"Planet of Parasites" by Robert Silverberg
This is a traditional SF horror-adventure story, in which scientists studying an alien planet face a monstrous enemy, an enemy that threatens their identities, threatens their lives, threatens the entire universe!
A team of eggheads has been on Gamma Crucis VII for eighteen months, and is being relieved by the team on which our hero is serving as medical officer. The doctor spots little clues that suggest something is wrong with the team being sent home, and, after they have left, addition clues come to his attention that suggest this planet is very unusual. Eventually it becomes undeniable that the people from the previous team were infected with an alien disease or parasite, and are bringing it to Earth to perhaps infect all of mankind! One by one the members of the relief team begin to succumb! Through use of his medical experience and equipment our hero realizes that this planet is all one big organism, a collective consciousness connected by telepathy, an entity that seeks to conquer the universe, and his colleagues are being absorbed into it! Our guy manages to get a message to Earth, warning them to not let the previous team land, and then we get an action climax with a tragic conclusion as the hero employs his energy pistol to burn to ash his best friend and his wife, and a whole lot of others; finally, he commits suicide.
As I've been saying about the other Silverberg stories I have been reading, "Planet of Parasites" is well-paced and well-constructed, a smooth engaging read. I think of this as a sort of horror story, and Silverberg handles all the deaths in a compelling way--as we might say of a slasher movie, the "kills" are satisfying.
Thumbs up for "Planet of Parasites." "Planet of Parasites" would be reprinted in the 2016 Silverberg collection Early Days: More Tales from the Pulp Era.
"I Want to Go Home" by Robert Moore Williams
"I Want to Go Home" is an acceptable somewhat gimmicky story, but I think it has a significant problem that crops up near the end.
The main character of Williams' tale is a psychiatrist working in a police station; his job is to deal with juvenile delinquents. He reads the social workers' file on a kid--just turned 18--who has always been something of a problem and has been brought in today for yet again stealing electronics equipment. This kid's first words were "I want to go home" and he is said to have a high IQ but to not take school seriously. When the shrink sees the kid, the kid explains that human beings do not belong here, that all his life he has known this fact that most people have forgotten, and that all his life he has been trying to get home. He has been stealing all that electronics paraphernalia in his effort to build a device that will afford him a way to get home.
The shrink has the stuff the kid lifted brought into the office, and the shrink watches as the boy genius constructs for the umpteenth time a complicated gadget he hopes will get him home, wherever that is. When he switches the thing on, the shrink has a weird feeling and the kid falls over dead! The doctors who examine the body have no idea what exactly killed the kid.
The shrink suddenly feels an almost irresistible desire to "go home" himself, and snatches up the service revolver he has never used, determined to kill himself! He comes to his senses just before he pulls the trigger. The psychiatrist puts the gun back in the drawer, and then throws the switch on the kid's device, which is still sitting there in his office. We are told that the doctor's body dies, but his consciousness goes where he, and all human beings, belong.
The problem with this story is the disparity between the way the kid and the psychiatrist respond to the powerful urge to "go home where people belong," and the relationship between death and "going home." If you go where you belong by dying, why did the kid go through the rigamarole of building electronic devices for years and years--why didn't he just jump off a roof or drink some anti-freeze? If the electronics are necessary, why did the urge to "go home" felt by the shrink manifest itself as an urge to shoot himself? The idea of death taking us home was not foreshadowed--when the kid flipped on his device I expected him to teleport away, and when he collapsed I was surprised to find he was dead, having thought he must be travelling astrally and would come back to his body in time.
I'll call this one acceptable; I liked it until the muddled ending.
In 2012 Robert Silverberg edited a volume of stories from Super-Science Fiction for Haffner Press, and "I Want to Go Home" is among its 400 pages. Otherwise, the story has not been reprinted.
"Situation on Sapella Six" by Harlan Ellison
Harlan Ellison attracts extravagant accolades and fervent support from across a wide swathe of the population. Just recently I heard two of the neocons at Commentary magazine (on their April 11 podcast) fulsomely singing Ellison's praises. Matthew Continetti, Director of Domestic Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute. even claimed he became a writer because he was inspired by Ellison and seemed to suggest, I guess hyperbolically, that he had read all of Ellison's work. While editor of Commentary John Podhoretz, who is addicted to Hollywood gossip, mostly wanted to relate anecdotes about how Ellison was a crazy person (a "meshugenah,") he also recommended Ellison's work and, preemptively defending Ellison from the charge that he was never able to write a novel, made the point that the primary medium of science fiction before the 1960s was the short story. I was certainly surprised to hear Ellison come up on the podcast, and even Podhoretz admitted he was amazed to hear of Continetti's attachment to Ellison.
Well, here in the issue of Super-Science Fiction under review today we have an Ellison story that was never reprinted--I wonder if even Continetti has read it! Today I, Ellison skeptic, will read "Situation on Sapella Six" and join what I have to assume is the small cadre of people who have done so.
Well, if Continetti hasn't read this one, he should be in no hurry to do so, as it is childish and weak: quite little happens; the pacing and structure are poor with lots of time wasted on fripperies at the beginning and the actual plot conflict being introduced and resolved brusquely, and there are no ideas or arguments or anything like that. Sometimes I read these stories that have not been reprinted and I tell you they are hidden gems, other times I read them and tell you it is obvious why they have not been reprinted, and today's subject falls in the latter category.
The start of the story consists of a long description of two Terran spacemen in their ship, sort of clowning around and participating in what one assumes is meant to be witty banter. They have with them a pet, a mutant leopard. They are headed to some planet to mine ore.
The second part of the story is about an alien who looks much like a little monkey. His race of people like to be alone, and he is flying in his space ship to a planet where he can be all alone--this is the same planet the two chummy humans are going to.
In the third part of the story the monkey man and the Terrans meet--the humans hit the alien with a nonlethal entangling goop weapon, immobilizing him, but the monkey has mental powers and paralyzes the two humans. They are at a standoff, a stalemate, all three of them frozen in place! The leopard resolves the plot, distracting the monkeyman so the humans are freed from its mental powers. Then the monkey man communicates with the Terrans telepathically. It seems that the very ore the humans want is poisonous to the monkeyman and he would be glad if they took it all off this planet.
In the denouement we learn that the humans traded the leopard for the ore and are headed back to Earth where they will become rich.
This is like a story for children. Thumbs down!
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The Silverberg is a good thriller-type SF story, and the Williams is good until the end. As for the Ellison, it is bad filler; we might think of it as a piece of juvenilia better forgotten.
It feels a little unfair to express my Ellison skepticism here and then offer up as an example of the man's work something that neither he himself nor any editor thought fit to reprint--obviously "Situation on Sappela Six" is not representative of Ellison's body of work or of what about his oeuvre appeals to his fanatical fans. So in our next episode I will read a story by Ellison specifically recommended by Continetti on that podcast, a story which has appeared in multiple Ellison collections.
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