James Nicoll Reviews

Poul Anderson’s 1975 Homeward and Beyond collects nine science fiction stories.

This book was at one time one of my favourite Anderson collections. Alas, what motivates me to review this today are not those fond memories, but pure spite… spite not directed at Anderson.

I own the Berkley MMPB, which features the Richard Powers abstract cover featured below.

This one looks a bit like a translucent deep-sea fish. I used to make gentle fun of Powers covers but honestly, his work doesn’t deserve it. There are much worse covers.

One such cover can be found on the Doubleday hardcover edition of Homeward and Beyond.

Why such a minimum-effort cover? I have been told that Doubleday’s business model focused on library sales. Libraries are not swayed by cover art. Therefore, Doubleday didn’t waste money on art.

A lamentable aspect of aging is that sometimes one loses the ability to revive the uncritical enthusiasm of youth. One has to settle for a more analytical approach. In this case, I found myself considering the roles that the original editors played in Anderson’s narrative choices.

The nine stories here fall into four groups: stories that were first published in Analog (Wings of Victory, Peek! I See You!, The Pirate), stories that first appeared in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (“The Long Remembering,” Goat Song, “The Visitor”), the stories that appear in this collection for the first time (“Wolfram” and The Peat Bog), and a loner that appeared in Robert Hoskins’ Infinity Two (“Murphy’s Hall”).

People who think of Anderson as a meat-and-potatoes hard SF author might be surprised to see as many stories from F&SF as from Analog. This balance might have been driven in part by financial necessity. Anderson was one of a handful of professionals who survived on his writing income. Therefore, he had to cultivate a broad range of venues.

However, I think there’s an additional factor, which is that F&SF’s Boucher and Ferman let Anderson stretch different muscles than the Analog editors Campbell and Bova (if the story that appeared under Bova was not among the stories already purchased when Campbell died). Bluntly, Analog readers got softballs while F&SF got fastballs. It’s not to say there weren’t interesting stories in late Campbell-era Analog, but they tended to be interesting in very predictable ways. Before Analog stories got to the reader, they had to appeal to Campbell and he had specific tastes.

I’d recommend that you pick up the collection to see for yourself but it is, of course, long out of print.

“Foreword (Homeward and Beyond)” • (1975) • essay

Anderson sets out the collection’s purpose: demonstrate science fiction’s range. This recalls the purpose of the earlier Anderson collection, The Queen of Air and Darkness and Other Stories, which would be more useful to you if I’d ever got around to reviewing Queen.

Each story is accompanied by brief commentary from Anderson himself.

Wings of Victory • [Technic History] • (1972) • novelette

An early Terran interstellar survey ship, late in a long, arduous voyage, struggles to determine the nature of a heretofore uncontacted alien race.

This particular team’s very in-your-face system for first contact seems likely to have played a role in the number of crew they’ve lost. In their defense, the text reveals that early missions like this were how humans worked out what methods work best and which do not.

The Anderson-Russ discussion described elsewhere may have had an effect on Anderson. In this tale, defense is given over to the woman, because “they were better than men at watching and waiting, less likely to open fire in doubtful situations.”

“The Long Remembering” • (1957) • short story

Advanced technology allows a modern man to project his mind into the distant past, to share an episode in the life of an ancestor. This provides insight into the last days of the Neanderthals, as well as underlining how dissatisfying the modern man’s life is.

The story is extremely condescending towards the the poor Neanderthals. Science has, as they say, marched on.

Peek! I See You! • (1968) • novelette

An American pilot’s efforts to prove that aliens routinely visit the Earth are stymied by alien distaste for paperwork. Specifically, the paperwork involved in admitting Earth to the Federation, should the humans ever discover that the Federation exists.

This is a very Analog story about humans outwitting aliens, except for one detail. The reason the aliens are putting off contacting humans is because they expect humans to demand a modernization grant from the Federation. In the language that Analog authors sometimes used, we’re welfare bums.

“Murphy's Hall” • (1971) • short story by Karen Anderson and Poul Anderson

Explorer after explorer dies, heroically expanding humanity’s frontiers. But has the Welfare State doomed the human race to egalitarian mediocrity?

To quote:

[quote] Our luck didn’t run out. Instead, the decision that could be made was made. It was decided for us that our race—among the trillions which must be out there wondering what lies beyond their skies—is not supposed to have either discipline or dreams. No, our job is to make everybody nice and safe and equal, and if this happens to be impossible, then nothing else matters. [/quote]

There is a direct line between this story and Niven’s claim that we don’t have air-cars because the money went to welfare.

The Pirate • [Psychotechnic League] • (1968) • novelette

Interstellar visionary (or ruthless businessman) Murdoch claims to have found an acceptable colony world for humans. It’s up to Coordination Service officers Trevelyan Micah and Smokesmith to discover what exactly Murdoch found, and what exactly to do about it.

This combines some themes common enough in Anderson stories that they probably reflect his preoccupations and not the needs of the story. The first is that the immediate needs of poor people can be discounted, because there will always be poor people. The second is the duty to respect the past, even someone else’s past. The second is why [another Anderson story I have not yet reviewed] was so shocking.

Goat Song • (1972) • novelette

Harper’s grief proves disruptive enough for the all-powerful computer SUM to resurrect the artist’s dead woman… if the great artist can adhere to one small condition.

Harper’s love does not seem to have a name, as such, but this may reflect that names are passé, replaced by ID numbers assigned by SUM.

Most readers will pick up early on that this plotline is Orpheus and Eurydice retold. Harper doesn’t, at least not sufficiently to avoid recapitulation. This may reflect that characters in certain genres have never read tales of the genre they are in. It could reflect that SUM is methodically erasing knowledge it deems obsolete.

“The Visitor” • (1974) • short story

Psionics facilitate a melancholy contact between adult and child.

“Wolfram” • (1975) • short story

Inspired by light research into tungsten—no, really—Anderson spins the whimsical tale of an old-time natural philosopher.

The seed for this is the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry’s 1949 degree that wolfram would be the universal name for element 74. I have seen ripples from the decision throughout SF: John W. Campbell complained about the renaming in 1963, H. Beam Piper used “wolfram” in his 1964 Fuzzy Sapiens, and of course, Anderson wrote this story.

Except…

The naming appears to have been unpopular enough to have been rolled back in 1951. Did the SF world just not get the memo that the renaming didn’t stick or is there something else going on here? Both Piper and Anderson sold to Campbell. Was this just a bugbear of Campbell’s that his pool of writers picked up on?

Not that this piece appeared in Analog. It is, as far as I can tell, original to this volume.

The Peat Bog • (1975) • novella

An envoy proceeding north from the Roman Empire deep into barbarian lands finds his mission complicated by profound culture clash.

This is a pretty straightforward historical tale. It’s also a first contact story, of sorts, between cultures whose values are very different. It’s also, while not exactly keen on certain Greek customs, not quite as homophobic as Anderson’s 1967 Eutopia.

***

Huh. No particular need for footnotes and astonishingly for a Disco-era Anderson, surprisingly little pretext for USA delenda est.