Damon Knight - Orbit 18

—“The Feast of St. Dionysus,” by Robert Silverberg, in An Exaltation of Stars, edited by Terry Carr (Simon and Schuster, 1973), p. 6.

“Brother,” he said. “Brother! Brother!” —Ibid., p. 30.

“Yes, John? Yes? Yes?” —Ibid., p. 40.

We might be able to do anything, the Speaker says, once we have reached that hidden god and transformed ourselves into the gods we were meant to be. Anything. Anything. Anything.

—Ibid., p. 46.

“Dave!” Oxenshuer cries. “Oh, Christ, Dave! Dave!”

—Ibid., p. 51.

I float. I go forth. I. I. I. —Ibid., p. 53.

I go to the god’s house and his fire consumes me. Go. Go. Go.

—Ibid., same page.

Whom, heem?

This book is honest homage from an early master of science fiction to an earlier writer whom Williamson feels has not yet been surpassed.

—Alexei and Cory Panshin,

in F&SF, March 1974

Rioz, whom we started out thinking was going to be the third-person limited narrative point of view, is no longer even present.

—The Science Fiction of Isaac Asimov, by Joseph E. Patrouch.Jr. (Doubleday, 1974)

To Your Scattered Bodies Go

Perhaps, though he did not like to admit it, his sight had betrayed him. Behind his glasses were fifty-four-year-old eyes.

—“Stations of the Nightmare, Part 1,” by Philip José Farmer, in Continuum 1, edited by Roger Elwood (Putnam, 1974)

After rejecting quantities of suitors out of devotion to the Tolstoyan ideal, she had fallen wildly in love with a man much older than she, Michael Sukhotin, who was married and the father of six children; he was in his fifties, had a middle-aged paunch and was both charming and witty.

—Tolstoy, by Henri Troyat, translated by Nancy Amphoux

So Much For Kidneys ’ Lib

. . . Are you SURE that an absolute ruling aristocracy is an evil and unworkable thing? Even one that’s been carefully, laboriously worked out on a hierarchic basis over many, many generations of trial and error, under all sorts of real-world challenges?

Then dethrone that arbitrary, absolute tyrant between your ears—that gray aristocracy that lives in its stone-walled castle up on top, demanding tribute of oxygen, food and comfort at the expense of trillions of worker cells! Away with that luxuryloving ruling aristocracy! Free the trillions of working individuals, and establish perfect equality among all the individual cells!

It’s guaranteed to work—-just destroy that unequal hierarchy and perfect equality results.

All the cells are dead very shortly.

—-John W. Campbell, Jr., in

Analog, July 1967

But Nothing to Compare with a Hole in the Shoe

“Hello,” Project Dove’s coordinator interrupted his wish on the seventh ring.

“Udall, this is Coltrain!”

“What . . . Coltrain?” Udall yawned sleepily.

“Listen, for God’s sake, Liu’s got—” He stopped. There was something aggrandizing about the emptiness of a dead line.

—“The Sixth Face,” by Thomas Sullivan (Analog, April 1975)

Let's See, Jesse Was the One Who Robbed Banks . . .

Last year’s Hugo Award winning story “The Ones Who Walk Away From Ornelas” by Ursula Le Guin carried the subtitle: “Variations on a Theme by Henry James.” At the time I felt sure I understood the story . . . but since then I have seen so many interpretations that not only contradict my conception of what the story means, but contradict each other, so perhaps Le Guin’s intended moral is not as obvious as I thought it was. Perhaps a clue to the meaning is contained in the subtitle, but I am not familiar with the works of William James—nor can I find anyone in the Psychology Department here who can enlighten me. Does anyone out there know what the reference to James in the subtitle means.

—Denis Quane, Notes from the Chemistry Dept, till, May 1975

A story of the golden time, when a man with a string of stolen Cadillacs could stand tall and look the world in the eye.

It was the time of the Sun Dance and the Big Tractor Pull. Freddy-in-the-Hollow and I had traveled three days to be at the River. We were almost late, what with the sandstorm and the raid on the white settlement over to Old Dallas.

We pulled in with our wrecker and string of fine cars, many of them newly stolen. You should have seen Freddy and me that morning, the first morning of the Sun Dance.

We were dressed in new-stolen fatigues and we had bright leather holsters and pistols. Freddy had a new carbine, too. We were wearing our silver and feathers and hard goods. I noticed many women watching us as we drove in. There seemed to be many more here than the last Sun Ceremony. It looked to be a good time.

The usual crowd gathered before we could circle up our remuda. I saw Bob One-Eye and Nathan Big Gimp, the mechanics, come across from their circles. Already the cook fires were burning and women were skinning out the cattle that had been slaughtered early in the morning.

“Hoa!” I heard Nathan call as he limped to our wrecker. He was old; his left leg had been shattered in the Highway wars, he went back that far. He put his hands on his hips and looked over our line.

“I know that car, Billy-Bob Chevrolet,” he said to me, pointing to an old Mercury. “Those son-a-bitch Dallas people stole it from me last year. I know its plates. It is good you stole it back. Maybe I will talk to you about doing car work to get it back sometime.”

“We’ll have to drink about it,” I said.

“Let’s stake them out,” said Freddy-in-the-Hollow. “I’m tired of pulling them.”

We parked them in two parallel rows and put up the signs, the strings of pennants and the whirlers. Then we got in the wrecker and smoked.

Many people walked by. We were near the Karankawa fuel trucks, so people would be coming by all time. Some I knew by sight, many I had known since I was a boy. They all walked by as though they did not notice the cars, but I saw them looking out of the comers of their eyes. Music was starting down the way, and most people were heading there. There would be plenty music in the next five days. I was in no hurry. We would all be danced out before the week was up.

Some of the men kept their strings tied to their tow trucks as if they didn’t care whether people saw them or not. They acted as if they were ready to move out at any time. But that was not the old way. In the old times, you had your cars parked in rows so they could be seen. It made them harder to steal, too, especially if you had a fence.

But none of the Tractor Pullers had arrived yet, and that was what everybody was waiting for.

The talk was that Simon Red Bulldozer would be here this year. He was known from the Brazos to the Sabine, though he had never been to one of our Ceremonies. He usually stayed in the Guadalupe River area.

But he had beaten everybody there and had taken all the fun out of their Big Pulls. So he had gone to the Karankawa Ceremony last year, and now was supposed to be coming to ours. They still talk about the time Simon Red Bulldozer took on Elmo John Deere two summers ago. I would have traded many plates to be there.

“We need more tobacco,” said Freddy-in-the-Hollow.

“We should have stolen some from the whites,” I said. “It will cost us plenty here.”

“Don’t you know anyone?”

“I know everyone, Fred,” I said quietly (a matter of pride). “But nobody has any friends during the Ceremonies. You pay for what you get.”

It was Freddy-in-the-Hollow’s first Sun Dance as a Raider. All the times before, he had come with his family. He still wore his coup-charm, a big VW symbol pried off the first car he’d boosted, on a chain around his neck. He was only seventeen summers. Someday he would be a better thief than me. And I’m the best there is.