"What Strange Stars and Skies'' (1963) by Avram Davidson

....on the night of Guy Fawkes Day in that year of our sovereign lord King George V the great and ancient city of London was the scene of a visitation more horrible than any in its previous history.

"What Strange Stars and Skies'' (1963) by Avram Davidson is a flawless weird sci-fi adventure story. It perfectly mimics the style of popular fiction circa 1890-1914. Indeed, reading it blind I would assume it was from the period itself: this is no cheesy pastiche.

Dame Phillipa Garreck, a wealthy woman who works in the slums of London's East End among the "people of the abyss," has disappeared. The narrator assembles the testimonies of different witnesses, each of whom adds a piece to the overall mosaic.

It would be hard to overstate the richness and skill Davidson employs in this narrative.

There are multitudes, literally multitudes, in this vast labyrinth of London for whom the normal institutions of a human society seem barely to exist. There are physicians in the East End, hospitals, and dispensaries; yet numbers past counting will suffer injury and disease and creep off to die like brutes in their dim corners, or, if they are fortunate, by brute strength survive. There are public baths in every borough, and facilities for washing clothes, yet many never touch water to their skins, and wear their rags unchanged till they rot. Babes are born without benefit of any human witness to the event save their own wretched mothers, though a word to the great hospital in Whitechapel Road will bring midwife and physician without charge. And while eating-places abound, from quite decent restaurants down to the dirty holes-in-the-walls offering tuppenny cups of tea and sixpenny papers of breaded smelts and greasy chips, and while private and public charity arrangements guarantee that no one need quite die of hunger who will ask to be fed, no day goes by without its toll from famine of those who—having their hoards of copper and silver—are disabled by their madness from spending either tuppence or shilling; or who find it much, much easier to die like dogs in their secluded kennels than come forward and declare their needs.

     As the pigeons in Trafalgar Square have learned when and where the old man with the bag of breadcrumbs will appear, as the ownerless cats near Billingsgate can tell what time and in what place to scavenge for the scraps of fish the dustman misses, as the rats in the sewers beneath Smithfield Market know without error the manner in which "they seek their meat from G d"; just so, from this stinking alley and from that crumbling tenement, here from underneath a dripping archway and there from a disused warehouse, slinking and creeping and peering fearfully and furtively and sidling with their ragged backs pressed against ragged walls, there appeared by one and by one the cast-offs—one must call them "humans," for what other name is theirs?—the self-exiled, the utterly incapable, to take in their quick reptilian grasp the things Dame Phillipa had for them. She knew, knew by instinct and knew by practice, which ones would benefit by a shilling and which by half-a-crown; she knew those to whom money was of no more use than cowry-shells but who would relish the meat of a hard-cooked egg and the savor of the tiny scrap of seasoning which went with it; knew those who would be hopelessly baffled by the labor of cracking the shell but who could manage to rip the paper off a packet of bread and butter (huddled and crouched in the rank, familiar darkness of their burrows, tearing the soft food with their toothless gums); knew those who would fight, squealing or wordlessly, fight like cornered stoats rather than surrender a single one of the unspeakably filthy rags into which their unspeakably filthy bodies were sewn; and those who would strip by some forgotten water-tap and wash themselves and put on clean things—but only if provided them, having no longer in many cases the ability to procure either soap or singlets for themselves. She also knew who could be coaxed another foot or two up the path to selfrespect by the tempting bait of mirror and comb, the subtle appeal such things made to the ravaged remnants of pride. And she knew when even a handful of toffee or a small picture of the charismatic King and Queen could brighten a dim corner or an eroded mind.

This is historical imagination operating at a very high aesthetic level indeed.

Jay

4 May 2021

"Is That What People Do?" By Robert Sheckley (1978)

I first heard about Robert Sheckley's strange story "Is That What People Do?" (1978) on an episode of novelist Scott Bradfield's YouTube show. I've found Scott to be an excellent guide to good writing, so I looked up the story in Store of the Worlds: The Stories of Robert Sheckley. It does not disappoint.

How many stories are there about uncanny binoculars? "A View From the Hill" by M. R. James is the only one I know of, a macabre masterpiece.

Sheckley's story gives us Eddie Quintero, who buys a pair of square binoculars in an Army Surplus store. Eddie's ambition is to zero-in on young women in the apartment building across the street. But the binoculars seem to have something loose inside, and only work intermittently. But when they do!

He paused to admire this unusual view, and then turned the knob again very gently. The wall loomed huge in front of him, and then suddenly he had gone completely through it and was standing inside an apartment.

The binoculars reveal normally hidden and increasingly unsettling behavior of strangers. 

     He saw what he had to do. He took off his shoes, straddled the binoculars again and performed a headstand. He had to do this several times before his head was positioned correctly in front of the eyepieces. He propped his feet against the wall and managed to get into a stable position.

     He was looking into a large office somewhere in the interior of the Chauvin Arms. It was a modern, expensively furnished office, windowless, indirectly lighted.

     There was only one man in the room—a large, well-dressed man in his fifties, seated behind a blond wood desk. He sat quite still, evidently lost in thought.

     Quintero could make out every detail of the office, even the little mahogany plaque on the desk that read, "Office of the Director. The Buck Stops Here."

     The Director got up and walked to a wall safe concealed behind a painting. He unlocked it, reached in, and took out a metal container somewhat larger than a shoebox. He carried this to his desk, took a key out of his pocket, and unlocked it.

     He opened the box and removed an object wrapped in a silky red cloth. He removed the cloth and set the object on his desk. Quintero saw that it was a statue of a monkey, carved in what looked like a dark volcanic rock.

     It was a strange-looking monkey, however, because it had four arms and six legs.

     Then the Director unlocked a drawer in his desk, took out a long stick, placed it in the monkey's lap, and lit it with a cigarette lighter.

     Oily black coils of smoke arose, and the Director began to dance around the monkey. His mouth was moving, and Quintero guessed that he was singing or chanting.

     He kept this up for about five minutes, and then the smoke began to coalesce and take on form. Soon it had shaped itself into a replica of the monkey, but magnified to the size of a man, an evil-looking thing made of smoke and enchantment.

     The smoke-demon (as Quintero named it) held a package in one of his four hands. He handed this to the Director, who took it, bowed deeply, and hurried over to his desk. He ripped open the package, and a pile of papers spilled over his desk. Quintero could see bundles of currency, and piles of engraved papers that looked like stock certificates.

     The Director tore himself away from the papers, bowed low once again to the smoke-demon, and spoke to it. The mouth of the smoky figure moved, and the Director answered him. They seemed to be having an argument.

     Then the Director shrugged, bowed again, went to his intercom, and pressed a button.

     An attractive young woman came into the room with a steno pad and pencil. She saw the smoke-demon, and her mouth widened into a scream. She ran to the door but was unable to open it.

     She turned and saw the smoke-demon flowing to her, engulfing her.

     During all this the Director was counting his piles of currency, oblivious to what was going on. But he had to look up when a brilliant light poured from the head of the smoke-demon, and the four hairy arms pulled the feebly struggling woman close to his body . . . At that moment Quintero's neck muscles could support him no longer. He fell and jostled the binoculars as he came down.

     He could hear the loose part rattle around; and then it gave a hard click, as though it had settled into its final position.

     Quintero picked himself up and massaged his neck with both hands. Had he been subject to a hallucination? Or had he seen something secret and magical that perhaps a few people knew about and used to maintain their financial positions—one more of the concealed and incredible things that people do?

     He didn't know the answer, but he knew that he had to witness at least one more of those visions. He stood on his head again and looked through the binoculars.

Scott Bradield notes that "Is That What People Do?" is only eight pages long. It is a marvel of brevity and precision. 

Jay

2 May 2021

Wasp (1957) by Eric Frank Russell

A droll, fast, behind-enemy-lines story of sabotage and derring-do. It has some of the same flavor as Wheatley's early Gregory Sallust novels, but without the snobbery.

❖

"....Finally, let's consider this auto smash. We know the cause; the survivor was able to tell us before he died. He said the driver lost control at speed while swiping at a wasp which had flown in through a window and started buzzing around his face."

"It nearly happened to me once."

Ignoring that, Wolf went on, "The weight of a wasp is under half an ounce. Compared with a human being its size is minute, its strength negligible. Its sole armament is a tiny syringe holding a drop of irritant, formic acid, and in this case it didn't even use it. Nevertheless it killed four big men and converted a large, powerful car into a heap of scrap."

"I see the point," agreed Mowry, "but where do I come in?"

"Right here," said Wolf. "We want you to become a wasp."

https://archive.org/details/RusselEricFrankWasp