Brian W. Aldiss - Perilous Planets

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Brian W. Aldiss is Britain's leading science fiction writer. He has won many of

the prizes in the field, including the Hugo, the Nebula, and the BSFA Award. The

Australians voted him 'World's Best Contemporary Writer of SF', and his novels

and stories have been translated into many languages. His science fiction novels

include Non-Stop (1958), Hothouse (1962), and recently more controversial novels

such as The Dark Light Years (1964), Report on Probability A (1967), and Barefoot

in the Head (1969). He has also proved himself a master of the short story, in

such collections as The Moment of Eclipse (1970). His recently published history

of science fiction Billion Year Spree has been widely acknowledged as a major

contribution to the genre.

Also available in Orbit edited by Brian W. Aldiss:

SPACE ODYSSEYS

EVIL EARTHS

GALACTIC EMPIRES Vols. I and 2

Perilous Planets

An anthology of way-back-when futures

edited by

Brian W. Aldiss

Futura Publications Limited

An Orbit Book

First published in Great Britain by George Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd

This edition 1980

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or

otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's

prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is pub-

lished and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on

the subsequent purchaser

ISBN o 7088 80711

Reproduced, printed and bound in Great Britain by Hazell Watson & Viney Ltd

Aylesbury, Bucks

Futura Publications Limited no Warner Road Camberwell, London

SE5

'HOW ARE THEY ALL ON DENEBIV ?' by C. C. Shackleton

MOUTH OF HELL by David I. Masson

Ltd. from THE CALTRAPS OF TIME by David I. Masson

BRIGHTSIDE CROSSING by Alan E. Nourse

by permission of Brandt & Brandt

THE SACK by William Morrison

of the Conde Nast Publications Inc. First published in the September 1950 issue of

Astounding Science Fiction

THE MONSTER by A. E. van Vogt

tions Inc.). Reprinted by arrangement with Forrest J. Ackerman and the E. J. Car-

nell Literary Agency. First published it} Astounding Science Fiction 1948

THE MONSTERS by Robert Sheckley

Co. Ltd.

GRENVILLE'S PLANET by Michael Shaara

BEACHHEAD by Clifford Simak

Mills Limited. First published in Fantastic Adventures July 1951

THE ARK OF JAMES CARLYLE by Cherry Wilder

her agent, Virginia Kidd. Published in New Writings in SF 24 edited by Kenneth

Bulmer. First published by Sidgwick & Jackson in 1974. Corgi edition published in

1975

ON THE RIVER by Robert F. Young

author

GODDESS IN GRANITE by Robert F. Young

Published in THE WORLDS OF ROBERT F.

YOUNG (Gollancz Feb. 1974). Reprinted from The Magazine of Fantasy and

Science Fiction, September 1957

THE SEEKERS by E. C. Tubb

mission of the author and the E. J. Carnell Literary Agency

WHEN THE PEOPLE FELL by Cordwainer Smith

Linebarger. Reprinted by permission of the author's estate and the Scott Mere-

dith Literary Agency Inc., 845 Third Avenue, New York, NY

SCHWARTZ BETWEEN THE GALAXIES by Robert Silverberg

thor and his agents, Scott Meredith Literary Agency Inc., 845 Third Avenue, New

York, NY10022

THE TITAN by P. Schuyler Miller

Drake, sister and heir

FOUR IN ONE by Damon Knight

author

THE AGE OF INVENTION by Norman Spinrad

tasy and Science Fiction by permission of the author and his agent, Michael

Bakewell & Associates Ltd.

THE SNOWMEN by Frederik Pohl

sion of the author and the E. J. Carnell Literary Agency

CONTENTS

Introduction

'How Are They All on Deneb IV ?'

C. C. Shackleton

SECTION 1 UNINHABITED PLANETS.

'. . . Because They're There'

Mouth of Hell

David I. Masson

Brightside Crossing

Alan E. Nourse

The Sack William Morrison

SECTION 2 INHABITED PLANETS.

Whatever Answers the Door . . .

The Monster

A. E. van Vogt

The Monsters

Robert Sheckley

Grenville's Planet

Michael Shaara

Beachhead Clifford D. Simak

SECTION 3 A DASH OF SYMBOLS.

No Names to the Rivers

The Ark of James Carlyle

Cherry Wilder

On the River

Robert F. Young

Goddess in Granite

Robert F. Young

The Seekers

E. C. Tubb

SECTION 4 MARS AND VENUS.

Love and War

When the People Fell

Cordwainer Smith

The Titan P. Schuyler Miller

SECTION 5 BECOMING MORE ALIEN. A Universal Home Truth

Four in One Damon Knight

The Age of Invention Norman Spinrad

The Snowmen Frederik Pohl

Schwartz Between the Galaxies Robert Silverberg

Afterword

INTRODUCTION

Long before I began compiling this book, I could see what it had to contain. Its title

and its contents leaped at me while I was working on the first anthology in this series,

Space Opera*,

three years ago.

For the majority of readers new to science fiction, a landing on another planet - a

planet, because unknown, even more perilous than Earth - must be their peak ex-

perience of the genre. If they don't get the true sf charge out of touchdown on Procyon

v, they will never get any charge at all. The cutting edge of science fiction lies along the

interface between the known and the unknown.

So what I wanted for my anthology was that seminal story in which our brave as-

tronauts, or space-travellers as they used to be called, make the first-ever voyage

through space, see the stars like jewels flung into the sack of night, and touch down on

a totally unknown planet. There they jump out to test the atmosphere, find it even

better than Earth's, and take a stroll amid the glorious scenery. Whereupon something

awful appears and - according to which seminal story you read -attempts to eat them,

warps their minds with obscene telepathic messages, or captures them and takes them

into subterranean tunnels.

It was a fantastic story, one you remember for the rest of your life. My trouble was,

I had forgotten

which

story it was. For months, I leafed my way through my library,

looking for the seminal story. I found plenty of stories like it, but never that actual

story.

Eventually the truth dawned. That seminal story had no actual existence. It was a

creation of my memory, compounded from elements common to many similar first-

landing stories.

It was, you might say,

a folk memory of landing on a strange planet.

* Space Opera was followed by Space Odysseys, Evil Earths, and Galactic Em-

pires (in two volumes), all from the publishers of this companion volume.

Looking backwards into the mists of receding time, or the receding mists of time,

I can see how the legend has gradually become briefer and more sophisticated over

the ages since I first began reading, and the sayers of the saga themselves gradu-

ally less Neanderthal. Right on the edge of the abyss where memory begins, I am

able to recall myself lying in my cot, dummy in mouth, reading an absolutely en-

chanting Great Progenitor of the story in Wonder Stories.

This is how that Great Progenitor went.

Two professors with German names are arguing about the nature of life. One of

them believes that life would be possible even with a silicon-based metabolism, as

opposed to the carbon-based metabolism prevalent on Earth; the other does not so

believe. Both put their points of view. Sometimes they grow angry and strike their

brows, or scribble equations on a handy blackboard. Every few chapters, in comes

the housekeeper and throws more coal on the fire.

So heated grows the argument, that the two professors with German names de-

cide to settle the matter by travelling to Mars, which they suspect is a silicon world.

Going out into the backyard, they begin to assemble a rocketship, still occasionally

striking their brows. Some parts they get from the local hardware store, where the

owner is amused by their preposterous idea; he often looks over the garden fence

to joke with them. But progress is made, little by little, chapter by chapter.

The rocket is completed. The two professors with German names persuade their

housekeeper to come along with them as cook; she consents to come as long as she

can bring her dog, Fritz. They climb aboard, shovel in the coal, heat up the

boiler, and the rocket goes shooting up into space - to the considerable discomfiture

of the hardware store owner.

Space is very interesting and is described in some detail. They can see all the

planets in the solar system, etc. They are aiming for Mars but Fritz knocks the

compass over and they land by accident on Jupiter instead. To their surprise,

they find Jupiter is rather like Earth, except cloudier. Also the trees are bigger.

The two professors with German names step outside and sniff the air. It is even

better than Earth's. They take a stroll.

Whereupon something appears. It is a crowd of Jovians and - bless my soul! -

they prove to have a silicon-based metabolism. So one of the professors wins his

argument. They shake hands and marry the housekeeper, whose carbon-based

metabolism has always had a certain appeal.

Doubtless some of my more cynical readers will find this story a little naive,

comical even. Let me assure you that my first impressions were entirely more fa-

vourable. At that tender age, I had never heard anyone discussing such a fascinat-

ing subject as the nature of life; if taxed I might have claimed offhand that life had

no nature. Nor had the subject of a silicon-based metabolism ever crossed my mind.

I believe I am correct in saying that it was this metaphysical aspect of science fiction

which interested me as much as the actual spaceflight and landing on Jupiter.

As the ages passed and I left nappies behind, I found that the story of that

first landing was developing. The earlier chapters became abridged, even perfunc-

tory. The spaceships were still built privately in back yards, but the details of

manufacture, and the argument, were curtailed. The landing, and what happened

then, became the thing. After more ages the stories simply skipped the prolegom-

ena and opened with the ship blasting out of space and the captain jumping out of

his ship, sniffing the air and finding it even better than Earth's, and claiming it

in the name of - well, it used to be the British Empire, but that changed too.

Nowadays, the formula has tightened still further. Perhaps you will recall a re-

cent story which begins smartly, 'After landing on Regulus v, the men of the Yar-

molinsky Expedition made camp .. .' (I prefer not to give the name of the story; with

any luck, you will find it in the next anthology in this series.)

There was a time, during the sixties, when it looked as if the first-landing story

was dead, killed by its own cliches. At that period, Harry Harrison and I had

started the first of our many collaborations, a little magazine of sf criticism entitled

SF Horizons. An Oxford friend of ours, C. C. Shackleton, wrote some witty send-ups

of various aspects of science fiction. One subject he impaled was precisely this mat-

ter of first-landings; as one can infer from his remarks he felt the subject had

suffered severely from over-use. I am happy to include his piece, 'How Are They

All on Deneb IV ?' as a kind of postscript to this Introduction, since it defines the

area more wittily than I could ever aspire to do.

So this anthology does not contain that first-landing story you remember. It

was just a folk-memory. All parts of the legend are, of course, embedded in H. G.

Well's novel, The First Men on the Moon. One never forgets the moment when Cavor

and Beford see the sun rise, watch the plants grow, and sniff the air, to find it even

better than Earth's.

What this anthology does contain are stories which, while being excellent in

their own right, range along the whole spectrum of interest aroused by that feat

which still remains imaginary: standing upon another planet. (The Moon is a sat-

ellite, not a planet.) That particular kind of thrill has been conjured in literature

since time immemorial; during time memorial, sf is the name of the literature that

does it now.

Actual unrestricted travel in space, if it ever comes, may alter the nature of

science fiction, as reality wipes out folk memories. There must be other beings on

other planets who dream similar tales. I'm convinced - I know it is controversial to

say this - that when we get to Jupiter we shall find it inhabited by creatures with

a silicon-based metabolism. For sure, their writers will be writing science fiction,

too. Who knows, maybe it's even better than Earth's ...

We have here seventeen stories from nine different magazines; their vintages

cover a span of three decades. Some are deservedly famous, some undeservedly

neglected. As always, in the hope of preserving a whiff of period flavour, I have left

the original blurbs intact, or forged them where the originals were not available.

Can you tell the fakes ? Two hundred and fifteen correct answers to the last an-

thology so far. An additional puzzle this time: which piece is by me, operating un-

der a pen name ?

Brian W. Aldiss Heath House Southmoor October 1976

'HOW ARE THEY ALL ON DENEB IV ?' by C. C. Shackleton

All right, I know, times are changing. It's the great theme of our age. Ever

since evolution and all that, the decades have gone hog wild for change; you'd

think there was a law about it. Maybe there is a law about it.

Don't think I'm complaining: I am. Since I was a kid, everything has changed,

from the taste of bread to the nature of Africa and China. But at least I thought

sf would stay the same.

Instead, what has happened ? It's all different. They don't write like Heinlein

any more - even Heinlein doesn't. In the old days, you knew exactly where you

stood in a story. Take the aliens; back in the Golden Age, when the writers had a

bit of a sense of wonder and there were blondes on the covers, you knew the

aliens would always be there, endlessly mown down, endlessly picturesque,

swarming over endless alien worlds. But nowadays - well, let's take actual cases,

he said, reaching eagerly for the May 1940 copy of Gruelling Science Stories. The

Luftwaffe was plastering London at the time, but thank heavens the American sf

writers hadn't got wind of that, and Zago Blinder was still turning out his custom-

ary peaceful limpid prose. His May 1940 stint was entitled, with what I've always

thought showed considerable skill in alliteration, 'The Devils of Deneb iv'.

You know how this sort of thing goes right from the start. The pleasure lies in

its predictability. Scarcely has the whine (whisper, snarl, thunder) of the landing

jets died than the hatch opens and three Earthmen jump (crawl, climb, fall) out

and stand looking round Deneb iv. They find the air is breathable and quickly

hoist the flag (Old Glory, U.N. banner, Stars and Stripes).

Up to now, we readers have been carried along breathlessly (restlessly, hesi-

tantly, mindlessly) on the flood of the author's

prose, full of admiration for the way in which he has so economically created a

situation so distinct from our own humdrum world. More, the old-timers among

us are full of gratitude for his dropping the first three (four, six, twelve) chapters

describing the construction of the spaceship in someone's back yard and its long

eventful journey to Deneb which were once considered compulsory in this sort of

exercise.

Now, however, comes an awkward pause. We have been brought painlessly

through what the textbooks call Building Up Atmosphere, Establishing Environ-

ment, Creating Character, and so on. The idyllic mood must be shattered. It is

time to Introduce the Action.

'Look!' gasps (coughs, barks, yells) the captain, pointing with trembling (rigid,

scarred, nicotine-stained) finger at the nearby hill (jungle, ocean, ruined temple).

His crewmen follow the line of his fingertip, and there approaching them they see

an angry group (ugly bunch, slavering horde, slobbering herd) of Denebians who

are plainly out for blood as they gallop (surge, slime, esp) towards the spaceship.

You must admit this is value for money, particularly if you only borrowed the

magazine. In no time, the three intrepid explorers are back in their ship and the

vile Denebians are trying to scratch their way in through the cargo hatch.

What more could you ask for? Personally, I asked for nothing more; I had

had enough by the time I came across this situation for the fiftieth time. It was

not boredom so much as bravery. The Denebians weren't what they used to be.

However mindless and merciless they got, I was no longer scared. I developed im-

munity. Yet, for all that, I liked things the way they were. The more unsociably

those aliens behaved, the more I realized how superior we Earthmen were.

Then things became less straightforward. I was rifling through Microscopic Sex

Wonder during the boom year of 1951 when I realized that Deneb was no longer the

same. They'd dared to alter the plot!

This time, the aliens .didn't appear when the flag was hoisted. Everything was

peaceful - too peaceful. Our three chums wandered among beautiful trees, or

they found charming people like themselves but nicer, with sweet old mums sit-

ting

knitting on the porch, and Pa sucking a corn cob and spittin' to avoid bunches

of rosy-cheeked kids, or else they found nothing there at all except the waving

grass.

You remember what happened, don't you ? Those beautiful trees, that grand old

granny, those cheeky kids, that expanse of nothing, that sneaky grass, was really

our old Denebians in disguise. Yes, sir! Freud had hit sf by this date, and the old

slobbering hordes were back in full force only nastier, because they could

thought-wrap themselves as grannies or grass and get into the ship and cause

chaos. That was a terrible era, and I don't know how I survived it. Story after story,

I had to face utter mind-wrenching terror.

I grew to love it.

Then they went and changed the plot again! I knew just how things were go-

ing and was all set to relax when the editors or whoever it is that insists on these

things - for sure it's not the writers - altered the orthodoxy.

I can pinpoint the date exactly when I realized something had gone wrong. I

had bought the Jannish - sorry, the January

issue of

The Monthly of Whimsey and

Wharnmo-Science,

1960,

and was leafing through this story by Piledriver Jones enti-

tled 'On Deneb Deep My Pleasure Stalks'. Funny, I thought, the title doesn't

sound right, they've started mucking around with the titles now, is nothing sa-

cred ? But since I wanted to find out if a pleasure stalk was what I thought it was

(it wasn't), I forced myself to read on.

You can't fail to recall the story, not only because it has since been antholo-

gized fifty-two times and won a Hank, but because it started a new trend. This is

the one where they arrive on Deneb iv all right, in this funny ship that rides solar

winds, but some sort of bug gets them and they all grow extra limbs; the captain

alone grows twelve big toes, fourteen left arms, a spare pair of buttocks, two girl's

knees, and a horse's head. And then they sit around and talk philosophy, not

minding at all, until in the end it turns out that back on Earth things are even

worse because people are terribly short of horse's heads and buttocks and knee

caps and things.

Let's have no false modesty - I can adjust to anything. But it needs about

twenty years to adjust to that sort of plot. And

what happened? Already, already, they've altered the line again. That's what I

mean about change running hog wild.

Just this year the new orthodoxy has set in. Look at this month's crop of maga-

zines - it's not a very big crop these days, because people won't read unless they

know what to expect -

look at

Monolog,

look at

Off,

look at

Odious Fantasy

and

Lewd

Worlds and Gallimaufry, and what do you find ? Not a darned one of them has a

story set on Deneb IV!

Not a darned one of them has a story set on any alien planet! They're all Earth

stories, everyone, though Monolog has this nine-part serial set in England at the

time of the Norman Conquest, with William the Conqueror finding cases of telepa-

thy among the peasants. Otherwise, nothing! Russians, psi powers, medicine, psy-

chology, sociology, politics, traffic problems, robots, nuclear wars, funny little tales

about fellows meeting aliens and not realizing it, oh yes, no shortage of all that sort

of stuff, and, of course, plenty of drowned, crystallized rainless, bug-ridden, child-

less, adultless, metal-less, doodless, witless worlds, all of them Earth. But not a

single story set on another planet.

I'd chuck in my hand. I would. I'd give up. I'd never bother to try and read an-

other sf story in another magazine in my life. There just happens to be one small

thing that gives me grounds for hope.

Lewd Worlds has a little cameo, not more than a thousand words long, about

this chap who seduces this girl and then creeps into his back yard and builds his

own rocket ship. He has this secret perverted desire to reach the stars, see ?

It's only a matter of sweating it out a few more years, boys. We'll get back to

Deneb one day. The times they are a-chang-, ing.

Section I

Uninhabited Planets

'.. . Because They're There"

MOUTH OF HELL David I. Masson BRIGHTSIDE CROSSING Alan E, Nourse THE SACK

William Morrison

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BrianW.AldissisBritain'sleadingsciencefictionwriter.Hehaswonmanyoftheprizesinthefield,includingtheHugo,theNebula,andtheBSFAAward.TheAustraliansvotedhim'World'sBestContemporaryWriterofSF',andhisnovelsandstorieshavebeentranslatedintomanylanguages.HissciencefictionnovelsincludeNon-Stop(1958),Hothouse(1...

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