We're in no rush here at MPorcius Fiction Log. Stop and smell the flowers, we say! So it has been like two months since we logged
an installment of our tour of the speculative fiction of 1958 courtesy of Judith Merril, the critics' favorite anthologist. But slow and steady wins the race, and today we again turn to the back pages of my copy of
SF: The Year's Greatest Science-Fiction and Fantasy: 4th Annual Volume to Merril's long list of honorable mentions and pick out three stories to read. Our journey through 1958 is an alphabetical one, and we are still on the letter "S," and today we check out stories by Cordwainer Smith, Will Stanton and Jon Stopa.
"Western Science is So Wonderful!" by Cordwainer Smith
Merril recommends two stories by Cordwainer Smith in
SF: The Year's Greatest Science-Fiction and Fantasy: 4th Annual Volume; we read
"The Burning of the Brain" back in 2019. I recognize the title "Western Science is So Wonderful!" and am a little surprised I haven't read it yet, but maybe I put off reading it because I thought the title was sarcastic and I was in no mood for yet another slagging of the Western world after a lifetime of hearing such slaggings from college professors, grad students (the college professor in its larval form), journalists and now rapping nepo-baby mayoral candidates. Whatever the case, today we see what this story, which debuted in Damon Knight's
If and has never been anthologized but has seen reprint in many Smith collections, is all about by reading it in a scan of the appropriate issue of
If.
"Western Science is So Wonderful" in fact is not an attack on Western society; the main target of its satire is actually socialism in Russia and China. But it is also a silly and repetitive joke story.
An exiled Martian is on Earth during the Second World War, and hangs around in rural China. It can read minds and change its shape and effortlessly fly and so forth--it likes to take the form of a tree and feel the wind in its branches, for example. The Martian encounters a U. S. Army liaison with the Chinese Nationalist Army and shocks the Yank and his Chinese porters with his bizarre behavior, like taking the form of the American's mother and then of a stripping Red Cross nurse in an effort to put him at ease. One of the jokes of this sequence is that the Martian is fascinated by the American's cigarette lighter. (It is this device that prompts the utterance that serves as the story title.) The Martian erases all memory of this encounter from the soldier and those who accompany him.
In 1955 a Soviet liaison to the Chinese Communist Party arrives in the same spot and the Martian interacts with him and the Chinese people accompanying him. The alien makes many comical efforts to make friends with these commies, like appearing as Chairman Mao and then a sexy Russian WAC and asking to join the Chinese Communist Party, and the commies respond comically by, for example, saying he must be a supernatural entity and thus must not exist because, as militant atheists, they believe the supernatural does not exist. Eventually the Soviet and the Chinese officers convince the Martian to go to the United States, where people are religious and will believe in him, and where much of the Western science he so admires comes from. This plot-light shaggy dog story ends when the Martian teleports itself to night time Connecticut and decides to take the form of a milk delivery truck made of gold.
I like that the story is largely a spoof of communism, and the jokes aren't terrible, but "Western Science is So Wonderful!" is still a waste of time and, though it pains me because I have been impressed by a lot of Smith's work, I have to give this production of Smith's a marginal thumbs down.
"Over the River to What's-Her-Name's House" by Will Stanton
Stanton has eighteen story credits at isfdb, and wikipedia is telling me he published hundreds of humor stories and essays in mainstream outlets like
Reader's Digest,
The New Yorker and the
Saturday Evening Post. As I tell you every time I do one of these Merril-inspired posts, Merril was skeptical or even hostile to genre distinctions and loved to promote as SF stories by mainstream writers whether they appeared in dedicated SF venues or mainstream ones. As it happens, "Over the River to What's-Her-Name's House" debuted in
F&SF. The only evidence of reprinting I can find is in the British edition of
Venture, but I didn't put a lot of effort into searching for reprints because it turns out there are a lot of Will Stantons out there and I didn't feel like sifting through all the pages that came up that were obviously not applicable.
"Over the River to What's-Her-Name's House" is a sleep-inducing satire of suburban life in the mid-century, a slice of life story about the future when there are lots of labor saving devices and lots of collective institutions that take up people's time (for example, farcical versions of the Book-of-the-Month Club--the Trivet of the Month Club and the Sick Friend of the Month Club--and of women's charitable groups) and lots of self-help rituals to ease stress endorsed by Ivy League professors. My eyes kept glazing over as I tried to read this sterile and vacuous ooze and maybe that is why I was unable to detect any plot--maybe the plot was about how the many mechanical and social systems designed to make life easier were in fact making life less satisfying and were breaking down anyway.
Absolute waste of time--this hunk of junk makes the Cordwainer Smith story I just condemned as a waste of time look like a brilliant masterpiece fashioned by a hero. Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger, all is forgiven!
"A Pair of Glasses" by Jon Stopa
Stopa has only four fiction credits at isfdb but was apparently an enthusiastic participant in fan activities--he and his wife
won an award at a convention for their skimpy costumes (or was the award really for their slender bodies?)--and in the production of nonfiction books about SF--he is credited with the competent if not inspired covers for many books of essays about SF including Damon Knight's famous
In Search of Wonder.
This is a tedious story in which two old guys living in a post-apocalyptic world smoke pipes and have boring philosophical arguments, referring to Sigmund Freud, David Hume, and Herman Hesse. In "A Pair of Glasses" Stopa contrasts those who, seeing the world is full of danger and confusion, retreat from the workaday world like monks to contemplate the spiritual world or like college professors to study sterile minutia, with those who engage with the world, try to meet its challenges and make it a better place for mankind. Stopa also includes descriptions of glass blowing and of the work of the optometrist and optician.
Ben, who is fat, and Roger, who is thin, were friends as kids. Mankind had exhausted the resources of the Earth, the oil and coal and iron and all that. Then a terrible war erupted. Now there is almost no industry or technology, and the military consists of archers. Ben retreated to a valley in California to found a colony of people who focused on getting in touch with nature and the infinite. Roger, on Lake Michigan, started a glass blowing shop to help rebuild modern civilization. Now they are old men, and Ben has walked to Roger's place in response to a letter from Rog in which Rog told him he could provide his old pal with a pair of spectacles. Obviously this is a metaphor; Roger is trying to help Ben see physically as well as intellectually--Ben even exhibits reluctance to wear the glasses, as they are uncomfortable and all the detail is confusing, a parallel to the willful blindness that led him to hide from life and reality in California.
The men have their boring debates, Stopa wasting our time with descriptions of their drinking lemonade and looking out over the lake and filling their pipes with tobacco and so forth.
The twist ending is that, while Ben was isolated in his California colony, people in the outside world developed their innate psychic abilities and can now teleport. The scientific method and engagement with the broader world are vindicated and the monkish life shown to be a dead end. Somehow, while walking from California through Colorado to Illinois or Wisconsin or wherever Roger's glass works is, Ben never noticed anybody teleporting. A little hard to believe.
Gotta give this one a thumbs down. I sympathize with its ideology, but "A Pair of Glasses" is boring and the twist ending is unacceptable. I don't think this thing has ever been reprinted after debuting in John W. Campbell, Jr.'s Astounding.
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Oy, three losers! Judith Merril did us dirty this time around! What can we salvage from the wreckage? Well, each of these stories is a sort of time capsule of 1950s concerns; communism in Russia and China is a major theme of Smith's story and a minor theme of Stopa's, and Stanton's unreadable tub of goop is, I guess, a satire of life at the time it was written. Stopa's story perhaps reflects the ideology and interests of the segment of the SF world which orbited around Campbell--pro-science, anti-religion, fascinated with psionic powers. So, maybe these stories have value for the student of social and cultural history. But entertainment value is very limited.
We'll be back on the sex and violence beat next time here at MPorcius Fiction Log, folks!
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