Who Goes There?

In the history of genre SF there are many ships that pass in the night, never to be seen or heard from again, one of these being Jack Sharkey. Sharkey had made his debut at the tail end of the ’50s and wrote a pretty considerable amount of short fiction over the next half-dozen years. For reasons I’m not sure about, because we don’t know much about Sharkey, he more or less disappeared from the field after 1965. As far as I can make out writing SF was just a temporary side gig for him, which is strange since he was most active at a time when the US magazine market was at low tide, with the bubble having burst in the back end of the ’50s. Even the SF Encyclopedia doesn’t have much to say about him. Nearly every genre outlet at the time bought his stuff, though, which means he must’ve made some impression. He also had a series of short stories that caught my attention, about a “space zoologist” named Jerry Norcriss, at a time when zoology and generally the study of animal life were still rather novel in modern SF. “Arcturus Times Three” is the first entry in this series.

Placing Coordinates

First published in the October 1961 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction. It was reprinted in Uncollected Stars (ed. Piers Anthony, Martin H. Greenberg, Barry N. Malzberg, and Charles G. Waugh). The copyright ran out, so it’s on Project Gutenberg. Surprisingly there was never a book collecting all of the Jerry Norcriss stories.

Enhancing Image

By the year 2097, man has voyaged to the stars, going where no one has gone before, to seek out new life and new civilizations, yadda yadda. However, making first contact in-person with intelligent life has proven to be a hefty gamble, perhaps heavy enough that a scientific alternative was called for; that alternative is the Space Zoologist, making capital-C Contact with alien life via telepathic mind-link, in which the zoologist will spend forty minutes at minimum inside the mind of an alien creature, walking (or slithering, or swimming) around in that creature’s shoes, sharing their brain, with the creature and zoologist’s personalities having a tug-of-war over the body. The catch, of course, is that if the creature were to die in those forty minutes, the zoologist dies with them, their body being a mindless husk. Why is this so? Well, the real reason is that otherwise there would be no potential bodily harm for the zoologist and thus your story would become boring rather quickly. Meet Jerry Norcriss, thirty-year-old Space Zoologist as well as space lieutenant, IN SPAAAAAACE. The mission is to survey some local wildlife on Arcturus Three, although the exact reason for this is not given until the end, so best not to think about it. The point is to stick Jerry’s mind in the heads of three random lifeforms, which he will not know anything about in advance and who are very likely to die within those forty minutes. Sounds simple enough, right?

I have a few issues. One has to think the mortality rate for Space Zoologist must be ridiculous, to the point where it might be more costly than to have a survey team come down and bring the party to the aliens. It also doesn’t occur to any of these people that sending robots would be preferable; surely it was not a novel idea, in 1961, to use robotic probes instead of humans to explore hostile environments. But then we wouldn’t have a story. At the same time, wouldn’t it make sense for the space crew to figure out some way to, I dunno, figure out what kind of lifeform Jerry would be sharing a head with in advance. It’s a shame, because the idea is a neat one, which borders on transhumanism. As the narrator tells us, “A man who has been an animal has infinitely more knowledge of that animal than a man who has merely dissected one.” Jerry’s interest in alien biology goes to a point where he doesn’t relate much to his fellow humans, and what little we find out about his character in this story (I assume we learn more in future entries, but not that much given the episodic nature of the whole thing) is just about enough to make us relate to him. I mean fuck, I don’t like hanging out with people that much either. With that said, this is not a cerebral or personal story, but an old-fashioned scientific adventure of the sort that would become increasingly rare as the ’60s progressed—or so retrospective views on the genre’s history would have it seem. Evidently there was still a sizable audience for this sort of thing.

As for the animals that Jerry takes control of, there’s a bit of variety between the three of them (get it, because it’s like a pun with the title, Arcturus Three and there being three animals…), with the first being this weird centipede creature that’s connected to another animals via its tongue; then there’s the most compelling sequence, where Jerry’s in the body of a “lion-thing,” somewhere between a lion and a bear, with its cub. The lion-thing’s instinctive behavior turns out to be as much that of a lemming’s as a lion’s, including a tendency to eat things that are very not good for it. Not that Jerry would know until he finds his tummy hurts real bad, on account of not being able to survey the territory beforehand. LIKE THEY SHOULD’VE FUCKING DONE. The only reason he gets out of it in one piece is having to do with time dilation, or rather Sharkey has his thumb on the scales so as to make sure his hero gets out okay. (In fairness, time would work differently on another planet. You say forty minutes, but how much is forty minutes on a planet that has a different gravity and rotation from Earth’s?) It’s all in good fun. We even get some fully intelligent aliens thrown into the mix, although their role is tertiary enough that one is quick to forget about them. This is a story where the journey matters much more than the destination, although I’m not sure if the journey was worth it.

There Be Spoilers Here

The most interesting part of this whole thing for me was the ending, which, after some rather lightweight planetary adventuring, reckons with a serious problem—that being the problem of colonization and the ensuing (and inevitable) ecological damage. On top of his awkwardness around people, Jerry feels more than a hint of shame about contributing to what will be a protracted and brutal colonization effort, in which the aforementioned animals will be displaced or killed outright, yet he also feels powerless to do anything about what is ultimately a systemic issue. He loves his job, and yet he doesn’t like what it costs for life in the universe. As the narrator says, clearly reflecting Jerry’s (and probably Sharkey’s) feelings, “People always were puzzled about how a Space Zoologist could stand being a creature other than a human being. And Space Zoologists always were puzzled about how a human being could stand being part of that conquering race called man.” I wish the rest of the story had something like this degree of seriousness, but it’s too little and a bit too late.

A Step Farther Out

I sat around for a couple days trying to organize my thoughts on this, which when such a thing happens is either from too much or too little material; in the case of “Arcturus Times Three” it’s the latter. Sharkey’s a competent storyteller with a clear interest in a certain science, but given how long this story is (it’s a solid novelette), it’s not quite enough meat on its bones. The alien creatures Sharkey describes are neat enough, but I got this consistent and burdensome feeling of wanting more, on top of the fact that I was much slower about reading this than I should’ve been. If I’m taking several breaks during your story that I should’ve been able to read in an hour or so, then something is definitely missing.

See you next time.