Group Read 27: The Big Book of Science Fiction

Story #65 of 107: “Sandkings” by George R. R. Martin

This is the third time I’ve read “Sandkings” by George R. R. Martin. It has 11 citations on The Classics of Science Fiction Short Fiction list. And it was made into an episode of The Outer Limits.

These are the stories “Sandkings” are tied with on our list for 7th place, all having 11 citations, all heavy-hitters.

This kind of success makes me wonder how such stories are written to make them so memorable. I’m familiar with all the above stories, and some (“Coming Attraction,” “The Country of the Kind,” “Sailing to Byzantium,” and “The Ugly Chickens”) are among my all-time favorites. To be honest, I put “Sandkings” in the second half of that list. But still, it’s a catchy tale.

In “Sandkings,” Simon Kress is a rich collector of violent pets. But not on Earth, on a planet named Baldur, so his pets can be quite exotic. He is offered sandkings, insect-like creatures, with hive intelligence. Kress buys them because he’s told they worship their owners and fight wars. He is also warned that there are certain conditions to be met to maintain safety, but then this story wouldn’t be the story it is if Kress minded those warnings. (I did wonder if Gremlins was an influence, but I checked and it came out five years later in 1984.)

“Sandkings” is another horror story in a science-fictional setting. The VanderMeers seem to have a penchant for those. Evidently, they have a macabre streak. Maybe they grew up reading Poe. “Sandkings” is a story old Edgar Allan would have admired. But I also catch whiffs of other literary influences.

First off, I wondered if Martin read Theodore Sturgeon’s 1941 classic, “Microcosmic God,” and thought, hey, this god of small things is a neat idea, I wonder if I could do something with it and make it more realistic? The protagonist for “Microcosmic God” was named Kidder, another K-name like Kress. Mercurio Rivera’s “Beyond the Tattered Veil of Stars” (Asimov’s Jan-Feb 2020) also used the god of small things theme. I only know of these three stories that use the god of small things theme, so it appears writers can recycle it about every forty years. Does anybody know of other examples?

Like I said, I felt Poe was an influence. But I also wondered about Oscar Wilde and The Picture of Dorian Gray. “Sandkings” has a gothic feel to it, and it’s about sensuality, decadence, and evil. The sandkings worship Kress. They build images of him in stone. Those images change over time, reflecting the corruption of Kress’s soul.

Reading “Sandkings” makes me wonder if more writers shouldn’t search out old forgotten SF themes and refashion them into new stories. It’s done all the time but usually at a superficial level to the most commonly used themes. The best example is the murder mystery. Why haven’t we gotten tired of that theme/plot?

James Wallace Harris, 12/28/21