Laurence M. Janifer: "Expatriate," "Who You Callin' a Monster," and "It's Magic"

In our last adventure I expressed admiration for Laurence M. Janifer's 1959 story "Hex," published in one of the most important SF magazines, John W. Campbell's, Jr. Astounding, and promoted by Judith Merril, one of the most celebrated SF anthologists and critics.  Today let's check out three stories from early in Janifer's career that were printed in a SF magazine I have not spent much time looking at or talking about, Cosmos.  A total of four issues of Cosmos appeared across 1953 and 1954; the magazine was ostensibly edited by L. B. Cole, a guy who is, as far as I can tell, more famous as a comic book artist (he apparently created the character "Wiggles the wonderworm") than as a SF editor.  According to the Science Fiction Encyclopedia and isfdb, it was Janifer himself who actually edited Cosmos.

I'll be reading today's three stories, which appear under two different pen names, from scans of this curious magazine; feel free to read along at the following links (said the spider to the fly):

"Expatriate"

"Who You Callin' a Monster"

"It's Magic"

"Expatriate" (1953)

This is a pretty stupid fantasy joke story that is kind of hard to follow, the "rules" of how its fantasy world works being doled out in the middle and end of the story instead of the beginning.  The jokes consist of bottom of the barrel stuff, like a guy tripping over a root in a forest and a guy having sneezing fits, a female character who is stupid and a male character who is also stupid and models all his behavior on that of the knights in a book of tales about the Knights of the Round Table, which makes it easy for a smarter character to take advantage of him.

Our two human characters are ghosts; even though they are ghosts, the dim-witted but beautiful Alma and the dim-witted but handsome and Lancelot-emulating Charlie are having a loving sexual relationship--at least that is what it looks like to me.  Maybe I am dim-witted, because I think Alma and Charlie are sympathetic, but the actual main characters of Janifer's story are a bunch of grotesque gnomes who outwit and exploit the human ghosts.

In the same way that the pots of many stories about vampires or werewolves are built around the "rules" the monsters are subject to, like a vampire can't cross running water or enter a house unless invited or tolerate the light of the sun or whatever, Janifer presents a bunch of rules about gnomes.  This right here is a weakness in "Expatriate;" vampires are exciting, and are linked to Christian theology and they and their behavior can serve as powerful metaphors for a vast range of things that have an immediate emotional or intellectual impact on the reader.  But gnomes?  Short boring little nothings?  Who gives a second thought to gnomes?  Who cares about gnomes?  Nobody!  What makes gnomes interesting?  Nothing!

Anyway, there are a bunch of gnomes in this story that are supposed to be funny.  One is in charge, nominally, but is insane, thinking he is the reincarnated Napoleon Bonaparte and speaking with a faked French accent.  Another is a scientist, who, I guess, can look into the future; I guess this gnome scientist is the story's real protagonist.  Or the protagonist is the gnome known as Riw, who is buried in the same cemetery as Alma and Charlie.  Gnomes don't breathe, so they can't die (we are told.)  But when they get to a certain age, 210, gnomes are buried alive.  They lay quietly in their graves, but every so often, when horny, leave their graves to have sex with somebody.  The gnome authorities (that Napoleon gnome is head of the Gnome Intelligence Services) are supposed to look into the future to make sure they don't bury a gnome in the same region where human beings will be buried, but they neglected to do so in Riw's case, so Riw was buried, 100 years ago, where humans would put a graveyard.  Alma and Charlie are interred in this graveyard, and Riw has fallen in love with (the ghost of) Alma, but since he is short and has a huge nose and huge ears, Alma refuses to throw (the ghost of) Charlie over for Riw.

The scientist solves Riw's problem.  Gnomes who suffer the sorts of injuries that would kill a human, I guess like getting shot full of holes or chopped into bits or whatever, don't die, but their souls transmigrate into a nearby body, stealing it from its occupant.  The gnome scientist digs a tunnel into the graveyard (he can't just walk in because the iron fence is impassable by gnomes) and tricks Charlie by taking advantage of the man's chivalrous nature into committing suicide at the same time that Riw is made to suffer a non-disfiguring injury that causes him to transmigrate.  How a ghost commits suicide or can serve as a vessel into which some other soul can transmigrate is left unexplained.  Anyway, Riw is now tall and handsome in Charlie's ghost "body," so he can have sex with Alma, and Charlie now inhabits a short and hideous body with sinus trouble.  I feel like a horrible crime has been committed against the innocent human ghosts by the gnomes, but maybe we are just supposed to laugh even though this event is not funny, or maybe we are supposed to sympathize with the gnomes because they are more intelligent than the humans or because, the way white people took America from the natives, humans have been taking the world from the gnomes, so this is a just vengeance?  Regardless, I am siding with my fellow dim-witted humans and so this story is leaving a bad taste in my mouth, besides being objectively bad.

Thumbs down for the terrible "Expatriate."  I may hate this story, but it was included in the 1968 Janifer collection Impossible? and a 1956 issue of the Australian magazine Science Fiction Monthly, most of the contents of which--including the bondage cover--seem to have been reprinted from Cosmos.

             

(The issue of Cosmos and of the land down under's Science Fiction Monthly which printed "Expatriate" also presented to readers Carl Jacobi's story "The Gentleman Was an Epwa," a story I read in 2022 and didn't find worthy of readers' time, either.)

"Who You Callin' a Monster" (1954)

"Expatriate" and "The Gentleman was an Epwa" are so bad that I am questioning my rash decision to read three stories from Cosmos by the guy who edited Cosmos.  But we forge on--"Expatriate" was like 11 pages of Cosmos Vol. 1 No. 2, but "Who You Callin' a Monster" is only ten pages long, so its gotta be less painful, right?

"Who You Callin' a Monster" is a story about a comic strip writer, and in part a parody or spoof of comic strips, and thus offers me a chance to unleash upon my unsuspecting readers one of my "hot takes," as the kids call them.  Mel Brooks was in the news lately, having turned 2000 years old or something, and one of my "hot takes" is that I don't like Mel Brooks' work.  Every Mel Brooks production, as far as I can tell, is just the most obvious and sophomoric jokes, puns and double entendres, jokes a 12-year-old boy could come up with, like changing "force" to "schwartz" and reminding you of the most banal thing, like that a Star Wars laser sword is a phallic symbol, or doing the most obvious switcheroo opposite-day irony thing, like having an elderly white woman be conversant with African-American slang (maybe that's a Zucker thing--I'm not singling Brooks out here, not really, his work is just among the most prominent examples of a widespread species that gets my goat.)  And his work is not original or sincere or in any way meant to say anything useful or interesting about real life, it is just bottom-barrel parody and spoof, totally derivative of other fiction; Brooks takes some long-established property that has well-proven appeal, that speaks to people on a human level and had a powerful effect on individuals and the culture, like Robin Hood or Dracula or the Western or Star Wars, and makes the most obvious possible jokes about it--Brooks' body of work is not creative or generative, but parasitic and destructive.  Sometimes you hear comedians claim that sincere drama is easy and comedy is hard, but they are just lying--creating Superman was real work and incorporates real human feeling, calling it "Stuporman" or "Superduperman" was something anybody could do without any effort that lacks or in fact deadens human emotion.  (I don't get Mad Magazine, either.)

Alright, back to "Who You Callin' a Monster."  Mike is a comics creator whose hero, Enormo, I guess based on Superman, fights a different monster every six weeks, vanquishing it at the end of that period, monsters like The Nose, The Eyes, the Mouth, or The Faceless--I guess this is a spoof of Dick Tracy.  (Kal-El and Bruce Wayne and those guys never actually kill Lex Luthor or the Joker or whoever, just fight them again and again and again.  At first this seems unrealistic, but consider that perhaps it is a metaphor for how bad ideas like socialism and Islam can never seem to be vanquished, only temporarily beaten off.)  Mike needs a new monster soon, and draws a truly hideous man that has not just one deformity, but many.  The sight of his own drawing scares Mike.

Mike goes to dinner with friends and there meets a beautiful woman much like the female lead of his comic strip.  The two fall in love, hope to marry.  But then Dad shows up and, as we readers have been led to expect, he looks just like Mike's latest monster.  Dad hates Mike's strip, says it warps the minds of children, and forbids the marriage; Dad is so scary Mike can't really stand up to him to win his daughter's hand unless he dresses himself as the invincible Enormo, but when he cosplays as Enormo he takes on the pure-hearted Enormo's attitude towards women, which is strictly hands-off.  The plot is resolved when Mike redraws the new monster into a kindly man.

Mediocre filler, but competent--far far better than the mess that was "Expatriate."  Acceptable.

As with "Expatriate," our mates down at the intersection of kangaroo boulevard and koala lane reprinted "Who You Callin' a Monster" in an issue of Science Fiction Monthly.  The cover of that ish of Science Fiction Monthly is also a copy of a cover that appeared on Cosmos, though the flag of Australia replaces the Stars And Stripes.  (And no doubt the galley of that rocket is full of Vegemite instead of apple pie.)

"It's Magic" (1954)     

Here we have today's shortest story; "It's Magic" occupies only nine pages behind the dominatrix cover of the final issue of Cosmos.  Say what you want about the contents of Cosmos, but at least the fetishistic covers of three of the four issues are engaging.

Holy crap, this is a sequel to "Expatriate," with the gnome scientist and the gnome who cosplays as Bonaparte!  isfdb didn't warn me this Gnome Intelligence Services business was a series!

The two gnomes are attending a conference of wizards and supernatural creatures.  They are in an auditorium where a wizard is giving a lecture. The lecture is boring and the gnomes are distracted by the beauty of a female attendee--they compare her to Alma from "Expatriate," but for some reason instead of "Alma" they keep saying "Irma."  Didn't author Janifer or editor Janifer consult the earlier issue of Cosmos when composing or editing this piece of junk?   

The lecturer provides a demonstration of the principles of his discourse, casting a spell that transports the auditorium into a dimension of nothingness.  Out the windows is nothing but black.  To cast the spell, the wizard used a "cantrap," which I guess is a scroll with the words of the spell on it.  Somewhat confusingly, the scroll also projects an aura or field of protection from the nothingness outside, allowing the wizard to reach out the window.  But when he does reach out the window, he drops the cantrap.  He hasn't memorized the spell's words, so now they are all trapped in this nothingness dimension, and the oxygen many of the attendees need will run out in 30 minutes.

The gnome scientist hypnotizes the other gnome to overcome his fear so he'll go out into the nothingness to retrieve the cantrap.  But upon touching the nothingness, the head of GIS is paralyzed, stands immobile, not even blinking, at the threshold.  The beautiful woman is a were-butterfly, and has changed into insect form to conserve oxygen, and when she flits over to examine the would-be-Bonaparte she accidentally touches the nothingness herself and is similarly frozen in time.  Then the gnome scientist has a brainwave.  He hypnotizes the wizard so he remembers the spell and can cast it to bring them all back to real space.  So grateful is the were-butterfly to the scientist that they (we are led to assume) have sex.

Bad filler, but better written and constructed than its abominable predecessor.  Still, nobody--not even Australians!--has seen fit to reprint this limp exercise.

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Every expedition into the jungle or the mountains doesn't return with a pouch full of diamonds or saddle bags full of gold, and we certainly didn't find anything precious on this adventure.  But we'll always have those BDSM covers.  Look on the bright side, kids.