Tag: analog science fiction

The Observatory: The Pleasant Duality of Robert Heinlein and Anson MacDonald

February 15th, 2023

(Robert Heinlein, as sketched in the April-May issue of Amazing Stories. Artist uncredited.)

In the January 1980 issue of Analog Science Fiction there’s a special feature covering the history of the Analytical Laboratory. An attempt at calculating author popularity, the Analytical Laboratory is a monthly feature wherein authors’ pieces from a given issue are ranked based on reader response, and the results, surprisingly, matter: the author to get the top spot receives a bonus payment. The aforementioned special feature includes a ranking of the most popular authors to appear in Astounding/Analog between 1938 and 1976, with a couple quirks: pseudonyms get their own entries, and each author must have had at least ten fiction pieces published in the magazine. The funny result was that Robert Heinlein, one of the most famous of all SF authors and arguably the single most important author in the history of American SF, was and was not at the top.

Heinlein, under his own name, came in at a very respectable second place, with “Anson MacDonald,” having published just enough works to meet the minimum, taking the top spot. Presumably the serial installments for Sixth Column and Beyond This Horizon, both by MacDonald, count as individual entries. MacDonald was, of course, also Heinlein, or rather Heinlein was MacDonald. Heinlein’s middle name is Anson, after all, and apparently he came up with MacDonald, a Scottish-sounding name, to appeal to editor John W. Campbell.

But let’s rewind a bit.

Heinlein made his genre debut in the August 1939 issue of Astounding with “Life-Line,” a science-fantasy yarn (Heinlein had also submitted it to Unknown, Astounding‘s fantasy-oriented sister magazine) that, contrary to most debut stories by great authors, still reads well. It also proved pretty popular with readers, ranking second in the Analytical Laboratory for the October 1939 issue. Still, while it was and still is a good read, “Life-Line” was only a small taste of the storm to come. Heinlein only published one more story in 1939 with “Misfit,” but 1940 immediately kicked off with what can only be called a one-author renaissance. In the January 1940 issue of Astounding we got “Requiem,” one of Heinlein’s most popular early stories, having been adapted for radio multiple times, and which was pretty close to winning the Retro Hugo for the Best Short Story of 1940, only losing to Isaac Asimov’s iconic “Robbie.”

The February 1940 issue saw the first installment of If This Goes On—, an ambitious if uneven piece of work (see my review of both installments here and here) that showed a highly talented writer who was quickly becoming a master. For the June 1940 issue Heinlein got the cover a second time with “The Roads Must Roll,” also hugely popular, also getting adapted for radio, and also, like If This Goes On—, depicting a future United States that seemed to have its own history—a future history, if you will. Heinlein’s ambition, especially with regards to worldbuilding and imagining future technological breakthroughs, was mesmerizing, and his takeover of Astounding was the swiftest the field had ever known. Within two years he had turned the field on its head with a series of short stories and novellas that were often both revolutionary and highly readable. The language of American science fiction was quickly becoming Heinlein’s language.

There was just one problem: Heinlein was only one person. At this highly prolific early stage in his career he had more material than he could publish in a single issue of Astounding, which after all was the highest paying of the SF magazines. There were a few alternatives. Heinlein made his fantasy debut in the September 1940 issue of Unknown with “The Devil Makes the Law,” later reprinted and better known as “Magic, Inc.” He also appeared a few times in Super Science Stories under the pseudonym Lyle Monroe, but that is not the pseudonym we’re here to talk about today. No, if Heinlein was to appear more often in Astounding (and by 1941 he needed to, so productive was he), another name would have to do the trick. Thus he came up with Anson MacDonald, combining his middle name with a last name that would appeal to Campbell’s sensibilities. Actually getting that extra work published in Astounding would be no issue; Campbell wanted to buy damn near everything Heinlein was selling.

The January 1941 issue thus saw the “debut” of Anson MacDonald with the serialization of Sixth Column, which in reality was Heinlein’s first novel. Based on an outline by Campbell, Sixth Column was a rare instance of Heinlein writing fiction on someone else’s orders, and the novel’s unfortunate Yellow Peril plot can only be partly blamed on him. Not that readers were immediately aware of the novel being a Heinlein work anyway, although the connection between Heinlein and MacDonald was not exactly a clever ruse. Still, the novel was evidently a hit with readers; all three installments ranked #1 in the Analytical Laboratory. “Heinlein” was absent for the January issue, but for February and March he appeared with stories of his own, in the forms of “—And He Built a Crooked House” (one of my personal favorites) and “Logic of Empire” respectively; incidentally both of those came in second to the MacDonald serial. There were a few more issues in 1941 which saw both Heinlein and MacDonald side by side, the two working in tandem and always (somehow) exploring different corners of SF.

(Cover by Hubert Rogers. Astounding, January 1941.)

1941 was about as major a year for Heinlein as it could be for any author, and indeed skimming through the contents of Astounding during this year it lays claim to marking the very apex of the Campbellian Golden Age. Despite having debuted only two years prior, Heinlein was undoubtedly the biggest talent in the field, puncutated by him being made Guest of Honor at the 1941 Worldcon (held in Denver that year), the last Worldcon before the US entered World War II; there would not be another one until 1946. 1941 was the year that saw Heinlein and MacDonald dominating Astounding, often in the same issue. On top of Sixth Column we also got our first novel-length serial under Heinlein’s own name with Methuselah’s Children, but more importantly we saw, from “both” authors, a string of short stories that were almost always home runs. From Heinlein you got “Universe” and its sequel “Common Sense,” and from MacDonald you got “Solution Unsatisfactory” and the classic time travel novella “By His Bootstraps.”

Unfortunately, nothing lasts forever, and the imaginary duo of Heinlein and MacDonald was soon was to come to an end—although, oddly, it was Heinlein who “left” first. As the US entered the war at the tail end of 1941 people of certain professions were needed, to help the war effort if not to see combat directly; thus in 1942 we saw Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, L. Sprague de Camp, and some other Astounding regulars step away from their typewriters and put their degrees to good use. Heinlein, along with Asimov and de Camp, went to work at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, but not before handing a few final gems before he went on hiatus. Strangely 1942 did not see Heinlein’s name at all, but we did get MacDonald flying solo (as it were), along with the one-off pseudonym John Riverside for the haunting fantasy-horror novella “The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag.” Heinlein (as MacDonald) made sure to go out with a bang, though.

First we have the serialization of Beyond This Horizon, which was also a hit with readers, and even later won the Retro Hugo for Best Novel. Beyond This Horizon is one of the weirdest pieces from Heinlein’s early period, and in some ways it anticipates the idiosyncrasies of later, longer, more (in)famous novels like Stranger in a Strange Land and The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. Because this is still early Heinlein, though, it’s a more concise and decidedly more left-leaning affair, albeit tempered with that militarism which in fact characterized Heinlein’s writing from the beginning. Then we have the novella “Waldo,” which also won a Retro Hugo, and whose influence outside the field is so palpable that we actually have technology which takes its name after the story: the waldo, a remote-controlled manipulator used for hazardous materials. Finally we have the borderline Lovecraftian story “Goldfish Bowl,” which sees Heinlein pit humanity against incomprehensible life forms which may or may not be alien in origin.

Sadly, by the end of 1942, Heinlein had left the field, and he would also take the MacDonald name with him. While Heinlein returned to the field stronger than ever in 1947, MacDonald did not.

Not unlike Richard Bachman, a persona which allowed Stephen King to publish works not strictly “on-brand” for him, MacDonald allowed Heinlein to really stretch his legs and further dominate Astounding. Authors have a plethora of reasons for concocting pseudonyms, but Heinlein had a straightforward reason for creating MacDonald and their “relationship” was quite a symbiotic one. If you were to pick up, say, the May 1941 issue of Astounding you could have Heinlein via “Universe” or MacDonald via “Solution Unsatisfactory,” two very different stories by the same man. The fact that Heinlein took the top two spots in that special Analytical Laboratory feature I mentioned at the beginning goes to show that his talents were enough to be spread across multiple names and still have all of them produce classic works. For a brief time he was not one but two of the most popular authors to appear in Astounding‘s pages.

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Novella Review: “Cascade Point” by Timothy Zahn

January 24th, 2023

(Cover by Doug Beekman. Analog, December 1983.)

Who Goes There?

It feels weird to introduce Timothy Zahn, because he’s a somewhat famous author who’s famous for reasons that have nothing to do with this site. Zahn debuted at the tail end of the ’70s and quickly became a regular contributor to Analog Science Fiction under Stanley Schmidt’s editorship, and not surprisingly he also became a regular at Baen Books. Zahn’s fiction, from what I can tell, skews toward good old-fashioned space opera, but with more attention paid to character work than some of his fellows. What really gained Zahn recognition, though, was his attachment to the old Star Wars expanded universe, being perhaps the most prominent and most acclaimed author to write for that (now defunct) continuity. Thrawn, Zahn’s single most famous creation, is so beloved that he’s actually crawled his way into post-Disney buyout Star Wars properties. Zahn’s Star Wars cred is so prominent, in fact, that a lot of people seem unaware that he’s written things that have nothing to do with that franchise.

Not that I’m one to talk.

“Cascade Point” was the first story of Zahn’s that I’ve read, and so far it’s the only thing by Zahn that I’ve read. Don’t worry, I’ll fix that eventually. It was written during an especially prolific period for Zahn, and even nabbed him a Hugo (despite not getting a Nebula nomination) for Best Novella. Technically a reread, because I know for a fact I read it as part of The New Hugo Winners (see below), but I basically remember nothing about it from that first reading. In hindsight I think I just didn’t give it a lot of attention, which is a shame because I can see why readers at the time would’ve liked it a lot.

Placing Coordinates

The December 1983 issue of Analog is not on the Internet Archive. Not on Luminist, either. Same goes for any Analog issues after 1979. That’s right, if you want it you’ll have to buy a hard copy with dollars, pounds, shekels, and so on, which is what I did. Like I said, I try to read these stories as they had originally appeared unless it’s a reprint. What’s weird is that despite the Hugo, and despite Zahn’s status, “Cascade Point” has not been reprinted often. The New Hugo Winners, edited by Isaac Asimov and an uncredited (for some reason) Martin H. Greenberg, is easy enough to find used. That Doug Beekman cover is so good that they reused it for the first edition of Cascade Point and Other Stories, and I don’t blame them. Most interestingly (to me) it was bundled with Greg Bear’s “Hardfought” as a Tor Double, that series packaging Hugo- and Nebula-winning novellas together. Finally, if you want a reprint published in the 21st century we have The Mammoth Book of Mindblowing SF, edited by Mike Ashley.

Enhancing Image

Pall (seems like a bastardization of “Paul,” but would be funnier and indeed is porbably pronounced like “pal”) Durriken has a fine enough job as the captain of the Aura Dancer, a space liner that’s not what you would call first-class. Durriken is not the most sociable of men, reliying most on Alana Keal, his right-hand (wo)man and the person onboard he gets along with the most. The plot involves a trip to the colony planet of Taimyr with a small number of passengers in tow, but we really get a quality-over-quantity deal here as two of the passengers, Rik Bradley and his psychiatrist Dr. Hammerfield Lanton, are a bit of an odd pair. These two, as it turns out, will cause some issues.

As you know if you’ve read enough science fiction, space travel is highly impractical at best; without faster-than-light travel or some way to cheat around spacetime it would years at bare minimum just to leave one’s solar system. Of course FTL as we understand it is impossible, something I suspect was considered true even in 1983, which of course did not stop authors from going with the “ceating around spacetime” option. Here, we have a series of warp points called cascade points, in which not only can ships basically teleport but also seem to intersect with alternate universe. Yes, this is another multiverse narrative, sort of, but the multiverse is not made as big a deal of as you would think. As far as anyone can tell a ship going through a cascade point is not liable to enter an alternate universe by accident—which is not to say it can’t happen…

Passengers and crew are supposed to take drugs that knock them out cold during a ship’s maneuvering through a cascade point, minding that these points are days apart; in other words, everyone goes unconscious except for the person piloting the ship. First-class ships like luxury liners can afford to have an autopilot installed for cascade point maneuvers, but the Aura Dancer is decidedly not first-class and so Durriken has to stick it out alone, every time, without losing his sanity. Given that it’s set far in the future, robots and computers play a shockingly small role in the literal mechanics of the setting. I’ll elaborate on this a bit later, but I’ll say for now that, looking back on it, this lack of computerization is one of those signs that this novella was not of its time, but actually before its time. It feels like a Star Trek episode, like from the ’60s, the original show—not that that’s necessarily a bad thing.

So, about the cover. In case I didn’t make it clear before, I really like it. Some cover stories get covers that have little to do with the actual story, but this is not one of them. Sometimes with a cover story you can tell which scene exactly inspired the cover art, and in the case of “Cascade Point” it’s the first time we see the effects someone awake would experience when going through one of those cascade points.

Observe:

I will never understand how the first person to test the Colloton Drive ever made it past this point. The images silently surrounding me a bare arm’s length away were life-size, lifelike, and—at first glance, anyway—as solid as the panels and chairs they seemed to have displaced. It took a careful look to realize they were actually slightly transparent, like some kind of colored glass, and a little experimentation at that point would show they had less substance than air. They were nothing but ghosts, specters straight out of childhood’s scariest stories. Which merely added to the discomfort… because all of them were me.

Durriken sees alternate versions of himself when going through a cascade point, or rather the ghosts of different versions of himself since he can’t interact with them and they, conversely, are unaware of his existence. It’s a bit of a psychedelic effect, and it makes for a good illustration, but it’s not the root of the conflict; nay, the root of the conflict is people. See, Dr. Lanton is treating Bradley for neurosis, and Lanton has this brilliant idea to use the cascade points as a possible way to treat Bradley, keeping him awake through the multiverse hijinks. As you can tell, this is a horrible idea. Lanton is the closest the story has to a conventional villain, although he’s less malicious and more laughably incompetent—so ethically dubious that I honestly have to wonder if he’s based on Eugene Landy. Hmm, Lanton, Landy…

Lanton’s ideas about treatment are so obviously bad that even Durriken feels the need to point it out; but then, Lanton is a paying customer and a passenger on Durriken’s ship. The human drama comes from Lanton’s treatment methods but also some equipment he brings aboard that a) he didn’t consult any of the crew about in advance, and b) might contain materials that could interfere with the ship’s delicate maneuvering balance. For instance, if some device Lanton brought aboard just so happened contained a specific and rather rare metal that would throw the ship’s cascade point maneuvering off—well, you can guess what might happen. For now, thought, the big problem is simply dealing with the asshole and also making sure Alana, who has a history of falling in love with her “patients” (it’s a good thing she’s not a nurse), doesn’t get too attached to Bradley.

You have the relationship square of Durriken, Alana, Lanton, and Bradley; there are other characters with names, but you’re not gonna remember them. Would pose a problem if this was a novel, but being a 20,000-word novella leaves only so much room for character, and the characters Zahn does focus on are pretty fun to read about, even if some of their antics can wander beyond the realm of plausibility. I seriously doubt, for one, that Lanton would be a licensed psychiatrist who’s allowed a seemingly endless supply of drugs and gadgets; maybe it would’ve been plausible in 1983, given changing medical practice standards, but certainly not now. Alana, while she’s charismatic, is also a bit of a satellite, with her relationship with Bradley dominating her character for most of the story.

Durriken is a fun protagonist, though, which is good considering he’s also the narrator. Writing a first-person narrator is always a dangerous game, because as a reader you’re basically sitting down and having a one-way conversation with this person for however many minutes or hours. Thign is, the person spewing words at you could be a real annoying prick, but thankfully Durriken has just enough of a sense of humor without detouring into asshole territory. His objections to Lanton’s methods are super-reasonable (a little too understated, if anything) and it’s clear that he cares about his crew and his ship while also wishing he could have a better life for himself. Seeing alternate versions of himself is disorienting just visually, but it’s also unnerving for him to think about all the ways his life could’ve gone better or worse. Not too philosophical, but it’s fine character work.

There Be Spoilers Here

Early in the story we hear, rather passively, that ships have occasionally gone missing mid-voyage; no wreckage or signs of piracy or system failure, but rather ships just straight-up vanishing into thin air. The Aura Dancer is a secured vessel, but the fact that these vanishings remain unexplained doesn’t help Durriken’s conscience. He’s right to be worried, too; turns out Lanton brought aboard a gadget with a certain rare metal inside it that would mess with the ship’s cascade point maneuvering, requiring compensation, but more importantly it sends the ship more off-course than anyone could’ve expected. When we finally get to Taimyr we find… nothing. Nobody waiting for the ship. No buildings. Not even the remains of buildings. It’s as if the world had never been colonized, which gets Durriken thinking…

Basically, the Aura Dancer hopped into an alternate universe where Taimyr remains uninhabited. Thanks a lot, Lanton! Keep in mind that the situation is more complicated than I’m letting on, but that’s the gist of it. “Cascade Point” is arguably hard SF, but it’s such a loaded term that it could apply to anything that has even the most tenuous connection to real science. I’m not a scientist or someone with a background in physics (I majored in film studies) so I’m just the kind of person Zahn would cater to when he goes on about Ming metal and cascade points and other invented nonsense. My general rule is that if a story’s science can’t be easily disproved by a middle schooler then it’s fine enough for me, I usually won’t get hung up on inaccuracies, in which case “Cascade Point” passes easily.

What’s important is that with the heightened stakes, the character drama intensifies. There’s a bit of romantic tension between Durriken and Alana, on top of Alana’s deal with Bradley, but luckily Zahn keeps their relationship platonic; they’re very good friends and it’s clear that they trust each other more than anyone else on the ship. So what’s the solution? To make a long story short, going backwards. There are extra steps, but again, that’s the gist of it. Crazy. How come nobody’s done this before? Well, as far as we know anyway. The potential for ships to hop across universes is pretty vast, a vastness that’s only hinted at here. The ending is rather happy-go-lucky with Durriken saving the day and Alana giving him a figurative pat on the back, albeit Lanton gets away with his idiocy. Disappointing.

The very last scene is pretty good, though. It brings closure to Durriken’s character arc while giving us something genuinely heartwarming. Not necessary from a plot angle, but I’m glad Zahn included it.

A Step Farther Out

I chose this for review partly because it’s one of those stories where I’m pretty sure I didn’t give it the attention it needed the first time around, and partly because I thought it’d be interesting to read/review it in close proximity with “Hardfought,” since the two were reprinted together at one point. It’s curious to read these two so close together, because aside from being spacefaring hard SF by “macho” ’80s authors, they have very little in common, and their goals are also quite different. “Hardfought” is honestly one of the most impressive pieces of science fiction at any length that I’ve read in a long time—a genuine effort on Bear’s part to write from the future as opposed to simply about the future. “Cascade Point” is considerably more straightforward and less ambitious, which means it goes down easier but there’s less to think about. The cliche about the Hugo winner being the crowd-pleaser and the Nebula winner the “literary” choice is more often untrue than not, but it’s pretty accurate here.

Which is not to say “Cascade Point” isn’t an effective crowd-pleaser. It’s old-fashioned, and it arguably would’ve read as that even at the time, but Zahn knows what he’s doing. I’m a sucker for narratives set on ships, bonus points if there’s good crew dynamics, and this is a good one. It’s a classic Analog narrative in that it’s ultimately a “problem” story: there’s a scientific problem, usually an anomaly, and Our Heroes™ have to solve it. The ingenuity of man triumphs. Like I said, this feels like it could’ve been a Star Trek (specifically TOS or TNG) episode, and not a bad one. Just set your expectations for something that’s pleasing but not mindblowing.

See you next time.
Short Story Review: “With Morning Comes Mistfall” by George R. R. Martin

August 31st, 2022

(Cover by Jack Gaughan. Analog, May 1973.)

Who Goes There?

Indeed who. George R. R. Martin is one of the most famous authors in the world today; even people who don’t read books at all (the poor devils) probably recognize him. In 1996 he began the series that would make him a household name, the A Song of Ice and Fire series of fantasy novels, a landmark title in low fantasy with five books so far and a sixth coming out… at some point. On top of being famous, Martin has also become infamous for, among other things, seemingly refusing to release the last two volumes of his series, and while Martin obviously isn’t obligated to finish his work for anyone else’s sake, one can’t help but get a sense that there’s a cynical motive at play here. Regardless, unless something disastrous happens—like, say, Martin coming out as a rabid homophobe or transphobe—this man’s legacy is more or less settled.

There’s just one problem, though: it’s not.

Martin’s uber-success with A Song of Ice and Fire has had the perverse effect of all but burying the fact that he was one of the most promising writers of science fiction to debut in the ’70s. Hitting the professional scene with “The Hero” in 1971, Martin would be nominated for the inaugural ~~John W. Campbell~~ Astounding Award for Best New Writer, losing to Jerry Pournelle, and the nomination was well-earned! By 1973 he showed himself to be a lyrical and emotional earnest author, not letting hard science get in the way of strong character writing and evocative imagery. “With Morning Comes Mistfall” was, according to the Thousand Worlds fandom wiki (more on that in a bit), written in the summer of 1971 before being published in the May 1973 issue of Analog Science Fiction. Despite appearing at first to be just another short story, “With Morning Comes Mistfall” would go on to earn Martin his first Hugo and Nebula nominations, and as we’re about to see those nominations are very much earned.

Now, ISFDB lists “If Morning Comes Mistfall” as a standalone story, which it functionally is. However, the aforementioned Thousand Worlds fandom wiki has an article on the story, listing it as part of that shared continuity. Does it make a difference if it’s part of the Thousand Worlds series? Not really. I just think it’s funny whenever the people who run ISFDB disagree with somebody. Get a load of this:

The Thousand Worlds wiki lists this as part of that series, although by their own admission it is “only a tenuous link” based on a planet name also referenced in a different story in that series.

You don’t see that kind of note on ISFDB a lot.

Placing Coordinates

This issue of Analog is…… NOT on the Archive.

I know, I’m sorry! If you want it you’re gonna have to get a used copy the old-fashioned way. I guess there’s also Luminist, but I don’t find their layout to be as intuitive, you can’t view an issue in-browser, and most importantly… their PDFs tend to be HUGE. Like we’re talking 100 megabytes or bigger, so big that you can’t even preview the file you’re about to download. It’s like I’ve entered an alternate timeline where file compression isn’t a thing.

On the bright side, it’s not like “With Morning Comes Mistfall” has only been reprinted two times. It showed up in the collection A Song for Lya, which covers a good deal of Martin’s ’70s output, and of course it appeared in some anthologies from that period, such as the third volume of Lester del Rey’s Best Science Fiction Stories of the Year. If you want a recent reprint, and assuming you don’t mind putting in a few more dollars, we have the first volume of Dreamsongs, which covers most of the material in A Song for Lya as well as additional stories.

Enhancing Image

Normally I don’t pay mind to story blurbs, but this one (not sure if it was written by Martin or editor Ben Bova) caught my attention:

Man’s curiosity drives him to seek the answer to every question. But it’s the unanswered questions which are the most exciting.

It’s about as succinct a mission statement as you can get, all while giving absolutely none of the plot away. Not that there’s much of a plot to begin with. “With Morning Comes Mistfall” is a hard story to spoil because it’s far more driven by characters and themes than by the movements of its narrative, which themselves are not hard to anticipate. It’s a very simple story, but it’s also Campbellian in the best way possible, in the sense that implies the existence of something great that was previously outside the realm of human knowledge; you could call it secular mysticism. “With Morning Comes Mistfall” could have very feasibly been printed in Campbell’s Analog, and this seems to be the mode in which Martin wrote his eariest professional-grade fiction. The result is a story which lacks characteristics we would now associate with Martin; there’s no foul language, nothing too violent happens, and female characters aren’t being forced into sexually degrading situations.

But more on that later.

With all that said, I’ll try my best to give you something of a plot summary, and for better or worse, the spoiler section will be pretty short this time around. So…

A journalist travels to the desolate planet of Wraithworld, a planet that remains almost entirely uninhabited. There’s only one human establishment on the whole planet, that being Castle Cloud, a hotel and casino owned by Paul Sanders. The journalist has come to talk to Sanders about the wraiths, a supposed mythical species lurking the depths of the mist-covered landscape. Nobody has ever gotten concrete evidence that that wraiths exist, but much like Bigfoot or the Jersey Devil, their mysteriousness makes them a magnet for tourism; while the sights of Wraithworld are nothing to sneeze at, people largely come for the wraiths. What I’m trying to say is that this story is about cryptids, which immediately makes it up my alley.

Sanders is a bit of a subversive character; despite being a business owner, and being described physically as rather rotund (something often attributed stereotypically to greedy businessmen), Sanders turns out to not be of that sort. The journalist quickly finds that Sanders is indeed taken by the mysterious beauty of Wraithworld. When the journalist notes the rising of the mists over the mountain range (Castle Cloud was built on the highest peak), we get this:

“Is it always like this?” I asked Sanders, after drinking it all in for a while.

“Every mistfall,” he replied, turning toward me with a wistful smile. He was a fat man, with a jovial red face. Not the sort who should smile wistfully. But he did.

He gestured toward the east, where Wraithworld’s sun rising above the mists made a crimson and orange spectacle of the dawn sky.

“The sun,” he said. “As it rises, the heat drives the mists back into the valleys, forces them to surrender the mountains they’ve conquered during the night. The mists sink, and one by one the peaks come into view. By noon the whole range is visible for miles and miles. There’s nothing like it on Earth, or anywhere else.”

The conflict comes in when Charles Dubowski, a renowned scienist, comes to Castle Cloud, and he too is here for the wraiths. More specifically Dubowski is here with a team to scan as far and as thoroughly as they can to see if the wraiths are real or a fabrication. We’re presented with a triangle of conflict—two sides ideologically opposed with a third as the more or less neutral presence. Dubowski wants to disprove the existence of the wraiths while Sanders wants to keep the wraiths’ existence ambiguous. Does it hurt that Sanders profits immensely off of people coming to Wraithworld to see if they can spot any wraiths? Of course not, but that’s not the point. It’s worth mentioning too that while Dubowski is written less sympathetically, he’s by no measn evil; his worldview simply conflicts with Sanders’s, whom the journalist takes more of a liking to.

Now, something that caught my eye reading the story this time around is the fact that not only is the journalist (who’s also the first-person narrator) nameless, but also genderless. There are only three principal characters in this thing and two of them are confirmed dudes, yet there’s nothing to indicate one way or another what gender the narrator is. This might be for the best. Personally I like to think the narrator is a woman, but I assume Martin wrote this voice with a man in mind. Otherwise there aren’t any female characters of any importance, which hey, it’s not like there’s any in-your-face sexism around here. I also like that the journalist, who’s a relatively passive character, is the narrator, since it focuses the action on the war of worldviews between Sanders and Dubowski.

We get to find out some more about Wraithworld, a setting which Martin chooses not to describe in excessive detail. That the narrator is a journalist (as was Martin before he got into writing SFF) helps explain the perfunctory style; we aren’t burdened with learning about anything that we don’t have to. We know Wraithworld is a failed colony. We know there was something called the Gregor expedition, in which some explorers were driven to madness, claiming they had come into contact with tall apelike creatures that were immune to bullets. There were a few deaths, and there’ve been more since then, often assumed to be due to the wraiths. What began as an anomaly soon turned into myth.

And the legend of the mist wraiths was born, and began to grow. Other ships came to Wraithworld, and a trickle of colonists came and went, and Paul Sanders landed one day and erected the Castle Cloud so the public might safely visit the mysterious planet of the wraiths.

Not that Wraithworld has much else going for it. The mists cover everything below the tops of the highest mountains by nightfall, and the soil is not good for farming. As a colony, Wraithworld’s potential would be pretty low. On the plus side, the air seems to be breathable; we never get an in-depth explanation for the world’s climate, but the atmosphere’s mix and density must be Earthlike enough for people to walk around without space suits. All the better. Martin doesn’t bog the story down with details that might distract us from what is ultimately a fable or a mood piece, and what a tightly structured fable it is. That the ending is easily predictable is a non-issue, since in order for Martin’s thesis to work, the story must end in a certain way.

There Be Spoilers Here

After accompanying Dubowski and his men through the forests and mountains in search of the wraiths, the journalist gets the creeping feeling that Dubowski is right, that the wraiths were a product of hysteria—a hunch that turns out to be correct. Shortly before Dubowski is about to give a press conference about his findings, he lets Sanders and the journalist in on the conclusion of his research: the wraiths aren’t real. They didn’t find any, no matter how much manpower and tech they used. Sanders is not a happy man as he tries, with hope fading, to convince Dubowski that there might be wraiths in the mists after all.

Sanders raised his eyes from his drink. They were bitter eyes. “Gregor,” he said stubbornly. “Gregor and the other classics.”

Dubowski’s smile became a smirk. “Ah, yes. We searched that area quite thoroughly. My theory was right. We found a tribe of apes nearby. Big brutes. Like giant baboons, with dirty white fur. Not a very successful species, either. We found only one small tribe, and they were dying out. But clearly, that was what Gregor’s man sighted. And exaggerated all out of proportion.”

The discovery ruins Sanders’s business, of course. People no longer come to Wraithworld looking for wraiths. It does, on the other hand, take off as a colony, albeit a minor one. More people come to the planet, but all three main characters go their separate ways, with the journalist leaving to cover other events, Dubowski continuing his studies elsewhere, and Sanders leaving Castle Cloud to be condemned; we never find out what becomes of him, ultimately. It’s a somber ending, but it’s not the end of the world by any means, as the journalist comes to find. Normally I don’t like to quote the endings of stories, but I have to do it with this one—I think it’s too lovely. The yearning in these final words is palpable.

“Otherwise the planet hasn’t changed much. The mists still rise at sunset, and fall at dawn. The Red Ghost is still stark and beautiful in the early morning light. The forests are still there, and the rockcats still prowl.

Only the wraiths are missing.

Only the wraiths.

Gets my emotions going, even more so the second time around. Martin knows what the perfect note to end on is and he goes with it. Like everything else it feels like the act of an artist who is totally in control of his faculties, and I just adore it.

A Step Farther Out

This is a very different kind of writing from Martin than what most people are used to. It’s poetic, but not over-encumbered with purple language. It’s retrained, coming in at about fifteen pages, exhibiting a very young writer (Martin would’ve only been 22 when he wrote it) who’s also trying his utmost to be disciplined with his craft. Apparently Martin wrote “With Morning Comes Mistfall” shortly before another great early outing of his, “The Second Kind of Loneliness,” though the latter would be published first. I would not have guessed, since while “The Second Kind of Loneliness” certainly does hone in on the mood it wants, the slightly older story here feels more like the work of a mature writer. On top of that, Martin comes through with a discernable statement here, about the nature of beauty and about a certain quality that something beautiful should ideally have—that is to say, an air of mystery about it.

Despite Paul Sanders being a bsuiness type, Martin clearly sympathizes with him because, in the context of the story, Sanders is also an artist, with Wraithworld as his piece or perhaps his muse. That Sanders never comes to understand totally how this planet works, and that we the readers are denied a lot of details (What does a rockcat look like, anyway?), reinforces this notion that in order for something to bewitch us with what seems to be an unspeakable beauty, we can only know so much about it. Indeed, there are things about a thing of beauty that we shouldn’t know; too much knowledge would take away the mystery of it, and after all, the most mysterious things are also the most alluring.

I think “With Morning Comes Mistfall” is Martin’s early masterpiece; it’s certainly the best of his ’70s output that I’ve read so far, or at least it’s my favorite of the bunch. It lost the Hugo that year to Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” and the Nebula to James Tiptree Jr.’s “Love Is the Plan the Plan Is Death.” Now that’s some pretty intimidating competition right there! “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” is a stone-cold classic, one that’s still being much read and talked about today (God forbid if you’re forced to have a classroom discussion about it), and undeniably it’s more layered than Martin’s story. Still, if we’re talking about pure enjoyability in the act of reading a story, about reading something perfectly simple and yet poignant, about catching a young writer at the very moment when he becomes a serious artist, then I would have voted for Martin.

See you next time.
Things Beyond: August 2022

August 1st, 2022
(Cover by Hubert Rogers. Astounding, February 1940.)

Picking stories to review can be pretty hard. Imagine simply reading fiction in your free time: novels, short stories, whatever. There are so many things you want to get to, things you’ve heard good things about, things you’ve been meaning to reread (because rereading is important), and yet there are only so many hours in the day.

Now I must, for August, limit myself to writing about three short stories, two novel serials, and two novellas. And not just anything; these will be the first to charge into battle, the first guinea pigs for me to test on and see what this site will be all about. The stories that will help me find my footing the most.

As such, all the stories this month will at least be Hugo nominees, if not winners—with one exception, and even then it’s by a two-time Hugo winner. Speaking of which, we have, for the serials:
1. The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester. Published in three parts in Galaxy Science Fiction, January to March 1952, and it would win the very first Hugo for Best Novel. I’m fond of Bester’s short fiction, and The Stars My Destination is still a delightfully hardboiled and experimental novel. Alas, I’ve yet to read The Demolished Man, his debut novel, but that’ll change pretty soon.
2. If This Goes On— by Robert Heinlein, published in two parts in Astounding Science Fiction, February to March 1940. An early and defining work by one of my absolute favorite authors, though I’m ashamed to say I haven’t read it before. It would win the Retro Hugo for Best Novella. I know, it’s technically a novella, but hey, if it’s serialized, it gets a serialized review.
Now for the novellas. I must confess, dear reader, I have a huge soft spot for novellas, especially when it comes to SFF. Hell, SFF is the only field of literature nowadays where novellas still get written and published regularly. Still, two novellas for this month. I had to choose wisely. Here they are:
1. “The Big Front Yard” by Clifford D. Simak. Astounding Science Fiction, October 1958. Winner of the 1959 Hugo for Best Novelette (the Best Novella category didn’t exist yet). Aside from his Hugo-winning novel Way Station this is probably the quintessential Simak story, so we’ll be giving it a deep dive and see how Simak works his magic.
2. “The Lineman” by Walter M. Miller Jr. The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, August 1957. You may know Miller as the author of A Canticle for Leibowitz, but did you know that he also wrote… OTHER STUFF? He even won another Hugo with “The Darfstellar,” but I’m more interested in checking out this one.
Finally, we have the short stories for this month. Two of these are rereads (one I’ve reread more times than I can count), but as you know, rereading is important. And the one I haven’t read before has me very curious. This month’s short stories are:
1. “Bears Discover Fire” by Terry Bission. Asimov’s Science Fiction, August 1990. Winner of the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, God knows what else, and I’ve read it about as many times as it’s been reprinted—which is a lot. A fine choice for the inaugural short story.
2. “Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience™” by Rebecca Roanhorse. Apex Magazine, August 2017. Hugo and Nebula winner. This will be my first time reading this short story, and by extension anything by Roanhorse. Very excited about it.
3. “With Morning Comes Mistfall” by George R. R. Martin. Analog Science Fiction, May 1973. Hugo and Nebula nominee. Martin is one of the most famous fantasy authors ever, but readers will be less familiar and thus pleasantly surprised with his SF.
I’ll be linking to the source magazine issues when available/convenient. I want my readers (all five of you) to be able to read these stories without going through much hassle, and besides, you get to discover or rediscover some stuff that’s really worth reading. I won’t always be able to provide a digital zine link—occasionally I’ll have to track down used print copies, like some kind of literary raccoon.

Won’t you read with me?