Group Read 27: The Big Book of Science Fiction

Story #42 of 107: “Day of Wrath” by Sever Gansovsky

Even though “Day of Wrath” is translated from Russian, it sounded completely American. The story is about two men riding on horseback into a backcountry settled by folks who work the land, live in cabins, and who fear people they don’t consider humans. I don’t know if Gansovsky intentionally wanted us to think of Native Americans but I did. There is one scene that reminds me of The Searchers.

“Day of Wrath” reminded me of stories I read in old issues of Astounding, Analog, or Galaxy from the 1950s and 1960s. Stories like those written by Poul Anderson, Gordon Dickson, or Jack Vance. Stories that began with two riders, sometimes on horses, and sometimes on strange alien mounts, with one rider who knows the country, and one rider who doesn’t. That setup lets us the reader learn the backstory with the newcomer. I assume we’re on Earth, but that might not be true.

The two characters are Meller, the forester, and Betly, the journalist. Betly wants to find out what people think of the otarks, superintelligent creatures that escape from a science lab years ago and are now populating that rural area. They are pushing out the humans. The city people have heard about the otarks and are fascinated by the fact they know advanced mathematics. But the local people only know the otarks as killers, and consider them inhuman. Gansovsky also tells us this society has intelligent machines but doesn’t make much of them.

“Day of Wrath” wants us to consider the old question: What is human? That’s a favorite science-fictional theme I enjoy. Like the androids in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick, we’re told the otarks have no empathy, no compassion. They do have brilliant analytical minds that do higher mathematics and understand the Theory of Relativity. But the otarks also kill wantonly. To portray them as the ultimate evil, Gansovsky has them eat humans and even each other. Does he do this so we’ll think they are worth exterminating? But then, does he tell us they understand Einstein as a reason to save them?

Gansovsky brings us these issues, but the ending suggests he’s on the side of extermination. I assume the ending is the day of wrath. That’s an interesting word to use since we usually associate it with God. We are the gods of the otarks, and it’s our wrath that will destroy them. It’s telling that Gansovsky begins his tale with this quote from a hearing:

The key to the story is deciding if humans have qualities the otarks don’t. This is my first reading of “Day of Wrath” and I expect to reread it because I believe it’s a deeper story than possible to understand from one reading.

But I have a question for Gansovsky: Does killing make us inhuman? Humans kill all the time. Sometimes we’re even cannibals. Maybe we lack that divine spark we think we see in ourselves. In Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Dick does advocate extermination because the androids lack empathy. His novel focuses on what makes us inhuman. But the film version Blade Runner focuses on what makes the Replicants human. I tend to feel, that Gansovsky is positioning himself closer to PKD here, and not seeing the otarks as a Roy Batty who gives us a “Tears in the Rain” speech. But when I reread this story in the future I might change my mind.

Rating: ****

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James Wallace Harris, 11/10/21

Group Read 27: The Big Book of Science Fiction

Story #41 of 107: “A Modest Genius” by Vadim Shefner

“A Modest Genius” by Vadim Shefner is another story in The Big Book of Science Fiction that I wouldn’t consider science fiction. Yes, it has an inventor of science-fictional gadgets, but those inventions are used as a fantasy writer would use them, not science fiction. “A Modest Genius” is told in a fable or parable-like style about a man and three women he’s interested in. I don’t know what to call this style, but it involves more telling than showing. We’ve seen this mode of storytelling mostly in the translated stories in this anthology. I wonder if it’s just a popular narrative approach in other countries?

Maybe this style of writing should be called the oral storytelling mode because it sounds like what you’d hear if the narrator was telling us the story out loud. Oral storytellers usually don’t have a lot of dialogs — probably because it would make them sound like they had multiple personalities. This technique is more common in fantasy stories because it conveys an old-timey feel. Unfortunately, I don’t like its use in science fiction, probably because it reminds me of 19th-century fiction, and I like to think of SF as future-oriented.

“A Modest Genius” is still a pleasant little tale but one I would never choose to anthologize. The story’s core insights are about picking the right kind of spouse for your personality. That’s hardly science-fictional. The crazy inventions just gives Sergei the patina of being an oddball, or add a bit of humor.

This disappoints me because I was looking forward to reading Soviet science fiction. I was hoping the translated stories would give us insights into the traditional themes of science fiction with unique perspectives from other cultures. All too often they’ve been about mundane topics with some science-fictional elements.

Science fiction is notoriously hard to define. Everyone has their own definition. But for me, it’s essential that the story is science-fiction at heart. “A Modest Genius” is about a lonely man trying to find the right woman. If the story had centered on his future vision gadget to solve his romance conundrum I would have considered it science fiction, but that idea was only tossed out and ignored.

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James Wallace Harris, 11/8/21

Group Read 27: The Big Book of Science Fiction

Story #40 of 107: “2 B R 0 2 B” Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

I believe we should talk about context — the context of when and why we read science fiction. I became addicted to science fiction during the 7th (63/64) and 8th (64/65) grades because I went to four different junior high schools during those two years. My parents’ marriage was coming apart, and my father had a heart attack, and we just kept having to move. It was a very stressful time and reading science fiction was how I coped. If my life had been stable I’m not sure I would have read so much. I would have been more involved with the real world. My consumption of sci-fi would have been moderate, maybe even casual.

I’m reading a lot of science fiction now because that’s about all I physically feel like doing. I turn 70 this month. Being retired, and discussing science fiction on the internet is something enjoyable to do, somewhat social, letting me interact with folks with a similar reading interest.

When I read a science fiction story today it has to mean something in my current context of life. I’ve been trying to explain that context as I’ve reviewed the stories in The Big Book of Science Fiction.

“2 B R 0 2 B” by Kurt Vonnegut is a famous short story that’s often taught in schools. It’s fun. It’s slick. It’s entertaining. It has a surprise ending. However, I thought the story thin and expected more from the famous Kurt Vonnegut. Of course, when this story was published it was when he was selling to the science fiction magazines, and before he disavowed being a science fiction writer to become a major literary writer. That’s a kind of context too.

In one of my recent reviews, I talk about how I enjoyed a story because I was in the right mood. I had read the story just after getting up in the morning. That’s when I’m at my best. I read “2 B R 0 2 B” while feeling uncomfortable from an overactive bladder and a cranky prostate, while feeling pains in my ass from a recent flareup of the piles, and a stuffy head from the side effects of the drugs I have to take that makes it hard to think clearly. Maybe I would have liked “2 B R 0 2 B” more if I had felt better when I read it?

However, I felt just as bad when I raced through twenty hours of To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis, enjoying every minute of it. That book made me forget that I felt crappy. As soon as I finished that novel I started listening to Crossroads, the new novel by Jonathan Frazen, which is twenty-six hours on audio. I’m just as delighted with it, and it helps me to forget my yucky physical situation too. However, I tried reading Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome, a book considered one of the funniest from the 19th century and the book that inspired Willis to write To Say Nothing of the Dog. Jerome K. Jerome didn’t work. It’s just a series of humorous sketches that aren’t that compelling as a page-turning novel.

Evidently, having an addictive plot is what I need. And Vonnegut’s little story about a man whose wife is having triplets in a world where the population is severely controlled doesn’t last very long or isn’t very diverting. But I’m not sure if the length is a necessity. “The Voices of Time” by J. G. Ballard drew me deeply into it.

There are aspects of “2 B R 0 2 B” that were more important back in the 1960s. Even before The Population Bomb (1968) and The Limits of Growth (1972) science fiction magazines ran essays and stories about the dangers of overpopulation. It was a popular topic for Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov, and Harry Harrison wrote a vivid 1966 novel Make Room! Make Room! about the problem. Vonnegut’s facetious treatment of the idea is a quick bit of satire, that really ignores the seriousness of the problem just to get a sick laugh. That’s another context. Now, almost sixty years later, overpopulation is a major factor in climate change, and it’s even more serious of an issue. Shooting people is not a very funny solution because we now live in a world where too many people are whipping out guns and shooting other people. That’s another context.

As a classic story “2 B R 0 2 B” probably desires 4-stars, but as a pleasant trifle, I feel like only giving it 3-stars. And each of those is a different context.

I’ve got 67 more stories to read and review in The Big Book of Science Fiction. The context of reading so much science fiction weighs on each story I read. After forty stories it’s getting harder and harder to impress me.

Supposedly, all the stories in the collection are exceptional. But reading them together shows something different. If I was in the 8th grade and “2 B R 0 2 B” was my only reading assignment, I would probably consider “2 B R 0 2 B” a really good story. It was easy to read and funny. It would also be easy to talk about in class, or a snap to write a paper on. In that context, I would have thought English class that day wasn’t the drag it usually is. Compared to the other 39 stories we’ve read so far, it would rank maybe 28.

But in my present context of annoying bodily sensations and having to read this story because I set my goal to review all the stories in a giant anthology, Vonnegut’s story was barely a blip.

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James Wallace Harris, 11/7/21

Group Read 27: The Big Book of Science Fiction

Story #39 of 107: “The Squid Chooses Its Own Ink” by Adolfo Bioy Casares

“The Squid Chooses Its Own Ink” by Adolfo Bioy Casares is a nice enough little tale, but it really didn’t do much for me. It’s another story about an alien that comes to Earth to save humanity from itself and protect outer space from us crazy people who have the bomb. We never get to meet the alien, and the story is told in a rather roundabout comic tone. I’m not even sure the alien is the important aspect of this story, but since we’re science fiction readers we zero in on it. I wonder if we were just ordinary fiction readers living in Argentina at the time if the focus of the story wasn’t the teacher and the small-town characters.

The narrative structure, style, and voice felt like other Hispanic stories I’ve read. Since I haven’t read a lot of Spanish-translated stories I don’t know if I’m missing out on literary allusions that might make the story more impressive to people that do. For example, I just finished To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis. It’s a comedy of manners that riffs off of many classic English novels. Since I am familiar with those novels, it made Willis’ style an important part of the story.

Since I don’t have that experience with Hispanic novels I could be missing something very delightful in “The Squid Chooses Its Own Ink.”

Like I said above, the science-fictional elements of this story were already tired by 1962 when this story first came out. Maybe those ideas were new and novel in Argentina at the time. The idea behind this story reminds me of The Man Who Fell To Earth by Walter Tevis from 1963. It takes the old idea and gives it deeper pathos. Do not think you know the Tevis novel if you’ve only seen the horrible film version with David Bowie. It’s a beautifully poignant story of a Martian who comes to Earth to save his world and ours but painfully fails. Casares’ SF idea also reminds me of the 1951 film The Day the Earth Stood Still and the 1954 novel A Mirror for Observers by Edgar Pangborn.

Casares only hinted at the theme, but having an alien from space that comes to save us in a Christ-like role is a good idea though. Maybe it’s even time to resurrect that idea. I do like that the alien fails and some of the town’s people didn’t feel humans were worth saving.

“With my hand on my heart,” Aldini murmured, “I say to you that the traveler did not lie. Sooner or later we’ll blow ourselves up with the atomic bomb. There’s no way past it.” 

As if he were speaking to himself, Badaracco said: 

“Don’t tell me that these old people have destroyed our last hope.” 

“Don Juan doesn’t want to change his way of living,” the Spaniard proposed. “He would rather that the world blew up than that salvation came from outside. I suppose it is a way of loving mankind.” 

“Disgust in the face of things you don’t know,” I said. “Obscurantism.” 

They say that fear makes one’s mind run more clearly. The truth is that there was something strange in the bar that night and we all brought our ideas to the discussion. 

“Come on, fellows, let’s do something,” Badaracco said. “For the love of humanity.” 

“Señor Badaracco, why do you have so much love for humanity?” the Spaniard asked. 

Badaracco blushed and stammered: 

“I don’t know. We all know.” 

“What do we know, Señor Badaracco? If you think about men, do you think them admirable? I think the exact opposite: they are stupid, and cruel, and mean and envious,” Villaroel declared. 

“Whenever there are elections,” Chazarreta agreed, “then your beautiful humanity stands revealed naked, just as it really is. It’s always the worst ones who win.” 

“So love of humanity is just an empty phrase, then?” 

“No, my dear teacher,” Villaroel replied. “Let us call love of humanity the compassion for other people’s pain and the veneration we have for the works of our great minds, for the Immortal Cripple’s Quixote, for the paintings of Velázquez and Murillo. In no sense does this love serve as an argument to delay the end of the world. These works only exist for humans to experience, and after the end of the world—and the day will come, whether brought by the bomb or by natural causes—they will have no justification or support, believe you me. As for compassion, it will disappear as the end approaches….As no one can escape death, let it come quickly, for everyone, so the sum of pain will be as small as possible!”

The Big Book of Science Fiction (p. 444). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

I feel there is humorous cynicism throughout this story, but I can’t be sure. I sense that Casares is poking fun at people who live in small towns, but again I’m not sure. The way the characters address and talk to each other seems like it’s meant to be humorous, but I’m behind both a language and cultural barrier, and Casares might have intended no quaint humor at all. Because the alien figures so little in this story, I’m not sure if the story isn’t mostly poking fun at small-town characters.

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James Wallace Harris, 11/3/21

Group Read 27: The Big Book of Science Fiction

Story #37 of 107: “The Voices of Time” by J. G. Ballard

Whenever I read stories by J. G. Ballard I feel like I’m reading science fiction for grownups. This is my second reading of “The Voices of Time” and it has very adult vibes. Sure, the story ideas are the same old science-fictional bullshit, but they feel literary and serious. Maybe because the theme is death and decay. That’s very heavy. There’s a mature acceptance of death in this story. Youthful science fiction is always about rejecting and defying mortality. However, J. G. Ballard was only around thirty when he wrote “The Voices of Time.” Could Ballard’s upbringing under the conditions described in the autobiographical Empire of The Sun explain his wiser-than-his-years outlook?

Is it me, or do Ballard’s stories from the 1960s focus on decay and decline? Was that just a schtick he developed or personal philosophy? Or should we tag that as his entropic period? When I was young I didn’t dig Ballard that much. I admired him, especially the Vermillion Sands stories, but his end-of-the-world novels didn’t have the violence and excitement as American end-of-the-world novels. They felt decadent. I also associated them with how I imagined the British felt about the decline of their empire. Now that I’m older, Ballard’s stories resonate with my current moods. One of those moods is the belief that the American empire is in decline.

The story begins with a doctor named Powers contemplating the suicide of a colleague who had spent his last days carving a giant symbol at the bottom of an empty pool. Powers knows he’s about to die too and has his own compulsions to leave a message. Powers knows he’s been infected with a plague that makes people comatose. He is sleeping more each day and plots his remaining hours of consciousness to wrap up his affairs. This lets us readers observe a world undergoing bizarre changes. Earth is experiencing a rise in radiation from space, and animals are starting to mutate and adapt, including some plants and animals absorbing lead to produce protective shielding.

Initially, however, Powers was too preoccupied with completing his work at the Clinic and planning his own final withdrawal. After the first frantic weeks of panic he had managed to accept an uneasy compromise that allowed him to view his predicament with the detached fatalism he had previously reserved for his patients. Fortunately he was moving down the physical and mental gradients simultaneously—lethargy and inertia blunted his anxieties, a slackening metabolism made it necessary to concentrate to produce a connected thought-train. In fact, the lengthening intervals of dreamless sleep were almost restful. He found himself beginning to look forward to them, and made no effort to wake earlier than was essential.

“The Voices of Time” is a 4-star story for me that I look forward to reading, again and again, it might even become a 5-star story if I can ever decipher what Ballard is doing. I can’t yet tell if Ballard has accidentally included enough elements to make this story into a philosophical mystery, or if it was intentional. It’s the kind of story that college students analyze and write papers about.

There is a beautiful epic passage towards the end that explains the title.

Like an endless river, so broad that its banks were below the horizons, it flowed steadily towards him, a vast course of time that spread outwards to fill the sky and the universe, enveloping everything within them. Moving slowly, the forward direction of its majestic current almost imperceptible, Powers knew that its source was the source of the cosmos itself. As it passed him, he felt its massive magnetic pull, let himself be drawn into it, borne gently on its powerful back. Quietly it carried him away, and he rotated slowly, facing the direction of the tide. Around him the outlines of the hills and the lake had faded, but the image of the mandala, like a cosmic clock, remained fixed before his eyes, illuminating the broad surface of the stream. Watching it constantly, he felt his body gradually dissolving, its physical dimensions melting into the vast continuum of the current, which bore him out into the centre of the great channel, sweeping him onward, beyond hope but at last at rest, down the broadening reaches of the river of eternity.

Why did Ballard imagine this immense view of time? Was he smoking dope or meditating and this vision appeared to him? Or did some classic poem or writer inspire it? For whatever reason, he worked it into a lovely science fiction story. It justifies creating a dying character, even a dying Earth.

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James Wallace Harris, 10/31/21