We'll read "The Several Murders of Roger Ackroyd" from a scan of this anthology, and round out this blog post with stories by two other masters, men whom we'd have to guess know a lot more than Barry about the hard sciences and also about bringing in the big bucks for publishers and bringing home those Hugos, Arthur C. Clarke and Larry Niven.
"Quarantine" by Arthur C. Clarke
"Quarantine" is a little cryptic, but I think I get it. There is a vast interstellar empire of robots. They keep sending recon units to Earth, but all these recon units get "infected" and so HQ destroys them. After this has happened many times, the command program of the inorganic space empire directs the destruction of the Earth. The surprise ending is that the "infection" suffered by the recon robots was getting addicted to chess, and the command program knew that this addiction, if allowed to spread, would so obsess the computers of the empire that the empire would collapse.
Acceptable. After its debut in Asimov's, "Quarantine" has reappeared in multiple Asimov properties and Clarke collections.
Gordon is one of the few humans on some kind of space station or something full of intelligent aliens of many different species. One alien approaches him, a being who has a similar body chemistry to a human. This alien is obsessed with trying to achieve immortality, and has been spending his life travelling hither and thither throughout the universe, investigating every culture and every technology, trying to find the secret of immortality. He has not found it yet, but he hasn't given up. He has developed a sense that tells him when he meets other intelligent beings who share his obsession--Gordon he knows is one.
Gordon hears this alien talk, describe all the places he has been, all the time he has spent on the quest for immortality. The alien is now too old to have children, something he has left undone; the alien lets slip that he has lived over ten thousand Earth years. Then he asks Gordon to join him on his quest, which will afford Gordon access to knowledge and technology no human has ever before had access to.
The story thus far resembles the first chapter of a novel about a long quest, but this is a short story, and Niven's twist ending is that Gordon refuses to join this alien on his quest talking to the alien has opened Gordon's eyes to ancient wisdom--it is better to spend your brief life productively, not on a a quixotic quest seek to extend that life indefinitely. Gordon heads back to Earth, presumably to meet a woman and build a family, the only real way to achieve anything close to immortality.
I like it. "Cautionary Tales" shows up in a few of the aforementioned Asimov properties as well as a bunch of Niven collections.
"The Several Murders of Roger Ackroyd" by Barry Malzberg
"The Several Murders of Roger Ackroyd" is an epistolary story consisting of communications between different individuals; each individual gets his own font, at least in the Asimov's printings. Through the documents we learn that it is the 24th century and a big organization handles what amounts to TV broadcasts across the solar system, maybe across the galaxy. Our protagonist, the Roger of the title, is an expert on mystery stories, and has applied for a job composing mystery scripts. He was rejected, largely because the mystery form is no longer popular and thus few mystery writers are needed. Science fiction, westerns, pornography and "gothics" are much more popular, and the organization's management suggests Roger apply for a job writing military adventure stories set on Venus.
Roger is a very emotional and egotistical guy. He is insulted by the suggestion he write SF, and argues passionately that the mystery is the form that built popular fiction entertainment and that soon it will again rise to dominance over SF, the western, and the gothics. When the management still refuses to hire him, Roger hatches a cunning plan of revenge. He has a friend who is already employed as a mystery writer, and Roger has this accomplice put scripts composed by Roger into the system. These scripts cause an uproar as they, apparently, kill off famous fictional detectives like Hercule Poirot.
A pretty fun story with meta characteristics that are not cloying or indulgent but actually sort of amusing and interesting. What genres will continue to be popular in the future?
"The Several Murders of Roger Ackroyd" would be reprinted in various publications associated with Asimov, and Malzberg and his oft-times partner Bill Pronzini included it in their anthology of SF crime stories, Dark Sins, Dark Dreams. The version of the story printed in Dark Sins, Dark Dreams lacks much of the distinctive use of fonts, but it includes an intro by Malzberg in which Barry tells us that, when he (Barry) publicly declared he was quitting the SF field, Philip K. Dick called Barry "a whiner."
Three stories which accomplish their goals, which are not too long or too convoluted, stories in which people's behavior and motivations make sense, stories which have twist endings that do not strain credulity but sync up with what has come before and thus offer the reader satisfaction. These stories are not breathtaking masterpieces, but the respectable work of craftspeople who show respect for their field, their audiences, and themselves. Things don't always go so smoothly here at MPFL, so let's show some gratitude to Messrs. Clarke, Niven and Malzberg, and the editor of Asimov's, George H. Scithers.
More short stories when next we convene here at MPorcius Fiction Log.
No comments:
Post a Comment