Legal Ramblings
[ Thursday, September 23, 2004 (10:03 PM) ] ( link )
Three science-fiction short stories: I'm a big science fiction fan. Here are three science-fiction short stories that, for one reason have another, have embedded themselves into my memory.
1. "A Dry, Quiet War," by Tony Daniel
What I love about "A Dry, Quiet War" is its atmosphere. The war referenced in the title is wonderfully understated--you know that it is a galaxy-shattering, time-busting conflict, but the narrator drops only a few tantalizing hints about it (for instance, the second sentence: "I had been away twelve billion years"). What Daniel most effectively conveys is the narrator's utter weariness with the war, his deep-seated desire to return to normality, even though both his mind and his body have been irrevocably warped.
But "A Dry, Quiet War" is also a little revenge story, and in that respect it is also pretty thrilling. Not only does the narrator turn out to be an utter badass when the circumstances call for it, but he utters one of the best badass lines of all time: "You have something on me," I said. "I cannot abide that."
If I one day gain the power to unleash hell on my enemies, that is what I will say to them before laying bare their souls.
2. "Bounty," by George Saunders
I encountered "Bounty" through a rather curious path. When I was in middle school, my parents, obsessed with the idea of churning out literate, high-minded children, subscribed to a bunch of magazines far too sophisticated for my tastes, including The New Yorker and, most relevant here, Harper's Magazine. As I said these magazines were simply too highbrow for me, and I spent most of time searching out the really scandalous articles or stories (sex, violence, or videogames, please) rather than the boring cultural stuff. (I also liked the weird shorts Harper's had in the front, but that's irrelevant here.)
One day I was very surprised to open Harper's Magazine to discover that their feature article was a novella--and not just any novella, but a science-fiction novella entitled "Bounty." The story was very, very weird, but not because of its subject matter--its discussion of mutated human beings being the subject of discrimination and often violence might seem novel to some people but is utterly blase for even the most casual science-fiction (or comics) fan. It's true that the world of "Bounty" was much darker and grittier than most stories I had read thus far, but even that was not enough to make me think the story weird. Rather, what was so strange about "Bounty" was the author's almost flippant style. Take, for instance, this bit of dialogue from early in the story: "Another incident of this ilk and you may well find yourself wandering the wide world sans income my friend," Oberlin says. "And no joke. Bear in mind that in your case we're talking about a young man who was practically frigging born here, and who has apparently forgotten the considerable deprivations and pains in the asses of existing without a potable water source, not to mention security from rampaging gangs that mean him harm."
"Wow," Albert says.
I hope that gives you a taste of the author's style. As a result of these little flourishes, the story is almost surreal, hopping from place to place in a dystopian future America where genetic purity is the key to survival. I think it is fair to say that this story blew my mind when I first read it. I had of course read stylistically strange stuff before, but none of it had wheedled itself into my brain quite like "Bounty." (In hindsight, it's not so strange; but I was young and impressionable.)
A coincidental aside: Years later, when I was in college, I happened to work at the New America Foundation for a summer. One of New America's fellows is Michael Lind. It turns out that Lind was an editor at Harper's Magazine when they published "Bounty," and he described to me how a bunch of Harper's editors were sitting around a table one day, discussing this story, when they all decided "What the hell, let's screw with the critics," and published a science-fiction story as a Harper's centerpiece. I let him know how much I liked the piece. He seemed amused.
3. "Nightmare Brother," by Alan Nourse
I read this story as part of an anthology that also included "A Sound of Thunder" by Ray Bradbury and "And He Built a Crooked House" by Robert A. Heinlein. Nourse's story is actually pretty straightforward. (Warning: the rest of the paragraph contains spoilers.) Basically, the narrator is experiencing a series of increasingly horrific nightmares, which Nourse graphically describes. But it turns out that the nightmares are really just a simulation, to prepare the man to become a space pilot. The reason they're giving him nightmares on purpose is that space flight turned out to be a lot more mentally taxing than they had imagined: somehow, when you got beyond the range of the solar system (or galaxy, or whatever), things happened that made normal people go mad.
(Actually, I'm pretty sure spoilers continue here so if you really care you probably don't want to read on.) Two things struck me about this story. The first was Nourse's excellent descriptions of the nightmares, particularly the one at the end, which, if I recall correctly, starts off on a tall pillar of rock and ends up on a sandy beach. I actually had dreams (both nightmares and not-nightmares) about this particular setting for years afterward. (I had actually forgotten the source of this dream until I had it particularly vividly one day in college, of all places, and got up to figure out a non-Freudian reason that I was dreaming of falling off a rocky tower.)
The second reason is Nourse's decidedly non-romantic view of space flight. Now, I had already encountered H.P. Lovecraft, so I was used to the idea of things that would drive people mad because they were just so wacky. But Lovecraft's maddening things were all hideous monsters, so their tendency to drive people insane was totally understandable. On the other hand, I had always thought of space flight as just a mechanical action, no more mentally destabilizing than, say, driving a car (other than in New York City). Nourse's story was the first one I had encountered that presented the possibility that deep space flight--really deep space flight--was something that our limited mammalian minds were simply incapable of actually going through without being reduced to gibbering lumps of flesh. That idea seems to have increased in popularity since Nourse--see, e.g., 2001: A Space Odyssey, Warren Ellis's graphic novel Orbiter, the trashy but somehow fun horror movie Event Horizon--but it was novel to me back then, and perhaps even to Nourse when he wrote the story in 1953.
The deep impression that these stories left on me can be explained in large part by the fact that I read them when I was very young. But, at least in my opinion, they do not suffer particularly much as one ages. If you have a few minutes, I'd still recommend reading them.
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