Four more stories from Operation Future: Russell, Simak, Del Rey and Knight

Let's read four more stories from 1955's Operation Future!  Today we'll be looking at tales by relatively well known members of the SF community: Eric Frank Russell, Clifford D. Simak, Lester del Rey, and Damon Knight.

"Exposure" by Eric Frank Russell (1950)

(I am going to be saying "It is impossible to achieve the aim without suffering" under my breath for a week after writing this.)

Last year I read the 1978 collection The Best of Eric Frank Russell.  Here's a story which didn't make it into that collection, but which has been anthologized several times, not only in a Russell collection (Like Nothing on Earth) but in at least three anthologies with Martin H. Greenberg's name on them.  Perhaps even more remarkable, it was included in a 1952 anthology called Let's Go Naked: Love and Life in a Nudist Camp edited by SF super-editor Donald Wollheim!  (isfdb doesn't mention Let's Go Naked, but the editor of Operation Future, Groff Conklin, does in his intro to "Exposure," warning us that "Exposure" is the only SF story in that book.)

"Exposure" is a joke story about aliens who land in a secluded forest in the United States and go about collecting samples of Earth life; their people plan on conquering Earth and enslaving us natives, and this recon ship is here to learn as much as they can about us before the assault is launched.  These aliens are shape-shifters, and after they have collected (and dissected!) two human beings from a camp, their best scouts take on the appearance of humans and try to infiltrate several nearby towns in order to investigate our weapons and energy technology.  The punch line of the story is that the aliens took their sample humans from a nudist colony, so their scouts have no clothes and are immediately picked up by the authorities, which foils their reconnaissance mission and ultimately spares Earth the calamity of invasion.

This is a humorous story and it is full of little jokes, but Russell plays it straight; this is not a farce or an extravagant satire, and the jokes come out of believable characters and situations and are actually amusing.  The aliens and their recon methods are convincing and interesting, and I enjoyed the story as much or more for its "serious" bits as the comedy.  I can see why "Exposure" has been so widely anthologized--it is quite good.

"Exposure" first appeared in Astounding.  Also pictured: a 1956 edition of Let's Go Naked.

"Worrywart" by Clifford D. Simak (1953)

I haven't read any Simak in a long time.  I think Simak is a good writer, but I find his anti-modern, anti-urban, anti-industrial attitude a little tiresome.  Maybe it is just me, but I don't actually think the world would be a better place if the only humans left were roving bands of Indians who leave the cities to intelligent dogs and robot priests.

Simak was a newspaperman, and "Worrywart"'s text draws on this knowledge, and talk of how a 1950s newspaper was run adds some additional interest to the proceedings.  Our protagonist is a copyreader who comes across a number of stories describing almost impossible events, like a terrible plane crash which all the passengers survive and the miraculous recovery of a terminally ill child, and investigates possible connections between them.  He discovers that a man with amazing mental powers must be at the bottom of these unlikely deliverances.  This guy was an invalid as a child, and did lots of reading and fantasizing.  Somehow his fantasizing about travelling to other planets has put him in touch with alien intelligences, and this relationship has given him the power to manipulate matter, time and history!  If he wants something to happen, or something to unhappen, he can make it so!

"Worrywart" was first published in Galaxy

The psychic is very agitated about the possibility of a major war.  ("He's hell bent...to bring peace to the world," one character says of him.)  One assumes Simak is alluding to Cold War tensions (1952 and 1953 saw lots of exciting Cold War incidents, including Stalin's death, anti-Communist uprisings in Czechoslovakia and East Germany, the execution of the Rosenbergs, various nuclear weapons tests and the tail end of the Korean War) but Simak studiously avoids mentioning such words as "Cold War" or "Soviet Union" or "communism."  Perhaps Simak was chary of offending readers who had taken sides in the political and ideological struggle between the East and West; we don't all have the courage to say what we really think about the people who pay our bills, the kind of courage we see in Drexel professors.

Our newspaperman worries that the psychic, who has lived a sheltered life and never been to school and so is very naive, will clumsily use his astonishing powers in an attempt to ensure peace, perhaps in a way that will cause more problems than it solves. The newspaperman is aware that the psychic reads science fiction stories, and when he finds that a new magazine includes a story about a man who ends modern war by outlawing electricity, his worries go into overdrive--by tinkering with man's knowledge of electricity, or the natural phenomena of electricity itself, the naive psyker may impoverish mankind or even destroy the universe!

This story is well written and well paced and all that, so I don't mind recommending it, even if the plot is a little silly.  All you SF scholars out there can compare it to the famous Jerome Bixby story about a naive person who wields godlike power, "It's a Good Life," which was published the same year as "Worrywart."

"Day is Done" by Lester del Rey (1939)

"Day is Done" first chronicled
 microaggressions against Neanderthalers
in Astounding

Del Rey's last name is very familiar to me from the spines of Ballantine science-fiction and fantasy paperbacks (he and his fourth wife Judy-Lynn were both important editors) but I haven't read a whole lot of his fiction. When I read the short version of Nerves back in 2014, I thought it long and boring, but on this topic I was swimming against the tide: that version of Nerves has been widely anthologized and even included in the Science Fiction Hall of Fame, and Conklin praises Nerves in his intro here.

All you paleontologists and anthropologists will be thrilled to hear that "Day is Done" is about cavemen!  Del Rey spins the sad tale of the last Neanderthal, Hwoogh, who is not only driven out of the hunting business, but insulted and abused by the smarter, more dextrous, and more technologically advanced Cro-Magnons who moved into the area when Hwoogh was young.  They even violate his cave, which everybody knows is a caveman's safe space!  Del Rey describes these peoples' biology and culture in some detail; I have no idea how much of what del Rey tells us is based on scientific research and how much he just came up with.  Whatever the case, this story is entertaining enough, and will perhaps resonate with readers who have grown old and feel obsolete, or have witnessed their culture, people or way of life demeaned and swept away.

"Special Delivery" by Damon Knight (1954)

Like del Rey, Knight may well be more important as an editor than a writer, but I have actually read a bunch of Knight's own fiction, as well as stories he edited for such publications as the famous Orbit series.  It turns out that "Special Delivery" is a commonly used name for short stories; Kris Neville published a story called "Special Delivery" two years before Knight's.  Neville's "Special Delivery" was about an alien spy softening up Earth for conquest, while Knight's "Special Delivery" exploits new parents' anxieties about their children and how a baby will change their lives, and features some of the whining we never stop hearing from public school teachers about how the taxpayers don't shovel enough money into their pockets.

"Special Delivery" first sent chills up new
parents' spines in Galaxy

Moira, wife of school teacher Len Connington, a Columbia alumnus and aspiring physics grad student, is pregnant.  Knight signals the story's cynicism by telling us (in a sort of oblique way that softens the blow and muddies the issue) on the second page that Len regrets ever meeting Moira!  It quickly becomes apparent that their unborn child is some kind of mutant supergenius--he can read Moira's mind and see through her eyes and so forth, and while still in the womb can understand English and even talk--a doctor holding a stethoscope to Moira's belly hears the baby insulting him.  Yes, insulting him--this baby is a jerk! (Knight flings a healthy helping of cultural references at us in this story, and one such allusion compares the enfant terrible to Monty Woolley's character in the 1942 film The Man Who Came to Dinner--old movie fans and wikipedia will tell you this character was "notoriously acerbic"; internet film reviewer MonsterHunter calls him "consistently caustic" and "maddeningly self-absorbed.")

The baby, whom Moira names after Leonardo da Vinci, starts running the household by threatening to kick if he doesn't get his way.  Leo gets Len fired from his teaching job, forces Moira to read stacks and stacks of challenging books, and refuses to let Len sleep in the same bed with Moira!  Len and Moira fear that Leo will become a dictator and rule the world with an iron fist once he is free of the womb, but they needn't have worried: Leo's genius is the result of the low oxygen environment of the uterus; once he has to breathe normal air he reverts to being a normal infant, ignorant and helpless.

Not bad.  All you SF scholars out there can compare this to Bradbury's 1946 "Small Assassin" and Kuttner and Moore's stories about troublesome kids in conflict with their parents, like 1944's "When the Bough Breaks" and 1946's "Absalom."  It's true: babies are scary!

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All these stories are entertaining and worth the SF fan's time; the Russell and Simak indulge in far-out SF concepts but reflect the anxieties of a world embroiled in the Cold War in which the cataclysm of World War II was a recent memory, while the del Rey and Knight allegorically treat our personal worries about our places in the world and in our families.  Operation Future is a worthwhile purchase.

The Green Odyssey by Philip Jose Farmer

"'It was the hand of man struck him down, my boy.  If it's violent death you are trying to explain, don't drag in the supernatural.  There's enough murder in the hearts of humankind to take care of every case.'"

I don't run into the word "roistering" very often. But here it is on both the front and back covers of my 1966 printing of Philip Jose Farmer's 1957 novel The Green Odyssey. And from two different sources!

If these blurbs are to be believed, The Green Odyssey is a superlative, one-of-a-kind adventure.  According to the New York Herald Tribune it is the "most agreeable interplanetary adventure novel" ever, and according to Inside S-F it has a heroine who is "unique" and "magnificent."  (Alert the feminists, their dream book has arrived!) Sounds terrific, and the Powers cover sure looks terrific.  Let's see if this 152 page paperback lives up to the hype, and to Power's impressive illustration.

Like Adam Reith in Jack Vance's Planet of Adventure books, and Jason dinAlt in Harry Harrison's Deathworld 2, Alan Green crash landed on a relatively primitive planet.  (Ralph Nader should look into these persistent problems with space ships crashing.)  Green ends up in a country where most of the free people are short brunettes; he's a tall blonde, like most of the slaves, and is quickly enslaved himself.  As the novel begins he is a sort of butler and male concubine to a beautiful but stupid and annoying duchess, Zuni.  Green also has a wife, Amra, who is beautiful but domineering and only respects a man who can dominate her in turn.

(On second thought, do not alert the feminists, this is not their dream book after all.)

Word comes to Duchess Zuni's court that another space ship has arrived on the planet, and its two-man crew has been taken captive.  (The superstitious natives don't know about space and think these space men are demons.) The Green Odyssey follows Alan Green's adventures as he flees slavery and tries to hook up with these fellow marooned spacefarers and get off the planet.  He cuts a deal with a merchant, fights his way out of the castle, and sails away as part of the crew of the merchant's wheeled square-rigged land ship.  His canny wife figures out his plan, and joins him on the voyage with her gaggle of children, one of whom is Green's.

The land ship crosses a vast flat plain to the kingdom where the spacers are imprisoned. Along the way the land ship is attacked by pirates and then by cannibals.  Green also has trouble with the ship's crew and the merchant; fortunately the clever and resourceful Amra is there to help him; she is instrumental in saving his life more than once.  The cannibals kill some of Amra's children, but Farmer doesn't dwell on how horrible an experience this must be.   

One of the themes of the book is how absurd and counterproductive religion is, and how supernatural beliefs grow out of misunderstandings of mundane phenomena.  The planet is covered in high tech artifacts, which the superstitious inhabitants interpret as the work of demons or gods.  Green's modern and rational outlook enables him to outwit everybody else.   I think Farmer must have been an atheist or agnostic when Green Odyssey was written, but as I learned in his essay in The Visual Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, his thinking about religion would later evolve.

Green activates a huge aircraft the natives think is a hill, killing numerous people in the process, and takes to the skies, terrorizing the kingdom where the one surviving spaceman is held captive.  The king and the priests surrender the spaceman and the two-man scout space ship, and, after teaching Amra how to operate the invincible aircraft, Green heads to Earth, promising to return to Amra as part of a large expedition that will investigate the many secrets of the planet's ancient technological civilization.  (The flat plain, for example, was created by these mysterious ancients and has been maintained by their robots for centuries.  Like his famous Riverworld series and his World of Tiers books, Farmer's The Green Odyssey is set in an artificial world shaped by mysterious beings.)

The book exhibits considerable hostility towards the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie; I guess we could call this another theme.  The aristocratic women are sexy but stupid, and the aristocratic men are obese.  The merchant character is a skilled leader and sailor, but also fat, greedy, and a ruthless backstabber.   It is also perhaps significant that those children of Amra's who are killed by cannibals are products of her liaisons with aristocrats; we never learn their names.

When Green needs a land boat he just steals one, with the aid of one of Amra's sons. Green sucker punches the guy guarding it, while Amra's son beats him over the head with a pipe.  We are told the owner of the land yacht (whom we know nothing about and who never appears "on screen") must be rich, which in the eyes of some may excuse the theft, but what about the poor guard?

isfdb image of 1957 edition

This attack on the yacht's guard brings up some more themes of the novel, moral relativism and man's propensity for violence.  We are told that Green's modern space faring civilization is a peaceful one, in which children are taught to abhor violence.  Under ordinary circumstances Green would not enjoy any kind of violence, but life on this violent planet has had an effect on him. Green gleefully throws a dog who has been tormenting him for months off a castle balcony, enjoys shooting wild dogs from the crow's nest of the land ship, and is thrilled during a battle, crying out "This is living!"  He also forgives the bloodthirstiness expressed by Amra and her son.  What makes moral sense in some places and some situations doesn't make sense in others. Farmer further suggests that there is a "philosophy of the body," a natural propensity to enjoy action, danger, and violence, that is "older and deeper" than rational philosophies that teach a loathing of violence.  This "philosophy of the body" may lead the cannibals to commit horrible atrocities (we are told that "like all undisciplined primitives," in their initial assault they "killed indiscriminately and hysterically,") but Green needs it as much as his modern logic and science knowledge to survive.

Farmer's body of work is uneven--I recall Maker of Universes, the first volume in the World of Tiers series, being pretty lame--but in The Green Odyssey Farmer gives us a well-realized and interesting setting that includes a believable culture, strange natural and man-made elements, and entertaining characters.  I'd say it is moderately good; the reviewers are correct to say it is entertaining, though I would not share their breathless enthusiasm. 

I recommend The Green Odyssey as a fun adventure.  It is also your chance to see the word "roistering" in action; Farmer uses it twice in the text, presumably inspiring his admiring reviewers to follow suit.

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The last page of my copy of The Green Odyssey have some interesting advertising. 

There is a full page ad for the first of John Norman's Gor novels, Tarnsman of Gor.  In my teens I read Tarnsman of Gor, and thought it a fun Barsoom-style adventure.  It didn't (as far as I can recall) include so much of what the later Gor books became famous for, what Wikipedia calls a "focus on relationships between dominant men and submissive women."  I never read any of the later Gor books, I think they were not at the library (where I got Tarnsman of Gor.)

The final page of The Green Odyssey lists some "early classics" published by Ballantine, most of which I have some familiarity with.  Ahead of Time includes the very good story "Home is the Hunter," as well as "Or Else," which I recall not liking very much.  Brain Wave is good, and To Live Forever is alright, I think below average for Vance.  (I think nowadays we are supposed to refer to To Live Forever by the author-approved title Clarges.)  I read the novella version of Nerves and didn't think much of it. I haven't read Gladiator-At Law, which I assume is some kind of satire attacking lawyers.  I haven't read The Space Merchants, a satire attacking advertising, either.  I'm not into those broad satires, and I don't have any particular animus against people in advertising or the law. 

Last of the Novelets: Blish and Clarke

At this here blog we've been reading Novelets of Science Fiction, a paperback anthology of early 1950s stories published first in 1963 (I have the 1967 printing.)  In a spirit of friendly competition we will be crowning the writer of the best novelet, and so far Poul Anderson is in the lead.  But we have high hopes for today's contenders, James Blish, my fellow Jersey boy and Rutgers alum, and Arthur C. Clarke, writer, explorer, and TV and film icon.

"Testament of Andros" by James Blish (1953)

If you've been following my investigation of Novelets of Science Fiction you won't be surprised to learn, despite claims on the front and back cover of the book, that "Testament of Andros" appeared in a paperback collection of Blish stories in 1961 entitled So Close to Home.

"Testament of Andros" is the craziest and most experimental of the stories in Novelets of Science Fiction.  It consists of five first-person narratives, each told by a male with a name that is a variant of "Andrew," and each in part about the narrator's relationship with a female whose name is a variant of "Margaret."  These narratives all take place on an alternate Earth (among other things, it has 12 continents and its version of Wagner wrote an opera titled Tristan and Messalina) which is devastated by a solar flare that kills the majority of life on the planet.

Each of the stories details human unhappiness, and most of them feature some kind of injustice or depravity.  A scientist believes a grad student is taking credit for his research and having an affair with his wife, so he murders the student.  A working class orphan grows up to be a rapist and murderer and dies in prison when the solar flare hits.  An eight-year-old child who fantasizes about being a space hero tries to come to terms with his unhappy family and school life as well as the solar flare.  Some of the narratives take a dim view of religion, suggesting that organized religion has failed to comfort and guide people, while one of them is written by an insane person who claims to have seen God and has started his own religion.

This is a good "literary" story that reminded me of the kind of experimental work we associate with the New Wave of ten or more years later.  It tackles religion, psychology, gender relations, the family, economics, all that heavy stuff.

"The Possessed" by Arthur C. Clarke (1953)

This six page story in which Clarke ponders why lemmings sometimes jump to their deaths en masse is gimmicky and forgettable.   It was included in a 1956 paperback, Reach for Tomorrow.

A non-corporeal life form, parasitic in nature, is floating through space, looking for an intelligent species to serve as its host.  After millions of fruitless years of searching it lands on Earth during the Age of Reptiles.  With no intelligent hosts available, the creature opts for a desperate expedient: it will split in two parts, one portion remaining on Earth, the other half continuing the search.  Should the space-going half find an attractive host species somewhere else in the universe, it will return with the good news.  The two halves agree on a meeting place, which the Earthbound portion of the creature will return to periodically.

The Earthbound portion of the alien colonizes the minds of small mammals in hopes they will evolve intelligence.  Instead, they evolve into lemmings.   Millions of years in non-intelligent hosts takes a toll, and the parasite creature grows weaker and weaker until it is essentially dead.  The lemmings, however, retain an instinctive need to periodically return to the meeting place, an instinct which overrides any thought of safety, and the fact that the meeting place is now underwater.

This story is inoffensive, so I would grade it "OK" or "acceptable," but it has zero feeling and no characters or plot--it is just an odd speculation.

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It's time to rate the eight "superlative" stories found in Novelets of Science Fiction and crown a King of the Novelets!

James Blish put in a good showing, but I have to judge him our rummer up--which means Poul Anderson, with his story, "The Chapter Ends," is King of the Novelets!  "The Chapter Ends" has multiple interesting SF ideas, emotional content, characters who make big decisions, and memorable images, and actually made me consider what I would do and how I would feel in the situations he describes.  So, congrats to Poul.

Simak and Clarke's stories are sort of one note idea tales, lacking in plot or feeling, and so they bring up the rear.  Frank Belknap Long's "Night Fear" is also vulnerable to the charge that it is just an idea and not really a story, but I found the idea interesting and I think Long's piece had some added human drama.

Our three violent adventure stories, by Del Rey, Lesser and de Camp, make up the middle of the pack.  Each has its own charm; Del Rey has his ponderings about politics and free will, Lesser his hard-boiled stylings, and De Camp has his mediocre jokes.

Here are our rankings:

Winner                        Poul Anderson              "The Chapter Ends"
Runner Up                  James Blish                   "The Testament of Andros"
3rd place                     Frank Belknap Long     "Night Fear"
4th place                     Lester Del Rey              "I Am Tomorrow"
5th place                     Milton Lesser                "'A' as in Android"
6th place                     L. Sprague de Camp     "Ultrasonic God"
7th place                     Clifford Simak              "...And the Truth Shall Make You Free"
8th place                     Arthur C. Clarke           "The Possessed"  

Novelets of Science Fiction is a good collection; none of the stories were bad.  A worthwhile purchase for those, like me, interested in 1950s SF!    

Second Wave of Novelets: Simak, Long and Del Rey

The self-proclaimed "Book of the Year" strikes again--here are three more selections from 1963's Novelets of Science Fiction, a collection of 1950s tales from "modern masters of science fiction."  In our last episode, Poul Anderson took the lead in the race to be finest novelet; let's see if Clifford Simak, Frank Belknap Long or Lester del Rey can knock him off his perch.

"...And the Truth Shall Make You Free" by Clifford Simak (1953)

The text on the front and back of Novelets of Science Fiction claims that the stories it contains never before appeared in paperback.  Maybe this kind of claim would go unchallenged in 1963, when this anthology first appeared, but today even lazy people like myself have the isfdb at our fingertips and we can try to  keep the boys in the advertising department honest.  According to the isfdb, this story appeared in Strangers in the Universe, a 1957 paperback collection of Simak stories, but under a variant title, "The Answers."  Very sneaky!

Simak is one of those guys who is always down on humanity.  In his stories, robots, aliens, dogs, ants, whatever, are proven to be superior to humans.  And if there are no bugs or droids to compare us to, Simak will claim that primitive rural or nomadic human societies are better than industrialized urban human societies.  If you aren't buying what Simak is selling, you call him a misanthropic anti-Western luddite.  If you are buying it, you call him "science fiction's premier pastoralist."      

In "...And the Truth Shall Make You Free" a space ship lands near an abandoned village (Simak takes pains to point out that it is not an arrogant disruptive city, but a village) and four beings, representatives of a multicultural galactic civilization, step out.  There is an alien called a Globe, who floats around.  There is a Human, and a Dog (by the time this story takes place dogs have achieved the ability to talk) and a Spider (as with canines, arachnids are also the equal or superior of humans in this story.)  The dog still seems kindly disposed to humanity, but the spider seems to hold a grudge against us, maybe because of all that Raid we've been spraying on his ancestors.

The village was built by a mutant strain of humans who were better than the run of the mill humans like you and me, who, we are told, only just barely qualified for membership in the galactic civilization and are good for nothing but making machines.  His three comrades fly back into space, but the human remains to explore, and eventually finds the superior strain of human beings.  Long ago they deserted the village to live on isolated farms.  They spend all their time working the land, and, in their free time, they sit on their porches and gossip (we are assured this is "kindly" gossip.)  This is Simak's idea of paradise.

The galactic human senses that these people are happy because they know some great Truth with a capital "T."  He lives with them and works the land with them for some time, and eventually they reveal to him this great Truth--that the universe has no purpose and life has no significance.

This is more of an idea than a story.  It is interesting that Simak sees the absolute refutation of religion as the foundation of a stable and happy society instead of as a cause for despair, terror, and chaos, as many others have.  But not very interesting.

Simak is an able writer and he gets right to the point, and the Truth came as a surprise to me (I expected the Truth to be "be kind" or something like that) so I'm going to grade "...And the Truth Shall Make You Free" as "acceptable."

"Night Fear" by Frank Belknap Long (1953)

Frank Belknap Long has a good reputation, but in late 2011 I read his novel Survival World and was bewildered by how terrible it was.  (My one star Amazon review can be found here.)  Maybe that novel is not a characteristic sample of his body of work?

"Night Fear" is based on the idea that Lunar colonists might construct a base with artificial gravity, artificial sunlight, and a whole array of devices to create the convincing illusion they are living on Earth.  The moon colonists in this story go so far as to fool kids into believing they are on Earth until their eighth birthdays.  In the story a seven-year-old is broken-hearted when he figures out the truth.  Long keeps the reader in the dark as to what the secret is until the sixth and final page, and I actually was surprised; I thought they were on Earth and the secret was that the little boy and his mother were aliens or robots living a lie among real humans.

The story works, and the idea that living on the Moon is such a hell that you would keep it from your kids is an interesting contrast to the optimism of Robert Heinlein's work, in which space colonists (in "The Menace From Earth" or The Rolling Stones, for example) quickly develop robust and proud societies imbued with patriotism.  

I liked "Night Fear," but don't ask me how a six-page story qualifies as a "novelet."        

Cover illustrates the Alfred Coppel story

"I Am Tomorrow" by Lester del Rey (1952)

Of all the stories in Novelets of Science Fiction this is the one I faced with the most trepidation.  (I know, First World problems.  The kids are still saying that, right?)  It is long, 45 pages, and when I recently read Del Rey's "Nerves" I found it to be kind of a drag.  You can believe I groaned when I realized this story is about a US politician who aspires to the presidency; I was afraid this story would follow an election campaign.  Fictional election campaigns bore me to death.  I was relieved when the story turned out to be a crazy time travel and civil war story full of horrible violence.

Tom Blake is an idealistic politician who just won election as Governor of an unnamed state.  His brother James is a genius inventor, who has developed a ray pistol with an integrated force field.  Tom and James want to distribute the pistol widely, believing that if every man is armed with one then peace and equality will result.  Did A. E. Van Vogt or Robert Heinlein ghost write this story?

Before Tom even has a chance to celebrate winning the gubernatorial election people from 40 years in the future suck his mind out of his brain and implant it in the body of Jed, a working class schlub who happens to be the fastest shot of the year 2000!  Tom's mind has been captured by the police force of the dictator who rules the entire world 40 years in the future.  Who is this dictator?  Tom's older self!

The rebels who are always trying to overthrow year 2000 Tom rescue Jed without realizing Jed's body is now inhabited by 1960 Tom's mind.  Jed is given the job of assassinating year 2000 Tom during the next uprising.  Tom (1960 version) isn't sure which group is worse, world dictator Tom and his Iron Guard or the rebels, and Del Rey doesn't make it clear which side the reader is supposed to sympathize with.  The uprising fails, 1960 Tom flubs his shot at 2000 Tom, and lots of people get killed.  Del Rey doesn't romanticize the fighting, but rather includes lots of friendly fire incidents and gory wounds in order to make the reader doubt the uprising is worth it.

This story isn't bad.  Besides all the shooting and mind transference and time travel there is quite a bit of talk about time paradoxes and rumination about free will.  If the story has a "point" it seems to be to debunk morality: we aren't really responsible for our actions because everything is determined, and idealism has to be tempered by realism.  Del Rey ascribes both positive and negative attributes to both the dictator and the rebels, and suggests both sides are acting reasonably in response to the circumstances Del Rey puts them in.  One character who admits to being consciously amoral is not denounced, and all the other characters in the story become less moral and idealistic as the story progresses, but we still get a happy ending.

Not a great story, but definitely better than "Nerves."

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All three of these stories have some entertainment value, have somewhat odd points of view, and can surprise the reader, so I think all three are worth reading.  But none of them is very good, and I don't think any of them is superior to Poul Anderson's "The Chapter Ends."

In our next installment we look at the final two stories in Novelets of Science Fiction, those of James Blish and Arthur C. Clarke, and make our final determination of who is king of the novelets!

Science Fiction Hall of Fame 2A Strikes Again: Campbell, Del Rey, and C. Smith

Having decided that I should be familiar with every story in the Science Fiction Hall of Fame Volume 2A, over the last few days I read three of the included novellas, "Who Goes There?" by John W. Campbell, Jr., "Nerves" by Lester Del Rey, and "The Ballad of Lost C'Mell" by Cordwainer Smith.  I had never read these stories before.

"Who Goes There?" by John W. Campbell, Jr.

I've known about this famous 1938 story, the basis of several films, almost all my life, but I've never read it.  I was relieved to find it more sophisticated than the two space operas I read by Campbell, The Ultimate Weapon and Invaders from the Infinite (links lead to my 2011 Amazon reviews of these epics of space naval warfare, reviews which are not exactly brimming over with love.)  The story includes some level of suspense and human feeling, and doesn't feel long and repetitive.

"Who Goes There?" is a pretty traditional hard science fiction story.  It stars a bunch of scientists and a hostile alien with telepathy and other powers, contains lots of science lectures and experiments, includes a puzzle the scientists have to figure out using logic and their lab equipment, and in the end the human race is not only saved from extermination, but technology captured from the alien (including anti-gravity) will change human life forever, opening up to us a brilliant new future.  There is some brutal fighting, both with guns and hand to hand (hand to tentacle?), but the emphasis of the story is on the suspenseful puzzle: some of the scientists are in fact aliens in disguise, so the real humans have to figure out a way to identify each other and the monsters, and they have to do it fast, before the aliens outnumber the humans.

I like the Heinlein, Anderson and Kuttner & Moore inclusions better, but this is a solid piece of work and I don't begrudge its presence in the Hall of Fame.

1976 edition of Nerves

"Nerves" by Lester Del Rey

I started "Nerves"with some trepidation.  For weeks or months there was a copy of the 1976 paperback of the novel Nerves on the collectible paperbacks spinner rack at the Half Price Books I frequent, and I became pretty familiar with the cover.  The cover illustration makes Nerves look like a medical drama, and medical dramas do not interest me.  When I hear somebody say "50 ccs" or "STAT" I fall asleep. 

The version of "Nerves" in Science Fiction Hall of Fame Volume 2A is the 1942 version, and is over 60 pages long.  It tells the story of middle-aged Dr. Ferrel, who was once the finest surgeon in the world and is now getting a little fat, and the young new doctor, Dr. Jenkins.  Ferrel and Jenkins work at an atomic factory whose products include atomic insecticide (the boll weevil doesn't stand a chance!) and fuel for atomic vehicles.  There is an accident at one of the converters, an uncontrolled reaction that continually sprays magma and radioactive debris everywhere and threatens to blow up everything in a fifty-mile radius.  Ferrel, Jenkins, and the nurses, who include Jenkins's wife, fueled by tobacco, booze, and caffeine tablets, work for untold hours on the scores of casualties, injecting curare, salving radiation burns, stitching up wounds, extracting radioactive fragments, etc.  When the genius Japanese scientist who is managing the accident scene gets appendicitis, Ferrel has to put on armor and hop into a tank and drive into the radioactive inferno to help rescue Jorgenson, the only other scientist in the country who can figure out what has gone wrong and how to fix it.

Ferrell hacks open Jorgenson's chest and then he and the Jenkins couple spend page after page massaging Jorgenson's heart.  When Jorgenson is revived he only has enough energy to provide a brief clue...luckily Jenkins is a sort of amateur expert on atomics because his father ran his own atomics factory.  Jenkins deciphers the clue and saves the factory, the atomics industry, and the U. S. economy.

This story feels long and slow, and failed to excite any feeling in me for the doctors, scientists or factory workers.  In many ways it is like those Campbell space operas I mentioned above, the best scientists in the field figuring out how to solve a complex problem in a race against the clock.  The big difference (for me) is that I find space war inherently interesting, and being a surgeon in a factory inherently boring.

"Nerves" is just an average melodrama, which is one reason why I wonder how it got into the Hall of Fame.  The other reason I don't understand why "Nerves" is in the Science Fiction Hall of Fame is that its science fiction content is pretty light.  One hears complaints that many "science fiction" stories are just war stories or westerns or detective stories set in space or on another planet.  I think "Nerves" is vulnerable to the charge that it is just a medical drama set in an atomic factory.  Couldn't a very similar medical drama have been set in a munitions plant or an automobile factory? 

"Nerves" is an OK story, but I don't think it really belongs in Science Fiction Hall of Fame Volume 2A.

"The Ballad of Lost C'Mell" by Cordwainer Smith

I'm not at all familiar with Cordwainer Smith's work.  I know I read "Scanners Live in Vain" in college for the class I took on science fiction (Spring 1990), but it made little impression on me.

"The Ballad of Lost C'Mell" takes place on Earth in a building 25 kilometers tall, far far in the future.  Mankind has colonized the universe, and created a society so affluent that crime, war, and poverty, among humans, are virtually unknown.  But living on Earth are also the "underpeople," people much like humans, but derived from animals.  The underpeople must work to make money to pay for food, shelter and so forth, like people of "ancient" times, and are subject to summary, arbitrary justice and oppression at the hands of humans.

C'Mell is a beautiful woman whose ancestors were derived from cats, who works as a sort of hostess or geisha, making visitors to Earth comfortable and welcome.  The plot of this 18 page story from 1962 concerns C'Mell's relationship with one of the rulers of the universe, Lord Jestocost.  Jestocost believes the underpeople should be on an equal legal footing with true humans.  C'Mell becomes a telepathic conduit between Jestocost and the leader of an underpeople revolutionary movement; Jentocost hopes by working with this leader that he can help reform human-underpeople relations without resort to violence.  C'Mell falls in love with Jentocost, but this is a love that cannot be consummated.

This is a good story, the setting and characters interesting and satisfying.  The story is also economical, conjuring up arresting images and feelings without superfluous verbiage.  There have been many SF stories about oppressed minorities or underclasses with special powers, but to me this one felt fresh.

It appears that most or all of Smith's SF work is set in the same universe, and that Smith (real name Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger) had an exciting career in academia and in various parts of the US defense establishment.  I will definitely seek out more of his stories; hopefully they will be as good as "The Ballad of Lost C'Mell."

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As of today I have read every novella in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame Volume 2A.  (I read Wells' Time Machine, Williamson's With Folded Hands, and Russell's ...And Then There Were None years ago.)  I am certainly glad to have more knowledge of what the pro SF writers of the early 1970s thought were the "classics"of their field.  And I am looking forward to becoming better acquainted with Cordwainer Smith's work.