Merril-approved 1959 stories by G C Edmondson and George P Elliott

We're still doing this, looking at the list of Honorable Mentions at the back of Judith Merril's 1960 Year's Best SF anthology and reading selected stories from it.  Last time was "D"s, today is "E"s.  Only two stories today, because Merril only has three "E" recommendations, and one is Harlan Ellison's "The Abnormals," which we read in 2024 under its later title "The Discarded" in my signed paperback copy of Alone Against Tomorrow.

We're reading G. C. Edmondson's "'From Caribou to Carrie Nation'" in the November 1959 ish of F&SF, which also includes part of the serialized edition of Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers and Damon Knight's criticism of Algis Budrys' The Falling Torch and Merril's 1959 Year's Best SF anthology--Knight considers the question of how many stories that are published under the banner of science fiction actually are science fiction, arguing that Merril's anthology and Budrys' novel contain little or no new ideas or actual science.  Is science fiction in 1959 just mainstream lit superfluously set in the future, or just fantasy?  "Invasion of the Planet of Love" by George P. Elliott we are reading in a scan of the January '59 issue of F&SF, even though Merril cites as her source the ninth Best From F&SF anthology, because a scan of the magazine is easier to find than a scan of the book.

Feel free to read along by clicking the links in the preceding paragraph.

"'From Caribou to Carrie Nation'" by G. C. Edmondson

It looks like I haven't read anything by Edmondson since 2014 when I read his "Technological Retreat," a joke story to which I gave a passing grade because I was a softy back then.  The years have made me hard, my droogs!  The title of this one, and those extra quote marks which I always find so annoying, make us expect that this too will be a joke story.  And then there is the fact that isfdb is telling me this is the second of eight or nine stories in the "Mad Friend" series.  Red flags all around!

"'From Caribou to Carrie Nation'" is a pile of supposedly clever nonsense, two smart ass characters, our narrator and his "mad friend," talking about reincarnation and transmigration as they hang around a zoo, the zoo affording Edmondson the opportunity to make lame scatological jokes--we hear all about animals spitting, farting, shitting, chewing, etc.  The final joke is that the narrator's grandfather was reincarnated or transmigrated as a carrot and/or as the narrator's son so said son doesn't want to eat carrots because that would render him a cannibal.  Or something like that.  

As I was reading "'From Caribou to Carrie Nation'" I found it irritating and thought it a total waste of time, but after finishing it (and it is a mere merciful four pages) I found the way Edmondson has sort of constructed and wrapped up the thing sort of intriguing, and wondered what the other seven or eight Mad Friend stories might be like, so I have to grade this thing "acceptable."   

I'm still a softy.

"'From Caribou to Carrie Nation'" was reprinted in a 1964 issue of Britain's Venture, a magazine which reprinted lots of F&SF material, and in the 1965 Edmondson collection (half of an Edmondson Ace Double) Stranger Than You Think, which collects most of the Mad Friend stories.

This Ace Double has cover illos and nine little interior illos by Jack Gaughan, so
fans of Gaughan's should try to find a copy or scan of it  

"Invasion of the Planet of Love" by George P. Elliott

This is a broad satire that tells you that the space program is a waste of time and resources, and besides would only lead to the spread of white racism, exploitive capitalism, hypocritical Christianity, and murderous imperialism.  Was this story specifically written to appeal to Judith Merril?  Thumbs down!

"Invasion of the Planet of Love" is a report produced for public consumption by one of four men on a pioneering mission to Venus.  Only one of the men (not the narrator) has a distinctive personality; that guy is an Anglican minister who carries a cross in one hand and a submachine gun in the other.  The United States is devoted to spreading war and Anglicanism to other planets, but all expeditions to Mars have failed, vanishing without a trace, so this expedition to Venus has been mounted.  (Elliott obviously chose Venus for his story because Venus is the goddess of love.)  The four men make it to the surface of Venus, but all they find is barren waste, acre after acre, plain and mountain, consisting solely of granite--no natural resources, no life.  The men detonate an atomic bomb and in the crater discover what they are looking for, valuable minerals and the entrance to a subterranean settlement inhabited by bipedal people.  The Venereans are like hippies or figures from a Ted Sturgeon story, dancing and expressing their love for each other nonstop.  They try to express their love for the Americans, but our boys gun them down  by the score, capture and torture some of them, and are disappointed that these natives don't put up a good fight, don't offer the prospect of an exciting and challenging war.

Eventually the natives combine their psychic love powers and the Americans are so overwhelmed with love that they have to leave.

"Invasion of the Planet of Love" is so "out there" (picking out that most milquetoast and moribund of sects, Anglicanism?) it seems possible it is not an attack on the United States and Christianity but a spoof of such attacks, but I think we have to assume it is sincere.  Elliott's satire of marriage, "Sandra," which I read in 2015, was a lot better, while his treatment of an African-American academic dealing with primitives, "Among the Dangs," which I read in 2024, was significantly better.  Of course, I was a softy back then.

"Invasion of the Planet of Love" was reprinted behind an ooh la la cover in the French edition of F&SF and in the aforementioned Best From F&SF anthology, plus in a 1968 Elliott collection.   

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You might say our guide Merril has led us down the garden path this time, presenting us with a trifle and serving of heavy-handed leftist slop.  (In Merril's defense, her Ellison pick is not bad.)  Hopefully we won't be similarly effed by Merril's 1959 "F"s.  Stay tuned to find out.