Four stories from 1955's Operation Future: Sturgeon, Leinster, Bixby, and Kuttner & Moore

Last week I purchased Operation Future, a 1955 anthology edited by Groff Conklin and put out by Permabooks, with the last pennies remaining on the Half-Price Books gift card I got as a Christmas gift.  Having just read a bunch of deliberately innovative stories from the 1970s, let's check out some stories from the late '40s and early '50s by Theodore Sturgeon, Murray Leinster, Jerome Bixby and Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore; perhaps these are the sorts of stories that laid the foundations for that 1970s work, or the sort of stories those "Me Decade" writers were rebelling against.

"The Education of Drusilla Strange" by Theodore Sturgeon (1954)

Editor Groff Conklin's introduction to this novella (it's like 36 pages here) made me laugh; in my last blog post we witnessed Barry Malzberg make the case that after ten years or so a SF writer should retire because he is out of ideas.  But Conklin here, comparing "The Education of Drusilla Strange" with Sturgeon's 1940 "Derm Fool," tells us that Sturgeon has "matured in the short space of 14 years, both in writing ability and in richness of conceptual grasp."  I suppose these assessments are not mutually exclusive (a guy could write the same basic story again and again for 15 years and get better at it with practice), but Conklin and Malzberg certainly seem to have contrasting attitudes about whether an enduring career leads to growth or degeneration.

A spaceship drops a beautiful naked woman off on the seashore--she is an alien with psychic powers and sophisticated science and engineering knowledge, exiled to our pathetic and disgusting planet of Earth for the crime of murder!  Not only does she have to live among us ignorant schlubs, but alien torture satellites beam down into her mind the beautiful music and art of her sophisticated homeworld, a painful reminder of all she has lost!

"The Education of Drusilla Strange" first
appeared in Galaxy 

"The Education of Drusilla Strange" is a quite good story that takes the adage "behind every great man is a great woman" and runs with it.  The plot is solid, and full of surprises; Sturgeon gets you to believe one thing about the alien exile or her homeworld or some other character, and then later pulls the rug right out from under you, telling you that the opposite is true. He does this in such a way that it doesn't feel like a cheap trick, but comes as a pleasant surprise that feels quite natural.

The alien, who takes the name of Drusilla Strange, thanks to her superior brain, ultra keen senses and mind reading abilities, has no trouble fitting into Earth society and making a decent living.  She takes up with a musician, Chandler Behringer, and, by designing a superior guitar and amplification system and even doing clandestine surgery on his arm to give him greater dexterity, succeeds in making him the world's finest guitarist!  She has an ulterior motive in doing this that reflects how miserable she is on Earth--she manipulates Chandler into projecting her own alien-style music back up at the torture satellites in hopes this act of insubordination will trigger a bombardment from the satellite which will put her out of her misery!

Fortunately for everybody, another exiled alien, Luellen Mullings, whom Drusilla initially thought was a vacuous trophy wife, saves the day.  Luellen, who is married to a novelist whom she has been shepherding to greatness, reveals the truth to Drusilla about their homeworld (it is decadent and corrupt and in terminal decline) and the Earth (it is young and vital, the "hope of the Galaxy") and how she can enjoy her life on Earth, and contribute to Earth's rise to greatness.  It turns out that Earth's history is full of alien exile women who have been inspiring human men to heroic deeds! A hopeful and happy ending, though I presume one which will not meet today's standards for thinking about gender roles.

All the little scenes and elements are good (Drusilla's reactions to Earth technology and customs are engaging), and the story as a whole is well-paced and constructed.  I really enjoyed ol' Ted's work here--this may now be my favorite thing by Sturgeon! (Feel free to check out the many ups and downs in my relationship with Sturgeon over the course of this blog's life!)

"Cure for a Ylith" by Murray Leinster (1949)

It looks like it has been over three years since I have read anything by Leinster.  "Cure for a Ylith" is one of those traditional SF stories in which a scientist uses high technology and trickery to resolve the plot and achieve his goals and trigger a paradigm shift in his society, and it is pretty good.

"Cure for a Ylith" first saw print in
Startling Stories; behold the Chrysler Building!

Planet Loren has suffered under the tyranny of the monarchy for centuries.  Garr, a medical researcher, is one of the tiny handful of Lorenian subjects permitted to travel to another planet via the interstellar teleporter system.  He returns to Garr after two years on Yorath, bringing with him a new device.  The device, he tells people, is able to pick up transmissions of such low power that they have never been detected before.  When people test out the device (by putting on a headset) they report that they have had conversations with deceased relatives--the device apparently allows communication with the immortal souls of the dead!  Good people who use the machine receive comfort and advice from their relations in the afterlife, while people who have misbehaved receive dire warnings of punishment!

Garr finds himself in the royal court after being called upon to help treat one of the King's pet monsters (the "Ylith" of the title.)  He makes sure that the King learns of the Yorathian device and tests it out himself.  This results in catastrophic internecine warfare among the palace guard and aristocracy--among the two million dead are the King and almost all his flunkies.  The monarchy collapses, hopefully to be replaced by a more responsible government.

As Garr explains in the final scene of the story, the Yorathian machine doesn't really communicate with the dead--it brings to vivid life the user's superego, personified as a trusted deceased relative.  (This sounds kind of dumb as I type it, but I felt like it worked as I read the story.)  The King's warped superego warned him of traitors among the elite, inspiring an attempted purge that set off the fighting.

Leinster does a good job of quickly sketching out his setting and characters, economically bringing it all to life.  I also like the plot.  "Cure for a Ylith" is a solid piece of work; can it be time for me to explore the unread Leinster books I have on my shelf: Quarantine World, Space Captain and The Greks Bring Gifts?  

"The Holes Around Mars" by Jerome Bixby (1954)

"The Holes Around Mars" first appeared in
Galaxy

Bixby's is a pretty prominent name in SF, but I am not very familiar with his work.  He of course wrote the immortal classic "It's a Good Life;" I also enjoyed "Vengeance on Mars" a few years ago, as well as some of the films he contributed to, so I welcome a chance to become better acquainted with him.

"The Holes Around Mars" follows the investigation of strange geological phenomena on the Martian surface by the first Earth expedition to the red planet.  I'm afraid readers will figure out the answer to the mystery long before the scientists and astronauts do.  I'd judge this story a little slight and kind of silly (a main theme of the tale is the puns made by the expedition's leader, and there is even a "he was so scared he shit his pants" joke) but it is a pleasant entertainment and I'm giving it a passing grade.

"Project" by "Lewis Padgett" (Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore) (1947)

"Project" is the main reason I bought Operation Future; I am keen on Kuttner and Moore, and a quick look at isfdb on my battered iphone while at the store indicated that this story has appeared in no other book.

It is the 21st century, and the world is ruled by an autocratic "Global Unit;" only a tyrannical one-world government, it is believed, can keep a lid on nuclear power and prevent the rise of dangerously powerful mutants (homo superior), the product of limited atomic wars.  The Global Unit, however, is not truly in charge--it accepts without question the advice of the scientists of the secretive Council at Mar Vista General.

The people, and some Senators of the Global Unit, are sick of the lack of transparency into the doings of the eggheads who truly rule the world from Mar Vista; no outsider has ever been allowed inside the facility since the foundation of the current governmental system.  So the most pugnacious of the Senators, Mitchell, insists on being allowed to investigate the secretive campus, and his findings will be broadcast to the world instantly from his little hand transmitter!

"Project" first saw publication in an issue of
Astounding with a typo on its cover (or is this issue
perhaps an artifact from a slightly different
alternate universe where Canadian SF writers
have subtly different pen names?)

The scientists are afraid that the truth of their work will cause a revolution and they will all be lynched by the ignorant masses. And what is this truth?  Well, not only did they engineer that whole limited atomic war business to increase their own power, but they have kept one of the dangerous homo superior mutants alive, in a sort of suspended animation which prevents it from maturing; they have been picking its brain, passing off its brilliant ideas as their own, while keeping it from reaching its full, world-shattering potential.  Luckily, they are mere hours from activating a super weapon which will give them total power; if they can just distract and delay Mitchell for a few hours they will have absolute control and be able to ignore any attack that may come from the Global Unit's military apparatus, much less a lynch mob.

Just after Mitchell, being held at gunpoint by one of the boffins, learns how much the Mar Vista scientists have been manipulating the rest of the world for decades, the ostensibly retarded homo superior reveals that he in turn has been manipulating the scientists!  He has only been pretending to be retarded, and has in fact achieved his full potential!  This superman will now take over the world, controlling the aforementioned super weapon and infiltrating its homo superior offspring among the homo sapiens populace until homo sapiens is extinct.

This story is disappointing; no wonder "Project" doesn't appear in any later anthologies!  It has no human feeling; it takes no ideological stand for or against human liberty or for or against the rise of homo superior; all the characters are bland and uninteresting.  The whole thing comes off as a boring history lecture about a complicated series of events you can't bring yourself to care about.  Too bad!

**********

Both the Sturgeon and the Kuttner and Moore stories include shocking revelations that flip what we thought was going on 180 degrees, but Sturgeon's twists feel natural and are closely tied to believable and touching characters, while the twists in "Project" had me asking, "Who cares?"

Sturgeon's "The Education of Drusilla Strange" is the stand out here, while the Leinster and Bixby are fun entertainments.  The Kuttner and Moore is worse than filler, it is a waste of time.  Sad, but true.

There are 15 more pieces in Operation Future, and we'll read some of them before the book goes back on the shelf.

Four Stories from the Sept 1951 Planet Stories

Back on November 11 of 2015, SFFAudio tweeted about four stories from the famous SF magazine Planet Stories that have fallen into the public domain and are available as PDFs at the SFFAudio website.  I read this tweet as I sat in the Toyota Corolla, in a dark parking lot, waiting for the wife, and all four of these stories actually sounded pretty good.  So this week I directed the ol' browser to SFFAudio and read these four tales that first appeared in the fall of 1951, those unhappy and happy days when UN forces were defending South Korea from the commies and I Love Lucy first hit the airwaves.

"Last Night Out" by "Lee Gregor"

Lee Gregor is a pseudonym used by Milton A. Rothman, a physicist and active SF fan who wrote a number of SF stories as well as books on science.

"Last Night Out" is about prejudice and race relations.  In the future the human race is in contact with dozens of intelligent alien species, and relations are more or less cordial.  But when a war erupts with a new and mysterious alien civilization, relations have to get a whole lot closer in a hurry.

The best part about "Last Night Out" is how our Terran hero, Grey, and our furry Canopan hero, 647-B-43C (AKA "Joe"), work together.  Joe's people have powerful psychic abilities, but their tentacles are not very good at using tools.  Together, Joe and Grey make a perfect technician: when a piece of machinery malfunctions, Joe can look "inside" the machine and immediately see what is wrong, and guide Grey in quickly and efficiently repairing it.  Obviously, fixing your space battleship fast can be the difference between life and death in a space war, and human-Canopan teams like Grey and Joe's are a vital component of the war effort.

Being in constant telepathic rapport, and holding hands all the time, Grey describes his relationship with Joe as much like that of a husband and wife.  Joe's powers even enable Grey to better enjoy music.  But most humans find Canopans disgusting and/or scary, making downtime on Earth stressful or even dangerous as Grey and Joe are confronted by racist slurs and angry mobs.

Anti-racist stories and stories about the value of cooperation can be sappy or schmaltzy, but Rothman manages to give his story an edge and a layer of ambiguity. At the end of the story we learn that the Canopans can use their psychic powers to instantly kill humans, and perhaps even control them like puppets, and we are left to consider the possibility that the Canopans are stealthily making us their slaves!

Pretty good!

"Tydore's Gift" by Alfred Coppel

I don't think I've read anything by Coppel before, but he appears to have been a prolific writer of short stories as well as a successful novelist inside and outside SF, with quite a few dramatic love stories and espionage thrillers to his credit.

"Tydore's Gift" has a good atmosphere and good images, but the ending is too gimmicky and silly.

The last few Martians are decadent sophisticates, living alone in towers, reading their esoteric books, admiring their intricate art, playing their subtle unharmonic music. Tydore is just such a Martian.  Morely is an Earthman, a spy, drawn by rumors that Tydore has built an atomic rifle that will give Morely's (unspecified) country an edge in the current war on Earth.  Morely pretends to be a student come seeking Tydore's vast and ancient wisdom.  For his part Tydore is elaborately polite and welcoming, while at the same time feeling utter contempt for Morely and all Earthmen, who to his eyes are interloping barbarians.  I guess Coppel is evoking the relationship between the tricky and sophisticated Byzantines and the rude Crusaders, or between calm mystical Asians and impulsive materialistic Westerners.  (We see this in pop culture from time to time--Dante and Spielberg's Gremlins comes to mind.  Earlier this year I saw Gremlins for the first time in decades and was surprised at how naked and relentless was its attack on American culture and society.)

The short (less than four pages) story works well until the end.  Morley gets his hands on the atomic rifle but when he tries to murder Tydore with it he learns, too late, that Tydore crafted it so the muzzle looks like the stock and vice versa.  Morley shoots himself to death.  

Good in a lot of ways, but a disappointment at the end.

"The Watchers" by Roger Dee

Dee only has one novel listed at isfdb, but many short stories, most in the 1950s.

This one is even shorter and more gimmicky than the Coppel, and lacks the Coppel's rich atmosphere and settings.

A writer/researcher has figured out that the Earth has been infiltrated by aliens in disguise, and that these aliens have been manipulating human history.  That is why the Earth has such a history of war and crime, he thinks.  But when, gun in hand, he confronts one of the aliens, he learns the unhappy truth: the aliens are here trying to manipulate us into being good.  Thousands of races throughout the galaxy have been guided by the agents of the Kha Niish, been turned away from violence and set on the societal course to a "benign culture."  Humans, however, are far too violent and have signally rejected the urgings of the Kha Niish agents, and so they are on their way back into space.  Incorrigible humankind will no doubt exterminate itself in a short time.  After the alien missionaries leave, the researcher uses his gun to commit suicide.

Feels like filler--thumbs down.

"Vengeance on Mars!" by "D. B. Lewis"

"D. B. Lewis" is a pseudonym used by Jerome Bixby.  Bixby is the author of the famous story "It's a Good Life," immortalized in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame and as an episode of The Twilight Zone TV series.  He also contributed to the Star Trek TV show and the film Fantastic Voyage, which features much-beloved stars Raquel Welch and Donald Pleasance.

I thought the Mars in "Tydore's Gift" was based on the Near or Far East; I think the Mars in "Vengeance on Mars" is based on the American West and colonial Africa in the late 19th century.  Enterprising Earthmen have come to Mars and set up farms, with the natives (whom they call "redboys") as their field hands.  Earthers more interested in a fast buck than the hard work of building up a farm make money by looting Martian temples.  This pisses off the redboys, and, because the colonial government won't solve the problem (they are regularly bribed by the looters!) the human ranchers have banded together to exact some frontier justice from one looter. The looter is holed up in a temple, a veritable fortress, and if the farmers don't get him out of there and "take care" of him before morning, the redboys will "go on the warpath," likely killing scores or hundreds of human settlers!

The farmers send into the temple to negotiate one of their number who, years ago, was friends with the looter.  Will the looter come out peacefully?  Or come out blasting? Will he escape or pay for his crimes?  Who will live and who will die?

This story is an acceptable entertainment; the Martian setting is well done.  There's no twist or redemption at the end--the looter tricks his friend, steals his friend's blaster, tries to shoot his way out,  and dies in a hail of blaster fire.  I guess this story is about how the frontier can bring out the worst in people.

***********

These stories, taken as a group, are pretty good.  Maybe I'll read more from Planet Stories' September 1951 issue later this week.