Kenneth Schneyer's "Life of the Author Plus Seventy" (short story, humor): Legal implications of human hibernation

Three major themes here, often told in a hilarious way:

1. Customer service dysfunction.
2. A parody of US copyright law, particularly w.r.t. Disney case.
3. Legal implications of human hibernation.

Story summary.

A not very successful author has a novel published but it's not selling much. He bugs local library enough to make them buy a copy, but no one is borrowing it. So he himself borrows it, but forgets to return it.

He'll later get a job with a company in a creative role, & is made to sign a curiously twisted copyright clause in the employment contract that gives the company the copyright over his creations for hundreds of years rather than "just" 120 years: when he's about to die, the company will have a right to hibernate him for up to 500 years, so copyright rule of author's life + 70 years applies!

A decade after borrowing the book, library has handed over the overdue & fines collection to a debt collection agency, & he receives his first overdue & fines bill - a couple of hundred thousand dollars. Hilarity ensues as he gets into negotiations with the debt collector, & later tries evading it...

Fact sheet.

First published: Analog, September 2013.
Rating: A.
Added to my "best of 2013" list.

Henry Kuttner's "Sword of Tomorrow" (novella, adventure, free)

This is a complicated & very pulpish adventure in far future.

Story summary.

A US soldier is a prisoner of war of Japan near the end of WWII, held captive somewhere in China. From a fellow prisoner, he learns Tibetan "self-hypnotism", & goes into hibernation to avoid questioning.

War ends. A bombing raid destroyed his prison, & entombed him. No one finds him. There he lay hibernating for eons.

Eventually, he wakes into a future where continents don't look familiar & stars aren't familiar. Humans have since fallen to savagery, & again built a civilization, but historical trauma has made it impossible for them to conceive weapons, though they can build all other kinds of gadgets.

A would be dictator would see an opportunity when our hero comes into his time...

Fact sheet.

First published: Thrilling Wonder Stories, September 1945.
Read online at UNZ. Or download HTML from Arthur's Bookshelf or BookReader.
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of Henry Kuttner.

Herbert W Franke's "Paradise 3000" (short story, overpopulation dystopia)

While there are many overpopulation dystopias in fiction, there are two things here that I've not seen often (ok - I've seen some that can be called variants of the second but not in this form):

1. Why overpopulation? Well, in this future, you have a welfare society that won't let anyone die, & refuses to accept birth control. Because human life is sacred.
2. To cope with the overpopulation, the society practices "Reduction". Reduction in living space per person, reduction in allowed rations per person, reduction in normal life expectancy, ... And woe be on you ("OrdCit", short for ordinary citizen) if you're over 16 & you manage to get yourself hurt in an accident - you'll be "recalled". As is everyone over 30.
   
   What's "recall"? It's cold storage hibernation, in completely unreasonable hope that a future will discover how to cope with the huge population & revive those hibernating. I was a bit confused with the ending; may be nice dreams are piped directly into the brains of the hibernating?

It's told as a love story with a confused ending for protagonists who've been indoctrinated since childhood to not get emotionally involved with their partners.

Collected in.

1. Donald A Wollheim (ed)'s "The Best from the Rest of the World: European Science Fiction".

Fact sheet.

First published: 1975? (in German) (where?)
This post is based on the translation from German by Christine Priest.
Rating: B.

Gerald W Page's "The Happy Man" (novelette, free): A do-gooder is on a mission to awaken lazy men

This is the author's first published story.

Story summary.

There is a surprising twist near end, but most of the story is of a rebel loner trying to survive & help fix the ugly world he finds himself in. A world where people are either "sleepers" (sleeping forever in machine-tended "coffins", living in a personal utopia in their dreams), or "wakers" - rebels who prefer real world to the artificial. Most of the world is sleepers. Few wakers are mostly "patrolmen", forever rounding up non-patrolmen wakers & forcefully putting them in dream coffins!

Hal Nelson, hero of this story, is a non-patrolman waker who must survive, & has taken upon himself the mission to help the sleeping world wake up.

Fact sheet.

First published: Analog, March 1963.
Download full text from Project Gutenberg, Feedbooks.
Rating: B.
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell.

Henry Kuttner & C L Moore's "This is the House" (as by Lawrence O'Donnell) (novelette, haunted house, free)

There are a lot of familiar themes here - I'm not sure which of them this story originated, & which it just used. But a very good read. Sort of ... spooky version of authors' "The Twonky" (download).

This also must be among the earliest stories about nano-tech.

Story summary.

Bob Melton, his wife Michaela, & his brother-in-law Phil, have recently moved into a new house. Only, they've been having weird experiences:

1. "Red ice" in the refrigerator.
2. Coal furnace in the basement that burns without consuming coals!
3. Weird noises barely registering with consciousness.
4. Occasional feeling of complete disorientation; when normalcy returns, a lot of time seems to have passed.
5. Windows that sometimes refuse to open; other times yield easily.
6. Door bell that Bob doesn't hear, but Michaela can feel (though not hear)!
7. ... it goes on & on.

As the story unfolds, we will learn that the previous owner, John French, was probably not human at all. And he seems to have done some "renovating" inside the house for his own comfort, without affecting the house's exterior...

Quotes.

1. "The previous tenant probably rewired the house."
   
   "Who was he? Einstein? Or a Martian?"
2. "Machines can be so simple they're unrecognizable."
3. "Machines in the walls".
   
   "Very simple and very complicated. And unrecognizable. Paint is just paint, but you can do a Mona Lisa with it."
   
   "So French coated the inside walls with paint that acts like a machine?"
   
   "Invisible and intangible—how should I know? As for those noises at night—"
   
   "Well?"
   
   "I think the house is just recharging itself".
4. "Eventually the world of the future—I think—won't be burdened with immense, complicated gadgets. Everything will be so simple—or seem so simple—that a man from the twentieth century might find it quite homelike, except for the results."
5. Psychiatrist: "Half of my patients are slightly nuts, and, as long as they don't know it, they get along fine."
6. On effect of environment on human psyche: "Lock a kid up in a dark closet, and he's apt to be afraid of the dark ever after."
7. "If you had to move into a Ubangi hut and stay there. You wouldn't have anything in common with the natives, would you?"
   
   "What would you do?"
   
   "Change the huts a bit. Especially if I wanted to pretend I was a Ubangi, too. I wouldn't alter it outside, but I'd fix it up a bit inside, for my own convenience, and I wouldn't let anybody else come in. Chairs instead of grass mats. I wonder how French had this place furnished."
   
   ...
   
   "Why would a white man live in a Ubangi village? To study ethnology or entomology, perhaps. Or for the climate. Or simply to rest—to hibernate."

See also.

1. Ray Bradbury's "There Will Come Soft Rains" (download): One of the best known stories featuring an automated live house that keeps on serving long after the original tenants are gone.
2. Clifford D Simak's "The Big Front Yard": Well known story where the aliens quietly renovate the house, no need to ask permission of its human owner... And the resulting house becoming something else altogether!
3. Larry Niven's "Wait It Out": A hibernating man - alive but time seems to be moving rather slowly...

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, February 1946.
Download full text.
Rating: A.
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John W Campbell, Jr.

Related.

1. Stories of Henry Kuttner, C L Moore (as by Lawrence O'Donnell).
2. Tuesday Classics;
3. Fiction from 1940s.

Free fiction: 2 Hindi novels & a short story of Zeashan Zaidi & Yashwant Kothari

Zeashan's both stories are science fiction. I haven't read Yashwant's novel, but it is probably non-genre.

Zeashan's short story "Avatar": It's about a cyborg planted by an unnamed X-country in India - to play godman, & help build a favorable public opinion towards imports from X country.
Download original Hindi as a 4-part serial: 01, 02, 03, 04. Or automatic translation to English by Google: 01, 02, 03, 04.
PS: I wish all serials have their own label - so a single link needs to be posted & opened!

Zeashan also recently finished posting his serial novel "Taboot" (tr "Coffin"). Download original Hindi, or automatic English translation by Google. This is about the hibernating ancients awoken accidentally in a cave in Assam, & their adventures in modern India. Lot of (low-end) humor.

Both stories make a light read, later in a fun mood too.

Yashwant Kothari's satirical novel "Asatyam Ashivam Asundaram": At Internet Archive.

Related: Stories of Zeashan Zaidi; Hindi fiction; humor.

Michael Shaara's "All the Way Back" (short story, first contact, free): An answer to Fermi's Paradox

If the theory says galaxy must be full of habitable worlds & intelligent life, why haven't we met aliens yet? Light read, occasionally amusing, but with a dark ending.

Story summary.

300 years after setting foot on Mars, & 200 years after exploration of neighboring stars began, humans have found only 4 dead & unusable worlds in all the nearly 1000 star systems they've explored. Fifth one, discovered during the course of this story, is achingly earth-like & spells doom for explorers & may be humanity too!

Jansen & Cohn are in a scout starship. They've been off earth for 11 years, & have examined a lot of star systems - none with a planet, let alone a habitable one. They go into cold sleep during the long ride between stars.

Next one they're about to examine, the star Mina, is the last before they head back home. It's here that they find an earth-like world. It appears devoid of animal, or even insect, life, but it is full of plants. And parts show signs of old intelligent construction & radiation. We will later learn it was wrecked in a nuclear war. But that is long past; they touch down in a radiation free area.

Their entry into Mina system was noted by a patrol of Galactic Scouts; looks like there is of government covering large areas of galaxy - the "Galactic Federation". The aliens we meet are not only humanoid, but physically indistinguishable from humans! And these Scouts employ a "Mind-Search" staff that can telepathically do a lot of things to sentient beings at distances as great as a light year! Amusing parts are where aliens are tracking the human ship.

Anyway, after the humans touch down, the representatives of Scouts come to make contact. Communications is no problem because of telepathy. They tell humans about the already claimed status of this world, the terrible reason the star systems around Sol are void of not only life but worlds, & the unhappy fate of humanity...

Collected in.

1. David Drake, Jim Baen, & Eric Flint (Ed)'s "The World Turned Upside Down".

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding Science Fiction, July 1952.
Rating: A
Download full text.
Related: All first contact stories.

Philip José Farmer's "The Sliced-Crosswise Only-on-Tuesday World" (short story, science fiction, free): Romance in a weird overpopulated world

This story was later expanded into "the Dayworld trilogy, set some thirteen-hundred (normal, not divided by seven) years later", according to Dave at The ED SF Project.

Story summary.

Imagine a world where everyone lives only one day of the week; rest of the week, you hibernate. So you may be a Tuesday person, I may be a Wednesday person, etc!

It's a pretty crowded world. Many unrelated people live together. Somewhere in your house is a "stoner room" where people who use it the other 6 days are hibernating. The hibernation vaults of everyone who share the home - on the same day & on other days - are all together, & have transparent front. These hibernation vaults are called by many names: "eternium cylinders", "stoners", or "coffins".

At the end of your day, you go stand in your vault, & press a button. Machine will automatically wake you next week your day.

When you tell someone your age, you say "thirty-five (Tuesday time)"!

This also is a world with a somewhat high handed government. Oh - the government is also, of course, day-based. So Wednesday President is a different individual than a Tuesday President.

You can seek transfer to another day by applying to governments of both days. It's an extremely tedious process - can take years. And you will be lucky getting the transfer once in a lifetime.

This is the story of Tom Pym, a Tuesday man. "He had been sixteen about one hundred and six years ago, not that that made any difference. Physiologically, he was thirty."

He's just been alloted "the very house he had picked". He will be one of the 63 men & women sharing this home - 9 awake each day. When going into hibernation at the end of the day in his new home, he will fall in love (at first sight) with "Jennie Marlowe. Born 2031 A.D., San Marino, California... twenty-four years old. Actress. Unmarried.", a Wednesday woman who shares his home. He'll leave a message for her; she's not interested in a friendship where she can never meet him.

But he's obsessed with her. So he goes through the years long process of getting himself transfered to her day, after a lot of governmental forms & interviews. Finally, when he arrives in Wednesday world of hers after transfer, he finds to his horror that she has been transferred to Tuesday, his original day, the same day!

Looks like she was also unhappy with her day, had been seeking transfer for a long time, & one of the government officials involved in Tom's transfer who had visited her as part of governmental approval process had also fallen in love with her! Poor Tom, exiled in another world that doesn't have his lady love!

Fact sheet.

First published: Robert Silverberg (Ed)'s "New Dimensions 1", Doubleday, 1971.
Rating: B
Download full text from Internet Archive.
Included in Ellen Datlow's Sci Fiction classics.

John W Campbell, Jr's "Who Goes There?" (science fiction thriller, novella): When the curious opened the bottle, & let the jinn out!

Great fast-paced thriller, even if many of its themes are no longer new. Not always reasonable, but it held my interest all through.

Conceptually, the story is closest to Hal Clement's "Needle" - among the stories I've read. Campbell's version much faster paced. Clement's is more rigorous where behavior of alien is described.

Full text of this story is available for download. But I've not read this online version.

Story summary.

A research expedition is camping in Antarctica - where all action in the story takes place. 37 men, with Commander Garry as leader.

A team investigating magnetic south pole discovers a second minor magnetic pole nearby! Hitherto unknown, & not explained by anything known. Further investigations reveal a buried ancient spaceship of alien origins - "a thing like a submarine without a conning tower or directive vanes, 280 feet long and 45 feet in diameter at its thickest". It's buried "within one hundred feet of the glacier surface"; we will later learn it has been buried for at least 20 million years! Note there was also a magnetic anomaly on moon that led to discovery of ancient sentinel in Arthur Clarke's "2001 A Space Odyssey".

After digging, they find the ship's airlock ajar, but jammed - there is snow inside too. To melt this snow, they throw a supposedly harmless "25-pound thermite bomb", an "ice-softener", in the airlock. Result is: the whole ship is blown to bits, with nothing recoverable!!

Bit more investigation reveals a frozen specimen nearby. An authentic alien, probably intelligent, probably part of the crew, probably tried to take a look at the place after crash & was frozen "within ten feet of the ship". We will later learn - through arguments I don't recall - that the alien ship came from stars; it's not of any world within Sol.

Anyway, the story is about this frozen alien specimen. Some argument after taking it back to camp ("Big Magnet" - that's camp's name), & a decision is made to thaw it - slowly.

There are some arguments presented here that always sound egotistic to me (but I'm not a biologist, & cannot now locate relevant quotes): distinction between "lower" & "higher" lifeforms where it concerns basic life processes. We are told certain fish survive such freezing & thawing, but no higher life forms do. Since a starfaring alien is obviously at least our peer, he is "higher" life form - hence is certainly dead! Objective of thawing is to look at equivalent of alien bacteria - these low life forms are said to survive 20 million years of freezing. They are not considered a health hazard, because alien biochemistry will be so different from earthly one.

Anyway, the group goes to sleep. One guy is working in a room, & that is where the frozen alien is left thawing. By the time the guy notices, alien is not in the room anymore! Alarm is raised, there is commotion among dogs maintained by group, a deadly chase is given, & eventually the alien is electrocuted & is declared dead.

That is when the world begins to fall apart. Arguments are a bit hand-wavy, but they prepare the way for real thriller. We are told the alien biochemistry is such that its cells simply take over any others it comes in contact with. It's a sort of shape shifter - it eats a bit of a dog, & it becomes a dog indistinguishable from other dogs but that dog in not really an earthly dog - it's this alien, & as smart! They found this because the thing they finally killed was partly dog, partly alien; it had not had time to completely adopt new shape.

And it can multiply fast because each of its cells is a complete individual - & as smart. Threaten a drop of its blood, & that drop will defend itself! This threatened blood drops will play a role in the story later.

OK - so here is the threat. Any animal it comes in touch with is absorbed - birds, fish, humans, ... Very soon, all earth life will be alien!

And our friends discover that some of them have been taken over! How to detect friend from foe? That's what the story is about - everyone is a suspect, many tests that each fail because alien has been thinking ahead, infected individuals don't know they are infected, ... Eventually, the running-blood test described earlier will be used to catch & kill the infected crew. 14 crew members will be thus killed!

But that is not all; one individual is still left. He had raised so much ruckus during earlier days that he had been isolated with food. And he kept making annoying noises all though about the week of drama. That's when someone thinks of giving him the running-blood test too - but too late! There will be some fight; eventually they will kill this host of alien too. And some remnant of alien is seen running out to Antarctic wilderness - hopefully to find other victims later!!

Going through the isolation chamber, they figure the alien has been making gadgets to effect escape (by looting the camp's "apparatus caches") - among them a tiny atomic power plant that consumes any material as fuel, & an anti-gravity device he planned to use to fly away! You see, all vehicles of camp, including aircraft, were destroyed beyond any hope of fixing when the menace was discovered - to contain its spread through earth.

We will also learn that the alien wasn't completely frozen; only his metabolism was slowed down. He could still think, & he in fact telepathically put the idea of his thawing in the heads of the crew!

Quotes.

1. "micro-life might retain the power of living. Such unorganized things as individual cells can retain life for unknown periods, when solidly frozen... Organized, highly developed life-forms can't stand that treatment."
2. "individual cells might show the characteristics they had in life, if it is properly thawed. A man's muscle cells live many hours after he has died. Just because they live, and a few things like hair and fingernail cells still live, you wouldn't accuse a corpse of being a Zombie".
3. "childish human weakness of hating the different. On its own world it would probably class you as a fish-belly, white monstrosity with an insufficient number of eyes and a fungoid body pale and bloated with gas."
4. "Nothing would kill it. It has no natural enemies, because it becomes whatever it wants to. If a killer whale attacked it, it would become a killer whale. If it was an albatross, and an eagle attacked it, it would become an eagle. Lord, it might become a female eagle. Go back—build a nest and lay eggs!"
5. "Man studied birds for centuries, trying to learn how to make a machine to fly like them. He never did do the trick; his final success came when he broke away entirely and tried new methods."
6. "It doesn't fight. I don't think it ever fights. It must be a peaceable thing, in its own—inimitable—way. It never had to, because it always gained its end—otherwise."
7. "the blood will not obey. It's a new individual, with all the desire to protect its own life that the original—the main mass from which it was split—has. The blood will live—and try to crawl away from a hot needle".

Movie adaptations.

1. Christian Nyby's "The Thing from Another World" (1951).
2. John Carpenter's "The Thing" (1982).

I haven't seen either of the movies.

Collected in.

1. Ben Bova (Ed)'s "The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume Two A".
2. David Drake, Jim Baen, & Eric Flint (Ed)'s "The World Turned Upside Down".
3. Raymond J Healy & J Francis McComas (Eds)' "Adventures in Time and Space".

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding Science-Fiction, August 1938 (as by Don A Stuart).
Rating: A

* Arthur Clarke's "3001 The Final Odyssey" (novel)

Main post. Why this dummy post?

* Arthur Clarke & Gentry Lee - "Rama Revealed" (novel)

Main post. Why this dummy post?

James Van Pelt's "Of Late I Dreamt of Venus" (novelette, science fiction): Terrafarming Venus!

Full text of this story is available for download.

Story summary.

This is the story of a very rich woman Elizabeth Audrey, & her lover Henry Harrison. She has decided to terrafarm Venus & make it a world that is better than earth.

Since the project is likely to take a 1000 years or more, she has arranged herself & her lover to be put to hibernation for several hundred years at a time - so they can periodically emerge & examine the progress!

A small parallel thread tells us she's not happy with the physical appearance of her lover. So every time they hibernate, she arranges to have some physical aspect of him changed while he's hibernating - without his consent. After a while, he's very angry.

Anyway, the story comprises of 3 or 4 awakenings over the entire terrafarming period. During the final sleep, something went wrong. She barely made it - & woke up as an old woman. Her lover has generally been coming out of hibernation many years before her - so now he's old too.

What she finds after final awakening is that Venus is habitable but nowhere near as good as she wanted. Her lover is very angry because of her tinkering with his body. All her huge properties & corporations are long gone. While Venus is now very alive, she no longer is a heroine; she's now merely a historical curiosity.

Collected in.

1. Gardner Dozois (Ed)'s "The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Fifth Annual Collection" (2008).
   

Fact sheet.

First published: Eric T Reynolds (Ed)'s "Visual Journeys" (anthology), 2007.
Rating: B

Ken MacLeod's "Who's Afraid of Wolf 359?" (short story, space opera): Underdog becomes the empire maker

Readable story, but I would not have missed it had I never seen this.

Most of the stuff is familiar rehashed, sometimes in nonsensical ways. And there are a lot of complicated sounding but incomprehensible sentences.

Download full text or MP3.

Story summary.

Story is set in a future where earth no longer has liquid water & is effectively a dead world. Humans are spread to many worlds, & naming earth is taboo (I could not figure out why) - it is referred to as "Moon's primary"!

Unnamed narrator is a young man forced on a mission by circumstances that can only be called imaginative. He was chasing a woman in some space habitat ("Long Station One"), & she was one of the wives in the harem of local lord ("Tycoon"). He now must pay fines so huge going on this mission is the only way he can escape.

Anyway - the mission. There is a human civilization in orbit around a star called Wolf 359 somewhere. It once comprised of a lot of artificial habitats in orbit around that star, & the civilization was administered by a limited liability company rather than a government.

Company crashed a decade earlier, & nothing has since been heard from this civilization. Civil Worlds, the dominant human galaxy-spanning government, would like to know what happened. Narrator goes there to investigate.

He finds no space habitats, only a single nearly terrestrial planet ("New Earth") that should not have been there, & local humans living in primitive conditions. Here he will learn that after the fall of local administration, some fanatics came up with the solution of "starting social evolution all over again: to build a new planet in the image of the old home planet, and settle it with people whose genes had been reset to the default human baseline."

So they made the planet in the image of earth - note they were competent enough to have made the planet from orbital debris, so they could go back to primitive conditions!!!

AI controlling the ship narrator traveled in has concluded that these locals living in stone age conditions pose a major threat to rest of humans spanning the galaxy, & must be exterminated!! Message has gone out to home world; attacks will come in 37 years!

But our hero, the narrator, has other plans. He plays king maker, makes a powerful local king, uses his ship's AI to build factories, & then space habitats where these people will now move from this silly earth-like planet!! He will also make them build a pile of weapons.

When the attacks come, locals are not only unharmed, but in a position to retaliate. They quickly subdue rest of humanity, & are now the seat of this space empire!

Oh - and there is a curious mode of interstellar travel. Via a catapult ("Long Tube"), conceptually of the kind seen in Heinlein's "Moon is a Harsh Mistress", & Clarke's "Maelstrom II" & a subplot of his "Islands in the Sky". But those were simple ones - to launch payload from moon to earth. These are to launch payload, including live (under hibernation) payload, for interstellar distances at speeds relative which 10% of the speed of light looks puny!!! Payload accelerated electromagnetically "at 30g" in a tube 180 times the distance of earth from Sun - 27 billion km long!!! I prefer old school space stories, thank you - at least Heinlein & Clarke knew what they were talking about.

Notes.

1. Rusty speculates if "Wolf 359" in title is linked to "real planet Wolf 562 c" discovered last year?

Collected in.

1. David Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer (Ed)'s "Year's Best SF 13" (2008).
   

Fact sheet.

"Who's Afraid of Wolf 359?", short story, review
First published: Gardner Dozois & Jonathan Strahan (Eds)' "The New Space Opera", HarperCollins/Eos, 2007.
Rating: B
Nominated for Hugo Awards 2008 in short story category.

Jules Verne & Michel Verne's "In the Year 2889" (short story, science fiction): Beware! Future telling can come true!

A couple of pages into it, & my reaction was - why did Hartwell classify it as hard sf? I still won't classify it as such. It's what is sometimes called "future history" - without much attention to detail of each specific item of technology in this magical future, & yet prophetic.

And it's a very amusing story. The story is set a 1000 years after its publication date; but many of its predictions are already common place just a little over 100 years since its publication. Though often in ways different from they way author thought. The story also includes several themes now popular in science fiction.

Full text of the story is available online.

Story summary.

To tell us how this future looks like, story selects a random date - "September 25th of this present year 2889". It's a diary describing details of the day of one Fritz Napoleon Smith, "editor of the Earth Chronicle" - an influential futuristic newspaper. And one with wealth that "reaches the almost unimaginable figure of $10,000,000,000"!

I collect some quotes in the section below that highlight the elements I found interesting in the story.

Quotes.

Quotes are generally in order they appear in the story. Except occasional ones where I've merged a later quote with a similar earlier one.

1. "modern towns, with populations amounting sometimes to 10,000,000 souls; their streets 300 feet wide, their houses 1000 feet in height; with a temperature the same in all seasons; with their lines of aerial locomotion crossing the sky in every direction".
   
   10 million already sounds rather low for big cities. But we still don't have sky cars or general weather control. Story doesn't talk of air conditioning inside your home, but outside as well!
   
   A bit more on his conception of sky car: "air-coach ... waiting for him at a window." And its driver is called "coachman".
2. "pneumatic tubes through which today one travels at the rate of 1000 miles an hour".
   
   We actually have aircrafts at this speed, though surface transport is still far behind.
3. "so early as ten centuries ago it was known that the differences between the several chemical and physical forces depend on the mode of vibration of the etheric particles, which is for each specifically different. When at last the kinship of all these forces was discovered, it is simply astounding that 500 years should still have to elapse before men could analyze and describe the several modes of vibration that constitute these differences. Above all, it is singular that the mode of reproducing these forces directly from one another, and of reproducing one without the others, should have remained undiscovered till less than a hundred years ago"
   
   Discussion of a research project:
   "Once the elementary bodies ... were held to be sixty-two in number; a hundred years ago they were reduced to ten; now only three remain irresolvable, as you are aware."
   ...
   "these also I will show to be composite."
   ...
   "The practical outcome? Why, that we shall be able to produce easily all bodies whatever--stone, wood, metal, fibers--"
   "And flesh and blood? ... Do you pretend that you expect to manufacture a human being out and out?"
   "Why not?"
4. "those wonderful instruments the new accumulators. Some of these absorb and condense the living force contained in the sun's rays; others, the electricity stored in our globe; others again, the energy coming from whatever source, as a waterfall, a stream, the winds, etc... the transformer, a more wonderful contrivance still, which takes the living force from the accumulator, and, on the simple pressure of a button, gives it back to space in whatever form may be desired, whether as heat, light, electricity, or mechanical force, after having first obtained from it the work required...
   As for their applications, they are numberless. Mitigating the rigors of winter, by giving back to the atmosphere the surplus heat stored up during the summer, they have revolutionized agriculture. By supplying motive power for aerial navigation, ... the continuous production of electricity without batteries or dynamos, of light without combustion or incandescence, and for an unfailing supply of mechanical energy for all the needs of industry."
5. "Instead of being printed, the Earth Chronicle is every morning spoken to subscribers... each subscriber owns a phonograph, and to this instrument he leaves the task of gathering the news whenever he happens not to be in a mood to listen directly himself. As for purchasers of single copies, they can at a very trifling cost learn all that is in the paper of the day at any of the innumerable phonographs set up nearly everywhere."
   
   The rub is - it's not computer supplying this information from other end. It's actual people - in call centers.
6. "thanks to the progress of hygiene, which, abating all the old sources of unhealthfulness, has lifted the mean of human life from 37 up to 52 years"!
7. Description of a video conferencing system: "The first thing that Mr. Smith does is to connect his phonotelephote... The transmission of speech is an old story; the transmission of images by means of sensitive mirrors connected by wires is a thing but of yesterday."
8. Protagonist criticizing the work of a novelist: "Your story is not a picture of life; it lacks the elements of truth. And why? Simply because you run straight on to the end; because you do not analyze. Your heroes do this thing or that from this or that motive, which you assign without ever a thought of dissecting their mental and moral natures... In real life every act is the resultant of a hundred thoughts that come and go, and these you must study, each by itself, if you would create a living character."
9. "Besides his telephone, each reporter ... has in front of him a set of commutators, which enable him to communicate with any desired telephotic line. Thus the subscribers not only hear the news but see the occurrences."
10. Newspaper subscribers have access to some kind of a filter: "the hearers are free to listen only to what specially concerns them. They may at pleasure give attention to one editor and refuse it to another."
11. "Telescopes? O no, the trouble here is about inhabitants!"
    ...
    "then, the moon is positively uninhabited?"
    ...
    "At least ... on the face which she presents to us. As for the opposite side, who knows?"
    ...
    "Ah, the opposite side! You think, then... Why, turn the moon about-face."
    "Ah, there's something in that," cried the two men at once. And indeed, so confident was their air, they seemed to have no doubt as to the possibility of success in such an undertaking.
    
    Wow! Cannot conceive of going to moon, but can physically turn it around!
12. "atmospheric advertising... those enormous advertisements reflected from the clouds, so large that they may be seen by the populations of whole cities or even of entire countries... a thousand projectors are constantly engaged in displaying upon the clouds these mammoth advertisements."
    
    "a cloudless sky! That's too bad... Shall we produce rain? That we might do, but is it of any use? What we need is clouds, not rain."
    ...
    "go see Mr. Samuel Mark, of the meteorological division of the scientific department, and tell him for me to go to work in earnest on the question of artificial clouds. It will never do for us to be always thus at the mercy of cloudless skies!"
    
    Cool. If you live in India during summer, you can go completely crazy because of always overcast skies!
13. "Is war possible in view of modern inventions - asphyxiating shells capable of being projected a distance of 60 miles, an electric spark of 90 miles, that can at one stroke annihilate a battalion; to say nothing of the plague, the cholera, the yellow fever, that the belligerents might spread among their antagonists mutually, and which would in a few days destroy the greatest armies?"
14. "For him, instead of the endless suites of apartments of the olden time, one room fitted with ingenious mechanical contrivances is enough. Here he sleeps, takes his meals, in short, lives."
    
    At the press of a button, this room transforms from a bedroom to dining room to bathroom...!
15. "he turned the tap for the first dish. For like all wealthy folk in our day, Mr. Smith has done away with the domestic kitchen and is a subscriber to the Grand Alimentation Company, which sends through a great network of tubes to subscribers' residences all sorts of dishes".
16. "by the aid of our solar and terrestrial accumulators and transformers, we are able to make all the seasons the same. I propose to do something better still. Transform into heat a portion of the surplus energy at our disposal; send this heat to the poles; then the polar regions, relieved of their snow-cap, will become a vast territory available for man's use."
    
    I wonder how Mr Verne missed out figuring out that this would flood the existing coasts, apart from weather changes which is already a solved problem in this story.
17. "Dr. Nathaniel Faithburn... being a firm believer in human hibernation--in other words, in the possibility of our suspending our vital functions and of calling them into action again after a time--resolved to subject the theory to a practical test. To this end, having first made his last will and pointed out the proper method of awakening him; having also directed that his sleep was to continue a hundred years to a day from the date of his apparent death, he unhesitatingly put the theory to the proof in his own person.
    
    Reduced to the condition of a mummy, Dr. Faithburn was coffined and laid in a tomb."
    
    During the story, we witness the attempt at his resurrection - he has completed 100 years in hibernation. Only he will be found dead already for 100 years - apparently, his experiment had failed.
18. "touching a knob, he established communication with the Central Concert Hall, whence our greatest maestros send out to subscribers their delightful successions of accords determined by recondite algebraic formulas."
    
    Some kind of remote music piping service.
19. "Thanks to the Piano Electro-Reckoner, the most complex calculations can be made in a few seconds. In two hours Mr. Smith completed his task."
    
    Mr Smith wanted to tally some financial transactions - where you will probably use a spreadsheet today.

Collected in.

1. David Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer (Ed)'s "The Ascent of Wonder: The Evolution of Hard SF".
   

Fact sheet.

"In the Year 2889", short story, review
Alternate titles: "The Day of an American Journalist in the Year 2889", "Time Travelers".
First published in English: The Forum, New York, February 1889.
Rating: A

On authorship of this story.

1. According to a note in Project Gutenberg's copy of this story: "Although published under the name of Jules Verne, it is now believed to be chiefly if not entirely the work of Jules' son, Michel Verne."
2. According to another source, "This story was written by Michel Verne (Verne's son) Jules Verne later modified it and it was published in 1890 as La journée d'un journaliste américain en 2890 with the title changed so the date of publication would be 1000 years before the date of the story."
3. Some more enlightenment is provided on the authorship & history of this story in Editor's Note (in pink at the beginning) of this online copy of the story.
   

Larry Niven's "Wait It Out": A man in natural stasis, on Pluto

While the idea of stasis is used in many stories - to freeze people when they travel between stars or far off planets, or till time the medical state of the art can cure them of something terminal, or just as somebody's practical joke, I haven't yet seen a stasis story of this class. Very thoughtful, though I am not sure of practicality.

Story summary.
Narrator, along with Jerome Glass & Sammy Cross, has traveled to Pluto on an exploration mission when Pluto was closest to earth. About 18 months one way trip.

Sammy will stay in orbit; narrator with Jerome goes down in a landing craft.

Something goes wrong after landing. I didn't quite catch all the details of accident, but the two are now marooned. No way to go back to orbiting return vehicle.

Sammy quickly commits suicide - by removing his helmet, & quickly freezing to death.

Narrator does something similar but doesn't die. He is now in a semi-stasis. Comes alive with very sluggish metabolism & thoughts during night; is pretty much dead during the day.

Story is told by this frozen narrator for whom the time has all but stopped. And he is awaiting rescue which will surely come some day!

Fact sheet.
Wait It Out, short story, review
First published: "The Future Unbound Program Book", 1968
Rating: B

See also.

1. Very good illustration to accompany the story, by Joe Bergeron.
   

Peter Watts' "Blindsight" (novel, science fiction): Second rate first-contact story

A stranger knocks at your door. What do you you do? You hit him with a rod - because he might be hostile! That, in a nutshell, is the message of this story!

I have an instinctive dislike of stories & people who use too much techno-babble. With rare exceptions, experience says they usually have no clue to what they are talking about. I did not really count, but I think about two-thirds of all sentences in this book contain jargon!

I have a third reason to dislike this book. "Gutter language" is the term we use in India for describing the language used in this book. I am aware different countries & communities have different tolerances - so your mileage on this count might differ from mine.

The only reason I read the whole book was its publicity & claims that it provides new insights into first contact possibilities. It doesn't.

In fact, author gives a cue - in a different context - that also applies to interpretation of this book: "something has coded nonsense in a way that poses as a useful message; only after wasting time and effort does the deception becomes apparent. The signal functions to consume the resources of a recipient for zero payoff and reduced fitness. The signal is a virus. Viruses do not arise from kin, symbionts, or other allies. The signal is an attack."

Title of the story comes from a form of hallucination where your mind says you are seeing something, but your eye is not really seeing the thing. This is an effect some human adventurers in the story experience.
Note: Aug 4, 2007: I guess I did not quite get the meaning of "blindsight" right. Comments #1 & #2 below clarify. Sorry. And my thanks to commentators.

In spite of all the negatives, there are some observations in the story that made me ponder. I collect them here.

This book is available both in paper form, & as a web download.

Story summary.
Feb 13, 2082. Earth received an easily visible & extensive meteor shower. Event got dubbed Fireflies - sometimes shortened to Flies. Investigations reveal they mostly consisted of iron.

We are later told they were actually 65,536 probes of alien origin. They took scientific measurements & then burned up in atmosphere. They formed a pattern in the skies, & said something - though no one knew what.

We are not told how, but those in authority have figured out a long period comet as a possible alien target. So a ship is made in record 18 months, & a crew is assembled to make first contact.

Now this crew cast is curious, to put it mildly:

1. Siri Keeton aka Cygnus, the narrator. He had half his brain removed surgically when he was a child - to cure "some kind of viral epilepsy". He is now a "freelance synthesist" - a job described as someone who explains "the Incomprehensible to the Indifferent", or someone who bridges "the gap between the people who make the breakthroughs and the people who take the credit for them". Most crew mates think of him as a spy of Mission Control on earth, though they generally tolerate him. He is an expert at reading body language, & also has some telepathic ability.

2. Jukka Sarasti - commander of the mission, & an - hold your breath - authentic vampire! Genetically engineered. Since he is by nature a predator, we are told he is far smarter than us. In particular, he can simultaneously look at a problem from multiple perspectives. He also likes violence, though he controls it well - for the most part, at least, where humans are concerned; but not where aliens are concerned. He also directly interfaces with the ship - his brain can be directly connected to an interface port on ship via a cable (I could not understand how his end plugs into his head).

3. Susan James - a woman with 4 independent personalities, each really a different person. I didn't quite catch how this was achieved. She is the communications expert; different personalities will presumably come in handy when talking to aliens about whom we know nothing.

4. Major Amanda Bates - the fighter. She commands an impressive armory & a contingent of fighter robots. Just to be prepared, if violence becomes necessary.

5. Isaac Szpindel - some kind of a medical expert. Not only is he available for any medical contingencies for the crew, he is supposed to be able to study the alien life. Assuming they will present themselves for dissection! He is very good at using prosthetic extensions of his senses.

6. Robert Cunningham - a standby for Isaac Szpindel.

There are three more unnamed crew member who remains in stasis all through the story. For a total of 9 member crew.

The ship they will be traveling in is called Theseus. This is a very competent & smart ship. Ship can also increase its size, & can assemble pretty much anything by collecting material from interplanetary space. Ship is so smart, everyone refers to it as the Captain.

They travel in stasis - hibernation - "sleep apnea". Because it's a long journey.

When the narrator wakes up, he realizes he has overslept by 5 years! And he is not where he should be in space. Apparently, somewhere beyond Neptune, the ship received signals from a bearing that confused it; current chase began after ship sought clarifications from earth & tracked the source.

They are now somewhere in Kuiper belt - chasing this object "200 km diameter" & "transmitting to a target not familiar to Man."

This target is dubbed Burns-Caulfield. I have an impression Theseus is one of the 3 human ships out to investigate it - not sure. Anyway, Our guys sneak up to it, & find that it is a comet - with an ice covering & some kind of structure underneath. As soon as Theseus turns its radar on it, it goes momentarily blind. When it recovers, Burns-Caulfield has vanished!

Through arguments I did not follow, it is concluded that Burns-Caulfield was an alien decoy to mislead humans. Their real ship is elsewhere. And decoy has been discovered before aliens wanted discovery.

OK - so our friends head for the real thing. I am not clear how they found the new target location - probably by tracking direction of Burns-Caulfield's radio transmissions (without coming in the radio field!). Anyway, after another long journey, they see a supermassive gas giant in the outer reaches of the solar system - 7 light months from earth; they dub it "Big Ben" or Ben. Ben weighs "over ten Jupiters" & is "measured twenty percent wider at the belly". We are told Ben is "a dismembered remnant of some long-lost galaxy that had drifted into ours and ended up as road kill, uncounted billions of years ago ... something from outside the Milky Way"!

They go in orbit around it, & observe curious things. Looks like somebody is using Ben as an agricultural field - growing things - seeding, harvesting, etc. Again, I was at a loss to follow arguments leading to this conclusion.

Then they accidentally detect something even more curious - a dark object orbiting Ben with a 40 hour period - "almost low enough to graze the atmosphere". It's a 30 km wide, hiding itself from human ship, & tracking human ship - I could not follow how humans determined it was tracking them.

As soon as the object figures it has been detected, it begins communicating in English. Our friends talk. Just hello, & trivialities. Dark object identifies itself as Rorschach, & humans determine it is some kind of a ship. They also observe that it is growing.

After a while, humans figure it is a "Chinese Room" - an entity that appears to carry out an apparently reasonable conversation without the least idea of what it is talking about! This is where humans figure they can do some violent & forced investigation.

Hence begins the tale of forced human landing on alien ship, in spite of their warnings to the contrary. Over several landings (using the shuttle Scylla), humans cut through alien ship's hull at more than one places, face some hallucinations & injuries inside ship, kill some creatures inside, & kidnap two for investigation! These alien creatures are dubbed "Scramblers".

Kidnapped ones, dubbed Stretch & Clench, are put in cages, & treated to all kinds of abuse. But extreme comes when the humans want to figure out a way of communicating with aliens. Reminded me of laboratory animals. Use torture to make them learn! Here is the enlightenment:

"Start with two beings ... that ... know how to talk among themselves.

Separate them. Let them see each other... Let them practice the art of conversation in their own chosen way...

Hurt them...

when you discover just the right stimulus, the optimum balance between pain and injury, you must inflict it without the remorse...

give one of your subjects the means to end the pain, but give the other the information required to use it. To one you might present a single shape, while showing the other a whole selection. The pain will stop when the being with the menu chooses the item its partner has seen...

This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you
hurt it, and keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the speech
from the screams."

Hence begins the Inquisition to learn their competence (way beyond humans) & their way of talking that ultimately results in the death of both subjects!

Naturally there is a reaction from alien ship. End is escape of a live Siri & a dead Jukka in a shuttle Charybdis towards earth. All other occupants of both Theseus & Rorschach die, along with destruction of both ships.

Fact sheet.
"Blindsight", novel, review
Rating: C
First published: October 2006
Nominated for Hugo Award 2007 in novel category.

See also.

1. Eric Donovan in Larry Niven's stories is a cyborg much more deeply integrated with the spaceship via prosthetic aids, when compared with Jukka Sarasti or Isaac Szpindel.
2. An alternative & non-violent way of learning the language to communicate with very cooperative aliens is found in Ted Chiang's "Story Of Your Life".