Кингсли Эмис: Something Strange

Like J. B. Priestley, who was included in Volume one, Kingsley Amis involved himself in the negotiations over an Arts Council grant for the floundering New Worlds magazine in 1967, having already declared a life-long interest in science fiction.

Kingsley William Amis was born on April 16th, 1922, and was educated at the City of London school and St John’s College, Oxford, where he earned his MA. Serving in the Army between 1942 and 1945, he later became a Lecturer in English at the University of Swansea from 1949 to 1961. He shot to fame in 1954 with the publication of his humorous novel Lucky Jim.

In the Spring of 1959 he was invited to give a series of lectures at Princeton University as part of the Christian Gauss Seminars in Criticism. Amis chose as his subject matter, science fiction. Reworked and lengthened these lectures were published in 1960 as New Maps of Hell. Whilst Amis classifies most early and much current sf as banal, he nevertheless champions the genre as a valuable vehicle for social comment which could never be attained in any other stream of literature.

Intent on proving himself within the field, Amis, in collaboration with fellow author and lecturer Robert Conquest (who has also written some science fiction), prepared a series of science fiction anthologies, Spectrum, annually from 1961 to 1966. He also turned his own pen to writing science fiction, with novels like The Anti-Death League (1966), The Green Man (1971), his recent alternate-Earth novel The Alteration (1976), and this earlier short story, Something Strange, which first appeared in The Spectator in 1960.

Something strange happened every day. It might happen during the morning, while the two men were taking their readings and observations and the two women busy with the domestic routine: the big faces had come during the morning. Or, as with the little faces and the coloured fires, the strange thing would happen in the afternoon, in the middle of Bruno’s maintenance programme and Clovis’s transmission to Base, Lia’s rounds of the garden and Myri’s work on her story. The evening was often undisturbed, the night less often.

They all understood that ordinary temporal expressions had no meaning for people confined indefinitely, as they were, to a motionless steel sphere hanging in a region of space so empty that the light of the nearest star took some hundreds of years to reach them. The Standing Orders devised by Base, however, recommended that they adopt a twenty-four-hour unit of time, as was the rule on the Earth they had not seen for many months. The arrangement suited them well: their work, recreation and rest seemed to fall naturally into the periods provided. It was only the prospect of year after year of the same routine, stretching further into the future than they could see, that was a source of strain.

Bruno commented on this to Clovis after a morning spent repairing a fault in the spectrum analyser they used for investigating and classifying the nearer stars. They were sitting at the main observation port in the lounge, drinking the midday cocktail and waiting for the women to join them.

‘I’d say we stood up to it extremely well,’ Clovis said in answer to Bruno. ‘Perhaps too well.’

Bruno hunched his fat figure upright. ‘How do you mean?’

‘We may be hindering our chances of being relieved.’

‘Base has never said a word about our relief.’

‘Exactly. With half a million stations to staff, it’ll be a long time before they get round to one like this, where everything runs smoothly. You and I are a perfect team, and you have Lia and I have Myri, and they’re all right together — no real conflict at all. Hence ho reason for a relief.’

Myri had heard all this as she laid the table in the alcove. She wondered how Clovis could not know that Bruno wanted to have her instead of Lia, or perhaps as well as Lia. If Clovis did know, and was teasing Bruno, then that would be a silly thing to do, because Bruno was not a pleasant man. With his thick neck and pale fat face he would not be pleasant to be had by, either, quite unlike Clovis, who was no taller but whose straight, hard body and soft skin were always pleasant. He could not think as well as Bruno, but on the other hand many of the things Bruno thought were not pleasant. She poured herself a drink and went over to them.

Bruno had said something about its being a pity they could not fake their personnel report by inventing a few quarrels, and Clovis had immediately agreed that that was impossible. She kissed him and sat down at his side. ‘What do you think about the idea of being relieved?’ he asked her.

‘I never think about it.’

‘Quite right,’ Bruno said, grinning. ‘You’re doing very nicely here. Fairly nicely, anyway.’

‘What are you getting at?’ Clovis asked him with a different kind of grin.

‘It’s not a very complete life, is it? For any of us. I could do with a change, anyway. A different kind of job, something that isn’t testing and using and repairing apparatus. We do seem to have a lot of repairing to do, don’t we? That analyser breaks down almost every day. And yet — ’

His voice tailed off and he looked out of the port, as if to assure himself that all that lay beyond it was the familiar starscape of points and smudges of light. ‘And yet what?’ Clovis asked, irritably this time.

‘I was just thinking that we really ought to be thankful for having plenty to do. There’s the routine and the fruits and vegetables to look after, and Myri’s story…. How’s that going, by the way? Won’t you read us some of it? This evening, perhaps?’

‘Not until it’s finished, if you don’t mind.’

‘Oh, but I do mind. It’s part of our duty to entertain one another. And I’m very interested in it personally.’

‘Why?’

‘Because you’re an interesting girl. Bright brown eyes and a healthy glowing skin — how do you manage it after all this time in space? And you’ve more energy than any of us.’

Myri said nothing. Bruno was good at making remarks there was nothing to say to.

‘What’s it about, this story of yours?’ he pursued. ‘At least you can tell us that.’

‘I have told you. It’s about normal life. Life on Earth before there were any space stations, lots of different people doing different things, not this — ’

‘That’s normal life, is it, different people doing different things? I can’t wait to hear what the things are. Who’s the hero, Myri? Our dear Clovis?’

Myri put her hand on Clovis’s shoulder. ‘No more, please, Bruno. Let’s go back to your point about the routine. I couldn’t understand why you left out the most important part, the part that keeps us busiest of all.’

‘Ah, the strange happenings.’ Bruno dipped his head in a characteristic gesture, half laugh, half nervous tremor. ‘And the hours we spend discussing them. Oh yes. How could I have failed to mention all that?’

‘If you’ve got any sense you’ll go on not mentioning it,’ Clovis snapped. ‘We’re all fed up with the whole business.’

‘You may be, but I’m not. I want to discuss it. So does Myri, don’t you, Myri?’

‘I do think perhaps it’s time we made another attempt to find a pattern,’ Myri said. This was a case of Bruno not being pleasant but being right.

‘Oh, not again.’ Clovis bounded up and went over to the drinks table. ‘Ah, hallo, Lia,’ he said to the tall, thin, blonde woman who had just entered with a tray of cold dishes. ‘Let me get you a drink. Bruno and Myri are getting philosophical — looking for patterns. What do you think? I’ll tell you what I think. I think we’re doing enough already. I think patterns are Base’s job.’