Lester del Rey: "Whom the Gods Love," "Though Dreamers Die," and "Fool's Errand"

Here at MPorcius Fiction Log we are reading Early del Rey, a thick hardcover collection published in 1975, when I was four years old, that includes stories first published from 1938 to 1951 along with del Rey's memoirs of his career and his relationships with other SF figures.  We are making our way through this volume at a leisurely pace; in fact, I think it has been like four months since our last installment in this series of posts.  Let's blame it on a road trip to the Middle West and the always taxing holiday season and just welcome the fact that we are back on track today with our fifth blog post about Early del Rey, during which we will tackle three stories from the period 1943-1951.

Oh yeah, links to the first four episodes in this series:

"The Faithful," "Anything" and "Habit"

"The Smallest God," "The Stars Look Down," "Doubled in Brass," and "Reincarnate"
"Carillon of Skulls," "Done Without Eagles," and "My Name is Legion"
"Though Poppies Grow," "Lunar Landing," and "Fifth Freedom"

"Whom the Gods Love" (1943)

This is a sort of power and revenge fantasy.  Some kind of alien consciousness or immaterial being wakes up with amnesia in the body of a dead American pilot on a Pacific island, next to a crashed two-seater warplane in which lies another dead American.  The alien animates the body it occupies, and uses its ability to create matter out of ambient cosmic energy and manipulate it telekinetically to partially heal the body and to repair the aircraft.  Inspired by a bird flying by, the alien ignores the plane's damaged propeller and internal combustion engine and gives the plane's wings the ability to flap before climbing in and taking off.  When its occupied body gets hungry it makes food pop into existence, guided by memories of food found in the American airman's brain.  Similarly prompted by the airman's memories, it recognizes Allied aircraft as friendly and Japanese aircraft as hostile--the alien also can read minds, so knows the Japanese wish him ill.  (I told you this was a power fantasy--this alien can do anything.)  The alien gives the aircraft's guns, which are out of ammo, the ability to shoot energy bolts it can unerringly aim with its mind and wipes out an entire Japanese naval task force. 

Eventually the alien decides to finish repairing the body it is occupying, removing a bullet from the brain.  When the bullet is removed the airman comes back to life and the alien consciousness is forced out.  Without the alien's telekinesis to keep the motorless plane aloft, it goes down, but the resurrected American flyer bails out safely into American-held territory.

"Whom the Gods Love" is a merely acceptable action story that lacks suspense or characterization, but offers some entertainment through the astounding events it depicts and the way it portrays a high intelligence grappling with a totally novel milieu.  The story has not been reprinted outside the various editions of Early del Rey.

In the text following "Whom the Gods Love," del Rey talks a little about the rage felt by Americans towards the Japanese after Pearl Harbor, saying "Given the right provocation, we are all racist bigots, I fear," and admitting he shared some of that animosity, but also mentioning that he made one of the heroes in "Nerves" a Japanese as a way of combatting such racism.  Then he talks about his own experiences doing war work, manufacturing parts of DC-3s, bragging about how his employers were amazed by how good he was with tools.

"Though Dreamers Die" (1944)

After telling us how he excelled as a sheet metal worker and how he enjoys such work as much as he does writing, del Rey talks a little about his relationship with Robert Moore Williams.  Williams, as del Rey tells it, wrote some very good stories for Astounding, including "Robots' Return," which we read back in 2018, but then decided to churn out "routine stories" for Amazing instead of expending the effort required to meet Astounding and Unknown editor John W. Campbell, Jr's exacting standards.  (We've read good stories by Williams, like the aforementioned robot story and "The Counterfeiter" and "Death Sentence," but also a bunch of things of his that are mediocre or bad, like "Jongor of Lost Land," "The Return of Jongor," "Red Death of Mars" and "Zanthar at Trip's End.")  Del Rey was so impressed by "Robots' Return" that he got permission from Williams to write a prequel to it; entitled "Though Dreamers Die," Campbell printed in Astounding and it has reappeared in several robot-themed anthologies since then.

"Though Dreamers Die" is sentimental and to my mind somewhat silly, but then I don't anthropomorphize robots the way many people do.

Just when humanity was about to conquer the galaxy, when the first star ship was just weeks from completion, a Plague with a capital "P" struck Earth, killing almost everybody.  A small group of people were put into suspended animation on the star ship, which was operated by five of the latest, most advanced robots.

Our hero is one of the guys in suspended animation.  He is awoken by the robots after ninety years--they have found an Earth-like planet!  Unfortunately all the other people in suspended animation have died of the Plague--our protagonist, a man, is the last member of the human race!  There is a lot of melodramatic talk about how mankind's dreams have gone unfulfilled and how it is a cosmic joke that they found a planet suitable for colonization only after colonization was impossible.  But then the protagonist realizes that the robots can fulfill mankind's dream by reproducing themselves and building cities all across the galaxy.  The dream is independent of those who initially dreamed it!

This story is quite long for what it accomplishes, with lots of descriptions of the new planet--in particular a natural harbor that would be an ideal location for a beautiful city--and of the star ship as well as lots of flashbacks and exposition in which del Rey describes characters now dead.  But the real problem with the story is the whole premise--it makes no sense for robots to colonize the galaxy and build cities if no humans are left alive.  Why would human beings explore and colonize the galaxy?  To make their lives better, to satisfy the human desire to overcome obstacles and win renown.  Do machines have lives?  Do machines have desires?  Of course they don't.  What would the city built by robots be like?  Human cities are full of places to sleep, to conduct business and maintain order, to pursue pleasure, full of infrastructure to distribute food and water.  Robots don't need to sleep, they don't trade or commit crimes, they don't experience pleasure and they don't need food or water.  The romanticization of robots is one of the commonplaces of science fiction that I don't get.

We'll call it acceptable.

"Fool's Errand" (1951)

Between "Though Dreamers Die" and "Fool's Errand," del Rey talks about moving to New York and about writing the story "Kindness."   

"Fool's Errand" is a gimmicky joke story--the gimmick is actually much like that in the 1980s horror novel we just read, Late at Night by William Schoell, in which a person writes a book about an adventure she was in and then contrives to transport the book back in time so some of the other participants in the adventure have access to it before and during the adventure it describes, so they come to believe the book is prophetic.  (Oh, yeah, spoiler alert.)

In "Fool's Errand," people in 1989 discover an early manuscript of Nostradamus, one which lists all his prophecies but in less ambiguous verbiage.  All of these predictions prove accurate.  In the 23rd century, people want to make sure this manuscript is really Nostradamus' and not some kind of forgery, so they build a time machine and send a guy back to 14th-century Paris to try to find Nostradamus and confirm the pedigree of the manuscript.  The scientists estimate that the time traveler has only a week to accomplish his mission before he is brought back home automatically.  The time traveler is accidentally sent back in time too early, the time of Nostradamus' college days in Montpelier.  He rushes down to the university town, and by the time he gets there ten dats have already passed--he could disappear back to the future any moment!  He does manage to get to Nostradamus just in time.  The twist ending of the story is that N has not taken up the career of prophet yet--he only embarks on such a project because he acquires the copy of the manuscript the time traveler brought back with him to have authenticated when the time traveler is jerked back to the 23rd century before he can take the manuscript back.

Barely acceptable.  In the Forties, Campbell rejected "Fool's Errand," which del Rey admits is too obvious, but a few years later Robert A. W. Lowndes bought it for Science Fiction Quarterly.  In 1953 it was reprinted in an Australian magazine, and in 2009 in the del Rey collection War & Space.

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None of these stories is actually bad, but they aren't great either, relying on gimmicks and the exploitation of attitudes I just don't have--I don't care about Nostradamus, I don't romanticize robots, and I'm not particularly fired up about the Japanese imperialism, as horrible as it was, of 85 years ago.  These stories are not "timeless" and have a specific rather than a broad appeal.  They are competent, though, which we can't take for granted here at MPorcius Fiction Log, and read in conjunction with del Rey's memoirs, the stories are valuable for the student of SF as they offer insight into the world of the time and the workings of the professional SF community, so I'm still finding Early del Rey a quite worthwhile read.