Thirteen O'Clock And Other Zero Hours CONTENTS PREFACE THIRTEEN O'CLOCK THE ROCKET OF 1955 WHAT SORGHUM SAYS CRISIS THE REVERSIBLE REVOLUTIONS THE CITY IN THE SOFA THE GOLDEN ROAD MS. FOUND IN A CHINESE FORTUNE COOKIE KORNBLUTH COUNTRY... A launching pad for pulse-racing flights to looking-glass worlds, where nothing is what it seems, and danger comes in the most inconceivable forms. A blast-off point for mind-bending trips in time—deep into the darkest past, and far out into the frenetic future. A wild realm of storytelling imagination inhabited by the most amazing surprises and action in all science fiction. All in C. M. Kornbluth's legendary "Cecil Corwin" stories, presented for the first time in book form for the delight of every SF fan. to MARY—of course Published by Dell Publishing Co., Inc. 750 Third Avenue New York, New York 10017 Copyright © 1970 by James Blish "The Golden Road," copyright 1942 by Albing Publications; copyright © renewed 1970 by Mrs. C. M. Kornbluth. "Ms. Found in a Chinese Fortune Cookie," copyright © 1957 by Mercury Press, Inc.; reprinted from The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. "Thirteen O'Clock," copyright 1940 by Albing Publications. "The City in the Sofa," copyright 1941 by Albing Publications. "Mr. Packer Goes to Hell," copyright 1941 by Albing Publications. "The Reversible Revolutions," copyright 1941 by Albing Publications. "The Rocket of 1955," copyright 1941 by Albing Publications. "What Sorghum Says," copyright 1941 by Albing Publications. ("Thirteen O'Clock" and "Mr. Packer Goes to Hell" appear in this volume under the title "Thirteen O'Clock".) All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in connection with reviews written specifically for inclusion in a magazine or newspaper. Dell ® TM 681510, Dell Publishing Co., Inc. Printed in Canada First printing—December 1970 PREFACE In the very first years of the 1940s, the late C. M. Kornbluth, who was not only a master of many kinds of writing but also almost incredibly prolific, turned out eight delicious fantasies under the pen name of "Cecil. Corwin." These pieces appeared in low-paying, short-lived magazines, such as Stirring Science Stories and Cosmic Stories, and very few of them have ever been reprinted, even in Kornbluth's own short-story collections—perhaps in part because few anthologists even know where to look for them. I am delighted to be able to redress this injustice, however belatedly. The Corwin fantasies are all gorgeously imaginative and witty—even the shortest of them has a bite like a coral snake—but they have something else, too, which was rare in Kornbluth's other work. It is hard to characterize this special quality, but if pressed, I should be tempted to call it joy. The best-remembered of these little-known jeux d' esprit are the two stories about the bemused but resourceful Peter and Almarish Packer, which have a wild Carrollian logic nobody else since Lewis Carroll himself has ever approached. (An exception might be made for James Branch Cabell's "The Nightmare Had Triplets," but regardless of Cabell's intentions, this trilogy is pure Cabell, not Carrollian at all.) Though I may be struck by lightning for it, I will say that I think the Packer stories superior to some of Carroll's own fiction: for example, "Sylvie and Bruno." I think this is true despite a few small stylistic blemishes in this very early work which Cyril outgrew later: that is, a slight tendency toward said-bookism, and some conventional pulp reactions which vanish about halfway through the first chapter. Above all, these stories, like most of the other Corwin pieces, are genuinely, unsentimentally funny, which is an attribute painfully difficult to find in the science-fiction and fantasy field as a whole. These two stories appeared separately as "Thirteen O'Clock" and "Mr. Packer Goes to Hell," but with only slight editing they merge smoothly into one continuous and mountingly hilarious narrative, which is the way they are presented in this book. This did not prove possible to do for the two stories about Cyril's soldier of fortune, Lt. J. C. Battle, but at least I have offered them here in the order in which they were written. The first Battle story appeared with the notation "by Cecil Corwin (author of 'Thirteen O'Clock,' `The Fly-by-Nights,' etc.)." There is no Corwin story called "The Fly-by-Nights"; Cyril was fond of this title, his editor of the period anything but, and he kept putting it on each new Corwin story he submitted. Then came the appearance of "The Reversible Revolutions" with its underline. "Now," said the editor, "you can't use the title on any further manuscripts, because 'The Fly-by-Nights' has already been published. See—it says so right here in print!" At this point Cyril struck his colors.* (* For this explanation I am indebted to Robert A. W. Lowndes, who knew Cyril well back in those days, whereas my first personal contact with him was in 1950. The succeeding anecdote about "Fortune Cookie," however, I got from Cyril himself.) The other stories are unrelated to each other, but they are all pure Kornbluth, in a genre he handled every bit as well as he did science fiction, adventure, the roman a clef, or any other field he ever touched. With one exception, they and the Battle stories might be classified as marginal science fiction, but obviously Cyril did not think of them as such or he would not have appended the Corwin pseudonym to them. The exception, of course, is the magnificent "The Golden Road." The final story, "Ms. Found in a Chinese Fortune Cookie," has been reprinted several times before, but it certainly belongs in this collection; for though it was not signed by Cecil Corwin, it contains Corwin, who is in fact the leading character. This story has a curious underground history. In 1953, a literary agent who did not represent Cyril somehow put his hands on an old Kornbluth manuscript—not a finished story, but a sketch for a collaboration with another writer. Without Cyril's knowledge, the agent sold the sketch to a magazine, signed jointly by Corwin and a pseudonym of the other writer. Cyril did not in fact know about this until the piece appeared in print, and both discovering how it had happened and collecting the money for the sale turned out to be difficult. The literary agent in question appears, in (not surprisingly) a not very flattering light, in "Ms. Found in a Chinese Fortune Cookie"; and the story also shows that, given the nature of poor Corwin's retirement from the world of letters, he couldn't possibly have written that sketch. (Just incidentally, the story also contains what I believe to be the very first reference to LSD in fiction.) The sketch, on the other hand, is the one story with Corwin's name on it which I have not included in this collection. Clearly, that would have been Cyril's own preference. Some rather serious—or at least, deadpan—remarks might be made about the Corwin fantasies, for they do contain germs of what were to be preoccupations of Cyril's in later years. One such, for example, is the question of the interchangeability of Good and Evil, which is the subject both of "The Golden Road," which is dead serious, and "The Reversible Revolutions," which most decidedly is not. Or one might note that "The Golden Road" contains a great deal of material about music (more than is to be found in any other work of Cyril's) and that the title itself—which is never explained in the text—is drawn from James Elroy Flecker's play Hassan, with one line of which Cyril was familiar because it had been set to music by Delius ("We take the Golden Road to Samarkand"). But critical apparatus of this kind would be inappropriate to the Corwin spirit, which—again except for "The Golden Road"—is all bounce and persiflage, and ought to be read as such.* (* It is certainly worth noticing, though, that every story in this book except "Fortune Cookie" was written in Cyril's 17th and 18th years. He died in 1958 at the age of 34. ) I am most indebted to Mrs. Mary Kornbluth for permission to reprint these rare and lovely pieces . . . and, of course, to Cyril, who was a dear friend of mine as well, for having written them. JAMES BUSH Marlow, Bucks., U.K. 1969 Thirteen O'Clock I PETER PACKER folded the carpenter's rule and rose from his knees, brushing dust from the neat crease of his serge trousers. No doubt of it—the house had a secret attic room. Peter didn't know anything about sliding panels or hidden buttons; in the most direct way imaginable he lifted the axe he had brought and crunched it into the wall. On his third blow he holed through. The rush of air from the darkness was cool and sweet. Smart old boy, his grandfather, thought Peter. Direct ventilation all over the house—even in a false compartment. He chopped away heartily, the hollow strokes ringing through the empty attic and down the stairs. He could have walked through the hole erect when he was satisfied with his labors; instead he cautiously turned a flashlight inside the space. The beam was invisible; all dust had long since settled. Peter grunted. The floor seemed to be sound. He tested it with one foot, half in, half out of the hidden chamber. It held. The young man stepped through easily, turning the flash on walls and floor. The room was not large, but it was cluttered with a miscellany of objects—chests, furniture, knick-knacks and what-nots. Peter opened a chest, wondering about pirate gold. Bu...
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