Table of Contents
PERILOUS PLANETS
INTRODUCTION ‘HOW ARE THEY ALL ON DENEB IV ?’
Section 1—Uninhabited Planets—‘… Because They’re There” MOUTH OF HELL
BRIGHTSIDE CROSSING
THE SACK
Section 2—Inhabited Planets—Whatever Answers the Door THE MONSTER
THE MONSTERS
GRENVILLE’S PLANET
BEACHHEAD
Section 3—A Dash of Symbols—No Names to the Rivers THE ARK OF JAMES CARLYLE
ON THE RIVER
GODDESS IN GRANITE
THE SEEKERS
Section 4—Mar sand Venus—Love and War WHEN THE PEOPLE FELL
THE TITAN Spring Night
The Desert
The Elders
Thorana
Karak
In The Pit
The Star-Beast
The Hunting of the Beast
The Star-Beast’s Lair
The Polar Sluices
The Titan
Section 5—Becoming More Alien—A Universal Home Truth FOUR IN ONE I
II
III
IV
THE AGE OF INVENTION
THE SNOWMEN
SCHWARTZ BETWEEN THE GALAXIES
AFTERWORD
PERILOUS PLANETS
An anthology of way-back-when futures edited by
BRIAN W. ALDISS
* * *
1980-02-00
ISBN: 0-380-47100-0 [978-0-380-47100-3]
Avon Books
Cover: Alex Ebel
INTRODUCTION
Long before I began compiling this book, I could see what it had to contain. Its title and its contents leaped at me while I was working on the first anthology in this series, Space Opera**, three years ago.
**Space Opera was followed by Space Odysseys, Evil Earths, and Galactic Empires (in two volumes), all from the publishers of this companion volume.
For the majority of readers new to science fiction, a landing on another planet—a planet, because unknown, even more perilous than Earth—must be their peak experience of the genre. If they don’t get the true sf charge out of touchdown on Procyon V, they will never get any charge at all. The cutting edge of science fiction lies along the interface between the known and the unknown.
So what I wanted for my anthology was that seminal story in which our brave astronauts, or space-travelers as they used to be called, make the first-ever voyage through space, see the stars like jewels flung into the sack of night, and touch down on a totally unknown planet. There they jump out to test the atmosphere, find it even better than Earth’s, and take a stroll amid the glorious scenery. Whereupon something awful appears and—according to which seminal story you read—attempts to eat them, warps their minds with obscene telepathic messages, or captures them and takes them into subterranean tunnels.
It was a fantastic story, one you remember for the rest of your life. My trouble was, I had forgotten which story it was. For months, I leafed my way through my library, looking for the seminal story. I found plenty of stories like it, but never that actual story.
Eventually the truth dawned. That seminal story had no actual existence. It was a creation of my memory, compounded from elements common to many similar first-landing stories. It was, you might say, a folk memory of landing on a strange planet.
Looking backwards into the mists of receding time, or the receding mists of time, I can see how the legend has gradually become briefer and more sophisticated over the ages since I first began reading, and the sayers of the saga themselves gradually less Neanderthal. Right on the edge of the abyss where memory begins, I am able to recall myself lying in my cot, dummy in mouth, reading an absolutely enchanting Great Progenitor of the story in Wonder Stories.
This is how that Great Progenitor went.
Two professors with German names are arguing about the nature of life. One of them believes that life would be possible even with a silicon-based metabolism, as opposed to the carbon-based metabolism prevalent on Earth; the other does not so believe. Both put their points of view. Sometimes they grow angry and strike their brows, or scribble equations on a handy blackboard. Every few chapters, in comes the housekeeper and throws more coal on the fire.
So heated grows the argument, that the two professors with German names decide to settle the matter by travelling to Mars, which they suspect is a silicon world. Going out into the backyard, they begin to assemble a rocketship, still occasionally striking their brows. Some parts they get from the local hardware store, where the owner is amused by their preposterous idea; he often looks over the garden fence to joke with them. But progress is made, little by little, chapter by chapter.
The rocket is completed. The two professors with German names persuade their housekeeper to come along with them as cook; she consents to come as long as she can bring her dog, Fritz. They climb aboard, shovel in the coal, heat up the boiler, and the rocket goes shooting up into space—to the considerable discomfiture of the hardware store owner.
Space is very interesting and is described in some detail. They can see all the planets in the solar system, etc. They are aiming for Mars but Fritz knocks the compass over and they land by accident on Jupiter instead. To their surprise, they find Jupiter is rather like Earth, except cloudier. Also the trees are bigger.
The two professors with German names step outside and sniff the air. It is even better than Earth’s. They take a stroll.
Whereupon something appears. It is a crowd of Jovians and—bless my soul!—they prove to have a silicon-based metabolism. So one of the professors wins his argument. They shake hands and marry the housekeeper, whose carbon-based metabolism has always had a certain appeal.
Doubtless some of my more cynical readers will find this story a little naive, comical even. Let me assure you that my first impressions were entirely more favourable. At that tender age, I had never heard anyone discussing such a fascinating subject as the nature of life; if taxed I might have claimed offhand that life had no nature. Nor had the subject of a silicon-based metabolism ever crossed my mind. I believe I am correct in saying that it was this metaphysical aspect of science fiction which interested me as much as the actual spaceflight and landing on Jupiter.
As the ages passed and I left nappies behind, I found that the story of that first landing was developing. The earlier chapters became abridged, even perfunctory. The spaceships were still built privately in back yards, but the details of manufacture, and the argument, were curtailed. The landing, and what happened then, became the thing. After more ages the stories simply skipped the prolegomena and opened with the ship blasting out of space and the captain jumping out of his ship, sniffing the air and finding it even better than Earth’s, and claiming it in the name of—well, it used to be the British Empire, but that changed too.
Nowadays, the formula has tightened still further. Perhaps you will recall a recent story which begins smartly, ‘After landing on Regulus v, the men of the Yarmolinsky Expedition made camp…’ (I prefer not to give the name of the story; with any luck, you will find it in the next anthology in this series.)
There was a time, during the sixties, when it looked as if the first-landing story was dead, killed by its own cliches. At that period, Harry Harrison and I had started the first of our many collaborations, a little magazine of sf criticism entitled SF Horizons. An Oxford friend of ours, C. C. Shackleton, wrote some witty send-ups of various aspects of science fiction. One subject he impaled was precisely this matter of first-landings; as one can infer from his remarks he felt the subject had suffered severely from over-use. I am happy to include his piece, ‘How Are They All on Deneb IV?’ as a kind
of postscript to this Introduction, since it defines the area more wittily than I could ever aspire to do.
So this anthology does not contain that first-landing story you remember. It was just a folk-memory. All parts of the legend are, of course, embedded in H. G. Well’s novel, The First Men on the Moon. One never forgets the moment when Cavor and Beford see the sun rise, watch the plants grow, and sniff the air, to find it even better than Earth’s.
What this anthology does contain are stories which, while being excellent in their own right, range along the whole spectrum of interest aroused by that feat which still remains imaginary: standing upon another planet. (The Moon is a satellite, not a planet.) That particular kind of thrill has been conjured in literature since time immemorial; during time memorial, sf is the name of the literature that does it now.
Actual unrestricted travel in space, if it ever comes, may alter the nature of science fiction, as reality wipes out folk memories. There must be other beings on other planets who dream similar tales. I’m convinced—I know it is controversial to say this—that when we get to Jupiter we shall find it inhabited by creatures with a silicon-based metabolism. For sure, their writers will be writing science fiction, too. Who knows, maybe it’s even better than Earth’s…
==========
We have here seventeen stories from nine different magazines; their vintages cover a span of three decades. Some are deservedly famous, some undeservedly neglected. As always, in the hope of preserving a whiff of period flavour, I have left the original blurbs intact, or forged them where the originals were not available. Can you tell the fakes? Two hundred and fifteen correct answers to the last anthology so far. An additional puzzle this time: which piece is by me, operating under a pen name?
Brian W. Aldiss
Heath House Southmoor October
* * *
‘HOW ARE THEY ALL ON DENEB IV?’
by C. C. Shackleton
==========
All right, I know, times are changing. It’s the great theme of our age. Ever since evolution and all that, the decades have gone hog wild for change; you’d think there was a law about it. Maybe there is a law about it.
Don’t think I’m complaining: I am. Since I was a kid, everything has changed, from the taste of bread to the nature of Africa and China. But at least I thought sf would stay the same.
Instead, what has happened? It’s all different. They don’t write like Heinlein any more—even Heinlein doesn’t. In the old days, you knew exactly where you stood in a story. Take the aliens; back in the Golden Age, when the writers had a bit of a sense of wonder and there were blondes on the covers, you knew the aliens would always be there, endlessly mown down, endlessly picturesque, swarming over endless alien worlds. But nowadays—well, let’s take actual cases, he said, reaching eagerly for the May 1940 copy of Gruelling Science Stories. The Luftwaffe was plastering London at the time, but thank heavens the American sf writers hadn’t got wind of that, and Zago Blinder was still turning out his customary peaceful limpid prose. His May 1940 stint was entitled, with what I’ve always thought showed considerable skill in alliteration, ‘The Devils of Deneb iv’.
You know how this sort of thing goes right from the start. The pleasure lies in its predictability. Scarcely has the whine (whisper, snarl, thunder) of the landing jets died than the hatch opens and three Earthmen jump (crawl, climb, fall) out and stand looking round Deneb iv. They find the air is breathable and quickly hoist the flag (Old Glory, U.N. banner, Stars and Stripes).
Up to now, we readers have been carried along breathlessly (restlessly, hesitantly, mindlessly) on the flood of the author’s prose, full of admiration for the way in which he has so economically created a situation so distinct from our own humdrum world. More, the old-timers among us are full of gratitude for his dropping the first three (four, six, twelve) chapters describing the construction of the spaceship in someone’s back yard and its long eventful journey to Deneb which were once considered compulsory in this sort of exercise.
Now, however, comes an awkward pause. We have been brought painlessly through what the textbooks call Building Up Atmosphere, Establishing Environment, Creating Character, and so on. The idyllic mood must be shattered. It is time to Introduce the Action.
‘Look!’ gasps (coughs, barks, yells) the captain, pointing with trembling (rigid, scarred, nicotine-stained) finger at the nearby hill (jungle, ocean, ruined temple). His crewmen follow the line of his fingertip, and there approaching them they see an angry group (ugly bunch, slavering horde, slobbering herd) of Denebians who are plainly out for blood as they gallop (surge, slime, esp) towards the spaceship.
You must admit this is value for money, particularly if you only borrowed the magazine. In no time, the three intrepid explorers are back in their ship and the vile Denebians are trying to scratch their way in through the cargo hatch.
What more could you ask for? Personally, I asked for nothing more; I had had enough by the time I came across this situation for the fiftieth time. It was not boredom so much as bravery. The Denebians weren’t what they used to be. However mindless and merciless they got, I was no longer scared. I developed immunity. Yet, for all that, I liked things the way they were. The more unsociably those aliens behaved, the more I realized how superior we Earthmen were.
Then things became less straightforward. I was rifling through Microscopic Sex Wonder during the boom year of 1951 when I realized that Deneb was no longer the same. They’d dared to alter the plot!
This time, the aliens didn’t appear when the flag was hoisted. Everything was peaceful—too peaceful. Our three chums wandered among beautiful trees, or they found charming people like themselves but nicer, with sweet old mums sitting knitting on the porch, and Pa sucking a corn cob and spittin’ to avoid bunches of rosy-cheeked kids, or else they found nothing there at all except the waving grass.
You remember what happened, don’t you? Those beautiful trees, that grand old granny, those cheeky kids, that expanse of nothing, that sneaky grass, was really our old Denebians in disguise. Yes, sir! Freud had hit sf by this date, and the old slobbering hordes were back in full force only nastier, because they could thought-wrap themselves as grannies or grass and get into the ship and cause chaos. That was a terrible era, and I don’t know how I survived it. Story after story, I had to face utter mind-wrenching terror.
I grew to love it.
Then they went and changed the plot again! I knew just how things were going and was all set to relax when the editors or whoever it is that insists on these things—for sure it’s not the writers—altered the orthodoxy.
I can pinpoint the date exactly when I realized something had gone wrong. I had bought the Jannish—sorry, the January issue of The Monthly of Whimsey and Wharnmo-Science, 1960, and was leafing through this story by Piledriver Jones entitled ‘On Deneb Deep My Pleasure Stalks’. Funny, I thought, the title doesn’t sound right, they’ve started mucking around with the titles now, is nothing sacred? But since I wanted to find out if a pleasure stalk was what I thought it was (it wasn’t), I forced myself to read on.
You can’t fail to recall the story, not only because it has since been anthologized fifty-two times and won a Hank, but because it started a new trend. This is the one where they arrive on Deneb iv all right, in this funny ship that rides solar winds, but some sort of bug gets them and they all grow extra limbs; the captain alone grows twelve big toes, fourteen left arms, a spare pair of buttocks, two girl’s knees, and a horse’s head. And then they sit around and talk philosophy, not minding at all, until in the end it turns out that back on Earth things are even worse because people are terribly short of horse’s heads and buttocks and knee caps and things.
Let’s have no false modesty—I can adjust to anything. But it needs about twenty years to adjust to that sort of plot. And what happened? Already, already, they’ve altered the line again. That’s what I mean about change running hog wild.
Just this year the new orthodoxy has set
in. Look at this month’s crop of magazines—it’s not a very big crop these days, because people won’t read unless they know what to expect—look at Monolog, look at Off, look at Odious Fantasy and Lewd Worlds and Gallimaufry, and what do you find? Not a darned one of them has a story set on Deneb IV!
Not a darned one of them has a story set on any alien planet! They’re all Earth stories, everyone, though Monolog has this nine-part serial set in England at the time of the Norman Conquest, with William the Conqueror finding cases of telepathy among the peasants. Otherwise, nothing! Russians, psi powers, medicine, psychology, sociology, politics, traffic problems, robots, nuclear wars, funny little tales about fellows meeting aliens and not realizing it, oh yes, no shortage of all that sort of stuff, and, of course, plenty of drowned, crystallized rainless, bug-ridden, childless, adultless, metal-less, doodless, witless worlds, all of them Earth. But not a single story set on another planet.
I’d chuck in my hand. I would. I’d give up. I’d never bother to try and read another sf story in another magazine in my life. There just happens to be one small thing that gives me grounds for hope.
Lewd Worlds has a little cameo, not more than a thousand words long, about this chap who seduces this girl and then creeps into his back yard and builds his own rocket ship. He has this secret perverted desire to reach the stars, see?
It’s only a matter of sweating it out a few more years, boys. We’ll get back to Deneb one day. The times they are a-changing.
* * *
Section 1—Uninhabited Planets—‘… Because They’re There”
==========
It’s an adaptation of what Sir Edmund Hillary replied when asked why he wanted to climb Everest. ‘Because it’s there,’ he said. This remark has become part of the currency of conversation of our time. For the same reason, we want to visit other planets. Because they’re there. (The unspoken remainder of the sentence goes, and because we are human beings.)