When I lose my perspective, I can become aggressive in promoting aesthetic principles: a pointless and perhaps even offensive waste of time.
What matters is not that other people share my convictions, but that my convictions gain enough clarity within my skull to inform what I write. I will never be a critic; my reviews and comments are lessons to myself.
One of the miracles of American pulp SF of the 1930s is that a good story could slip through, now and then -- this one, for example.
Raymond Z. Gallun was never a stylist, but never an embarrassment, either. He had just enough writing skill to bring his ideas to life, and these were often striking.
In "Derelict," a man running away from his past, without direction since the death of his wife and child, comes across a dead alien vessel adrift in space. His arrival triggers an automatic repair system, and its elegant alien robot, voiceless but perceptive, inscrutable but patient, not only rebuilds the ship, but also heals the psychologically-wounded man.
This combination of narrative simplicity and emotional meaning sets "Derelict" above so many other stories from its decade. Gallun deserves to be rediscovered by every new generation; I want stories like this to stay alive.
When I was young (and strong, and charming, and psychotic) I took antibiotics as if they were ordinary medicine, without much concern for side-effects or interactions. But now, I find the warning labels almost frightening:
-- While taking this medication, do not step on linoleum tiles.
-- Avoid the colour orange.
-- Do not look at the Big Dipper.
-- Chew any and all food on the left side of your mouth. If you accidentally chew on the right, contact your local funeral home for immediate services.
-- If you begin to feel as if you were in the grip of overwhelming mutational forces, you are mistaken and should not be alarmed. Mutation occurs at the level of DNA sequencing, and can harm organisms in reproductive development; as a fully-developed, adult organism, you are most unlikely to sprout lobster claws, or to grow an extra brain, because of mutationary damage. Instead, the overpowering forces that compel your somatic structure to bulge and melt into the shape of a killer monstrosity are nothing more than a pharmaceutically-induced action of metamorphosis, a mere side-effect. It is not mutation. It is not mutation at all. It happens every year to caterpillars, and they never complain.
Because they compress their narratives, many short stories can be far more complex, overtly and by implication, than their length might suggest. This complexity adds to their power, but there can also be power in simplicity. Not every story needs layers of meaning and nuance, because every now and then, a story can suceed by charm alone.
One of my favourite recent examples would be "Scarecrows," by Garry Kilworth, from his collection, DARK HILLS, HOLLOW CLOCKS. Within five pages, Kilworth sets out everything he needs for a light-hearted, almost fabular story.
Right from the start, "Scarecrows" grounds its concept, plot, and resolution in the story's location:
"This village is called Feerness. It sits on an alluvial island which can be reached at low tide from the mainland by a track known locally as 'the hard'. The hard is visible for just a short period each day, the rest of the time it is submerged. A horseman crossing the hard needs to judge when to start his journey very accurately, while the waters are still on the ebb, to reach the other side before the tide turns and rushes back in to recover its territory."
In the most matter-of-fact way, the story then implies that anything could happen here:
"In such places of course, there are still nooks of magic, which have not been cleared away by the march of reason and logic of later centuries. They lie there in hollows, like pockets of green marsh gas, waiting to be used up."
For all of its remote severity, this village has one irresistible pull for the tourists:
"'Aren't the houses charming?' remarked the foreigners. 'Look at the beautiful gabled windows and the thatched rooftops of the cottages. Have you seen the gardens? Full of hollyhocks and roses, and trellises covered in wisteria. And the bullseye windows and leaded lights...'"
Accustomed to their isolation and their private ways, the villagers decide to ward off attention by making their houses ugly:
"The villagers had a meeting one night, and being fisher and farming folk, decided on a course of action congruent with their way of life. They were simple people who believed in simple solutions. They rebuilt their village, making it ugly and frightening, using stone dredged from the slick wastes of the estuary, and sea-rotted timbers covered in limpets and barnacles. There were bulges, and mean little windows as tight as ploughshare slits in turnips, and sills dripping with slime. There were grotesques jutting from the eaves, and dark bands of pocked wood, and misshapen bricks of river mud sealed with organic sludge. The gardens grew only stunted alders, always leafless, that twisted in arthritic poses. There were stagnant pools and lifeless streams, and mounds reminiscent of unkempt graves.
"These new houses threw daunting shadows that in themselves were forbidding areas, cold as churchyard earth."
The trick works, but with an unforeseen cost: the scarecrows of the village come to life, and claim these ugly houses for themselves.
"'What on earth do you want?' asked the astonished John Barnes. It was not the idea that his scarecrow stood before him that was shocking, so much as the fact that the fellow had deserted his post and left the fields unattended.
"'This house,' said the scarecrow, 'was obviously built for the likes of me, not people like you. You must have stolen it from my ancestors. I'm reclaiming my rights.'
"With that, strong gloved fingers of straw gripped John Barnes by the shoulder and wrenched him out into the rain. The scarecrow stepped inside the cottage and slammed the door. There were the sounds of bolts being slammed into place and after a few moments the lamp was put out and the fire doused."
Before the night is over, everyone in the village has been tossed out and locked out, but having fooled the tourists, the villagers now find a way to trick the scarecrows. The plan, of course, goes right back to details of location that began the story. But -- there is always a But.
And there is always room for different priorities in short fiction. Complex or straightforward, haunting or just plain fun, a short story lives or dies according to its impact on the page and its endurance in memory. Garry Kilworth shows that even the simplest of stories, on its own terms, can live and succeed.
[Journal notes: November 22, 2020.]
Although many science fiction films of the 1950s offer layers of implication that speak to adult viewers, while the surface levels of action, spectacle, and monsters appeal to children, THIS ISLAND EARTH is probably best appreciated by the young.
For pure spectacle, the film is a joy (and on the Scream Factory blu ray, looks better than ever). I must have been seven years old when I saw it for the first time, and watching it last night, I felt again that childhood appeal, even if its merits are only skin-deep. I would never call the film bad, so much as naive: the scientist heroes are essentially smart children, lured by the promises of a mail-order catalogue, given lectures by a school teacher benevolent yet distant, dragged without agency from one educational tableau to another. As a result, the film is dreamlike, episodic, with all the colours and emotional depth of a rain puddle bright with gasoline.
Still, for the sake of that colour, THIS ISLAND EARTH remains a film that a part of me will never outgrow.
I hand her the manuscript. She looks at it the way I looked at that chipped beef on toast I looked at during the last convention, and then she starts to hand it back to me, but then I shake my head and start to hand it back to her.
"For me," I say. "A gift. I've typed a lot, and then still more. I want the dough."
She is standing with her back to the great reddish-yellow neon sign of this bank, and it seems to me that light is streaming from her as it does from a cash register, that she is glowing, that she is luminous, that she is brilliant, that she is gleaming, that she is herself becoming a cash register.
"Mammon save you, Lady," I say quietly.
All of the words of the galaxy are whirling about me, around me, within me, through me, above me. I will type them all. I will take this contract and take what it pays, until I take another.
"Mammon save you," I say quietly. "Mammon save you, Lady."
I am alive. I am aglow. I am agog. I am typing at random. I am filling the pages. I am pouring into the trough. I am winning a Hugo, a Nebula, a Mars bar. I am going on and on and on and on and on. I am slaughtering the verb To Be in a great sacrifice.
"Mammon save you," I say quietly. "Mammon save you, Lady," I say quietly. Soon I will be saying it again.
-- From, "We Are For the Cheque," by Robert Silverberg.
[Monday, August 31, 2020.]
