Sci Fiction Classics Volume 3
Page 1
Sci Fiction Classics
Volume 3
version 1.2
Editor's Note
Sci Fiction was an online magazine published by the Sci Fi channel between 2000 and 2005. In it was published short science fiction, both original material and classic stories. After the magazine was discontinued, much of the content remained available for a few years, until the website was removed a few years later.
Most of the stories are still available online with a little searching, mostly via mirrors of the website captured before it was shut down. The format is somewhat inconvenient for reading, however, especially if using mobile devices or e-readers. This project grew from a desire to have a high-quality, convenient e-book version of these stories.
The primary changes made to the source material is to strip out most of the website-specific formatting from the files, and to present each story as a single file as opposed to the multi-page format used in the original magazine. Formatting of the stories themselves has been generally standardized; when something was questionable I consulted hardcopies (when available) to determine what the author's intention was. The stories have also been proofread and obvious errors corrected.
The files themselves have also been standardized; which is probably of interest only to those who may want to work with the text in the future. Most of the formatting was done by hand in a generic text editor.
The stories are presented in chronological order by the date that they were published in Sci Fiction. This volume contains "classics" -- older stories that were republished online in the magazine.
The Wikipedia entry for Sci Fiction at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci_Fiction was invaluable in compiling this collection. Stories were sometimes removed from the archive, and the list from the above Wikipedia article is incomplete, so I have also relied on captures of the Sci Fiction archive page from the Internet Archive (https://archive.org) to compile a full list.
The source of each story in this volume is listed below.
"Temperature Days on Hawthorne Street" by Charles L. Grant, published 16-Apr-2003. Retrieved 27-Jan-2014 from http://lexal.net/scifi/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/c_grant/index.html.
"High Weir" by Samuel R. Delany, published 7-May-2003. Retrieved 27-Jan-2014 from http://lexal.net/scifi/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/delany2/index.html.
"When I Was Miss Dow" by Sonya Dorman, published 21-May-2003. Retrieved 27-Jan-2014 from http://lexal.net/scifi/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/dorman/index.html.
"Touchstone" by Terry Carr, published 4-Jun-2003. Retrieved 27-Jan-2014 from http://lexal.net/scifi/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/carr3/index.html.
"A Full Member of the Club" by Bob Shaw, published 18-Jun-2003. Retrieved 27-Jan-2014 from http://lexal.net/scifi/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/shaw2/index.html.
"David's Daddy" by Rosel George Brown, published 2-Jul-2003. Retrieved 27-Jan-2014 from http://lexal.net/scifi/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/rgbrown/index.html.
"What Now, Little Man?" by Mark Clifton, published 16-Jul-2003. Retrieved 27-Jan-2014 from http://lexal.net/scifi/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/clifton2/index.html.
"Thirty Days Had September" by Robert F. Young, published 6-Aug-2003. Retrieved 27-Jan-2014 from http://lexal.net/scifi/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/young/index.html.
"The View from Endless Scarp" by Marta Randall, published 20-Aug-2003. Retrieved 27-Jan-2014 from http://lexal.net/scifi/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/randall/index.html.
"It Walks in Beauty" by Chan Davis, published 3-Sep-2003. Retrieved 27-Jan-2014 from http://lexal.net/scifi/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/davis/index.html.
"Caught in the Organ Draft" by Robert Silverberg, published 17-Sep-2003. Retrieved 27-Jan-2014 from http://lexal.net/scifi/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/silverberg3/index.html.
"The Transcendent Tigers" by R. A. Lafferty, published 1-Oct-2003. Retrieved 27-Jan-2014 from http://web.archive.org/web/20071230052651/www.scifi.com/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/lafferty4/lafferty41.html.
"The Fellow who Married the Maxill Girl" by Ward Moore, published 15-Oct-2003. Retrieved 27-Jan-2014 from http://lexal.net/scifi/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/moore2/index.html.
"The Golem" by Avram Davidson, published 5-Nov-2003. Retrieved 27-Jan-2014 from http://lexal.net/scifi/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/davidson3/index.html.
"The Pink Caterpillar" by Anthony Boucher, published 19-Nov-2003. Retrieved 29-Jan-2014 from https://web.archive.org/web/20031204082824/http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/boucher2/.
"The Keepers of the House" by Lester del Rey, published 3-Dec-2003. Retrieved 27-Jan-2014 from http://lexal.net/scifi/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/delrey/index.html.
"Minnesota Gothic" by Thomas M. Disch, published 17-Dec-2003. Retrieved 28-Jan-2014 from http://lexal.net/scifi/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/disch3/index.html.
"The Prize of Peril" by Robert Sheckley, published 7-Jan-2004. Retrieved 28-Jan-2014 from http://lexal.net/scifi/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/sheckley5/index.html.
"The Stare" by John Wyndham, published 21-Jan-2004. Retrieved 28-Jan-2014 from http://lexal.net/scifi/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/wyndham3/index.html.
"Twilla" by Tom Reamy, published 4-Feb-2004. Retrieved 28-Jan-2014 from http://lexal.net/scifi/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/reamy3/index.html.
"Ballenger's People" by Kris Ottman Neville, published 18-Feb-2004. Retrieved 28-Jan-2014 from http://lexal.net/scifi/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/neville/index.html.
"King Solomon's Ring" by Roger Zelazny, published 3-Mar-2004. Retrieved 28-Jan-2014 from http://lexal.net/scifi/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/zelazny3/index.html.
"The Little Lamb" by Fredric Brown, published 17-Mar-2004. Retrieved 28-Jan-2014 from http://lexal.net/scifi/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/brown3/index.html.
"Sin's Doorway" by Manly Wade Wellman, published 7-Apr-2004. Retrieved 28-Jan-2014 from http://lexal.net/scifi/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/wellman/index.html.
"The Dandelion Girl" by Robert F. Young, published 21-Apr-2004. Retrieved 28-Jan-2014 from http://lexal.net/scifi/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/young2/index.html.
"Un Bel Di" by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, published 5-May-2004. Retrieved 28-Jan-2014 from http://lexal.net/scifi/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/yarbro3/index.html.
"Paul's Treehouse" by Gene Wolfe, published 19-May-2004. Retrieved 28-Jan-2014 from http://lexal.net/scifi/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/wolfe3/index.html.
"The Girl Had Guts" by Theodore Sturgeon, published 2-Jun-2004. Retrieved 28-Jan-2014 from http://lexal.net/scifi/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/sturgeon2/index.html.
"Slow Tuesday Night" by R. A. Lafferty, published 16-Jun-2004. Retrieved 29-Jan-2014 from https://web.archive.org/web/20040623054255/http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/lafferty5/.
"Aye, and Gomorrah" by Samuel R. Delany, published 7-Jul-2004. Retrieved 28-Jan-2014 from http://lexal.net/scifi/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/delany3/index.html.
Version history:
version 1.0 - 28-Jan-2014. Initial compilation.
version 1.1 - 29-Jan-2014. Added "The Pink Caterpillar" and "Slow Tuesday Night."
version 1.2 - 27-Feb-2014. Text of all stories proofread and errors corrected.
I may be contacted for feedback or questions at tristramr@yahoo.com.
Temperature Days on Hawthorne Street
Charles L. Grant
The half-moon porch was partially masked by untrimmed arms of fully green forsythia and juniper dying at the tips. What breeze there was in pressing heat
only caused to quaver the languid drone of hunting bees. A spider, working steadily in the shaded corner of a peeling post and sloping roof, ambushed a fly while a mantis lurking on the lattice flanking the steps watched, praying. There were ants, marching, but the man on the bottom step ignored their parade, waiting instead for the sounds of anger to drain from the house. He rubbed his face, tugged at his chin, blaming the summer-long heat for the pots he heard slamming onto the stove, the crack of cabinet doors, the thud and hollow roll of an empty can on the linoleum floor. He hunched at the sharp noises and glanced up the block, wondering why none of the houses to the top of the gentle hill had emptied at the aftermath of the fight.
Sounds carried on a street like this, he thought, like the night the week before when Casper Waters had ordered his wife to pack and leave just before the late evening news. By the time she had limped with a suitcase to her car and had driven around the corner, not a porch was deserted, not a lawn with flickering flashlights carried by men ostensibly searching for lost tools. So now where are they, he wondered at the blank facades of Hawthorne Street. They're no better than I am. Why the hell don't they come out?
The milkman, he answered himself. They've figured the bogeyman milkman has done it again, and some of them believe it, and they're as afraid as I am.
A robin landed silently beneath one of the front yard's two ancient willows and cocked a brown eye toward the lawn.
"Gerry?"
It pecked twice and fluttered, hopping rapidly across the slate walk to the other side, where it pecked twice again and flew off.
"Gerry?"
He leaned backward, feeling the ragged edge of the step pressing against his spine, and tilted his head until his neck stretched close to choking. Ruth, her night-soft hair twisted back to a ponytail and wisping around her temples, looked down at him, trying to manipulate muscles that once made her smile. One softly tanned hand lay flat against her stomach, and he suddenly wished the baby would hurry up and show itself; his first daughter had kept Ruth slim, and had died before birth. He closed his eyes briefly, then stretched up a palm, holding it open until she covered it and came down beside him.
"They must be tired of men beating their wives," he said quietly, waving his free hand toward the street. "Not even old lady Greene's left her precious garden."
Nearly four years ago he would have been a father for the second time.
"Gerry, I'm sorry."
"Don't be silly, lover," he said. "You've nothing to be sorry for. I'm the one who started it. I guess I'm not used to such heat in September."
Smiling then, she rested her cheek against his damp shoulder, and they watched for an hour the shadows of the willows glide away from the house. A lawn mower sputtered; a gaggle of small girls shrieked by in pursuit of a dream; there were birds and clustering gnats, and a Siamese cat that disdained Gerry's enticements for the stalking of a jay. Then, explosive, a trio of boys sped past on bicycles, shouting and gesturing to one another before separating at the block's center, one to swerve widely and thump over the curb, mischievous bravado in the skid that came to a halt inches from the juncture of step and walk.
"Hi," he said, with Ruth's thin lips and Gerry's heavy jaw.
"I'm too young for a heart attack," Gerry said, noticing absently the clotted mud on the boy's jeans. "Put the bike away and wash up. We're going to eat; your mother's tired."
"She asleep?" his son whispered loudly.
"No," Ruth said, keeping her eyes shut. "I'm recovering from shock. One of these days you're going to hit these steps and wind up in pieces all over the porch." It should have been a joke, but the boy knew it wasn't. "Your father," she added, aware of the strained silence. "Your father just painted it last summer."
"It'll never happen," he said, laughing as he walked the bicycle around to the side of the house. "How much time?"
"Not enough time for you to call that girl," Gerry said. "Just wash up and get on out here. And change those pants."
"Maybe the milkman will bring me a new pair. I've sure messed this one up."
Ruth immediately sat up, preparing to stand, when Gerry grabbed her firmly by the wrist. "Relax," he said. "Sandy didn't mean anything by it. He doesn't know for sure. None of the kids do."
A joke, Gerry had thought in a long-ago May when the grass was new and the smell of it cut filled the neighborhood like meadowed incense. In addition to the family's usual order for milk, eggs, and butter, he had added at the bottom of the note a mocking request for a clean shirt when Ruth had forgotten to do one up for him the evening before. They had laughed and gone to bed, and the following morning a package lay beside the milkbox. Inside was a shirt the proper size and perfect color for the suit he had been planning to wear.
"Now this is the kind of milkman I like," he said, but Ruth, though laughing, was uneasy. "Oh, come on, woman," he said. "This guy obviously appreciates a joke. I'll just leave the box if it'll make you feel better, and I'll bet it will be gone the next time he comes. Okay?"
He did, and when the plain-wrapped package remained, he only shrugged and shoved the shirt to the bottom of his dresser drawer. Ruth asked him to get up early enough to give it back personally; she was wary of gifts from a man they'd never seen.
"Now you're being silly," he said, more stubbornly than he had intended. "I'll be damned if I'm going to get up before dawn just to give a stupid milkman back his shirt. Besides, it's a pretty nice one, you said so yourself. I'll just wait for the bill and see how much he nails me for it."
There was a week before the payment notice arrived, itemizing nothing more than the dairy products they'd consumed. Gerry shrugged again and decided the shirt was a present. He assumed it was a clever bit of maneuvering for a whopping Christmas gift but did not mind since he had planned after the first delivery to do it anyway. The Sweet Milk Dairy Farm was a firm he'd never heard of and decided was an independent farmer. Since he was willing to patronize the little guy over the big guy, especially one whose service provided unexpected benefits and the best-tasting buttermilk he'd had since he was a kid, he ignored Ruth's misgivings.
Shortly afterward, he needled Ruth into asking for something, and when she proved as intransigent in her refusals as he was in his insistence, he petulantly added a request for a tie to match the shirt. And when it came, in a plain-wrapped box, he laughed all day, shaking his head and telling his friends at the office what a tailor he had. Bolder then, he decided to ask for a suit to go with the shirt and tie; and this time, when the hand-tailored-to-fit-no-one-else sharkskin garment hung on a nail over the mailbox, he stopped laughing and began wondering what kind of racket he was getting himself into. Ruth, he noticed with some relief, had not said a word but placed the suit at the back of the closet, still wrapped in its clear plastic bag.
"You got to admit," he said at dinner one evening when Fritz Foster and the Yorks had joined them, "the man's a go-getter. I just wish he'd send me a bill or something. Ruth here thinks he might be peddling stolen goods. I've been thinking about asking around the police myself, to tell the truth."
Syd York, puff-cheeked and portly, glanced at his wife, who nodded, and Gerry's eyebrows raised in question. "Yeah, yeah," Syd admitted. "We've been picking up a few things here and there ourselves. Like you, we figured it was some kind of joke but … what the hell, right? I don't ask questions, and I get what I want. There was a set of golf clubs, a pair of shoes and … what else, dear?"
Aggie, her husband's twin, pointed at her mouth with her fork apologetically. Syd snapped his fingers. "Of course, how could I forget. Silverware! Aggie was complaining about the stuff we use in the kitchen, and when I got my clubs, she snuck in a note for the knives and forks. Damn, but didn't we get real silver."
Aggie grinned, and Ruth only stared at her coffee.
Fritz placed his utensils on his empty plate and leaned back, his fingers tucking inside of his belt. "I asked for money."
The women looked at him. Syd laughed, and Gerry only shook his head
, not surprised that the block's resident investment broker would be the one to get practical with their dawn genie.
"How much?" he asked. "That is, if you don't mind me getting personal."
"Let's just say substantial, and I received every dime."
"Well, didn't you ask him where he got it?"
Fritz grinned at Ruth and shook his head. "I don't ask, my dear, I just take. The money was in large bills, and when I took it to the bank, it was good. As long as I don't see his face in the post office, what do I care how he operates, as long as he keeps up the good work."
"Besides," Syd added, "how could you know him? None of us have ever seen him."
It had been like moving into another country, Gerry recalled thinking when he and Ruth deserted the city and the routine of the neighborhood settled over them like a worn and welcome sweater. The mailman knocked at every door and knew all the streets by name; a policeman walked the beat three times daily and was covered by a patrol car whose brace of blue was as familiar as the century-old maple on the corner. Through traffic was negligible, and the street was covered with markings for baseball and hopscotch and spur-of-the-moment games comprehensible only to the young. And the milkman, who might have used a fly-bitten horse for all the inhabitants knew, passed each dawn, and only the early-risers and insomniacs heard the clatter of empty bottles as he left each back door more silent than shadow.
No one tried to wake early enough to see him; an unspoken warning about breaking their charm.
As June released summer, children, and, sporadically, husbands, Gerry thought he noticed increasing reluctance to try their luck again. Indeed, they all seemed rather guilty about suspecting their good fortune and began ordering more dairy products than most of them could use. Then Syd, after drinking himself into melancholy on Gerry's porch, asked for a raise, and two days later he was promoted.
"Now that was definitely a coincidence," Gerry said. "I can understand a guy trying to pick up an extra buck peddling goods from God knows where, but there's no way a stupid milkman can get a guy a raise like that."