When last we met, we read a story by Manly Wade Wellman we quite liked,
"Vardy, Vardy," that debuted in an issue of
F&SF. Let's further explore that issue, the March 1953 number. Now, many years ago, we read Richard Matheson's contribution,
"Disappearing Act" (another story I liked) but this issue with the Chesley Bonestell Mars cover also includes new tales for us to investigate by editor Anthony Boucher, Wilson Tucker (who apparently coined the term "space opera") and Margaret St. Clair, critic of Edmond Hamilton and Seabury Quinn and fan of Clark Ashton Smith and C. L. Moore. Their three stories have all reappeared in collections and anthologies, but keep in mind I am reading them in a scan of the original 1953 ish of
F&SF in which they first saw print.
"The Other Inauguration" by Anthony Boucher
In our last episode I quite harshly criticized Boucher's 1941 story "Snulbug" but it is unto the breach once more my friends as we tackle another Boucher piece which I fear is a joke story occasioned by the election of Dwight D. Eisenhower. "The Other Inauguration" would be included in the 1955 Boucher collection
Far and Away (I love the stark white spire on Richard Powers' cover) and Groff Conklin's
Science Fiction Terror Tales reprinted it in that same year.
The year: 1984. Our protagonist: a college professor at a government university in the poli sci dept. His obsession: politics. This guy even broke up with a girlfriend over the '72 election and so never got married. And he thinks the '84 election is an even bigger deal--when a senator whom he considers a combination of Huey Long and Joe McCarthy wins the presidential race, beating our hero's candidate, a judge, in a landslide, our bachelor considers suicide! This would save us readers having to read the remaining nine pages of the story, but instead poli sci boy goes to visit a fellow professor saddened by the prospect of a future in which the senator will curtail their latitude to indoctrinate their students. This second egghead is in the Psi Dept and has the idea of using time travel to change the election results. (Or shifting to another time stream. to a universe in which the judge won the election--the story seems to conflate the two concepts in a way I found sloppy, or maybe just so boring I lost track of the distinction.) Yes, just like in "Snulbug," the Boucher story I condemned mere hours ago, we have in "The Other Inauguration" a scientist who wants to use time travel to "make a better world"...and fails!
The two profs train their psi technique and develop equipment to the point that they can move in time and/or shift to alternate time streams. (Why Boucher includes mechanical as well as psychic means of manipulating time in his story I don't know, it just makes the story longer.) The pro-judge activists shift to a time stream where the judge won the election. But, as in "Snulbug," you can't really change history. The judge and his party quickly becomes as totalitarian as our protagonists feared the senator and his faction would have. When our guys are suspected of being subversives, a mob destroys their psi equipment and hits each of them in the head, destroying their psi ability and preventing them from further meddling with history. I guess the lesson of the story is not only that you can't change history, but that it is counterproductive for elites to try to meddle with the popular will by breaking the rules, that you just have ride the wave of public opinion, which, in the long run, is more to be trusted than that of elites.
More streamlined and with fewer jokes, this is a better story than "Snulbug," but still banal and kind of boring. We'll judge it acceptable.
"Able to Zebra" by Wilson Tucker
Way back in 2016 we read Wilson Tucker's 1981
Resurrection Days and I found it disappointing and so have avoided the man ever since. But today the Tucker-drought ends.
One of the things I noted about Resurrection Days was its jocular tone; another was the meta elements, like its protagonist's fondness for SF and his references to Robert Heinlein. Well, "Able to Zebra" shares these characteristics. (Also, the ability to induce disappointment in yours truly.)
Our hero is an alien secret agent here on Earth in the 1950s. The galactic federation or whatever it is that he represents has deployed such agents to each of the 26 inhabited planets of the galaxy to keep an eye out for, and remedy, anachronisms introduced by irresponsible time-travelling tricksters. So when our hero, one of the most junior agents in the service, hears tell that a 400-year old Indian burial mound has been excavated and within it has been discovered 20th-century coins, he contacts HQ and they send a sexy blonde agent, an individual quite senior to him, to take charge of Earth operations.
The junior agent has an idea--he is an avid reader of Earth SF magazines, and thinks he and blondie can somehow make people ignore the anachronistic coins by planting stories about time machines in the magazines. (The universe Tucker depicts is an alternate to our own, in which, among other things, the idea of time machines has not been broached in fiction yet.) Tucker puts in the junior agent's mouth a long speech about the history of science fiction and the field's ability to predict widespread use of atomic power and geostationary satellites. Tucker also includes as a minor character in his story real-life SF editor Beatrice Mahaffey, a woman apparently popular in SF circles because she was pretty.
The hot blonde agrees to a scheme in which they travel back in time to convince H. G. Wells to write Time Machine and thus alter the history of SF and make it easier to explain away the coins to 1950s people. The plan works and as the story ends it looks like the blonde is going to reward the junior agent by having sex with him. (In a jokey wink-and-nod fashion, sex is a pervasive theme of the story.)
Lame filler--thumbs down. The plot is convoluted and unconvincing, and the self-indulgent in-jokes about Mahaffey and other SF figures are silly. Probably Mahaffey and Heinlein and all the rest liked Tucker and thought his references to them fun but that fun does not translate to this reader.
I don't think this limp production has been anthologized in English, though our paisans over in Italia reprinted it in Urania. It does show up in Tucker collections.
(The Tucker-drought resumes.)
"Thirsty God" by Margaret St. Clair
"Thirsty God," like much of St. Clair's work, appeared under the Idris Seabright pen name. I guess I've read three stories by St. Clair so far,
"Horror Howce," "Squee," and
"Mrs. Hawk." The fact that "Thirsty God" was reprinted in Groff Conklin's
Crossroads in Time (our amigos in Spain perhaps know the anthology as
Encrucijadas del tiempo) is making me think this story will be our third today about travelling through time to change the future. Enough already, guys.
"Thirsty God" reminds us immediately of the work of C. L. Moore and Leigh Brackett. A roguish Terran adventurer is on Venus, riding a beast, pursued by the primitive natives because of his sexual dalliance with one of their females. He takes refuge in what he takes to be some kind of sacred shrine--the natives do not follow him within. In fact, this is an ancient facility, left over from when Martians colonized Venus; the building's role was to radically alter the body chemistry and structure of the natives of dry Mars to facilitate survival on humid Venus. Robotic apparatus transform the Terran adventurer and he is forced against his will to become a vital part of the current Venusian ecosystem. St. Clair suggests this is poetic justice, his punishment for raping the Venusian girl is to have his body used by alien beings in a way he finds both disgusting and irresistible.
This is a good science fiction horror story--it's central gimmick is clever and St. Clair describes the human's physical transformation and psychological response to it in a way that is convincing and entertaining. And there is nothing to do with time travel in "Thirsty God," thank heavens. Thumbs up!
**********
So Margaret St. Clair, operating undercover as Idris Seabright, is our big winner today with a story that has a good science fiction concept attached to a traditional adventure setting and is well-written and unencumbered by jokes or other superfluities. I'm glad I read her story last and can thus bid this blogpost on its way with a light heart.
Next time, something I expect will be evil and disgusting, so stay tuned to MPorcius Fiction Log if that is your bag, you sicko.
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