WHO ...
. . . says you can't find the earth's most fantastic machine sitting in the middle of a neighborhood junkyard?
. . . says you can't use skywriting to build a mausoleum big enough to bury a city?
. . . says you can't play a monstrously elaborate joke on all of the world's leading scientists?
. . . says you can't build a better mousetrap that will by itself destroy civilization?
. . . says you can't stop interplanetary war by finding a certain hungry ragpicker?
Who?
You?
Then read on . . .
13
GREAT STORIES
OF SCIENCE FICTION
A Gold Medal Collection
Edited by GROFF CONKLIN
Gold Medal Books
PAWCETT publications, inc., Greenwich Conn.
Copyright © I960 by Fawcett Publications, Inc.
First printing, May I960
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof.
Poul Anderson, the light. © 1957 by Galaxy Publishing Corporation. Reprinted by permission of Scott Meredith from Galaxy Science Fiction, March 1957.
Algis Budrys, the war is over. © 1957 by Street and Smith Publications, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Scott Meredith from Astounding Science Fiction, February 1957.
Arthur C. Clarke, silence, please! Copyright 1950 by Science Fantasy Magazine (Great Britain). Reprinted by permission of Scott Meredith from Science Fantasy, Winter, 1950.
G. C. Edmondson, technological retreat. © 1956 by Mercury Press, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Malcolm Reiss from Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, May 1956.
Richard B. Gehman, the machine. Copyright 1946 by P. F. Collier & Son Corp. Reprinted by permission of the author and Littauer and Wilkinson, agents, from Collier's, December 14, 1946.
Wyman Guin, volpla. Copyright 1952 by Galaxy Publishing Corporation. Reprinted by permission of the author from Galaxy Science Fiction, May 1956.
Damon Knight, the analogues. Copyright 1952 by Street and Smith Publications, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Harry Altshuler from Astounding Science Fiction, January 1952.
William Morrison, shipping clerk. Copyright 1952 by Galaxy Publishing Corporation. Reprinted by permission of Joseph Samachson from Galaxy Science Fiction, June 1952.
Alan Nelson, soap opera. Copyright 1953 by Mercury Press, Inc. Reprinted by permission of the author from Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, April 1953.
W. T. Powers, allegory. Copyright 1953 by Street and Smith Publications, Inc. Reprinted from Astounding Science Fiction, April 1953.
Lion Miller, the available data on the worp reaction. Copyright 1953 by Mercury Press, Inc. Reprinted by permission of the author from Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, September 1953.
Theodore Sturgeon, the skills of xanadu. © 1956 by Galaxy Publishing Corporation. Reprinted by permission of the author from Galaxy Science Fiction, July 1956.
John Wyndham, compassion circuit. Copyright 1954 by King Size Publications. Reprinted by .permission of Scott Meredith from Fantastic Universe, December 1954.
All characters in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
Printed in the United States of America
Contents
Introduction
The War Is Over
Algis Budrys
The Light
Poul Anderson
Compassion Circuit
John Wyndham
Volpla
Wyman Guin
Silence, Please!
Arthur C. Clarke
Allegory
William T. Powers
Soap Opera
Alan Nelson
Shipping Clerk
William Morrison
Technological Retreat
G. C. Edmondson
The Analogues
Damon Knight
The Available Data on the Worp Reaction
Lion Miller
The Skills of Xanadu
Theodore Sturgeon
The Machine
Richard Gehman
What constitutes invention—in science fiction as well as science? The dictionary definition is, like so many dictionary definitions, vague, generalized, variable, and subject to wide and conflicting interpretations.
Says Webster: "Invention: the power of inventing, or conceiving, devising, originating, etc. . . . Something invented; specif.: a. A fabrication of the imagination; fiction; hence, falsehood, b. A device, contrivance, or the like, originated after study and experiment." • In other words, "invention" does not only mean a patentable gadget or process that can be used to increase the luxury, the efficiency, or the complicatedness of modern life. It can mean many other things. To take a single example, there are musical "inventions;" and the great Johann Sebastian Bach described his as having as their purpose not only to teach the student "To learn ... to acquire good ideas, but also to work them out themselves . . ." The function of invention, in science, in fiction, in music, in everything, is thus to expand the use of the mind, as well as to turn out something "new."
How widely the term is used! There have been poets whc* said that God "invented" the universe. Critics often write in praise of an actor's "inventiveness" in portraying a character or illuminating a situation. Once there was a social poet who wrote:
"So every great invention means Another multi-millionaire Whose hirelings—also his machines— Subsist on less than prison fare."
That was by an almost-forgotten American named John Luckey McCreery (d. 1906).
Almost every kind of invention in the book is to be found in this collection, except musical. There is an invention that begins a new civilization, and another that ends an old one. There is a silly little invention that makes skywriting impractical—for a limited time and over a limited area, at any rate. And a very serious one that enslaves mankind. One tale tells of a man who "invented" a new animal, and another that reports on a fellow who "dis-invented" noise. And there are a couple describing inventions that are patently (pardon the pun) beyond science; in this, perhaps, partaking more of the aspects of Webster's definition dealing with "fabrications of the imagination" rather than with contrivances "originated after study and experiment." In other words, sheer fantasy inventions.
Only one important type of standard science fiction invention is omitted from this book: a type that has, indeed, become almost tiresomely commonplace in recent years. That is the time machine. There are no time machines in this collection because (if you want the fact flatly) everyone will expect some time machine stories: so why include the obvious in a highly unobvious book like this ?
Meanwhile, I hope you enjoy this book—and also that you draw a few conclusions from it, comparing its screwy ideas with the real world as we know it. The conclusion: almost anything can be invented! What could have been more unbelievable than radio to a person who hadn't been born in an era in which Hertzian waves were a commonplace? Or hydrogen bombs, in a world without E=Mc2 ? So don't be surprised if some of the notions in this compilation have become reality by the time you get hold of it. (On the other hand, don't be surprised if they haven't, either!)
There are, of course, many hundreds of "inventions" in the science fiction gold mine, and we can only scratch the surface of the lode in a book as brief as this. For those who want more of the same, many of the over one hundred anthologies of science fantasy that have appeared during the past twelve years are as full of 24-karat invention as a good home-made raisin bread is of raisins. The present selection does, however, offer a selective survey of the almost incredibly rich vein of ideas that the science fiction imagination habitually explores; and that is all it is intended to do. If it encourages you to further reading in this exciting field—why, so much the better!
Groff Conklin
by
The first sentence of this somber story sets its mood with a disturbing incongruity, for only birds and reptiles have nictitating membranes over their eyes. Certainly no human named Frank Simpson ever had them. . . . Well—read on, and discover what strange wonders tomorrow's cybernetic science can be imagined as developing to control living beings—and on an inter galactic scale, at that.
A SLOW WIND was rolling over the dusty plateau where the spaceship was being fueled, and Frank Simpson, waiting in his flight coveralls, drew his nictitating membranes across his stinging eyes. He continued to stare abstractedly at the gleaming, just-completed hull.
Overhead, Castle's cold sun glowed wanly down through the ice-crystal clouds. A line of men stretched from the block-and-tackle hoist at the plateau's edge to the exposed fuel racks at the base of the riveted hull. As each naked fuel slug was hauled up from the plain, it passed from hand to hand, from man to man, and so to its place in the ship. A reserve labor pool stood quietly to one side. As a man faltered in the working line, a reserve stepped into his place. Sick, dying men staggered to a place set aside for them, out of the work’s way, and slumped down there, waiting. Some of them had been handling the fuel since it came out of the processing pile, three hundred miles across the plains in a straight line, nearer five hundred by wagon track. Simpson did not wonder they were dying, nor paid them any attention. His job was the ship, and he'd be at it soon.
He wiped at the film of dirt settling on his cheeks, digging it out of the serrations in his hide with a horny forefinger-nail. Looking at the ship, he found himself feeling nothing new. He was neither impressed with its size, pleased by the innate grace of its design, nor excited by anticipation of its goal. He felt nothing but the old, old driving urgency to get aboard, lock the locks, throw the switches, fire the engines, and go—go! From birth, probably, from first intelligent self-awareness certainly, that drive had loomed over everything else like a demon just behind his back. Every one of these men on this plateau felt the same thing. Only Simpson was going, but he felt no triumph in it.
He turned his back on a particularly vicious puff of dust and found himself looking in the direction of Castle town, far over the horizon on the other side of the great plains that ended at the foot of this plateau.
Castle town was his birthplace. He thought to himself, with sardonic logic, that he could hardly have had any other. Where else on Castle did anyone live but in Castle town? He remembered his family's den with no special sentimental affection. But, standing here in the thin cold, bedeviled by dust, he appreciated it in memory. It was a snug, comfortable place to be, with the rich, moist smell of the earth surrounding him. There was a ramp up to the surface, and at the ramp's head were the few square yards of ground hard-packed by the weight of generations of his family lying ecstatically in the infrequently warm sun.
He hunched his shoulders against the cold of the plateau, and a wish that he was back on the other side of the plains, where Castle town spread on one side of the broad hill above a quiet creek, crept past the demon that had brought him here.
The thought of Castle town reminded him of his father— "This is the generation, Frank! This is the generation that'll see the ship finished, and one of us going. It could be you, Frank!"—and of the long process, some of it hard work, some of it inherent aptitude, some of it luck, that had brought ...
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