tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-81631659291580890082024-03-16T14:52:43.923-04:00Casual DebrisCasual Debris has evolved a little from its inception. Currently, we are interested in anthologies, literary and genre, as well as television. We also like to review lesser known novels and stories, and toss in a few asides, now and again. Thank you for stopping by.Casual Debrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08098608670682517783noreply@blogger.comBlogger318125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8163165929158089008.post-70301741366289136312024-03-09T13:41:00.002-05:002024-03-09T13:41:56.509-05:00Briefly: Little Eve by Catriona Ward (2018)<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #990000;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="color: #990000;">Ward, Catriona. Little Eve. UK: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, July 2018</span></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="color: #990000;"><br /></span></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="color: #990000;">Rating: 8/10</span></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Little Eve at the <a href="https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?2374912" target="_blank">ISFsb</a></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Little Eve at <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59808007-little-eve?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=Zpmu9vBJEr&rank=1" target="_blank">Goodreads</a></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwHe5JrZ-NcNqcc_UXy54KsbRdMmajf7UZ19cHk8RvZPJjna1A5Uj_On-ZJ6O21GQiEpczv3iuRQiqPI3PosH8-WdmMggzqQTjCEvtWTjwfPskx3-Luu4X4qQSkUTwHB59Pf6tILiN-YNWh_PgV-dsxbt59zDPOwPJG1oeuUpSFpbRB5b3xg9U6q-0-upy/s985/Little%20Eve.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="985" data-original-width="648" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwHe5JrZ-NcNqcc_UXy54KsbRdMmajf7UZ19cHk8RvZPJjna1A5Uj_On-ZJ6O21GQiEpczv3iuRQiqPI3PosH8-WdmMggzqQTjCEvtWTjwfPskx3-Luu4X4qQSkUTwHB59Pf6tILiN-YNWh_PgV-dsxbt59zDPOwPJG1oeuUpSFpbRB5b3xg9U6q-0-upy/s320/Little%20Eve.jpg" width="211" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Tor Nightfire edition, 2022</i></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Catriona Ward's gothic novel <span style="color: #cc0000;"><b>Little Eve</b></span> is difficult to describe. Not because it is surreal or unclear or overly complex, but because revealing its plot is a disservice to the reader. The novel begins in 1921 with the discovery of a brutal scene, then falls back to 1917, the latter stages of the Great War, to tell its story. The story reveals itself to the reader in mostly episodic sequences, as characters living on an isolated Scottish island go about their daily activities, picking mushrooms and mending clothes and taking part in a snake ritual. As we read, the story becomes increasingly complex, with characters from the outside world seeping in, and the occasional time jump. Yet as it is complicated it also begins to piece itself together.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">This is as vague as I dare describe the plot, since I would urge readers of darker, psychological fiction to pick this one up. I enjoyed it immensely. The novel revolves primarily around two teenaged girls at the isolated island, where they live with their Uncle, two women and two other children. They attend school at the nearby village, and have various encounters with outsiders, most of whom see them as odd. Tensions rise among the island members, through their outside interactions, their individual desires, and their often strained relationships between one another, all under the watchful eyes and strict leadership of their Uncle. The situation is fascinating, the characters intriguing, and Ward manages to consistently maintain both the suspense and the tension, along with its powerful atmosphere in that stormy environment, as the story builds to its reveal.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Despite selling poorly and being available at the time of publication only in the UK, the book received the <b><a href="https://www.shirleyjacksonawards.org/award-winners/2018-shirley-jackson-awards-winners/#:~:text=Winner%3A%20%E2%80%9CHelp%20the%20Witch%2C,Tom%20Cox%20(Help%20the%20Witch)&text=%E2%80%9CBlood%20and%20Smoke%2C%20Vinegar%20and,Tom%20Cox%20(Help%20the%20Witch)" target="_blank">2018 Shirley Jackson Award</a></b> for best novel, which is awarded for dark psychological fiction. Following the international success of <b><a href="https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?2979346" target="_blank">The House on Needless Street</a></b>, which I also enjoyed immensely, <b><span style="color: #cc0000;">Little Eve</span></b> was reprinted with an introduction by Ward, and made available in North America.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>Casual Debrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08098608670682517783noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8163165929158089008.post-69654810584124899632024-02-28T09:11:00.006-05:002024-02-28T09:30:55.363-05:00Casual Shorts & the ISFdb Top Short Fiction # 41: The Dunwich Horror by H. P. Lovecraft<div style="text-align: left;"><div><span style="color: #990000;"><b>Lovecraft, H. P. "The Dunwich Horror." Weird Tales, April 1929.</b></span></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>This article is part of my attempt to read all the 155 stories currently (as of 1 November 2022) on the ISFdb's Top Short Fiction list. Please <a href="https://casualdebris.blogspot.com/2022/11/project-isfdb-top-short-fiction.html" target="_blank">see the introduction and list of stories here</a></i>. <i>I am encouraging readers to rate the stories and books they have read on the ISFdb.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><span style="color: #990000;">ISFdb Rating: 8.75/10</span></b></div><div><b><span style="color: #990000;">My Rating: 7/10</span></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgkh1uiZnMlQS8OKZdufm7Hete4u-iQoR4cyUaiPwdk9wiw8JqCt7ZiXsls-Rfn7d52fJyuaeGMPS0Ob3UjlM1OGtRgOBSiZDPKMuFpoa0TXPfKDYIrrYNPz4a4bv2tGEdedZStRsged40I0mxDVODZxxFV9a6AV1eC01GlFdCtghR338UQ5OS1RFh0F-x/s1516/Weird%20Tales%20April%201929.webp" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1516" data-original-width="1000" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgkh1uiZnMlQS8OKZdufm7Hete4u-iQoR4cyUaiPwdk9wiw8JqCt7ZiXsls-Rfn7d52fJyuaeGMPS0Ob3UjlM1OGtRgOBSiZDPKMuFpoa0TXPfKDYIrrYNPz4a4bv2tGEdedZStRsged40I0mxDVODZxxFV9a6AV1eC01GlFdCtghR338UQ5OS1RFh0F-x/s320/Weird%20Tales%20April%201929.webp" width="211" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>"<i>When a traveller in north central Massachusetts takes the wrong fork at the junction of the Aylesbury pike just beyond Dean's Corners he comes upon a lonely and curious country.</i>"</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>And so begins the tale of the town of Dunwich and a horror it recently experienced. Like many a Lovecraft story, the setting is lonely and isolated, but compared to the more urban centres of "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" and the ports and seas of "The Call of Cthulhu," Dunwich is mostly detached from the known world. The story keeps us mostly at an isolated house in the hills and its environs (with side visits to the library), and of course such tales must be in isolated regions otherwise their secrets wouldn't be so secretive and the curious general public would be milling about.</div><div><br /></div><div>In our isolated house lives Lavinia Whateley, her aged father and her unusually quick-developing Wilbur, who is toddler-sized and skilled when he is less than a year old. Who is the father of this devilish child, and what strange creature is he and grandpa hiding in the newly reconstructed portion of their house? This is not among my favourite of Lovecraft's stories, but I award points for mood and atmosphere, which are highly effective throughout. Lovecraft's melodrama is sometimes too much for me, with the learned townsmen studying and desperately translating documents, and later swooning at indescribable horrors, and the story, as many of his stories, is somewhat overlong since we get the point and don't need have it stretched out. This is why as a teen I believe I read only one of his collections, and I believe I read it intermittently, goaded on by Lovecraft-reading classmates.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>For more of this week's Wednesday Short Stories, please visit <a href="https://pattinase.blogspot.com/2024/02/short-story-wednesday-my-cheesecake.html" target="_blank">Patti Abbott's blog</a>.</div></div>Casual Debrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08098608670682517783noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8163165929158089008.post-59630898394864954272024-02-20T13:46:00.002-05:002024-02-20T17:39:27.989-05:00Casual Shorts & the ISFdb Top Short Fiction # 40: The Monkey's Paw by W. W. Jacobs<div style="text-align: left;"><div><span style="color: #990000;"><b><br /></b></span></div><div><span style="color: #990000;"><b>Jacobs, W. W. "The Monkey's Paw." Harper's Monthly Magazine, September 1902.</b></span></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>This article is part of my attempt to read all the 155 stories currently (as of 1 November 2022) on the ISFdb's Top Short Fiction list. Please <a href="https://casualdebris.blogspot.com/2022/11/project-isfdb-top-short-fiction.html" target="_blank">see the introduction and list of stories here</a></i>. <i>I am encouraging readers to rate the stories and books they have read on the ISFdb.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><span style="color: #990000;">ISFdb Rating: 8.75/10</span></b></div><div><b><span style="color: #990000;">My Rating: 9/10</span></b></div><div><br /></div><br /><div><br /></div><div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi914ypbQGRH2WzoGxUbAMMlM20fb6C2ccWIb6HTU99uFU103ZhiI_n6ulv052IzehG6f_tlhmTmpSm-Mn8BRF2hZ4PkpkCk6zurmjw-cNWn9XqHPUyn_wD2IjzxBfkVxQFBSbpV_pWiiH8x2-hDlZ73Wvcebo5pZtHV0XMzL73HPeGZEDvfabvhlxbxppv/s1000/Monkeys%20Paw%20Walt%20Sturrock.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="758" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi914ypbQGRH2WzoGxUbAMMlM20fb6C2ccWIb6HTU99uFU103ZhiI_n6ulv052IzehG6f_tlhmTmpSm-Mn8BRF2hZ4PkpkCk6zurmjw-cNWn9XqHPUyn_wD2IjzxBfkVxQFBSbpV_pWiiH8x2-hDlZ73Wvcebo5pZtHV0XMzL73HPeGZEDvfabvhlxbxppv/s320/Monkeys%20Paw%20Walt%20Sturrock.jpg" width="243" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Art by Walt Sturrock</i></td></tr></tbody></table>"<i>Outside, the night was cold and wet, but in the small living room the curtains were closed and the<br />fire burned brightly.</i>"</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>On a dark and stormy night, Mr. and Mrs. White and their adult son Herbert are visited by an old acquaintance of the father's, Sergeant-Major Morris. Unlike the homely Whites, Morris is a man of the world, a travel with vast experience who had been stationed in India and has returned with many tales. Among these is the tale of the monkey's paw, a talisman that bestows upon its owner three wishes, yet with the warning that the wishes are granted via malicious means. Morris was the last person to own the monkey's paw, and tosses the wretched object into the fire, from where it is quickly rescued by Mr. White. Sure enough, later that night the White's decide to make a wish, partly in jest, and ask for two hundred pounds to clear their mortgage.</div><div><br /></div><div><div><i>“Well, I don’t see the money,” said his son, </i>[...]<i> and I bet I </i><i>never shall.”</i></div></div><div><br /></div><div>Ominous words indeed.</div><div><br /></div><div>Because I read this story at the young and impressionable age of ten or eleven, it has stayed closely with me, and I enjoy it with every re-read (which has been numerous). Aside from nostalgia, it is well constructed, remaining simple yet tight, and contains an impressive layer of emotions for a story so short, from the tight-nit family with their playful understanding of one another, to the mother's affecting grief and the father's anxieties over the ominous paw. That last sequence, wonderfully illustrated by Walt Sturrock, alone contains more contrasting emotions than many a novel. There are some great phrases, terrific mood, and the story's enclosed space and oppressive weather create the perfect atmosphere. To contrast all this darkness, that instance of the streetlight at the end gives a tiny glow of relief amid such horrible circumstances.</div><div><br /></div><div>The story is readily available throughout the web, and I urge anyone who has not yet experienced the story outside that <b><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0759267/?ref_=ttep_ep7" target="_blank">The Simpsons</a></b> episode, to do so. Once read, you can read the following paragraph.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>For many years following its initial publication in <b>Harper's Monthly</b>, "The Monkey's Paw" was a staple in ghost story anthologies, a practice that continues but in a lessened form. Interestingly, the story is not a ghost story, but an example of an early zombie, or living dead tale. Mr. White's wish to make his son alive again presumably brings the animated corpse of the boy to come rapping at their front door, and not the spirit of the boy. While subgenres at the time were not as defined as they are today, so that many terror tales or stories with a supernatural element were relegated to the popular ghost story form, this misclassifying can lead to a transformation or misreading of the text. As a ghost, there would be a formless spirit somehow managing to tap on the door, yet the understanding that it is the walking corpse of their child brings with it a powerful element of horror that would be deprived from a reader with a ghost in mind. Jacobs makes it clear that Herbert was killed by falling into "some machinery," and Mr. White reminds his wife that he was only able to recognize the boy because of his clothes (as he was evidently horribly mangled). It is this shredded and bloodied figure Jacobs expects us to imagine standing behind the door, the image Mr. White so desperately wants to spare his wife from seeing, and not a translucent image of a boy nor a bedsheet blowing in the wind.</div><div><br /></div><div>Wonderful stuff.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>For more of this week's Wednesday Short Stories, please visit <a href="https://pattinase.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Patti Abbott's blog</a>.</div></div>Casual Debrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08098608670682517783noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8163165929158089008.post-77178490273946801352024-01-17T09:26:00.007-05:002024-01-17T09:42:25.330-05:00Casual Shorts & the ISFdb Top Short Fiction # 39: The Veldt by Ray Bradbury<div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div><span style="color: #990000;"><b>Bradbury, Ray. "The World the Children Made." The Saturday Evening Post, 23 September 1950.</b></span></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>This article is part of my attempt to read all the 155 stories currently (as of 1 November 2022) on the ISFdb's Top Short Fiction list. Please <a href="https://casualdebris.blogspot.com/2022/11/project-isfdb-top-short-fiction.html" target="_blank">see the introduction and list of stories here</a></i>. <i>I am encouraging readers to rate the stories and books they have read on the ISFdb.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><span style="color: #990000;">ISFdb Rating: 8.82/10</span></b></div><div><b><span style="color: #990000;">My Rating: 7/10</span></b></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>" <i>'George, I wish you'd look at the nursery.' </i>"</div><br /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpmwB_sxZHlqY0GyIyqzjJVpd38d-q_Tk8mGQu-NZXXmTfCtQeaWKziwmN9GGDLrxlYy0w_4FmIaeHYfGmDXFNc17Yc41DYBCXlvfntf-3u89WfXBQ54FvvedC4YlII4w7z3tKuwLtfP7dGdaw6ISZur5H4p4d347hBrdvoWbAkkYdwGJ-T0p8Rj0YgPWR/s200/Saturday%20Evening%20Post%20September%2023%201950.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="200" data-original-width="148" height="264" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpmwB_sxZHlqY0GyIyqzjJVpd38d-q_Tk8mGQu-NZXXmTfCtQeaWKziwmN9GGDLrxlYy0w_4FmIaeHYfGmDXFNc17Yc41DYBCXlvfntf-3u89WfXBQ54FvvedC4YlII4w7z3tKuwLtfP7dGdaw6ISZur5H4p4d347hBrdvoWbAkkYdwGJ-T0p8Rj0YgPWR/w195-h264/Saturday%20Evening%20Post%20September%2023%201950.jpg" width="195" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Cover by George Hughes</i></td></tr></tbody></table>George and Lydia Hadley have invested in a Happylife Home, where all their daily comforts are met. Their home will prepare and serve their meals, and even switch their lights on and off throughout each part of the home they are passing, as they are passing. Yet they believe that the best decision they made was to include in their home a nursery for the children. Very much like the <b>Star Trek</b> holodeck, the nursery can create whatever is on the minds of the children--it can produce their very desires. In the case of ten year-olds Peter and Wendy Hadley, who are currently interested in Africa, the nursery has created a veldt, an open space within a jungle, which includes a herd of lions in the distance who seem to always be chewing up some prey.</div><div><br /></div><div>Yet something is off, the Hadleys notice, as the children's obsession begins to make them uncomfortable, as does the veldt and the ever observing lions. They decide that the children--and even they--have become too spoiled with the comforts of their new home, and make the ultimate decision to be less reliant on modern comforts. But are the children prepared for this great change?</div><div><br /></div><div>Included in Bradbury's popular collection <b><a href="https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?31723" target="_blank">The Illustrated Man</a></b>, "The Veldt" is one of his most read stories, and it is overall a really good one. The message is straightforward, as is the plotting which is paint-by-numbers, but the story works well as it places the reader on edge, is short with good pacing, and those looming lions--the looming dangers of technology and its ties to indolence--drive the narrative forward. There is nothing subtle or surprising, and its theme is well worn, even for 1950, but it becomes more prevalent each year so is never dated. The story predicts motion sensor lights and the holodeck, though we don't yet have tables that apologize to us for forgetting the ketchup. In fact, any smart gadget that would "forget" a pre-programmed step would today be considered faulty. In this world the table gadget is given personality, perhaps a little joke by Bradbury, or to indicate that those lions are not smoke and mirrors, but have desires of their own.</div><div><br /></div><div>The story was originally title "The World the Children Made," but "The Veldt" is a more appropriate title. While the children made the world inside the nursery, the world that made a nursery that could drive the irrational drives of children was made by a society seeking comfort. The story's central focus, and where the tension lies, is in the veldt.</div><div><br /></div></div>Casual Debrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08098608670682517783noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8163165929158089008.post-10836232843705089362024-01-10T11:09:00.002-05:002024-01-10T11:09:42.397-05:00Casual Shorts & the ISFdb Top Short Fiction # 38: The Lucky Strike by Kim Stanley Robinson <div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div><span style="color: #990000;"><b>Robinson, Kim Stanley. "The Lucky Strike." Universe 14, edited by Terry Carr. New York: Doubleday, June 1984.</b></span></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>This article is part of my attempt to read all the 155 stories currently (as of 1 November 2022) on the ISFdb's Top Short Fiction list. Please <a href="https://casualdebris.blogspot.com/2022/11/project-isfdb-top-short-fiction.html" target="_blank">see the introduction and list of stories here</a></i>. <i>I am encouraging readers to rate the stories and books they have read on the ISFdb.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><span style="color: #990000;">ISFdb Rating: 8.83/10</span></b></div><div><b><span style="color: #990000;">My Rating: 7/10</span></b></div><div><br /></div><div>This story is available online at <a href="http://strangehorizons.com/fiction/the-lucky-strike/" target="_blank">Strange Horizons</a>.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>"<i>War Breeds strange pastimes.</i>"</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjREohFD-xE2xl0jG4Tqcw0h7D5F5xFBIiH7PRhH5a9YMcvZ9mlMY3TLcDgKLJ2vNGE7Pqcagj6gMQIZeG5x_6-JK2_E3OeJr-NhJsVuvxmPrDesly3f_sz2gViEFE5ng1oMCpKppX6FFWJyN-NAxOIV618BPDF5DiWDAtEaOyIuUfCcG-XKRxTcQJGggy9/s600/Universe%2014%20Terry%20Carr.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="396" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjREohFD-xE2xl0jG4Tqcw0h7D5F5xFBIiH7PRhH5a9YMcvZ9mlMY3TLcDgKLJ2vNGE7Pqcagj6gMQIZeG5x_6-JK2_E3OeJr-NhJsVuvxmPrDesly3f_sz2gViEFE5ng1oMCpKppX6FFWJyN-NAxOIV618BPDF5DiWDAtEaOyIuUfCcG-XKRxTcQJGggy9/s320/Universe%2014%20Terry%20Carr.jpg" width="211" /></a></div>In an alternate World War II, pilot Colonel Paul Tibbets crashes the <i>Enola Gay</i> on a practice run, killing the entire crew. This tragedy leaves Captain Frank January in charge of the replacement crew and its plane, <i>The Lucky Strike</i>, on her voyage to drop a new kind of bomb on Hiroshima, Japan.</div><div><br /></div><div>An interesting story that explores the anxieties and doubts of January, aware of the destructive power of the atomic bomb, and struggling between his duty and the desire to abandon the mission. A good story with a strong first third, an overlong middle section, and a good but unsubtle finish. Essentially, the story presents an alternate scenario to end the war, to not drop the bomb on a populated area, but rather send a message by dropping the bomb onto an unpopulated area and force the Japanese to surrender as they are witness to the potential devastation that a nuclear strike can potentially wreak on a city. Of course, we can never know exactly how this would have played out in our reality, but Robinson is confident as to what the outcome would have been, and idealistically envisions such a scenario quickly leading to worldwide disarmament.</div><div><br /></div><div>The historical elements and the crew's flight and its details were what I found most interesting, and whether accurate or not (though it probably is), the flight sequence is believable and creates more tension than January's anxieties, though undoubtedly heightened by those anxieties. I did wonder why a person like January would be selected as crew leader for the most important flight of WWII, since these high level decisions are made with scrutiny. There is a brief interplay with a psychologist early on, implying that it is easy to deceive medical officers, but this is slight and in itself not terribly convincing, or perhaps a scenario too familiar in war stories featuring conscientious officers. January is presented as more of an average American who would denounce the practice of a nuclear strike, than a soldier who would unwaveringly follow such an order.</div><div><br /></div><div>The last section plays out conveniently for Robinson's message. January is sacrificed but Hiroshima and the rest of Japan are saved, and nuclear disarmament is to follow shortly. Harry S. Truman is depicted as the villainous leader who pushed for the strike, and the scientists behind the nuclear bomb are presented as military realists whose mission is to end the war without concern for civilian life.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>For more of this week's Wednesday Short Stories, please visit <a href="https://pattinase.blogspot.com/2024/01/short-story-wednesday-conversation-with.html" target="_blank">Patti Abbott's blog</a>.</div></div>Casual Debrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08098608670682517783noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8163165929158089008.post-38627989450605492612023-12-20T10:47:00.000-05:002023-12-20T10:47:07.987-05:00Casual Shorts & the ISFdb Top Short Fiction # 37: Arena by Frederic Brown<div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div><span style="color: #990000;"><b>Brown, Frederic. "Arena." Astounding Science Fiction, June 1944.</b></span></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>This article is part of my attempt to read all the 155 stories currently (as of 1 November 2022) on the ISFdb's Top Short Fiction list. Please <a href="https://casualdebris.blogspot.com/2022/11/project-isfdb-top-short-fiction.html" target="_blank">see the introduction and list of stories here</a></i>. <i>I am encouraging readers to rate the stories and books they have read on the ISFdb.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><span style="color: #990000;">ISFdb Rating: 8.83/10</span></b></div><div><b><span style="color: #990000;">My Rating: 7/10</span></b></div><br /><div><br /></div><div>"<i>Carson opened his eyes, and found himself looking upward into a flickering blue dimness.</i>"</div><br /><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimUxhXvyPIe7BzfUv-YGVHOx4dMBjYTPDaK7eWRZ16DIkEk0mAGQNeDlOz0kfMc-F4YkeBguCmZVkKH3XysBfd5GAZQK5bSkEKa_l9Tz3xdBWxeXkTmXG71Zqnli1hqzfRHthcVq54SY0zP5OhZISYFMwg7lVtDbMUQbGRaXafRmRRgZ6B0jtzoZXw6ptg/s264/Astounding%20Science%20Fiction%20Arena%20Frederic%20Brown.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="264" data-original-width="191" height="264" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimUxhXvyPIe7BzfUv-YGVHOx4dMBjYTPDaK7eWRZ16DIkEk0mAGQNeDlOz0kfMc-F4YkeBguCmZVkKH3XysBfd5GAZQK5bSkEKa_l9Tz3xdBWxeXkTmXG71Zqnli1hqzfRHthcVq54SY0zP5OhZISYFMwg7lVtDbMUQbGRaXafRmRRgZ6B0jtzoZXw6ptg/s1600/Astounding%20Science%20Fiction%20Arena%20Frederic%20Brown.jpg" width="191" /></a></div>At the edge of our solar system, just beyond the (once) planet Pluto, humans are battling beings from another galaxy. They have named these beings "Outsiders," as they know nothing of the aliens, having never captured any of their technology nor ever having even seen one of the creatures. Despite this, humans and Outsiders are caught in an ongoing war that has no end in sight, and no clear victor.</div><div><br /></div><div>A soldier awakens on a bed of hot blue sand, in a dome that has drawn him and an outsider into its confines. The "Entity" that has trapped them informs Carson telepathically that to end their forever war, he and the outsider must fight to the death, and the losing being's entire species will be wiped from existence. The Entity explains that there will be no end to this way, as they two are equally matched, and that there is no hope for peace, so in order to end the war and allow the progression of one race, the other needs to be destroyed.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Arena" then becomes a battle of wits between Carson and the Outsider, a round blobbish creature with extendable arms. As such it is entertaining and has a decent ending. Reading this in 2023 I cannot help, however, to have some major qualms about the story. Namely, the Outsiders are presented as cruel, bloodthirsty creatures, and humans are human, so that we must root for Carson and the human race. Yet the Outsider is seen only through Carson's eyes, and we must accept its bloodthirst via two points: it kills a lizard and can project its hatred toward Carson. These, however, are interpretations of a being we know absolutely nothing about--a being so different from us that we should not be trying to project our own human limitations on it. Perhaps it killed the lizard to absorb nutrients, or perhaps it is testing its environment as it is also aware that it is engaging in a battle to save its entire species. Its projection of hated can be related to the perceived threat of the human to its race, or the intense emotion is merely its way of expressing fear, or like a boxer before a fight, trying to intimidate its opponent. Regardless, this is not a reason to so easily accept the destruction of another species. We understand, from Carson's point of view, that the Outsiders invaded our galaxy, but as in Starship Troopers, it is possible that the humans were in some way the original aggressors, but that Carson, a mere soldier, would be unaware of this. The motive is unknown, yet the perception is that these are evil creatures out to destroy us, without actual evidence.</div><div><br /></div><div>Interestingly, the story was published in 1944, near the close of World War II. While the general public was not at that time fully aware of the genocidal extremes experienced during the war, presenting humans here as participating in genocide, justified by Carson and the Entity, is still a somewhat uncomfortable. In the 1960s, Gene Roddenberry and the producers of <b>Star Trek</b> were more aware of these allusions, and in their adaptation by frequent ST contributor Gene L. Coon, for the short story for its season one episode also title "<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708418/?ref_=ttep_ep18" target="_blank">Arena</a>," the threat was diminished. The losing party of a battle between human Captain James T. Kirk and alien lizard creature Gorn would see its warship and crew destroyed, and not their entire species.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Arena" recalls some of those adventure survival stories I read as a kid, and though I grew tired of them as I grew older, there is something compelling in Brown's version. The solitariness of Carson, the strangeness of his environment, and the predicament itself, more so than the alien foe, kept me rapt.</div><div><br /></div></div>Casual Debrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08098608670682517783noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8163165929158089008.post-91416595687247628492023-12-12T23:55:00.002-05:002023-12-23T22:29:19.034-05:00Casual Shorts & the ISFdb Top Short Fiction # 36: And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side by James Tiptree, Jr.<div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div><span style="color: #990000;"><b>Tiptree, Jr., James. "And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side." Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, March 1972.</b></span></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>This article is part of my attempt to read all the 155 stories currently (as of 1 November 2022) on the ISFdb's Top Short Fiction list. Please <a href="https://casualdebris.blogspot.com/2022/11/project-isfdb-top-short-fiction.html" target="_blank">see the introduction and list of stories here</a></i>. <i>I am encouraging readers to rate the stories and books they have read on the ISFdb.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><span style="color: #990000;">ISFdb Rating: 8.83/10</span></b></div><div><b><span style="color: #990000;">My Rating: 8/10</span></b></div><br /><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaLiswXMqKdrpjW9e5xNhO0qRZUUi-nsXE_vTniFX3xPBoyDkJytzAk71FrC7kl1I97CTJJXI2OZhe5UA8kkwzoZixedIGW3HKmkOGoEwskGe18zSJolcGQc1vMpUsjM8j-V5nSBWrOmwtXP8TjiDxB194JrxMLcAA5sjLM6e16qjJaGRWtlMmRE69Ibay/s600/MFSF%20March%201972%20Tiptree.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="425" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaLiswXMqKdrpjW9e5xNhO0qRZUUi-nsXE_vTniFX3xPBoyDkJytzAk71FrC7kl1I97CTJJXI2OZhe5UA8kkwzoZixedIGW3HKmkOGoEwskGe18zSJolcGQc1vMpUsjM8j-V5nSBWrOmwtXP8TjiDxB194JrxMLcAA5sjLM6e16qjJaGRWtlMmRE69Ibay/s320/MFSF%20March%201972%20Tiptree.jpg" width="227" /></a></div><br /></div><div>"<i>He was standing absolutely still by a service port, staring out at the belly of the </i>Orion<i> docking above us.</i>"</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>In the distant future, humans have expanded into space and interact with a variety of alien species. A reporter is at Big Junction waiting for alien ships to dock, hoping to encounter his first alien, when he begins a conversation with a station engineer. The engineer tells him of his own obsession with aliens, and his life-long pursuit of a subservient sexual relationship with a member of another species. This desire led him to abandon a career in medicine and return to school to instead pursue a career that would eventually allow him into space. He soon discovered that while aliens want nothing to do with humans, his obsession drives him to continue seeking what he can never have. This obsession, it turns out, is common for humans, and the engineer believes that it is our natural sex drive and need to seek out new experiences that is the root cause. He tells the reported his story in the hopes of dissuading the other from further pursuing contact with aliens.</div><div><br /></div><div>A surprisingly sad story in the way it relegates some species, not just humans, to the bottom of a many-tiered social ladder, and the desire for recognition while barely existing in the eyes of most other species. But what is ultimately sad is that humans are presented as chasing the impossible in the most pathetic, unabashed way. Stay away, we warn each other, but we are destined to take on this pursuit as it is fundamentally in our nature. The engineer is a representation of humanity, and we know the route that the curious reporter will take, now child-like beside the older, deeply depressed engineer. Short and with a straightforward point, the story nonetheless gives us many fine moments, such as the appearance of the engineer's wife and the treatment of a baser alien species by the engineer himself.</div><div><br /></div><div>While I do not agree with Tiptree's thesis, I do find it compelling and well presented. We can interpret the story as a case of interracial sex, or even simply the complexities of sexual relationship as a whole. I don't think this was Tiptree's intention, though, since within the text it is clear that she has created both a complex and detailed universe, and strong character elements that are reflected in the story's individual moments.</div><div><br /></div><div>A master of storytelling, it is difficult not to engage with the story, and to re-read as there is so much in even this short piece that we can infer. There are the more obvious moments, such as the engineering looking at his wrist, clearly indicating that he had sold his watch as part of the expensive pursuit of alien love. Then there are the more subtle moments. We learn the engineer's marriage is loveless, one of convenience as space stations hire only couples. This rule of couple hiring was likely implemented in a doomed attempt to ensure that employees would not pursue relations with aliens as they would have sexual partners alongside them. The rule is easily skirted, however, as the engineer and his wife, it turns out, have conspired in their roles as each is on the quest for alien love.</div><div><br /></div><div>The reporter mentions briefly that he catches the scent of tallow. This is in reference to the engineer's body odour, a mixture of unwashed flesh as his obsession precedes even basic hygiene, and also infers the animal desire of which he cannot be rid. Adding to this baseness, we learn that aliens who agree sleep with humans are referred to as perverts. Human sex, or sex with a human, is universally considered unnatural, heightening the notion that the pursuit for alien sex is unattainable. As humans are being debased by the most noble of aliens (noble from a human perspective), humans in turn attempt to debase those aliens in lesser regards (as we see the engineer's treatment of the station's helpful alien). This pattern, we learn, began with the engineer early in his career, as when describing his first meeting with an alien in a bar, he refers to the bartender as a "snotty spade," as derogatory as it is racist.</div><div><br /></div><div>This scene at the bar invokes much of the latter part of the story, and of the engineer's fruitless quest. The obsessed human woman in the bar is covered in bruises, we learn from sexual acts with aliens. This woman is likened to the engineer's wife, but we know these are not the same women as the one in the bar kills herself, but the obsessiveness is shared by the two women, as the engineer's wife too is described as having similar sexual scars. At the bar the engineer mentions seeing an expensively dressed man with "something wrecked about his face." This is how the reported first describes the engineer, who indicates that the description "fits." The scene in the bar is a foreshadowing of the engineer and his wife; he essentially sees his fate from the outset, sees his future in these two characters: the bruised woman and the wrecked man.</div></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div>The fact that the characters are nameless indicates that the affliction discussed is not individual, as argued by the engineer, but that these characters merely reflect all of humanity. In addition, we learn that the engineer is from Nebraska whereas the reporter is an Aussie, indicating that the affliction is global.</div><div><br /></div><div>Finally, the reporter is not good at his job. He complains that no one will talk to him, and his comments and opening questions are elementary, not learned on journalism school but by watching generic newscasts. His generic remarks while "greedily" trying to have a peek at a docking ship reveal that he is not there for a story, but driven by his desire. Like the engineer, he probably chose a profession that would allow him to visit a space station in order to pursue his desire. This is the story's greatest irony: the engineer reveals what would be unique and fascinating story about humanity's desires and the sharp drop in today's birthrate, yet the person in a position to bring this story to the world, and thereby potentially bringing journalistic glory upon himself, is like a child stuck to the station glass, and finally a puppy dashing off to catch sight of an alien.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>For more of this week's Wednesday's Short Stories, please visit <a href="https://pattinase.blogspot.com/2023/12/short-story-wednesday.html" target="_blank">Patti Abbott's blog</a>.</div></div>Casual Debrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08098608670682517783noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8163165929158089008.post-27641260777628760722023-12-08T14:29:00.002-05:002023-12-08T14:29:45.606-05:00Casual Shorts & the ISFdb Top Short Fiction # 35: The Gernsback Continuum by William Gibson<div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div><span style="color: #990000;"><b>Gibson, William. "The Gernsback Continuum." Universe 11, edited by Terry Carr. New York: Doubleday, June 1981.</b></span></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>This article is part of my attempt to read all the 155 stories currently (as of 1 November 2022) on the ISFdb's Top Short Fiction list. Please <a href="https://casualdebris.blogspot.com/2022/11/project-isfdb-top-short-fiction.html" target="_blank">see the introduction and list of stories here</a></i>. <i>I am encouraging readers to rate the stories and books they have read on the ISFdb.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><span style="color: #990000;">ISFdb Rating: 8.83/10</span></b></div><div><b><span style="color: #990000;">My Rating: 7/10</span></b></div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMg9kRRAuob9kmIcuSAI3mQTpXg72OO_AH2s16QN0E462tFN8k2IB1Li-7h3AVOEWIy2Z-OWaYo9dz-kmukxCvUJDAFMeQIcpXXGthwj5y9fZrpMrWoXUuYWxMcEpO0zZslXXBMSnaA4V7ZdUjrgbpTRnYx4p-4VHs7S5WCEHPJuD_dfVjmoFQu3lbGmRM/s600/Universe%2011%20Terry%20Carr.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="406" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMg9kRRAuob9kmIcuSAI3mQTpXg72OO_AH2s16QN0E462tFN8k2IB1Li-7h3AVOEWIy2Z-OWaYo9dz-kmukxCvUJDAFMeQIcpXXGthwj5y9fZrpMrWoXUuYWxMcEpO0zZslXXBMSnaA4V7ZdUjrgbpTRnYx4p-4VHs7S5WCEHPJuD_dfVjmoFQu3lbGmRM/s320/Universe%2011%20Terry%20Carr.jpg" width="217" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div><div>"<i>Mercifully, the whole thing started to fade, to become an episode.</i>"</div><div><br /></div><div>An American photographer in London photographing shoes for a series of ads, is hired by a British publisher to photograph 1930s American architecture. The idea is that American architecture of the 1930s reveals what western society at the time believed was in store for the future--the future through the perspective of the past. The photographer returns to the U.S. and, in Los Angeles, begins work on the project. As he is immersed in canvasing and documenting buildings and other constructs of the past, he begins to catch glimpses of future engineering from the perspective of the '30s, images evoked from old science fiction film, H. G. Wells, pulp magazines and the naïve hopefulness of an America that was unaware of the damages created by striving to achieve a technologically driven future.</div><div><br /></div><div>"The Gernsback Continuum" is an essay disguised as a short story. In terms of plot, there really isn't much: a photographer is assigned to take specific photos, becomes immersed and starts to hallucinate, gains perspective from a friend and the hallucinations begin to dissipate. He reflects, and the end. It is the thesis that makes the story interesting, and it could have been quite a good essay, but would not have found as many readers as the short story did.</div><div><br /></div><div>Gibson is essentially looking at how westerners used to view the future half a century in the pre-World War II past, with a hopefulness that longed for the technology proposed by the early pulps, led by pulp pioneer Hugo Gernsback. We could have had large flying machines with fins or advanced dirigibles, oversized road vehicles, underwater civilizations, eighty-lane highways, nutrition pills, and so forth. Yet the reality fifty years later is the cost of technological development, the environmental and health problems derived in order to get to where we are in 1980. The future we received is one of global threats, illness. strife and pollution. He wonders which of these options is the preferred world?</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div></div>Casual Debrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08098608670682517783noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8163165929158089008.post-65731643881835799792023-12-05T22:35:00.003-05:002023-12-05T22:35:27.453-05:00Casual Shorts & the ISFdb Top Short Fiction # 34: The Quest for Saint Aquin by Anthony Boucher<div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div><span style="color: #990000;"><b>Boucher, Anthony. "The Quest for Saint Aquin." New Tales of Time and Space, Raymond J. Healy, editor, November 1951.</b></span></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>This article is part of my attempt to read all the 155 stories currently (as of 1 November 2022) on the ISFdb's Top Short Fiction list. Please <a href="https://casualdebris.blogspot.com/2022/11/project-isfdb-top-short-fiction.html" target="_blank">see the introduction and list of stories here</a></i>. <i>I am encouraging readers to rate the stories and books they have read on the ISFdb.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><span style="color: #990000;">ISFdb Rating: 8.86/10</span></b></div><div><b><span style="color: #990000;">My Rating: 7/10</span></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjG5LcKP7bTDiuzBQZcIuS9qrVeNF51JS6hhgAhwqEJlsMPQMfT9FEcxFhubWQkyoPZZsxCaBahdiCljuxd7Vgx8Iuq1V6-weX_k06lsdTVUGrVaY_23t4A2ULIhRyk_OJUQDaqFP33S7D-ytlAatgXxgHySa-vRqHoUKzh0gXhCh15HXN2Uj0nsBJBDiKV/s600/New%20Tales%20of%20Time%20and%20Space.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="527" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjG5LcKP7bTDiuzBQZcIuS9qrVeNF51JS6hhgAhwqEJlsMPQMfT9FEcxFhubWQkyoPZZsxCaBahdiCljuxd7Vgx8Iuq1V6-weX_k06lsdTVUGrVaY_23t4A2ULIhRyk_OJUQDaqFP33S7D-ytlAatgXxgHySa-vRqHoUKzh0gXhCh15HXN2Uj0nsBJBDiKV/s320/New%20Tales%20of%20Time%20and%20Space.jpg" width="281" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div><div>"<i>The Bishop of Rome, the head of the Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, the Vicar of Christ on Earth--in short, the Pope--brushed a cockroach from the fifth-encrusted wooden table, took another sip of the raw red wine, and resumed his discourse.</i>"</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>In a post-apocalyptic future, the technocratic government has banned all religion, and those who insist on practicing must do so in secret or risk imprisonment or death. The story opens with the secret pope meeting a devout Catholic, Thomas, at the back of a quiet, out-of-the-way pub. The pope engages Thomas to seek out the remains of a long-deceased Catholic orator named Saint Aquin, who it is said had the power to convert people in droves. It is also rumoured that Saint Aquin's body remains entirely intact, and the pope believes that if they can find these remains, they would attract many more converts to the church. The body, however, is located in the radioactive zone, and Thomas would need to successfully sneak past government officials and loyal atheist citizens who are always on the lookout for believers. To help him in his quest, the pope gives him a robotic horse, or "robass" as it is called (more of a robotic donkey, but despite the "ass," still it is referred to as a horse). The robass is sentient, a robot instilled with artificial intelligence, and en route the two are able to freely converse.</div><div><br /></div><div>On their quest they face many dangers, of discovery, physical violence and doubt. The voyage is filled also with many biblical allusions. Saint Aquin is a barely disguised reference to Saint Thomas Aquinas, and Thomas is, without a doubt, Doubting Thomas. The robass is Balem's donkey, a tale mentioned in the story, and amid the biblical allusions there is a different kind of reference.</div><div><br /></div><div>The story outright mentions Isaac Asimov's short story "<a href="https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?44192" target="_blank">Reason</a>" (<b><span style="color: #cc0000;">Astounding Science Fiction</span></b>, April 1941), one of the robot stories later included in his 1950 collection <b><a href="https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?17201" target="_blank">I, Robot</a></b>--one of my favourites in the collection. In "Reason," a robot deduces that humans could not have created it, since the robot is far superior than humans, and therefore worshipped a robot god. Amid Thomas and the robass's ongoing discussion of faith, the donkey-horse states: "<i>I have heard of one robot on an isolated space station who worshipped a God of robots and would not believe that any man had created him</i>." (Though perhaps what he heard about was the short story, rather than the event, though an AI of today wouldn't confuse the two.) Boucher places his story in the same universe as Asimov's robot stories, and the anecdote of the reasoning robot is set in "The Quest for Saint Aquin's" distant past, as though the technocracy occurred following the robot age. Perhaps the technocracy was established by Asimov's now-ruling robots (really there is nothing in the text to suggest this.)</div><div><br /></div><div>"The Quest for Saint Aquin" is a good short story, with some good ideas interweaved with plotting that is expected of such a story. It is an idea that we encounter quite frequently in science fiction, that science and robotics will eventually help in eliminating faith, as we continue to learn more about the world around us, and can argue less and less that what is in nature is a miracle, since we can explain its existence in scientific words. These earlier stories do it in simpler terms, but it continues to crop up as a sub-genre. Or perhaps a sub-sub-genre.</div><div><br /></div><div>The story was reprinted a few years later in the January 1959 issue of <b><span style="color: #cc0000;">The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction</span></b>, shortly after Boucher stepped down as its editor. The note on the story indicates that the reprint was aimed at getting the story out to a wider audience, as "its single previous appearance, in an anthology some years ago, did not give it as wide a readership as it deserves." There is no indication that Boucher himself had any influence in its publication, but perhaps it was included partly as homage to the magazine's previous editor. The reprint is reformatted, and ignores the original breaks that appeared in its original publication, replacing them with new breaks in unusual places.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>For more of this week's Wednesday Short Stories, please visit <a href="https://pattinase.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Patti Abbott's blog</a>.</div></div>Casual Debrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08098608670682517783noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8163165929158089008.post-86654894611238530642023-11-26T21:33:00.004-05:002023-11-28T22:23:47.174-05:00Casual Shorts & the ISFdb Top Short Fiction # 33: The Marching Morons by C. M. Kornbluth<div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div><span style="color: #990000;"><b>Kornbluth, C.M. "The Marching Morons." Galaxy Science Fiction, April 1951.</b></span></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>This article is part of my attempt to read all the 155 stories currently (as of 1 November 2022) on the ISFdb's Top Short Fiction list. Please <a href="https://casualdebris.blogspot.com/2022/11/project-isfdb-top-short-fiction.html" target="_blank">see the introduction and list of stories here</a></i>. <i>I am encouraging readers to rate the stories and books they have read on the ISFdb.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><span style="color: #990000;">ISFdb Rating: 8.86/10</span></b></div><div><b><span style="color: #990000;">My Rating: 7/10</span></b></div><br /><div><br /></div><div>"<i>Some things had not changed.</i>"</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhondC17xBS6rYk-86BabDB4J34LV_Kh3urxeM-F_I__9aAZZuLp9dKLmP4tPI2XxZ3s_Wf1LW04jQqNyCSKf3yzjpYO9IdbAH3joiWZtAbtiE-vFo9uooSrMdZ7cZywEHBT_G2ZRxc5ifrgdB7yxkEWCiC11qIfVWRl7fxWakoOsAB-5ByV83yTOJP8d5m/s600/Kornbluth%20Marching%20Morons.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="423" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhondC17xBS6rYk-86BabDB4J34LV_Kh3urxeM-F_I__9aAZZuLp9dKLmP4tPI2XxZ3s_Wf1LW04jQqNyCSKf3yzjpYO9IdbAH3joiWZtAbtiE-vFo9uooSrMdZ7cZywEHBT_G2ZRxc5ifrgdB7yxkEWCiC11qIfVWRl7fxWakoOsAB-5ByV83yTOJP8d5m/s320/Kornbluth%20Marching%20Morons.jpg" width="226" /></a></div>An average man from 1988 is awoken in the distant future to a world in which the average IQ is 45.</div><div><br /></div><div>In his time, Barlow was a successful but dishonest realtor. A dental accident left him in a coma, and he was sealed in a vacuum until, centuries later, a potter discovers his body, recognizes his ailment and immediately cures him. Barlow is brought to a government rep and eventually learns of the current state of the world. Evidently, over the last generations, the more educated classes produced less children while the less educated continued to breed furiously, so that the genetics passed down led to a crisis of idiocy, and an overpopulation of morons. The government wants Barlow to help find a way to reduce the population, so that eventually a balance can be found. Being a man of greed and lesser morals, Barlow comes up with a harsh solution while demanding a dictatorship in return.</div><div><br /></div><div>While this is among Kornbluth's best-known stories, and much praised, I was less taken by it. The circumstances are certainly interesting, and I do like the depiction of the chaotic future society where objects are oversized rather than miniaturized, radios are still the main source of information and entertainment, and paper money is still being used while movie theatres have become so advanced that sensory enhancements include scent, despite featuring primarily blatant propaganda. Other than the radio news segment, I did not care for the overt comedy and feel the story would have had a natural element of comedy in the circumstances alone. The tone is comedic though the storyline is quite dark--extremely dark as it deals with eugenics in a plot set up by a clearly racist man, so that the need to eliminate morons can ultimately be diverted to a need to eliminate anyone of a darker skin tone or a different set of beliefs. While Kornbluth does not pursue this particular route outwardly, the two are placed side-by-side, so that racial cleansing is a possibility in a world determined to pursue moron-cleansing.</div><div><br /></div><div>There are a lot of similarities between "The Marching Morons" and Kornbluth's other popular story "<a href="https://casualdebris.blogspot.com/2023/01/casual-shorts-isfdb-top-short-fiction_28.html" target="_blank">The Little Black Bag</a>." For a premise, each presents us with unlikeable characters accidentally embroiled in time travel who gain fame and fortune by taking advantage of the people around them. In "The Little Black Bag," however, protagonist Dr. Brayard Kendrick attempts to improve upon himself and, despite conning those around him, does perform positive acts for society. In "The Marching Morons," Barlow has no intention or even a kindling of awareness of doing good, and goes to extremes to gain as much from helping government than he possibly can. He is overtly racist and egocentric, and sees people as cattle, or more specifically, as lemmings. Nowhere is there even the hint of any gains he might make, and his desires are to the extremes of selfishness. The end differs greatly, for while they are both taken down from the heights they have achieved, Barlow suffers a cruel death through an act of vengeance by those who promised him great wealth, while Kendrick's demise is quite somber, as he has given a great deal of aid to those around him, and has learned to be a better person through his experiences, despite having begun his career with less than moral motives.</div><div><br /></div><div>This characterization of Barlow in the midst of a moronic dystopia leads us to wonder if it is not the constant breeding of the genetically poor that leads to a bleak, dysfunctional future, but instead the lack of morals in the average contemporary man and in government. And this, subtly presented, is the most interesting idea in the story. Barlow behaves similarly to the higher IQ government officials, whose intelligence is used not to save humanity, as they recruit Barlow for this, but to eventually execute Barlow once humanity has been saved. The officials use Barlow to exterminate the moron population, and are pleased at the extermination, but primarily because it was done other hands. They in turn exterminate the exterminator on grounds that he is dangerous and a threat to them, whereas the officials were the threat to the moron population--the entire citizenry of the planet--as the ruse to wipe them out was effectively their own. In fact, it is implied that the officials have conjured up this idea of extermination but were unable to act on it, as soon as an outsider with the ability to effectuate the plan is easily paid off to do so. There is no talk of education programs or methods other than propaganda aimed to reduce the birthrate, and the simplest form of cleansing is death, not rehabilitation of any kind. A comment on the current state of an uninvolved mass and a government out to protect itself. </div><div><br /></div><div>I do not like this story as much as I liked "The Little Black Bag," but I do like the thinking it offers if we peel away the humour.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>For more of this week's Wednesday Short Stories, please visit <a href="https://pattinase.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Patti Abbott's blog</a>.</div></div>Casual Debrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08098608670682517783noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8163165929158089008.post-82049986409919323872023-11-22T10:00:00.001-05:002023-11-22T10:03:01.383-05:00Casual Shorts & the ISFdb Top Short Fiction # 32: Second Variety by Philip K. Dick<div style="text-align: left;"><div><span style="color: #990000;"><b><br /></b></span></div><div><span style="color: #990000;"><b>Dick, Philip K. "Second Variety." Space Science Fiction, May 1953.</b></span></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>This article is part of my attempt to read all the 155 stories currently (as of 1 November 2022) on the ISFdb's Top Short Fiction list. Please <a href="https://casualdebris.blogspot.com/2022/11/project-isfdb-top-short-fiction.html" target="_blank">see the introduction and list of stories here</a></i>. <i>I am encouraging readers to rate the stories and books they have read on the ISFdb.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><span style="color: #990000;">ISFdb Rating: 8.88/10</span></b></div><div><b><span style="color: #990000;">My Rating: 8/10</span></b></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>"<i>The Russian soldier made his way nervously up the ragged side of the hill, holding his gun ready.</i>"</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtoCYaouMiJOT5qyyLRgY6vVKyWjDyS3iyfikqb0CqVf4-GIY_AfnisPTt1nk6CvDFDkksy1W7n8E3Oi5XIXe_eJsaPhwagkNIT7cjKbZ_lBwx5kCyizh9VY0-UZOB6SCakP8DbjzTUvzGmyPuthsZwPhmn9K0rA7TMmTGdRnyd8xqb_gxuUaLJ9iKgF_1/s514/Space%20Science%20Fiction%20May%201953.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="514" data-original-width="360" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtoCYaouMiJOT5qyyLRgY6vVKyWjDyS3iyfikqb0CqVf4-GIY_AfnisPTt1nk6CvDFDkksy1W7n8E3Oi5XIXe_eJsaPhwagkNIT7cjKbZ_lBwx5kCyizh9VY0-UZOB6SCakP8DbjzTUvzGmyPuthsZwPhmn9K0rA7TMmTGdRnyd8xqb_gxuUaLJ9iKgF_1/s320/Space%20Science%20Fiction%20May%201953.jpg" width="224" /></a></div>Opposing Russian and American forces are nearing the end of a lengthy world war that has decimated much of the Earth. The Russians were in control of the war, but the Americans developed a new weapon, small machines called "claws" that dig around searching for prey, essentially tearing to pieces any life it encounters, human or otherwise. Americans have radiation shields to protect themselves from attack, and in the latter stages of the war it was the Russians who were being decimated. But these machines have evolved, gained sentience, and have been able to construct improved versions of itself, and smarter claws have begun to appear. Humans have been forced to live sheltered underground, the only place they are protected from the claws. The American leaders, however, have managed to escape to the moon, where they are safe from both claws and the Russian military. Communication has become difficult on- and off-planet</div><div><br /></div><div>An American bunker is visited by a single Russian soldier who is taken down by a claw as he delivers a message, asking for an American officer to visit the Russian bunker. Senior officer Major Hendricks decides to comply, and makes his way through ash-ridden wasteland France toward the enemy base. At the Russian base he discovers a new kind of claw, far more advanced than former counterparts. The remaining three Russians show him faded photographs of other advanced claws, and inform him that the two they have encountered each have a plate indicating their make: V1 and V3. Therefore, there remains a still undiscovered second variety.</div><div><br /></div><div>Then the real paranoia sets in.</div><div><br /></div><div>I have always admired the work of Philip K. Dick, and I have read a good deal of it. "Second Variety" is among his better stories. While it has some clunky bits in the first half and some less polished sequences in the latter quarter, it is nonetheless a good, energetic read. (Dick rarely polished his work as he was in a rush to get it published.) In this story Dick mixes his usual paranoia with a powerful comment on human nature, and it is this comment that he chooses to end the story with, rather than the expected final twist. Dick does try to veer us away from guessing that twist, but really it is only direction in which the story can head, and because he chooses to end on his social commentary, the story is not weakened by predictability, but rather elevated by this decision.</div><div><br /></div><div>Oddly, the original interior artwork used in <b>Space Science Fiction</b>, by Alex Ebel, gives away the story's two major surprise plot points. It would be interesting to know what was Dick's response response to this, as well as that of the readers.</div><div><br /></div><div>The story was adapted in 1995 as <b><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114367/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_7_nm_1_q_screamers" target="_blank">Screamers</a></b>, an entertaining movie diminished by a final act made up of generic drawn-out fight sequences. The ending tries to capture Dick's intention but is not as effective, though has Peter Weller and a nice post-apocalyptic setting filmed in my home city. If I were to re-watch it today, though, I would probably be disappointed.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>For more of this week's Wednesday Short Stories, please visit <a href="https://pattinase.blogspot.com/2023/11/short-story-wednesday-beauty-contest.html" target="_blank">Patti Abbott's blog</a>.</div></div>Casual Debrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08098608670682517783noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8163165929158089008.post-11414567200435268892023-11-04T22:45:00.003-04:002023-11-08T08:30:01.111-05:00Casual Shorts & the ISFdb Top Short Fiction # 31: Sandkings by George R.R. Martin<div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div><span style="color: #990000;"><b>Martin, George R.R. "Sandkings." Omni, August 1979.</b></span></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>This article is part of my attempt to read all the 155 stories currently (as of 1 November 2022) on the ISFdb's Top Short Fiction list. Please <a href="https://casualdebris.blogspot.com/2022/11/project-isfdb-top-short-fiction.html" target="_blank">see the introduction and list of stories here</a></i>. <i>I am encouraging readers to rate the stories and books they have read on the ISFdb.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><span style="color: #990000;">ISFdb Rating: 8.88/10</span></b></div><div><b><span style="color: #990000;">My Rating: 9/10</span></b></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>"<i>Simon Kress lived alone in a sprawling manor house among dry, rocky hills fifty kilometers from the city.</i>"</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhazdxNZbvELOsRVD2B9HLh8XCYBU2mvtZHT1e0m6CewpldkGPkJbeX-9DnvXY8in7V-RIcWE8wEixN8sMZ0_lcD2BAM_OhU26wyFSi6G-Nuui3tB84zmCh-wPobXDkNK-N_bfCSkj4bbG2MT_ubxZnil1UIRxOFahutGYBUEjjzX6JVwtGUr_pJ7BMOa5O/s645/Omni%201979%20Sandkings.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="645" data-original-width="496" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhazdxNZbvELOsRVD2B9HLh8XCYBU2mvtZHT1e0m6CewpldkGPkJbeX-9DnvXY8in7V-RIcWE8wEixN8sMZ0_lcD2BAM_OhU26wyFSi6G-Nuui3tB84zmCh-wPobXDkNK-N_bfCSkj4bbG2MT_ubxZnil1UIRxOFahutGYBUEjjzX6JVwtGUr_pJ7BMOa5O/s320/Omni%201979%20Sandkings.jpg" width="246" /></a></div>Wealthy and arrogant Simon Kress likes to amuse himself with unusual pets, and needs a new kind of somewhat self-sufficient pet as he is often away from home for lengthy periods. At an obscure rarities shop, he purchases psionic insect-like creatures called "sandkings." These creatures have a "maw" that lives underground and is protected by its minion "mobiles," who built elaborate castle-like structures over their maw. Moreover, these creatures can wage war among their groups, and worship their owner who feeds them, to the point that they can carve the owner's likeness into their castle.</div><div><br /></div><div>Kress purchases four maws and a large aquarium-encased desert is installed in his house. Seller Jala Wo tells him to be patient, that the creatures need time to evolve and develop their communities before the warring and worshipping can begin. Yet Kress is nothing but impatient. Utterly spoiled by wealth and the social circle in which he revolves, Kress learns to provoke the sandkings into battle through calculated starvation, and soon places the creatures on display for his impressed elite guests. Betting ensues, and things get pretty nutty. As we expect, everything escalates, from the growth of the sandkings to their abuse, their battles, the social gatherings and even the skewed worshipping of Kress.</div><div><br /></div><div>The story straddles many genres, from science fiction with elements of fantasy, it soon evolves into pure horror with even quite the all-out action sequence in its latter stages. The story is satire and a cruel depiction of wealth and greed--its protagonist is not one who will change but instead become more and more warped as his situation becomes more dire, and he shows absolutely no compassion, or even the slightest acknowledgement of those he harms along the way, committing acts to protect himself that can pretty much harm anyone and everyone who get involved. The violence too escalates as does the gruesome horror. It is all done well though, as the novella-length allows for good pacing and story development. Unlike Kress, the narrative is very patient, giving the reader first Kress's current situation and circumstance, nicely bringing in the sandkings and developing those creatures at a nice pace as well. Martin then begins to toss everything into the story, placing Kress through various stages of horror and desperation, as he attempts so many ways in escaping his ever-evolving sandkings.</div><div><br /></div><div>And that ending is excellent.</div><div><br /></div><div>As much as we despise Kress, and pretty much everyone else in the story, we cannot help feel threatened by these creatures and hence drawn into Kress's own desperations as he attempts to leave the hell that he has created. We want Kress to get what he deserves, but we do not necessarily want the sandkings to be victorious. These creatures essentially evolve from Kress's own warped psychology, and the physical world that the sandkings begin to build around Kress are pretty much emulating his own warped mind, as though they are evolving as Kress himself had evolved, from opportunist to egoist to murderer.</div><div><br /></div><div>This story left a strong impression on me when I first read it as a teen. Incidentally, in <b><a href="https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?301940" target="_blank">Nebula Winners 15</a></b> (Frank Herbert, ed., Harper & Row, 1981), which is where I also first encountered a couple other stories that impressed me, including Barry B. Longyear's "<a href="https://casualdebris.blogspot.com/2023/09/casual-shorts-isfdb-top-short-fiction.html" target="_blank">Enemy Mine</a>." This is my third reading, I believe, and I have enjoyed it each time. The novella was loosely adapted for <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0667945/?ref_=ttep_ep1" target="_blank">the pilot episode</a> of <b><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112111/?ref_=fn_al_tt_3" target="_blank">The Outer Limits</a></b>, and while much was changed to make the story more contemporaneous and appropriate for prime time, an to make Kress into a mad scientist rather than a greedy young professional, it is on its own merits enjoyable television, with a great performance by Beau Bridges.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>For this week's Wednesday's short stories, please visit <a href="https://pattinase.blogspot.com/2023/11/short-story-wednesday-finger-stewart.html" target="_blank">Patti Abbott's blog</a>.</div></div>Casual Debrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08098608670682517783noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8163165929158089008.post-23000696825961932952023-10-29T11:08:00.002-04:002023-10-31T23:12:54.557-04:00Casual Shorts & the ISFdb Top Short Fiction # 30: The Word for World is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin<div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div><span style="color: #990000;"><b>Le Guin, Ursula K. "The Word for World is Forest." Again, Dangerous Visions, Harlan Ellison, ed. New York: Doubleday, March </b></span><span style="color: #990000;"><b>1972.</b></span></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>This article is part of my attempt to read all the 155 stories currently (as of 1 November 2022) on the ISFdb's Top Short Fiction list. Please <a href="https://casualdebris.blogspot.com/2022/11/project-isfdb-top-short-fiction.html" target="_blank">see the introduction and list of stories here</a></i>. <i>I am encouraging readers to rate the stories and books they have read on the ISFdb.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><span style="color: #990000;">ISFdb Rating: 8.90/10</span></b></div><div><b><span style="color: #990000;">My Rating: 8/10</span></b></div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSyJrELrzObm4EUHnHfXP5FAgltIAGQW0GvO1Ckm3SsB7P8-DaCHMr1zuZfgMfu7eOKFG307TeVRV5UPc99KPTZ_BJa818II3nWY16Z_UqdbW2dpANoZtka32c24AP1Q5E9m4YpdoBjxlT2bXRIBF2JeZ9booOaRbB-urijqULC6gd2ngwZyMs6GbkyyGr/s475/The%20Word%20for%20World%20is%20Forest%20Le%20Guin.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="289" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSyJrELrzObm4EUHnHfXP5FAgltIAGQW0GvO1Ckm3SsB7P8-DaCHMr1zuZfgMfu7eOKFG307TeVRV5UPc99KPTZ_BJa818II3nWY16Z_UqdbW2dpANoZtka32c24AP1Q5E9m4YpdoBjxlT2bXRIBF2JeZ9booOaRbB-urijqULC6gd2ngwZyMs6GbkyyGr/s320/The%20Word%20for%20World%20is%20Forest%20Le%20Guin.jpg" width="195" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div>"<i>Two pieces of yesterday were in Captain<span> Davidson's mind when he woke, and he lay looking at them in the darkness for a while</span>.</i>"</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Humans are in the process of colonizing Athshe, a planet covered almost entirely with forest. Some settlements on the planet act as military bases and administration centres, while others act as lumberyards, like New Tahiti, where the loggers are clear-cutting the dense forest, preparing the lumber for a one-way trip to Earth. As with early colonial invasion on Earth, settlements have enslaved a number of Athsheans, or "creechies" as they are derogatorily called. Athsheans are small in stature and covered in green fur, and live what humans consider to be simple and primitive lives. Moreover, Athsheans are non-aggressive, have no recorded acts of violence against one another, no war of any kind, and live entirely in peace. They are forced to perform menial tasks under the administrative guise of "autochthone volunteers," and are looked upon as inferior and treated poorly. While a few humans are sympathetic to the Athsheans, wanting to learn of their rich culture, their world view and unusual lucid dreaming, to the point of befriending some of the natives, most are indifferent or downright aggressive toward the furry green beings.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">When a female Athshean is brutally raped and killed by a human soldier, her husband begins an uprising, forever changing the nature of his people.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">An undisguised anti-colonial novel that has been likened to a treatise on Vietnam, given its date of publication, as well as a statement on the founding of the Americas, really it can be read as a criticism of all forms of colonialism humans have experienced. "It's just how things happen to be," one human conqueror remarks early on. "Primitive races always have to give way to civilized ones. Or be assimilated."</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Le Guin's sympathies, and the readers', are with the Athsheans, though she does give a broad range of character to the humans, from the caring Lyubov who teaches Athshean revolt leader Slever and essentially lays the foundation for his later vengeance, to the marine Davidson, a cold-blooded "virile" brute (Le Guin's words). From their names, humans are given international scope, as we have colonists named Muhammed, Juju and Raj, and so forth, yet Davidson is the only one given a nationality, as he is born in Cleveland, so the unsympathetic virile colonial brute is an American. With "hoppers" he and his group of loyal followers try to mow down the "creechies" in their jungle, dropping jelly bombs that set the forests on fire. This scene is a portrait of the American war in Vietnam.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">My favourite section of the novella is Chapter II, where we travel with Selver among his people, village to village, and learn of their culture, of their dreaming and understanding of the world which is vastly different from the colonialists, with their own ideas of "dreaming" and their own notions of madness. In particular, a very different experience of killing and for the Athsheans, not knowing the concept of murder. This living directly on the land and a connection to its people can be a representation of North American Indigenous peoples.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Overall it is a strong story. The first half is, however, stronger than the latter sections, which were a little more familiar, and even Avatar-like (but of course precedes any Hollywood take on colonialism), and ends on a more realistically grim reality. The end made the work a little over-long, as Davidson's struggles just aren't as interesting as the Athsheans or their relations with humans.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Evidently Le Guin titled the story "The Little Green Men," and her editor for <a href="https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?224813" target="_blank"><b>Again, Dangerous Visions</b></a>, Harlan Ellison, pressured her to re-title it "The Word for World is Forest," which she eventually, and reluctantly agreed to. I like Ellison's title, which refers to the fact that the Athsheans have the same work for "world" as they do for "forest," and this title evokes their view of the world in which they live, as for them society is the world, and their world of Athshe is their single society. This point is also important as it is in contrast with the humans naming their planet Earth, which is synonymous with dirt. Le Guin's title, on the other hand, takes the classic idea of aliens from outer space, the concept of "little green men," and essentially humanizes them, which should be the objective when encountering a new people, rather than othering them.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">For more of this week's Wednesday's Short Stories, please visit <a href="https://pattinase.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Patti Abbott's blog</a>.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>Casual Debrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08098608670682517783noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8163165929158089008.post-89930061262933105782023-10-10T22:23:00.003-04:002023-10-10T22:23:34.757-04:00Casual Shorts & the ISFdb Top Short Fiction # 29: The Sound of Thunder by Ray Bradbury<div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div><span style="color: #990000;"><b>Bradbury, Ray. "A Sound of Thunder." </b></span><span style="color: #990000;"><b>Collier's, 28 June 1952.</b></span></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>This article is part of my attempt to read all the 155 stories currently (as of 1 November 2022) on the ISFdb's Top Short Fiction list. Please <a href="https://casualdebris.blogspot.com/2022/11/project-isfdb-top-short-fiction.html" target="_blank">see the introduction and list of stories here</a></i>. <i>I am encouraging readers to rate the stories and books they have read on the ISFdb.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><span style="color: #990000;">ISFdb Rating: 8.91/10</span></b></div><div><b><span style="color: #990000;">My Rating: 7/10</span></b></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>"<i>The sign on the wall seemed to quaver under a film of sliding warm water.</i>"</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4_u4IX5_lRoekfXP9yUrayuAgTUSlu_gBSiZMSwGQ3rrgw7TnSysJb1s-K0vvdQXiynmNR7-CGxq17vk5aEBEJDegQ9w1vWkniT_iYRP2TXuNeBkoQtcZLhVmx6UzkrUf6i6YKzxXz1s81F6h952CDfurch5lnUCjBF5NX8BEJwhhHARCbdIdq5Hk5d3u/s640/Colliers%2028%20June%201952.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="480" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4_u4IX5_lRoekfXP9yUrayuAgTUSlu_gBSiZMSwGQ3rrgw7TnSysJb1s-K0vvdQXiynmNR7-CGxq17vk5aEBEJDegQ9w1vWkniT_iYRP2TXuNeBkoQtcZLhVmx6UzkrUf6i6YKzxXz1s81F6h952CDfurch5lnUCjBF5NX8BEJwhhHARCbdIdq5Hk5d3u/s320/Colliers%2028%20June%201952.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><br />Wealthy Eckels joins a hunting safari that takes him far into the past to hunt a Tyrannosaurus rex. The guide warns Eckles and his fellow hunters to remain on the path they have set up, and to shoot only the dinosaur they have marked with paint. Any other action, no matter how infinitesimal, can change the future.</div><div><br /></div><div>Bradbury plays with the theory of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect" target="_blank">butterfly effect</a> to exaggeration, and as expected, Eckels strays off the marked path. This slight action infuriates the guides, as they fear nothing more than to change the course of history, and even threaten to leave Eckels behind. As expected, great change in the far future of 2055 awaits our time travellers.</div><div><br /></div><div>So many variations of this story have been published over the years that it has become too familiar. Yet in the vein of predictable dated Bradbury, it is nonetheless a good story. I particularly like his use of the titular sound of thunder as it unites the threat of the distant past with the threat of the changed future. Of greater impact than a massive, threatening monster, is awakening in a world that has completely changed. I also like that Bradbury takes the time to explain the certainty of why the death of the hunted animal will not affect the future. Far-fetched, sure, but that he takes the time to close this potential hole with logical reasoning is great.</div><div><br /></div><div>The original <b>Collier's</b> included a nice, and nicely accurate, <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/eyemagazine/5589021911" target="_blank">illustration for the story</a> by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Siebel" target="_blank">Frederick "Fritz" Siebel</a>.</div><div><br /></div><div>In 2005, a movie adaptation was released, <b><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0318081/?ref_=hm_rvi_tt_i_15" target="_blank">The Sound of Thunder</a></b>, directed by Peter Hyams. I have not seen it, nor do I particularly wish to.</div><div><br /></div></div>Casual Debrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08098608670682517783noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8163165929158089008.post-62837967566810099652023-09-26T12:31:00.001-04:002023-09-26T14:05:51.678-04:00Casual Shorts & the ISFdb Top Short Fiction # 28: The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula K. Leguin<div style="text-align: left;"><div><b><span style="color: #990000;"><br /></span></b></div><div><span style="color: #990000;"><b>Leguin, Ursula K. "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas." </b></span><span style="color: #990000;"><b>New Dimensions 3, Robert Silverberg, ed. New York: Doubleday, October 1973.</b></span></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>This article is part of my attempt to read all the 155 stories currently (as of 1 November 2022) on the ISFdb's Top Short Fiction list. Please <a href="https://casualdebris.blogspot.com/2022/11/project-isfdb-top-short-fiction.html" target="_blank">see the introduction and list of stories here</a></i>. <i>I am encouraging readers to rate the stories and books they have read on the ISFdb.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><span style="color: #990000;">ISFdb Rating: 8.93/10</span></b></div><div><b><span style="color: #990000;">My Rating: 9/10</span></b></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>"<i>With a clamor of bells that set the swallows soaring, the Festival of Summer came to the city<br />Omelas, bright-towered by the sea.</i>"</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiX1ySugeS9rAna0hkj2U87G1P_hbMTFFgLbzNyi2zC1WOSEUk4_nDTwaUtE1IKDhIT7cEwFnSD7eUhIlVA4IID9J7w4q4e6RY6w_r-n0bJzsFah0nBw1O_UWQyXQrKmO7U9sDJlUJUK4Y1wXkeni3E3cb5suTPi6kbv6WmMkd65Lpo2bVpd4dYpIGJTAVx/s640/New%20Dimensions%203%20Robert%20Silverberg.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="491" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiX1ySugeS9rAna0hkj2U87G1P_hbMTFFgLbzNyi2zC1WOSEUk4_nDTwaUtE1IKDhIT7cEwFnSD7eUhIlVA4IID9J7w4q4e6RY6w_r-n0bJzsFah0nBw1O_UWQyXQrKmO7U9sDJlUJUK4Y1wXkeni3E3cb5suTPi6kbv6WmMkd65Lpo2bVpd4dYpIGJTAVx/s320/New%20Dimensions%203%20Robert%20Silverberg.jpg" width="246" /></a></div>The land of Omelas is a beautiful utopia, where all the inhabitants are happy. All except for one child who is locked away and neglected. It is the abuse of this child that is the cost for all others to be happy.</div><div><br /></div><div>An effective take on the moral conundrum of one person's eternal suffering resulting in the happiness of the multitude. The story presents a moral thought experiment: Can we allow a single individual to exist in perpetual squalor, to be tortured and shunned and isolated from all others, so that all others can live in peace and plenty? And yet the story moves beyond thought and debate, as Le Guin appears to be giving the reader an answer.</div><div><br /></div><div>In Le Guin's version of the debate, the idyll is a seaside village celebrating its summer festival, while a child is locked away in the dark and damp of a broom closet. Le Guin's narrator reports on the village activities, and after painting the utopian picture, tells of the child. This is followed by the varying responses of the villagers to the child. The narrator's tone, though reporting, is not altogether removed. There is an underlying sense of judgement, and the voice indicates that the people of Omelas are, in effect, just like the reader, average people with a certain level of intelligence.</div><div><br /></div><div>There is also a dark underlying element. These intelligent people, for the most part, do nothing for the child, and accept the word that the child's suffering is in effect their happiness, and yet there is no proof given, neither concrete nor heresy, that freeing the child would result in suffering for Omelas. The narrator tells it as fact, and we, like the citizens of Omelas, are expected to accept it as such, like the traditional stoning of Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" and other truths or realities whose origins have been lost, and whose practices should be questioned.</div><div><br /></div><div>Moreover, the narrator tells us early in the story that not only are these people intelligent, but "there is no guilt in Omelas." The idyll in Omelas includes not just material comforts, but the added benefit of being guilt-free. We are also informed that everyone in Omelas, as soon as they reach a certain age, are informed of the child and of the reason for its captivity, and moreover, are allowed to visit and witness the child's suffering in person. The citizens of Omelas are not morally upset by the captivity of the child, or if upset, they quickly accept the situation and move on: "Their tears at the bitter injustice dry when they begin to perceive the terrible justice of reality, and to accept it."</div><div><br /></div><div>(While the ending is not transformative, it is impressionable, and I must here discuss that ending. So if you have not read the story, please do so now.)</div><div><br /></div><div>The ones who walk away refers to those who witness the child and, as a result, leave Omelas, never to return. No one knows where these people go, only that they are never seen again. At least not in Omelas. The ones who walk away presumably feel guilt, and cannot dry their tears and move on, and therefore cannot stay. They are the morally enlightened members of the society, and abandon all the happiness and material plenty of that world to walk away on their own. This enlightenment results in their self-banishment, as they would rather be challenged by the hardships of the outside world, unable to accept the wealth provided through the suffering of one child.</div><div><br /></div><div>A powerful story, exquisitely written.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>The short story has been a favourite of critics and editors over the years. It received the <a href="https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ay.cgi?23+1974" target="_blank"><b>1974 Hugo</b></a> for best short story, and has been included in an impressive number of major (and minor) anthologies. There are the "Best of..." and "Greatest..." collections, such as <a href="https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?4165" target="_blank"><b>The Best Science Fiction of the Year #3</b></a> (Terry Carr, ed., Ballantine, July 1974), <a href="https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?41816" target="_blank"><b>The Hugo Winners, Volume Three</b></a> (Isaac Asimov, ed., Doubleday, August 1977), <a href="https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?35843" target="_blank"><b>The Best of New Dimensions</b></a> (Robert Silverberg, ed., Pocket Books, November 1979), <a href="https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?365009" target="_blank"><b>The Greatest Science Fiction Stories of the Twentieth Century</b></a> (Martin H. Greenberg, ed., NewStar, October 1998) and <a href="https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?21656" target="_blank"><b>Masterpieces: The Best Science Fiction of the Twentieth Century</b></a> (Orson Scott Card, ed., Ace, November 2001). Then there are the noted fantasy anthologies such as <a href="https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?320309" target="_blank"><b>Black Water: The Anthology of Fantastic Literature</b></a> (Alberto Manguel, ed., Picador, 1983), <a href="https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?298169" target="_blank"><b>The Fantasy Hall of Fame</b></a> (Martin H. Greenberg & Robert Silverberg, eds., Arbor House, October 1983; later reprinted as <b><a href="https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?43698" target="_blank">The Mammoth Book of Fantasy All-Time Greats</a></b>), and <a href="https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?781455" target="_blank"><b>The Big Book of Modern Fantasy</b></a> (Ann VanderMeer & Jeff VanderMeer, eds, Vintage, July 2020). There are even anthologies for horror (<b>Wolf's Book of Terror</b>), female horror authors (<b>Mistresses of the Dark</b>), dystopias (Brave New Worlds), general literature (<b>Thirty American Stories from the Last Thirty Years</b>) and academic literature (<b>Backpack Literature</b>). And several others... It was of course included in many of Le Guin's collections, initially in her first collection, <b><a href="https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?105271" target="_blank">The Wind's Twelve Quarters</a></b> (Harper & Row, October 1975). The story is also a staple in readings for courses on literature, sociology, and philosophy. And likely others.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>For more of this week's "Wednesday Short Stories," please visit <a href="http://pattinase.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Patti Abbott's blog</a>.</div><div><br /></div></div>Casual Debrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08098608670682517783noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8163165929158089008.post-40287437363270629562023-09-20T10:35:00.001-04:002023-09-20T10:35:31.349-04:00Casual Shorts & the ISFdb Top Short Fiction # 27: Kaleidoscope by Ray Bradbury<div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div><b><span style="color: #990000;">Bradbury, Ray. "Kaleidoscope." </span></b><span style="color: #990000;"><b>Thrilling Wonder Stories, October 1949. pp 129-134</b></span></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>This article is part of my attempt to read all the 155 stories currently (as of 1 November 2022) on the ISFdb's Top Short Fiction list. Please <a href="https://casualdebris.blogspot.com/2022/11/project-isfdb-top-short-fiction.html" target="_blank">see the introduction and list of stories here</a></i>. <i>I am encouraging readers to rate the stories and books they have read on the ISFdb.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><span style="color: #990000;">ISFdb Rating: 9.00/10</span></b></div><div><b><span style="color: #990000;">My Rating: 7/10</span></b></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAnU5vKQrPT9NeMWtDEWRrN-P7nBZ4ocR8oR71TosyNpEB3wUI-xVJMzRQpglvJK3PgwDk-Uewe8S5cZ_R6pF55fHUu8XF_NbBeCAAHtR3HTy4CqlRRu5NmT9y4lT4puYmW5FXCtldKRO6-979VDXD8qS5XJuf5LnOjvaBLQ0a0OE9xQd5FooQmUa8YL7V/s600/Thrilling%20Wonder%20Stories%201949.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="425" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAnU5vKQrPT9NeMWtDEWRrN-P7nBZ4ocR8oR71TosyNpEB3wUI-xVJMzRQpglvJK3PgwDk-Uewe8S5cZ_R6pF55fHUu8XF_NbBeCAAHtR3HTy4CqlRRu5NmT9y4lT4puYmW5FXCtldKRO6-979VDXD8qS5XJuf5LnOjvaBLQ0a0OE9xQd5FooQmUa8YL7V/s320/Thrilling%20Wonder%20Stories%201949.jpg" width="227" /></a></div>"<i>The first concussion cut the ship up the side like a giant can opener.</i>"</div><div><br /></div><div>A dozen astronauts are launched into space when their rocket ship breaks open. They are each hurtling toward a different direction and a separate destination, away from one another, with about an hour remaining before they can no longer hear one another. In a brief space of time they contemplate mortality and whether a life fully lived meant anything more than one that was not, now that they will soon all be corpses.</div><div><br /></div><div>Bradbury is in existential mode. While this is not among his best thinking stories, it is nonetheless quite good. I did find myself more affected with the thought of spinning dizzyingly across space with not a shred of control--an absolutely horrific thought--than the idea of reminiscing and regretting minutes before death. Published in 1949, the story is as dated as one would expect, with a primitive take on space travel, and an all-male cast whose envy is aimed at the one man who had experienced many women and much comfort in his lifetime. With humans colonizing Jupiter, you would think their ships and their suits would be more advanced and better equipped, but in all fairness that was not Bradbury's aim. And humanity does not evolve as quickly as technology, and the main idea is still relevant and will continue to remain relevant as our rocket ships continue to improve.</div><div><br /></div><div>The title is well thought out. It refers to the image of one of the astronauts carried off by a small meteor shower and the metal and rock that surround him. Yet it refers simultaneously to the kaleidoscopic view of one's life, that it can be viewed at different angles and can contain beauty regardless of its experience.</div><div><br /></div><div>Bradbury's prose is distracting, His overuse of similes (the opening brief three-sentence paragraph contains three similes, with another close behind, and then another, like a barrage of meteorites, or like thoughts flashing quickly through one's mind, or like...). </div><div><br /></div><div>Not my favourite Bradbury (though it's his highest ranked on the ISFdb), but nonetheless a solid story, well worth reading..</div><div><br /></div><div>"Kaleidoscope" was among the stories selected for inclusion in Bradbury's famed <a href="https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?31723" target="_blank"><b>The Illustrated Man</b></a>. It has been reprinted excessively over the years.</div><div><br /></div></div>Casual Debrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08098608670682517783noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8163165929158089008.post-54047304011407509822023-09-18T10:12:00.000-04:002023-09-18T10:12:35.129-04:00Casual Shorts & the ISFdb Top Short Fiction # 26: Enemy Mine by Barry B. Longyear<div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div><b><span style="color: #990000;">Longyear, Barry B. "Enemy Mine." </span></b><span style="color: #990000;"><b>Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, September 1979.</b></span></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>This article is part of my attempt to read all the 155 stories currently (as of 1 November 2022) on the ISFdb's Top Short Fiction list. Please <a href="https://casualdebris.blogspot.com/2022/11/project-isfdb-top-short-fiction.html" target="_blank">see the introduction and list of stories here</a></i>. <i>I am encouraging readers to rate the stories and books they have read on the ISFdb.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><span style="color: #990000;">ISFdb Rating: 9.00/10</span></b></div><div><b><span style="color: #990000;">My Rating: 9/10</span></b></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>"<i>The Dracon's three-fingered hand flexed.</i>"</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIYwf5rW6C5TCXiKO21aU474mYUThMBW69xKock-1AX42n7SieH7y8ECvr7Kc-W4aOqtwwibaKc4rY25NUAW0l5DSlntEX1_micw6wOrLo9fkn0Yp_mLLkc_eGZCQzroZ0BeVWoPtUSVLXQA82wq76NlBa25gmq516sBwLTNP1JdhkXYVCOqXLgwR2SNLu/s380/Enemy%20Mine%20Barry%20B%20Longyear%201979.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="380" data-original-width="261" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIYwf5rW6C5TCXiKO21aU474mYUThMBW69xKock-1AX42n7SieH7y8ECvr7Kc-W4aOqtwwibaKc4rY25NUAW0l5DSlntEX1_micw6wOrLo9fkn0Yp_mLLkc_eGZCQzroZ0BeVWoPtUSVLXQA82wq76NlBa25gmq516sBwLTNP1JdhkXYVCOqXLgwR2SNLu/s320/Enemy%20Mine%20Barry%20B%20Longyear%201979.jpg" width="220" /></a></div>On an unexplored planetoid, a human and a Dracon (or "Drac") have crash landed during a battle between the two species. They must survive both the inhospitable landscape and their hatred for each other.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Reads like the premise of many a Hollywood script, and as expected, the two learn to work together and eventually develop a strong bond during their long months of confinement. However, unlike many stories that follow this plot-line, interracial or not, "Enemy Mine" has an engaging plot and is ultimately a genuinely touching story. The interracial aspects are strong, though they are to be expected (the racist human later experiences racism directed toward him when visiting Dracon society, etc.), but the friendship and commitment to another's cultural responsibilities is what I find mostly intriguing.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Along with hefty thematic elements, Longyear builds an excellent environment on Fyrine IV, the planet on which the two are stranded. The pair of enemies begin by struggling against the extreme elements, and then must build a life for themselves by seeking proper shelter, food and making clothes and other necessities with the little they have at hand. The details in which they learn to build and stitch are reminiscent of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, who also eventually discovers a companion. The story can be expanded by discovering more of Fyrine IV, and Longyear did expand the novella into a full-fledged novel in 1998 as "Enemy Mine: The Author's Cut," published alongside new stories set in the same universe, as <a href="https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?136520" target="_blank">The Enemy Papers</a> (Borealis, 1998). I have not read the works but will likely do so at some time.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Another aspect of the novella that I quite like, though it is not discussed too much, is the notion that the war between humans and Dracs is for naught, as our human mentions at the story's opening that the battle was essentially pointless, in a part of space no one really wanted. This is elaborated later on, but only slightly, and we are to understand that the hatred between the two species developed from a chance encounter as they were each attempting to expand their species. Yet there is no value in that part of space, so the war is driven partly by pride, the desire to conquer and perhaps the need each species has to burrow unhindered into deeper space. One thing we discover later in the story is that Dracons and humans are, despite their obvious differences, essentially the same species. Like humans they tend to other those who are unlike them, placing themselves on a higher rung. They have religion, a kind of caste system, and a knack for bureaucracy. Not entirely original, but it serves to drive home much of the story's thematic concerns.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibdcMH89ctLPDMcfbxWYv_uRXSP9byzDfeOTo7NJ5hlbGBQw651m7NDXEg80xiqNPdY2H9FTxvyV8EjS14OPVWTdA9qUHjMQIdNuuZKw3qDT5bCcUerEB1OyO-z3Ln2nlfbI_dxzxiFN0WC82Qpje9Onzco6LuFb6WepvYuDf_9Xe7eDYvj9W4NzfU0fdJ/s714/The%20Enemy%20Papers%20Longyear.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="714" data-original-width="478" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibdcMH89ctLPDMcfbxWYv_uRXSP9byzDfeOTo7NJ5hlbGBQw651m7NDXEg80xiqNPdY2H9FTxvyV8EjS14OPVWTdA9qUHjMQIdNuuZKw3qDT5bCcUerEB1OyO-z3Ln2nlfbI_dxzxiFN0WC82Qpje9Onzco6LuFb6WepvYuDf_9Xe7eDYvj9W4NzfU0fdJ/s320/The%20Enemy%20Papers%20Longyear.jpg" width="214" /></a></div>"Enemy Mine" swept the novella awards for stories published in 1979, being awarded the Hugo, the Nebula and the Locus in the novella category. Six years following its publication it was released as a major motion picture, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089092/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_8_nm_0_q_enemy%2520mine" target="_blank">Enemy Mine</a> (1985), directed by Wolfgang Petersen, and starring Dennis Quaid and Louis Gossett, Jr. I first watched the movie, in French, around 1987 or '88 with my brother, and read the novella not too long afterwards in the anthology <a href="https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?301940" target="_blank">Nebula Winners Fifteen</a> (ed. Frank Herbert, Harper & Row, 1981). My brother and I both enjoyed the movie, and I loved the novella, so much so that I gave it to my mother to read, who, an avid reader, disliked science fiction. She too loved the novella, and may have shed a tear if memory serves. I re-read the novella a couple years ago and enjoyed it once again then, and re-read it yet again a few days ago, and it holds up nicely.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>Casual Debrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08098608670682517783noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8163165929158089008.post-53362936604225771592023-08-30T10:40:00.008-04:002023-08-31T09:59:28.028-04:00Casual Shorts & the ISFdb Top Short Fiction # 25: The Machine Stops by E. M. Forster<div style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="color: #990000;"><br /></span></b><b><span style="color: #990000;">Forster, E. M. "The Machine Stops." The </span></b><span style="color: #990000;"><b>Oxford and Cambridge Review, Michaelmas Term (November) 1909.</b></span></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>This article is part of my attempt to read all the 155 stories currently (as of 1 November 2022) on the ISFdb's Top Short Fiction list. Please <a href="https://casualdebris.blogspot.com/2022/11/project-isfdb-top-short-fiction.html" target="_blank">see the introduction and list of stories here</a></i>. <i>I am encouraging readers to rate the stories and books they have read on the ISFdb.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><span style="color: #990000;">ISFdb Rating: 9.00/10</span></b></div><div><b><span style="color: #990000;">My Rating: 8/10</span></b></div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhh-2cBfQXT_0SQGMnpMaXtHxtXK6X8cLsMOg46S6X6LVvI8x1660d-wBqP2qMUWdm1Krmrm59H4bVkOEIyk1kKYuwRxkec1t395biX925y2DPdSqQArD5o4dq4Lxiq0teY_MCrMhezDLG51mMSe2ardHHBp5Z157Y_YybpqMWrZLFeE-Rvrnl6IUcPkPPN/s475/Forster%20The%20Machine%20Stops.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="316" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhh-2cBfQXT_0SQGMnpMaXtHxtXK6X8cLsMOg46S6X6LVvI8x1660d-wBqP2qMUWdm1Krmrm59H4bVkOEIyk1kKYuwRxkec1t395biX925y2DPdSqQArD5o4dq4Lxiq0teY_MCrMhezDLG51mMSe2ardHHBp5Z157Y_YybpqMWrZLFeE-Rvrnl6IUcPkPPN/s320/Forster%20The%20Machine%20Stops.jpg" width="213" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div>"<i>Imagine, if you can, a small room, hexagonal in shape, like the cell of a bee.</i>"</div><div><br /></div><div>In the distant future, humanity has reached a climax in their evolution, as humans have nestled into a stagnant existence. Some time before, people believed that it would be to their benefit to construct a great machine that spans the globe underground, and in which now are contained many cells that are home to individuals. Society is controlled by what appears to be artificial intelligence (as viewed in 1909), and humans are kept at bay: distracted by ideas, made to fear the outside, controlled birth and weaning, while babies born with special abilities, such as advanced athletics, are "destroyed." It appears the Machine is looking out for the interest of the people, but the people are instead being trained to worship the Machine.</div><div><br /></div><div>People rarely leave their cells, and have access to an assortment of buttons, each of which, by being pressed, provides the person with their immediate need: feeding, bathing, communicating with others in primitive audio or video, listening to music, attending lectures, and so forth. Like today's internet, people can also access information, texts and music of the past. Thanks to the Machine (now capital M), humanity no longer progresses, and people pursue frivolous acts, seeking new ideas and preparing to share them with others either through private communication or public lectures. This pursuit of "ideas" is intended to prevent humans from accessing true Ideas--those associated with their existence. Like television and the internet which distract more than they educate, Forster manages to foresee a future that is close to today's reality. The story seems to have had a resurgence during the pandemic lockdown, as we were living in cells and pursuing frivolous activities.</div><div><br /></div><div>The novelette focuses on Vashti, a woman content to be a part of the Machine. In a moment of pure irony, Vashti encounters the greatest form of ideas in the use of her imagination, as she views the clouds while riding in an air-ship: "Their shapes were fantastic; one of them resembled a prostate man. 'No ideas here', murmured Vashti, and hid the Caucasus behind a metal blind." This need to distance oneself from the outside world is an act of limiting thought and imagination. True progress is technological, not social, as "progress had come to mean the progress of the Machine."</div><div><br /></div><div>Vashti receives a call from her son, who is interested in the outdoors and in the stars, concepts that make Vashti uncomfortable. Her son requests a visit from her, and reluctantly she agrees. In person, he admits to having committed a great crime: he has found a way to the outside world, and gave in to his need to pursue it, even though the act can result in "homelessness": being left outside to die.</div><div><br /></div><div>An extraordinary story and well ahead of its time. The story appeared during a time of transition for dystopian fiction. We are moving away from the fantasy dystopias of Sir Thomas Moore, Jonathan Swift, and Samuel Butler, and toward more technological and science fiction dystopias. Forster apparently wrote the story as a response to the utopian fiction of H. G. Wells, who frequently wrote positively about technological advance, and believed that technology would bring much good to mankind despite potential dangers. Forster's vision is evidently darker. Later twentieth century dystopian novels have clearly borrowed or were influenced by "The Machine Stops." Forster himself was familiar with the precursors to dystopian fiction and early science fiction writing, and forged his work entirely around technology, replacing leadership with artificial intelligence and the dystopian hero who was an outsider and, with Forster, is now born into the dystopian world, rather than the Gullivers of the past who wander into their dystopian realities, whether they be lost lands or a present figure awakening in the future.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Casual Debrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08098608670682517783noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8163165929158089008.post-70696865212700808222023-08-15T14:46:00.001-04:002023-08-16T22:03:57.462-04:00Casual Shorts & the ISFdb Top Short Fiction # 24: The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe<div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div><b><span style="color: #990000;">Poe, Edgar Allan. "The Cask of Amontillado." </span></b><span style="color: #990000;"><b>Godey's Magazine and Lady's Book 33, November 1846; New England Weekly Review, 14 November 1846.</b></span></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>This article is part of my attempt to read all the 155 stories currently (as of 1 November 2022) on the ISFdb's Top Short Fiction list. Please <a href="https://casualdebris.blogspot.com/2022/11/project-isfdb-top-short-fiction.html" target="_blank">see the introduction and list of stories here</a></i>. <i>I am encouraging readers to rate the stories and books they have read on the ISFdb.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><span style="color: #990000;">ISFdb Rating: 9.00/10</span></b></div><div><b><span style="color: #990000;">My Rating: 10/10</span></b></div><div><br /></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgi64ArAqhKKmrAnJ_zq5aLxb3Ma1HuTIKZfFq8VSZy-lE-In6bp7B7QbQIizuIk-Zgkw8tGfE1SCu31VoOWBryB7aXAJSOi21BDkUk4e_s3Q3jtxmvyQ_F77nYfx-gx5YGLS1D57mVWSMVf9qMMOJbDbApEqvJdtxRn7jTGoGBV_FzVMatheM2CcOk3hU8/s1047/The%20Cask%20of%20Amontillado.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1047" data-original-width="800" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgi64ArAqhKKmrAnJ_zq5aLxb3Ma1HuTIKZfFq8VSZy-lE-In6bp7B7QbQIizuIk-Zgkw8tGfE1SCu31VoOWBryB7aXAJSOi21BDkUk4e_s3Q3jtxmvyQ_F77nYfx-gx5YGLS1D57mVWSMVf9qMMOJbDbApEqvJdtxRn7jTGoGBV_FzVMatheM2CcOk3hU8/s320/The%20Cask%20of%20Amontillado.jpg" width="245" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Illustration by Arthur Rakham,<br />for <i>Tales of Mystery and Imagination</i>,<br />J. B. Lippincott, 1935</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div>"<i>The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could; but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge.</i>"</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">One of literature's strongest opening sentences launches the reader into the confession of narrator Montresor's horrible act of vengeance against the insulting Fortunato.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">As with "<a href="https://casualdebris.blogspot.com/2023/08/casual-shorts-isfdb-top-short-fiction.html" target="_blank">The Tell-Tale Heart</a>," Poe does not directly state the motivation for the need to commit murder, and we can only speculate as to what this single insult was to drive Montresor to commit the crime, when a thousand other injuries did not. While the "thousand" is hyperbolic, it is understood through Montresor's descriptions that Fortunato, a well-to-do elite Italian with pride and an ego, is capable of injuring others in an offhanded way. Fortunato makes flippant comments without thought, and is entirely dismissive of the only other person mentioned in the confession, another Italian wine connoisseur by the name of Luchesi. In the brief narrative, Montresor is able to portray the arrogance of Fortunato, who sits atop social circles and despite regularly committing offences, appears otherwise friendly and accommodating, so that his behaviour, kind or offensive, is simply his natural self. He may not have disliked Montresor and simply caused injury in the wake of his stumbling, not always sober path, via flippant remarks not meant to injure others but instead to uphold his own pride. And yet this last insult must have been a doozy, as Montresor reveals himself to be a man of conscience and, unlike the narrator of "The Tell-Tale Heart," of moral awareness. (More on this later.)</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Montresor chooses to seek his revenge on carnival day, knowing Fortunato, a connoisseur of wine, would be inebriated and hence off his guard. He would lead the drunken Fortunato with the promise of some pure amontillado, a high quality Italian sherry. Montresor plays on the other's vanity, telling him he needs an expert to be able to identify whether he has purchased true amontillado or wasted his money on mere sherry, and plays on the man's ego by mentioning that he can instead seek the advice of competitor Luchesi. Clearly Fortunato is prideful and egoist.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div>In contrast, Montresor is overly sensitive. He refers to Fortunato as "my friend" and treats him as a most beloved companion, though admits early that this treatment was part of his great plan. As they stumble through the catacombs, he says to Fortunato, "you are happy, as once I was," as though poking at him, insinuating that his own happiness left him at the moment of Fortunato's insult. A sensitive man, Montresor, who over an insult plots to kill a man, claims the insult is the reason for his unhappiness, and following the murder suffers a half-century of guilt. The man's disintegration is his sensitivity.</div><div><br /></div></div><div style="text-align: left;">Despite leading Fortunato through his family catacombs, patiently and with intent, Montresor soon suffers pangs of guilt, and maintains that suffering for fifty years. After immuring Fortunato, Montresor is stricken with guilt over what he has done. "My heart grew sick," he says, just as the last stone of his plan has been laid. He attributes the feeling to the dampness of the catacombs, but the wiser reader is aware that the sickness he experiences is moral. Montresor concludes his narrative with: "For the half of a century no mortal has disturbed them. <i>In pace requiescat</i>!" Rest in peace. This solidifies the notion that Montresor, though he acted cold-heartedly, is now burdened with remorse. As some wise critics have indicated, by walling up Fortunato, Montresor has walled himself up, as he narrates this tale half a century after the events, and in that half a century has been burdened by the guilt of his actions.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">At the time of its publication, "The Cask of Amontillado" was not among Poe's most popular stories. In fact, it was reprinted only once in his lifetime (compared with at least ten printings of "The Tell-Tale Heart" between 1843-1845, or fourteen printings of "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar, 1845-1849). However, it has become among the most anthologized of his short stories, finding its way into anthologies for young adults, as well as horror, crime and literary anthologies for adults, and anthologies used in colleges and universities. For a glimpse of its popularity over the years, visit <a href="https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?76056" target="_blank">the story's ISFdb page</a>. Its growing popularity may be that the story needs a closer reading to uncover the narrator's guilt, which is where the emotional impact of the story lies. The emotional impact in "The Tell-Tale Heart," to compare, lies perhaps in the dichotomy between the narrator's love of the old man, and the passionate need to kill him, which is more readily available than the subtler heart of "The Cask of Amontillado."</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>Casual Debrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08098608670682517783noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8163165929158089008.post-90761951043938842312023-08-01T23:46:00.002-04:002023-08-02T00:23:47.501-04:00Casual Shorts & the ISFdb Top Short Fiction #23: The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe<div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div><b><span style="color: #990000;">Poe, Edgar Allan. "The Tell-Tale Heart." </span></b><span style="color: #990000;"><b>Pioneer, January 1843; Dollar Newspaper, 25 January 1843</b></span>.</div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>This article is part of my attempt to read all the 155 stories currently (as of 1 November 2022) on the ISFdb's Top Short Fiction list. Please <a href="https://casualdebris.blogspot.com/2022/11/project-isfdb-top-short-fiction.html" target="_blank">see the introduction and list of stories here</a></i>. <i>I am encouraging readers to rate the stories and books they have read on the ISFdb.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><span style="color: #990000;">ISFdb Rating: 9.00/10</span></b></div><div><b><span style="color: #990000;">My Rating: 10/10</span></b></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>"<i>True! — nervous — very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?</i>"</div><div><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDtWMVR3IcS-pJ2Oql1IublrvYdyQ03r38OeOOgvi9UTu5gbh44r4i7r_0rFRdjThRNW14L07ClJ-ze9nCxCr9zJKnmqPfpZtFEzPrlBlBD8zIu0bVcVnDL-L7DfMNJb2IzPQws4esJTWcR-pTSdWiGfJa57I2b_mVuN3MMXSWNgsmYRzYKk0gweno1YMX/s664/Edgar%20Allan%20Poe%20The%20Tell%20Tale%20Heart.png" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="664" data-original-width="576" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDtWMVR3IcS-pJ2Oql1IublrvYdyQ03r38OeOOgvi9UTu5gbh44r4i7r_0rFRdjThRNW14L07ClJ-ze9nCxCr9zJKnmqPfpZtFEzPrlBlBD8zIu0bVcVnDL-L7DfMNJb2IzPQws4esJTWcR-pTSdWiGfJa57I2b_mVuN3MMXSWNgsmYRzYKk0gweno1YMX/s320/Edgar%20Allan%20Poe%20The%20Tell%20Tale%20Heart.png" width="278" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Artwork by Virgil Finlay,<br />from <a href="https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?58281" target="_blank">Fantastic, Fall 1952</a></i></td></tr></tbody></table></div><div><br /></div><div>A man tells of a murder he has committed, attempting desperately to convince the listener of his sanity. The narrative is driven by a combination of character and plot, as the narrator's skewed judgement drives his actions. The main plot point--the narrator has killed a man--is quickly revealed, as Poe is interested in the teller more than he is in the tale.</div><div><br /></div><div>The narration centres around the murderer's mental state, with emphasis on his heightened senses, and the detailing of the two major scenes: the murder itself and the police interrogation. Everything else is up for conjecture, and there is much conjecture to be sought. The narrator is more focused on the quieter, indistinguishable sounds, the heartbeats rather than the shrieks. This ends up being his eventual undoing, as he misinterprets ticking for the beating of the dead man's heart. The title emphasizes this, but it is ironic, as the heart is obviously silent, and cannot tell a tale, nor tattle tale (as was Poe's intention for the title). It is not the heart that tells, but the mind, the same mind that led the narrator to commit the horrible deed.</div><div><br /></div><div>"The tell-Tale Heart" is among Poe's shortest stories, and its brevity is the result of the stripping of much detail. Poe also employs his own form of minimalism, and motive for the crime and the relationship between the killer and his victim are not directly revealed. As a result there is a good deal of work to be done by the reader in order to understand the relationship between murderer and victim, as well as the motive for the crime. Poe does sprinkle the test with hints for both, and over the years several interesting theories have been developed.</div><div><br /></div><div>Many interpretations suggest the narrator is related to the "old man," either a son-father or nephew-uncle relationship. However, Poe inserts a few small clues to dissuade the interpretation that the two are related. We assume an age gap as the narrator refers to his victim as an old man. Beyond this, the relationship appears to be more business-like, somewhat formal as they live together and yet all of the old man's belongings are stored in his own room, and the narrator examines them without an emotional response, as though the objects are foreign to him. We are given the impression that the narrator owns the house, as it is he who answers the door when the police arrive, and it is he the police is interested in. He gives the investigators a tour of the house, accessing all of its rooms. The old man, then, is possibly a lodger. That his single room is filled with all his belongings, as mentioned above, we can assume the other rooms in the house are off limits to him, at least to a degree, or at least not in his possession as he would have his little trinkets all over the place, not just in the single room he occupies. Poe is also specific that the house is in the midst of an urban setting. This is an important point, since at the time houses along urban streets were built side-by-side, attached to one another. Poe reveals that it is a neighbour who calls the police, having heard noise. This tight-housed urban landscape is used in many of Poe's stories, notable "<a href="https://casualdebris.blogspot.com/2022/12/casual-shorts-isfdb-top-short-fiction-8.html" target="_blank">The Black Cat</a>," whose geography is also integral to the story's plot.</div><div><br /></div><div>Given these details, my interpretation of the story is that the men are unrelated, yet have been living together for some time, as there is an intimacy between them. "I loved the old man," says the narrator, and we have no reason to not believe this statement. The "old man" is used as a form of endearment, and is repeated each time without disdain. So why would this possible landlord want to murder a beloved old man whom, so he tells us, has no money or valuables, and whom he professes to love?</div><div><br /></div><div>The narrator claims he wanted to destroy the old man's eye which he sees akin to that of a vulture. The narrator separates the eye from the man, so that he loves the man, but hates the eye. He is unable to harm the man, and it is the eye that he wishes to destroy. He is in this way excising himself from committing murder, as he is destroying an object and not a person. But why would he want to destroy this eye? It is "a pale blue eye, with a film over it," and every time the eye "fell upon" the narrator, his "blood ran cold." It is a creepy, ugly eye--the eye of a buzzard. The old man would watch the narrator, we suspect, and that look perhaps held a hint of judgement or disapproval, or simple wariness as the narrator has heightened senses and likely behaves daily with this defect. Perhaps there is no specific look given by the old man, but the narrator's heightened senses and paranoia may lead him to believe that there is. Described as a vulture's eye, we understand that a vulture is a scavenger, seeking carcasses rather than hunting and gathering, so that it is possible the narrator believed the old man was coveting his home or his belongings, as the old man in his advanced age had so little, and was forced to be content lodging in the home of this madman.</div><div><br /></div><div>And so the conjecture can run on. Why Poe left us so little detail in this story is not problematic. He is interested in the character, his voice and the irony of his own undoing. Yet the food for thought left behind is of value to the reader, as we have such a short but rich text to appreciate.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>For more of this week's Short Story Wednesday, please visit <a href="http://pattinase.blogspot.com/2023/08/short-story-wednesday-blood-lines-by.html" target="_blank">Patti Abbott's blog</a>.</div></div>Casual Debrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08098608670682517783noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8163165929158089008.post-13567940056153333522023-07-13T14:28:00.002-04:002023-07-13T14:30:26.028-04:00Louise Penny, The Best American Mysteries Stories 2018<div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="color: #990000;">Penny, Louise, ed. The Best American Mysteries Stories 2018 (Otto Penzler, series editor). Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018.</span></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>The Best American Mystery Stories 2018 at <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37569339-the-best-american-mystery-stories-2018" target="_blank">Goodreads</a></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><br /></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="color: #990000;">Overall rating: 6/10</span></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8bJaQTzB51WV7NsI6pZwzHjrn4VxsZm9Bt1b2Kax0C7e2In2b2KDKA6rmjhyg-qSejiWmNG9Cdv7oXSr5UHJP2yVivHVtP54djcqeERISqLYjBn8e0zlQ9sKatoYLSCsarrz4VbtSRpMWRVoJYYXFLGYce5nn0mxXMZ3WRZXI21MgLovFwtaf1K2YJScy/s2250/Best%20American%202018.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2250" data-original-width="1500" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8bJaQTzB51WV7NsI6pZwzHjrn4VxsZm9Bt1b2Kax0C7e2In2b2KDKA6rmjhyg-qSejiWmNG9Cdv7oXSr5UHJP2yVivHVtP54djcqeERISqLYjBn8e0zlQ9sKatoYLSCsarrz4VbtSRpMWRVoJYYXFLGYce5nn0mxXMZ3WRZXI21MgLovFwtaf1K2YJScy/s320/Best%20American%202018.jpg" width="213" /></a></div>In my attempt at reading more contemporary fiction, I selected this book for mystery (with another "Best of" anthology for contemporary horror, and some modern literature for a novel). So much reading to get through, I had little time for writing. Now that I am the end of that stint, I can write about it all, beginning with my least favourite of the batch.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The selection of stories in <span><b>The Best American Mysteries Stories 2018</b></span> is somewhat varied, though there appears to be a slight shift toward more adventure or thriller stories, where the mystery transforms into a climactic showdown or chase, and where the mystery element feels almost secondary to the action, like a standard Hollywood movie. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but for many of these stories, such as David Edgerley Gates's "Cabin Fever" and David A. Hendrickson's "Death in Serengeti," we know how it is going end, so other elements need to be elevated and the action shortened. Though I understand many readers may prefer the adrenaline brought on by the action, this is not my sub-genre of choice.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Less varied is the gender of the authors. Of the twenty stories in the anthology, a whopping two are written by women. Ten percent. According to the UN, there is a greater representation of women in parliament than there is in this anthology.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">(I wonder how much the selections in these best-of books are influenced by the stories' authors, so editors & publishers choose entries not on the individual story merits, but on their author or a combination of the two, to help increase sales. The best stories here are not necessarily by the more recognizable authors. Both women are big names.)</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">As usual I prefer the stories that are character-based, and the real stand-out for me is T. C. Boyle's "The Designee," which I read as a modern tragedy. Other strong stories are Rob Hart's "Takeout," the excellently titled opening story by Louis Bayard, "Banana Triangle Six," Scott Loring Sanders's "Waiting on Joe," and "All Our Yesterday's" by Andrew Klavan. I also like the the Joyce Carol Oates novelette, though I feel it does not belong in this book. The rest are pretty forgettable.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="color: #990000;">Banana Triangle Six by Louis Bayard 7/10</span></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, July/August 2017</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Eighty-four year-old Mr. Hank is living out his days at the Morning Has Broken home for the elderly. He is grumpily abandoning his lunch and heading to his room for a nap. His memory seems to be fading, and he barely recognizes the woman, Dr. Landis, who appears unexpectedly in his room to run a few small tests. A touching story, tightly written, and a good one to launch the collection.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="color: #990000;">Y is for Yangchuan Lizard by Andrew Bourelle 7/10</span></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>D is for Dinosaur, edited by Rhonda Parrish, Edmonton: Poise and Pen, 2017</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">To pay off a debt, a young man sells drugs from a bar for the Chechen mafia. When his friend gets ahold of a rare bag of coke mixed with dinosaur bones, the mafia is prepared to commit murder in order to get their hands on the stash. A pretty good read with some standard twists, elevated by a nice dark undertone of hopelessness.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="color: #990000;">The Designee by T. C. Boyle 8/10</span></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>The Iowa Review, 47:2, Fall 2017</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I have yet to read a story by T. C. Boyle (author of "Greasy Lake") that I do not like. In this one, a retired elderly professor is caught in a mail scheme that sees him slowly sending his life savings overseas. A painful read, as we know what is transpiring and must be content to continue amid frustration and outrage. This story's designation here as a mystery is arguable: while it has elements of mystery, so does every short story, yet this one doesn't hinge on any moment of discovery or climax. It is more of a character study and a portrait of a very real scheme that has seen so many retirees taken for so much money. Very well written with a heartbreaking finish.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="color: #990000;">Smoked by Michael Bracken 6/10</span></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Noir at the Salad Bar, edited by Verena Rose, Harriette Sacker, and Shawn Reilly Simmons, Level Best Books, 2017</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">In small town Texa,s Beau James is running the Quarryville Smokehouse. When his photo appears in a local paper, he fears he has been outed as he settled in town via the witness protection program. A fairly average story with a noisy climax.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="color: #990000;">The Wild Side of Life by James Lee Burke 6/10</span></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>The Southern Review, Winter 2017</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Oil driller has an affair with the wife of Louisiana bigshot who runs the local police. Some familiar events, focus on PTSD following a tragic event many years before, and a rushed and dwindling finish. The title refers to a country song.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div><b><span style="color: #990000;">Too Much Time by Lee Child 6.5/10</span></b></div><div><b>No Middle Name, Delacorte Press, 2017</b></div><div><br /></div><div>While walking through a plaza minding his own business, Jack Reacher witnesses the snatch-theft of a handbag and gets involved in the investigation, the cops pulling him in as a key witness. This novella is my first Jack Reacher, and I did enjoy it, though it could have been shorter. I guess it took just too much time reading this...</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="color: #990000;">The Third Panel by Michael Connolly 6/10</span></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Alive in Shape and Color, edited by Lawrence Block, 2017</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Police investigate a brutal crime scene at a model home in an abandoned development area seventy miles from Los Angeles that was being used as a meth cookhouse. An FBI agent arrives to determine if it matches other similar crimes attributed to a group calling themselves The Third Panel. Pretty good short story with a minor, semi-expected twist.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div><b><span style="color: #990000;">Gun Work by John M. Floyd 6/10</span></b></div><div><b>Coast to Coast: Private Eyes from Sea to Shining Sea, edited by Andrew McAleer and Paul D. Marks, Down & Out Books, 2017</b></div><div><br /></div><div>A western tale of mystery. Investigator Will Parker is sent to uncover the truth about a twenty-two year incident involving a retired sheriff and the shooting of a wanted criminal. Average story with an expected finish</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><div><b><span style="color: #990000;">Cabin Fever by David Edgerley Gates 6/10</span></b></div><div><b>Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, September/October 2017</b></div><div><br /></div><div>Ranger Hector is caught in a storm in the midst of the wild, while a pair of cold-blooded murderers are on the loose after a prison bus turns over. The story shifts between Hector and the two escaped convicts who take him hostage, and the FBI and the ranger's girlfriend medic who try to locate him, while coordinating a wildfire triggered by lightning. This is a common formula and I was not too invested in this one, as we can guess early on how it will turn out.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div></div></div><div><div><div><b><span style="color: #990000;">Small Signs by Charlaine Harris 6/10</span></b></div><div><b>Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, November/December 2017</b></div><div><br /></div><div>High school principal and former trainer of government operatives Anne DeWitt is surprised by a visit from former colleagues. It appears money has been laundered from the training camp, and Anne's replacement at the camp is desperate to discover the culprit. This is part of a series of short stories featuring Anne DeWitt with her new identity. This one was alright, but the quick scenes needed to be interspersed with so much background information for those unfamiliar with the series (such as myself), that it only became interesting half-way through.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div></div></div><div><div><div><b><span style="color: #990000;">Takeout by Rob Hart 8/10</span></b></div><div><b>Mystery Tribune, Issue No. 2, Summer 2017</b></div><div><br /></div><div>To pay off a gambling debt to the Chinese gambling house and restaurant, The Happy Dumpling, Harold makes special takeout deliveries for owner Mr. Mo. He does not, however, deliver food, but rather messages in the form of seemingly random items. Harold wants out, but behind on alimony payments and wanting to get on the good side of his former wife and their six year-old daughter, he has no choice but to continue. Until an option comes to light.</div><div><br /></div><div>A character driven story that also presents a great situation and environment, this story is a slice of life, a few days amid a hefty sequence of events. Well written and well framed, each moment is both necessary and interesting, and honestly I liked the scenario so much, with its not-too-likable protagonist, I would have read a good deal more. In addition, it has something many of the stories in the anthology do not: a great ending.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div></div></div><div><div><div><b><span style="color: #990000;">Death in the Serengeti by David H. Hendrickson 6/10</span></b></div><div><b>Fiction River #24: Pulse Pounders Adrenaline, edited by Kevin J. Anderson, July 2017</b></div><div><br /></div><div>Senior Serengeti park ranger Makinda comes across the carcasses of several elephants, their ivory tusks sawed off. Shortly thereafter his jeep explodes, followed by additional explosions in the distance as the vehicles of the other rangers in the district also explode. Makinda becomes aware that he has just evaded being murdered, and that there are dangerous poachers in the vicinity who have likely killed his colleagues, leaving him alone to fight the threat.</div><div><br /></div><div>The most interesting aspect of the story is the tragic and cold-blooded poaching business, which genuinely enraged me as I was reading. While this made me emotionally invested in the story, this is the kind of adventure story in which I am not normally interested. Also, because I was emotionally invested, I was hoping for a better finishing off of the culprits, something more poetic and long-lasting, whereas they were simply done away with all too quickly.</div><div><br /></div><div>The story received the 2018 <b>Derringer Award</b> for "Best Long Story" (4,001-8,000 words).</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div></div></div><div><div><div><b><span style="color: #990000;">All Our Yesterdays by Andrew Klavan 7/10</span></b></div><div><b>Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, March/April 2017</b></div><div><br /></div><div>During the First World War, Brooks is injured during a charge from his trench, and is sent to England for a lengthy recuperation period. He finds that everything has changed--not just the world around him, but his own self as well. He experiences blackouts and sudden, strong bouts of fear and anger, often associated with inexplicable rage. He longs for a former time, during the late nineteenth century when times were easier and women, in particular, were purer. He befriends his older doctor with whom he feels the need to reminiscence, yet while Dr. Haven tries to explain that it was not a better time, that there was darkness even then, Brooks's desire to talk about the past does not dampen, and his blackouts, which he keeps a secret, seem to become more severe.</div><div><br /></div><div>What a long description for this excellent story that had me glued. A great finish as well that links the details nicely.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div></div></div><div><div><div><b><span style="color: #990000;">PX Christmas by Martin Limón 6/10</span></b></div><div><b>The Usual Santas: A Collection of Soho Crime Christmas Capers, (no credited editor), Random House, 2017</b></div><div><br /></div><div>In the Korean demilitarized zone, a pair of American army officers investigate the abuse of the military PX shop, a shop designed for the military and their spouses where imported items can be purchased at low cost. Some wives abuse the shops by making their purchases and selling them in Seoul for great profit, and one of these is sighted by our officers.</div><div><br /></div><div>The premise of the story is its strongest aspect, as the plot to re-take the wife and make sure Huk leaves everyone alone is less interesting than the mechanisms of the US military in the DMZ.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div></div></div><div><div><div><b><span style="color: #990000;">Windward by Paul D. Marks 6/10</span></b></div><div><b>Coast to Coast: Private Eyes from Sea to Shining Sea, edited by Andrew McAleer and Paul D. Marks, Down & Out Books, 2017</b></div><div><br /></div><div>Private investigator receives a visit from no-nonsense successful film producer claiming his wife has disappeared and that the police believe she has simply run off. PI investigates, theorizes, things happen and mystery is resolved. Fairly average tale with fairly average PI.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div></div></div><div><div><div><b><span style="color: #990000;">Phantomwise: 1972 by Joyce Carol Oates 7/10</span></b></div><div><b>Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, September/October 2017</b></div><div><br /></div><div>Undergraduate student Alyce is seduced and impregnated by one of her young instructors, who soon thereafter distances himself from her. In the meantime, Alyce befriends visiting professor and successful poet Roland, who hires her to help collect his papers.</div><div><br /></div><div>While there is a clear element of mystery, and even crime, these are relegated to the backdrop, as the story focuses on Alyce and her complicated relationship with Roland. This is also the most interesting element of the story, so that as a mystery it is weaker than as a character study. I sympathized with both Alyce and Roland, and would even have liked to see their relationship continue to develop. The ending moves away from this and does its own thing.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div></div></div><div><div><div><b><span style="color: #990000;">Rule Number One by Alan Orloff 7/10</span></b></div><div><b>Snowbound: Best New England Crime Stories 2017, Shawn Reilly Simmons, Harriette Sackler, Verena Rose, editors, Level best Books, 2017</b></div><div><br /></div><div>A thief helps his aging, retiring mentor by allowing him to take part in one final heist. And of course, there is much double-crossing. A familiar set-up, and you can figure out the ending at the last leg, but it is nonetheless an enjoyable, well written story.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div></div></div><div><div><div><b><span style="color: #990000;">The Apex Predator by William Dylan Powell 6/10</span></b></div><div><b>Switchblade #1, Scotch Rutherford ed., 2017</b></div><div><br /></div><div>Professional diver is hired to help police locate sunken cars in an attempt to close unsolved disappearances. When preparing a sunken Camaro and its pair of police corpses for ascent, our diver notices there are hundred dollar bills floating around in the vehicle. Down on his luck, he decides to keep the stash for himself.</div><div><br /></div><div>Pretty good, but the first half is far more interesting than the second, and I didn't care for for the jokey ending. I really liked the concept of recovering sunken vehicles and would read more on that topic.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div></div></div><div><div><div><b><span style="color: #990000;">Waiting on Joe by Scott Loring Sanders 8/10</span></b></div><div><b>Shooting Creek and Other Stories, Down & Out Books, March 2017</b></div><div><br /></div><div>Christmas tree plantation worker loves his dog, so much that he whittles wood into little mutt statues. That mutt digs close to the house and comes up with a human foot. This leads to so much, and sets up expectations which it nicely tears down as the narrative progresses. Highly enjoyable, not only in plotting but also in tone. The narrator's voice is a blast and the story ends as well as it begins.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div></div></div><div><div><div><b><span style="color: #990000;">Breadfruit by Brian Silverman 6/10</span></b></div><div><b>Mystery Tribune, Fall 2017</b></div><div><br /></div><div>Former firefighter and current bar owner in St. Pierre, Len Buonfiglio, finds a pair of local breadfruit on his bar. Shortly thereafter he is visited by a man claiming interest in exporting breadfruit. A great opening wanes as the story gets into its final action sequence, with which I am less interested. However the focus on breadfruit and the conversation between the men, as well as the locale and surrounding characters, all work well.</div><div><br /></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>Casual Debrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08098608670682517783noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8163165929158089008.post-91823464741211804132023-04-19T00:37:00.000-04:002023-04-19T00:37:08.907-04:00Beyond Fantasy Fiction, July 1953<div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="color: #990000;">Beyond Fantasy Fiction. H. L. Gold, editor. Vol. 1 No. 1, July 1953</span></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Beyond Fantasy Fiction 1:1 at the <a href="https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?57845" target="_blank">ISFdb</a></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Beyond Fantasy Fiction 1:1 at <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36636883-beyond-fantasy-fiction-july-1953-vol-1-no-1?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=SJSqc1SJR1&rank=1" target="_blank">Goodreads</a></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="color: #990000;">Overall 7/10</span></b></div><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOm91jJBtRQiyQVuRkWWi2Ru52OgDUbdN0eH5P-bXCCUmSjgxHyLSUFsEuvOZKiG-_QVk9L_djkLBebQxtOeNDqbe9SH84uJQVDqONfu6Q8G8NAhh0SUSDLe4wY7Y-4Gx7fUItK8lPBSjeMfMJoswrHWaR1rULI51qI8UNwqlwA0y_FvTVKDquv5tq_w/s600/Beyond%20Fantasy%20Fiction%20July%201953.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="445" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOm91jJBtRQiyQVuRkWWi2Ru52OgDUbdN0eH5P-bXCCUmSjgxHyLSUFsEuvOZKiG-_QVk9L_djkLBebQxtOeNDqbe9SH84uJQVDqONfu6Q8G8NAhh0SUSDLe4wY7Y-4Gx7fUItK8lPBSjeMfMJoswrHWaR1rULI51qI8UNwqlwA0y_FvTVKDquv5tq_w/s320/Beyond%20Fantasy%20Fiction%20July%201953.jpg" width="237" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Cover by Richard Powers</i></td></tr></tbody></table>Successful science fiction editor H. L. Gold was hoping to equal his success with <b>Galaxy Science Fiction</b> by producing a monthly fantasy magazine, titled <b>Beyond Fantasy Fiction</b>, Though for this new publication he recruited top notch authors and illustrators, many of whom he had worked with on <b>Galaxy</b>, the magazine survived only ten issues. Perhaps readers had a preference for science fiction at the time, or perhaps the fact that the magazine included various forms of genre and not just fantasy, with some stories being outright science fiction, fantasy readers lost interest early on.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Regardless, <b>Beyond </b>featured some strong stories, and this first issue included nothing terrible and some good content. My personal favourite stories are "The Springbird" by Roger Dee and "Share Alike" by Jerome Bixby and Joe E. Dean. In addition, most of the art is quite good, particularly Ed Emshwiller's work on Damon Knight's "Babel II."</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Too bad about all the typos that can break up some focused reading. My favourite is from "Eye of Iniquity": "...if you except the fact that my own mother was born with a caul..." [139]</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="color: #990000;">...And My Fear is Great... by Theodore Sturgeon 7/10</span></b></div><div style="text-align: left;">Eighteen year-old Don meets sixty year-old Miss Phoebe, a woman with special powers who takes the misguided man under her wing. She opens his mind to eastern philosophical concepts, and gets him to think about the world around him, wishing to share her power with him in order to do good. However, she tells him he must remain celibate and alone, whereas he has recently fallen in love.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">A good story with some issues, such as a point of view that jumps for convenience sake to withhold some information from the reader, and a didactic latter portion. Still interesting, with good character dynamics and overall quite original.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="color: #990000;">All of You by James McConnell 6/10</span></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">An unhappy, corpulent man has fled Earth and crash-landed on a distant planet. There he is found by an alien female who immediately falls in love with him, as obesity is valued in their culture. Yet in this matriarchal world the elder women take the man from her, claiming that all their females should have rights on him, come mating season. A nice little piece of space horror that becomes obvious at about the half-way mark, though the author does well in delaying the eventual end. An example of a non-fantastical story.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="color: #990000;">The Day the World Ended by Frank M. Robinson 6/10</span></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">TV reporter Bill Wyser interviews Professor Arnold, a scientist who has just appeared on a program pitting science against superstition. The pair argue both sides, and Arnold informs him that his university will pay anyone ten grand if they can come up with a superstition that gives a better explanation for a phenomena than does science. Short and entertaining enough, though I was underwhelmed by the ending.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="color: #990000;">The Springbird by Roger Dee 8/10</span></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Marble County finds itself in perpetual spring, as April weather conditions continue for seven months. The country doctor narrator takes a weekly drive to Moorhead Mountain to visit Romanian gipsy Lysko Czernak who lives with his grandson, who is dying from tuberculosis. A touching story of love and what we are capable of when it comes to making someone happy. Moreover, it is well written, with soft prose that matches the slow passing of spring.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="color: #990000;">Babel II by Damon Knight 6/10</span></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Photographer and comics artist Cavanaugh encounters an odd little man he refers to as Hooligan. They can communicate through a spherical object where they can think up images, and quickly the Hooligan wants to trade diamonds for the many objects in Cavanaugh's home. Unintentionally, the Hooligan mixes up human languages, so that chaos quickly breaks out as no one can understand one another.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">An average story with some good points. Though the story is intended to be humourous, the quick regression to violence is wholly unbelievable. Also, Cavanaugh's running around New York is tedious and needless. The Hooligan and its communication device are neat, but only bookend the story. I am usually underwhelmed with Knight's novelettes, preferring his shorter pieces. Stories like "Babel II," "Double Meaning" and "Rule Golden" contain some neat ideas, but aren't developed well as longer works.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="color: #990000;">Share Alike by Jerome Bixby and Joe E. Dean 8/10</span></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">A pair of men are stranded in a lifeboat after their ship has sunk. They are not too worried as neither men knew anyone aboard who had perished, and there is much food and water in the boat's store. Moreover, they are in a well-travelled ship lane. Only, the American Craig is eating his share of the stock, whereas the Romanian Eric seems not to be eating at all, and Craig begins to suspect that his mate is a vampire. A very well written story with a strong relationship between two very different men who are forced to share--one his portion of the stores and the other his blood--in order that they both survive.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="color: #990000;">The Wedding by Richard Matheson 6/10</span></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Before they are to be married, Frank begins to place unusual demands surrounding their wedding, such as not getting married on a Thursday and paying her father as symbol of the purchase of his daughter. A quick and amusing story with an effective comedic twist. The second story in the issue to revolve around superstitions.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="color: #990000;">Eye for Iniquity by T. L. Sheperd 6/10</span></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">McNally has the inherited talent of duplicating money. Simply by staring at a bill, a duplicate will appear beside it. He puts the talent to good use, quits his job, buys a house, and takes his family shopping. Then he learns there is concern as counterfeit money is being discovered in various shops, and soon the government begins to take interest in him.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Interesting enough of a story, but the protagonist is not very smart so it is difficult to sympathize with him. Along with some stereotypical service agents and revenue bureau officers, with the standard 1950s agreeable wife, the story fizzles in its latter stages, particularly that it is overlong.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>Casual Debrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08098608670682517783noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8163165929158089008.post-2904054608166524702023-04-04T23:09:00.009-04:002023-04-05T13:38:03.526-04:00R. Chetwynd-Hayes, editor: Tales of Terror from Outer Space (1975)<div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #990000;"><b>Chetwynd-Hayes, R, editor. Tales of Terror from Outer Space. UK: Fontana Books, 1975.</b></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Tales of Terror from Outer Space at the <a href="https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?35338" target="_blank">ISFdb</a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div>Tales of Terror from Outer Space at <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6095408-tales-of-terror-from-outer-space" target="_blank">Goodreads</a></div><div><br /></div></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhT_0rOCPpDGEevjjhf4hA7ui4P9k_DSp9NcaYvEIg7z450xJSw9XFest2s6_3iPCGKfdZ9C8fFCHJm-y0GTR7ipujyvJrnPS_GTzs-CIz7y3PiiOg8e8nhbBAkI2H4fh3f_ictQMYB1qcUECU9xakBfalAdlJbc9lu_E1rmbamSKV8KYeemBRv5xAYWA/s640/Tales%20of%20Terror%20from%20Outer%20Space.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="381" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhT_0rOCPpDGEevjjhf4hA7ui4P9k_DSp9NcaYvEIg7z450xJSw9XFest2s6_3iPCGKfdZ9C8fFCHJm-y0GTR7ipujyvJrnPS_GTzs-CIz7y3PiiOg8e8nhbBAkI2H4fh3f_ictQMYB1qcUECU9xakBfalAdlJbc9lu_E1rmbamSKV8KYeemBRv5xAYWA/s320/Tales%20of%20Terror%20from%20Outer%20Space.jpg" width="191" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Cover by Justin Todd</i></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="color: #990000;">Overall rating: 7/10</span></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">A part of the <b>Fontana Tales of Terror</b> series.<br /><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Where I was expecting a batch of silly stories, aside from the couple I'd already read, I was impressed as to how strong these stories are. While most of them deal with aliens coming to Earth for one reason or other, the motives behind each arrival differ story to story, and the plotting and styles are surprisingly varied for a topic that appears limited.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">A couple of stories don't really fit the bill. The Sheckley, though a good story, is not horror despite having aliens arriving on Earth. Chetwynd-Hayes covers this in his introduction by stating that the stories "deal with invaders that either menace or disrupt the inhabitants of this already, agitated planet." The aliens here are nice enough and do not "invade," though they agitate one man, for a time. The Clarke is more of a quick joke, lightly entertaining but not horrifying. Sure the sun is about to explode, but there are so many other stories featuring this premise that present it more horrifically, such as Richard Matheson's "The Last Day," whereas Clarke is having fun and using a comedic tone.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">My favourite story in the collection is easily the dark invasion story by French author Claude Veillot, "The First Days of May," well translated by Damon Knight. Close behind are those by the two Rays, Bradbury and Nelson, followed in turn by the Aldiss, the Bloch and the Sheckley. My least favourite would be the comedic pieces, led by the editor's own original entry.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Chetwynd-Hayes's introduction is a series of story synopses, so I treated it more like an epilogue. I prefer knowing as little as possible about a story when I begin to read, but I always read anthology and collection introductions. A good intro though, and he makes a nice link between his story and the one by Bounds, when he writes: "I think I would rather shake hands with Sydney J. Bounds's Animators." This sentence gives a hint as to the final joke in "Shipwreck."</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div><b><span style="color: #990000;">I, Mars by Ray Bradbury 8/10</span></b></div><div><b>Super Science Stories, April 1949</b></div><div><br /></div><div>Eighty year-old Emil Barton has been stranded on Mars for sixty years, after every colonist returned to Earth when global war erupted. He receives a phone call from himself, from recordings he had made when he was in his in twenties. And the calls keep coming, arrogant and mocking, tormenting the old man. An excellently dark story, in which a man suffers unceasingly for decades, and really for no apparent reason. Surprisingly, this story does not appear to have as yet been included in a Bradbury collection. This is the only story in the collection that does not feature an alien, and instead of having an extra terrestrial visit Earth, we have a human on Mars.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="color: #990000;"><b>Eight O'Clock in the Morning by Ray Nelson</b><b> 8/10</b></span></div><div><b>The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, November 1963</b></div><div><br /></div><div>George Nada awakens, not from sleep but from hypnosis, and becomes aware that there are aliens amidst humans. Not only do the aliens live among us, but they control humans via television and radio, brainwashing them to consume, reproduce and to obey. Certainly more pertinent today than in 1963, where the internet can be added to the mix. A good story overall with impact still felt sixty years after its original publication.</div><div><br /></div><div>This is the short story that was adapted for John Carpenter's highly entertaining film, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096256/?ref_=nm_flmg_t_14_dr" target="_blank">They Live</a>.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="color: #990000;"><b>Girl from Mars by Robert Bloch</b><b> 7/10</b></span></div><div><b>Fantastic Adventures, March 1950 (as "The Girl from Mars")</b></div><div><br /></div><div>Circus owner Ace Clawson has been unlucky lately. Business is slow, weather is bad and his girl has recently run off on him, But when an attractive woman shows up, claiming to be from Mars, he thinks his luck is about to change. Though predictable, Bloch writes with such charm that it is nonetheless enjoyable, and well written with a restrained humour and a deft handling of sex for the time.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="color: #990000;"><b>Heresies of the Huge God by Brian W. Aldiss</b><b> 7/10</b></span></div><div><b>Galaxy Magazine, August 1966</b></div><div><br /></div><div>A manuscript by an official scribe nearly a thousand years in the future, recounts the devastation of the Earth after a large object lands, covering most of Europe, Africa and parts of the Middle East. The event caused major changes to the planet's landscape, and sent humans into the religious fanatical dark ages. A truly original idea by Aldiss, and well constructed.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="color: #990000;"><b>The Head-Hunters by Ralph Williams</b><b> 6/10</b></span></div><div><b>Astounding Science Fiction, October 1951</b></div><div><br /></div><div>In the Alaskan wilderness a man has escaped captivity from an alien head-hunter, and seeks the aid of a hunter and his guide who he has stumbled upon. The story employs a third person multiple point of view structure, shifting from the fugitive to the hunters and even to the alien as well, which elevates the otherwise standard plot. The ending itself is flat. There are similarities to the film <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093773/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0" target="_blank"><b>Predator</b></a>, and I suppose the author has a case to sue the filmmakers, the way Harlan Ellison got away with suing (an out-of-court arrangement) the makers of <b><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088247/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0" target="_blank">The Terminator</a></b>.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="color: #990000;"><b>The Animators by Sydney J. Bounds</b><b> 6.5/10</b></span></div><div><b>Tales of Terror from Outer Space, edited by R. Chetwynd Hayes, Fontana Books, 1975</b></div><div><br /></div><div>A group of scientists are collecting and studying specimens on Mars, when they accidentally awaken a virus that transforms humans into zombies. A surprisingly enjoyable story with a straightforward horror plot.</div><div><br /></div><div>The story was adapted for the slightly enjoyable 2013 movie, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1709143/?ref_=nm_flmg_t_1_wr" target="_blank"><b>The Last Days on Mars</b></a>.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="color: #990000;"><b>The Night of the Seventh Finger by Robert Presslie</b><b> 7/10</b></span></div><div><b>New Writings in S-F 7, edited by John Carnell, Corgi, 1966</b></div><div><br /></div><div>A teenage girl is taken hostage by a large, seven-fingered man who claims to be from outer space from the distant future. He will not hurt her, he repeats, but needs her help as he senses her natural female empathy. The story is made up of a single conversation, and the plot plays out within that conversation. A good story with some nice twists as the details of the situation become clearer. I am not familiar with Robert Presslie (1920 - 2000), a Scottish author with a number of short stories published in the UK during a ten-year span (1955-1966). I would be interested in discovering more of his work.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="color: #990000;"><b>No More for Mary by Charles Birkin</b><b> 5/10</b></span></div><div><b>Where Terror Stalked and Other Horror Stories, Tandem Press, 1966</b></div><div><br /></div><div>Popular playwright Toby Lewis is near completing his latest play, and sets it aside for a holiday in Italy. There he discovers an unusual one-eyed insect, and decides to keep it in a jar for his sister Mary, an entomologist. The story offers some twists, but it just is not that interesting of a read, and the entire thing falls flat.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="color: #990000;"><b>Invasion of Privacy by Bob Shaw</b><b> 7/10</b></span></div><div><b>Amazing Science Fiction, July 1970</b></div><div><br /></div><div>George Ferguson grows weary of his wife's unnatural mourning for her recently departed mother, while their seven year-old son insists that he has just seen his grandma, two weeks after her death. A premised ghost story that turns out to be something more complex. Plot aside, which is pretty good, the strongest element in the story is, without giving too much away, the dad's eventual struggle with his son's identity. It would be nice to see this portion developed further, but Shaw ended the story in the midst of this discovery, the moment of which is truly creepy.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="color: #990000;"><b>The Ruum by Arthur Porges</b><b> 6/10</b></span></div><div><b>The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, October 1953</b></div><div><br /></div><div>In the distant past, a group of aliens dashing through space accidentally leave a ruum on the third planet of our solar system, intending to return, but preventing from doing so by a devastating space battle. In the present day Earth, a uranium prospector flies to the Canadian Rockies where he encounters the alien ruum. The thing has preserved several animals across time, and now appears to have its sights on the encroaching prospector.</div><div><br /></div><div>This was included in Edmund Crispin's <a href="https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?4149" target="_blank">Best SF</a> (1955), where I first read it many years ago. Even then, though a decent enough story, I'm pretty sure there were many stronger works published during the years covered (1948 - 1954).</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="color: #990000;"><b>The First Days of May by Claude Veillot</b><b> 8/10</b></span></div><div><b>Translation of "Les premiers jours de mai" by Damon Knight</b></div><div><b>Fiction, #78, May 1960</b></div><div><b>The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, December 1961</b></div><div><br /></div><div>Earth is invaded by an insect-like alien species, named Shrills for the piercing shrill sound they make that deafens and paralyses humans. A man is holed up in a hotel, and overcomes his fear to search for his wife. An excellent story; a truly dark vision of an invasion and humanity's dark side that emerges when hopelessly taken over by another race.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="color: #990000;"><b>Specialist by Robert Sheckley</b><b> 7/10</b></span></div><div><b>Galaxy Science Fiction, May 1953</b></div><div><br /></div><div>A merchant ship containing several intergalactic species that essentially make up the structure of the ship, is blown off course and its Pusher is killed, preventing the crew from returning back home. In order not to perish light years from their own sector, they search the nearby area for a replacement Pusher. The story, though good, does not fit into the horror sci-fi category, and I am not sure which aspect of the story the editor found to be horror. As with the Aldiss story, this is highly original.</div><div><br /></div><div>I read this a few years back as part of Sheckley's enjoyable collection <b><a href="https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?38075" target="_blank">Untouched By Human Hands</a></b> (Ballantine, 1954). According to my notes, it impressed me more then than it did now (I had given it an 8/10). Still a good story, though, and I'm surprised I recalled nothing as I re-read it here. EDIT: Nearly a week has passed and this story has stayed with me. Maybe that original 8/10 was more accurate...</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="color: #990000;"><b>No Morning After by Arthur C. Clarke</b><b> 6/10</b></span></div><div><b>Time to Come: Science-Fiction Stories of Tomorrow, edited by August Derleth, April 1954</b></div><div><b>The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, July 1956</b></div><div><br /></div><div>Five hundred light years from Earth, the Thaarns are desperately reaching out to make telepathic communication with humans, and manage to connect with rocket engineer Dr. William Cross. Heartbroken and intoxicated, however, Cross believes that the voices and images are part of a drunken hallucination, and scoffs at their claim that the Earth's sun is expected to explode in four days.</div><div><br /></div><div>Not exactly a horror story, as it is more of a quick joke story. Mildly entertaining for what it is, though does not belong in this anthology.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="color: #990000;"><b>Shipwreck by R. Chetwynd-Hayes</b><b> 6/10</b></span></div><div><div><b>Tales of Teror from Outer Space, edited by R. Chetwtynd-Hayes, Fontana Books, 1975</b></div><div><br /></div><div>An alien being crash lands on Earth and takes over the life form of a young man named Sydney J. Beecham. The creature then joins his new bride and mother-in-law, who are shocked at the drastic change in his personality. The story has the potential to be horrific, particularly the creepy moment when the alien, as Beecham, coldly informs Beecham's wife that he has crashed on the planet and reveals his ultimate goal. Aside from that brief scene the story is mostly comedic, and ends with a punch-line.</div><div><br /></div><div>I suspect the character of Sydney J. Beecham is named after Sydney J. Bounds. The Bounds story is the only other one original to this anthology, and the two share similar traits: aliens or a virus that reproduce or take over our bodies. Perhaps the two discussed the idea and each went ahead and developed their own version. And there is the little joke the editor makes in his introduction that links the two stories.</div></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>For more Wednesday Short Stories, please visit <a href="http://pattinase.blogspot.com/2023/04/short-story-wednesday-perfect-day-for.html" target="_blank">Patti Abbott's blog</a>.</div><div><br /></div></div>Casual Debrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08098608670682517783noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8163165929158089008.post-75070065527408109032023-03-29T08:38:00.005-04:002023-03-29T08:45:50.329-04:00Casual Shorts & the ISFdb Top Short Fiction #22: The Pit and the Pendulum by Edgar Allan Poe<div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div><b><span style="color: #990000;">Poe, Edgar Allan. "The Pit and the Pendulum." </span></b><span style="color: #990000;"><b>The Gift, a Christmas and New Year's Present for 1843, 1843</b></span>.</div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>This brief article is part of my attempt to read all the 155 stories currently (as of 1 November 2022) on the ISFdb's Top Short Fiction list. Please <a href="https://casualdebris.blogspot.com/2022/11/project-isfdb-top-short-fiction.html" target="_blank">see the introduction and list of stories here</a></i>. <i>I am encouraging readers to rate the stories and books they have read on the ISFdb.</i></div><div><br /></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbPwg8OmuAvku-cgg6nRTZUZfiGl6scgklx9jjdHTNvpJ-6tu3U_lojCF09njjSq7FeLUWBToCcLmrgJpY5rU5E1vCuqaN3YyNcVjtGQXls79IYm4F8fPvlxO1vVjeWPtR4FfV4z9Dv4N19hpt_pcWczTjwAaGiQrLqAgSfDGwMf9myTS2vA9vDKmmuA/s546/Poe%20The%20Pit%20and%20the%20Pendulum.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="546" data-original-width="353" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbPwg8OmuAvku-cgg6nRTZUZfiGl6scgklx9jjdHTNvpJ-6tu3U_lojCF09njjSq7FeLUWBToCcLmrgJpY5rU5E1vCuqaN3YyNcVjtGQXls79IYm4F8fPvlxO1vVjeWPtR4FfV4z9Dv4N19hpt_pcWczTjwAaGiQrLqAgSfDGwMf9myTS2vA9vDKmmuA/s320/Poe%20The%20Pit%20and%20the%20Pendulum.jpg" width="207" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Kobo ebook edition,<br />cover from an illustration by<br />Arthur Rackham</i></td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div><div><b><span style="color: #990000;">ISFdb Rating: 9.00/10</span></b></div><div><b><span style="color: #990000;">My Rating: 8/10</span></b></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>"<i>I was sick--sick unto death with that long agony; and when they at length unbound me, and I was permitted to sit, I felt that my senses were leaving me</i>."</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>In the latter stages of the Spanish Inquisition, a self-proclaimed innocent man is sent to Toledo where the truly brutal tortures of the Inquisition are rumoured to take place. There he is deposited in a dungeon, left awaiting his fate. The waiting increases his anxiety, as he can only imagine what the inquisitors have in store for him. He studies his pitch black surroundings, and discovers a pit at the centre of the dungeon. Adding to this discovery, and o his anxiety, he awakens tied down with rope, and descending toward him is a sharp scythe on that infamous pendulum.</div><div><br /></div><div>To be expected from Poe, a well-written narrative providing much horror. Yet worse than the razor sharp pendulum, the moving walls and the fiery pit, are those nasty accompanying rats. Ingenious of Poe to bring such well detailed and horrible rodents to swarm the protagonist while in such a desperate state, and how those rats are utilized to help save him, a moment that inspired many scenes in popular film.</div><div><br /></div><div>More ingenious is Poe's attention to detail, as the story takes place in such limited space and with a limited sequence of events. His use of alliteration, particularly in relation to the sweeping scythe, the waking-sleeping delirium and the attention to the senses, gives much body to a tale with so little plot.</div><div><br /></div><div>The Spanish Inquisition had officially come to an end a few decades prior to the publication of "The Pit and the Pendulum," and periodicals over the years were reporting on the various events that were coming to light as details of the tortures, survival stories and such were being uncovered. Poe, having worked for many of the periodicals, became fascinated with the events of the Inquisition, and came up with his own, wholly invented, method of torture. Just as "<a href="https://casualdebris.blogspot.com/2022/12/casual-shorts-isfdb-top-short-fiction-8.html" target="_blank">The Black Cat</a>" came about with a report of the discovery of a skeleton in the walls of a house, "The Pit and the Pendulum" was the result of other printed articles.</div><div><br /></div><div>This has never been my favourite of Poe's most famous stories, but the craftsmanship is evident and nonetheless makes for an excellent read. One of those stories that is so cemented in popular western culture that we need not have to read it to know exactly how it plays out.</div><div><br /></div><div>For more of this week's Wednesday Short Stories, please visit <a href="http://pattinase.blogspot.com/2023/03/short-story-wedneday.html" target="_blank">Patti Abbott's blog</a>.</div><div><br /></div></div>Casual Debrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08098608670682517783noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8163165929158089008.post-49052273558080516022023-03-21T23:30:00.002-04:002023-03-23T23:22:12.310-04:00Casual Shorts & the ISFdb Top Short Fiction #21: Nightfall by Isaac Asimov<div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div><b><span style="color: #990000;">Asimov, Isaac. "Nightfall." </span></b><span style="color: #990000;"><b>Astounding Science-Fiction, September 1941</b></span>.</div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>This article is part of my attempt to read all the 155 stories currently (as of 1 November 2022) on the ISFdb's Top Short Fiction list. Please <a href="https://casualdebris.blogspot.com/2022/11/project-isfdb-top-short-fiction.html" target="_blank">see the introduction and list of stories here</a></i>. <i>I am encouraging readers to rate the stories and books they have read on the ISFdb.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><span style="color: #990000;">ISFdb Rating: 9.06/10</span></b></div><div><b><span style="color: #990000;">My Rating: 7/10</span></b></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>"<i>Aton 77, director of Saro University, thrust out a belligerent lower lip and glared at the young newspaperman in a hot fury</i>."</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKyommuA4sfhn5Jj5nQazy-szhaodgXaKd4sNBTyAw11jVLiZ22uNGB2E8dtrVNpx101BrJWrKTSr3QEPCQc20hLEozJ-5LNixu95Cxc2tavMdNcpj3pbI4ZYyyyV0MiXu6mGSZSrGyQ1reoWuwCIcDS54sApBfSHpHq-5nYpA0pAYe4UnoroEDc6ERA/s2741/Astounding%20SF%20September%201941%20Asimov%20Nightfall.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2741" data-original-width="1956" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKyommuA4sfhn5Jj5nQazy-szhaodgXaKd4sNBTyAw11jVLiZ22uNGB2E8dtrVNpx101BrJWrKTSr3QEPCQc20hLEozJ-5LNixu95Cxc2tavMdNcpj3pbI4ZYyyyV0MiXu6mGSZSrGyQ1reoWuwCIcDS54sApBfSHpHq-5nYpA0pAYe4UnoroEDc6ERA/s320/Astounding%20SF%20September%201941%20Asimov%20Nightfall.jpg" width="228" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div><div>The planet Lagash has six suns, and in a few hours, when only one remains in the sky, an eclipse will plunge the planet into total darkness. This occurrence transpires every 2,049 years, and it appears that every 2,049 years, like clockwork, the people of Lagash destroy their civilization at the moment of eclipse.</div><div><br /></div><div>Gathered in the University of Saro observatory is a group of scientists and a reporter who await the monumental event. A hideout has been built to preserve some citizens from the anticipated chaos, while the scientists remain in the enclosed building to record the event with their somewhat primitive instruments. Adding to the tension is a group of religious fanatics trying to break into the observatory, to sabotage the research as they believe this is truly the end of days. Yet even the rational men (yes, they are all men) fear the oncoming dark, as no one from Lagash has ever experienced total darkness, nor has anyone seen stars.</div><div><br /></div><div>History has progressed at a somewhat slower pace on Lagash than it has on Earth. With the absence of the night sky, it is more difficult for astronomers to properly observe the celestial bodies, and we learn that their science discovered gravity late in the civilization's maturation. In addition, with the absence of darkness, Lagashians do not develop electric light, and yet they do have electricity, as revealed by the two astronomers who attempt to create artificial stars in a darkened dome. In no instance does it appear that Lagash is ahead of Earth technologically, so the implication is that darkness and the access to stars (visible access, at least), has greatly helped humans evolve. However, religion has evolved at an equal pace on both planets, so ironically the absence of the heavens has placed greater emphasis on eventually reaching them.</div><div><br /></div><div>I have always enjoyed this story as well as the concept behind it. Asimov was truly a great thinker, and at the age of twenty-one had already developed such an advanced concept for 1941. As with many of his early stories, editor John W. Campbell Jr. helped the young Asimov develop his ideas, and apparently with the success of "Nightfall," increased the writer's pay.</div><div><br /></div><div>One item in the story alludes me, and perhaps someone can clear this up for me. One sun remains in the sky, while the five others have set, presumably lighting up the opposite side of the planet. The eclipse is of the remaining star, plunging the entire planet into darkness. However, wouldn't the eclipse affect only this side of the planet? Yet the scientists maintain that the entire planet will plunge into darkness, and there is mention of other cities on the planet, so wouldn't those far enough away be spared the eclipse and the sight of the stars? Have I misread a detail in the story?</div><div><br /></div><div>For more of this week's Wednesday's Short Stories, please visit <a href="http://pattinase.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Patti Abbott's blog</a>.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div></div>Casual Debrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08098608670682517783noreply@blogger.com9