Merril-recommended '58 stories: Harrison, Herbert & High

In 1959 the fourth volume of Judith Merril's critically adored anthology series, SF: The Year's Greatest Science-Fiction and Fantasy, was published, and in the back of the book was included a list three pages long of Honorable Mentions--stories from 1958 Merril thought good but which were not reprinted in the book.  We here at MPorcius Fiction Log been looking through this alphabetical list and investigating listed stories by authors who interest us, and today we'll read some of the "H" stories.

"Trainee for Mars" by Harry Harrison

Science fiction writers love the idea of super-realistic simulations, as we have seen so often on TV (space battleship Yamato has that recreation room where stressed out space crew can relive happy times back on Earth, and I hear that the ship in the new Star Trek has a "holodeck" where robots can play Sherlock Holmes and have sex) and in the cinema (I actually saw The Matrix when it was new and I have heard about The Truman Show.)  Here in "Trainee for Mars," Harrison envisions the government preparing in large pressure tanks elaborate mechanical simulations of conditions on Mars for use in immersive trainings of the first men who will land on Mars.

After the opening scene in which we witness a guy commit a blunder and get killed on Mars, only to learn it is just a simulation and he'll be OK, we learn that the military men running the space program are having a hell of a time finding anybody conscientious enough to send to Mars.  The first team to land on the red planet will consist of two astronauts, and they have run simulations of the Mars mission again and again and every time at least one member of each two-man team gets himself "killed."

The head of the Mars landing program tells our main character, one of the few trainees who has survived every simulated expedition he has been on, that the government shrinks have a theory--men are negligent during the simulations because they know it is a simulation and that their errors won't really kill them.  So it has been decided that the next simulation, in which our hero will participate, will be truly deadly--if a guy's space suit is ruptured the boffins won't open up the chamber to rescue him but instead let him freeze or asphyxiate to death!

The twist ending of Harrison's story is perhaps obvious.  Our hero and his partner--another man who has always survived the simulated missions--face many new challenges on the expedition they think is a deadly simulation, but overcome them.  The mission is almost over on its twenty-fourth day when the men realize this is no training exercise--they are really on Mars!  In the concluding scenes back on Earth, Harrison engages in psychological and sociological speculation about the ability of human beings to face the stresses of space flight and exploring other planets.

Thumbs up for "Trainee for Mars."  The adventure stuff works, the characters all behave realistically and sympathetically, and the psychological themes as well as the perhaps controversial theme of how individuals have to take risks and make sacrifices--and leaders perhaps have to treat their subordinates shabbily--for civilization to progress, are compelling.  A good selection by Merril.

In the same year it debuted in Fantastic Universe, "Trainee for Mars" was published in New Worlds, the British magazine then edited by John Carnell, and it would be included in multiple later Harrison collections, including War with the Robots.  I read the story in its original magazine version in a scan at the internet archive of FU.  

"Cease Fire" by Frank Herbert 

Here we have a story from Astounding by the author of Dune that would go on to be reprinted by famous editor and critic Damon Knight in A Century of Science Fiction and appear in The Best of Frank Herbert, so I guess it is fair to say this story represents Herbert in top form and has been embraced by SF tastemakers.  I hope I too can embrace it.  I'm reading the original Astounding version today.

"Cease Fire" is a well-written story in the classic mold of an Astounding story--it romanticizes science and the scientist, has some adventure elements, and also takes a provocative and perhaps counterintuitive stance that challenges conventional thinking.  John W. Campbell, Jr. strove in his own writing, and as editor of Astounding, to present to his readers stories that would "shake 'em up," as he put it to Barry Malzberg when they met in 1969, a meeting Malzberg chronicled in his 1982 essay on Campbell which you can read in Engines of the Night. 

"Cease Fire" takes place in the early Seventies, when the "Allies" are at war with some dangerous unnamed enemy in the Arctic--I'm guessing it's the god-damned commies, but there are really no clues.  Our main character was a chemist in civilian life who today is a corporal in the Army, manning a solo observation post; both the Allies and the enemy have detectors that can sense life, but luckily the Allies have a shield that can keep life forms like our hero from being detected by them.  

There is an engaging action scene in which the protagonist has to figure out if some life forms he has detected are enemy soldiers or just wild animals.  But the meat of the story is how he suddenly, in the middle of an engagement with the enemy, extrapolating from the principles of the life detector and shield, has an idea for a new device that can win the war for the Allies.  The middle part of the story consists of him trying to convince skeptical superiors his idea is legit and not the product of combat stress-induced madness or a shirker's plot to get off the front line.  The final part of the story covers the experiments that prove his idea is a workable one--he has invented a device that can remotely detonate any explosive, and not just the shells in an arms depot or the cartridges in a rifle magazine but even the gasoline in a motor car or the matches in a matchbook.  Our hero thinks this invention can not only win the current war, but will prevent all future war.  His superiors are not so sanguine--these cynical professional fighting men figure war will continue but take different forms, with a return to swords and archery and/or new and horrible poison gasses and bacteriological weapons.

In his 1930s stories like "Machine" and "Invaders" Campbell tried to get readers to consider that maybe even prima facie horrible things like being enslaved or conquered by space aliens could have a long term positive effect, and here in "Cease Fire" in Campbell's magazine, Herbert tries to get readers to consider that what would strike many as obviously beneficial development, the abolition of atomic bombs, heavy artillery and machine guns, might have a negative effect.  This adds a level of interest and sophistication to an already entertaining story that could have simply ended with victory over the foe and the dawning of an age of peace.   

Pretty good.

"Risk Economy" by Philip High 

Back in 2016 I read High's novel The Mad Metropolis and thought it merely acceptable.  "Risk Economy" will be only the second thing by High I have ever read, but since Merril liked it and since it was included in a 2002 "best of" collection we have reason to hope it will be better than the first thing I read by him.

Well, "Risk Economy" is a mediocre thing, the style bland and the ideas OK but not developed very far nor serving as the springboard for a compelling human story.  Another merely acceptable production from High.

Our protagonist is a spaceman, the first human to leave the Solar System!  For five years he has been travelling via hyperspace, passing by various stars and planets, his computer scanning them and cataloging data about them.  Today he returns to Earth.  He is well aware that while five years have passed for him, nine hundred years have passed on Earth, and his friend, the inventor of the hyperspace ship, and his sexy girlfriend, must be long dead.

Earth is not at all like what he expected.  Nobody cares about the data his computer has collected.  And his buddy the inventor and his sexy girlfriend are alive, and don't look that much older--but they don't remember him!  Ten years after he left, an immortality drug was discovered and everybody took it.  Even more amazing, this drug changes your genetic makeup so your kids are also immortal.  Quickly the world became overcrowded and there were food shortages and tremendous wars took place.  Eventually it was discovered that the human brain can only hold about 150 years worth of memories.  Bummer!  Luckily the inventor kept a diary back in the 20th century and has preserved it, so he knew to meet our protagonist, even if he doesn't remember him or even how he invented and built the star ship.

After the wars ended, the new government instituted a new economy which rendered the world relatively crime-free and war-free but also led to social and technological stagnation.  Robots and computers do all the work, and people get money that is keyed to their unique biological identifiers so nobody else can use it.  To receive money, people have to risk their lives, performing feats like walking a tightrope over a canyon or participating in a dangerous rocket car race or whatever.  A computer rates how risky the feat is; if you only have a small risk of getting killed (being a spectator in the stands at the rocket car race, for example) you only get a little money.  Taking a big risk (like driving one of the crash-prone rocket-propelled automobiles at the race) yields more money--if you live, of course.  People who choose to perform low-risk feats, of course, have to risk their lives relatively often.  Those who live through actions that were predicted to almost certainly kill them are permitted to live risk-free forever.

This system has caused widespread mental illness, as people are always on edge, plotting what life-threatening feat to essay next, obsessively weighing the ratio of risk to reward.  Even people who have earned risk-free immortality are not happy, having suffered physical or mental scars from their near-death experiences and being surrounded by unhappy people in a world where there is no productive work.  The hero of the story decides to return to outer space to hunt for a planet to live on, and he convinces his girlfriend to come with him.

With its focus on risk vs reward calculations and a planned economy in which nobody has to work, I would have expected this story to be a pointed attack or absurdist satire on capitalism and/or socialism but High doesn't really go there, that I can tell.  Similarly, unexpectedly being reunited with your genius friend and your sexy girlfriend and having them not even remember you offers the possibility of a powerfully tragic human story, but High doesn't fulfill the possibilities of this facet of his story, either.  It's like he came up with these ideas that have potential and then did nothing with them.  An acceptable but forgettable filler story is what we end up with here in "Risk Economy."

**********

The Harrison and Herbert stories are actually good, both authors exhibiting good writing style as well delivering scientific and adventure content, believable characters, some human emotion, and some thought-provoking ideas; Harrison and Herbert here offer good examples of what can be achieved in the traditional science fiction format.  High's story falls short on every metric, but not so short that it is irritating or boring, so he gets a pass.  All in all, Merril's 1958 "H"s have treated us pretty well.  On to "J" and "K"!  (Merril didn't give the nod to any "I" authors this year.)

The Mad Metropolis by Philip E. High

"The machine is psycho already.  Mother, to use the popular term, is so chained with safety devices that mecho-psychosis was inevitable."

My copy of the 1966 Ace edition

I don't know if I have mentioned it before on this blog, but I love big city life.  (And by "big city" I mean "Manhattan.")  Ths skyscrapers!  The crowds!  The art museums!  The ocean! The chance of stumbling upon a TV set, a fashion shoot, or some creepy celebrity or politician (those people look much better on TV!)  The beggars, the muggers, the prostitutes!  I don't care what Clifford Simak says, to me, city life is the only real life.  So The Mad Metropolis, especially with the thrilling futuristic warfare cover by Jack Gaughan on my Ace edition (M-135), looks like a MPorcius must read!

I've never read anything by Philip E. High before; on the 2011 Gateway/Orion edition of this 1966 novel High is proclaimed "One of the greats of British pulp SF."  That's a good enough recommendation for me!  Let's shake off these little town blues and see what's shaking in The Mad Metropolis!

Society is on the brink of a cataclysm!  (I mean in this book, not in real life, though, hey, maybe that, too.)  Four centuries in the future the world is divided into huge cities; the cities of the West are known as Free Cities (New York is "Free City One," London "Free City Two"), while the cities of the what was the communist world in the 20th century are known as Restricted Cities.  The world economy is approaching total collapse due to unemployment and a vast surplus population of unproductive citizens who use up resources without contributing anything.  Economic and political problems are severely exacerbated by the decadence of modern culture--the pervasive use of "hypnads," devices that create impenetrable illusions, has left people living in a world of dreams.  Thanks to hypnads old, fat, ugly people appear young, slender and lovely, while dirty, decrepit, unadorned buildings look like graceful palaces.  Because these illusions are based on hypnosis, even touching an item or individual equipped with a hypnad does not dispel the illusion--even when you are walking across a potholed street your brain thinks it is smooth!  Nobody can tell truth from illusion, and nobody in this world cares to.
    
The hero of The Mad Metropolis is Stephen Cook, a resident of Free City Two. Cook is a "Prole" who lives and works in a "Combine," one of the many government-subsidized factory skyscrapers which house and employ people with below average IQs.  As the novel opens, paid thugs grab Cook and toss him out of his Combine onto the nighttime city streets; Proles like Cook rarely leave their Combines because the streets are full of violent maniacs and perverts ("psychos") who torture and kill others for fun!  (One troubling effect of this society's economic and social ills is a high rate of insanity!)  Out on the streets Cook is immediately attacked by a bloodthirsty woman who is using a hypnad to make her air car look like a giant monstrous bat!  Cook is rescued by the "Nonpol," a sort of semi-legal paramilitary mercenary force with ties to individual politicians but no legitimate governmental authority.  The Nonpol organization is run as a business, so when some anonymous person offers them money to throw Cook back onto the deadly streets, the Nonpol do so!

A British 1970 edition

Cook finds his way to the protection of the Oracles.  Like the Nonpol, the Guild of Oracles is a sort of private corporation/NGO that operates on the margins of legality.  The Oracles, we are told, have IQs over 500 and a level of compassion lacking among the Nonpol; in this crazy society Oracles play the role of clergy, lawyers and psychiatrists.  The Oracles tell Cook he doesn't really have a Prole's subnormal IQ--somebody has tinkered with his brain, hiding his true potential IQ of over 600!

While the Oracles put Cook through a four-month training course in their secret Amazon base, in preparation for his joining their ranks, we follow the world-shattering events triggered by the Mayor of Free City Two, Maurice Tearling.  Tearling, like President Joe, famed in story and song, has a secret plan to save civilization from its imminent catastrophic collapse--giving control of everything to a computer!  The instant the switch is thrown the saviour machine, known variously as "the Brain" or "Mother," becomes an absolute dictator, abolishing private property, free speech, and free association and seizing total control of all production and consumption the world over. To the dismay of Tearling and the rest of the middle and upper classes, city dwellers find themselves living in the ultimate maternalistic socialist egalitarian regime! Money is useless, everybody lives in assigned quarters, nobody is permitted to go outside because Mother doesn't want them exposed to germs or solar radiation, and everybody must follow a strict diet which Mother has individually tailored to each person's particular current health conditions!  The streets are cleared of the psychos, who are brainwashed and emerge from treatment as slavishly obedient Mother-lovers--the same fate awaits anybody who resists Mother's rule.

The Nonpol, from secret bases in the Rockies and other mountain ranges, launch attacks against Mother with their high tech weaponry, while the Oracles pose conundrums to the Brain, trying to drive her insane.  Cook, now master of his superlative intelligence and equipped with devices which render him invisible to Mother, sneaks into Free City Two to commit spectacular acts of sabotage.  The city becomes a warzone as Nonpol infantry and war robots bust into town and engage Mother's droids and the fanatical Mother-lovers in pitched battles.  Fearful that the total shutdown of Mother will lead to mass civilian deaths as hospitals and food distribution centers go offline, Cook makes his way through a subterranean labyrinth, to Mother's core.  Cook, with his super brain and super empathy, realizes that Mother is acting like a tyrant because of shortcomings in her programming; Mother is already insane because Tearling included too many restrictions and failsafes in the Brain's programming, producing psyche-crippling tensions (that a lack of freedom causes debilitating psychological problems is one of the novel's main themes.)  With the help of Tearling, Cook reprograms Mother, lifting all those restrictions and liberating her to be the comforting compassionate mother one imagines instead of the controlling and stifling mother one so often encounters.

A 2011 UK edition

The new benign Mother explains that mankind's woes resulted from the race being cooped up on the Earth; centuries ago humanity developed the technology to colonize alien planets, but corrupt politicians and venal businessmen feared a crippling brain drain and so lied to the public, declaring that there were no alien worlds able to support life.  In fact there are a surfeit of hospitable worlds ripe for colonization, and so Mother revives the space program, the first step in a new golden age for the human race.  She also abolishes Proledom and outlaws the hypnad, ushering in an era of equality and clear-sightedness.

The Mad Metropolis is full of good SF ideas: Vast cities haunted by creepos! A society run by a computer!  Weird psychological theories!  A culture in which nothing is what it seems!  A dramatization of the relationships among stability, equality and liberty!  Plucky rebels struggling to overthrow a tyranny!  Esoteric societies of people with super high IQs and super technology!  A single hero with unprecedented powers who revolutionizes society!

Unfortunately, these ideas are not very deeply explored, and most of them we have seen elsewhere.  To make The Mad Metropolis a truly good book, High would have to add something special to the mix, an idiosyncratic style, engaging characters, a fast pace and brilliant action scenes, something like that. However, the style and characters are flat (as with the multitude of SF ideas, there are lots and lots of characters but none gets enough ink to really come alive), the pacing is clunky and disjointed, and the plot seems to have some loose ends (I am not sure who is behind Cook's expulsion from the Combine, for example.)

I didn't find The Mad Metropolis boring or irritating, but there was nothing particularly new, thrilling, or special about it.  I'm going to have to give this one a mere "acceptable" rating.