The Great Science Fiction Stories 9 (1947)

The ninth in this anthology series, this volume contains stories that were being written and revised soon after the close of World War II. It’s obvious that the shadow of that war and its ending hangs over the stories, as more than the usual number are concerned with the after-effects of atomic warfare. It’s a stereotype that science fiction is inherently optimistic, and a number of stories show the reality opposing the stereotype.

“Little Lost Robot” by Isaac Asimov (Astounding) – I admit to not being very fond of Asimov’s famous Robot series. It’s not that I don’t like them; it’s just that I don’t think they are as amazing as is generally held. For me, this story is a great example of their weakness. There is no denying the impact of Asimov’s robotic laws both on fiction and in developing technology, but that doesn’t mean that all the stories that used those laws are necessarily good. While a lot of science fiction uses aliens as the gimmick on which to write other genres of fiction, Asimov instead used robots.

“Little Lost Robot” is, really, a mystery, a tidy little logic problem based on the premise of the robotic laws. The characterization, often a problem with Asimov, is decidedly flat. Asimov actively makes the characters share animosity towards one another for no reason that is apparent in the story itself, while the story implies that they should get along, not just for a common purpose, but because they are smart and thoughtful people. The story ends up being ingenious, but not really “great”. It makes a terrific example of what was good about the writing of that time, but I have a lot of trouble making it signpost of the best science fiction has to offer.

“Tomorrow's Children” Poul Anderson (Astounding) – Given the current interest in post-apocalyptic stories, Anderson’s first story in this anthology series might be interesting to modern readers. I find it interesting that the story comes out of Astounding, whose editor John Campbell believed in human exceptionalism and the ability to rise above any obstacle. Then again, the story does go to an interesting place if only because it is far more realistic than most of the current post-apocalyptic stories. Still, it’s a bit over-long and flat in its delivery, making it a little difficult to read. However, given that it was Anderson’s first published work, it serves as a sign of what was to follow in a long and brilliant career.

“Child's Play” by William Tenn (Astounding) – There seems to be a running motif, usually found in stories by Kuttner and Moore, of toys from the future coming back to wreak havoc on contemporary characters. This is another of those stories by a mostly forgotten writer, William Tenn. The motif allows the story to dance along the edge of whimsy and dread, but they usually end up strongly on the side of dread. This one cuts a little harder, since it involves biogenetics, and the narrator may not be entirely sane as he plays with a child’s science kit from the future. While the ending is telegraphed pretty early on, it is still an evocative piece.

“Time and Time Again” by H. Beam Piper (Astounding) – Piper is probably best known for his Fuzzy novels, which are enjoying a resurrection among modern readers. “Time and Time Again” is an interesting twist on a time travel story, probably fairly ground-breaking in its day but a little clichéd now. If you could travel back into your own past, how would you change things? Piper chooses to use an altruist as his protagonist, so his interest is in changing rotten history rather than just making his life easier. It’s a departure from the Piper I know and so valuable for that alone. The story also makes an interesting introduction into the possibility of time travel, forming an interesting resonance with the recent move Looper.

“Tiny and the Monster” by Theodore Sturgeon (Astounding) – Science fiction of this time is stereotypically known for its alien invasion story, but Sturgeon turns that trope around a bit. The gimmick ends up being a little bit hokey, but Sturgeon’s writing is fun and breezy. Sturgeon shows off his ability to build characters in this story as well, adding straightforward humor to a story that otherwise could be considered twee.

“E for Effort” by T. L. Sherred (Astounding) - This is a fairly well-known piece, reprinted in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame. It’s an interesting take on time travel, imagining that instead of physically moving backwards in time, the characters can merely see into the past. They decide to use this technology to make movies, and the story becomes an interesting view into mid-century moviemaking with a slow progression to something bigger. The writing is very much like Robert Heinlein’s short stories, with a mildly cynical take on culture and human nature. Its climax comes fast and requires a few re-readings to fully understand, but it’s powerful in its delivery. I’ve thought about this story often recently and was delighted to uncover it again.

“Letter to Ellen” by Chan Davis (Astounding) – One of the characteristics of some of the best short stories from this general time period is the attempt to put a human emotional face on technological changes. Science and invention were blossoming at the end of World War II, and the best science fiction stories attempted to put an emotional element on those advances, weighing if they were perhaps not worth their cost. “Letter to Ellen” is an interesting story about technology that we’ve really only begun to explore to its full potential in the past decade, so there is a predictive element to Davis’s writing. However, he points out a bias that grows because of the use of the technology, a bias that doesn’t feel logical but I’m sure would happen if our science reaches the state described in the novel. Interestingly enough, it’s a similar question raised by the novel Frankenstein, but from a different point of view.

“The Figure” by Edward Grendon (Astounding) – This story is very much like an episode of Twilight Zone: short with a twist ending that leaves the audience dangling to find out what happens next. While it is fun, the twist is unfortunately telegraphed early and often. It may well be that decades of watching Twilight Zone and similarly themed and paced TV shows has made it easy to spot the twists of such things.

“With Folded Hands . . .” by Jack Williamson (Astounding) – This is perhaps the most well-known story in this collection. I’ve also come across it in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, so it is fairly well regarded by readers and critics.

I think this story is a nice counterpoint to the Robot stories by Asimov, wherein the three laws of robotics generally force the robots to be relatively docile and benign. But Williamson extrapolates the idea of telling a near-perfect machine to help man to ironic but plausible extremes. Given the near-universal understanding that the greatest threat to man is man itself, it’s fairly amazing that no one attempted to write this story before. In addition, the story has Williamson’s knack for placing a contemporary man of the 40s into a future that is easily recognizable, but different enough to allow there to be space for the story. While a lot of science fiction projects a future where the world is far less complicated, Williamson also recognizes that no matter how automated the world might become, the nature of people is less likely to change quickly.

“The Fires Within” by Arthur C. Clarke (Fantasy) – This is a strong example of Clarke’s own puzzle stories, involving characters trying to solve a mystery. To me, Clarke does this much better than Asimov, especially because his characters are far more believable. Clarke also doesn’t fall back on the clichés as models for what he writes. The framing device for this story is fairly unique, definitely unpredictable, and a delight when fully revealed. The final few paragraphs may seem trite, especially to an audience familiar with the twists and turns of The Twilight Zone, but that ending is merely Clarke’s nifty way of closing out his story, rather than the shocking purpose for the story in the first place. It’s not a weighty story and not Clarke’s best, but it is a good example of what he does when he truly excels (see “The Star” and “Nine Billion Names of God”).

“Zero Hour” by Ray Bradbury (Planet Stories) – “Zero Hour” is a great example of Ray Bradbury’s ability to take the mundane and turn it into something terrifying. The story focuses on fairly generic children’s games based on imagination, but as it proceeds, the sense of lurking dread grows and grows. The story begins with the adults laughing on the childish games until coincidences begin piling up. Bradbury pulls off a neat trick, allowing the reader to know exactly what is going on, so the horror comes not from our discovery of the truth but of the slow realization by the adult characters about what is going to happen. I’m reminded of the lengthier “Something Wicked This Way Comes” in the story’s basis on the usually innocent, but the the brevity of “Zero Hour” compacts and condenses the chill.

“Hobbyist” by Eric Frank Russell (Astounding) – Eric Frank Russell is a mostly forgotten writer from the 40s and 50s, but whose admirers think he deserves a revival. “Hobbyist” concerns an explorer who ends up far from human culture with no fuel. His lone companion on the planet he finds himself on is a macaw named Laura. Russell spends some time justifying choosing a macaw, but I’ve never been a fan of pet birds, so the explanations ring hollow. But it does give the lead character someone to talk to and to provide a second reaction to the story’s events for the reader.

The planet the explorer finds himself on is lush and lively, but something about it unsettles him. It was pretty clear to me what that something was, but it takes the trained explorer a while to figure it out. And just as he struggles to understand the cause of his concern, the action accelerates and gives the explorer an extremely deus ex machina way home.

Russell’s writing has a fine style and subtle humor, more subtle than the story that follows it, for example. Russell also raises some huge questions, especially in the last few paragraphs, but his handling of those large questions feels a little trite. Nonetheless, the story is engrossing despite the macaw and the “sense of humor” she displays.

“Exit the Professor” by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore (Thrilling Wonder Stories) – It’s astonishing how small a role humor plays in longer fiction. “Exit the Professor” is another of Kuttner and Moore’s outrageously charming stories where the science fiction takes a backseat to making the reader laugh. The story is based on a fairly common premise—a few individuals have taken the next step evolutionary step, but the story imagines them being brought up as, for lack of a better word, rednecks. And when their difference is uncovered by a visiting professor, all sorts of mayhem ensues as they race to keep their secret from the world at large.

“Thunder and Roses” by Theodore Sturgeon (Astounding) – Asimov makes the point that atomic destruction certainly seemed to be on everyone’s minds as reflected in the stories of 1947. With the dramatic end of World War II and the revelation of the resources available via atomic power, there was perhaps reason to be fearful. Sturgeon’s story is a powerful piece set after the United States has been devastated by a surprise attack. The narrator stumbles across an important secret and must weigh whether to use it, balancing his instinct against the request of an unexpected companion. The writing is contemplative and compelling, and it’s difficult to not feel for the narrator as he puzzles through his final days in a city dying from fallout.

Leviathan Wakes

It strikes me that space opera is the epic fantasy of science fiction. That is, you expect vast settings and a large cast of characters, all moving about their little narratives that eventually get tied up by the end of the book/series and somehow weave together to overcome the threat that imperils the solar system/galaxy/universe. Even if you are fairly unfamiliar with either subgenre, you can most likely do a quick comparison of the Star Wars (I’m thinking of the original trilogy mostly) and Lord of the Rings movies in your mind. They both have their avatars of oppressive evil—Darth Vader and  Emperor Palpatine versus Saruman and Sauron. They are both far-flung, moving through planetary systems quickly and several countries in Middle Earth respectively. They both have a number of characters whose stories have to be maintained and which come together at the climax to thwart the evil avatars and their attempt to dominate everything and everyone. Therefore it is something of a delight to find a novel that is clearly space opera, but succeeds in escaping these tropes to do something innovative. Leviathan Wakes, by James S. A. Corey (the pseudonym of Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck) is that novel, finding a crevice in the stalwart tradition of space opera and exploiting it with a compelling story.

While the scope of Leviathan Wakes is the entire solar system and while the threat does involve something extra-solar “invading”, the scope is smaller by magnitudes than the galactic milieu of most space opera and especially smaller than the universe-sized setting of the earliest space opera. The novel still makes it clear that we are talking about vast stretches of distance and time, larger than most people truly comprehend, but it also is satisfied to only deal with the solar system from the asteroid belt in. The novel also doesn’t posit a far-distant future where the science allows people to move freely around spacecraft that exceed the speed of light; rather, the science of Leviathan Wakes is not that far advanced from what we currently have now. This also results in delayed communication as participants in the conversation wait for their parts in a conversation to travel at light speed. Thus the setting that the novel inhabits is grand, but doesn’t require the suspension of disbelief of most space operas.

This realistic approach is enhanced by the novel’s focus on really just two characters, James Holden and Joe Miller. Holden is the executive officer on the Canterbury, an ice miner plying the asteroid belt. Holden is sent with a small crew to discover the source of a distress signal, but he ends up witnessing the destruction of the Canterbury by unknown forces. Joe Miller is a nourish private police officer on the asteroid Ceres, who notices strange goings-on among the criminal elements before being given a scut assignment to track down the missing heiress of an Earth industrial mogul. Both characters pull on the threads that are left to them as disaster after disaster strikes—a war breaks out between Earth, Mars, and the largely independent asteroid belt—and both characters try to minimize not only the damage around them but their own unexpected responsibility for the events shaping the war. While there are a few other minor characters that play parts in the ongoing story, Holden and Miller alternate the story’s point-of-view, even as they end up together on the same ship.

The two main characters are pretty deeply flawed, which is a twist on space opera’s general insistence on paragons, or characters who overcome their flaws to become paragons. This is not to say that Holden and Miller are not good people, because they are. But they are fully rounded characters, existing on a continuum rather than a binary. Holden is something of an idealist, expecting that people will do the right thing especially in the cold light of truth. Miller on the other hand is a cynic, expecting people to only act in their self-interest unless forced to do otherwise. This dichotomy causes real friction between them; even though they have the same goals, their respective methodologies disturb each other. And this lies at the heart of space opera—as humans explore the vast expanse of space, the very enormity of their endeavor highlights and intensifies the humanity of the characters. Paradoxically, it is against the largest setting, when individuals appear the smallest, do the characters excel the most.

The large backdrop also exacerbates the worst qualities as well. Given such a large arena in which to succeed, when failures happen, they are often spectacular. In Leviathan Wakes, it is human folly which enables the circumstances that drive the story: the war between the planets is a façade, a ploy setting ignorant militaries at each other’s’ throats in order to hide a corporate power grab, which in turn potentially endangers the entirety of the human race. This is the crux on which Miller and Holden’s differences lie.

Despite its differences from the stereotypes of the genre, Leviathan Wakes remains clearly a space opera. The action is relentless and on a large scale. The questions are big and the answers that Holden and Miller uncover in their search are bigger. And like well-written space opera, Leviathan Wakes is engaging and fun, difficult to put down once started. I’m pleased that there is a sequel and potentially a series.

Batman: The Dark Knight Returns Part 1

In 1986, DC Comics unleashed two of the most important series in comics history, broaching the possibility of mainstream superhero comics as literature. The stories are packed with all the accoutrements of what supposedly makes for good books: symbolism, philosophy, thought-provoking commentary on the human condition. One of those two series, Watchmen, has recently been made into a movie, attempting to take 12 issues and condense the images and words into something like a feature length movie. Audiences who didn’t know the story were put off by the storytelling, in part because of the denseness that faithfulness to the original required. They were also put off by its darkness: people with power are not any better than those without, they just have more ability to do the things they want to do. This is not the stereotypical view of superheroes, supposed paragons of virtue.

While Watchmen has garnered acclaim from mainstream audiences, it actually was the second of the seminal series to come out in 1986. The first, Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, was also groundbreaking and arguably had more impact on the comic industry than even Watchmen. I’m not aware that there has ever been any conversation about making a live action movie out the series, but DC has been quietly animating their best storylines of the past 30 years or so, and their latest project is an adaptation of this story of a retired Batman coming back to the service of his city.

Part of what makes The Dark Knight Returns so innovative is its setting; superheroes generally seem to live in the eternal now, always youthful and in fighting trim. But Frank Miller and this adaptation posits a time when Batman has been retired for a decade and the effect this has both on Gotham City and the people who interacted with him. Commissioner Gordon is on the verge of retirement, Harvey Dent (Two Face) has been rehabilitated and is returning to society, and the Joker sits wordlessly and catatonically in a ward in Arkham Asylum, destitute with no Batman to fight. But Gotham City is not at peace—a new gang called the Mutants has risen, and their only interests seem to be anarchy and mayhem. Batman himself is merely a legend, and the criminals in Gotham City have very few fears. Bruce Wayne really is the idle rich now, a powerful figure in the community, gray-haired but still possessing a presence, racing cars for sport in his leisure time.

After the Mutants murder the parents of a young boy in the streets and their leader openly targets Gordon for assassination before his retirement, Wayne feels the urge to put on the Batman costume again, to return to his city and fulfill the promise he made when he first put it on, “Never again.” The narrative dances along a tenuously thin line here: does Batman exist because of some altruistic desire to serve his city or is he ill, emotionally crippled when not in the costume and compelled by delusions into taking on the role of a messiah? The story also does not answer the question; instead it hangs there as a backdrop as a ruthless Batman sets about saving the things he cares about. The story also plays with the question of the violence that Batman uses to fight crime; while he doesn’t kill, he is not beyond a little torture or temporary maiming to get what he wants.

To fully bring these questions into the foreground, the story uses the device of interspersing news reports from television as segues into scenes. Those reports tend to focus on the average citizens’ response to what is taking place in the city with some people calling Batman a hero for his actions while others think he exacerbates and perhaps causes any problems that may occur. The TV segments come to a sharp focus with an ongoing debate between Bartholomew Wolper, a psychologist who believes that anyone can be rehabilitated but that the Batman is sick and provokes sick responses from his villains, and Lana Lang, a reporter who praises Batman’s efforts to clean up the city, arguing that the hero is a symbol to the people, that anyone can rise up against those who oppress them. It’s important to note that Miller’s original story is decidedly a product of its time, an exploration of the attitudes of the Reagan years in American history and of the idea that certain moral positions demand to be acted upon no matter the cost, and its corollary that might makes right. But these topics do not feel dated at all and have just as much potency as they did when Miller first brought them up.

Peter Weller’s voice jars in Batman’s mouth, especially for animated fans who have had years of Kevin Conroy playing the Dark Knight. But Weller is able to add a tone of weariness to Wayne and Batman, a note that is generally missing from Conroy’s portrayal. To be honest, the other voice actors are okay (even though the talent used is generally of the highest quality), but they are meant to be more complementary to Weller’s Batman and they serve that role well. The animation is a fine dance between the highly stylized artwork of Frank Miller’s original, and the more mainstream animation style that DC Entertainment has developed over the years, based on a mixture of anime sensibilities with Western lines. So, while there is nothing so dramatic as Miller’s figures, there are echoes of his lines in everything. And of course, the animators know their source material, so famous panels are used to send chills up the spines of longtime fans.

Of particular note is the soundtrack by Christopher Drake. The work is at least as compelling as Hans Zimmer’s work on Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, and I pine for the soundtrack much as I do for those of Hans Zimmer. Even after the movie is over and your mind works over the implications and questions raised by the movie, the soundtrack remains in the background, an integral part of the story that this movie tells.

Quite frankly, this is the best Batman movie of the year, multi-layered and complex, with ideas that are impactful after the movie is over. It is much closer to the power of the brilliant The Dark Knight than the actual sequel from this summer, The Dark Knight Rises. It is also the best of DC Entertainment’s animated movies, which is also saying a great deal since the quality of those has generally been excellent. Unfortunately, the storytelling is so lush and dense that the full adaptation has been broken in two, and fans will have to wait a few months to get Part 2. I don’t know if there are any plans to eventually make it into a single package, but if so I don’t know if I can recommend waiting that long to see the brilliant work that DC has done.