Jack Skillingstead's "Scrawl Daddy": Figuring out alien space travel technology

This is an extremely contrived urban ghetto story of an evil scientist, helped by an evil government, to make life miserable for innocent humans used a guinea pigs in dangerous experiments without their consent.

Story summary.

One fine day, an alien falls from the sky! Scientists confirm this after examining the remains. In due course, we learn of an alien space travel "portal" that opens a kilometer above earth's surface somewhere! Only, it's one way - you can come in, but not go out via this door. Our brilliant scientists also figure out, starting from the fallen alien, the location of his home world - "in a region of space occupied by the double star Albireo", also known as "Beta Cygni"!!!

Humans also have a similar space travel technology - Tachyon Funnel Acceleration (TFA) - only it is inferior. They want to learn the alien technology, but how to go to alien world?

There is also a rub in that TFA travel involves accelerations too strong for anything living. This issue is ultimately resolved by "lead lined titanium baffles" as if covering in a strong material will reduce acceleration felt! But that is only one of the minor technical points you are expected to ignore.

Enter David Statama, the evil scientist. He works in genetics, & has figured a way to make animals age faster than normal. I could not quite figure out how this faster aging helped travel to alien world, but it is used in the story.

Evil scientist, with help from evil government, takes charge of 3 innocent orphans - Barney Huff, Faye Rutherford, & Joe Null. He will harvest their cells & clone them. He will put them in a mechanical nursery tended by robots where the clones will grow. They will also be taught all they need to know by directly feeding the knowledge into their brains! And they will be made to age faster - don't ask me why! They will be put in this magical box that will be thrown down the TFA towards the alien world. They are still cells when they leave earth - they will grow into an embryo & mature during their lonely journey. Three clones will be launched at an year's interval.

There is another piece. Embryo's brain is telepathically linked to original at earth! So whatever the clone learns can be learned on earth.

Only as the lonely embryos grow, they panic - sending the panic back to originals, ensuring they end up in a lunatic asylum!

Eventually, Joe will successfully discover his fate & escape with the help of Anthea, his lady love. Faye will attempt freedom, but will be caught by evil scientist.

There are many other magical technologies, among them the stuff for high tech graffiti - an art where Joe excels. Story title comes from this graffiti business.

Fact sheet.

"Scrawl Daddy", short story, review
First published: Asimov's Science Fiction, June 2007.
Rating: C

R Neube's "Studies in the Field": A human plays protector on an alien world

While the story has colorful detail of a very alive alien world, & of the human adventure there, I seem to have read just too many stories of the ilk. Found it a little boring.

Story summary.

Narrator is a human born on Mars, a "professor of xenopology" at the "University of Deimos", currently on a "field trip" to the alien world named "Therov IV". He went there with 3 graduate students, but all students were killed by a local predator; only Professor survives.

The world has two sentient species - "doughboys" live like aboriginals of may be eighteenth century earth, "Raken" are at the level Europeans were when they began exploring the seas. Wherever Raken meet "doughboys", later get butchered.

Narrator has been living with a tribe of "doughboys", & helping them out in little ways. When Rakens attack, he not only kills them, but goes after their cities & fleets destroying much - thus buying some more years of survival for "doughboys".

Fact sheet.

"Studies in the Field", short story, review
First published: Asimov's Science Fiction, June 2007.
Rating: B

Kristin Mandigma's "Excerpt from a Letter by a Social-realist Aswang": A politician's doublespeak

Of the half dozen odd stories I've read to date from Clarkeworld magazine, this is easily the best. Light satire about the doublespeak of a Filipino politician professing the communist cause.

Satire is a bit sharpened by declaring the politician to be an aswang (a mythological Filipino counterpart of a western vampire), rather than an ordinary human.

There is a bit of unnecessary banter about sf literature & Heinlein's "Starship Troppers". Except for that, & with a sharper focus on political satire, this story could have made it to my best of the year 2007 picks. In its current form, I'll say it's a "not bad" light reading.

Full story text is available as a free download.

Fact sheet.

"Excerpt from a Letter by a Social-realist Aswang", short story, review
First published: Clarkesworld, October 2007.
Rating: B

Holly Phillips' "Three Days of Rain": Epic tale of a parched city

This is a good read for a lazy afternoon when you want to stick to familiar plot. Good language, easy to follow & rather familiar storyline - tribe needs to move from its ancient home because the local lake has run out of water.

Presented in an epic style, except for abrupt ending.

Fact sheet.

Length: short story
First published: Asimov's Science Fiction, June 2007.
Rating: A

Theodora Goss' "Catherine and the Satyr": A slave is freed

Don't bother with this story unless you are familiar with English history & some mythology. If you qualify, & like snob stories with cruelty, you are still likely to find it a very ordinary one.

Full story text is available as a free download.

Story summary.

A group of snobs in colonial era England. One of them likes to collect exotic animals. Among his collection is a caged Satyr.

Webster tells me Satyr is either a mythological Greek god, or a man with rather excitable libido. As the story progresses, Satyr of this story appears very much human, though he is described as a savage; colonists had picked him up in some foreign land. He is pretty much a caged slave, kept for owner's amusement. You poke him with a stick when you want him to make sounds - e.g., when you show your visitors around!!

Catherine is a woman among these aristocrats & she is going through a bad patch with her husband. Feels empathy towards Satyr. Frees him, has sex with him, & gets pregnant. But this is a small part of the whole story - near end.

Fact sheet.

Length: short story
First published: Strange Horizons, 1 Oct 2007.
Rating: C

Lavie Tidhar's "The Master": An old man has seen better days

I found this novelette-size story extremely readable primarily on the strength of beautiful language. Plot is rather weak, end is pessimistic, & there is nothing sf about it.

Also much of the subject matter is politically very controversial. If your sympathies lie on the Arab side of Israel/Arab conflict, you might want to either skip this story, or mentally replace all occurrences of Israel with humans & Arab with aliens to make acceptable text! I sometimes wonder if politically controversial stories will have a larger market if presented as parables?

Full text of this story is available as a free download.

Story summary.

Shaul Canaan is an old man - once a very successful writer of political propaganda style children's adventure stories where Israeli kids beat bigger Arab villains. He stopped writing after the death of his wife Na'ama, & is now living the life of a recluse.

Much of the story is his ruminations on better days. Near end, he mingles with crowds for a while, & comes back disenchanted - wishing old days back.

See also.

1. Kevin Anderson & Rebecca Moesta's "Rough Draft": Another story about a fiction writer who has given up on writing. But there is a deliverance at end.

Fact sheet.

Length: short story
First published: Strange Horizons, 8 Oct 2007.
Rating: A

Arthur C. Clarke's "Earthlight" (novella, science fiction): Interplanetary war over energy resources, fought with super-weapons

This novella-size story - almost 40 densely packed larger-than-normal pages in my copy of "Collected Stories" - tackles a subject that is rather rare among Clarke's stories - war. Of the 100 odd Clarke stories & novels I have posted on at this site & older companion site, I can off-hand recall only one other war story - "Superiority".

This is also among the better stories by Clarke. Except fighting scenes near end, & the utopian final peace treaty, this is a hard-sf story in best traditions of the genre. There are a lot of small details about Moon - generally very realistic, considering the year it was published in.

Political background of the story.

Many outer planets have been colonized, as is Venus. Outer planets are very energetic, constantly expanding the frontier outwards. There are three political groupings - governments of Earth, Venus, & the "Federation of the Outer Planets". Earth includes Moon; Federation includes Mars & every colony beyond.

Because of expanding frontier, Federation has been attracting the best brains, & is technologically the most advanced of the three. War will be fought between Earth & Federation over access to energy resources.

The contentious energy supplies.

Earth is unique among the planets in that it has large deposits of uranium - only most of these are buried thousand miles deep, & are pretty much inaccessible. "Johnstone's theory of satellite formation" says the moon broke off earth. Some recent studies have shown that Moon has "enough uranium to make all the deposits on Earth look like very small stuff"; all this easily accessible uranium originally came from deeper recesses inside earth.

Federation wants larger access to this uranium pool: "they had to have the atomic power to open up the cold outer planets and that Earth could manage quite easily with alternative sources of energy". Earth politicians fear Federation's growing clout, want to ration supplies.

The super-weapons of war.

Federation has "Wilson or acceleration less drive": ships fitted with it can start & stop at a million-g without affecting their human cargo! They are confident they can forcibly take all the uranium they need on moon. Three of their ships - "Acheron", "Eridanus", & "Phlegethon" - will come mounting the raid.

Earth has both a defensive & attack weapon Federation doesn't know about. We are not given many details, but it makes use of the knowledge about a new kind of radiation. It can shield an installation - harmlessly destroying any incoming torpedoes in the sky; & it can attack the enemy ships with "polaran beam" - against which they simply have no defense.

At the end of war, earth garrison on moon defending a uranium mine will be completely destroyed. Two of the enemy ships will be destroyed; third so badly hurt, it will have to limp back home.

Plot summary.

Sid Jamieson & Conrad Wheeler are young astronomers at a lunar observatory, & also friends; they will be the characters observing most action. Large parts of the story is about life on moon & at the observatory.

Following an unexplained massive emergency exercise to quickly remove the main reflector, & then to put it back, ordered by observatory Director, Professor Maclaurin, there is some resentment in staff because all work had come to a standstill for no fathomable reason. Dr Robert Molton, an older astronomer, offers his uranium theory & likely conflict over it - while gossiping with the two friends.

Soon afterwards, observatory staff begin observing a lot of rocketship traffic in the vicinity of observatory. During a leisure trip to the country-side, the two friends will bump into the secret military facility newly built over a uranium mine that earth considers a likely candidate of attack. But the local staff easily ward them off, feeding them a false story that it is some kind of a super communications facility.

A few days after their return, during a lunar night, Sid will get a request from Director to drive a visitor - Dr James Alan Fletcher - to that military installation, because Sid is the best driver around. Looks like the visitor's rocket from earth had to make an emergency landing, & dropped him way off target.

Sid & Conrad will drive the visitor. On the way, they will learn about the impending attack, & that visitor is somehow linked to the defense plan. After dropping him, the friends are advised to quickly put as much distance as they can between themselves & the military facilities where the hostilities will soon break.

Hostilities break sooner than expected. The friends observe the entire fight from a secure hiding place in the open country. Their vehicle will be destroyed during the fight. So they will eventually trek back to observatory, 80 miles away, with earth shining bright in the lunar sky - in "earthlight". They will be picked up part way through by an observatory vehicle after their SOS.

End is rather tame. Both earth & Federation politicians become reasonable, & sign a treaty that looks good for mankind!

Trivia.

1. This story makes a passing reference to H G Wells' "The First Men in the Moon", hinting Wells' story was too imaginative by the time Clarke's own story was written. I haven't read Wells' story.
   

Fact sheet.

Length: short story
First published: Thrilling Wonder Stories, August 1951.
Rating: A
Note: In 1955, an expanded version of this story was published as a novel under the same title. I have not read this novel.

This story appears in the following collections.

1. "The Collected Stories of Arthur C Clarke"
2. "Across the Sea of Stars": Contains the 1955 expanded novel version of this story.