"When I Was Miss Dow" by Sonya Dorman

 

First appeared in Frederik Pohl's Galaxy Magazine. Made the first ballot for the Nebula and nominated for the Tiptree Retrospective award. Reprinted Brian W. Aldiss, Harry Harrison, Judith Merril, Pamela Sargent, Brian Attebery, Ursula K. Le Guin, Ellen Datlow, Heather Masri,  Lisa Yaszek.

 

Summary:

Aliens, who trade with humans, can change shape and gender--a bit like squishing play dough through a plastic "factory" into whatever shape desired. Despite being initially reluctant, one of the aliens enjoys becoming Miss Dow who takes a liking to the doctor she is supposed to work for.

Discussion (spoilers):

She forms an attachment both to the doctor and to her form. It anticipates Ursula Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness by several years and one might guess it had some influence on the novel.

Ah, now this belongs in an anthology (or at least one could see why it might be included) like Norton's. It belongs in a year's best. It is the cream if not the crème de la crème. It made the first ballot, but if you see which tales beat it out for the Nebula, you'd understand. However, as a subgenre that gained importance with the Tiptree award. You can see, from the novelty of subject matter, why Aldiss and Harrison decided to bump aside the finalists to reprint this instead.

If one takes The Left Hand of Darkness to be seminal, then this is the seed that must have spawned Le Guin's work.

"The Hated" by Frederik Pohl

Originally appeared in H. L. Gold's Galaxy. Reprinted by H. L. Gold in a magazine retrospective and by Robert Hoskins. Read online here.

 

Summary:

What happens to a crew bound for Mars, after years of living together?

 

Discussion (Spoilers):

This is a masterwork of voice and psychology. Pohl speculates that long-term, cramped living conditions might lead to hatred toward the people you live with--from a sneeze to a cough--leading to murderous intent. Psychologists think they've accomplished some greater good, but they very well may not have.

“Repent, Harlequin!” Said the Ticktockman

First appeared in Frederik Pohl's Galaxy. It won the Hugo, Nebula and Prometheus awards. Reprinted in several major retrospectives by Damon Knight, Donald A. Wollheim, Terry Carr, Frederik Pohl, Dick Allen,  Willis E. McNelly, Leon E. Stover, Thomas E. Sanders, Isaac Asimov, Daniel Roselle, Bernard C. Hollister, Charles W. Sullivan, Leo P. Kelley, Martin H. Greenberg, Patricia S. Warrick, Bonnie L. Heintz, Frank Herbert, Donald A. Joos, Jane Agorn McGee, Rich Jones, Richard L. Roe, Leslie A. Fiedler, Arthur C. Clarke, Jerry E. Pournelle, John F. Carr, Ben Bova, Martin H. Greenberg, Applewhite Minyard, David Hartwell, Orson Scott Card, David G. Hartwell, Jack Dann, Gardner Dozois, Rob Latham, Veronica Hollinger, Joan Gordon, Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr., Arthur B. Evans, Carol McGuirk, John Joseph Adams.

Summary:

The Harlequin is disrupting a future dystopia ruled by time or, rather, the Ticktockman. He holds the cardioplates of its citizens and can end peoples' lives prematurely if they are late to work, etc. The Harlequin slows schedules with a $150,000 in jelly beans gumming up slidewalks, badgers shoppers not to be slaves to time, and eludes capture (getting would-be captors caught in their own web).

Analysis:

This has one of Ellison's patent-pending titles that simultaneously intrigues, conjures the story and its theme if obliquely. This tale provides an intriguing contrast to "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream," which has a similarly loaded title.

The latter story, however, at first appearance seems simple enough but proves to be thematically elusive or at least complex. This story's theme, on first glance, feels elusive but turns out rather simple if compelling. It is spelled out immediately from Henry David Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience":

"The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines.... there is no free exercise whatever of the judgement...they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones."

Men choose to become machines--as they did in "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream," albeit to a different effect.

What surprised and disappointed as a lad yet empowers me as an adult--coming midway into the story--was that the Harlequin was an ordinary man, in love with an ordinary woman. They have a spat about his extracurricular activities and lateness (later, when he's told that his wife or girlfriend ratted him out, the exchange about whether she did or didn't takes on a different flavor).

Although the theme is somewhat clear, the ending is elusive. It involves at least three possibilities:

1. Harlequin confesses, gets killed, yet somehow infects the Ticktockman with anti-clock mentality. This seems least probable since most in power would want to cling to that power.
2. Harlequin somehow escapes, forces the Ticktockman to believe he is the Harlequin, gets the Ticktockman to confess as if he were the Harlequin and gets killed while the Harlequin becomes the Ticktockman. We aren't witnesses to this complicated event. While Harlequin might be trickster enough to pull this off, is the Ticktockman truly gullible enough to fall for an identity switch? Nothing in the story really leads us to this.
3. Harlequin is the Ticktockman. Both mask their identities. The Ticktockman's irregularities at the end match the Harlequin's usual habits. We don't know if this is unusual for the Ticktockman, but being in charge, he could probably get away with it. 

Additional confirmation of the lattermost interpretation comes at the opening where to whom the narrator is referring--Harlequin or the Ticktockman--gets confused. We open with an unknown, unassigned "he" pronoun. In fact, even after the Ticktockman is introduced, most readers will assume the narrator is speaking of the Harlequin, yet the last "he" mentioned after the Ticktockman's mention is the Ticktockman. So grammar rules dictate that the Ticktockman should be the "he" referred to.

Finally, there is a temporary irony (or hypocrisy) that loses its meaning if Harlequin is the Ticktockman:

"[H]e was called the Ticktockman. But no one called him that to his mask.

"The cardioplate here in my right hand is also named, but whom named, merely what named."

We know what the Ticktockman is--the Master Timekeeper--but not who he is since he is masked.

The theme isn't much altered in the first two ending possibilities. But the third suggests that the revolutionary and the problematic cogwork-makers sprout from the same scarcely sane source. The theme alters considerably. It might be paraphrased by The Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again":

"Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss."

"Slow Tuesday Night" by R. A. Lafferty

First appeared in Frederik Pohl’s Galaxy. Nominated for a Nebula award and reprinted in several Year’s Best and genre retrospectives by Judith Merril, Frederik Pohl, Robert Silverberg, Willis E. McNelly, Leon E. Stover, Martin H. Greenberg, Edward L. Ferman, John W. Milstead, Joseph D. Olander, Patricia S. Warrick, Gardner R. Dozois, Pamela Sargent, Terry Carr, James E. Gunn, Ellen Datlow, Rob Latham, Veronica Hollinger, Joan Gordon, Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr., Arthur B. Evans, Carol McGuirk. Online.

Summary:

Economics, inventions and trends come hourly. Someone's fame can wax and wane within minutes. Fortunes can be won and lost four times in a day. Marriages dissolve as men and women follow trends of what's popular.

Discussion:

In what is considered another of Lafferty’s classics, this expands Moore's Law--computer transistor power doubling every two years--to include people and society. However, this story appeared in Galaxy before Moore announced his theory. Perhaps it was in the air: steam-engine time.

This satirizes popularity, economics, and trend-watching to make societal decisions. By rendering the timeline for trends down to hours or minutes, all such decisions based on trends appear absurd. The title punctuates the satire by calling all the events as occurring on a "Slow Tuesday Night."

"To Serve Man" by Damon Knight

First appeared in Galaxy. Reprinted in various major genre retrospectives by Everett F. Bleiler, T. E. Dikty, Joe W. Haldeman, Mike Ashley, Frederik Pohl, Martin H. Greenberg, Joseph D. Olander, Isaac Asimov, Richard Matheson & Charles G. Waugh, Bruce Coville, Robert Weinberg, Stefan R. Dziemianowicz, Dennis Pepper.  Won a Retro Hugo.  A classic story on the Twilight Zone.

The Kanamit aliens arrive, promising to end the world's troubles--begin endless cheap power, end hunger, end war (explosives will no longer go off).  They want to help.  One representative from Russia, Grigori, is dubious but his hard questions fall on deaf ears once the alien passes a lie-detector test built for humans.  They have a book called How to Serve Man, which appears to validate their good intent.

[Spoiler] It is too easy to spoil this tale, so I'll try to make it harder to spoil with extra words....  [Spoiler] It turns out the Kanamit book is a cookbook.

Clearly the joy of this tale is the surprise--one of extreme audacity, especially leading humans down the opposite path of intention.  However, the tale has some subtlety often overlooked.  The aliens didn't actually lie (well, they did and they didn't).  They created a trail that allowed humans to be misled.  As Grigori puts it:

"They told the truth, though, as far as that went." 

In fact, some of the humans appear complicit in the Kanamit chicanery by not allowing debate.  Knight waits until the last third of the tale to reveal the book title, in order to make sure we were thinking along his terms so that we could be duped like the Earthlings in his tale.  In the tale's last line he reveals the secondary meaning, which sticks with readers years after they've read it.

What did Knight expect to accomplish by making the aliens hideous pigs but bearing gifts?  Probably it makes you feel guilty that you felt suspicious about their motives since they only appear to want to help.  The theme likely comes from Grigori who distrusted the Kanamit all along:

"[T]here is no such thing as a completely disinterested altruism.  In one way or another, they have something to gain"

The Twilight Zone episode changes it by not making the aliens hideous pigs and by setting an initial mood of retrospective anger and anxiety.  This may ruin the tale for some, but not others.  However, Rod Serling also made it personal, had it directly impact the narrator, who is about to be made into dinner, which may have made it zing for viewers.  Also, Serling delivers a great double entendre, "They want to make Earth a garden of Eden."

"Beyond Bedlam" by Wyman Guin

First appeared in H.L. Gold's Galaxy. Reprinted by H. L. Gold, Kingsley Amis, Robert Conquest, Robert Silverberg, Martin H. Greenberg--Silverberg especially collected it in various genre retrospectives. 

In 2013, Wyman Guin was awarded the Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award "to honour notable sf and fantasy authors who in the view of the judging panel did not receive or no longer receive the attention they deserve."  --SFE

Humans are divided into two personalities [Note: What's called schizophrenia in the text is actually Multiple Personality Disorder--two mental disorder often confused.  Oddly, no one's pointed that out yet, but it doesn't really undermine the text], where each manifests for two days at a time.  In the past--our present--people lived with the personalities together, personalities which would undermine each.  In fact, we are all naturally schizophrenic (2nd meaning) and the latest drugs help us deal with these warring sides of our personalities.  This supposedly has the added effect of stopping all wars.

They also each administered a "hypothalamic block" to prevent subconscious thoughts and actions.  Everything is above board.  No hidden secrets remain hidden beneath to cause wars.  This is also said to make people more logical.

Within this scenario is an unusual family, unusual because both personalities of a person (Conrad and Bill) are married to both personalities of another person (Helena and Clara).  Normally they only see the one wife, but Bill wanted to see what the other personality was like and falls madly in love with her. They both suppress shifting in order to see each.  They are sinning since these personalities aren't married.  Slowly the cogs of society catch on to what the couple is up to.

Mary, daughter of one couple, feels unloved by the other couple, so she skips her drugs so she can find love from the other set.  However, this set is cold.  Mary isn't even genetically related.  Nobody keeps their own children.  Society decides whom the best match should be.

This is likely Guin's best work.  John Clute calls it "brilliant" -- "ideally designed for Galaxy, with its focus (< Medicine; Identity; Psychology; Sociology) on the human implications involved in enduring the future."

Clute's not whistling Dixie.  This is a tour de force--as every character has a twin, often very different.  They do not see each other as two personalities living in the same person but as two separate entities, making the text a rich reading experience. One personality of a person you may be in love with, but the other no.

When compared to other works in Guin's oevre, a theme arises where couples tend to bump up against difficulties in their marriage.  Some speculative element tends to intervene until the couple reestablishes themselves.  It's more fascinating since one personality of a person may be far more attractive than another--for parent and child.  It shades a whole new meaning on the phrase "My evil twin did it."

Mary behaves younger than a thirteen year old, but she is said to be immature for her age.  What created the society seems implausible, but what a triptych once you arrive.  This should be part of the SF canon.  The final line is genius (said by one of the top officers in the society, Major Grey):

"It was a pretty wonderful society he lived in, he realized.  How wouldn't trade it for the kind Bill Walden had wanted.  Nobody in his right mind would."

Note protagonist's last name, Walden.  The title plays on two double meanings: bedlam (confusion or insane asylum) and beyond (as in past that point, or exceeding, at a higher degree).  In other words, are we past insanity or increasing it?  Are we past confusion or increasing it?

This story may require multiple readings to pick up all that's going on.

Edition:  Beyond Bedlam and Other Stories by Wyman Guin

"Volpla" by Wyman Guin

First appeared in Galaxy. Reprinted by H. L. Gold, and Groff Conklin, and the radio program, X-Minus One. If X-Minus One did a program on it, you can trust it will be fun if not thought-provoking: Audio dramatization.  

In 2013, Wyman Guin was awarded the Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award "to honour notable sf and fantasy authors who in the view of the judging panel did not receive or no longer receive the attention they deserve."  --SFE

A man genetically creates new creatures, which he hides from his family.  He wants to create a grand practical joke where he fools not only  the creatures but also, primarily, the humans into thinking a race of being existed on Earth long before the humans.  However, his kids find the creatures and play with them, and his wife spills the beans about this being a joke.  The creatures learn of this but don't hold it against him.  Instead, they hitch a ride to Mars, and the protagonist wants to join them.


Much of the character interaction is reminiscent of Nancy Kress's work.  However, she would unlikely have left it as a practical joke.  The story might have gained significance had it supplied a motivation for the joke, i.e. "The scientific establishment/Communist pinkos/Capitalist pigs won't laugh at me anymore. We'll see who gets the last laugh." or whatever to infuse his actions with more meaning than an elaborate joke.

Edition:  Beyond Bedlam and Other Stories by Wyman Guin