And those are only three of the stories. There are a couple of dozen others.
Some, like R. A. Lafferty’s “Narrow Valley,” C. M. Kornbluth’s “The Cosmic Expense Account,” and George Alec Effinger’s “The Aliens Who Knew, I Mean, Everything,” are brilliantly funny, totally gonzo. Others, such as Zenna Henderson’s “The Anything Box,” Ken Liu’s “The Paper Menagerie,” Paolo Bacigalupi’s “The People of Sand and Slag,” and Stephen King’s “The New York Times at Special Bargain Rates,” are tender and beautiful and quite heartbreaking. Many are fast-paced and action-movie thrilling: try James Patrick Kelly’s “Rat”—about drug-smuggling in a future New York where people can genetically alter their bodies—or Robert Sheckley’s “The Prize of Peril,” a prefiguration of Reality TV shows and The Hunger Games.
To be taxonomic, the chosen stories can be loosely divided into two sorts: The plain and the fancy. In the first, the emphasis is on transparent diction and the clear unfolding of a plot. The stories mentioned in the previous paragraph are examples of this (with the partial exception of “Rat”). In “The Lincoln Train,” to take another example, Maureen F. McHugh simply describes a young Southern girl who is being relocated by the victorious Northern Armies to some western settlement. The language is direct and unadorned, the action crisply presented and—upsetting. What gives this alternate ninteenth-century history its power is how close it comes to real and all-too-familiar twentieth-century history. In “Have Not Have” Geoff Ryman’s language is comparably plain, yet timelessly serene, perfectly cadenced. Almost nothing of consequence happens: a dressmaker in a small Asian village describes her life and the people she interacts with. We gradually recognize that technological “progress” will alter the age-old routines, and that there will be consequent cultural and personal losses. But this knowledge is only lightly touched on. Nevertheless, the delicate beauty, the tonal equipoise of this story, hold the reader enthralled.
In the fancy stories, by contrast, language draws attention to itself. The mode of narration, the style, the diction, the whole storytelling apparatus struts and frets and shouts or whimpers. In such works we value the razzle-dazzle on the page as much as the turns of the plot. Jack Vance’s slightly world-weary elegance in “Green Magic,” the psychedelic “trip” that is Robert Silverberg’s “Sundance,” the restless baroque inventiveness of Brian Aldiss’s “A Kind of Artistry,” the rat-a-tat Vietnam-memoir prose of Lucius Shepard’s harrowing “Salvador”—these stories triumph through their verbal firepower. Their style is their substance. Almost.
As one reads through these sixty years of great short fiction, one occasionally detects loose patterns. The tension of past and present that haunts Harlan Ellison®’s “Jeffty Is Five” is taken up again in Ryman’s “Have Not Have.” Jack Finney’s “The Third Level” focuses on a mysterious floor of Grand Central Station; in Stephen King’s story the dead congregate in what looks to be Grand Central Station before exiting by one of its many doors. Even as Sheckley’s “The Prize of Peril” sends up television’s excesses, so Kit Reed’s “The Attack of the Giant Baby” reworks the clichés of 1950s monster movies.
Some stories are masterfully composed yet tantalizingly oblique—Gene Wolfe’s revenge tale “The Friendship Light,” for example, or Elizabeth Hand’s confession of desolation and desperate yearning, “Echo.” Urban fantasist Charles de Lint is represented by his signature work, “The Bone Woman,” while Robert Reed’s “Winemaster”—a combination of sf thriller and metaphysical mystery, with a few touches from a famous Outer Limits episode—reminds us that he should be more widely acknowledged as one of the best short story writers in the field. Not least, the anthology includes masterly work from the multi-talented Bruce Sterling (the funny “Maneki Neko,” which extrapolates a future based on Japan’s traditional gift economy) and the contemporary English sf master, M. John Harrison, whose “Suicide Coast” probes what one might call the risky business of life.
Overall, though, one aspect of The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction stands out: the continuity of excellence. While we shouldn’t over-privilege the present or neglect the achievements of the past, neither should we undervalue the artistic mastery of contemporaries such as Liu, Hand, Ryman, or Bacigalupi. Such writers of today are by no means pygmies, even if they do stand on the shoulders of giants. Nonetheless, the fantastic in their stories, while present, may sometimes seem distinctly attenuated. As Gary Wolfe and other critics have pointed out, the traditional boundary lines of genre are breaking down even as the world we live in is growing increasingly science fictional.
Together, the two volumes of The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction will, if nothing else, persuade you that great imaginative fiction was being written in the 1950s—just as it is still being written in the 2010s. This is due, at least partly, simply because of the existence of F&SF, a home for virtuoso storytelling ever since Anthony Boucher and J. Francis McComas founded it in 1949. That’s still the case, magnificently so, under the editorship of Gordon Van Gelder. To this day, Fantasy & Science Fiction remains, like The New Yorker, The Atlantic, or The Paris Review, one of the great fiction magazines of modern American literature.
The Third Level (1952)
JACK FINNEY
The author of The Woodrow Wilson Dime, Marion’s Wall, and Assault on a Queen, JACK FINNEY (1911–1995) is best known nowadays for two works: The Body Snatchers, which formed the basis for the movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and Time and Again, a classic novel of traveling back through time to New York City in 1982.
Originally from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Jack Finney worked in advertising in New York before moving to California in the 1950s. His appreciation of Manhattan as a place of magic and mystery is obvious in this short yarn.
HE PRESIDENTS OF the New York Central and the New York, New Haven and Hartford railroads will swear on a stack of timetables that there are only two. But I say there are three, because I’ve been on the third level at Grand Central Station. Yes, I’ve taken the obvious step: I talked to a psychiatrist friend of mine, among others. I told him about the third level at Grand Central Station, and he said it was a waking-dream wish fulfillment. He said I was unhappy. That made my wife kind of mad, but he explained that he meant the modern world is full of insecurity, fear, war worry and all the rest of it, and that I just want to escape. Well, hell, who doesn’t? Everybody I know wants to escape but they don’t wander down into any third level at Grand Central Station.
But that’s the reason, he said, and my friends all agreed. Everything points to it, they claimed. My stamp collecting, for example; that’s a “temporary refuge from reality.” Well, maybe, but my grandfather didn’t need any refuge from reality; things were pretty nice and peaceful in his day, from all I hear, and he started my collection. It’s a nice collection, too, blocks of four of practically every U.S. issue, first-day covers, and so on. President Roosevelt collected stamps, too, you know.
Anyway, here’s what happened at Grand Central. One night last summer I worked late at the office. I was in a hurry to get uptown to my apartment so I decided to take the subway from Grand Central because it’s faster than the bus.
Now, I don’t know why this should have happened to me. I’m just an ordinary guy named Charley, thirty-one years old, and I was wearing a tan gabardine suit and a straw hat with fancy band; I passed a dozen men who looked just like me. And I wasn’t trying to escape from anything; I just wanted to get home to Louisa, my wife.
I turned into Grand Central from Vanderbilt Avenue, and went down the steps to the first level, where you take trains like the Twentieth Century. Then I walked down another flight to the second level, where the suburban trains leave from, ducked into an arched doorway heading for the subway—and got lost. That’s easy to do. I’ve been in and out of Grand Central hundreds of times, but I’m always bumping into new doorways and stairs and corridors. Once I got into a tunnel about a mile long and came out in the lobby of the Roosevelt Hotel. Another t
ime I came up in an office building on Forty-sixth Street, three blocks away.
Sometimes I think Grand Central is growing like a tree, pushing out new corridors and staircases like roots. There’s probably a long tunnel that nobody knows about feeling its way under the city right now, on its way to Times Square, and maybe another to Central Park. And maybe—because for so many people through the years Grand Central has been an exit, a way of escape—maybe that’s how the tunnel I got into . . . But I never told my psychiatrist friend about that idea.
The corridor I was in began angling left and slanting downward and I thought that was wrong, but I kept on walking. All I could hear was the empty sound of my own footsteps and I didn’t pass a soul. Then I heard that sort of hollow roar ahead that means open space and people talking. The tunnel turned sharp left; I went down a short flight of stairs and came out on the third level at Grand Central Station. For just a moment I thought I was back on the second level, but I saw the room was smaller, there were fewer ticket windows and train gates, and the information booth in the center was wood and old-looking. And the man in the booth wore a green eyeshade and long black sleeve protectors. The lights were dim and sort of flickering. Then I saw why; they were open-flame gaslights.
There were brass spittoons on the floor, and across the station a glint of light caught my eye: a man was pulling a gold watch from his vest pocket. He snapped open the cover, glanced at his watch, and frowned. He wore a dirty hat, a black four-button suit with tiny lapels, and he had a big, black, handlebar mustache. Then I looked around and saw that everyone in the station was dressed like 1890 something; I never saw so many beards, sideburns and fancy mustaches in my life. A woman walked in through the train gate; she wore a dress with leg-of-mutton sleeves and skirts to the top of her high-buttoned shoes. Back of her, out on the tracks, I caught a glimpse of a locomotive, a very small Currier & Ives locomotive with a funnel-shaped stack. And then I knew.
To make sure, I walked over to a newsboy and glanced at the stack of papers at his feet. It was the World; and the World hasn’t been published for years. The lead story said something about President Cleveland. I’ve found that front page since, in the Public Library files, and it was printed June 11, 1894.
I turned toward the ticket windows knowing that here—on the third level at Grand Central—I could buy tickets that would take Louisa and me anywhere in the United States we wanted to go. In the year 1894. And I wanted two tickets to Galesburg, Illinois.
Have you ever been there? It’s a wonderful town still, with big old frame houses, huge lawns, and tremendous trees whose branches meet overhead and roof the streets. And in 1894, summer evenings were twice as long, and people sat out on their lawns, the men smoking cigars and talking quietly, the women waving palm-leaf fans, with the fireflies all around, in a peaceful world. To be back there with the First World War still twenty years off, and World War II over forty years in the future . . . I wanted two tickets for that.
The clerk figured the fare—he glanced at my fancy hatband, but he figured the fare—and I had enough for two coach tickets, one way. But when I counted out the money and looked up, the clerk was staring at me. He nodded at the bills. “That ain’t money, mister,” he said, “and if you’re trying to skin me you won’t get very far,” and he glanced at the cash drawer beside him. Of course the money was old-style bills, half again as big as the money we use nowadays, and different looking. I turned away and got out fast. There’s nothing nice about jail, even in 1894.
And that was that. I left the same way I came, I suppose. Next day, during lunch hour, I drew $300 out of the bank, nearly all we had, and bought old-style currency (that really worried my psychiatrist friend). You can buy old money at almost any coin dealer’s, but you have to pay a premium. My $300 bought less than $200 in old-style bills, but I didn’t care; eggs were thirteen cents a dozen in 1894.
But I’ve never again found the corridor that leads to the third level at Grand Central Station, although I’ve tried often enough.
Louisa was pretty worried when I told her all this, and didn’t want me to look for the third level any more, and after a while I stopped; I went back to my stamps. But now we’re both looking, every week end, because now we have proof that the third level is still there. My friend Sam Weiner disappeared! Nobody knew where, but I sort of suspected because Sam’s a city boy, and I used to tell him about Galesburg—I went to school there—and he always said he liked the sound of the place. And that’s where he is, all right. In 1894.
Because one night, fussing with my stamp collection, I found—Well, do you know what a first-day cover is? When a new stamp is issued, stamp collectors buy some and use them to mail envelopes to themselves on the very first day of sale; and the postmark proves the date. The envelope is called a first-day cover. They’re never opened; you just put blank paper in the envelope.
That night, among my oldest first-day covers, I found one that shouldn’t have been there. But there it was. It was there because someone had mailed it to my grandfather at his home in Galesburg; that’s what the address on the envelope said. And it had been there since July 18, 1894—the postmark showed that—yet I didn’t remember it at all. The stamp was a six-cent, dull brown, with a picture of President Garfield. Naturally, when the envelope came to Granddad in the mail, it went right into his collection and stayed there—till I took it out and opened it.
The paper inside wasn’t blank. It read:
941 Willard Street
Galesburg, Illinois
July 18, 1894
CHARLEY:
I got to wishing that you were right. Then I got to believing you were right. And, Charley, it’s true; I found the third level!
I’ve been here two weeks, and right now, down the street at the Dalys’, someone is playing a piano, and they’re all out on the front porch
singing “Seeing Nellie Home.” And I’m invited over for lemonade.
Come on back, Charley and Louisa. Keep looking till you find the third level! It’s worth it, believe me!
The note is signed SAM.
At the stamp and coin store I go to, I found out that Sam bought $800 worth of old-style currency. That ought to set him up in a nice little hay, feed and grain business; he always said that’s what he really wished he could do, and he certainly can’t go back to his old business. Not in Galesburg, Illinois, in 1894. His old business? Why, Sam was my psychiatrist.
The Cosmic Expense Account (1956)
C. M. CORNBLUTH
CYRIL KORNBLUTH (1923–1958) was one of the young New York science-fiction fans who formed the group known as the Futurians in the 1930s. He began publishing fiction as a teen and ultimately wrote about a dozen novels (including collaborations with Frederik Pohl and Judith Merril) and six dozen short stories before he died at the age of thirty-four. His sharp and cynical view of the future is perhaps best displayed in such stories as “The Marching Morons” and such novels as The Space Merchants.
Kornbluth suffered from heart problems and was prescribed medication, but the medication made his head cloudy, so he stopped taking it. In 1958, after shoveling his driveway, he ran to catch a train, and his heart gave out on the train platform. One aspect of his tragic death that is often overlooked: The train was going to take him into New York, where he was scheduled to meet with Bob Mills about becoming editor of F&SF. Sadly, we can only imagine what Kornbluth’s tenure as editor might have been like, but at least we have “The Cosmic Expense Account” to suggest what he might have done as an employee of Mercury Press.
HE LACKAWANNA WAS still running one cautious morning train a day into Scranton, though the city was said to be emptying fast. Professor Leuten and I had a coach to ourselves, except for a scared, jittery trainman who hung around and talked at us.
“The name’s Pech,” he said. “And let me tell you, the Peches have been around for a mighty long time in these parts. There’s a town twenty-three miles north of Scranton named Pechville. Full of my cousins an
d aunts and uncles, and I used to visit there and we used to send picture post cards and get them, too. But my God, mister, what’s happened to them?”
His question was rhetorical. He didn’t realize that Professor Leuten and I happened to be the only two people outside the miscalled Plague Area who could probably answer it.
“Mr. Pech,” I said, “if you don’t mind we’d like to talk some business.”
“Sorry,” he said miserably, and went on to the next car.
When we were alone Professor Leuten remarked: “An interesting reaction.” He was very smooth about it. Without the slightest warning he whipped a huge, writhing, hairy spider from his pocket and thrust it at my face.
I was fast on the draw too. In one violent fling I was standing on my left foot in the aisle, thumbing my nose, my tongue stuck out. Goose flesh rippled down my neck and shoulders.
“Very good,” he said, and put the spider away. It was damnably realistic. Even knowing that it was a gadget of twisted springs and plush, I cringed at the thought of its nestling in his pocket. With me it was spiders. With the professor it was rats and asphyxiation. Toward the end of our mutual training program it took only one part per million of sulfur dioxide gas in his vicinity to send him whirling into the posture of defense, crane-like on one leg, tongue out and thumb to nose, the sweat of terror on his brow.
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