FFB - All the Sounds of Fear

The 1973 Panther paperback was the first British publication of this collection by Harlan Ellison. It comprises eight short stories previously published in magazines from 1956 to 1967. Considering that he was twenty-two when the first of these stories was published, it’s not surprising that he garnered much praise – and awards. On the back cover he is described as ‘one of the most explosive talents in science fiction today’, ‘a non-stop controversialist’ and ‘the bête noire of science fiction.’

Harlan Ellison wears his heart on his sleeve; that’s no bad thing: he has a good heart, even at eighty-one. He admits to possessing an abrasive personality, but that has no bearing here; it is his work that matters.

 

In his introduction to this book (1970), Ellison is not hopeful about our planet and human evolution: ‘we have created for ourselves a madhouse of irrationality and despair.’ Surprisingly, perhaps, we’ve survived, after a fashion, some forty-five years since; as for ‘irrationality and despair’, he could have prophetically been thinking about the ravings and cravings found in social media.

Not alone among authors, he believes that writers can make a difference: ‘The creative intellect struggles against this sorry reality… It would seem only the mind of the madman is free… And even so the artist persists… in hopes that cautions may be flung on the wind and somehow still be heard.’ He states that this collection of stories, written over a decade or so, is dominated by the theme of alienation. However, he is a romantic at heart, and still believes ‘we find hope within ourselves.’

Perhaps one of the most anthologised of his stories is the first here, ‘I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream’ (1967), which won a Hugo Award. It’s the future and the supercomputer AM feels trapped because though he had sentience, he couldn’t do anything except simply be. In a rage, he had destroyed humankind, save for five who he would torment for all eternity. ‘He was Earth and we were the fruit of that Earth and though he had eaten us, he would never digest us.’ They couldn’t attempt suicide, either; they were to all intents immortal, and damned.

‘The Discarded’ (1959) is from the viewpoint of Bedzyk, one of many incarcerated in a space vessel, ‘a raft adrift in the sea of night’. Everyone on-board was a mutant of some description – not X-Men with superhuman powers, simply possessors of additional limbs, eyes, heads, and therefore outcast. All as a result of a terrible contagion on Earth. Once normality had resumed, those who looked different were outcast, set adrift in space, unwelcome on no inhabited station or planet.

‘Deeper than the Darkness’ (1957) concerns Alf Gunnderson who is released from prison for a special task. He was imprisoned because he accidentally started a forest fire with his mind. Now, however, the authorities wanted to put his ‘gift’ to use, to end a war. Alf was in a quandary: ‘What of the people who hated war, and the people who served because they had been told to serve, and the people who wanted to be left alone? What of the men who went into the fields, while their fellow troops dutifully sharpened their war knives, and cried?

            ‘Was this war one of salvation or liberation or duty as they parroted the phrases of patriotism? Or was this still another of the unending wars for domination, larger holdings, richer worlds. Was this another vast joke of the Universe, where men were sent to their deaths so one type of government, no better than another, could rule?’ A novella about conscience and power.

‘Blind Lightning’ (1956) finds us with old spaceman Kettridge stranded on an inhospitable planet with an enormous ravenous beast that happens to speak telepathically in his language... Quite a moving little parable, about redemption and ‘first contact’.

‘All the Sounds of Fear’ (1962) is an interesting story, first featured in The Saint Detective Magazine. Richard Becker is an extraordinary actor – he seems to not only live the stage part, but to become the character he portrays in every way, no matter what the source, historical or contemporary. Until that dark day when he emulated a character to a murderous degree and was sectioned to be studied by doctors. While in the sanatorium Becker transgresses, becoming each part again, from the most recent to the earliest. A stunning end awaits.

 
‘The Silver Corridor’ (1956) is about egomania, where two  powerful men vie to be proved ‘right’ and the other ‘wrong’ regarding the latest theory. They are thrust into a special corridor that stretches reality to the limits, where they contest in many varied duels to better each other. Of all these stories, this is the weakest, though it has plenty of colour, time-shifts, action and excitement.

‘“Repent, Harlequin!” Said the Ticktockman’ (1965) won Ellison several awards and is believed to be one of the most reprinted short stories in the English language. It is a tongue-in-cheek critique of a dystopian system and in particular of lives being ruled by the clock. In the dystopia depicted, everybody had a schedule to keep; lateness was punishable, ultimately by being switched off – everybody was fitted with a cardioplate that the Timekeeper could make inactive. Unfortunately for the system, Everett C Marm wasn’t punctual and revelled in disturbing the smooth running of the day, causing schedule mayhem while disguised as a harlequin. The mysterious Harlequin became ‘an emotionally disturbed segment of the populace’.

Ellison’s distinctive style is evidenced here, for example: ‘And so it goes. And so it goes. And so it goes. And so it goes goes goes goes goes tick tock tick tock tick tock and one day we no longer let time serve us, we serve time and we are slaves of the schedule, worshippers of the sun’s passing, bound into a life predicated on restrictions because the system will not function if we don’t keep the schedule tight… Until it becomes more than a minor inconvenience to be late. It becomes a sin. Then a crime. Then a crime punishable by (death).’ In essence, if a person was ten minutes late, then those minutes were deducted from that person’s life-span.

 
The book ends with ‘Bright Eyes’ which is anything but bright, for it is the end of the world. The last survivor – who came before Man – witnesses the utter waste of resources and life. An apocalyptic tale, with bruising and impressive imagery, and no hope.

And of course Ellison ends this collection with ‘no hope’ in the belief stated in his Introduction that his ‘cautions may be flung on the wind and somehow still be heard.’

Loose change in the treasury of fiction

In his introduction to the volume collecting all his short stories, J.G. Ballard states, ‘Short stories are the loose change in the treasury of fiction, easily ignored beside the wealth of novels available, an over-valued currency that often turns out to be counterfeit. At its best, in Borges, Ray Bradbury and Edgar Allen Poe, the short story is coined from precious metal, a glint of gold that will glow for ever in the deep purse of your imagination.’

To continue yesterday’s theme about next week’s UK National Short Story Week, I thought I’d scan my book shelves for the collections by sci-fi and horror authors (a separate set of shelves).

Here I find Brian Aldiss, J.G. Ballard, Anthony Boucher, Ray Bradbury, John W. Campbell, Angela Carter, Harlan Ellison, Jack Finney, Richard Matheson, Cordwainer Smith, Philip K. Dick, Christopher Priest, Clifford Simak, Theodore Sturgeon, James Tiptree Jr (Alice B. Sheldon), Gene Wolfe, Connie Willis and H.G. Wells.

 

 

Aldiss’ title story (see cover) plus two other linked tales were adapted for Spielberg’s film A.I.

 

Jack Finney’s classic novel Invasion of the Body Snatchers has been filmed more than once; yet it’s his beautiful short story ‘I love Galesburg in the Springtime’ that lingers in my memory.

 

 

Science fiction lends itself to the short story form because it’s often the fiction of ideas; though in truth that was in the early days; by the 1960s with the New Wave spearheaded by Moorcock and Ballard, light was shone on the inner space embedded within the human condition.

Some readers are quite insular in their taste, and eschew certain genre writing, which is a pity, because there is a richness of prose and idea within all genres; a good story, about people and emotion can be found in all genre writing; a good story is a good story.

‘I don’t read sci-fi’ is perhaps as common a statement as ‘I don’t read westerns’ or ‘I don’t read horror’. Perhaps these opinions stem from a bad experience with a poor writer within a particular genre. Yet you won’t hear anyone say ‘I don’t read novels’ (well, apart from those who prefer non-fiction!) because this statement is too broad. And that’s the point. Within any genre, there’s a very broad range of style, quality and imagination. Short story collections by an author can introduce you to his or her style, and I believe that any of the above mentioned authors have something like ‘precious metal’ to offer readers who are bold enough to mine these treasures.

 

Faceless rule-makers

Yesterday’s post about Facebook’s abysmal security algorithm prompts thoughts about the power of faceless rule-makers and how they deploy that power.  Lest we forget, computer applications are designed by humans, who are as prone as the next person to commit errors.

Whether it’s a computer, an in-car system or a game on a tablet, it cannot have been tested in every conceivable scenario. I recall some years back seeing the standard message on computers, along these lines – ‘You have committed an illegal action.’ Which definitely alarmed law-abiding new users, who worried about what they’d done… This is typical of some programmers – too lazy to program and test for all eventualities, they let the conditional options drop through a number of possible messages and then throw in a catch-all – ‘illegal alert!’ – to capture any other unforeseen route a user might go down.

It’s the English language being misused: illegal in my dictionary says it’s something that’s contrary to or for bidden by law. The last time I looked, computer programmers didn’t make law – they make rules. The same goes for android and robots used with regard to tablets and apps. Android is an automaton resembling a human being; robot was invented by Karel Capek in his story ‘R.U.R – Rossum’s Universal Robots’ and derives from the Polish, Ukrainian robota, forced labour, and Russian, robota, work. Early twentieth century definition now accepts that it can be a machine that carries out a variety of tasks automatically or with a minimum of external impulse (such as factory robots); that’s still a big leap from software applications.

Are the individuals who label these applications so devoid of imagination that they must steal an existing term for their jargon? Ask any sci-fi writer and he or she would probably come up with something appropriate. I realise that it’s academic my discussing this, when you consider that for the Windows operating system you have to click on ‘Start’ to log off (which was removed, sensibly, but the clamour from old users has demanded its return, a yearning for the familiar).

I digress. Consider two new ideas being bandied about of late – driverless cars and driverless lorry convoys!

We’re slowly blindly going down that path that was trodden decades before the Terminator movies were thought of, be assured.

If users become dependent on all these applications, then when they go wrong, as they do and will continue to do so, the resultant responses will be anger without management, frustration, and a tendency to rebel – whether as a hacker, a troll or in a more personal manner. It’s the stuff of science fiction. Harlan Ellison’s ‘ “Repent, Harlequin!” said the Ticktockman’ was about nonconformity being a felony, as well as being a moral tale. Sci-fi authors extrapolate current trends to see where it might lead. Jim England’s story ‘The Globe’ (published in Auguries #6, 1987 is about, among other things, litter louts being zapped by a surveillance stun-gun. And the late Bob Jenkins published a short story ‘No Fire Without Smoke’ (published in Adlib, 1985, reprinted Portsmouth Post, 2007) that casts cigarette smokers as public enemies, liable to be incarcerated or even shot…

'The Globe', 1987

 

The point – faceless rule-makers, if allowed, can take us down a road of unintended and even unperceived consequences.

Back to normal tomorrow…