Three more above the night: Herbert, Davidson & Klass, and White

Maybe you'll remember that we recently read three stories from Groff Conklin's 1965 anthology 13 Above the Night, a story questioning monogamy by Fritz Leiber and stories of conflict with aliens by Mack Reynolds and Eric Frank Russell.  Well, today we'll read three more stories from that book, taking advantage of a scan of it at the world's greatest website, the internet archive.  We've got something from Frank Herbert of Dune fame, whose "Cease Fire" and "The Nothing" we read recently.  Also, a collaboration between critically acclaimed Avram Davidson, whom we last saw penning a satire about interstellar undocumented aliens and welfare fraudsters and William Tenn's brother, Morton Klass.  And finally a story by James White, famous for his Sector General series--I liked his novel All Judgement Fled and some stories from his collection Deadly Litter when I read them before the inauguration of this blog; a couple of years ago I did blog about White's "Tableau." 

"Mating Call" by Frank Herbert (1961)

The architect of Arrakis here presents us with a gimmicky filler story that is too long for what it accomplishes.  Barely acceptable.

Two women scientists are on the surface of a planet, there to help the natives, people shaped like eggs who move around with five prehensile members.  These natives don't seem to have much by way of technology.  The women bicker quite a bit,  having different attitudes in general and holding conflicting opinions about the locals and the problem that has led them to seek Terran aid--a recent decline in the birth rate.  The defining characteristic of these aliens is the music they make--they can sing a wide array of sounds, and do so beautifully, at least according to the younger, junior of the two scientists--the older woman is tone deaf.  The women's research is going slowly because the natives don't seem to want the women to attend their big sing along events--the women figure this event will give them a clue to the source of the fertility problem.  There's a lot of dialogue, and eventually the women are permitted to attend one of the natives' huge gatherings and witness and record their singing.  The scientists immediately transmit the music up to the mother ship and it is quickly retransmitted throughout human civilization.

It turns out that these natives, who all look the same, don't reproduce sexually--the music they produce at these big gatherings has the customary effect of triggering reproduction by splitting; those egg people blessed with parenthood break in half, which produces two smaller but otherwise identical egg people.  How likely any individual native is to reproduce at the concert is determined by how beautiful the music is.  Recently, the natives have been fascinated with human music, and have been trying to produce music of their own with some of the virtues of Terran music, but haven't been getting it quite right.  Thus, the low birth rate.  But tonight they put on a performance of breathtaking beauty, and more reproduction takes place than ever before.

The twist ending is that the music also triggers parthenogenetic pregnancy in the two women scientists, who will give birth to sterile clones of themselves in nine months or so.  All the women of the right age up in the mother ship are also pregnant.  And all over the galaxy human women who listened to the music live are in a similar condition.  Human civilization will be rocked by this discovery--it is implied that men may well have just been rendered obsolete, the recorded music being easily available to any woman who wants to have a daughter and isn't interested in a sexual relationship with a man.

"Mating Call" has itself been reproduced quite a few times in Herbert collections and some European anthologies.  It debuted in an issue of Galaxy we looked into back in 2015 when we blogged about Fritz Leiber's "The Beat Cluster" and Cordwainer Smith's "A Planet Called Shayol."

"The Kappa Nu Nexus" by Avram Davidson and Morton Klass (1961)

Avram Davidson is one of those super well-read johnnies and "The Kappa Nu Nexus" begins with a quote or paraphrase from Joseph Addison's Cato, something 18th-century people read ravenously but which I can't imagine many 21st-century people read or have even heard of.  There was a time when I expected I would read lots of Addison and Steele myself, when I harbored plans of becoming some kind of college professor specializing in 18th-century British history, but that was long ago.  Anyway, "The Kappa Nu Nexus" is chockablock with literary, historical and cultural references explicit and oblique, ranging from "Surrey With the Fringe on Top" to the Whig Party and the Spanish-American War, from Revolutions French and Russian to rebellions Jacobite. 

"The Kappa Nu Nexus" is the tale of Hank Gordon's first day at college and how he becomes the Big Man on Campus.  Before arriving at school, Gordon expressed contempt for fraternities, for partying, women, and booze, and declared his determination to study hard, but that was little more than sham.  Upon arrival he is quickly tricked into joining the failing Kappa Nu fraternity, which is desperate for members.  As he lies abed on his first night in his room at the decaying frat house, he is amazed to see a beautiful and scantily-clad woman with a nametag reading "Thais" step out of the closet and proceed to vanish.  (I actually own a reproduction of Demetre Chiparus' Thais, so I thought this was fun.)  Thais is followed by Cleopatra, Madame du Pompadour, and Nell Gwynn.  Eventually Hank learns from an unusually dressed man who similarly materializes inexplicably that this room is a short cut through space and time, and that it is used by an interstellar time travelling prostitution ring--sexually skilled women of beauty from all periods of history regularly pass through the room on their way to meet clients.  Hank swings a deal--the prostitutes and pimps can continue using the passageway as long as the women service the men of the fraternity on their way through.  As a result Hank becomes a hero and Kappa Nu becomes the most popular frat on campus.

I generally dislike these kinds of joke stories, but this one won me over.  For one thing, the plot actually holds together and is not totally absurd.  The many cultural references are interesting.  Our young hapless (but ultimately triumphant) protagonist and the various bits of slang remind me of P. G. Wodehouse, and the long digressions of Laurence Sterne.  So I can give this one a moderate recommendation.  With its sympathetic depiction of prostitution we might also consider it an intriguing example of science fiction that deals with sex and gender roles.   

Interestingly, "The Kappa Nu Nexus" has been avoided by editors and anthologists--according to isfdb, the only time it has been reprinted since its initial appearance in F&SF is here in 13 Above the Night.

"Counter Security" by James White (1963)

Here we have a quite well-written story with much of the structure of a detective story but a traditional science fiction climax in which the protagonist survives first contact with aliens through application of knowledge, logic and quick thinking.  White also includes subtle unobtrusive humor, and plenty of "meta" elements-- there are direct references to H. P. Lovecraft, Theodore Sturgeon and Alfred Bester as well as SF criticism.  White also successfully paints a believable and engaging main character.  A really good story that scores hits when it comes to SF elements and mainstream literary values--thumbs up for "Counter Security"!  

"Counter Security" is set in a large department store.  Our hero is sort of a slacker or underachiever, an intelligent man who has taken the somewhat low status job of night watchman at the store because it gives him time to read SF magazines (though he only likes "serious" science fiction, not supernatural or fantasy stories.)  White describes this guy's job and the operations of the store in an engrossing, entertaining way.

Our guy has a problem to solve--for weeks the women working in the toy department have come in to work in the morning to find that during the night dolls of black girls have been vandalized, always in the same way.  Is there some racist maniac on the staff?  Or somehow breaking in every night?  We observe as the night watchman solves the crime, making a mind-blowing discovery--space aliens have materialized their ship under the store and at night are infiltrating the building!  The night watchman figures out why they are messing with the dolls and how to make friends with the aliens and we get a nice happy ending.

As I say about writers all the time, I should probably read more James White.  I have been sort of avoiding him because so many of his stories are medical-related and that sounds boring to me, but he has a large body of work outside the Sector General series and it would be easy to track some of them down. 

"Counter Security" debuted in F&SF and was the same year reprinted in a German anthology with a cool cover and in some European magazines; in 1977 it was included in the White collection Monsters and Medics.

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I feel pretty good about this batch of stories from 13 Above the Night.  Maybe we'll return to this volume some day.  In any case, expect more stories from mid-century SF magazines next time here at MPorcius Fiction Log.