That said, let's take a break from the living dead and black magic to read science fiction short stories that are specifically promoted as "casting new light on social problems." If you type "science fiction anthology" into the internet archive's search field, one of the things that comes up is Above the Human Landscape: An Anthology of Social Science Fiction, published in 1971, edited by college professors Willis E. McNelly and Leon Stover. According to wikipedia, McNelly was "close friends" with Frank Herbert, and Stover wrote an unpublished biography of Robert A. Heinlein, so these individuals were intimately connected to the SF community.
Let's take a look at stories from within the pages of McNelly and Stover's book by authors with whom I already have some familiarity: Harry Harrison, R. A. Lafferty, and Raymond F. Jones.
(But first, I'll provide links to blog posts in which I unburdened myself of my opinions about three stories in Above the Human Landscape: An Anthology of Social Science Fiction which I have already read: "They" by Robert Heinlein (1941), "Shattered Like a Glass Goblin" by Harlan Ellison (1968), and "Who Can Replace a Man?" by Brian Aldiss (1958).
"Rescue Operation" by Harry Harrison (1964)
As a youth I really enjoyed Harrison's Bill the Galactic Hero, the Stainless Steel Rat books, and the Deathworld books; nowadays that sort of broad satire and sarcastic smartassery appeals to me much less, but when I recently (within the last ten years is recent, right?) read the first two of Harrison's books about an alternate Earth full of dinosaurs in which humans have to fight a race of matriarchal reptile people, West of Eden and Winter in Eden, I quite liked them. Above the Human Landscape: An Anthology of Social Science Fiction includes two stories by Harrison--let's see how I feel about them."Rescue Operation" is about how rural people are closed-minded religious dopes who should listen to their superiors--the scientists!
Joze Kukjovic is a nuclear physicist in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia; currently he is hanging around in a little seaside town full of superstitious peasants because he loves to dive and explore sunken Roman ships. Two fishermen come to him one morning when he's drinking his Turkish coffee and tell him that they saw a spaceship crash in the Adriatic and spotted the ejected astronaut in the relatively shallow water! Kukjovic hurries to the site of the crash and rescues the astronaut--but it's not one of our boys who has the right stuff, and it's not some vodka-swilling Russki--it's a bona fide space alien!
"Rescue Operation" is a sort of traditional SF story in which our hero, a man of science, uses the scientific method and trickery to try to overcome his inferiors--the uneducated Christian villagers--and solve a problem--the problem of keeping the alien alive. Because of the bungling of the locals, Kukjovic fails, and the alien dies in agony. Even worse, as the alien is dying it whips a book out of its suit to give to Kujovic, but a local priest, who thinks the alien is a demon, snatches the book and throws it in a fire, destroying this potentially world-shaking source of new knowledge!
The story's themes may be tired, but "Rescue Operation" is well-written and paced and Harrison handles all the hard science stuff in a fun way, so I can recommend it--moderately good standard issue anti-religion pro-science SF.
"Rescue Operation" debuted in Analog and has been reprinted many times in anthologies and Harrison collections. It appears that Harrison considered it one of his best stories.
"Roommates" by Harry Harrison (1971)"Roommates" first appeared in Thomas Disch's anthology The Ruins of Earth. (R. A. Lafferty's "Groaning Hinges of the World," which I read back in 2013, also made its debut there.) Wikipedia tells me that "Roommates" is a reworking of snippets from Harrison's 1966 novel Make Room! Make Room!, a book I have not read and the source material of the famous film Soylent Green. This is like the opposite of one of SF's standard operating procedures, employed by our heroes A. E. van Vogt and Barry N. Malzberg, in which you take a bunch of short stories and stitch them together to make an episodic novel--here Harrison hacks bits out of a novel to make an episodic short story.
Like "Rescue Operation," "Roommates" has been reprinted in numerous anthologies and Harrison collections.
I lived in beautiful New York City, the unrivaled center of the universe and pinnacle of human achievement, in 1999, and I am here to tell you it was a paradise! But in this story, printed in the year of my birth, life in the future Big Apple of summer 1999 is a living hell! There is a heat wave but no air conditioning! Water isn't pumped into everybody's apartment--instead you have to carry a jerry can outside to get your water ration from the heavily guarded government spigot! Everybody is gaunt from the food shortage and our main character can only afford to buy two or three razor blades a year! Oh yeah, and the whales are all dead! Why is all this happening? Because of overpopulation! Families get government handouts proportionate to the number of kids they have and social pressures limit access to birth control (as in "Rescue Operation," Christians are the villain here) and so Mother Earth is collapsing under the weight of a surfeit of homo sapiens.
"Roommates" is split into four little chapters. The first is "Summer," then comes "Fall," then "Winter," and then (you guessed it) "Spring." In "Summer" we meet Andy the cop and his septuagenarian roommate Sol, who is a sort of Jewish wiseman character who is smarter than everybody else and voices Harrison's arguments (e.g., he has hooked up a bicycle to four car batteries to power a fridge; he grows his own herbs and distills his own booze; when the U. S. Congress is set to pass legislation that will encourage birth control he says "the Pope will really plotz!") In "Fall" we meet Shirl, Andy's girlfriend, who has moved in with Andy and Sol, and go with her on her trip to the government spigot; she witnesses a fight between a mother and water thieves. In "Winter" the city is wracked by riots in which Andy must fight the mobs. In "Spring" Sol has died and the government moves a welfare queen, her wretched husband and her army of disgusting brats into Andy and Shirl's place, and we have reason to suspect that Shirl is going to leave Andy--she can use her attractive body to earn a more comfortable lifestyle.
The episodic nature of "Roommates," and its focus on its dystopian setting instead of the relationships among the characters (there are long expository passages in "Winter" describing stuff none of the characters witness that feel tedious) mean the story is not very satisfying. I'll call it acceptable.
"Slow Tuesday Night" by R. A. Lafferty (1965)
A man's supreme joy was the joy of building, molding, changing, assembling--creating--with his own two hands and his mind. And this was the single thing the Abundant Society could not tolerate for fear of coming apart at the seams. Only a narrow elite, isolated from all other citizens, could be permitted the luxury of creation--of work.The story's resolution sees George trying to figure out a way to satisfy men's needs for creative work that won't end up sending him or anybody else to the subsistence reservation and optimistically offers us readers the possibility that George's efforts will lead to a social revolution and a return to a world in which people run their own lives.
I've been reading a few Raymond F.Jones stories lately. I'll try read "Rat Race" too.
ReplyDeleteI think I get less tired of reiterated themes than you do, but I need to think about that.
Do you have any favorite Jones stories you might recommend? I interpreted "Rat Race" and The Cybernetic Brains as attacks on planned economies/socialism/big government, whatever you want to call it--do the stories you have been reading address similar themes?
Deletehttps://mporcius.blogspot.com/2017/07/the-cybernetic-brains-by-raymond-f-jones.html
Here are two recent reviews:
Deletehttps://classicsofsciencefiction.com/2021/02/07/the-colonists-by-raymond-f-jones/
https://classicsofsciencefiction.com/2021/02/06/the-memory-of-mars-by-raymond-f-jones/
Cool, thanks!
DeleteI mostly read SF and fantasy for escapism. I want to be transported to new, unique worlds. It used to be called "A Sense of Wonder." A few SF and fantasy writers can pull this trick off consistently: Jack Vance, Fritz Leiber, Lord Dunsany, Clark Ashton Smith, etc.
ReplyDeleteI'm not against using SF as a vehicle to make some political or social point per se, but for me to enjoy it it has to be fresh and new or particularly well done. Sturgeon's "If All Men Were Brothers Would You Let One Marry Your Sister" is good because it is so off the wall, so out there, making an argument you don't hear very often. Many of Disch's 334 stories are well-written and moving or funny. Jack Vance's attack on socialism in Wyst was also entertaining, because Vance is such a funny, skillful writer.
DeleteI just read Matthew Hughes BARBARIANS OF THE BEYOND, a sequel of sorts to Jack Vance's THE DEMON KINGS series. It will be published later this year. You would enjoy it!
ReplyDelete