Rocket Science: 1955 - 1956

Introducing a new column for 2009, Rocket Science, a tour of the winners of past Hugo Awards in the various short fiction categories. Your guide will be Scott D. Danielson; please keep your feet and arms inside the ride at all times.

1955: Clevention, Cleveland, Ohio.

Novelette: “The Darfstellar” by Walter M. Miller, Jr.

Walter M. Miller, Jr. (1923 - 1996) had an extremely brief but extremely bright career in science fiction. He was primarily a short story writer whose published stories all appeared between 1951 and 1957. Not too long after this story was published, the first part of Miller’s famous A Canticle for Leibowitz appeared in Fantasy & Science Fiction (April 1955) as a novella. It and two other novellas were collected and published as the novel we know in 1960. After that, no new fiction by Miller was published until after his death in 1996.

“The Darfstellar” is about Ryan Thornier, a man who used to be an actor but now works as a janitor in a theater. He didn’t lose his job because he stank as an actor; instead, he lost it to technology. Live theater is now performed by mannequins that are controlled by The Maestro, a central machine. Every theater has one. Most of Thornier’s colleagues, enticed by royalties and fame, allowed the mannequins to be patterned after them, but not Thornier, who wouldn’t have it.

The theater Thornier works for starts to set up for their next play, which is one that Thornier himself was in rehearsal for (lead role!) before being let go in favor of the mannequins. He figures out how to disable the mannequin that is playing the lead part, then steps into the role himself.

The obvious theme here is the survival of mankind and self-worth in the face of technology. Near the end, a character puts it this way to Thornier:

Whatever you specialize in, another specialty will either gobble you up, or find a way to replace you. If you get what looks like a secure niche, somebody’ll come along and wall you up in it and write your epitaph on it. And the more specialized a society gets, the more dangerous it is for the pure specialist. You think an electronic engineer is any safer than an actor? Or a ditch-digger?

The story translates very well to today except for the computer technology, which is full of tape reels and other moving parts. The theme, though, still hits home, and Miller’s description of the performance, which takes up a large part of the story, is well worth the time.

Short Story: “Allamagoosa” by Eric Frank Russell

Like Walter Miller, Eric Frank Russell (1905 - 1978) stopped writing long before the end of his life. He published only a couple of novels and a few short stories after a very prolific 1950’s. In the introduction to the Del Rey The Best of Eric Frank Russell collection, Alan Dean Foster recalls John Campbell saying that he wished he could get Russell writing again. Foster then goes on to quote a letter he received from Russell in 1972 in which Russell said: “I can’t write without being enthusiastic and I can’t get enthusiastic about an old-hat plot. Ninety-nine percent of today’s SF yarns are decidedly old-hat.” He goes on to say: “Hence, today’s SF yarns get cheers mainly from the young who haven’t read the oldies and think their plots and angles shine with pristine newness.” Interesting that we are still talking the same way in 2009.

“Allamagoosa” is a story that really doesn’t need to be science fiction. The story would have fit just fine in Herman Wouk’s World War II novel The Caine Mutiny, for example, both in tone and in theme, if it were set on a battleship instead of a starship. “Allamagoosa” is about the crew of the starship Bustler, which is now in port after a long, trouble-filled trip. Preparing for inspection, the crew checks their inventory and finds that they are missing something listed as an “offog.” No one knows what an “offog” is, so what they do then to avoid problems with the inspection is the subject of the laugh-out-loud story that satirizes the military way of doing things.

1956: NyCon II, New York, NY

Novelette: “Exploration Team” by Murray Leinster

Huyghens is the kind of man who speaks with an exclamation point after every sentence. He lives on a planet filled with dangerous animals, but he doesn’t live there completely alone. He’s got four bears with him, and an eagle. Together they survive, battling dangerous creatures on a daily basis and enjoying every minute of it.

Then they get a surprise visitor from the Survey. That visitor is expecting to land his ship at a colony founded by a mixed team of humans and robots, but instead he finds Huyghens and his bears. After realizing that the colony did exist and might still, Huyghens listens for and detects an SOS from that colony. The two men quickly decide to mount a rescue.

Murray Leinster (1896 - 1975) is a giant in the science fiction field. He wrote hundreds of stories and 56 novels. To say that he had a huge effect on the genre would be an understatement, but I don’t get the impression that he’s widely read today.

The can-do nature of the characters in this story is something that I’ve seen a lot in Robert A. Heinlein’s characters, and not too often in fiction nowadays. Huyghens explains that the colonists, if they survive, would broadcast a signal with what they had on the shortest wavelength possible, so with a few tugs here and some solder there, he should be able to detect that signal, and… bingo. There it is. Star Trek took that kind of thing and ran with it to the point of nonsense, fixing imaginary things with other imaginary things without attempting to make sense. Leinster was one of the writers who really cared about how things worked, and he took the time to explain those things in his fiction. It was as important as the rest of the story.

Leinster’s character, Huyghens, doesn’t think much of robots. They can only do what they are programmed to do, he says. A colony could never survive if it’s being run be robots because robots can’t handle the unexpected, and the one thing you can expect on a new planet is the unexpected. I think he’s right.

Short Story: “The Star” by Arthur C. Clarke

Of the four stories here, if I had to select one that was a “must-read,” it would be this one. The opening sentences grab me still, at least 30 years since I first read it:

It is three thousand light years to the Vatican. Once, I believed that space could have no power over faith, just as I believed the heavens declared the glory of God’s handiwork. Now I have seen that handiwork, and my faith is sorely troubled.

The speaker in the story is a Jesuit priest who joins an expedition that explores an archaeological site in deep space. If you haven’t read it, you’ll thank me for saying no more, but know that the story is excellent on two levels: first, in its description of an alien culture (in a very short space) and second in its portrayal of a man who has discovered facts that directly contradict his religious faith.

Arthur C. Clarke (1917 - 2008) revisited religion numerous times in his fiction. His most famous work is probably 2001: A Space Odyssey in which he replaces God with godlike aliens. The first story in the collection I read “The Star” in is The Nine Billion Names of God, in which a monastery lists every possible name of God. That one also has a good ending and is a must-read.

Closer Look

• “The Darfstellar” appeared originally in Astounding Science Fiction, January 1955.
• “Allamagoosa” originally appeared in Astounding Science Fiction, May 1955. I read it in The Best of Eric Frank Russell, introduction by Alan Dean Foster, Del Rey, 1978. I love those Del Rey collections!
• “Exploration Team” was the cover story in the March 1956 issue of Astounding Science Fiction.
• “The Star” originally appeared in the November 1955 issue of Infinity Science Fiction. I read the story in the 1959 collection The Other Side of the Sky.