"I, Dreamer" by Walter Miller, Jr. (1953)
We've read a number of Miller stories about men being integrated with machines and the sacrifices men will have to make to conquer the stars, and this story is in the same vein. An italicized prologue describes the experiences of an infant as it is born, meets its mother, and then is torn from her. The bulk of the story is a first-person narrative in the voice of a computer being trained to pilot a space warship--this computer has integrated into it the brain of a human being, and so has consciousness, creativity, emotion, etc. The computer doesn't realize it is part organic, but it is tormented by a desire for love and a fear of pain, just like you and me, and when it sleeps, it dreams of being human. The plot of the story concerns the computer falling in love with a female technician and witnessing her being sexually harassed by the guy who is training the computer--this guy's behavior is emblematic of the society in which the story takes place, a militaristic space empire run by a dictator where men can have multiple wives and which is plotting to conquer the Earth. When the woman refuses to join his harem the man tries to take her by force and by guile and threats. The computer contrives to kill the man, which of course puts the computer at risk of destruction, and the woman as well.
The climax of the story is something you might see in a Barry Malzberg story if sad sack Barry had a slightly sunnier or more romantic disposition. The woman, who may actually be the mother of the 12-year-old boy whose brain is integrated into the computer, is a member of a resistance movement that is trying to overthrow the government. With nothing left to lose, she convinces the computer to crash the space warship into the palace of the dictator of the space empire--she leads the computer to believe that death will be a long dream of being human, and we readers are lead to believe this sacrifice will protect Earth from conquest.
Pretty good. "I, Dreamer" was first printed in an issue of Amazing (when it was edited by Howard Browne, who took over after Palmer, his boss, left) with a cover seemingly depicting some kind of sex dream. It has appeared in many Miller collections, and two other anthologies listed at isfdb, one American, one Belgian.
"Payment in Full" by Ray Bradbury (1950)
You can see why this story hasn't been all that popular; this story is not Ray at his best, and it is a downer, but not a downer in an interesting way.
There are three Earthmen on Mars when the Earth is destroyed by nuclear war--the Earth becomes a "new small sun" that can be seen burning in the Martian sky. The astronauts are depressed, and drink, and list off the various things they will miss about Earth, their friends' and family members' names and so forth. One of the three men, making a dark joke about the end of the human race or perhaps just insane, keeps talking about how he will marry one of the other astronauts and have children with him.
A Martian appears, to the surprise of the astronauts, who hadn't thought Mars was populated. The Martian telepathically invites the three last Earthmen to join the last thousand Martians in their beautiful city. The Martians learned wisdom long ago, turning away from atomic power before it was too late. No Martian has used a weapon in ten thousand years! The Martian gives a long list of all the beautiful things in the city, fountains and minarets and all that. And now that the Earth and all the violent Earthmen are gone, they don't have to hide anymore, they can turn on all the lights!
The Earthmen respond to the invitation not gratefully, but angrily, as if the Martian is bragging and pointing out Earth's inferiority. They shoot down the Martian, then take off in their rocket to find the once-hidden, now illuminated city, where they land. We get a list of all the wonderful things about the city, people reading books and children laughing and people dancing and so on. "Everybody was happy." Then the Earthmen emerge from their rocket and destroy the entire city with their machine guns, murdering everybody.
With its lists and its repetition...
The Martian named the places. They must visit the deep fount pools where colored inks mixed into patterns every second, they must see the flame pictures in the walls, burning and changing. They must climb the crystal minarets where flowers ten centuries old bloomed forever and forever as delicate as white children, as warm, as tender. They must hear the music....
"Now," said Comfort, with his machine gun...."Payment in Full" has the poetic elements we associate with Bradbury, but the whole thing is over-the-top and obvious, a monotonous misanthropic cri de coeur rather than anything sophisticated or clever. I have to give this one a thumbs down, but stories that use aliens as props to show how crummy humans are almost always rub me the wrong way, and maybe others might find this sort of thing moving or validating.
"Now," said Jones.
"Now," cried Williams.
They pressed the triggers of their three guns.
"Transformer" by Chad Oliver (1954)
"Transformer" first appeared in F&SF, and a year later was included in the collection of Oliver stories entitled Another Kind. Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg saw fit to include it in their DAW anthology The Great SF Stories #16: 1954.
"Transformer" is a gimmicky joke story that has as its basis that tired conceit that has made Pixar, the guy from Bosom Buddies and the guy from Tool Time a bazillion dollars--your toys are really alive and move around when you aren't looking and resent it when you break them during your experiments and get sad when you stop playing with them. Most of the story has a first-person narrator, a tiny toy woman who is part of the scenery of a kid's electric train set. (The magazine version has a joke about first-person narration that was excised for the book version.) She describes all the parts of the train set at great length. She has lots of boring complaints (e. g., the kid doesn't dust the set) and there are lots of obvious jokes (e. g., the little toy people in the toy town are tired of eating bacon and eggs, bacon and eggs being the only food items modeled in the toy diner.) These are the kind of jokes an actual kid makes while playing with his toys.
The kid who owns the set is now thirteen and no longer plays with the set very often, and when he does he causes the trains to crash into each other, damaging some of the toy people. So the little toy people try to assassinate the boy by tinkering with the transformer, but the malfunctioning transformer merely gives him a little shock. Then he sells the set, separating the narrator from her friends, and she ends up in an even worse situation, with a kid who has an even lamer electric train set up. (Oliver tries to make the story sad as well as funny.)
I know people eat up this kind of goop, but it is not for me. I think I have to give it a thumbs down because I didn't like it, but recognize its essential competence (the author succeeds in his goals) and market appeal, so maybe the "real" score is "acceptable."
(By the way, this story has nothing to do with the future or man battling tomorrow or anything like that, Nolan's ostensible theme for this anthology, even though he tells us in the introduction to the book that "A worthwhile anthology...should project a comprehensive viewpoint. The stories in this volume display Man's essential strength in facing complex futuristic problems." I personally don't think an anthology needs a theme beyond "these are a stories worth reading," so I don't care, but it is odd to see Nolan set out a program and then just blithely divert from it.)
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| I sure hope somebody out there has that crazy mask from the Powers cover of Another Kind as his or her twitter avatar |
I guess this story is trying to be profound, but I have to admit I don't quite grok it. It is the future, in a highly regimented and militaristic society. Disease has been conquered, and people live very long lives--in fact, people die so rarely (it seems decades go by between deaths) that the government schedules everybody's euthanasia, making a big public event out of each person's passing, a "World Festival" with visits from diplomats from other planets, performances by dancing girls, etc. People live so long that they grow tired of life, and welcome death, so there is no resistance to the government-scheduled euthanasia regime.
Until today. Johnmartin has lived a long and full life, fighting with distinction in many wars, having had a successful marriage and produced many offspring. Since retirement he has cultivated a big diverse garden full of alien plants which have emotions and wills and can move about almost like animals. Johnmartin's day to die has come, but he tells the authorities that he does not want to die, that he is still fascinated by life, in particular his plants. It appears he developed this love of life and desire to enjoy immortality from reading some ancient books he found (it seems there are no books in this society, though there is reading and writing--we learn that the government sends people letters and it is a felony to ignore them.)
Obviously this is a sappy and sentimental story that is supposed to pull your heartstrings, but what is its "message?" That the kind of scientific and regimented society that could conquer death would, ironically and paradoxically, also forget the value of life? That death is what makes life feel worthwhile? Are we supposed to agree with the Johnmartin of the start of the story, the Johnmartin who wants to go on living, or with the Johnmartin who welcomes death in the last line of the story because he is going to live on in his plants? (It is a little odd that the idea of living on in his plants makes him content but he never considers that he is going to live on in any of his "hundreds of descendants--none mutants.") There are plenty of references to war and religion and intrusive laws in the story, but if the story is a satire of the military-industrial complex or big government or religious institutions it is a very subtle one, because there is no evidence offered that the wars were unjust or that people are groaning under tyranny or the victims of manipulation by priests--people are unhappy because they are "tired, bored, satiated." If the story is making the commonly-made-in-SF point that utopias are boring because there are no challenge or goals, why include all that talk of wars--this society, and Johnmartin in particular, has faced many challenges and achieved many goals.
I'm finding this story frustrating--thumbs down.
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The Miller is pretty good, but it was downhill from there. Well, they can't all be winners, can they? Nolan seems to have chosen these stories on the basis that they pack some kind of emotional punch, that each tries to break our hearts, which is fine, but only the Miller has a plot that is interesting and well-constructed and makes sense as a SF story. (The Oliver's plot is alright as a sort of silly fantasy.)
More 1950s SF short stories in the next exciting (we hope) episode of MPorcius Fiction Log.
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