The Big Book of Science Fiction

by The Big Book of Science Fiction (retail) (epub)

  Waiting for Towser, Fowler flexed the muscles of his body, amazed at the smooth, sleek strength he found. Not a bad body, he decided, and grimaced at remembering how he had pitied the Lopers when he glimpsed them through the television screen.

  For it had been hard to imagine a living organism based upon ammonia and hydrogen rather than upon water and oxygen, hard to believe that such a form of life could know the same quick thrill of life that humankind could know. Hard to conceive of life out in the soupy maelstrom that was Jupiter, not knowing, of course, that through Jovian eyes it was no soupy maelstrom at all.

  The wind brushed against him with what seemed gentle fingers and he remembered with a start that by Earth standards the wind was a roaring gale, a two-hundred-mile-an-hour howler laden with deadly gases.

  Pleasant scents seeped into his body. And yet scarcely scents, for it was not the sense of smell as he remembered it. It was as if his whole being was soaking up the sensation of lavender—and yet not lavender. It was something, he knew, for which he had no word, undoubtedly the first of many enigmas in terminology. For the words he knew, the thought symbols that served him as an Earthman, would not serve him as a Jovian.

  The lock in the side of the dome opened and Towser came tumbling out—at least he thought it must be Towser.

  He started to call to the dog, his mind shaping the words he meant to say. But he couldn’t say them. There was no way to say them. He had nothing to say them with.

  For a moment his mind swirled in muddy terror, a blind fear that eddied in little puffs of panic through his brain.

  How did Jovians talk? How—

  Suddenly he was aware of Towser, intensely aware of the bumbling, eager friendliness of the shaggy animal that had followed him from Earth to many planets. As if the thing that was Towser had reached out and for a moment sat within his brain.

  And out of the bubbling welcome that he sensed, came words.

  “Hiya, pal.”

  Not words, really, better than words. Thought symbols in his brain, communicated thought symbols that had shades of meaning words could never have.

  “Hiya, Towser,” he said.

  “I feel good,” said Towser. “Like I was a pup. Lately I’ve been feeling pretty punk. Legs stiffening up on me and teeth wearing down to almost nothing. Hard to mumble a bone with teeth like that. Besides, the fleas give me hell. Used to be I never paid much attention to them. A couple of fleas more or less never meant much in my early days.”

  “But…but—” Fowler’s thoughts tumbled awkwardly. “You’re talking to me!”

  “Sure thing,” said Towser. “I always talked to you, but you couldn’t hear me. I tried to say things to you, but I couldn’t make the grade.”

  “I understood you sometimes,” Fowler said.

  “Not very well,” said Towser. “You knew when I wanted food and when I wanted a drink and when I wanted out, but that’s about all you ever managed.”

  “I’m sorry,” Fowler said.

  “Forget it,” Towser told him. “I’ll race you to the cliff.”

  For the first time, Fowler saw the cliff, apparently many miles away, but with a strange crystalline beauty that sparkled in the shadow of the many-colored clouds.

  Fowler hesitated. “It’s a long way—”

  “Ah, come on,” said Towser, and even as he said it he started for the cliff.

  —

  Fowler followed, testing his legs, testing the strength in that new body of his, a bit doubtful at first, amazed a moment later, then running with a sheer joyousness that was one with the red and purple sward, with the drifting smoke of the rain across the land.

  As he ran the consciousness of music came to him, a music that beat into his body, that surged throughout his being, that lifted him on wings of silver speed. Music like bells might make from some steeple on a sunny, springtime hill.

  As the cliff drew nearer the music deepened and filled the universe with a spray of magic sound. And he knew the music came from the tumbling waterfall that feathered down the face of the shining cliff.

  Only, he knew, it was no waterfall, but an ammonia-fall, and the cliff was white because it was oxygen, solidified.

  He skidded to a stop beside Towser where the waterfall broke into a glittering rainbow of many hundred colors.

  Literally many hundred, for here, he saw, was no shading of one primary to another as human beings saw, but a clear-cut selectivity that broke the prism down to its last ultimate classification.

  “The music,” said Towser.

  “Yes, what about it?”

  “The music,” said Towser, “is vibrations. Vibrations of water falling.”

  “But, Towser, you don’t know about vibrations.”

  “Yes, I do,” contended Towser. “It just popped into my head.”

  Fowler gulped mentally. “Just popped!”

  And suddenly, within his own head, he held a formula—a formula for a process that would make metal to withstand the pressure of Jupiter.

  He stared, astounded, at the waterfall and swiftly his mind took the many colors and placed them in their exact sequence in the spectrum. Just like that. Just out of blue sky. Out of nothing, for he knew nothing either of metals or of colors.

  “Towser,” he cried. “Towser, something’s happening to us!”

  “Yeah, I know,” said Towser.

  “It’s our brains,” said Fowler. “We’re using them, all of them, down to the last hidden corner. Using them to figure out things we should have known all the time. Maybe the brains of Earth things naturally are slow and foggy. Maybe we are the morons of the universe. Maybe we are fixed so we have to do things the hard way.”

  And, in the new sharp clarity of thought that seemed to grip him, he knew that it would not only be the matter of colors in a waterfall or metals that would resist the pressure of Jupiter. He sensed other things, things not yet quite clear. A vague whispering that hinted of greater things, of mysteries beyond the pale of human thought, beyond even the pale of human imagination. Mysteries, fact, logic built on reasoning. Things that any brain should know if it used all its reasoning power.

  “We’re still mostly Earth,” he said. “We’re just beginning to learn a few of the things we are to know—a few of the things that were kept from us as human beings, perhaps because we were human beings. Because our human bodies were poor bodies. Poorly equipped for thinking, poorly equipped in certain senses that one has to have to know. Perhaps even lacking in certain senses that are necessary to true knowledge.”

  He stared back at the dome, a tiny black thing dwarfed by the distance.

  Back there were men who couldn’t see the beauty that was Jupiter. Men who thought that swirling clouds and lashing rain obscured the planet’s face. Unseeing human eyes. Poor eyes. Eyes that could not see the beauty in the clouds, that could not see through the storm. Bodies that could not feel the thrill of trilling music stemming from the rush of broken water.

  Men who walked alone, in terrible loneliness, talking with their tongue like Boy Scouts wigwagging out their messages, unable to reach out and touch one another’s mind as he could reach out and touch Towser’s mind. Shut off forever from that personal, intimate contact with other living things.

  He, Fowler, had expected terror inspired by alien things out here on the surface, had expected to cower before the threat of unknown things, had steeled himself against disgust of a situation that was not of Earth.

  But instead he had found something greater than man had ever known. A swifter, surer body. A sense of exhilaration, a deeper sense of life. A sharper mind. A world of beauty that even the dreamers of the Earth had not yet imagined.

  “Let’s get going,” Towser urged.

  “Where do you want to go?”

  “Anywhere,” said Towser. “Just start going and see where we end up. I have a feeling…well, a feeling—“

  “Yes, I know,” said Fowler.

  For he had the feeling, too. The feeling of high des
tiny. A certain sense of greatness. A knowledge that somewhere off beyond the horizons lay adventure and things greater than adventure.

  Those other five had felt it, too. Had felt the urge to go and see, the compelling sense that here lay a life of fullness and of knowledge.

  That, he knew, was why they had not returned.

  “I won’t go back,” said Towser.

  “We can’t let them down,” said Fowler.

  Fowler took a step or two, back towards the dome, then stopped.

  Back to the dome. Back to that aching, poison-laden body he had left. It hadn’t seemed aching before, but now he knew it was.

  Back to the fuzzy brain. Back to muddled thinking. Back to the flapping mouths that formed signals others understood.

  Back to eyes that now would be worse than no sight at all. Back to squalor, back to crawling, back to ignorance.

  “Perhaps someday,” he said, muttering to himself.

  “We got a lot to do and a lot to see,” said Towser. “We got a lot to learn. We’ll find things—”

  Yes, they could find things. Civilizations, perhaps. Civilizations that would make the civilization of man seem puny by comparison. Beauty and, more important, an understanding of that beauty. And a comradeship no one had ever known before—that no man, no dog, had ever known before.

  And life. The quickness of life after what seemed a drugged existence.

  “I can’t go back,” said Towser.

  “Nor I,” said Fowler.

  “They would turn me back into a dog,” said Towser.

  “And me,” said Fowler, “back into a man.”

  September 2005: The Martian

  RAY BRADBURY

  Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) was an iconic, award-winning US writer of speculative fiction who became internationally beloved due mainly to his lyrical, deeply humane short stories as well as The Martian Chronicles (1950), The Illustrated Man (1951), the classic novel about censorship Fahrenheit 451 (1953), and Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962), which had a direct influence on Neil Gaiman and Stephen King. Many of his fictions were turned into movies or adapted for television. Bradbury himself wrote for television and film, receiving an Emmy Award and his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Bradbury also received a National Medal of Arts from President George W. Bush and the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement, and was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 1999. An asteroid has also been named in his honor.

  Bradbury discovered science fiction in 1937 and began publishing his fanzine Futuria Fantasia in 1939. He would, all his life, be fond of the genre community but had startlingly eclectic and wide-ranging approaches to writing fiction that took him far afield and endeared him to a broad general audience. After a number of early stories that showed promise, the famous Bradbury style began to take shape: poetic, evocative, consciously symbolic, with strong nostalgic elements and a leaning toward the macabre—his work was always as much fantasy and horror as science fiction. This darkness served Bradbury well, as it balanced the more sentimental aspects of his writing and helped him create more layered and interesting work.

  Bradbury’s most iconic work is probably the mosaic novel The Martian Chronicles, which was made into a television miniseries and, in the Spanish edition, features an introduction by Jorge Luis Borges. Bradbury once said that John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath was the inspiration behind the structure of the book. Evocative and closely interwoven, the stories are linked by recurring images and themes. The stories tell of the repeated attempts by humans to colonize Mars, of the way they bring their old prejudices with them, including expectations that settlement on Mars could safely replicate their experience of California suburban life, and of their repeated, ambiguous meetings with the shape-changing Martians.

  The mood of The Martian Chronicles is of loneliness and nostalgia; a pensive regret suffuses the book. This approach would prove too un-science-fictional for some critics, and the book received a mixed reception in the genre community. Although Damon Knight listed The Martian Chronicles as one of the top science fiction books of 1950, L. Sprague de Camp thought Bradbury’s style was too literary, claiming Bradbury must have been influenced by Ernest Hemingway and William Saroyan. Bradbury himself said he was heavily influenced by Edgar Rice Burroughs. What is clear is the maturity of the work, dealing in subtle and deft fashion with complex themes and issues.

  “September 2005: The Martian” was first published as a stand-alone short story in Super Science Stories in November 1949.

  SEPTEMBER 2005: THE MARTIAN

  Ray Bradbury

  The blue mountains lifted into the rain and the rain fell down into the long canals and old LaFarge and his wife came out of their house to watch.

  “First rain this season,” LaFarge pointed out.

  “It’s good,” said his wife.

  “Very welcome.”

  They shut the door. Inside, they warmed their hands at a fire. They shivered. In the distance, through the window, they saw rain gleaming on the sides of the rocket which had brought them from Earth.

  “There’s only one thing,” said LaFarge, looking at his hands.

  “What’s that?” asked his wife.

  “I wish we could have brought Tom with us.”

  “Oh, now, Lafe!”

  “I won’t start again; I’m sorry.”

  “We came here to enjoy our old age in peace, not to think of Tom. He’s been dead so long now, we should try to forget him and everything on Earth.”

  “You’re right,” he said, and turned his hands again to the heat. He gazed into the fire. “I won’t speak of it anymore. It’s just I miss driving out to Green Lawn Park every Sunday to put flowers on his marker. It used to be our only excursion.”

  The blue rain fell gently upon the house.

  At nine o’clock they went to bed and lay quietly, hand in hand, he fifty-five, she sixty, in the raining darkness.

  “Anna?” he called softly.

  “Yes?” she replied.

  “Did you hear something?”

  They both listened to the rain and the wind.

  “Nothing,” she said.

  “Someone whistling,” he said.

  “No, I didn’t hear it.”

  “I’m going to get up to see anyhow.”

  He put on his robe and walked through the house to the front door. Hesitating, he pulled the door wide, and rain fell cold upon his face. The wind blew.

  In the dooryard stood a small figure.

  Lightning cracked the sky, and a wash of white color illumined the face looking in at old LaFarge there in the doorway.

  “Who’s there?” called LaFarge, trembling.

  No answer.

  “Who is it? What do you want!”

  Still not a word.

  He felt very weak and tired and numb. “Who are you?” he cried.

  His wife entered behind him and took his arm. “Why are you shouting?”

  “A small boy’s standing in the yard and won’t answer me,” said the old man, trembling. “He looks like Tom!”

  “Come to bed, you’re dreaming.”

  “But he’s there; see for yourself.”

  He pulled the door wider to let her see. The cold wind blew and the thin rain fell upon the soil and the figure stood looking at them with distant eyes. The old woman held to the doorway.

  “Go away!” she said, waving one hand. “Go away!”

  “Doesn’t it look like Tom?” asked the old man.

  The figure did not move.

  “I’m afraid,” said the old woman. “Lock the door and come to bed. I won’t have anything to do with it.”

  She vanished, moaning to herself, into the bedroom.

  The old man stood with the wind raining coldness on his hands.

  “Tom,” he called softly. “Tom, if that’s you, if by some chance it is you, Tom, I’ll leave the door unlatched. And if you’re cold and want to come in to warm yourself, just come in later and l
ie by the hearth; there’s some fur rugs there.”

  He shut but did not lock the door.

  His wife felt him return to bed, and shuddered. “It’s a terrible night. I feel so old,” she said, sobbing.

  “Hush, hush,” he gentled her, and held her in his arms. “Go to sleep.”

  After a long while she slept.

  And then, very quietly, as he listened, he heard the front door open, the rain and wind come in, the door shut. He heard soft footsteps on the hearth and a gentle breathing. “Tom,” he said to himself.

  Lightning struck in the sky and broke the blackness apart.

  In the morning the sun was very hot.

  Mr. LaFarge opened the door into the living room and glanced all about, quickly.

  The hearth rugs were empty.

  LaFarge sighed. “I’m getting old,” he said.

  He went out to walk to the canal to fetch a bucket of clear water to wash in. At the front door he almost knocked young Tom down carrying in a bucket already filled to the brim. “Good morning, Father!”

  “Morning, Tom.” The old man fell aside. The young boy, barefooted, hurried across the room, set the bucket down, and turned, smiling. “It’s a fine day!”

  “Yes, it is,” said the old man incredulously. The boy acted as if nothing was unusual. He began to wash his face with the water.

  The old man moved forward. “Tom, how did you get here? You’re alive?”

  “Shouldn’t I be?” The boy glanced up.

  “But, Tom, Green Lawn Park, every Sunday, the flowers and…” LaFarge had to sit down. The boy came and stood before him and took his hand. The old man felt of the fingers, warm and firm. “You’re really here, it’s not a dream?”

  “You do want me to be here, don’t you?” The boy seemed worried.

  “Yes, yes, Tom!”

  “Then why ask questions? Accept me!”

  “But your mother; the shock…”

  “Don’t worry about her. During the night I sang to both of you, and you’ll accept me more because of it, especially her. I know what the shock is. Wait till she comes, you’ll see.” He laughed, shaking his head of coppery, curled hair. His eyes were very blue and clear.