Protostars (1971): P Sargent, D R Bunch, R Deeley & B Weissman

Here comes part three of our exhaustive look at Protostars, the anthology edited by David Gerrold and Stephen Goldin 50 years ago that I bought for 50 cents at the Second Story Book location on Dupont Circle.  The authors of today's four stories are Pamela Sargent, David R. Bunch, Roger Deeley and Barry Weissman.

Gerrold writes an introduction to each of these stories, but he doesn't really say much that is interesting in them; it is as if presenting some memorable intros in the first half of the book he is running out of steam. 

"Oasis" by Pamela Sargent

The main reason I took Protostars off the paperback anthology shelves of the MPorcius Library is that I had just read Sargent's story "Matthew" in the anthology Ten Tomorrows and thought it was pretty good, and wondered if I had any other Sargent stories on hand.  "Oasis" would go on to be translated into French, and was also included in the 1977 Sargent collection Starshadows.  

"Oasis" is a good horror story; its premise feels fresh and Sargent does a good job with all the descriptions and with how she doles out information to us and leads up to the big reveal.  I wouldn't say it has a surprise or twist ending, because everything flows logically from beginning to end, but things happen that I didn't expect, and our feelings for the various characters evolve, and when they do it provides the reader a satisfying jolt.  Thumbs up!

An American, Simon Atenn, is living in the desert in the Middle East, at an oasis.  We observe his special abilities in operation, and learn about the curse they have inflicted on him--this guy can sense, can experience, the feelings of living things that are nearby, like a tree's pleasure at the touch of sunlight, and its discomfort when its roots can find no water.  The feelings of a mammal, particularly a human being, affect him far more acutely, and a big contributor to the story's dark and pessimistic tone is that most human feelings are a reflection of human evil or degradation, and so the presence of other people near Atenn causes him pain.  When the Arab who delivers Atenn's supplies comes by with his camel, Atenn has to shoot up with morphine to endure his immersive sensing of this creep's greed and lust.

Later, a middle-aged American geologist staggers into the oasis--his jeep has broken down.  He is part of an American team in the Middle East working to stabilize and rebuild the place, which has been wrecked by a war between Israel and its enemies that saw the detonation of nuclear weapons.  This guy has to stay with Atenn, and the agony of experiencing the geologist's age-related aches and pains, the early stages of cancer in his lungs, and his nightmares when he sleeps, starts driving Atenn insane.  When Atenn goes over the edge he commits a terrible crime and we learn all about what he did back in the U.S.A. before he moved to this desert.

I've already got a list of fiction I want to read too long for me to complete before inevitable death strikes me down, but maybe I should slip more Sargent stories into the schedule. 

"Holdholtzer's Box" by David R. Bunch

Bunch's story is a bitter satire, a satire of a bunch of stuff people satirize all the time, I guess all of them fitting under the broad category of "capitalism."  Our narrator is a journalist, and relates how years ago he interviewed an inventor with a German-sounding name, the Holdholtzer of the title, a man who would go on to be such a great success that his workshop was since been turned into a monument.  The interview took place just before Holdholtzer achieved his success, when the narrator was sort of down on his luck, in a difficult marriage, and was desperate to interview Holdholtzer because he needed the money.

Holdholtzer, the narrator finds, has invented a large black box and is going to mass produce it--he assures the narrator that he will only employ union labor in his factories.  The boxes have mirrors and pretty lights inside, and Holdholtzer thinks he can charge people a thousand bucks ("people love to spend money") to take a "ride" in the box for 24-hours.  Nota bene: the box doesn't actually go anywhere.  Inside the box is a toilet, water and food.  Also, a means for the person stuck inside to commit suicide and thus contribute to solving the overpopulation problem.  When the journalist asks why anybody would pay for such an experience, Holdholtzer says advertising and publicity, novelty and the promise of challenge, will bring in the customers.  People who get out of the box alive will be authorized to wear some kind of medal or ribbon and brag to their friends, and, like a diploma or an honorable discharge form the military, this evidence of the ability to see a project through to completion will make the box survivor more attractive to employers. 

Barely acceptable.  Maybe if you miss the Soviet Union and have an insatiable appetite to see hackneyed criticisms of our market society thinly dramatized you will enjoy "Holdholtzer's Box" more than I did.  I will take issue with Bunch's style as well as his theme; while as the story goes on it becomes increasingly simple and obvious, it begins with obscure, long-winded and convoluted metaphors ostensibly meant to describe Holdholtzer's physical appearance and how it reflects his psychology.  Maybe those are a joke about how the journalist is a pretentious but sloppy writer?

"Holdholtzer's Box" does not seem to have ever been reprinted; I guess nobody at The Daily Worker (which I guess by 1971 had been renamed The Daily World) read Protostars. 

"The Five-Dimensional Sugar Cube" by Roger Deeley   

This is a lame wish-fulfillment fantasy that feels quite long and offers no tension or excitement.  Our hero is a middle-class Londoner who commutes to work on the train everyday.  He has fallen in love with an attractive young woman he regularly sees on the train, but is too shy to speak to her.  Our hero is also a smart guy interested in recondite theoretical physics, a guy who reads books about things like the fifth dimension and infinity and who has developed his own theories about them.  The story's absurd passages about how the fifth dimension is the human mind or whatever are just a foundation for the story's real plot.

The hero figures out how to control his dreams, and then how to enter the dreams of others and control them, and the story's true plot is how he uses this power to court that woman from the train.  He jumps into her dreams, and tries to win her affection, and she playfully resists his advances; in a way that is not really explained, the protagonist has given her the power to control things in the dream as well.  So there are silly surreal scenes in which each summons up environments and objects with which to challenge the other; she makes a menacing jaguar appear and he summons a weapon with which to neutralize it, he keeps making a bed appear and inviting her to share it with him, and so on.  Eventually he wins her over and they become a happy couple.

The science speculations in the story take up lots of ink but are just boring nonsense--Deeley would have been better off making this a fantasy story about a wizard who falls for a noblewoman he saw at court or, if he wanted to be transgressive, like Clark Ashton Smith or Tanith Lee, a demoness or some kind of monster.  The protagonist's pursuit of the love interest is just page after page of lame scenes; Deeley doesn't put interesting obstacles in the hero's way or give the hero clever or exciting means of overcoming the obstacles--it wasn't even clear what he had done to overcome the woman's initial resistance.  (It seems the woman was always attracted to him and all this dream stuff is superfluous.)  A good writer, one able to arouse the reader's emotions, conjure up compelling images, and conceive obstacles and means of overcoming them that are either novel and thus surprising or authentic and thus something with which readers can identify, could build a fun or even moving story around this plot, but Deeley apparently lacks the abilities to do so.

Thumbs down!

This is another story which has never seen print outside of Protostars.

"And Watch the Smog Roll In..." by Barry Weissman

And here's yet another.  Weissman has only four stories listed at isfdb, and this is the fourth and final one.

"And Watch the Smog Roll In..." is a competent satire about bureaucracy and pollution and government corruption and incompetence, set in the Los Angeles of the future, where the smog is so bad that people wear oxygen masks and the streets are a battlefield where gangs fight it out with each other, and with the police, and casualty figures in the dozens are not unheard of.  

Jerry's beloved grandfather takes a walk every afternoon.  One day he doesn't return, so Jerry's Dad calls the cops.  Before looking for Grandpa, the boys in blue require that Jerry's Dad fill out an extensive form, but Dad doesn't remember such essential data as his father's library card number and date of high school graduation, and so he cannot complete the form.   The fuzz can't begin the search for Grandpa without a completed form in hand, so it is not until the next morning that Jerry's grandfather is found--dead, some ne'er-do-well having stolen Grandpa's oxygen mask, leaving him vulnerable to the deadly smog.

The cops bring the corpse to Jerry's family's house, and Jerry's Dad tries to hire the services of a funeral home to have his father buried, but the undertakers have the same sorts of forms the police have, and can't bury Grandpa without the provision of long forgotten official information only obtainable from long lost official records.  Should Jerry take matters into his own hands?  Can he cut the Gordian knot presented by his grandfather's rotting corpse without himself running afoul of the esoteric regulations of the corrupt local government?

"And Watch the Smog Roll In..." moves at a brisk pace and the jokes are not original but they work; I'll give this one a mild recommendation. 

**********

Sargent's story has some originality and is well crafted.  Bunch, Weissman and Deeley handle material that is sort of obvious and traditional, but Deeley does so incompetently while Bunch does so in an idiosyncratic and passable manner and Weissman in a straightforwardly effective fashion.  

We finish up with Protostars in our next episode.  Wait with bated breath!  

Six stories from 1972's Generation: Lief, Stevens, Laurence, Ray, & Deeley

Back cover text of Generation

After a two episode sojourn in the broadly defined World War II period (1939-1954), it's back to the era of flower power and Generation, the anthology of science fiction stories by "new voices" printed in 1972 but written in 1969.  We've already read Generation stories by critical darlings and MPorcius faves like Gene Wolfe and Barry Malzberg, and stories by prolific big sellers like Piers Anthony and Chelsea Quinn Yarbro.  Now let's read stories by people I've never heard of before!  This is the kind of blog post in which I say stuff like "It's a tragedy this person never produced more SF stories" and "It's no surprise this person never sold another SF story."

"Every Fourth House" by Evelyn Lief

This story takes place in a Levittown, one of the prototypical post-World War II suburbs where all the houses look the same (the story's title refers to this fact; every fourth house in this town has red shutters.  This has become an almost cliched criticism of suburban life that we have all heard in pop songs like Malvina Reynolds' 1962 "Little Boxes," Gerry Goffin and Carole King's 1967 "Pleasant Valley Sunday" and Sir Raymond Douglas Davies' 1969 "Shangri-la.")  I guess "Every Fourth House" takes place in the future, because a device is on the market that you hook up to your TV which allows you to smell the smells smelled by TV characters (remember "Smellevision" in 1944's "Old Grey Hare?") and think their thoughts and so on.

Housewife Barbara insisted her husband Harold buy her one of these devices so she'd have something to do all day besides watch the baby.  This brief story consists primarily of Barbara's flashbacks to the day Harold was killed in a car wreck and Barbara had an argument with mother, mixed in with Barbara's dreams about corpses and plagues; any of these "events" could in fact simply be reflective of the crazy adventures of the TV characters whose thoughts Barbara shares.  It is a little hard to figure out what is really going on, and I didn't feel like the reward of figuring it all out would match the amount of time and energy required to do so.  The last paragraph makes it seem like Barbara has either harmed her baby while under the influence of the TV, or has neglected to take the baby to the hospital after the car wreck because she is under the influence of the TV.  Either way, this story is some kind of attack on or lament about the suburbs and the TV, both of which are conventionally thought of by the cognoscenti as a "cultural wasteland."  (Maybe I should mention Ray Bradbury's much more interesting attack on TV in Fahrenheit 451?)

Do we need an unclear and dream-like story that tells us yet again that suburban life and TV are crummy?  Not really.  Is this story terrible?  Not really--I'm putting this one in the mediocre file.  However mediocre I thought it was, it was translated into German and into French (by Belgians, I think.)  No doubt those sophisticated continentals had a good laugh at the expense of our suburbs over a nice plate of kraut, snails and waffles!

Achtung! and ooh la la!

Lief has a novel and four short stories listed at isfdb.  It is a little embarrassing that I said I have never heard of her before because she has a story in Clarion and another in Again, Dangerous Visions, both of which I own and both of which I have read from.  I guess my eyes glazed over her name as I looked at the contents pages of both books.  Well, I have a bad habit of skimming and a poor memory, no doubt the result of a childhood spent empathizing with Gilligan, Barney Rubble and the long-suffering Fred Mertz!  A Google search suggests that Lief has found success as a psychoanalyst and as a painter and photographer in beautiful New York City, far from any ticky tacky Levittowns.

"The Birthday Boy" by James Stevens

Stevens has a novel and like 20 stories listed at isfdb, and apparently has achieved considerable success in the television industry (don't tell Evelyn!), writing and producing and directing films and commercials.

"The Birthday Boy," for most of its seven pages, is a charming, amusing, and bittersweet story about children and childhood and how cruel and callous kids can be and how the people we envy because they have wealth or some other advantage probably have problems just like we do.  This first part of the story consists of the narrator talking about the seventh birthday of his best friend, a child eager to grow up--this material is witty and fun, reminding me in some ways of that famous Jean Shepherd movie, A Christmas Story.  The last page and a half are a sort of surreal allegorical fantasy, I guess a sort of dream or nightmare?  This bizarre sequence seems to suggest that it is foolish to wish to grow up quickly because decrepitude and death come all too soon.

I enjoyed this one.

"Reprisal" by Alice Laurence

I think "Birthday Boy" and
"Reprisal" only ever appeared in
Generation--too bad, these are
worth your time

Laurence has a novel and thirteen stories listed at isfdb, and has also edited two anthologies, including Speculations, the anthology in which the authors' names were written in code and the reader was expected to try to guess who wrote what story based on style and content!

In his intro to "Reprisal," editor David Gerrold warns us this is a story about an oppressed minority with special powers.  We get a lot of these stories in science fiction, I suppose because of the considerable real estate in the popular consciousness occupied by the topics of anti-Semitism, racism, the Holocaust, and the Civil Rights movement, and because the stereotypical writer (and SF fan) is somebody who thinks he is smarter than everybody else and yet feels ostracized, alienated, or bullied.  Even though Generation is billed as including new voices and being fresh and original and all that, Gerrold admits that Laurence's story is not really new, but yet again hammers home a lesson he thinks we should hear "again and again and again."

This intro made me think reading this story was going to be like eating my broccoli or attending a mandatory diversity training, but it is actually not bad.  Joachim Boaz has suggested I hold off reading these intros until after I've read the story they accompany, but I just can't help myself.

It is the future!  Crime was so rampant in the late 20th century that in the 21st century there was a revolution in criminal justice, spearheaded by a psychologist!  The government abolished the overcrowded prisons and instead of imprisoning malefactors instituted a system of punishment which consisted of public paddling of lawbreakers!  This form of punishment was so humiliating that most people subjected to it reformed, abandoning all thoughts of leading a life of crime!

The plot of this story follows Anne and Johnny, the leaders of a non-violent movement for the civil rights of the newly emerging race of homo superior.  These people, popularly known as witches and wizards, have minor psychic powers, like telekinesis strong enough to move a sheet of paper, but, more importantly, can fly using transparent wings.  (As with the totally absurd idea of abolishing prison and replacing it with spanking, Laurence's description of how the witches and wizards fly is absolutely ridiculous and not meant to be believable; this story is a kind of fable.) Poor old homo sapiens resent and fear the wizards and witches, and besides making them live in ghettos and being reluctant to hire them and the like, they make flying illegal and paddle any of them caught flying.

"Reprisal" actually reminded me of something Robert Heinlein might write, in particular Stranger in a Strange Land.  Much of the text of the story is taken up with philosophical discussions between the narrator (Anne) and Johnny, who is a wise and saintly leader, like Heinlein's Valentine Michael Smith, and these discussions have a libertarian flavor (Johnny hates eminent domain, for example, and instead of agitating for anti-discrimination laws he accepts that refusal to rent to or hire witches and wizards is within the rights of business owners.)  Like the Martian protagonist of Stranger in a Strange Land, Johnny dies a martyr, but not before he has taught his followers a better way to live.

"Reprisal" can also be compared to Lester del Rey's "Day is Done," which we just read, in that it is about a new, superior, race ineluctably supplanting an old one, but while in Del Rey's story the new people are cruel jerks, in Laurence's story it is the obsolete race, driven by fear and envy, who commit all the sins.      

Clearly written (it is nice to get a break from the surrealism of the last two stories!) and including strange ideas and paradigm shifts like so many classic SF tales, I can give "Reprisal" a thumbs up without reservation.

"Psychedelic Flight" by Robert Ray

One of my pet peeves in SF is psychedelic dream sequences which the writer intends to convey the experience of being high on drugs or having amazing sex or listening to mind-bending rock music.  Robert Silverberg includes such scenes in The World Inside and Shadrach in the Furnace, and in my opinion theses scenes are boring and gratuitous and stop the narrative cold.  I feel a little bit like a hypocrite feeling this way, because I love the "Star Gate" sequence in Stanley Kubrick's 2001, but I think my attitude is justified by the vast differences between the different media and because the Star Gate sequence, with its strange sights and sounds, represents a quantitative rather than a qualitative change from the rest of the movie; the entire film consists of strange sights and sounds, the Star Gate section is just the strangest part, not a gratuitous digression at all but a fully integrated component of the work.  Also, the sequence is not simply in a character's head, but is "really" happening, unlike a drug-induced or music-inspired dream which is has nothing to do with the plot.

Anyway, the title of this story had me worrying that it was going to be just a bunch of pointless surreal visions.  (Joachim, there is no way I am going to read these stories without reading the title first!)

Our narrator is a pothead from New Orleans who moves to New York and gets mixed up in a "scene" with wealthy acid heads.  He doesn't want to use acid, but they basically force him to do so.  When he wakes up he is in a prison on another world, his soul trapped in the body of a hideous tentacled monster, a member of the intelligent race which rules this planet.  One of the other tentacled monsters tells him the score: the natives of this planet reproduce via a sort of industrial process in which souls of people from other planets, including Earth, are implanted in native bodies. Usually the souls come as a blank slate, but sometimes the soul is still imprinted with its original personality, as in the narrator's case.  Such people are put in this prison, where they live for centuries before the monster body wears out.

(I wonder if this story is some kind of homage to H. P. Lovecraft... in "The Shadow Out of Time" a narrator's consciousness occupies the body of an alien tentacled monster during dreams, and he talks to other humans who have suffered the same fate.)

To make boring prison life more interesting, the narrator figures out how to make hallucinogenic drugs by ripping off monster skin and drying it.  On one of his skin trips he dreams he is a guy on Earth, a pothead from New Orleans who moves to New York, etc.....

Gimmicky and lame, "Psychedelic Flight" gets a thumbs down.  (Still, it is probably better than editor Gerrold's own drugs-sent-me-to-outer-space story in Generation, "All of Them Were Empty.")   Ray has three novels and five stories listed at isfdb. Like Evelyn Lief's "Every Fourth House," "Psychedelic Flight" appeared, in French, in Cauchemars au ralenti.

"The Shortest Science Fiction Story Ever Told" by Roger Deeley

Remember "Sign at the End of the Universe" by Duane Ackerson, which appeared in David Gerrold and Stephen Goldin's 1974 anthology Alternities?  Well, here is another one line joke story Gerrold and Goldin saw fit to purchase.  Don't expect the nuance and excitement we witnessed in "Sign at the End of the Universe"'s three words, however; "The Shortest Science Fiction Story Ever Told"'s three words are a groan-inducing disappointment.

Lame.  Still, it was included in 1975's Reflections of the Future: An Elective Course in Science Fiction and Fact, and was translated for the delectation of our Francophone buddies.

I had trouble finding a good photo of Reflections of the Future

"Here's a Health Unto His Majesty" by Roger Deeley

Deeley isn't finished!  He has two stories here in Generation, and thus a chance to redeem himself!  And I suppose he does; "Here's a Health Unto His Majesty" is a trifling, but competent, time travel story, told from the point of view not of the time traveller but of the 17th century people he meets.

It is shortly after the Restoration, and a guy on his way to London stops at an inn.  The innkeeper tells him the story of a strange man he met back in 1649.  This man, we readers can easily discern, is a 20th-century genius who invented a time machine and travelled to the 17th century on a mission to rescue Charles I from execution.  His mission failed because he caught smallpox and died before he (armed with a supply of hand grenades) could get to London.

Acceptable.

Deeley has six short story credits at isfdb.  In the intro to "Here's a Health Unto His Majesty" we learn that his ancestors were French aristocrats who lost everything in the 1789 revolution.

**********

Taken as a whole, not a bad batch of stories.  More stories from Generation by people I know nothing about in our next episode.