Orbit 10: E Bryant, A Panshin & J Dann

Let's take another volume off the SF anthology shelves of the MPorcius Library and sample its contents.  Today under our cruel eye lies the paperback copy of 1972's Orbit 10 I bought for 50¢ in 2019 at the Second Story Books location in DuPont Circle in that wretched hive of scum and villainy we call Washington, D.C.  While the hardcover edition of Orbit 10 elegantly and democratically listed all eleven authors represented within its pages, the paperback went right for the hard sell, unleashing the bold face and the exclamation points to proclaim that the book contained "The most exciting fiction of our time!" and highlight Gene Wolfe's "masterpiece" "The Fifth Head of Cerberus;" four other worthies are references by last name only, while six authors are relegated to mere "other" status.

"The Fifth Head of Cerberus" does indeed merit celebration and promotion, but I won't be rereading it today.  Instead we'll talk about stories by one worthy, Alexei Panshin, author of the beloved Heinlein pastiche Rites of Passage, and by two "others," Edward Bryant and Jack Dann.  I've read a number of Bryant stories over the years, and a few Dann collaborations.  I've also read some Malzberg complaints about Dann the anthology editor rejecting Malzberg's work.  Don't pretend you don't love SF gossip.

"Jody After the War" by Ed Bryant   

"Jody After the War" has been reprinted numerous times, in multiple Bryant collections and in two different anthologies in which the ubiquitous Martin H. Greenberg had a hand.

It is the future (I guess the 1980s or 1990s) and America is still recovering from a terrible blow.  In the 1970s there was some political cataclysm in China and one product of the chaos was a nuclear attack which devastated the East Coast of the home of the free and the brave.  The capitol is now in Denver of all places!

Our narrator was in Nevada at the time of the attack.  He is some kind of creative type who aspires to work in the theatre or something, but he has been working for the telephone company, repairing public telephones in crime-ridden Denver; the machines are often the targets of vandals.  One day while working in a bad neighborhood a "Chicano gang" beat him unconscious.  The woman who called for help using the telephone he had just repaired, Jody the "half-Indian" with "high cheekbones," and he started dating.  Jody was in Pittsburgh at the time of the Chinese attack and has all kinds of nightmares, flashbacks, and anxiety as a result, and the main subject of this quite short story (seven pages) is the fact that the narrator wants to have sex with Jody and have children with her but she is afraid to have sex because she fears her chromosomes or whatever were damaged by radiation and she will not have healthy children.

"Jody After the War" is a "literary" story and there are plenty of showy efforts to be poetic and set the mood, like descriptions of the landscape ("Light lay bloody across the mountain side") and Jody's eyes ("the color of dark smoke") and the repeated use of key phrases ("She loves me" and "She loves me not.")  It feels like Bryant is trying too hard, but the story is competent, I guess.

Barely acceptable.

"Now I'm Watching Roger" by Alexei Panshin

This is a deliberately mysterious story that plays with the idea that life is an element of disorder in an otherwise orderly universe, suggesting that life is likely to spread from Earth to dominate the entire universe and asking whether this growth can and should be limited; would the dominance of life over all the universe represent a positive or a regrettable development?

The narrator is one of three people (I guess men though there is a sort of hint they might be augmented or mutated chimps or something) on a moon base, conducting experiments which are never described.  The narrator holds a position of authority and tries to make sure all the rules are followed.  One of his colleagues is lazy and rebellious and refuses to sterilize his garbage and dispose of it properly; it seems he buries some of it under the lunar surface outside the base, and is doing this deliberately to further the inevitable spread of life throughout the entire universe.  In jocular reference to the opinion that life taking over the universe is an evil, he makes for himself and dons a black hat.  (Eventually the narrator fashions a white hat for himself.)

The twist of the quite short story (like four and a half pages) is that in its last lines we are given a clue suggesting the experiments involve cutting up people or animals and that the garbage that is the center of the dispute consists at least in part of severed limbs.

Acceptable.

"Now I'm Watching Roger" would go on to be reprinted in two Panshin collections and an anthology upon which Martin H. Greenberg collaborated with others and which has appeared under different titles in the U.S. and the UK.

"Whirl Cage" by Jack M. Dann

This is a somewhat opaque and quite brief (eight pages) story that has as its themes (I guess) a negative take on that perennial SF fixture, collective consciousness, and a conventional take on that perennial topic of all fiction, the unruly mob of common people.  Dann's tale takes place in the Brooklyn of the future during some kind of inexplicable war or revolution.  A guy wearing some kind of psychic helmet is trying to use the telepathic powers the helmet provides to control a crowd and learn from it and about it.  The crowd is described as a churning, boiling, blob of people; individuals rise to surf on the surface of the blob and briefly act as its spokesman only to be submerged again.

The protagonist's efforts to pacify the mob fail, and it chases him through the Brooklyn streets.  The guy is supported by a tank with powerful electric weaponry, and as he flees back to it (it wasn't clear to me why he left this vehicle so far behind in the first place) he thinks about his wife and kids, who were killed earlier, and for whose death he blames himself; "You killed them, you killed them" says a voice, maybe his guilty conscience, maybe the mind of the crowd or some psychic enemy?  To his surprise, the tank is knocked out--the crowd, or enemies allied to or controlling the mob, have acquired anti-tank weapons.  The protagonist is seized by the mob and integrated with it physically and mentally. 

Acceptable.      

"Whirl Cage" has only escaped the confines of Orbit 10 once, appearing in German translation in a 1977 anthology published in Munich.

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These stories are all ambitious--they are all about abnormal or extreme psychology, the Bryant and Dann try to be poetic, the Panshin tries to be philosophical, the Dann and especially the Panshin are mysterious and challenge the reader to figure out what is really going on.  I can't say these stories are failures, but they aren't terribly exciting or particularly memorable, either.  I'd have to say they are slight.

We'll read more from Orbit 10 in the near future; maybe the next batch of stories will be more substantial.  But first we'll make another foray into the 1930s.