents talking about their sons who were killed by the hubris, venality and paranoia of the ruling class instead of trying to make you laugh at bargain basement jokes about marriage like Ustinov does.  We'll call "The Manned Missiles" acceptable.

I read "The Manned Missiles" in a scan of 2017's Complete Stories and you can find it in other Vonnegut collections as well.

**********

The Vance is the most fun and entertaining and the most science-fictiony story of today's group, Vance coming up with wild settings and cultures, perhaps as a means to illustrate and maybe undermine the idea of cultural relativism.  The Vatsek is also a success as an entertainment and it is probably the most sophisticated of today's stories; she takes a traditional ghost story format and hooks it up effectively with a love triangle element with some powerful if sneaky sexual components, and uses this material to talk in an undogmatic way about gender roles.  Vonnegut and Ustinov's stories are just tendentious anti-Western Cold War dogmatism, Ustinov bludgeoning you while Vonnegut uses tried and true literary devices in an effort to pull your heart strings.  Taken as a group, not a bad illustration of the variety of what could be accomplished in 1958 with fantasy and science fiction techniques.