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(music: reverbed bells)
"Damnation Morning" (1959)
Good evening, you are listening to Chrononauts, a science fiction literature history podcast. I'm Nate, and I'm joined by my co-host, J.M. and Gretchen, and this month we are taking a look at Fritz Leiber's "The Change War" series. For the background on Fritz Leiber, the series in general, and the novella "The Big Time", check out segment one of this episode. And for the first three stories that are present in the "Change War" anthology, namely "No Great Magic", "The Oldest Soldier", and "Knight to Move", check out segment two of this episode.
But for this segment, we're going to be taking a look at the next three stories in "The Change War" anthology. The next one in line is "Damnation Morning", which was initially published in Fantastic in August of 1959. And this one is an interesting story, because this one really does play up a lot of Leiber's horror elements. Maybe more so than all the other ones we've taken a look at this month. Certainly front and center here. And it reminded me a lot of something that we might see in a Night Gallery episode. We were talking about that briefly earlier in the episode, and two of his stories were actually adapted into Night Gallery episodes. But this one in particular feels like it does have that Rod Serling twist at the end, which I always really like. I mean, the Twilight Zone is great. Night Gallery is great. And it is a nice tie-in with what we were talking about last time with the TV tie-in work, and that a lot of these science fiction authors also found homes in television, like the Twilight Zone, or Night Gallery, or various other science fiction programs out there.
JM:
And in fact, the British version of "Conjure Wife", "Burn Witch Burn", was actually adapted by Charles Beaumont and Richard Matheson. So, again, it's just really fascinating how Leiber really got out there. But yeah, a lot of people now don't know who he is, you know?
Nate:
Yeah, I'm not going to mention that's the case with a lot of these authors. They made a bigger splash in their heyday than maybe some of the Nelson Bonds of the world. But, you know, I mean, 50 years later, they're not in the popular conscious the way that a Arthur C. Clarke or a Heinlein or an Asimov is. And that's just the nature of genre fiction. The bigger names float at the top in their own class, and then you have, like, the next layer down, which I think Leiber would definitely fall into. I mean, he's definitely not in obscurity. He's been republished multiple times. He's got several best of anthologies. But, you know, at the same time, he does not have the same household recognition that an Asimov does. But, you know, that's totally fine. You know, we cover all shapes and forms of these authors on the podcast. And Leiber is good at what he does. And I think he definitely has a cult following out there and people who do celebrate and recognize his work.
But this one, "Damnation Warning." I don't know what you guys think?
Gretchen:
I liked the twist as well. And I agree with what you said about it. It's feeling very like Twilight Zone, like Night Gallery. It does have that feeling. And I really like the way that Leiber does explore, like, sensations and the weird kind of state that the character is in as he's being inducted into the change war. I think that's really cool. Also, I think this is a very interesting story when it's in the context of Leiber's own experiences.
JM:
Yeah.
Gretchen:
With alcoholism.
Nate:
Sure. Yeah,
JM:
I think it's really interesting because in "The Big Time", one of the things we didn't really go into a lot was the dialogues between the characters and specifically Bruce and his, a lot of the points that he brought up. And one of the things he said was, and I think Greta's interpretation and mine, was kind of that this is Bruce's romantic side speaking and that who knows if it's really true or not. But Bruce's romantic side says, great men and women don't accept this bargain with the devil and they don't accept resurrection. But most people probably would if they were given the chance, right? And Bruce's excuse is, well, I did it because I wanted to do right things and do things for peace and stuff, right? That was kind of how he explained it away in the end.
Here we have a guy who's really down and out. It's kind of like, got nothing to lose. And being recruited for this cause and it's, yeah, it does feel like a deal with the devil in a way. And again, right? Yeah, you can feel the unfortunate dragging power of the alcoholism that Leiber seems to understand quite well and has incorporated into a lot of his stories in ways that are not always the same. Sometimes it's fun, but sometimes it's horrible and sometimes it's very soul crushing. And this story is kind of soul crushing, I think. And yeah, so that's the horror element really work.
Nate:
Yeah, definitely. Yeah. And I mean, the way it starts out, and I just might as well get into the plot now and let you guys have anything else.
JM:
Yeah.
Nate:
So I mean, the way it starts out, our narrator is just in this like deeply hungover state and everything is in this confusing haze. So I mean, it's not like he's a principled man like Bruce who knows he can stand up to something or whatever. And he's making a point for morality or whatever. Our narrator just has no idea what's going on whatsoever. Like he's not aware of what's around him, his surroundings, like who is this weird woman.
JM:
And this is something that Leiber describes very, very much in "Our Lady of Darkness" as well.
Nate:
Yeah.
JM:
A character who's just coming out of that. Something that he knows.
Nate:
Yeah. And I mean, he's very good at describing that state. I mean, in this particular case, it goes beyond just to hangover the narrator is basically in the throes of delirium tremens. And he's apparently just killed somebody, but again, you can't remember who or why. And he has no idea where he is. I mean, it seems to be in a seedy hotel, but who knows how he got there. And all of a sudden there's this just like mysterious woman with this weird sigil on her forehead who seems strangely out of time. And she's carrying some strange objects and asked him the very pointed question of, do you want to live? So not knowing how to respond to this or really where he is or what's going on.
JM:
Voulez-vous vivre?
Nate:
Yeah. Yeah. So our narrator ends up answering in the affirmative, but with this uncertainty and reluctance is, you know, what else would you do? And at that he's quickly rushed out of the hotel by this weird woman who tells him not to look back because if he does, he'll die. And he takes her very seriously on this point. And it's also noted that this also applies to mirrors, not just the stuff directly behind him. So dashing through various buildings and into a secret caged elevator. They start to descend to this mysterious organization that he's now a part of whether he likes it or not, which is, of course, the spiders. And she tells him to be wary of those with S markings representing, of course, the snakes.
The narrator keeps wanting to return the conversation, and his physical presence perhaps, to the hotel room that he was found in and really wants to know what happened to him. The woman tells him that she's a resurrectionist who digs the bodies out of the space time continuum and gives them the freedom of the fourth dimension. And none of this makes any sense at all to him. What does she mean by cutting his lifeline? What are these zombies she's talking about? And most importantly, what is he still doing back there in that room? Hadn't he left with this weird woman? Like, what's going on?
She says she'll create a door out of here and administer the test to him, the test being the determination of whether he can live in the fourth dimension or only die in it. Something is pulling him back to that hotel room, the blood scent of the person he's killed, which attracts any spider or snake. But enough of that for now. It's onto the test, which is a surreal flash of the universe throughout all space and time. Certainly not ideal for one in a hangover. And of course, reoccurring are glimpses of the hotel room where he came from and the snakes.
It dawns on him that he can go wherever and see wherever just by willing it. And he realized that this is in fact the test. He's drawn back to the hotel room scene and at the chaotic scene, the woman tells him to do what he needs to do and there will be a door ready for him. He sees a man leaping to his death from the hotel roof through his own eyes. So now he's like in the body of this man jumping and he realizes that it's himself. The man he killed is in fact him.
JM:
What a horrible feeling.
Nate:
I know, yeah. So he's then taken out of the scene by the woman after the impact and he's brought back to the scene now as like a third person observer. And he now understands what the zombies are, these masses of people all around him just kind of trapped in this three dimensional world unable to break out and live the true existence in life at this entire, the big time, I guess you would say.
JM:
Big time.
Nate:
Right. It's so much larger than life.
JM:
When I was reading the book, I was sitting somewhere and the Peter Gabriel song came on. "Big time."
Nate:
Yeah, right.
JM:
So appropriate.
Nate:
Yeah. It really is. Yeah. Yeah. So he sees himself jump from the hotel window and splatter and all that and there's this crowd of people standing over the body. But he sees another man with his face. But this man has a permanent S on his head watching him and he realizes that he's been sucked into this both ways and he'll be fighting with himself perpetually on both sides forever.
JM:
Yeah, another horrible implication of the change war.
Nate:
Yeah. Yeah.
Gretchen:
Yeah.
Nate:
So I mean, that's our broad sterling Twilight Zone twist. It's really great punch at the end. And yeah, I like the way this one plays out a lot. Again, deals with the same themes that we've been talking about for the earlier parts of the episode. But again, plays up on the horror imagery a lot more. It definitely is a lot grimmer and darker than pretty much everything else that we get in this set.
JM:
It reminds me of this movie called "Werewolves on Wheels".
Nate:
I don't think I've seen that one.
JM:
It's this movie from the 70s about this biker gang and they get involved in something and like they kill some monk type people or something like that. And then they go into this. Yeah, there's this weird satanic ritual and then they go find this monastery of monk guys who are all wearing hoods. And in the end of the movie, they pull back their hoods and it's the same people, some ghostly versions of themselves that they've been fighting the whole time. It's like this weird existential end to this crazy exploitation biker movie from the 70s. And it's like, yeah, it's kind of like that.
Nate:
What if we were the real monsters the whole time?
Gretchen:
Yeah.
JM:
Yeah. It was us, man.
Gretchen:
I do really love the twist because it's like when you're reading it, I remember thinking like, well, it's himself. Like I just was like, it's obviously himself that he killed the entire time. So it's like that is that the twist we're leading up to. And then of course, he has that final like moment where oh, it's worse than that. It's there's something worse than that here.
Nate:
There's more of themselves.
Gretchen:
Yeah. And it also is a really interesting thinking of this along with the replacements of real figures with like the snakes and the spiders agents where it's sort of not only does that happen in life, but then it happens still again after life with both sides taking one person as an agent.
Nate:
And I guess that leads to the whole thing of the big time of really not knowing who's a spider or a snake. I mean, maybe there is a double agent who was once a spider, but now they're now a snake because they've been replaced by their doppelganger. I mean, we really don't know how common this phenomenon is of a split personality coming out in both ways of somebody being recruited twice into a change war. I mean, it's only really talked about here, but I mean, presumably.
JM:
It reminds me of Lili and how her memories of that I'm dying twice basically.
Nate:
Yeah.
Gretchen:
Yeah. Yeah.
JM:
This one definitely played up the horror aspect a lot. Yeah.
Gretchen:
I like that you get the same sort of don't look around thing that's going on in "The Oldest Soldier", but it's like here it's a person who is actually being inducted rather than just an outsider that this is happening to the implications are a lot worse here.
Nate:
Yeah. I mean, we get the great, you know, come with me if you want to live type moment at the very moment, you know, like, yeah, it sets up the tension really high to begin with.
JM:
So basically, this is like the same thing that he described in "The Big Time" when Lili told her story. And I kind of like went over that really quickly in the summary, but like that was precisely because yeah, he describes it here in a little bit more detail.
Nate:
Right.
JM:
And I guess that is like, you know, the recruitment process, right. And again, like Bruce observes a lot of the recruits. Yeah, like there are people who died like horribly. That's that's a perfect way to get recruited into the change war. A great person who has much notoriety and stuff like that would not be a change war soldier.
Gretchen:
These people who died horribly and tragically in these like just dying in obscurity because of something like this.
Nate:
It certainly gives you no rest for eternity. It even makes it even more tragic, I suppose.
JM:
Right. And the thing is, like these people, they have the resources of a billion years and more, right? So you're thinking like, oh, you could take a down and out person and you can recuperate her and remedy him or her and make them into the perfect soldier. Right. Like now we might not have the resources to do that. But who knows what the future will hold, right?
It's kind of like when you think of something like the Borg from Star Trek, right? And you kind of think about why don't they just build machines? Why do they have to have cyborgs? Like why the human brain component? Well, because the human brain is relatively easy to produce. You can feed it on a minimal amount of chemicals and it will perform tasks and you don't have to build it from scratch. It's being used as a component and a machine. There's a real dehumanization aspect that's being described here, I think, in becoming a part of the change war. And again, I think that it does tie into the time period when this was written and the feelings about the Second World War and the feelings about the things that America was entering into around this time, right? The Cold War and the Korean War.
I think it's kind of also a thing that Gaiman and some others observed about Leiber is that he does have a thing about Germany. And it might be because of his parentage and his grandfather coming from there and stuff like that. And being around during World War Two and having the name Fritz Leiber and basically even commenting that when he was at school, one of his teachers told him that Fritz couldn't possibly be his first name and that his first name must be something else. And the reason he said that was that Fritz was a common disparaging term for Germans after the First World War. They're like, somebody's been fooling you. Your name is not really Fritz. What's your name? And it's like, oh, no, it's my name.
Nate, you read the story "Belsen Express"?
Nate:
Yeah, yeah.
JM:
You know, that's, there's some, I don't know, like, I mean, you know, he always lived in America. He was definitely not associated with anything. But I think there is a sort of fascination with like Nazi guilt and stuff like that that does come up in some stories. He has another one called "Catch That Zeppelin", which is a story that won a couple of awards in the 70s, including the Nebula, I think. And it's a story about an alternate version of Hitler when the Second World War didn't happen. It's really short and really, really good. That's a perfectly written economical story where you don't wish for more. There's just enough there to really engage your thoughts about a lot of things and history and how things might have been different, even though the Hitler in the story is not exactly a sympathetic character either. And you don't really find out who it is until the very end, and the way it's hinted at is a very clever and pretty well done. It's actually a very subtle story.
And "Belsen Express" is about an ex-concentration camp, I don't know, I guess he must have been one of the paper pushers or something like that. And he's constantly frothing at the mouth over the newspapers and how they report and talk about the Nazis still. And he thinks it should all be buried and stuff, obviously, because he used to be a part of it. And he's like trying to say that it wasn't all that, and I was only doing what I had to do and kind of denying it to himself and then something like horrible and supernatural happens to him. Again, it's kind of this Tales from the Crypt or maybe Night Gallery, Serling-esque twist kind of thing. He seems to do that a bit, including the next story that we're about to talk about.
Nate:
Yeah, definitely.
JM:
This one's great, but I did feel like after reading it from Lili, I knew what was coming and I knew what this one was going to be like before I got too far into it. The atmosphere was really good, though.
Gretchen:
Yeah.
(music: phasing sweeps)
"Try and Change the Past" (1958)
So the next one we're taking a look at is "Try and Change the Past", which was initially published in Astounding in March 1958. So this one was actually published concurrently with "The Big Time" in the same month. So readers of the two different magazines would have gotten it there. I mean, I would assume there's a large overlap in subscriber base, but I don't know. It'd be an interesting data set to take a look at. I don't know if anybody's actually studied it.
JM:
Yeah, I mean, Leiber's kind of wondering about the wisdom of doing that does seem to be, have been born about a little bit in the fact that the connections between these stories are not, I guess, spoken about as much as they could be considering that "The Big Time" is a Hugo winner and all that.
Nate:
This one, again, feels, again, very TV in the way that it's set up. I mean, obviously that wasn't a thing in 1958, but just all the stuff that's came afterwards. This one feels more Tales From the Crypt than Night Gallery. I mean, just the way the pacing is, all the twists that come about and the sense of humor that is here. I mean, he could have played up the horror element in this one a lot more than he did, but he really tried to take a lighter, more humorous approach here. And I think it works very, very well. I like this one as much as the last one. And I'm glad he took a similar kind of concept that could have gone either way, but he took a different direction with it for this. And I think it works out.
JM:
He did. And it was a really interesting choice. I don't know what I think about it, honestly. A part of me kind of wishes it was more like less detached and more from the point of view of the characters of the story. Like there seems to be a distance and like you said, it does work and it makes it seem more lighthearted.
Gretchen:
I actually really like this one. I kind of like the detached sort of, thinking of J.M. when you were saying about "The Oldest Soldier", like the idea of like a bunch of guys sitting around like telling stories. Like this is what this is just like a random guy coming up to you while he's like at a bar and he's just telling you this story. Like he kind of just assumes, oh yeah, you know, like he just is very casual about the stories telling you because.
JM:
Yeah, there was this guy, right?
Gretchen:
Yeah. And it's like, it kind of fits into this. Obviously these soldiers have been through a lot, you know, like we've already seen all of the horrors that they've gone through. This feels like one of those moments of a humorous way of coping with all the stuff that's happened to them.
JM:
Yeah, true. And it is very like Leiber to write it like that.
Gretchen:
Yeah.
JM:
So yeah, and then I do like that approach. I guess a part of my head does imagine a slightly different version of this. That's more like ominous and serious, but I don't know. I think that the way this is told does fit into the change war stuff very well. And it makes it almost seem like it was a more conscious attempt to build a universe than what first appears, right? Like I was saying earlier, that's very commonplace now, but in the fifties, maybe not quite as much. Not as many people would be aware of the connections between things unless they were really explicitly spelled out and not many writers were doing that kind of thing. So I like the situation a lot. It's very horror-esque and he didn't play it up in this one, which like you were saying is really interesting that he chose to do it like this. I do like it a lot too. I kind of remembered though that this is the second time I read it was for this and I kind of remembered for the first time. I remembered feeling slightly like I'm not sure I want this story to be told quite like this, but I really like it. But it just feels like I would, I don't know if he decided not to make this more of an atmospheric horror story. Okay, that's cool. I would go along with it like certain aspects of this work really well because it is a little more lighthearted and it is more like the guy relating the story of the soldier and it fits into this concept of the change war really well. This is what happens when a guy steps out of line, basically, right?
Nate:
Yeah, no, it's definitely a cool concept and I think it more so than the other ones in this set focuses on the ripple effect of how much can a change of the timeline really change the timeline. And we get here that, well, it's not infinite like that one Simpsons Halloween episode where Homer Simpson steps on a bug in the prehistoric past or whatever and the far future or the present time it is like totally radically different. Changes like that will have a very, very minor effect in the big time universe. And it really takes a big change to make a big dent in the timeline, which is I guess why we're doing things like kidnapping baby Einstein.
JM:
Right, that's a big deal, right?
Gretchen:
Yeah. Yeah.
JM:
And you need a whole platoon of army guys to do it, right?
Nate:
Right.
JM:
Whereas this guy doesn't have the power.
Gretchen:
Yeah.
JM:
He's incapable of doing the things he wants and this guy's a real asshole.
Gretchen:
Yeah, yeah, really.
Nate:
His aspirations are much smaller, much lower, but it makes for a fun Tales From the Crypt type story where you really see this guy get what's coming to him and you know he's going to get what's coming to him the entire time. And it's great.
JM:
And you know, a part of me is like, these are not real horror stories because in a real horror story, the person that has something coming to them doesn't deserve it.
Nate:
Right.
JM:
And that's what makes it horrible.
Nate:
Yeah.
Gretchen:
Right.
JM:
But I don't know. I think it's satisfying about seeing somebody get their comeuppance, I guess.
Gretchen:
Yeah. I mean, there are the occasional humorous Twilight Zones that this is also kind of like the one with the, I can't think of the one with like the camera where it's those horrible people that like are trying to use it for like gambling.
JM:
Yeah.
Gretchen:
There's just like those sorts of stories that this reminds me of. I do love the characterization of time as just being very stubborn. I just think that's a really fun way of looking at changing the past.
JM:
Yeah. Yeah. Again, the voice is uniquely Leiber, I guess, and it feels like, yeah, maybe actually the part of me that wants this story to be different actually thinks this would be a good non first person story, but at the same time. Yeah, I don't know. It's again, it's the guy relating something that he knows and doing it in his own way with his own interpretations. And it's good that we see that. Again, our character who has all the things happen to him is a real piece of work. So yeah, we'll talk about what kind of guy is now, I guess.
Nate:
Yeah. Yeah. So this is a really short story. It's a really short run through, but here we get a focus on a snake for a bit of a change, I guess. And he's explaining to us that change isn't something where you kick a stone in the Neolithic era and suddenly the conquests of Alexander are gone, but rather changes like a wave or a splash or something that gets dampened out over time. And he's going to illustrate such a point for us.
This recruit, just resurrected, tries to change the past to get him out of death and recruitment, you know, cheat everything and live his normal life. Normally he wouldn't have been able to, but due to recent staffing issues, of course, the place is poorly guarded, so he goes through the dispatching room, unguarded and just unseen. He recounts his death, it is from a meteor shower, and after hearing good news of inheritance money coming to him, he ends up promptly being shot in the head by his wife who finds proof of his infidelity. And we get a bit of the double remove from body type stuff from the last story. His wife then shoots herself and he figures out that he can go back in time, and if he prevents himself from being shot, he can maybe claim that inheritance money with his wife still shooting herself and no one will be the wiser.
Of course this doesn't work, and while the plan initially seems to be going off okay of the bullet intended for him, not actually firing, the not dead version of himself ends up shooting himself anyway. His death is fixed one way or another, and this attempt just left permanent powder burns on his head.
He tries a third time, this time avoiding the gunshot, but when he goes outside he's struck in the head by one of the meteors from the meteor shower, so you just really can't change the past. If you're gonna die, you're gonna die, and that's just it.
And yeah, it's a brief little story, it's fun, nothing too serious here, I'm not sure how much we can realistically tie it into any continuity given everything that we've said about the continuity and how it relates here. But yeah, it's kind of a bit of a framework on how the universe works with, you know, you need a big effort to make a big change.
JM:
My favorite thing though about the story, at the very end, it seems that somebody's kind of been made aware of what he's been trying to do, kind of. I had an idea of what he's doing by continually going into the past, and it's like he knows. And it's like this silent communication between them where the guy's like, yeah, a lot of people try to do this kind of shit, and it always works out badly for them. And you should just be a good soldier and not try this kind of shit.
Gretchen:
Don't rock the boat.
Nate:
Yeah, right.
JM:
Yeah, yeah. That's actually my favorite thing about the story is that very end there where it's like, it's almost like the older one knows, right? He's like, because he's kind of, yeah, I've seen this before. You think you're so clever by trying to change the past and alter your death? Like, I haven't seen this a million times.
Nate:
Yeah, I guess like cheating taxes with the IRS, you know, you might get away for it for a couple years at first due to the fact that they're understaffed and it's a huge bureaucracy, but eventually somebody's going to catch that accounting mistake and well, that'll be that.
JM:
Yeah. Kind of reminds me of again, because I've been watching Star Trek lately reminds me a little bit of Sisko's leadership style sometimes where he's like telling somebody or like giving reaming them out for doing something really terrible. And then he's like, don't do it again. Forget about it for now.
Gretchen:
Or something that's like, I kind of approve with what you did. So I'm not going to be too hard on you.
JM:
Right, exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
Gretchen:
I also do like the obviously the "Knight to Move" had Erica, who was a snake as like the focus. But here we do get the actual first person of a snake agent, which is cool.
Nate:
Yeah, we get to see that both sides really aren't that different from one another.
Gretchen:
Yeah.
Nate:
Yeah, I think it's part of that.
JM:
He does say like, Oh, maybe what's his name being called a snake is kind of appropriate, huh? Yeah, because he's such a such a sneaky, snakey guy.
Gretchen:
Yeah. I love I think that's another thing I like about these stories is how many things Fritz Leiber can attach to spiders and snakes with different connotations both of those creatures have.
Nate:
Yeah, right.
JM:
Oh, yeah. And he said spiders were one of the things one of the things that fascinated him about intro there. It was one of the things, why spiders? maybe because they're patient and they're creepy crawly, but they're also get rid of more invasive species to kind of cool.
Nate:
They're both great sci fi horror creatures that's for sure.
Gretchen:
Yes, definitely. Even though it is about the last story, I do like when the man in "Damnation Morning" gets very upset on hearing the word snakes because he's thinking of the DT's.
Nate:
Yeah.
JM:
Yeah. Yeah. And this one definitely is more funny.
Gretchen:
Yeah.
JM:
And now just talking about it kind of bringing it back into mind. I do appreciate it the way it is. Again, it's like some of the stuff in "The Big Time" of the situation seems so horrible, even though the tone can be kind of lighthearted. Right. That's a good thing that he doesn't like that. It makes it really fun. And it definitely feels like the way a lot of nowadays writers would probably handle it as well. Where, yeah, this is the worst thing you can possibly imagine, but we're going to keep you going with it by adding some fun to it and making it a little bit whimsical. And that's kind of how this story feels. But in fact, all three of these stories, the previous one, this one and the next one, I should say, all do have that twist for somebody who might deserve it kind of feelings to them.
Nate:
Sure.
JM:
Maybe not so much in "Damnation Morning". I mean, that guy seemed kind of unfortunate, but yeah, the next one definitely has that feeling too. And could definitely have fit in well in a show like Tales from the Crypt.
Nate:
Oh, yeah.
Gretchen:
Yeah, definitely.
JM:
That's a good one. We're going to talk about the last story, though, which seems to be one of his more anthologized stories, "The Deskful of Girls".
(music: piano and reverb)
"A Deskful of Girls" (1958)
Our last story for the evening is "A Deskful of Girls", initially published in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in the April 1958 issue. And the title "A Deskful of Girls", the first thing it brought to my mind was the Mitt Romney political gaffe, binders full of women, which in retrospect seems like...
JM:
Yeah, I thought of the same thing.
Nate:
It just seems incredibly quaint that that was a major political gaffe 10 years ago, so I don't know.
JM:
I know. It's funny because, yeah, like, there's a lot of this story. It's a really interesting one to me, anyway. I actually quite like it, but there's a lot to unpack in it for sure.
Nate:
Yeah. So I guess what do you guys think of this in general? There's some cool stuff in here, I think, for sure.
JM:
Like Fritz himself said, he saw it as a bit of a reversal of the James Bond stereotype, although he didn't really know specifically about Bond at that time. He said he hadn't read any of the Ian Fleming novels, but the guy going into the villains layer and the villain explaining everything and him being all tied up and unable to do anything, and then being rescued by this supernatural feminine entity and all this kind of hints at, I guess, scientific impropriety. I guess the way it ties into the change cycle in the end. It's unfortunate that this technique seems to have caught on. Keeping ghost creatures is not a great thing, and here it's definitely portrayed as imprisonment.
Fritz Leiber being around, inspired by the 1940s and 1950s, moviemaking and advertising and all these different media influences and stuff like that. And I guess the use of feminine sexuality for advertising and the spreading of things that were mostly motivated by the desire to make money and stuff like that.
Gretchen:
Yeah, it's very reminiscent of that idea that the film captures the soul, and I think that Leiber's really playing around with that sort of idea here.
JM:
Yeah, yeah, definitely.
Gretchen:
While reading "The Big Time", I did feel pretty bad for the ghost girls, and after reading this in the new context, I really wish it was them that had stolen the inverter. I really wish that they were the ones that had had some sort of revolt against the others.
JM:
Yeah, I definitely think this one has a lot of really telling things about what people would have been seeing and thinking at the time and stuff, and it's kind of powerful in a strange way, and I really liked all the reminiscences of music, and again, like, this one has a lot of atmosphere to it.
Nate:
Yeah, it definitely does, and the passages on music I think are some of the best parts in the story. And the sexual imagery in here was really forward in a way that is different from "Knight to Move", in that it's played up in a much more horror angle, like almost Cronenberg body horror, that I was kind of surprised at how forward it was for, I don't know, a pulp magazine at this time, but maybe that was more commonplace than I'm thinking, but yeah, it kind of jumped out at me when that part came around.
The James Bond type setup is a little silly on its face, but I don't know, it works for this, I think. It has cool atmosphere, and yeah, I think overall works well.
JM:
Yeah, there is a little bit of a silliness to the story, and that's definitely true, but I don't know, I think that it works well, and I think that there's a certain amount of awareness of the absurdity of the situation in a way. But as well as being absurd, it is kind of dark and disturbing.
Nate:
Yeah.
JM:
So it's like, I don't know, the binders full of women thing, the way that comment, it is kind of fitting in a way, right? Stuff them in an envelope somewhere, and keep it in a drawer, and just pull them out when you want to experience them.
Nate:
Yeah, I mean, it's extremely dehumanizing, and I think that's actually what physically happens is a detachment of humanity in a physical sense, which we'll get to. Yeah, it's an interesting way of looking at it for sure.
JM:
I don't think Leiber meant this in any kind of general way, but if this story were written by L. Ron Hubbard, it would probably be like an anti-psychiatry story, right? Because these people are basically psychic vampires sucking you dry, right? And all the people who pay a lot of money to go see these quacks with their orgone accumulators and stuff. I don't know, not that that's an accepted part of psychiatry, but it is mentioned in the story.
Nate:
Yeah, all right, so I guess we'll take a look at what happens in this one.
JM:
Yeah.
Nate:
So our narrator this time around, Carr Mackay. I don't know, how are we saying his name? Carr Mackay, let's go with that. He's going to tell us about the ghost girls, and he draws some parallels for us between ghost and sex, as after all, both can be quite frightening.
A Dr. Emil Slyker, again, I don't know how to pronounce these names. We'll go with Slyker, offers him a desk full of girls.
JM:
Again, this is kind of like the variation of the guy sitting at the bar and being like, oh, I got a crazy thing that I can show you. Don't you want to know what the crazy thing that I can show you is? I don't know. Again, it's a fun setup.
Nate:
It is.
JM:
It is somewhat goofy, but it's great at the same time.
Nate:
Yeah, a fair amount of not necessarily double crossing, but they're playing on each other a lot. Of course, they're all involved in the big time. And Slyker is some kind of ESP researcher guy. And Mackay is contacting him to try to get some documents from him, which Slyker is using to blackmail a certain Evelyn Cordew. They're at the Counter Sign Club, which is a real secret big time location. Mackay's entrance was presenting a copy of Marquis de Sade's "Justine" to Slyker after being given one by Cordew's ex-husband, Jeff.
JM:
And there was stuff in here that I haven't seen since our spiritualist episode. So that was fun.
Nate:
Oh, yeah, definitely. Yeah. Yeah, I haven't read "Justine" or "100 Days in Sodom", the handful of short stories and novellas that I read are certainly a lot tamer than his reputation, which from what I understand mostly stems from those two ones that I haven't read. But yeah, it's apparently some pretty wild stuff that's only to be passed around in the secretest of secret societies.
So they go back to his office and there's a real complicated door locking mechanism. Again, great spy-fi nonsense here. The room scene is kind of strange and the filing cabinet is big enough to fit a person in it. And Mackay is beckoned to sit in a strange chair of a Bauhaus design. And this chair has all sorts of significance in that a number have used it in the course of psychological and psychological research from orgone to ectoplasm. And the chair even changes color and form to fit the person sitting in it, contributed by, of course, one of the leading chemists. So again, another callback to what we were talking about in the spiritualism episode with Lugones and his mediums and the tying into the, I guess, the ether and the ideas of how spirits may be tied to wireless signals and how all this weird stuff is related to one another by scientific devices. So yeah, it is pretty cool how this stuff does make its way in here.
But Slyker turns to his filing cabinet and pulls out some of his case files and asks if Mackay would like to hear about some of the girls. Slyker puts on a record, the Nutcracker Suite, but a version of it that had part of the music suppressed out. And this version that is now being played is quite sexually forward, presumably used in some sort of mesmerism or demonstrations of clairvoyance. And I really like the idea of not only a secret missing piece from a famous piece of music like the Nutcracker, every now and then we'll find a deleted chapter or suppressed chapter from a famous novel that couldn't make it by the censors for whatever reason, but it's more interesting with a piece of music because it's not like there's foul language in the music itself. It's just the tone of the music is sexually charged in spiritual and nature. It has a different character than a deleted lewd chapter from a novel or something like that.
JM:
So I was going to mention that that was the other one besides his story, "Ship of Shadows". The Nutcracker was indeed the musical accompaniment to this story's writing.
Nate:
Right, yeah. That seems pretty obvious when we're taking a look at it because the Nutcracker is a major character in the story throughout.
JM:
The hidden suppressed movement. That's a fun thought as well.
Nate:
Absolutely. And in this new suppressed version, we're listening to it and I guess it provides the perfect, psychical and mesmeristic soundtrack for going through these case files of salacious gossip and lurid sexual details. And it seems the obvious purpose of this case file filing cabinet is blackmail and he has his cabinets organized by past, present and future and goes on to explain that he's demonstrated the phenomenon of ectoplasm, which is often birthed by stimulated women in a deep trance. The birthing, I guess, takes on somewhat of a mannequin-like shell, which again, incredibly vulgar and crass image for a mainstream science fiction magazine.
JM:
It's like this very depraved version of one of the spiritualists that we're reading about in our more 19th century oriented spiritualist episodes. And I don't know, there were definitely some weird things going on with some of those guys. But yeah, this is kind of taking it to the next level of how wrong could it be for the wrong kind of person to be into this stuff.
Nate:
Right, yeah.
JM:
And that's this guy, pretty much.
Nate:
He's not a Latin American, I guess, proto-magical realism, weird spiritualism stuff. I don't even know what you want to call that subgenre. But I mean, there's a whole lot of it there, and we go listen to that episode if you want to hear us talk about it more. But it never really takes on a really sexually explicit tone like this does here. I guess the Jarry novel that we covered would make like a crude, scatological joke about it. It's like body horror imagery that we're seeing quite vividly through the forbidden movement of the Nutcracker, which just makes it even more surreal because I kind of picture what it may sound like.
So yeah, these are what is referred to as a ghost and what our doctor here does is detach them. And Evelyn Cordew is a woman of her times, again, like a Greta Garbo before her. So I mean, maybe Evelyn Cordew is another version of our Greta. I mean, who knows how much the timeline has been erased and wiped over, but maybe not.
But here, Slyker has her in five ghost versions, and this surprises Mackay. And Slyker notices this and he gives us Evelyn's backstory. She has a Polish last name and grew up in a coal mining town. She came out of the burlesque circuit and found her way into Hollywood stardom, and all his blackmail stuff is just a cover for what she really wants.
What she really wants is the five ghosts back, but they might kill her in the process of doing so. So what Slyker does here is he presses a button that engages these velvet straps that bind Mackay to the chair. And such restraints are necessary for electro shock. And now he's going to see one of Evelyn's ghost.
Slyker orders him to be quiet and gags him with this airtight foam plastic thing, and you can only breathe through it if you make a very small amount of breath. So if you are making any kind of sound or a whisper, the airtight foam will just close up and suffocate you. So basically you have to shut up and make no sound at all.
JM:
This is such an evil scientist, definitely Bond villain type.
Nate:
Absolutely, 100%. Yeah, one of the coolest things in the story, definitely.
Gretchen:
Yeah, adding that with the green paper from "The Oldest Soldier", all of the spy-fi influence.
Nate:
Yeah, no, fantastic stuff. I mean, this even seems like a precursor to like spy-fi really taking off. I mean, the Bond stuff was around, I think, right? But I mean, like, I don't know, certainly the Euro spy movies were about a decade away at this point.
JM:
Yeah, Bond novels were already thing, but he said he hadn't read any of them till after this. Now, he said, I mean, not now, but in 1984 anyway, when he was talking about it, he said that reading this story was a little bit difficult for him at that time later on. Like, he kind of had trouble with, I guess, maybe because it was so far in the past. And it was like, he said it was an interesting experience writing it. And he definitely talked a lot about different visions of, I guess, the prominent female sex symbol actress at the time. And it does remind me of, I guess, ideas about Hollywood from then and how everyone was getting into weird psychiatry stuff. And like, I don't know, it just, it definitely feels classic in a way. Like, it has that kind of weird twisted stories about the golden age of Hollywood kind of feeling to it. And I think that's part of why I enjoyed it a lot. The feeling of this guy finally getting what was coming to him and the, I guess, you can't really call him the main character because he doesn't really do very much. But the point of view character, anyway, is just an observer, right? He's there to observe the thing happen. He's powerless to do anything until she comes in and frees him. But in a way, he was the excuse to have all the stuff be opened up. And so, you know, he was being used, I guess, to uncover the truth. And yeah, it's just a shame that this ghost girl technique apparently caught on.
Nate:
The commentary on Hollywood and media industry is surely an interesting one. And I guess it probably relates to Leiber's personal life. I mean, he seems to be quite taken with Greta Garbo, who at this time would have been quite out of vogue. I mean, she became a famous actress in the late 20s. So Leiber probably would have seen her as a young teenager or something like that and have her stuck in his mind forever. But she was definitely not a big Hollywood starlet in 1958.
JM:
Right. But it's almost like he's saying it's generational. There's different representations, but yeah, Garbo would have been his teenage fascination, I suppose.
Nate:
Right. Yeah. I think we can see how that pretty clearly manifests itself on his characters here, especially the Evelyn of this story. She's very much the same kind of background.
JM:
Yeah, he does mention Marilyn Monroe several times in this story. And that would have been very contemporary.
Nate:
Right. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, "Flesh and the Devil" is one of those movies where I downloaded like 15 years ago and never got around to watching. So maybe I'll have to give it a go sometime.
JM:
Yeah.
Nate:
So we have our doctor gagging Carr Mackay, yeah, with this cool foam spy-fi device. And we hear some noises in the background and out of the darkness slinks Evelyn. And she brags about how she was easily able to break in past the lock mechanism or whatever. And she's naturally come for her ghost. And as she's going through the files, one of the ghosts manifests itself looking like Evelyn, but in ethereal, wispy form. And Slyker is strapped into a chair at this point, a bit of a reversal of fortune.
So each of the ghosts is a snapshot of Evelyn at some point in her life. Most of them in a highly sexualized form in different ways. And she goes through the ghosts and gets them back. And the question of what to do with Slyker remains. So Evelyn and her ghost will leave it up to the other girls. The uncensored version of the Nutcracker is again put on. And the ghosts stream out of the filing cabinets in bright lights.
Evelyn lights the files on fire and releases Mackay from the chair and tells him to tell Jeff that Slyker is dead. So sirens immediately show up and it would seem that Evelyn put in a few calls to a few friends. Mackay learns from Jeff some weird bit of information about some of Evelyn's friends, the Arian, which is a word that comes from the Greek aranea, the modern version of this word. And most Roman languages is something like aranea, which means spider, of course.
JM:
We do have a more quite bold allusion to our change war cycle after all.
Nate:
But Mackay doesn't really pick up on any of this. He seems rather confused about the whole affair. And Slyker is like almost cocooned in his chair with, I guess, all this smoke and ghost girls floating around him in his ethereal haze. And indeed he is later found dead of smoke inhalation. And the last couple passages I want to read out so.
"I’m keeping out of it—just as I left it to the firemen to discover Dr. Emil Slyker “suffocated by smoke” from a fire in his “weird” private office, a fire which it was reported did little more than char the furniture and burn the contents of his files and the tapes of his hi fi.
"I think a little more was burned. When I looked back the last time I saw the Doctor lying in a strait jacket of pale flames. It may have been scattered papers or the electronic plastic. I think it was ghostgirls burning."
So I don't know a cool way to end it out.
JM:
I really like the way that ends and the atmosphere of it is really awesome, I think.
Nate:
Yeah, it's not as atmospheric and moody as "Damnation Morning", but it does play up the horror imagery pretty much more than any of the other stories in the set. We do get these really cool weird fiction scenes and there's a fair amount of them in the course of the story. The story is longer than most of the other ones, but there's a lot going on here. And despite the fact that our characters are basically strapped into chairs for most of the action.
JM:
So an evil scientist villain can make a big speech and then get overwhelmed. Right, but I don't know, it's good. I enjoyed it. I do think, yeah, maybe it's tropey and maybe that's kind of the point. It's kind of got that, I guess, feeling of representing stark images. The sex symbol. You don't really know that much about who she is. You just worship her from afar and you see that she plays these various parts. Again, she's an actor and you don't know who she really is. And that's also a theme in "The Girl with the Hungry Eyes".
It's really funny when you read "The Big Time" and you see what happens after the maintainer disappears. And they're kind of like, they're starting to think, oh, maybe even the ghost girls are actually more powerful than we thought they were. And they're planning something to, oh man, yeah, things have gotten really out of control.
You know, I've never thought to rank Leiber stories and say, like, these are my definite favorites or anything like that. But I can kind of see why this one was anthologized a lot. This one is definitely a lot more well-known than some of the other ones. I would say "No Great Magic" probably should be a story that people hail more. But at the same time, I appreciate this one. I think the archetypes that it's going for, it really hits and it is kind of dark and disturbing in a way because of its presentation. Getting to the core of this weird stuff that's used to sell things, basically. That seems to be like the commodification of bodies, almost, I guess.
So, yeah, there's a lot of that in this and it's implied in the big time as well, I think.
Nate:
Oh, definitely.
JM:
One of the reasons you feel bad for Greta is because of the things she might have to do. Miss Polly Andry, right? Having to put up with being the object of sexual desire of all the men that come through the place.
Nate:
Right, yeah. It's interesting symbolism of having a literal filing cabinet that you could just draw out and open up and do what you will. As if there were a piece of information in an inanimate object to be consumed.
Gretchen:
What's interesting is one of the things this reminded me of is actually one of my favorite Sherlock Holmes cases. There's this one, it's called "The Case of Charles Augustus Milverton". And it's this woman who is like an upper class woman comes to Sherlock and Watson because there's this man who has all this blackmail, all these like incriminating photos of upper class women that he uses to like extort money from them. And they decide to sneak into his house to burn them. It's like one of the times where Sherlock kind of just decides to go against the law in how he decides to handle the case. But before they're able to complete their plan, a woman comes in and murders Milverton while they're there like just hiding in like the closet. And when I think it's Lestrade the next day asks if Sherlock will help him with the case of the murder, he declines. But it's this very interesting sort of like you get to see this moment where it's not Sherlock who takes the most action, but like the victims themselves who take out this man who's been exploiting them. And that's what the story sort of reminded me of a bit.
Nate:
Oh, absolutely. Yeah, because our main character here, Carr Mackay, is totally useless. Like he does nothing. He just comes into this guy's office and gets tied up. And that's all he does.
Gretchen:
It's Evelyn who takes it all in her hands and deals with what actually happened.
JM:
The story you described is a little bit familiar, but I can't remember. I definitely need to reread that then.
Gretchen:
I like the ones where the formulas challenged a little bit that one and "Scandal in Bohemia" are really good ones.
JM:
Oh yeah, that's a good one. Yeah, for sure.
Nate:
So do we have anything else on this one or should we get into the final rankings?
Gretchen:
I'm ready to go into the rankings.
Nate:
Okay, why don't you start us off?
Gretchen:
Well, now let me get my list out there. So going from least to most favorite, "Knight to Move" was my least favorite. Still like the potential of it, just didn't live up to it. I do like "Deskful of Girls" and I enjoy it, but I kind of like the atmosphere and some of the stuff going on in the other stories a little more. So "Deskful of Girls" is six. Five is "To Change the Past". Four is "Damnation Morning". Three is "The Oldest Soldier". Two is "The Big Time". And the first is "No Great Magic", which isn't a surprise. I really love that one.
Nate:
Yeah, yeah, it's so good. Likewise. Mine is kind of similar, but I think might have a little more controversial order. So "Knight to Move" definitely at the bottom, not bad, but not the greatest. Then I would go "Oldest Soldier", "Deskful of Girls", then "The Big Time", then "Damnation Morning". Then I would try and "Change the Past" at number two. I just really love the comic timing. I mean, it makes it for me and it's just kind of nice to see that.
JM:
That's really cool.
Nate:
And then, yeah, "No Great Magic" at number one, absolutely loved it from start to finish.
Gretchen:
I really do like the comedy of "To Change the Past". I really like that one. It is fun.
JM:
Wow, okay, cool. We're all different. That's really great. I like that a lot. So I enjoy all these. I enjoy Leiber as must be evident from all this talk by now. So I'm not going to say that any of these I really disliked, obviously.
Gretchen:
Yeah, I'd like to say I think all of them are pretty great. Like I don't dislike any of them.
Nate:
Yeah, same. I have minor nitpicks, but they're just that minor nitpicks.
JM:
Yeah. Okay. Well, I agree. So at the bottom, but not really bottom because it's still good. I would say "Damnation Morning". I like the story a lot. The atmosphere was cool and the character was relatable. And I like, definitely not a hero kind of way. But I just kind of think that I already experienced that in the big time. I didn't necessarily need to have it again because Lili's was so good. It seemed like a supplement again, like an addition. But it was a really good one and I had a good horror atmosphere.
Then yeah, I'd say "Knight to Move" needed more if it was going to be awesome. Basically, a lot of things about it were really good. The setup was awesome. The games, the talk about the three different categories of chance games. I'm sure he pulled it out of a book somewhere, but it was just one of the most awesome things in this whole session. I really loved that for some reason. I guess I just never come across it explained quite in that way before. And I was like, yeah, that's cool. That makes sense. He's obviously thought about this. And I love the assassination missiles. And I guess the phone with arms. That was cool.
After that, I would say probably "Try and Change the Past". I think, I don't know, I questioned a couple of times about the way it was written. But in the end, I came to agree that yeah, it is good the way it is. It has the comic voice that Leiber can do and it does it well. And it doesn't take itself too seriously, which kind of makes it more timeless in a way, I guess. This could be another bleak story about a guy getting his just desserts, but he is an asshole. So we're kind of left to let go with that. And we understand that from the beginning. We don't have to try and sympathize with him that much or anything like that. And that's fine and good the way it is.
So after that, I would say "Deskful", I think. I like it a lot. I think it has a really, really awesome atmosphere. The objectification is really stark and troubling. And I kind of think that that's a point, right? So it's really ugly in a way. And the ugliness is being avenged. And that doesn't necessarily always make you feel awesome. It's not necessarily supposed to thrill you. Fritz himself, when he reread this in the 80s, because it was part of the Ghostlight book. And I didn't really describe the way the essay was done, but it's kind of done to weave around the stories that were published in the book. He kind of finds an artful way to mix everything together, as I was not strictly speaking chronological. But each story, he finds a way to relate to various aspects of his life. So this one figures quite centrally in a few places. And he talks about the objectification angle is definitely very heavy. And I think that he knows that it's an uncomfortable story. That's the way it's intended.
So yeah, "The Oldest Soldier" I would put next. I really enjoyed the vibe of it. I liked the setup as silly as it was. And then it went into this weird Lovecraftian horror territory for a short time. And again, it's individually Fritz, but it still got a bit of that aspect to it. And the vision of the guy sitting at the typewriter, just like frantically typing away nonsense and hoping that he can escape this creature. His mind slowly being tampered with. I love that it was really, really awesome.
Then I would put "No Great Magic", but at this point we're kind of at this stage where like it doesn't really matter. They're awesome. And I kind of figure "No Great Magic" and "The Big Time" are so tied together that I'm not really saying that "No Great Magic" is less good than "The Big Time". So I think that one is an inversion of the other in a way. And yeah, it's like the whole story was the surgical treatment was done. And what we got was a revelation of the theater and "The Big Time" is so often compared to a stage play. And maybe that's what a lot of the original reviews said. I didn't really look into that aspect of it too much what people thought of it at the time and what was said about it by the science fiction reading public. But I kind of feel like maybe he took that and was like, yeah, I'm going to take it one step further than I'm going to 100% fully incorporate my love of a theater into this story. Maybe it wasn't even that conscious, but it certainly came through. And this story is really exciting. "No Great Magic" is really, really cool. And if you like "The Big Time", you really, really have to read this. Can't stress it enough.
Yeah, so the main event, "The Big Time" for me, I just think that so much is included in here. And there's so much that's hinted at and so much that can really keep you thinking for a really long time. It's been great to come back to it every few years and re-experience it. But I do think that it's so tied in with all the other stuff, especially "No Great Magic". These are all very great. I really enjoyed doing these with you guys. There are definitely some change war, time war kind of things.
An example that was slightly before this, I think was Isaac Asimov's book, "End of Eternity", which is kind of a story about, yeah, people operating in eternity outside of time, influencing events in the timescape. And trying to alter things for their set purposes. And in the Asimov story, there's no Cold War kind of aspect, but it's about people who kind of rebelled from this eternity aspect and how controlling it is really. It's definitely, I think that if we were to do a longer Asimov work, that would be the one because it's a really great standalone book. And it does cover some of the same ground, I think. Maybe not quite as emotionally and existentially, but it's certainly there. And Nate, you said you had some other things in mind too, right?
Nate:
Nothing from this time. I guess there's some other franchises out there, the German television show "Dark". It focuses on some of the same themes, which I really, really enjoyed.
JM:
So the first thing that came to mind, obviously, is the new Doctor Who series and how the whole thing is supposed to be based on this time war. The Time Lords and the Daleks, right? And how they, at the beginning of the, I guess, conception of the new Doctor Who series, it was supposed to be that they wouldn't show any of that stuff. I think that they kind of made a conscious decision not to do that. But as it goes with shows with a lot of fans and stuff like that, people will climb up for things and creators listen. So we now have a lot of accounts of the time war in Doctor Who and how it supposedly happened, right?
But I like the way Leiber handles it here, especially in "The Big Time" and "No Great Magic", where it is like, it doesn't seem like the front lines. Although, as it turns out, it might be more of the front lines than they ever could have hoped for, right? Because that's kind of the essence of "No Great Magic", especially, right? It says at the end, that's what they're doing. And they are part of the war effort. They're a battle post and a theater in the Doctor Who series. Not only on the television, but like, you know, a lot of the audios and stuff really going into the battles and the things that happen and stuff like that. And I do think something like this is maybe best left a little bit more ambiguous. I don't know what you guys think?
Nate:
Yeah, I never really watched those Doctor Who episodes, to be honest with you. Yeah, I don't know. I like the way Leiber handles it here. He leaves a lot unsaid. And I think that works very well in the saga's favor.
Gretchen:
Yeah, I like the glimpses. And I think that works quite well. This idea of just getting this one person's perspective on this conflict that is, as we've mentioned before, so abstract and so giant, that it feels appropriate that there's only these small sort of excursions into this world. And that's what you get.
JM:
Yeah, I really like that aspect. I think that just kind of thinking about a lot of things lately with these long running franchises and stuff and how, I don't know, like I've been watching Star Trek Next Generation with a younger friend and they've kind of been informed about some general things without actually seeing any Star Trek so they know about the Borg and that that's a thing, right? And they're like constantly waiting for the Borg to show up. We haven't gotten there yet, but I kind of feel like, okay, yes, it's one thing if you get introduced to the Borg at the beginning and you're like, yeah, it's very threatening, unknown and strange. But the more time you spend with them, the more boring of an antagonist they sort of become. You have to keep trying to do things with them to make them seem less like what they are. And I think that it's kind of the same thing with trying to depict a time war in like meticulous detail because I kind of feel like your imagination is probably more crazy than whatever you can envisage, right? It's kind of best to keep it in the background and that's, I think, something that these stories do really well.
Nate:
Yeah.
JM:
But there are certainly other examples. Poul Anderson has a Time Patrol series, which has a similar concept, I guess, in a way. Again, it doesn't quite seem so cold war. There is Joe Haldeman's "Forever War" from the 1970s, which also won a lot of awards then. I don't know, maybe it was influenced by this. That's definitely something I would consider adding to the Chrononauts list sometime in the future if you want to do more war type stories. Again, it might be considered a little bit more military sci-fi than this. Again, I don't know where the boundaries of that lie. I remember when I did do meet with Seth for the Hugo's There podcast, he asked me if I preferred military science fiction. And I said, no, not really. I prefer science fiction that's written a little bit like fantasy, I think is what I said. So, yeah.
Nate:
Yeah, i'd also say it's not necessarily my favorite, but I don't really think this is military in nature really at all.
JM:
I'm sure we can think of another, a lot of examples. I saw something about a book recently that got published called "This Is How We Lose the Time War", or something like that. I can't remember the name of the author, but it's...
Gretchen:
It's two authors who have written it. I think it's like people on two different sides and one author writes one perspective and the other author writes the other.
JM:
That sounds kind of cool. That's very appropriate for a time war story.
Nate:
Right.
Gretchen:
Yeah.
JM:
Maybe we should read that, or maybe I should read that. Some of us should read that.
Gretchen:
Yeah, I have heard about that and I've been meaning to check it out at some point, so I'd be interested in reading it.
JM:
Cool. I just wanted to briefly mention a story I read recently by William Tenn called "Sanctuary". And it was a story about the future having embassies in the present. And how somebody from the present who's hated by people now could claim asylum in the future. And the conflicts that would resolve from that. It's a really interesting story. Really got me thinking a lot about these kind of concepts. And again, another interesting way of kind of expressing what it would be like to have antagonistic forces working through time.
Such a crazy concept if you think about it. And if you want to be like, yeah, it's the fourth dimension. That's the next step. That's the new frontier. Horrible to think about. Definitely. I think we've pretty much exhausted the maintainers for now. But why don't we talk about briefly what's going to happen over the next month or two on Chrononauts. We have a lot of interesting stuff with translations ahead of us.
Nate:
Yeah, so I guess the last five or so episodes we've largely been focused on American science fiction from the Golden Age's beginning and how it was developed through the 1930s, 1940s, and now into the 1950s and 60s. But as we've always wanted to do with the podcast, science fiction is not written only in America and the United Kingdom, but it has in fact always been written internationally. And we want to raise a profile and cover some of these more obscure works from other countries that haven't really gotten recognition before that haven't been translated into English - until now.
So you can read a number of Russian translations and Ukrainian translations that I've done over the last year on our blogspot. And we're going to be taking a look at five of those stories next time covering 1920s Soviet magazine science fiction.
So you could ask the question, was there a science fiction magazine in the Soviet Union in the 1920s? The short answer is no, the longer answer is far more interesting. And you can hear that story for the first time in English next time on the podcast where we'll be covering the historical background of that whole scene, as well as these five stories, which include Alexey Volkov's, "Aliens", Vladimir Orlovsky's, "Steckerite", Mikhail Zuev-Ordynets', "The Lord of Sound", Liza Kardynalovska's, "Death of the Happy City", and Anna Barkova's, "A Steel Husband".
So a lot of very interesting things that we'll be covering next time, a wide range of topics that present a viewpoint that you don't really see too often in American science fiction, though there are going to be some obvious parallels that we'll draw with Amazing Stories and Astounding. I think there's a lot of comparisons to be made between "Aliens" and the Galun story we did, "Old Faithful", as well as Anna Barkova's "A Steel Husband" with some of the domesticity and robotic stories we covered several episodes ago. So there's going to be some obvious parallels, there's going to be some obvious differences, and it's a set of stories that have not been translated to English previously or really been talked about in any of the English language sources, aside from maybe a cursory mention here or there. And in some cases, that's all, you really get other cases, you get absolutely nothing at all.
So it'll be a fun episode, I'm really excited to present not only the historical background for you, but these stories. I hope you read along with us, they can be found on our blogspot at chrononutspodcast.blogspot.com. Let us know what you think about the stories, about my translation, and we'll be talking about them at like next month. So we hope you'll be there.
JM:
Yeah, it's very exciting, definitely think that it's a really unique opportunity for us and anybody who wants to be introduced to something that's old, but new, pretty much. People in the English speaking world definitely haven't been exposed to these previously for the most part, so yeah.
So yeah, very much looking forward to that.
Now, I think we'll just say this:
"To the legion of the lost ones, to the cohort of the damned, To our brothers in the tunnels outside time, Sing three Change-resistant Zombies, raised from death and robot-crammed, And Commandos of the Spiders— Here's to crime! We're three blind mice on the wrong time-track, Hush—hush—hush! We've lost our now and will never get back, Hush—hush—hush! Change Commandos out on the spree, Damned through all possibility, Ghostgirls, think kindly on such as we, Hush—hush—hush!"
Keep your eyes on the maintainers, my friends, particularly the major maintainer, which is your door into the time gates. Speaking of time, we'll see you in the next one. We, the Chrononauts, the wanderers in time. Good night.
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