Future Corruption 1: Lupoff, Gloeckner, Goldin & Lafferty

The world is full of evil, I think we can all agree about that!  (What we can't agree on is exactly who or what is evil; one man's courageous freedom fighter is another man's murderous terrorist, after all.)  If the world is full of evil today, what can we expect to see in the future?  Greater evil? Different evil?  Let's get our pessimism on (the kids still talk that way, right?) with Roger Elwood and a bunch of scribblers the people in the advertising department call "science fiction's top writers" and indulge in some literary speculations about Future Corruption.

Future Corruption, unleashed on the public in 1975, has a gloomy Richard Powers cover (gorgeous reds and purples) that reminds me of Abraham Bosses's famous frontispiece to Hobbes' Leviathan, and text on the back cover that is meant to invoke Anthony's funeral oration from Julius Caesar.  All the stories are new to this collection.  All this is giving me a good vibe.

For fun, let's rate these stories not merely on whether they are entertaining or show literary merit, like we always do, but also on to what extent they further the supposed mission of the anthology, and on the magnitude of the evils they depict.

"Saltzman's Madness" by Richard Lupoff

I recently read Lupoff's novel Sandworld and gave it a mixed review.  "Saltzman's Madness" is actually a decent horror story, but I'm not sure it really belongs in a book that aims to "explore the outer limits of our potential for evil" or "speculate on the spread of corruption" in the future.

This is a longish (over 30 pages), rambling story with quite a few characters. Basically, Saltzman is one of the lead computer programmers at a software firm that makes operating systems.  Saltzman hates wasting time, is in fact with obsessed with using time wisely.  He hates to sleep, he insists on working on documents while riding in the car, and so forth.  One night in the bathroom (!) he has a sort of epiphany, and becomes convinced that there is a lot of time out there that we don't experience, that each minute is actually something like 100 seconds long, and each hour 100 minutes long, but beings from another dimension are using those extra 40 seconds and minutes.

Saltzman talks to a scientist who is doing research on tachyons, and to the office beatnik who talks about how marijuana, LSD and "speed" effect one's "time sense." Finally, Saltzman comes up with the idea that if he listens to Josef Rheinberger's "Organ Concerto in G Minor" through headphones, with the orchestral track and the organ track moving at different speeds, maybe he will be able to access all that extra time that is out there.

(I listened to the rendition of the Concerto at the link above while I wrote this, and have to admit I found it too high pitched; all those high notes pained my poor ears. Maybe the speakers on my laptop are to blame?)

H. P. Lovecraft-style, this experiment drives Saltzman insane and almost summons malevolent monsters to our universe from another dimension--or maybe not almost; could Saltzman's insanity in fact be possession by an alien creature?

Also Lovecraft-style, we know from the first page that Saltzman is in a government funny farm with some kind of multiple personality disorder; the story is almost entirely a flashback.

I enjoyed the story, but if someone complained that it was padded with overly long lectures on Einsteinian time-space theory and illegal drugs, and discussions of computer programming and high end hi-fi equipment, I would be hard pressed to disagree.

So, a thumbs up for "Saltzman's Madness," but a very low reading on the evilometer.

"Saltzman's Madness"   Is the story good?: Moderately good.   Evilometer Reading: Very Low

"Andrew" by Carolyn Gloeckner

Gloeckner has only four entries on isfdb, all for short stories published in the first half of the 1970s.  Googling around suggests that there is a Carolyn Gloeckner who writes biographies of sports figures and adaptations of popular classics for kids, but I don't know if this the same individual.  "Andrew," apparently, is her last published SF story.

"Andrew" reminded me of Thomas Mann's Death in Venice as well as episodes from Casanova's memoirs.

A black hole flies through the Solar System, destroying all the planets and exterminating the human race.  Just in time, a space ship leaves Earth with less than 2,000 survivors. The captain of the ship is a homosexual, and the twenty page story is about how he uses his position as captain to seduce a beautiful boy ("His face was childishly rounded, but his features were those of a Greek bust-- classic, symmetrical, elegantly defined.") The boy moves from his family's spartan cubicle where they eat protein bars every day and into the captain's richly appointed quarters where he can drink booze and eat gourmet food.  The captain fears that Andrew Garland's parents will object, but when they come to see him they just extort some extra rations out of him--they have essentially sold their son to the captain for use as a sex toy.

Before moving in with the captain, Andrew was recognized as one of the smartest pupils in the ship, and everyone expected him to become a high officer, even captain. However, access to alcohol and drugs absolutely corrupted him, and he abandoned his studies.  Years later the captain realizes the selfish thing he has done, turning a promising young man, who could have had an exciting and productive career and done a great service to humanity as a leader in the ship, into a parasite.

This is a quite good story.  All the human relations stuff is good, and all the SF stuff is good, and the story and all its scenes are just the correct length--Gloeckner conveys emotion and presents us a clear picture of life in the ship with the minimum amount of verbiage.  And "Andrew" is actually about what this anthology is supposed to be about: corruption.  The captain is corrupted by power and lust, Andrew's parents by poverty and greed, and Andrew by temptation.  In a situation in which the entire human race is reduced to fewer than 2,000 people, all these characters, instead of doing their duty to a fragile society, selfishly pursue their animal desires.

"Andrew"   Is the story good?:   Good!      Evilometer Reading:  Moderate


"Prelude to a Symphony of Unborn Shouts" by Stephen Goldin

Recently I read a very short story by Goldin and thought it pretty good.  Years ago I read one of Goldin's novels, A World Called Solitude, and also liked it.  

One of the reasons I liked the Goldin short short referred to above is that it had characters, plot and emotion.  Unfortunately, "Prelude to a Symphony of Unborn Shouts" has none of these.  It is one of those stories (six pages long, in this case) which consists entirely of newspaper clippings and quotes from fictional pundits.

The topic Goldin is addressing here is overpopulation.  (I guess he thinks it is evil to have children?Or more children than he has had?)  Set in the 1990s, the newspaper clippings describe how governments react to an overpopulation crisis by encouraging people to use contraceptives and have abortions.  Religious people resist these moves. The story is supposed to be funny (I think), and includes banal jokes from a fictional comedian.  Here's one of the jokes:

"You know, if they really wanted birth control, they'd simply outlaw aspirin.  Then the girls could have as many headaches as they wanted."  

The clippings about religion paint the religious as violent goofballs, and the final clipping is about food riots that (presumably) resulted due to overpopulation, so it is clear where Goldin's sympathies lie.  Maybe this story will appeal to militant atheists and people who are really worried about overpopulation.  I'm a laid back atheist and I'm not worried about overpopulation, and the story is not interesting or amusing or persuasive, so I thought it was quite lame.

"Prelude..."  Is the story good?:   No.      Evilometer Reading:  Low

"Heart Grow Fonder" by R. A Lafferty

I've read a sizable amount of Lafferty stories since I started this here blog, and for the most part I have found his stories amusing and thought-provoking.  It will be poetic justice if, after dedicated atheist Goldin laid that clunker on us, committed Catholic Lafferty can deliver the comedy goods.

Lafferty does not disappoint; "Heart Grow Fonder" is fun and entertaining and is all about temptation and the evils of deceitfulness, marital infidelity, thievery, and trying to be something (and someone) you are not.

Simon Radert is happily married and enjoys his work (apparently he is some kind of accountant or finance expert--Lafferty calls him a "paper pusher" and assures us he is well remunerated.)  When some swingers, the Swags, move in next door Radert is initially hostile to them, calling them "creeps," but it is not long before he is coveting sexy Mrs. Swag.

We learn that Mr. Swag has the ability to swap minds and bodies with people, and he shifts his own consciousness into Radert's body for an hour at midday so he can have sex with Radert's wife.  Mrs. Radert, at least initially thinking this is her own husband expressing renewed interest in her, is thrilled.  Swag starts doing this every day at noon like clockwork, and Radert, in Swag's body during these periods, succumbs to temptation and starts having sex every noon hour with Swag's wife.  (Swag's wife is aware another man is inhabiting her husband's body and responds with enthusiasm; she has many such liaisons every day!)

Radert not only succumbs to the temptation to betray his wife and marriage.  Being in Swag's body provides him access to Swag's bank accounts and financial papers, and Radert begins shifting money from Swag's accounts to his own (as well as engaging in far more complex swindles.)  Before the story is over Radert is even plotting Swag's murder.

"Heart Grow Fonder" benefits from Lafferty's jocular style, and moves briskly, but I found the end of the story, as various characters' duplicitous schemes collide, somewhat confusing.  

Notable about the story is that Lafferty does not follow the paradigm set out by the text on the cover of the paperback, that the stories be about the future and science. (To be fair, in his introduction to the volume, editor Elwood does not lay out these "rules," and perhaps they were concocted just for marketing purposes after the stories were compiled.)  This story is not about science or the future.  Lafferty specifically informs us that the body switching as depicted in the story is not scientifically possible, and attributes it to supernatural means, mentioning the devil repeatedly, and implying that Radert is bound for hell thanks to his sins.  Lafferty also argues, as we might expect a religious person to, that there are more ways to look at the world than the "scientific" way, and suggests that scientists are as susceptible to bias and error as anybody.

Like most of Lafferty's work, fun and thought-provoking.

"Heart Grow Fonder"  Is it good?: Yes.   Evilometer Reading: High.

     
********************

The Goldin piece was poor, but it was short.  I enjoyed the Lupoff story, and the Gloeckner and Lafferty stories were even better and addressed issues of temptation and corruption in an emotionally affecting and intellectually engaging way.  So far I'm really enjoying Elwood's anthology.

In our next episode, more corruption, this time with our old friends J. J. Russ, Bill Pronzini, and Barry Malzberg.

Sandworld by Richard A. Lupoff

"They only two places...inside and outside.  Inside is inside a fence.... Inside any jailhouse....Outside is anyplace else...."

Years ago, back in New York, I borrowed from the library an old hardcover edition of Richard A. Lupoff's Edgar Rice Burroughs: Master of Adventure and read quite a bit of it.  It was exciting to find that someone was taking Burroughs seriously, and I found the book to be very interesting and entertaining.

Besides that major work of genre literature criticism, Lupoff wrote quite a few SF and mystery novels.  (One of these novels features H. P. Lovecraft, another writer Lupoff had a scholarly interest in, as a character.)  While on my holidays travels I bought one of the less well-known of Lupoff's novels, Sandworld, a 1976 paperback from Berkley, for one dollar in a used bookstore in South Carolina.

Sandworld stars Red O'Reilly, who is serving time in San Quentin.  Shackled to two other jailbirds, a tall elderly black man and a foul-mouthed young Latino, Red is put into the back of a police car for transport to the courthouse. Behind the wheel of the car is the prison guard who is to drive the felonious trio, and beside him sits a female ACLU lawyer, there to make sure the guard doesn't abuse the "cons" during transit.

In the true tradition of Edgar Rice Burroughs, while driving down the highway the police vehicle is inexplicably teleported to an alien planet where the three crooks, the prison guard and the attorney have to fight for their lives against a giant snake!  They all survive the struggle with the monstrous serpent, and then trek across a strange desert, to a cyclopean city.  In the true tradition of H. P. Lovecraft, the city is abandoned, haunted by alien monsters, and filled with reliefs which tell the story of the fall of its advanced civilization.

Contra Burroughs and Lovecraft, the aliens the Earthlings meet after solving the riddle of the city are kind and generous.  (They even explain how the humans got teleported to this crazy planet in the first place.)  In fact, in classic sense of wonder fashion, the aliens provide our heroes with the technological means to explore thousands of planets! To employ this technology, the Earth exiles need only learn to "become at one with the universe" through meditation!

Then in the last 30 pages of the book, for some reason, we're back in Weird Tales territory.  On their very first exploration trip Red and company are captured by the "degenerate" descendants of a once great race and presented to these degenerates' mysterious god.

Lupoff's main focus seems to be not the book's plot, but its characters; there are many scenes of them debating what to do and squabbling with each other.  The characters, their relationships with each other, and their response to being sent to a planet full of monsters, reflect what I take to be the conventional 1970s liberal ideas held by Lupoff.  The prison guard is fat, ugly, racist, stupid and obsessed with rules and regulations.  Lupoff repeatedly uses the word "authoritarian" to describe him, and likens him to Nazis, fascists, and the alien monsters.  All the other characters enjoy multiple opportunities to humiliate him physically and verbally.  (If you want to read about an Italian-American corrections officer being beaten, shot, and insulted by a multi-ethnic crew of criminals and social justice types, this is your book!)

Our hero, Red, is a college-educated "fiery Irishman," and quickly takes command of the group.  Red somehow "parlayed a role in a campus political demonstration into an indeterminate sentence to a maximum security prison."  Red keeps the violent Hispanic, a mugger and thief who has spent eight years in prison and wants to rape the lawyer, under control.  The elderly black murderer has been in prison over 30 years, and is a "gentle giant" who plays the harmonica and, despite his bad grammar, utters pearls of wisdom.  ("God don't like us kill except we have to.")

The woman lawyer is there largely to serve as a lust interest for the Hispanic and a love interest for Red.       

Over the course of the story Lupoff denounces the harshness of prison life, questions the efficacy of imprisoning criminals, and questions the very idea of rules and authority.  (Of course, Red is always telling everybody what to do, which could muddle Lupoff's message a little, so we are shown time and again that Red is a reluctant leader who only takes the leadership position because the others beg him to do so.)  It is also suggested that criminals are not really to blame for their crimes--when the Latino tries to rape the lawyer she (after being rescued by Red) forgives her assailant, saying, "That was only natural."(!)

What is Sandworld trying to be?  What did Lupoff want to accomplish in writing it? On the back cover Burroughs' name is invoked and we are told this novel is a "rousing adventure in the SF pulp tradition," and it obviously owes some inspiration to Burroughs and Lovecraft.  But it doesn't really succeed as a "planetary romance" adventure or a piece of "cosmic horror."

For one thing, the book's politics don't mesh with the daring-do swashbuckling of a Burroughs story or the existential cosmic horror of a Lovecraft tale.  The politics of the book are very specific to its time and place, late-20th century USA, so the novel can't emulate the sort of timeless adventure of a Burroughs tale or the universal existential cosmic horror of a Lovecraft story.  The characters are not archetypes that represent us all and our hopes and fears (the man who triumphs over challenges, or the explorer who learns some dreadful truth) but stereotypes who represent very specific real people (the minorities who are oppressed by the system and react violently, the stupid ugly white guy who does the system's dirty work, and the sexy college-educated whites who work to change the system) and Lupoff's opinion of them.

Besides the distracting focus on parochial political issues, the novel's pace is slow, even in the action scenes; Lupoff is kind of long-winded and a little repetitive.  There is also no climax to the story; the last 30 pages with the degenerates and their god feel tacked on and are poorly conceived in any case.  

Seeing as Sandworld doesn't work as a pulp adventure story, I am forced to consider that it may be: a rush job done for money that Lupoff padded out with his banal political views; a half-hearted debunking or satire of pulp adventures that fails to be insightful or amusing; or, a sincere attack on criminal justice in America that Lupoff made salable to Berkley by setting it on another planet.  Or some combination of these.

Despite all my criticisms, I'm giving Sandworld a (marginally) passing grade.  I haven't talked about the original science fiction components that Lupoff brings to Sandworld, the astronomy and ecology of the planet, for example, but they are pretty good.  And I was never bored by the novel; I was always curious about what would happen next. The novel is not good, but it kept my interest.  Rather than passing "an indeterminate sentence" for "political demonstration" on Lupoff, I'll let him off with a warning this time.