Infinity, Feb '56: K Bulmer, D Knight and F Pohl & C M Kornbluth

In the last exciting episode of MPFL I looked at three stories from the February 1956 issue of Infinity and let it be known I didn't like them.  Today, however, I hope to praise this issue of Larry Shaw's magazine.  Well, I can start by lauding Ed Emshwiller's two illustrations for Kenneth Bulmer's contribution, "Quarry," one of which appears on the cover, while the other takes up an entire page on the inside.  But can I say anything nice about Bulmer's story?  And what about the included story by famed critic and editor Damon Knight?  And that by the "famous science fiction team" of C. M. Kornbluth and Frederick Pohl?  Well, let's dig in and find out.

"Quarry" by Ken Bulmer

I want to like Bulmer's work because he writes adventure stories and I like adventure stories, at least when they are good.  As you know, I love Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert E. Howard, and I have praised plenty of adventure capers by people like Edmond Hamilton and E. C. Tubb.  But I have often found Bulmer's work wanting.  Check out my blog posts about Bulmer's novels Cycle of Nemesis, The Diamond Contessa, and Kandar, for the sad details.  It has been like seven years since I have read anything by Bulmer, but today--in the spirit of a new year and new beginnings!--we are going to let bygones be bygones and read "Quarry," which the aforementioned Mr. Tubb reprinted in Authentic Science Fiction when he was serving as editor of that periodical and Francophonic Englishman Maxim Jakubowski included in a 1963 anthology for the French market.

"Quarry" is "The Most Dangerous Game" yet again. People in SF are aways getting thrown into the arena to fight to the death.  Luckily, Bulmer takes the scenario seriously and tries to generate real human emotion and suspense, and as a result "Quarry" is pretty entertaining.

It is the space faring future; mankind has colonized the solar system.  Unfortunately, before we could reach the stars, the extrasolar Rachen arrived and took over; we are at their mercy, second-class citizens on Earth, Mars, and the other heavenly bodies we have spent so much time and effort cultivating.  Patriotic humans are living in poverty--bodies skinny, clothes threadbare, lungs pink because they can't even afford cigarettes--while collaborators with the alien regime, those whom our protagonist calls "Rachentoads" and "Rachen-lovers" are living large!  Our hero is Dirk Gilmore, a man with big emotions and a quick temper, a hardened tough guy who has a racist hatred of the Rachen--when he sees them he wishes he could squash them like bugs!  This isn't nice, but it feels real.  

Gilmore has decided to make a terrible sacrifice to get some money for the kid he has with his faithless wife--Dirk has volunteered to be the prey in a Rachen hunting sport organized by a big fat human Rachen-lover!

The first hunt Gilmore gets involved in is a special one.  A Rachen prince, heir apparent to the throne of Mars, wants to hunt in an Earth city, one whose ten million human inhabitants have been forced to vacate so the metropolis can serve as a play ground for the snooty aliens.  The streets are deserted, but the robot trams and robot taxis and elevators and motion-activated fluorescent lights of the city still operate just fine.  The prince wants to hunt a woman, and Gilmore is paired with a girl--they are not allowed to split up during the hunt, and have devices strapped to their wrists that cause horrible pain if they get more than ten feet apart.  Bulmer here in "Quarry" uses all the most obvious devices to manipulate the reader, and the same way the human collaborator is a grossly obese and Gilmore starts the story dressed in rags and broken shoes, this woman, Trina, is beautiful, with a terrific body and clear eyes and so forth.    

The Rachen aristo and his cronies, armed with bolt-action rifles, have 24 hours to catch Dirk and Trina after the pair use their 15-minute head start to take public transit to get deep into the city.  Mysteriously, one of Fatso's lackeys gives Dirk a small pistol.  Is there a human resistance movement on Earth?  Is someone plotting to use Dirk to murder the prince so some other joker from beyond the solar system can become King of Mars?

Bulmer does a decent job with the development of the Dirk and Trina relationship, and with the action chase stuff in the city--running here, running there, laying traps, throwing a knife at a guy, outwitting the blob monsters that are the Rachen's bloodhounds, etc.  The chasing and shooting in the city does eventually feel a little moot, though, after we learn that the Prince's lackeys won't kill Dirk and Trina, just terrorize them, leaving them for the Prince himself, and, even worse, that the hunt doesn't automatically end at 24 hours if Dirk and Trina aren't killed--rather, at 24 hours, a gate in the electric fence surrounding the city is deactivated for 15 minutes.  Dirk and Trina are only safe if they can leave the city via this gate during that window, but since the Prince and his party know where the gate is and when it will be open, the hunters have no practical reason to hunt for D & T for 23 hours, they can just ambush them at the gate.  Oh, well.

Who will live?  Who will die?  I couldn't be sure until the end, which is good.  I'm giving "Quarry" a moderate recommendation; it is action-adventure filler, but performed competently.  Maybe I need to read more of Bulmer's short work, maybe that is where he shines.

"A Likely Story" by Damon Knight

Over the years, I have banged out on the keys of a succession of computers many hostile reviews of stories by Damon Knight, as well as attacks on the man himself.  But today, let's accentuate the positive.  I liked "Man in the Jar."  I liked "Masks."  I liked "I See You."  I liked "The Enemy." I called "The Beach Where Time Began" acceptable.  I like some of Knight's 1940s work as an illustrator.  I was cheering Knight on when he called Judith Merril's The Tomorrow People an overly feminine "shambles" full of science mistakes.  So, in the same way I reject the label of "Harlan Ellison hater" and consider myself an Ellison skeptic, I believe I give Knight a fair shake and am more than willing to praise him when his work aligns with my own taste and interests; I am just not one of the Knight groupies.        

Accentuating the positive is a worthy goal to reach for, but one which is sometimes beyond human grasp.  "A Likely Story" is a humor story about the SF community.  Ugh.  There are feeble and obvious jokes; for example, we are told that the association of pro SF writers in the story holds three kinds of meetings--meetings devoted to club politics, meetings devoted to drinking, and meetings devoted to lots of drinking.  Ha ha.  Also, the joke every person who has spent time in New York City makes, that it is very hot in the summer and very cold in the winter.  Oh, brother.  There are also smart guy jokes; a guy named Duchamp is smoking a pipe, for example; and more-or-less affectionate caricatures of a few prominent members of the SF community, plus a multitude of groan inducing puns on SF writer's names; "Preacher Flatt," for example.  

Three or four pages of these empty calories would have been enough for me; "A Likely Story" here in Infinity is sixteen god-damned pages.  Interminable and unforgivable. 

The plot.  Our narrator attends the yearly party of the professional SF writer association.  Strange phenomena occur, mostly banal slapstick, like Asa Akimosov's pants falling down to his knees or an unnamed woman's skirt rising up to show her legs, people dropping glasses or tripping and falling, but also inexplicable events like a joke from infallible funny man Bill Plass (I guess a stand in for Bob Bloch) falling flat.  Is this the work of a poltergeist?  No, the answer seems to be that somebody has figured out how to mess with probability, has the ability to make unlikely events occur.  The narrator and another writer try to figure out which of the SF writers is the culprit.  When they do, the man with the improbability device, the bespectacled "Harry Er-Ah," escapes by flying to Mars.

Just dreadful.

This soul-deadening lump of tedium was reprinted in Knight collections like Turning On and The Best of Damon Knight.

"The Engineer" by Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth

Let's check in on "The Most Famous SF Duo Ever."  Way way back, in 2014, I read Kornbluth's famous Hall-of-Fame story "The Marching Morons," and voiced many criticisms of it.  More recently, I called Kornbluth's collaboration with Donald Wollheim "Go Fast on Interplane" "competent filler" and his collab with Fred Pohl "Mute Inglorious Tam" "an acceptable sort of gimmick piece."  As for Pohl and Kornbluth's "Gift of Garigolli," I owned to actually hating it and described it as a "half-baked dish of garbage."  I have had nicer things to say about some Pohl solo works like "Survival Kit" and "To See Another Mountain," but long time readers of MPorcius Fiction Log will know much of his output has met a lukewarm reception here and others denunciations.

Well, let's see what "The Engineer," which was reprinted in the various English, German and Italian editions of The Wonder Effect as well as in the "Best of" Kornbluth and Pohl collection, Our Best, is all about.

Our protagonist, Muhlenhoff, began his career as a geologist and worker for an oil extraction company of the future, but found he had a talent for politics and leadership and worked his way up in the company until today he is a big wig in racist big business, managing a drilling facility 1800 meters below sea level off the coast of Mexico!  We learn this backstory after seeing Muhlenhoff in action in a meeting room and then in his office 1.118 miles down, responding to some kind of pressure leak that threatens to flood the submarine facility and kill everybody and lose the company a lot of money and give the Mexicans access to the oil.

The third part of the seven-page story has Muhlenhoff taking a break from work to read from a history book.  I had naively thought "The Engineer" a serious story about using science and psychology to resolve a crisis until this wacky joke--a facility manager taking a break during a life-threatening emergency--hit me over the head with the fact that the story was a satire.

By quoting and paraphrasing the book Pohl and Kornbluth tell us the history of the United States between the Second World War and the dawn of the 21st century.  The land of the free and the home of the brave led the defeat of the Warsaw Pact (Pohl and Kornbluth use the term "Cominform" which is one I don't see very often) but then early in the 2000s the US lost a war to Mexico!  The Mexicans, somehow, in the late 20th century developed technology and military tactics and training superior to that of the United States and conquered Texas, Oklahoma and the western states!  (A horror scenario for some, maybe wish-fulfillment for Pohl and Kornbluth?)  The history book suggests that the US lost the war because the US military was subjected to political pressure from many constituencies and its decisions before and during the war were focused on appeasing politicians, journalists, voters and lobbyists instead of defeating the Mexicans.

The final section of the story makes clear that Muhlenhoff and the underwater facility he manages are going to be destroyed because Muhlenhoff has been paying too much attention to career and political considerations and not enough to the science of keeping the facility safe.  

Pretty poor, but not abysmal; let's be generous and call "The Engineer" barely acceptable.

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Three pretty slight stories, though at least the Bulmer is a competent specimen of its type; the Knight is a particularly "cringe" example of an already questionable genre (the humorous SF story about a gathering of SF figures) and the Pohl and Kornbluth is a weak satire.

So we bid adieu to the second issue of Infinity.  Our next foray into the 1950s SF world will see us reading stories from a magazine with greater prestige than Infinity.