Who Goes There?

It’s become unofficially a mission of mine to cover every recipient (all are, as of right now, eligible for review) of the Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award for this site. The idea behind the Redicovery Award is that it’s given (nearly always posthumously) to genre authors who have, for one reason or another, been left behind by fandom’s (admittedly fickle) collective memory. Time is ruthless to pretty much all of us. A few authors who were active half a century ago still get talked about in fandom discussions, but most do not. The Rediscovery Award is for those who deserve to be, well, rediscovered. Frank M. Robinson received the Rediscovery Award in 2018, and while I had not read even a word of his prior to this review, his life and varied career are well worth considering. You see, Robinson was one of the first queer authors of magazine SFF, at least in the US.

Like a lot of genre writers round his age, Robinson got his start in the field during the height of the magazine boom in the first of the ’50s; he debuted in 1951. In the case of Robinson this period seemed to serve as a training ground, where he would work his craft at short lengths before (much later, mind you) writing novels in the “technothriller” mode. In between these points in his career as a genre writer he got involved rather profoundly in the blooming gay rights movement in the ’70s, to the point where he was associated with Harvey Milk. The book of his that most interests me has to be Robinson’s memoir, Not So Good a Gay Man, published a few years after his death. Despite not putting himself out there as a public figure he clearly worked to better the lives of his brethren, and for his efforts he was inducted into the Chicago LGBT Hall of Fame in 2009.

Placing Coordinates

First published in the April 1954 issue of Science Stories, which is on the Archive. Not to be confused with Science Fiction Stories. I also wish more magazines from the time had rough word counts in the table of contents. The most recent printing was in 1995. The two most recent anthologies this was in were edited by the same people; okay, but it’s three people. We have Starships and The Mammoth Book of Vintage Science Fiction: Short Novels of the 1950s, both edited by Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg, and Charles G. Waugh. A fresh reprinting may be in order.

Enhancing Image

Some stories would have the fact that we’re on a generation ship be the twist, but here that’s the name of the game. We’re onboard the Astra, in a search of a habitable planet after a few centuries of being stuck in a huge tin can. We meet Matty, who at the story’s beginning is a whimsical ten-year-old who hangs out by his lonesome and listens to his “sound box” for fun; too bad for Matty that he happens to be the protagonist of this story. Matty’s father is the Director, the leader (perhaps in name only) of the ship, and the Director is on his death bed. Because the Director’s position is inherited, like that of a monarch, Matty is next in line despite being a scrawny kid. Even more unfortunately it takes all of five minutes for Matt’s immediate family, including his uncle Seth, aunt Reba, and cousin Jeremiah, to start plotting his demise once his old man kicks the bucket.

Matty’s nurse recues him while there’s a manhunt going on and points him in the direction of the Predict, a mysterious but supposedly powerful figure who lurks in the forward section of the ship, an “immortal man whom nobody had seen—the stories went—for the last twenty-five years.” Matt will need to survive, and also need to be trained, and the Predict can provide this—at a bit of a price, it will turn out. The opening section of “The Oceans Are Wide” is paced a bit oddly, as I expected there to be more time spent in finding the Predict, but Matty finds his whereabouts so easily that I started to wonder why this mysteriouss man didn’t get more visitors. Oh well. The Predict is the man Matty is looking for, and more. With characters in this story I’ll normally only refer to them by their first names, but in the case of the Predict I’ll make an exception, as his name is Joseph Smith. Hmmm. Be sure to put a pin in this one.

Try not to take this out of context, but Joseph Smith is a bit of an ASSHOLE. Normally in these situations where there’s a wise mentor and a child protagonist the mentor, while sometimes harsh, has the child’s best interests in mind. Not Joseph Smith. “The Oceans Are Wide” is a coming-of-age narrative on its face, but as we’ll see it entails what amounts to the destruction of the individual’s happiness in the name of the greater good. Matty may be safe from his murderous family, but over the years he’ll learn to become a real bastard of a political maneuverer. Something else that’s curious is that much of the narrative sees Matty going under a different identity, being taken in by a foster family and spending the rest of his youth as a supposed nobody, with Matty the Director-to-be being presumed MIA by everyone else. The rightful heir to the throne evades said throne for his safety, only to return when the time is right—except…

I’ve heard elsewhere that Matty, despite rather tenuously having a female love interest (it goes nowhere, don’t think about it) here, is coded as a queer youth who has to hide his true identity for the sake of survivor; but of course it’s not just that. Robinson takes what must’ve been even at the time the standard procedure for politics in generation ship narratives (namely that these stories tend to endorse, actively or unwittingly, authoritarian models of government) and not only paints it a darker shade of grey but also uses the ensuing personal tragedy as a metaphor for growing up as a gay man in a time and place where being that was immensely dangerous. We queer people find that we have to, at some point, betray our own values and even our own sense of self for the sake of survival. Matty has to sacrifice pretty much any chance at personal happiness so that he could take to the throne in the future, which would be bad enough except Joseph Smith is not ambiguous about what kind of leader he wants Matty to be. Smith opposes democracy on the Astra, preferring a more… hands-on leader.

Of course Smith is the one really running the show here; like his father before him Matty will serve as little more than a puppet for the Predict, although according to Smith his late father was a shitty puppet who would not follow orders. Smith is, in most ways, a scoundrel. “Matty realized with sudden insight that he hated the Predict. He hated the remorseless logic, the constant denial of self for ship.” It’s not totally clear if we’re supposed to think of Joseph Smith as a heroic figure or a villain who happens to have a decent goal in mind, but Matty’s occasional thoughts on the man and Matty’s position as a queer surrogate suggest that at best Smith is to be understood as an anti-hero. If this was a Robert Heinlein or Poul Anderson story Smith would probably be rewritten to be more snarky, more outwardly “intelligent,” and framed more as a fine fellow—only that Robinson has other plans in mind. Indeed we get a quote from Machiavelli at one point, which suggests that Joseph Smith’s vision of leadership on the Astra is tyrannical. The creepy part is that Smith believes, all but explicitly, that tyranny is necessary in order to preserve “civilization,” for the greater good.

In fairness to Smith, life on the Astra was already a struggle. The population is strictly regulated, with families being allowed children only if there’s room available and with everyone being forcebly euthanized when they reach the age of sixty (I assume in Earth years). Introducing democracy, even if Smith supported the idea, would probably take generations, as there’s a violently reactionary monarchal system in place, hence the Game of Thrones antics at the beginning. The Astra used to be one of several generation ships coming out of a ruined Earth, but for several reasons the other ships were destroyed or were lost. Smith knows all this due to his incredibly advanced age, despite looking like a thirty-year-old man, a question that will not get answered till much later. While he’s a shady figure, to say the least, it’s not hard to understand why Smith would be preoccupied with saving the Astra, even if it meant breaking a few eggs. Speaking of which…

There Be Spoilers Here

When Matty finally becomes Director, with Seth relinquishing the position on the basis of age, he introduces some radical changes to the ship as it heads to what looks to be a habitable planet. The maximum age of sixty is removed, with the logic being that the shipmates-turned-colonists will need elders to help form civilization on the ground. Sound enough. Despite all the shit he’s gone through and the authoritarian politics Joseph Smith crammed into his head, Matty still shows a capacity for mercy. When they get to this first planet they find it’s… actually pretty welcoming to humans. Not only is there life on the planet but there’s plenty of food and, as far as the colonists can tell, no animals that would prevent a serious threat. Matty has a schedule set for the colonists, since there’s work to be done—only nobody wants to work. Nobody has to work here. “But they didn’t get back to the schedule that week. Nor that month. In six weeks, the schedule was forgotten.” If this was a Ray Bradbury story there might be some secret mischievous alien race at work, but the catch with this planet is that there is no catch.

Joseph Smith suggests to Matty that the planet is no good for colonizing—not for a sensible reason, like how suddenly introducing a thousand alien lifeforms to a lush and defenseless ecosystem would likely destroy it, but because the lack of incentive to work would result in the colonists devolving to savagery. Smith’s argument is simple, if draconian: that a struggle for survivle is necessary to maintain civilization. If the colonists don’t work then they’ll turn into pastoral commies or something. I know a few people who would have a word to say about what Smith posits here, but in the context of a queer allegory this is a very curious point. This become even more curious when we think about the gay rights movement as a movement of people and how it could be connected with other historical movements, such as (here it comes) the early days of Mormonism—although Smith strikes me more as a Brigham Young figure than the real Joseph Smith. Still, Robinson makes his point; he alludes rather heavily to the story being about the survival of a social movement and, more cleverly, how the individual can suffer when trying to support said movement.

Make no mistake, Matty is a tragic figure. As a child he’s stuck with having to choose between death and tyranny, and of course without being able to understand the implications of his future he picks the latter. From the time he chooses to be taken under Smith’s wing to the story’s climax he does not have, as far as we can tell, a single day of happiness; there may be fleeting moments, but no more. Even when nobody can hurt him anymore (so it seems) and he has accomplished his goal of saving as many people on the ship as possible, there’s a darkness that shrouds him. At the end, having served his purpose and after being ostracized by the colonists (with his consent, it turns out), Smith leaves the position of Predict to Matty. The colonists, Smith supposes, will no longer need a dictator with an iron fist but instead a philosopher-king. Smith gives Matty the equipment he uses to maintain his unnatural longevity: the equipment in question is a mysterious drug, complete with a needle. The story ends on a bleak note as Matty takes the drug and “pushe[s] the plunger home.” That the Predict is implied to be a drug addict is only the tip of the iceberg.

A Step Farther Out

The biggest problem I have with “The Oceans Are Wide” is its length, as I think it would’ve been stronger as either a novelette or a full novel; certainly there’s enough material here to supply a story that’s double the length. It also pains me to say this, as I’ve said before that I think science fiction often works best in the novella mode. Robinson probably wrote at the length he did (some 27,500 words) because he was still a fairly new writer and/or because he wrote with magazine publication in mind. “The Oceans Are Wide” is a thematically juicy affair that shows a somewhat rough but very promising talent, especially given that Robinson was one of the very few queer writers working in the field at the time. I have to say I was also impressed that I found this novella a bit disturbing, namely for its implications as an allegory, given its vintage. It’s not a masterpiece, but it’s very much a work of old-timey SF that’s worth being brought back into print. I’ll be keeping an eye on Robinson from hereon.

See you next time.