Aliens from Analog: Leinster, Anderson, Brown

Here at MPorcius Fiction Log we just read Eric Frank Russell's 1959 Astounding story "Now Inhale" in a 1965 anthology.  "Now Inhale" reappeared in 1983 in the anthology Aliens from Analog.  (I don't need to tell most people reading MPorcius Fiction Log that in 1960, Astounding, perhaps the most important science fiction magazine for decades, changed its name to Analog.)  Over the course of this blog's life we have now read five stories that appear in Aliens from Analog: Russell's "Now Inhale," "The Children's Hour" by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore, "Unhuman Sacrifice" by Katherine MacLean, "Big Sword" by Pauline Ashwell, and Russell's second story in the book, "The Hobbyist."  The anthology offers six stories which we have yet to read; let's cut that number down by half and read the stories in the book by three guys we already know, Murray Leinster, Poul Anderson and Fredric Brown.  (Maybe we'll read the stories in the book by people with whom we are not familiar, Alison Tellure, Stanley Schmidt, and Marc Steigler, next time.)

(Nota bene: I am reading the versions of the stories that appear in this 1983 anthology edited by Schmidt, editor of Analog from 1978 to 2013.)

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"First Contact" by Murray Leinster (1945)

Here we have a very famous story, one reprinted innumerable times in many languages, a tale that serves as the title story of a Damon Knight anthology and won a Retro Hugo in 1996.  "First Contact" was the cover story of the issue of Astounding in which it appeared, an issue that also prints a story by Frank Belknap Long which I rather liked, "The Trap."

"First Contact" is full of astronomy.  FTL Earth science ship Llanvabon is on a mission to study the Crab Nebula and the two stars at its center, and our main character is the guy with the job of photographing the nebula from various angles and distances and we hear all about the composition of the nebula and the temperature of the stars and so forth.  There's also quite a bit of description of sensors and space suits and that sort of thing, which I enjoy more than the astronomy stuff.

Though full of science and technology, the actual plot of the story revolves around Llanvabon's encounter with an alien ship--the first time humans have ever met a spacefaring extraterrestrial race!  Earth could benefit greatly from trade with these people, who no doubt have different and complementary knowledge and technology, but what if they are unscrupulous and want to conquer Earth, or just cautious and seek to destroy Llanvabon and then the human race for fear humans are unscrupulous?  Any exchange of useful info is likely to offer clues as to the location of Earth and thus put our entire civilization at terrible risk.  The safest course is to blow up the alien ship, but of course there is no guarantee the Earthers will win a fight they start, and a victory will destroy beyond recovery a tremendous volume of valuable data.

The crews of the two ships tentatively open communications and after a few weeks the main character comes up with a way for the two races to exchange invaluable knowledge without incurring much risk of genocidal interstellar war breaking out.  We are left with every reason to believe the human race is on course to build a mutually beneficial interstellar friendship with the ETs.

A solid traditional science fiction piece--thumbs up!

"Wings of Victory" by Poul Anderson (1972)

"Wings of Victory" takes place in the same universe as Anderson's many stories of Van Rijn, Falkayn and Flandry.  In 1979 it was reprinted in an anthology produced by a Soviet publisher that presents in English, with notes and supplementary material in Russian, stories by some of the most important American and British SF writers.  "Wings of Victory" would be included in multiple Anderson collections, one of which, The Earth Book of Stormgate, I own. 

"Wings of Victory" is a science-heavy story, the main point of which seems to be to describe the procedures of exploring an alien planet and to present all the science--biology, ecology, sociology and psychology--behind a fun alien race Anderson came up with.  Anderson includes a love triangle and a mutiny in an effort to produce some human drama, but this stuff is not particularly engaging, being a little too obvious and predictable.  "Wings of Victory" feels like a bunch of exposition meant to introduce to readers the Iron Age civilization of bird people native to the planet in the story, a society which seems to embody values Anderson admires--bravery, freedom, individualism, etc.  We'll call "Wings of Victory" acceptable.

A space boat with a multi-cultural crew of three humans lands on a planet where there are a substantial number of widely separated homesteads.  How civilized can the natives be if they all live so far apart from each other instead of being packed together in cities where trade and exchange of ideas can thrive?  The explorers encounter some large fearsome birds near one of the houses--are these domesticated guard beasts or the intelligent people who built the house?

One of the three explorers is an attractive woman and the two men compete over her attentions as they try to figure out the answers to these and related questions without getting killed in the process; these guys have radically divergent theories about the natives and have long science debates pushing their individual interpretations of the evidence.  One of Anderson's objectives in "Wings of Victory" seems to be to point out how long-held theories may turn out to be wrong, and people in positions of authority dangerously fallible, when faced with novel conditions--the guy who uses his intuition turns out to be correct and he gets the girl while his superior who relies on theories based on life from other planets and tries to pull rank suffers not only intellectual but physical humiliation.

A characteristic Anderson story which competently advances his ideological commitments and shows off his science knowledge, but not one of the more impressive ones from a literary or entertainment perspective.      

"The Waveries" by Fredric Brown (1945)

Here we have one of those science fiction disaster stories that feels like a history article from the future and tries to teach you about some scientific and technological phenomena (in this case, radio waves and the history of radio transmission and reception); "The Waveries" also serves as social commentary or satire, suggesting modern life, the era of the radio and the motor car, is driving us crazy and making us miserable.  Brown also unleashes a lot of speculative economics on us.  Unfortunately, "The Waveries" lacks much by way of character and human drama. 

It is the near future of 1947 and America is enjoying an economic boom as demobilized servicemen return home and set out spending all their pay.  Suddenly, everybody's radios, worldwide, begin picking up odd transmissions that interfere with legitimate broadcasts of music and news.  The well-informed recognize these puzzling sounds as being much like the first experimental signals sent out by radio pioneers like Marconi over 40 years ago, and in short order bits and pieces of more recent broadcasts are received over the air.  These signals overwhelm the airwaves, rendering radios useless, leading to a sharp rise in newspaper and magazine sales as well as a spike in the popularity of live and cinematic performances.

Scientists theorize that aliens of pure energy, living radio waves, have been attracted to Earth by our transmissions, and as they orbit the globe they are conforming their invisible hundreds-miles-long bodies to the shape of the messages that attracted them--the dots and dashes of morse code, snatches of song and speech less than thirty seconds long.

Things take a turn for what looks like the worse when the aliens start eating or absorbing electricity so that telephones, automobiles, aircraft, light bulbs, etc., cease to operate.  (Doesn't the human nervous system also operate via electrical pulses?  Brown doesn't address this as far as I can remember.)  The government seizes control of all steam locomotives and horses, now the world's primary sources of transport and power, and steam engines are produced en masse to power factories of all sizes.  (Brown displays a surprisingly robust faith in the ability of the government to effectively plan the economy in a time of crisis.)

The twist ending of "The Waveries" is that without electricity and gasoline engines people are healthier and happier!  They get plenty of exercise walking, riding bikes, riding horses, and toiling in the fields.  Denied radio and movies, they create their own entertainment via amateur theatricals and bands.  There is so much less stress that people stop drinking hard liquor.  Now, of course, we can't expect the bookish readers of Astounding to relish the idea of breaking their backs laboring on a farm--the main character of this story runs a small town newspaper, doing all the writing and editing and reporting himself.      

A provocative story that reminds you of those nostalgic reactionary types who try to convince you that medieval peasants had better lives than 21st-century office drones.  I'm not buying its rosy view of a simpler life, but "The Waveries" is OK.     

Among the places you can find "The Waveries" are a Penguin anthology called Connoisseur's Science Fiction and an Italian magazine called Gamma.

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Science fiction boosters call SF "the literature of ideas," and today we've read three stories that really do focus on science and speculation, rather than just using science jargon as window dressing for some kind of traditional adventure or horror story.  Whether this kind of SF is your cup of tea, or you prefer blood and guts, sex and violence, characters you can identify with and striking images, is a matter of taste, and I have to admit I find Brown's story a little dry and Anderson's efforts to incorporate relationship drama and combat action into his story a little flat, though these shortcomings are not fatal.  Leinster's story to my mind has the most compelling characters, relationships and images of today's three stories--it deserves that Retro Hugo.

We'll finish up Aliens in Analog soon, so stay tuned if you are curious about Stanley Schmidt's other picks.