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NOVA 3
Introduction
Harry Harrison
WELCOME TO THE STANDARD NIGHTMARE
Robert Sheckley
THE EXPENSIVE DELICATE SHIP
Brian Aldiss
DREAMING AND CONVERSIONS
Barry N. Malzberg
BREAKOUT IN ECOL 2
David R. Bunch
THE COLD WAR, CONTINUED
Mack Reynolds
THE FACTORY
Naomi Mitchison
THE DEFENSIVE BOMBER
Hank Dempsey
ENDORSEMENT, PERSONAL
Dean McLaughlin
THE NATIONAL PASTIME
Norman Spinrad
THE ULTIMATE END
Dick Glass
PITY THE POOR OUTDATED MAN
Philip Shofner
THE EXHIBITION
Scott Edelstein
SKETCHES AMONG THE RUINS OF MY MIND
Philip José Farmer
INTRODUCTION
THE WINDS OF change continue to blow through science fiction, tearing at the flapping sails of a number of foundering ships while at the same time pushing forward new craft with novel cargoes. This is only fair. For many years apologists of SF have stated that this is the only fictional form aware of change in the world—and in addition is aware that change itself can be changed. We can shape our futures and our environment if we have the will. So science fiction itself must constantly change or it will die. But simple change for its own sake in literature is not a good thing; along that course lies self-indulgence and writing empty of all content or interest. But writers will continue to experiment and when the result is a good story it certainly must be published.
Of course these changes—as with most kinds of change —are not appreciated by everyone. Science fiction is now broad enough in scope to contain both highbrow and lowbrow; something for the seekers after cerebral stimulation as well as those who want only emotional titillation. It was Brian Aldiss who recently noticed on a blackboard the chalked message: GET SCIENCE FICTION OUT OF THE CLASSROOM AND BACK IN THE GUTTER WHERE IT BELONGS. The feelings can be understood. The devotee of star-smashing space opera is surely baffled by much that is labeled science fiction today and can seek relief only by reading his collection of E. E. Smith, Ph.D., yet one more time. Perhaps we ought to emulate the example of the organized Germans who classify things more exactly. I have four of my novels to hand, that have been translated into that language, and I see that the first of them is simply a Science Fiction Roman. Clear enough. The next is a Utopischer Roman; clear though not exactly correct. Now the last two. One is labeled a Utopisch-technische collection of stories and the other a Utopisch-technischer Kriminalroman. Worse and worse. Not only are these categories not relevant to the American reader but the last one, the utopian-technical-criminal novel, is nothing of the sort.
No, I do not think that the Teutonic labeling system can be adapted for the American reader. Tried and true empirical experimentation is still the only way. Readers here must continue to read everything around in order to make up their own minds as to what they prefer. That this system works is evidenced by the jackets on most new SF books; the author’s name is usually far larger than the title. This enables the faithful reader to seek out books by his favorite authors and rush them home for a good read.
Original anthologies of new science fiction can help these readers in their quest. Here in Nova 3, as in the other Nova anthologies, I have done my best to obtain the finest new writing by the most qualified writers around. This is not as easy as it might seem and it usually takes eight to ten months to assemble one of these volumes. The established writers, all busy and claiming they are overworked, must be cajoled and tempted and enticed. But they do deliver as can be seen in the Brian W. Aldiss, Philip Jose Farmer and Robert Sheckley stories here. These men, and others, are the secure artists who provide a continuity of excellence in science fiction—long may they write.
But, in addition to the golden glow engendered by reading a new story of an old master, there is the particular pleasure provided by a story written by someone who is completely unknown and who has never sold a word before. This was the condition of every writer at one time, a condition that is changed by a First Sale. It has been my pleasure to print a number of “first” stories during my assorted editorial years. Some of the writers of these “firsts” vanished back into the darkness from which they came, while others went on to become established writers. This present anthology is unique in that it contains the first stories of two writers, Dick Glass and Philip Shofner. May they march triumphantly onward to greater glories.
I have no favorites among these stories—or rather they are all my favorites for they are all quite different. I think that Norman Spinrad is out of his gourd and I have told him so. I found myself, for some reason, reading his manuscript for the first time at six o’clock in the morning. Reading and laughing so hard that tears filled my eyes. Philip Jose Farmer, on the other hand, is as sanely efficient as any man and continues as a writer of devastating strengths. Brian Aldiss is a true artist, Robert Sheckley a cool pro, Naomi Mitchison goes from strength to strength. Let me simply say that I enjoyed greatly every one of the stories in this volume and hope that you may share that pleasure as well.
Harry Harrison
WELCOME TO THE
STANDARD NIGHTMARE
By ROBERT SHECKLEY
In Nova 2 Robert Sheckley wrote a story that put paid to the classic space opera. At least he would have checked the further publication of more of this bombastic form of science fiction if the authors of these works read anything other than their own stories. Oh well. Perhaps he will have better luck in polishing off the “war of the worlds” theme that began (and mostly ended) with the H. G. Wells book of the same title.
JOHNNY BEZIQUE WAS a spaceship driver for SBC Explorations, Inc. He was surveying a fringe of the Seergon Cluster, which at that time was terra incognita. The first four planets showed nothing interesting. Bezique went to the vicinity of the fifth. The standard nightmare began then.
His ship’s loudspeaker came on, apparently activated by remote control. A deep voice said, “You are approaching the planet Loris. We presume that you intend to put down here.”
“That’s right,” Johnny said. “How come you speak English?”
“One of our computers deduced the language from inferential evidence available during your approach to our planet.”
“That’s pretty good going,” Johnny said.
“It was nothing,” the voice said. “We will now speak directly to your ship’s computer, feeding it landing orbit, speed and other pertinent data. Is that agreeable to you?”
“Sure, go ahead,” Johnny said. He had just made Earth’s first contact with alien life. That was how the standard nightmare always began.
John Charles Bezique was a bandy-legged little man with ginger-colored hair and an irascible disposition. He was mechanically competent at his job. He was also conceited, disputatious, ignorant, fearless and profane. In short, he was per
fectly suited for deep-space exploration. It takes a particular kind of man to endure the shattering immensities of space and the paranoid-inducing stresses of threats from the unknown. It takes a man with a large and impervious ego and a consistently high degree of aggressive self-confidence. It takes a kind of a nut. So exploring spaceships are piloted by men like Bezique, whose self-complacency is firmly based upon unconquerable self-conceit and supported by impenetrable ignorance. The Conquistadores had possessed that psychic makeup. Cortez and his handful of cutthroats conquered the Aztec empire by not realizing that the thing was impossible.
Johnny sat back and watched as the control panel registered an immediate change in course and velocity. The planet Loris appeared in his viewplate, blue and green and brown. Johnny Bezique was about to meet the folks next door.
It’s nice to have intelligent neighbors, speaking intergalactically, but it’s not nice if those neighbors are a great deal smarter than you are, and maybe quicker and stronger and more aggressive, too. Neighbors like that might want to do things for us or to us or about us. It wouldn’t necessarily have to go that way, but let’s face it, it’s a tough universe, and the primordial question is always, who’s on top?
Expeditions were sent out from Earth on the theory that, if there is anything out there, it would be better for us to find them, rather than to have them come dropping by on us some quiet Sunday morning. Earth’s standard nightmare scenario always began with contact with a formidable alien civilization. After that, there were variations. Sometimes the aliens were mechanically advanced, sometimes they had incredible mental powers, sometimes they were stupid but nearly invincible—walking plant people, swarming insect people and the like. Usually they were ruthlessly amoral, unlike the good guys on Earth.
But those were minor details. The main sequence of the nightmare was always the same: Earth contacts a powerful alien civilization, and they take us over.
Bezique was about to learn the answer to the only question that seriously concerned Earth: Can they lick us or can we lick them?
So far, he wouldn’t care to make book on the outcome.
On Loris you could breathe the air and drink the water. And the people were humanoid. This, despite the fact that the Nobel-prize winner Serge Von Blut had stated that the likeliness of this was contraindicated to the tune of 1093 to one.
The Lorians gave Bezique a hypnopaedic knowledge of their language and a guided tour around their major city of Athisse, and the more Johnny saw the gloomier he got, because these people really had an impressive setup.
The Lorians were a pleasant, comely, stable, inventive and progressive people. They had had no wars, rebellions, insurrections or the like for the last five hundred years, and none seemed imminent. Birth and death-rates were nicely stabilized: there were plenty of people, but enough room and opportunity for everyone. There were several races, but no racial problems. The Lorians had a highly developed technology, but also maintained a beautiful ecological balance. All individual work was creative and freely chosen, since all brute labor had been given over to self-regulating machines.
The capital city of Athisse was a cyclopean place of enormous and fantastically beautiful buildings, castles, palaces and the like, all public of course, and all visually exciting in their bold asymmetry. And this city had everything—bazaars, restaurants, parks, majestic statues, houses, graveyards, funparks, hot-dog stands, playgrounds, even a limpid river—you name it, they had it. And everything was free, including all food, clothing, housing and entertainment. You took what you wanted and gave what you wanted, and it all balanced out somehow. Because of this there was no need for money on Loris, and without money you don’t need banks, treasuries, vaults or safe-deposit boxes. In fact, you don’t even need locks: on Loris all doors were opened and closed by simple mental command.
Politically, the government mirrored the near-unanimous collective mind of the Lorian people. And that collective mind was calm, thoughtful, good. Between public desire and government action there was no discernible distortion, gap or lag.
In fact, the more Johnny looked into it, the more it seemed that Loris had just about no government at all, and what little it did have governed mostly by not governing. The closest thing to a ruler was Veerhe, Chief of the Office of Future Projections. And Veerhe never gave any orders—he just issued economic, social and scientific forecasts from time to time.
Bezique learned all of this in a few days. He was helped along by a specially assigned guide named Helmis, a Lorian of Johnny’s age whose wit, forbearance, sagacity, gentleness, irrepressible humor, keen insights and self-deprecatory manner caused Johnny to detest him immeasurably.
Thinking it all over in his beautifully appointed suite, Johnny realized that the Lorians came about as close to human ideals of perfection as you could expect to find. They seemed to be really fine people, and paragons of all the virtues. But that didn’t change Earth’s standard nightmare. Humans, in their perversity, simply do not want to be governed by aliens, not even wonderfully good aliens, not even if it is for Earth’s own good.
Bezique could see that the Lorians were a pretty unaggressive stay-at-home people with no desire for territory, conquest, spreading their civilization, and other ego-trips. But on the other hand, they seemed smart enough to realize that unless they did something about Earth, Earth was sure as hell going to do something about them, or kick up a lot of dust trying.
Of course, maybe it would be no contest; maybe a people as wise and trusting and peaceful as the Lorians would have no armament to speak of. But he learned that that was an incorrect assumption on the following day, when Helmis took him to look at the Ancient Dynasty Spacefleet.
This was the last heavy armament ever built on Loris. The fleet was a thousand years old and all seventy ships worked as if they had been built yesterday.
“Tormish II, last rules of the Ancient Dynasty, intended to conquer all civilized planets,” Helmis said. “Luckily, our people matured before he could launch his project.”
“But you’ve still got the ships around,” Johnny said.
Helmis shrugged. “They’re a monument to our past irrationality. And practically speaking, if someone did try to invade us . . . we could perhaps cope.”
“You just might be able to at that,” Johnny said. He figured that one of those ships could handle anything Earth might put into space for the next two hundred years or so. No doubt about it, the Lorians had a lot going for them.
So that was life on Loris, just like the standard nightmare scenario said it would be. Too good to be true. Perfect, dismayingly, disgustingly perfect.
But was it really so perfect? Bezique had the Earthman’s abiding belief in the doctrine that every virtue had its corresponding vice. This he usually expressed as: “There’s gotta be a loop-hole in this thing somewhere.” Not even God’s own heaven could run that well.
He looked at everything with a critical eye. Loris did have policemen. They were referred to as monitors, and were excruciatingly polite. But they were cops. That implied the existence of criminals.
Helmis set him straight on that. “We have occasional genetic deviants, of course, but no criminal class. The monitors represent a branch of education rather than of law enforcement. Any citizen may ask a monitor for the ruling on a pertinent question of personal conduct. Should he break a law inadvertently, the monitor will point this out.”
“And then arrest him?”
“Certainly not. The citizen will apologize, and the incident will be forgotten.”
“But what if a citizen breaks the law over and over again? What do the monitors do then?”
“Such a circumstance never arises.”
“But if it did?”
“The monitors are programmed to take care of such problems, if they should ever arise.”
“They don’t look so tough to me,” Johnny said. Something didn’t quite convince him. Maybe he couldn’t afford to be convinced. Still . . . Loris worked. It worked damned
well. The only thing in it that didn’t work right was John
Charles Bezique. This was because he was an Earth-man—which is to say, an unbalanced primitive. Also, it was because Johnny was getting increasingly morose, depressed and savage.
The days went by, and everything went along beautifully. The monitors moved around like gentle maiden aunts. Traffic flowed evenly without the tie-ups or frayed nerves. The million automatic systems brought in vital products and took away wastes. The people strolled along, delighting in each other’s company, and pursuing various art forms. Every last mother’s son of them seemed to be an artist of some sort, and all of them seemed to be good at it.
No one worked at a paying job, no one felt guilty about it. Work was for machines, not people.
And they were all so reasonable about everything! And so accommodating! And so sweet-natured! And so highly intelligent and attractive.
Yes, it was paradise all right. Even Johnny Bezique had to admit that. And that made his increasingly bad mood even more difficult to understand, unless you happen to be an Earth person yourself.
Put a man like Johnny in a place like Loris and you have to get trouble. Johnny behaved himself for nearly two weeks. Then one day he was out for a drive. He had the car on manual control, and he made a left turn without signaling.
A car behind him and on his left had just moved up to pass. Johnny’s abrupt turn almost beat the other vehicle’s automatic reflexes. Not quite, but it was a near thing. The cars slewed around and ended up nose to nose. Johnny and the other driver both got out.
The other driver said mildly, “Well, old man, it seems we have had a mix-up here.”
“Mix-up hell,” Johnny said, “you cut me off.”
