Eric Frank Russell: "Somewhere A Voice," "U-Turn," "Seat of Oblivion," and "Tieline"

When I read John D. MacDonald's "Appointment for Tomorrow" in a 1949 issue of Super Science Stories recently, a commenter pointed out its similarities to Eric Frank Russell's "U-Turn," which first appeared in a 1950 issue of Astounding.  I looked up "U-Turn" at isfdb and saw it was reprinted in a 1966 collection with Frank Kelly Freas cover and interior illustrations, Somewhere A Voice.  The collection presents seven stories by Russell, three of which, "Displaced Person,"  "Dear Devil" and "I Am Nothing," we have already read, and four we have not.  Let's experience that quartet today as SF fans first experienced them, in scans of the magazines that hosted their original appearances.  Should you be curious to see Freas's illos (crashed rocket, caped creep, tentacled monster, child with automatic weapon, etc.) there's a link to a scan of the 1966 Dell paperback (F-398) at the isfdb page for Somewhere A Voice.  Also, nota bene, there is reason to believe Russell revised the stories for book publication--a look at the first paragraph of "Somewhere A Voice" indicates at least some changes were made to that story--so my comments below may not apply to the stories as they appear in the numerous editions of the collection.  

"Somewhere A Voice" (1953)

"Somewhere A Voice" made its first appearance in Other Worlds; this issue boasts not only a front cover that appeals to lovers of both birds and felines, but a fun back cover by Hannes Bok and a pointless autobiographical sketch by Russell in which he talks about how he doesn't like to write autobiographical sketches.  In 1957 "Somewhere A Voice" was reprinted in the British magazine Nebula.  In addition to the numerous different editions of the collection of which it is the title story, the story can be found in a big 1992 Russian anthology.

You'll be thrilled to learn that "Somewhere A Voice" is a story that celebrates diversity and debunks prejudice and bigotry, teaching us that, among other things, not every Chinese man is an opium addict and not every Jewish person carries diamonds around with him.  Keep a copy of this one in your back pocket to whip out when you hear someone bemoaning how old science fiction is white supremacy projected upon the stars.  

The Star Queen was hit by a meteor and wrecked, and almost everybody among her hundred-plus crew and passengers was killed.  A handful of people (and one dog) made it to the lifeboat in time and as the story begins they disembark onto a planet bathed in dangerous solar radiation whose toxic atmosphere gives life to endless jungles within which writhe carnivorous plants and skulk ambush-laying monsters.  One survivor is big and strong space sailor Bill Mallet, deputy engineer; another is First Officer Alex Symes; a third is Max Kessler, head of the third watch.  Mallet is dismayed to see that they are the only white crewmen to have survived the disaster--the remainder of the survivors consists of two elderly obese Russians, a Jewish passenger, an Asian who was a cook's assistant or something, and an unskilled "Negro" mechanic.  How are they going to survive the march to the nearest settlement--a trek of 2,000 miles!--with these losers slowing them down?  

For like thirty pages the party hacks its way through the jungle, regularly fighting the voracious native life.  One by one the human survivors of the shipwreck get killed, but before he is broken, torn or poisoned to death, each of the minorities has an opportunity to demonstrate courage, strength of character and unexpected capabilities, and before Bill Mallet himself expires he learns that people are all the same and tolerance is the most important virtue.  In the end Mallet, the last to die, also gets religion--delirious, he hears a voice reciting Matthew 11:28 in his head.  This is a surprise not only because science fiction stories are generally dismissive or even hostile to religion, but because it isn't foreshadowed at all, but seems to come out of nowhere.

Mallet keels over just as a rescue helicopter spots him and the dog--the dog is the only survivor of the Star Queen disaster.  The role of the dog is one aspect of "Somewhere A Voice" that sticks out, Russell suggesting this canine is an equal member of the party, that tolerance shouldn't be limited to human beings, but should be extended to our four-legged friends as well.  (I guess this is a data point in support of the cliché stereotype that English people love animals.)

"Somewhere A Voice" feels long.  Did we really need to see five different representatives of marginalized communities--two fat old foreigners, an African, a Chinese and a Jew--perform prodigies of self-sacrifice?  It gets a little monotonous; maybe one or two such characters would have driven the point home.  Individual scenes are also pretty long--Russell describes in great detail Mallet's provision of first aid to a number of his stricken companions, which I guess is meant to illustrate his burgeoning human connection to them (and maybe his massaging of somebody's feet is supposed to remind us of John 13), but again, it gets a little repetitive.  There is also little suspense in the story--once the first marginalized person sacrifices himself, you sort of know that they are all going to do it, and you can guess pretty early that the real journey Russell's story describes is Mallet's journey from racist xenophobe to diversity advocate, so whether he makes it to the settlement doesn't matter.

Merely acceptable.  Obviously a story to read if you are interested in depictions of racism and anti-Semitism and xenophobia in SF, and sympathetic depictions of Christianity in science fiction.

"U-Turn" (1950)

Lester Del Rey (in the intro to The Best of Eric Frank Russell) reports that Russell was John W. Campbell, Jr.'s favorite SF author, and here we have one of several stories from Somewhere A Voice that was first printed in Campbell's towering magazine, Astounding.  There the story was credited to Duncan H. Munro, a pen name Russell used three or four times, and appeared alongside tales by A. E. van Vogt, L. Ron Hubbard and L. Sprague de Camp.  It would later show up in the 1974 Dutch collection Welkom Op Aarde... and the 2000 American collection Major Ingredients.  

"U-Turn" showcases themes we see in lots of these old SF stories--the idea that utopia is overrated and to thrive people need challenge and even hardship; the cognitive elite who manipulate the masses for their own good; and the smart guy who uses logic and his science knowledge to figure everything out.

Our protagonist is a big success in the future of freedom and plenty that has been built by high technology, and Russell gives us lots of examples of how easy life has been made for the human race, and also lets us know that mankind seems to have reached its limit.  Rockets routinely carry people between Earth, the Moon, Venus and Mars, and Mars and Venus have been completely civilized.  However, rockets can't reach the planets beyond the asteroid belt, much less those of other star systems, and the matter transmitters in use that can transport things further than a rocket are not that reliable, so are only used to move inanimate objects.  Progress has ended--life on the inner planets can't be made any more luxurious and men can't venture further out--so our super rich protagonist, after over 200 years of productive life (he's on his third rejuvenation treatment) finds life a bore.  So he heads to the suicide facility, where a series of clerks try to gently dissuade him from destroying himself.  He is determined, however, and so steps into what is ostensibly an elevator to the upper floors where he will be euthanized, but which is in fact one of those unreliable matter transmitters.  Our guy reappears on the primitive Callisto colony, one of the lucky few whose atoms get correctly rearranged upon arrival.  Life is dangerous on Callisto (everybody wears a side arm) and everybody works hard using hand tools under the beautiful view of Jupiter, which is just the kind of life and work our hero is looking for!

In the last section of the story we learn that the protagonist had predicted that the suicide facility was actually a teleporter to a distant colony, and in the dialogue between him and the colonists who greet him, Russell explores some speculative sociology and political economy.  The utopian society is a bewilderingly complex machine, and a radical change might lead it to collapse.  If the general public knew there was even a slim chance of moving to a colony where life consists of real productive work with their hands and exciting fights with monsters, there would be a huge wave of volunteers to take that chance, which would put dangerous stress on the delicate economy and social order, so the authorities have kept the colonization program a secret, and just left a few clues for the smarty smarts to figure out how to volunteer and erected obstacles to deter all but those truly determined to leave their lives on Earth behind.

This story is more compact than "Somewhere A Voice" and the little details of the future world are more interesting than the details of the jungle in that story, and the themes of "U-Turn" are more challenging than the "don't be a bigot" preaching of "Somewhere A Voice."  I'm giving this one a mild recommendation.      

"Seat of Oblivion" (1941)

Here we have an entertaining sort of weird crime story, my favorite so far today.

Wade is an inventor, and he has built a working prototype of a device that bathes you in radiation that increases your spiritual power.  With all that extra spiritual power, your soul can free itself from your body.  This isn't as awesome as it sounds initially, as your body dies immediately upon you vacating it, and the extra spiritual power you have absorbed dissipates pretty quickly, so you have to take over another person's body quite soon after vacating your own, and doing so casts the other's soul into oblivion.  

A big fat investor financed this invention, and he isn't too crazy about the result--how can he make money on what amounts to a suicide-murder machine?  Scientist and humanitarian Wade isn't interested in money--he has the idea that his machine can be used to aid mankind by ensuring the longevity of people like himself.  Instead of executing heinous criminals in the electric chair, with the new machine geniuses who are elderly or terminally ill could migrate into the healthy bodies of convicted felons.  (Russell, in this story, dismisses materialist explanations of intelligence, personality and memory--your memories are not engraved on your brain physically or chemically, but are a component of your soul, so if you take over some other guy's body you don't take on any of his psychological attributes or gain access to any of his memories, or lose any of your own intellectual attributes.  This sort of thing makes "Seat of Oblivion" feel more like a weird tale than an actual science fiction story, but when I say that I am just describing, not complaining--you know I love Weird Tales as much as I do Astounding.)

The obese moneybags may not see possibilities for this machine, but Jensen the professional thief and three-time murderer does!  Jensen recently escaped from death row and is eavesdropping on Wade's conversation with his overweight backer.  Jensen murders the fat guy, forces Wade to teach him how to use the machine, and then takes possession of the machine and embarks on a crime spree; again and again he takes over some innocent person's body, robs a bank, and then takes over some other guy's body.  The public and the authorities are flabbergasted by the series of robberies committed by previously upstanding citizens who are then found dead, their bodies unmarred by any injury.

Wade works with law enforcement and they figure out a way to catch Jensen; Wade then destroys his invention, convinced the human race is not ready for it.

The 1979 German trans. of Somewhere A Voice (right) is abridged, including only
the title story, "U-Turn," "Seat of Oblivion" and "Dear Devil"

"Tieline" (1955)

Here's another Astounding piece that appears under the pseudonym Duncan H. Munro.  It would go on to be included in an Ace Double first published in 1958 and then reprinted in 1971 with different covers, Six Worlds Yonder.  

"Tieline" addresses a topic I associate with Barry Malzberg--the worry that participation in the effort to conquer space will drive people insane.  Our protagonist is the only man on a little island on a planet almost entirely covered in calm waveless oceans; his job is to maintain a transmitter that acts as a beacon, and he will be here all alone for ten years.  There are no large land animals, just fish and utterly silent insects, and the boredom and loneliness and silence threatens to drive the guy insane.

There are many such beacons across the galaxy tended by lone individuals, and the authorities are always trying to figure out new ways to stave off the plague of insanity that threatens to afflict their interstellar lighthouse keepers.  This brief story details a few of the methods they come up with to try to keep our particular guy sane; the idea is to create a connection ("tieline") to life on Earth.  A supply ship delivers recordings of Earth sounds, but they grow boring once they are too familiar.  Then a praying mantis is delivered, but the protagonist finds it too quiet and too alien--he's never seen one before, the mantis was never part of his life on Earth, so cannot serve as a tieline for him.  The story ends when something that really reminds him of his youth on the Outer Hebrides is delivered--hundreds of sea gulls.

Acceptable.

**********

'Seat of Oblivion" is actually a good thriller, and the other three stories, while not as entertaining, represent efforts by Russell to address interesting or important issues, issues where the lives of individuals and societies intersect, and he more or less succeeds in saying something intellectually or emotionally arousing.  Four stories worth the time of the classic SF fan.