"Shenadun"

Startling Stories was one of a handful of the great science fiction periodicals of the last century. Begun in January 1939 by Better Publications it ran until 1955 and published 99 unique issues, most all of them featuring “a complete novel” (read: novella) along with four or five standard-length short stories -- this at a time (the late 1930’s) when virtually no science fiction was being published in book form. From 1939 to 1943 the magazine was published as a bi-monthly, then, until 1946, as a quarterly, then back to a bi-monthly until 1952 when it went monthly. It finished out its run as, again, a quarterly.

The early years saw Startling Stories veer decidedly toward the juvenile segment of the reading audience and much of the content was of the “space opera” variety -- “rocketships, ray guns, and bug-eyed monsters,” as author Lee Server put it. Then in late 1945 editor Sam Merwin took over the editorial duties and gradually turned Startling Stories into a first-class science fiction magazine. Before he arrived, however, another long-standing relationship had begun, this time between the pulp and artist Earle Bergey. Perhaps more than any other person it is he who is most closely associated with Startling Stories, producing some of the most… well “startling” artwork for covers ever seen in pulps outside of Norman Saunders in the mystery pulps. His covers were summed up well by Malcolm J Edwards in The Science Fiction Encyclopedia: “The characteristic Bergey cover showed a rugged hero, a desperate heroine (either clad in a metallic bikini or in a dangerous state of déshabille) and a hideous alien menace.” But Bergey’s work contained graceful lines, perfect composition, beautifully rendered faces, eye-popping color and an overall mise-en-scène that, while not unique, was certainly as good or better than any of his contemporaries.

John D MacDonald wrote eight science fiction stories that appeared in Startling Stories, including the novella “Wine of the Dreamers” that went on to become one of his earliest novels. His first entry was the oddly-titled “Shenadun,” which was published in the September 1948 issue and was written when he was living in Clinton, New York, just before the family relocated to Mexico. It’s fairly standard science fiction and only-average JDM, running 7,200 words and published with MacDonald’s original title (which was pretty unusual in the pulps, but not in Startling: all eight of his stories appeared with his original titles intact). It is marked by some fairly unusual writing and characterization: in fact, when I began reading this I was convinced that it was the work of another author.

The protagonist of the tale is a Brit, so perhaps MacDonald’s odd, flowery, sometimes-archaic language is a product of that, the author attempting a style that was not really his own. He’s Gowan Mitchell, a 39-year old mountain climber, independently wealthy (thanks to an inheritance) and conqueror of many a tall peak. As the story opens he is high up the slope of Shenadun, a fictional mountain in the Himalayas, “sister of Everest.” This is his second attempt: the year before he had tried and failed, breaking his shoulder in the attempt. But now he is nearly at the top, his American climbing partner thirty feet below him.

As, buffeted by the wind, he threaded the rope through the eye of the piton, he thought of other tears and other mountains. Peaks in the Swiss Alps, the Canadian Rockies. But those had been tears of joy, tears to express the deep, throbbing emotion that had always filled him when he stood, alone and free on the tip of a mountain. The first hill, for it was but a hill, he had climbed had been in Scotland when he was twelve, twenty-seven years ago. That had been the beginning of the disease...

Shenadun! Stranger than Everest, stronger in the superstition of those who lived in the tropical valleys and watched the big bitter shoulders of the Himalayas!

... The conquest of Shenadun will give me immortality among those who climb, [he thought]... But he knew that he would continue to climb until at last he died. There could be nothing for him in the cities of men. His mind and his heart would always be fixed on the high places. The cities of men were drab small places, overrun with life. For him there could be only the clean cruel wind of the ceiling of the world, the aching slow progress up a chimney of rock, the clink of an ice axe, the thunder of the avalanche.

But as he nears the peak his partner slips and falls to his death, leaving Mitchell alone facing certain death, for there are sections of his descent that he cannot possible traverse by himself. He ascends to the summit, certain that he will reach his goal and die there.

The summit of Shenadun is an even, circular area around 200 feet in diameter. Mitchell plants his flag, buries a cylinder containing his name and the name of his dead companion, and readies himself to die, there in the freezing, blowing winds, without any equipment other than his ax and his oxygen. But as he walks around he notices a crack in the floor of the summit, with an icicle-like stalactite leading down into the unseen depths, with faintly warm air emerging from it. He uses his ax to make the hole large enough for him to fit and proceeds into the darkness.

Unable to see, he lights a match and faintly observes that he is in a cylindrical room with metal walls.

Oxygen starvation was making his mind giddy and foolish. He laughed aloud. It was absurd! He, Gowan Mitchell was the first to climb Shenadun! This was a mirage. No one could have been here before him, burying metal monstrosities in the ice.

Eventually he finds another hole in the metal wall which leads to a large area with a gently sloping ramp. Unable to see he slowly descends into whatever it is he has entered, and walks, and walks, and walks, for what seems like days. Eventually he reaches an enormous room with lights and… coffins?

Side by side, in two parallel rows, with a wide aisle between them, were huge, coffinlike objects. To steady his reeling brain he counted them. Exactly thirty... Up to the level of his eyes, they were intricate with odd dials, tubes, wiring, marked with symbols similar to those on the handles of the levers in the small room halfway to the top of the mountain. Above eye-level were the rounded, transparent tops.

And inside the bulbous tops were stretched the figures of men and women. But they were men and women such as he had never seen before. The fact that each was lying down made height difficult to estimate. It seemed that they were fifteen feet tall, each of them. Tall and blonde and dead…

There’s little mystery as to why “Shenadun” was left out of MacDonald’s 1978 science fiction anthology Other Times, Other Worlds. It’s wordy, overly-long and, as I mentioned above, written in a style more reminiscent of pulp writing of the early twentieth century rather than that of the postwar period. (It has to hold the record for the number of exclamation marks in any JDM work.) The science fiction in the last third of the story is interesting, if not original, and MacDonald’s attention to the detail of mountain climbing is expert, as usual. In fact, the first third of this story could have easily fit into an issue of Fifteen Sports Stories.

The word “Shenadun” seems to have been made up out of whole cloth by the author. I can find no other use of it in a Google search, outside of its later-day adoption for a character in a video game. Perhaps it was his corruption of a Hindi word he picked up while stationed in India during the war.

The story was never reprinted or anthologized, although a quick web search will pick up multiple instances of scanned and transcribed versions of the story available to read for free.

Early Reviews

The first book review John D MacDonald ever received was for his third novel, Wine of the Dreamers. Tellingly, the title was a hardcover release and -- even more tellingly -- it was a science fiction story. For while having a novel published in hardcover definitely increased the odds that it would be reviewed in one of the thousands of periodicals published in the mid-Twentieth Century, having as its content speculative fiction almost guaranteed its review, at least in the magazines that specialized in such content. For no other group of fiction readers was as passionate and as comprehensive as the science fiction community of the last century.

Unlike most other pulp or digest magazines, many science fiction periodicals contained regular non-fiction features that were standard fare in the slicks: editorials, a letter column, and a book review section. Wine of the Dreamers was reviewed in no less than four sf magazines, as was JDM’s second such effort, Ballroom of the Skies. The fact that these two books were both hardcovers (MacDonald’s first and second hardcover novels) also got them reviews in several major newspapers and magazines, such as the New York Times and Herald-Tribune, the San Francisco Chronicle and Saturday Review. (I’m speaking here of reviews contemporaneous with the initial publication, not ones for later editions.) MacDonald wouldn’t get a review of a non-science fiction novel until Dead Low Tide, his eighth book.

I thought it would be fun to look at the reviews of these two novels, to see what critics thought of the author back in the beginning, and to adduce MacDonald’s standing in the science fiction community of the time. The reviews are generally favorable it is is clear that JDM was thought of as “one of them,” a member of the sf culture, and one in good standing. I’ve also included two reviews of his third and last science fiction effort, The Girl, The Gold Watch & Everything, even though it appeared long after MacDonald had left the (extra terrestrial) building.

In 1964 MacDonald wrote “I don't believe I’ve ever received a considered, thoughtful review of anything I’ve written. I’ve had a few compliments, like being called a master story-teller, but considered reviews -- never.” These reviews (with the exception of Judith Merril’s piece on the third book) don’t belie that judgement, but they appeared with assessments of works by authors such as Ray Bradbury, Arthur C Clarke, Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein and were no less respectful or serious than the considerations given these science fiction luminaries.

Galaxy: December 1951, reviewed by Groff Conklin

WINE OF THE DREAMERS, by John D. MacDonald. Greenberg: Publisher, New York, 1951.

219 pages, $2.75

A GOOD example of the "we're property" type of science fiction which assumes that an extraterrestrial, extrahuman race is able to make us do more or less what it wants.

In this well-written novel, many of the accidents, crimes of violence, and unexplained tragedies of the world, and in particular the failure of every attempt at launching a spaceship, are due to the machinations of a group of individuals numbering fewer than a thousand, called the

Watchers.

These Watchers, who inhabit a planet several star systems away, are able to enter the bodies of Earthians at will and make these bodies do anything they choose to. This is accomplished by super-hypnotism machines. The irony of the situation revolves around the fact that the Watchers are sublimely convinced that we are mere dreams created for their pleasure, and have no actual reality.

The story is woven around the final discovery by the Watchers that we are "real," and by us that

most of our Earth’s miseries are caused by these utterly remote aliens, who turn out to be descendants from our own ancestors of at least tens of thousands of years ago.

That the plot and the concepts are not simon-pure originals, both being reminiscent, of Eric Frank Russell's famous "we're property" novels, is unimportant. The skill and the imagination

with which the tale is developed are genuinely satisfying.

Amazing Stories: January 1952, reviewed by Sam Merwin

WINE OF THE DREAMERS, by John D. MacDonald, Greenberg: Publisher, New York ($2.75).

The finest science-fiction effort to date by one of the country's ablest all-around young writers, this is a fascinating story in which a pair of far-distant worlds (and two others) become inextricably interinvolved.

The Dreamers are at the dead-end of a former interstellar civilization, live in a single building which they have come to consider the entire cosmos and pass their adult lives for the most part lying on comfortable pallets and, with the aid of devices left them by their more energetic forebears, living strange visions of life on three highly-varied planets they consider entirely imaginary.

One of the three is Earth in the very near future and, since the Dreamers can actually possess whomever they choose to and have them do the most dreadful things, their existence is far from the harmless idyll they hold it to be. Ultimately it is discovered the Dreamers, unaware of the harm they do, are actually responsible for much of the insanity, crime and suicide that plague our world today.

Happily, among them is a born rebel, named Raul, who is born with a nasty, suspicious turn of mind and decides there is more to the universe than the Dreamers have any idea of. His sister, Leesa, is rebellious, but in a different way. She doesn't want her love-life in dreams and doesn't care who gets hurt as long as her frustrations stay with her.

Between the two of them and some of their elders they manage to make a fine hash of things for Bard Lane, in charge of construction for what should be Man's first successful space ship, and Sharan Inly, the comely psychiatrist who loves him. Ultimately the Dreamers even manage to sabotage the ship and get Bard locked up in a quilted booby-hatch.

From then on it's every man for himself, with the reader coming out well ahead, thanks to the clarity of Mr. MacDonald's concept and the crisp, continued excitement induced by his fine writing. One of the better jobs of the year.

Astounding Science Fiction: April 1952, reviewed by P Schuyler Miller

WINE OF THE DREAMERS, by John D MacDonald. Greenberg: Publisher, New York. 1951. 219 pp. $2.75

Here is another science-fiction novel which, like several of the publisher's previous books of science fiction and fantasy, has not previously been serialized -- and it's good.

Here on Earth a group of scientists headed by Bard Lane and watched over by beautiful psychiatrist Sharon Inly are trying to build the first ship powered by an interstellar drive. Obstacle after obstacle is put in their way, and it begins to appear that they are somehow "possessed" by hostile hypnosis when the reader learns that the possessing minds are those of a dwindling race of Watchers, stars away across the Galaxy, who believe that the minds they invade telepathically are those of dream creatures of their own invention, and who take childishly -- or senilely -- cruel delight in smashing these dream-creations when they wake.

How Bard and Sharon learn the truth, and how two of the Dreamers, atavistic Raul Kinson and his sister Leesa, uncover the history of their own bleak planet and their three "dream" worlds and fight against the law of their kind to bring reality out of dreams, is the story, It is well and smoothly told, with likable characters a bit beyond the cardboard stage.

Science Fiction Adventures: November 1952, reviewed by Damon Knight

WINE OF THE DREAMERS, by John D. MacDonald. Greenberg, 219 pages, $2.75

Psychiatry returns full circle to the devil theory in this tightly-knit science-adventure novel, first published in Startling Stories two years ago. Pointing to the incessant newspaper reports of persons afflicted with sudden homicidal insanity (see the first three pages of your local tabloid), MacDonald suggests a fantastic but almost water-tight explanation: Degenerate descendants of the extra-solar race which colonized this planet 10,000 years ago, using hypnotic thought-projectors originally designed for benevolent surveillance, invade our minds, force us to cruel or absurd acts for their own pleasure.

Also, obeying a law whose purpose is long forgotten, they sabotage our every attempt to achieve space-travel. This is the peg on which MacDonald hangs a plot which is routine but workmanlike, and occasional passages of mood-writing or social comment that are a little more.

Like all stories that postulate an extra-solar origin for humanity, this one neglects such thorny acts as homo sap's resemblance to Neanderthal, Piltdown Man, the anthropoid apes and other vertebrates not likely to have been carried along on a colonist's vessel. This is the only major flaw in the argument, (though a minor one,- the number of the "Watchers" - 800 - is inadequate to account for all the damage they are supposed to do), and the careful, substantial detail-work is more than good enough to offset it.

MacDonald, a writer with an unusual combination of traits -  industry and talent - has been selling heavily to the slick magazines and other highpay markets of late; this novel is probably one of the last science-fiction stories we'll see from him for some time.

Galaxy: June 1953, reviewed by Groff Conklin

BALLROOM OF THE SKIES, by John D MacDonald. Greenberg, New York. 1952. 206 pp. $2.75

It looks as if it has been decided that the next war will eliminate most if not all of the U.S.A., Russia and Europe.

As noted below, Sprague de Camp [in The Continent Makers] makes Brazil the center of his new era. [H. Beam] Piper, in his novelette in [the anthology] The Petrified Planet ["Uller Uprising"](above), believes that South America, Africa and Australia will be the scenes of future greatness. In John MacDonald's new one, India is the "new colossus," the rich and arrogant "U.S.A. of tomorrow," with the original U.S.A. nothing but a rundown tourist trap.

Pessimism or prophecy? Who knows?

Ballroom is an exciting and effective alien invasion novel, a bit reminiscent of Eric Russell's Sinister Barrier. The problem: why is Earth always warring? Why do the "good people" never take control? The answer, when it comes, is both silly and defeatist; but in the process of getting there, MacDonald unreels an enthralling tale, full of parapsychological gadgetry and wonderful supermen from another galaxy in our midst, etc.

Worthwhile, despite the unsatisfactory ending.

Astounding Science Fiction: October 1953, reviewed by Groff Conlkin

BALLROOM OF THE SKIES, by John D MacDonald. Greenberg, New York. 1952. 206 pp. $2.75

Again, we're owned. Again, a superman is found to use his un-understood dark talents for humanity. But this time it's a little better done than it has been of late.

By 1967 the United States has been reduced to second-rate status by World War III. Dake Lorin is idealistically trying to work for an international balance which will save his Country from total submersion, and the world from another war. The man who is his ideal seems to betray everything for which they have been working. He tries to reveal the sellout -- finds himself referred to a crime-baron -- is involved with a beautiful girl of remarkable mental powers -- and finds himself a student in a strange school among the stars.

Since the secret of this school of worlds, the importance of certain Earthmen to galactic civilization, and the philosophy behind the plot and counterplot on Earth are the theme of the book, they cannot be revealed here. Enough to say that the motives involved are at least as controversial as the ending of [Jack] Williamson's Humanoids. Maybe there'll be discussion over them.

Startling Stories: January 1954, reviewed by Damon Knight

BALLROOM OF THE SKIES, by John D MacDonald. Greenberg, New York. 1952. 206 pp. $2.75

It is our sad, but civic, duty to report that Ballroom of the Skies is a potboiler which impressed us as being unworthy of the talented typewriter which turned out Wine of the Dreamers and "Shadow on the Sand." Mr. MacDonald seems to have caught a slight case of obfuscation, circa van Vogt and attempted the same stunt of having his story gallop off in all directions.

The result is confusion, as it always is. Moreover, the attempt to create menace and an eerie "other world" atmosphere by style alone is forced and unconvincing.

We are resisting manfully the temptation to say something nice about the book merely because we have, under normal circumstances, so high an opinion of Mr. MacDonald's capabilities. It is our conviction that this is a book which should never have been written or published. It is pretentious and empty.

The theme is the now familiar "we are owned by superior beings" who live among us and guide our destinies and fight over us with other inimical superior beings -- all unknown to us. The hero is a crusading newspaper man, the girl is an alien disguised as a chippy for the purpose of -- who knows?

Buy it if you must. If you're a MacDonald fan you might even like it!

Analog: September 1963, reviewed by P Schuyler Miller

The Girl, The Gold Watch & Everything by John D MacDonald. Gold Medal Books, N.Y. No. S-1259. 1962. 207 pp. 35¢.

This yarn starts like one of the author's highly professional mystery-action books, with the "ninny" hero -- the term is his own, and frequently justified -- stumbling along amid the ministrations of assorted people who are convinced that he has inherited the secret of his late uncle's success. Then he finds that he does indeed have that secret, and how to use it, and the action takes on a touch of Thorne Smith.

The secret is a kind of time-machine disguised as a gold watch. Rather, it is a device like Wells' "new accelerator," that plunges its holder into a red-lit limbo in which he can live an hour's time while the unaffected world passes fractions of a second. He likewise acquires the Girl, an uninhibited hillbilly nightclub singer named Bonny Lee Beaumont who meets him in bed and thereafter proves useful in other ways, not the least that of livening the action by her antics after borrowing the watch on a Miami beach.

There are other girls in passing: a sort of westernized Dragon Lady who leads the opposition and is at one point likened to a pack of Gabors, her TV-actress niece, and an underrated office drudge who has a couple of opportunities to be rated before the skulduggery is over.

The author's smooth hand with a word makes it all quite plausible and a lot of fun.

The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction: November 1965, reviewed by Judith Merril

See my previous posting: Judith Merril on JDM.

"Immortality"

"Immortality" was the fourth of eight stories John D MacDonald had published in the science fiction pulp Startling Stories. Appearing in the May 1949 issue of the magazine this brief 2,000-word tale filled a mere three pages, artwork included. It's an interesting, thought-provoking premise that, as many JDM science fiction stories did, "answered" one of several age-old riddles of man with an s-f answer. Not as ambitious as Ballroom of the Skies (or its antecedent novella "Hand From the Void"), which came up with a reason behind the ageless and endless conflicts of mankind, or Wine of the Dreamers, which sought to answer the reason behind insanity and nearly every other irrational act a human could commit, "Immortality," takes on the much smaller and presumably less-important question of "what causes déjà vu?" The answer, revealed early in the story, is not a hopeful one.

Which is interesting to the student of MacDonald in a strictly parochial sense, since the author's previous Startling Stories entry was "Flaw," a rare --for both him and for early science fiction in general -- pessimistic tale, showing a future that holds an empty promise of progress. The May issue in which "Immortality" appeared contains in its letters section dozens of responses to the previous story, and its reception was decidedly mixed. Since MacDonald rarely, if ever, wrote short stories for specific pulps, I doubt if this back-to-back gloom was anything more than serendipity.

"Immortality" begins with a framing device, set in the here and now and somewhat of a red herring in that the reader is given the full names of two characters who are only there to set up the real story taking place behind the scenes. Stephen Brale and Jane Torin are engaged to be married and are house hunting. Stephen has discovered the perfect home, complete with a "deep, native stone fireplace" and a huge window seat. He can't wait to show it to Jane, who arrives and is forced to shut her eyes before entering. After Stephen has led her inside and allows her to take a look at the beautiful living room, Jane's gasp is the result of more than simply "pleased anticipation."

"Oh, Steve! It's beautiful! But just for a moment, when I first looked at it I had the oddest feeling. It was as though you had brought me in here before and I had opened my eyes and seen this same room."

Steve make playful fun of her and they joke about it.

Double carriage return, next paragraph, and the reader in in a different place and time entirely.

In a subterranean room beneath the "tough vitrified skin of Planet Earth Eighty" sit the Seven, the last remnants of the human race. We are in a future so remote that time can scarcely be measured and the Seven are "incredibly aged" leaders with atrophied muscles and huge, hairless skulls. The glories of the human race, its advancements, its conquering of space and the distant stars is so far back in the past as to be beyond remembering. For at mankind's greatest fulfillment the universe began to die, contracting and decreasing, leaving dead, airless planets and tired, dying suns. (A direct parallel to "Flaw.") The last bits of vegetation on the last habitable planets died a million years ago, and now only the Seven remain, discussing (through telepathy, of course) no less important a subject than the "future" of mankind, such as it is.

"We are Man. We have fought through countless millions of years, migrating to green worlds when old ones perished. There are no more green worlds. Our universe fades and dies. Let this then, be the end. Let us, the last Seven of mankind, perish here, considering the deeds of our race, the worlds made and destroyed, the universe plumbed to the outermost edges of eternal darkness. Let this be the end."

It sounds as if they have a choice in the matter, and indeed they do. With science beyond imagining, they have seen the future and know there is nothing but death. They have also looked into the past and found that it "cannot be changed or altered in the slightest degree." But they have the power, through a huge machine built thousands of years earlier, to reboot time, but in the only way it can be rebooted: repeating history exactly as it has been played out before.

"It is known that we cannot step backward in time as independent entities. To do so would be to disturb the probability stream, leading to the mistaken concept of tangential worlds. On this same basis, an entire planet, or even an entire section of the universe can -- must be returned as a unit, because the whole is the smallest fraction that can be shifted in the time stream without altering in any way the probabilities involved."

Got that?

The conflict in the story (what little conflict there is) is between different factions of the Seven, those who want to press the button (literally) and those who don't. At that point one of them asks (telepathically, of course) the inevitable question:

"My brothers, have you  thought that possibly this is not the first time we have been here? Have you thought that possibly we are already in the closed circle and that our decision is inevitable? Have you thought that we have passed this way before?"

Of course they have, for that is the whole point of the story, and when the framing story returns to end the tale, it is as predictable as if we had all lived it before. Perhaps we have! One certainly gets that feeling reading lots of old pulp fiction.

Reading "Immortality" immediately brought to mind MacDonald's 1948 Clinton Courier newspaper column on science fiction, which he ended thusly:

"Maybe science fiction is like the comforting words of a wise parent: "Don't worry, little man. When you bust up this planet, I'll buy you a new one. A nice new green one. Two hundred light years away."

The story, as far as I know, has never been anthologized.

"A Condition of Beauty"

"A Condition of Beauty" was the first John D MacDonald science fiction story I ever read. I found a copy of it in a used book store back around 1975 when I was buying up and reading all of the JDM novels. It was included in an odd kind of digest-sized anthology called Great Science Fiction Stories, a 1966 collection that was neither magazine nor paperback but some sort of combination of the two. It was edited by Jim Hendryx, Jr., carried the designation "Number 3" on the cover, so it was obviously part of a series, and was notable for the fact that it included the original magazine pulp art with the stories. I was only dimly aware at the time that MacDonald had written science fiction, so it was a kind of surprise, and after I finished reading it I recall thinking, "So that's where Rod Serling stole the idea for "Eye of the Beholder!"

Of course Serling could have been inspired by any number of similar science fiction tales for his iconic 1960 Twilight Zone episode, but I didn't know any better at the time, and I seriously doubt if JDM himself came up with the idea of monsters-turn-out-to-be-human as a surprise ending. Besides, given his title it isn't really much of a surprise, and even if the title didn't clue the reader, the artwork that was featured at the beginning in the September 1949 issue of Startling Stories would have told the reader exactly what was going on.

The story opens in a dark, dank prison cell far away on some unnamed planet. Inside the unlighted cell are Pol and an elderly man simply known as "the old one." In an adjoining cell sits Lae, a female. These three are monsters, deformed beings shut away from the normal creatures of this civilization. When Pol was born his mother hid him in the woods, where he lived for many years until he was finally caught and imprisoned. While he was free he visited "the temple" and saw pictures of other monsters such as he. He knows what he is but has trouble coming to grips with it. "In darkness it is hard to accept. I feel like a man. I think as a man does. It is odd to be monstrous. It is something one wished to forget." Pol has managed to make a small opening in the wall between the two cells and is able to speak with Lae without seeing her. She has grown despondent and has stopped eating. Pol tells her, "I hear your voice and in my mind I see you as a woman, a normal woman. A woman such as my mother... It is easy to forget that you are [a monster] in this eternal darkness." She makes him put his hand through the opening to feel her arm. "He did so, felt the horror within him as his fingers told him that her arm was strong, solid, thick."

Cut to a spaceship, Patrol Eleven of Planet Census Group Fifty-One, out among the planets counting humans. They are on their way home and have only one distant, uninhabited planet to go. But a cursory inspection of their scan reveals something unusual, and despite their desire to return to their families, they move in closer to investigate. There they see a "vast ship sprawled against a gentle wooded slope," it's metal sides "still bright and untarnished." Since nothing was supposed to be here, they run the image through their historical reference books and discover that it is the remains of the Victrix, the tenth ship to leave Earth one hundred and ten generations ago. They land to investigate but have to don suits to go outside, as the oxygen is too thin and the gravity too weak. What they see makes two members of the landing party literally throw up...

You can see where this is going, but the real fun of the story is learning how things got the way they are, then going back and re-reading the brief 3,000 words to see all the clues the author left in the opening paragraphs.

MacDonald did not include this story in his science fiction anthology Other Times, Other Worlds, which tells me he probably didn't think much of it after almost thirty years. It's certainly not deep or profound, but it is enjoyable and well written. As far as I can tell it was only anthologized that once in 1966, and while copies of this book/magazine aren't always easy to find, one does show up for sale now and then.





Update (2/4/2015)


As you can read in the comments below, I was wrong in implying that the Virgil Finlay illustration used in the anthology was the artwork from the story's original publication. Eric was kind enough to scan and send me a copy of that illustration. While it doesn't come close to the quality of any of Finlay's work, it is just as much of a spoiler as is the radient female from the anthology.

"Flaw"

Pessimism is not a trait one usually associates with the works of John D MacDonald. His early fiction usually featured happy endings (MacDonald called them "glib") and, no matter how bleakly they began, were for the most part ultimately redemptive. For every "Miranda" or "The Reference Room" there are scores of criminals-caught and guy-gets-girl tales. And even though one can see the influence of Cornell Woolrich in MacDonald's very early pulp writings, he was never as dark as that author, at least by the time the stories were wrapped up. His science fiction is invariably positive, but "Flaw" is a notable exception.

Published in the January 1949 issue of Startling Stories, "Flaw" runs a brief 3,200 words and was buried inside without a cover blurb. One of the more notable science fiction pulps, Startling Stories was launched in 1939 as a companion magazine to Thrilling Wonder Stories, and ran until 1955, managing to outlive the majority of other popular fiction magazines of the times. It was geared to a younger audience than most of the other s-f pulps, but still managed to publish a lot of credible work, and it "discovered" a few name authors, such as Frank Herbert and Jack Vance. Always leading with a novel, the remainder of the magazine was filled with three or four shorter works. Except for their re-publication of Wine of the Dreamers in 1950, the eight published works MacDonald sold to Startling Stories were short pieces.

According to Martin H. Greenberg in his brief intro to the story in Other Times, Other Worlds, "Flaw" was "a rather bold story for its time because it challenged several rules of formula science fiction..." with both its pessimism and its ending, which I won't reveal here. It takes place in 1964, four years after the "atomic drive" enabling space travel was developed, and is told in the first person by one Carol Adlar. The opening paragraph immediately lets the reader know that they will not be reading a typical science fiction story:

"I rather imagine that I am quite mad. Nothing spectacular, you understand. Nothing calling for restraint, or shock therapy. I can live on, dangerous to no one but myself."

Carol begins recalling Johnny, her astronaut fiancé, who she met when he was a test pilot back in 1959. Right away we learn that Johnny left for space three years ago, and that he isn't coming back. She remembers when she first met him in this wonderfully evocative paragraph:

"Johnny Pritchard. I figured him out, I thought. A good-looking boy with dark hair and a careless grin and a swagger. That's all I saw in the beginning. The hot sun blazed down on the rocks and the evenings were cool and clear."

Carol resists Johnny's advances, but after a date where he spends the evening talking about his dreams of traveling into space, Carol falls for him and his vision:

"There have always been people like Johnny and me. For a thousand years mankind has looked at the stars and thought of reaching them. The stars were to be the new frontier, the new worlds on which mankind could expand and find the full promise of the human soul... All persons in love have dreams. This was ours. Johnny would be at the controls of one of the first interplanetary rockets. He would return to me and then we would become one of the first couples to become colonists for the new world."

They exchange rings and decide to put off marriage until after Johnny returns. But Carol makes it plain that he isn't coming back, even though everyone else is still hopefully expecting the return of the Destiny II. An 18-month voyage has turned into three years, and still they wait. But not Carol. She knows something they don't, not only about Johnny, but about outer space and rocket travel, and the "flaw" in their science.

The first person narration in "Flaw" is as bleak as anything you'll read by Jim Thompson, and one wonders how it ended up in a magazine geared to younger readers. MacDonald rarely used a female narrator, and he seems somehow liberated by it here, especially in the open lyricism of the prose he uses. You will rarely find lines like "The heart is ever cautious," or "I saw it with my mind, but not with my heart," in a John D MacDonald story, but it works wonderfully within the context. The story reads like a kind of a tone poem or, if you like, a dirge. Still, it is beautifully written and holds up well, despite the fact that it presents interplanetary space travel in 1960.

In MacDonald's deconstructionist Afterword to Other Times, Other Worlds, he strongly echoes "Flaw" when he writes about how the science of 1978 (when the anthology was published) makes impossible most of the science fiction ever written. "The merciless mathematics of Einstein and Fitzgerald lock us into our own planetary system forever. We are not going out to the stars. It is not only cruel to hold out such a hope for mankind, but even in entertainment fiction, it is counterproductive to the races of man." It's hard to imagine that the person who wrote those sentences was the same author who gave us Wine of the Dreamers, but by 1978 MacDonald had long since given up on science fiction. And as "Flaw" demonstrates, it wasn't necessarily a new notion.

But it was somewhat unique, as Martin H Greenberg points out, even among the other 52 works of science fiction by MacDonald. A year after it appeared in Startling Stories "Flaw" was included in an anthology titled The Best Science Fiction Stories: 1950 and, of course, it eventually became one of the stories in Other Times, Other Worlds.

Wine of the Dreamers

Wine of the Dreamers, John D MacDonald's fourth or fifth published novel (depending how you're counting), has an interesting history. Originally appearing in the May 1950 issue of Startling Stories, it was subsequently published in book form, in late 1951, as a hardcover -- MacDonald's first -- and didn't appear in paperback until May 1953, under the title Planet of the Dreamers. Both versions went through only one edition before disappearing completely. It wasn't until late 1968 that MacDonald's editor Knox Burger convinced him to issue new versions of both Dreamers and MacDonald's other early science fiction novel, Ballroom of the Skies. MacDonald wrote a special Afterward that appeared in both novels, where he justified the idea of the re-releases and admitted (somewhat defensively) that he thought the books had aged rather well.

Both are, in my opinion, excellent novels and excellent science fiction, although I can claim no expertise in the later. I've always preferred Dreamers over Ballroom, simply because I feel the characters are more engaging, the plot is constructed with more care, and the central idea behind the book is more cleverly realized. Both books deal with the same theme, or question: What is the cause of "the wellspring of the random wars and killings that [occupies] men's souls," and, why does mankind stumble and fall so often in its progression to a desired perfection? The answer, according to MacDonald (in both books) is an unknown, ongoing alien intervention. In Ballroom it is for weal, in Dreamers it's for woe.

The setting takes place in two locations: Earth in 1975 (25 years after the novel was written), and on the planet of the Dreamers. Brad Lane is the director of the secret Project Tempo, one of many attempts at building an extraterrestrial spacecraft on Earth. He is assisted by Sharan Inly, Project Assistant in Charge of Psycho-Adjustment. Sharan is necessary because this project, like all others before it, is bedeviled by sudden and inexplicable sabotage, carried out by trusted members of the project team. There is no predicting when this will take place, or who will carry it out, but in each case the person will behave normally, then go nuts and wreck some all-important piece of necessary machinery before reverting back to normal, unable to explain why they did what they did.

On another world many light years away, a race of pale, child-like beings live inside an enclosed world and live to dream. They dream inside of large, tube-like devices which they are permitted to enter upon reaching adulthood. Their dreams all take place in three different and separate settings: a world of entities far more mentally and technologically evolved than they are, a world of near primitive beings, and a world somewhere in between. The dreamers amuse themselves by entering the minds of the people they dream about, take over their minds, and force them to do what they wish. This can be anything from enjoying a good romp in the hay, to savagely annihilating other beings in cold blood. It's all good, because they're only dreams.

There are a few rules, though, and the most important one is this: If any person in the middle world makes any progress in their attempts to go beyond their own planet, they must be stopped.

Raul Kinson is a member of this dreaming society, but he's a bit different than everyone else: more curious, more inquisitive, and built more firmly than the other rather enervated beings there. He begins to explore his walled world, even though it's strictly forbidden, and discovers a huge repository of history, untouched for eons, written by the predecessors of this society. He also learns -- by seeing -- that the world he lives in does indeed extend beyond the walls everyone else accepts as reality. Looking out of a window at the very top of the structure his people live in, he sees what he later learns are rocket ships, several of them, sitting on a vast plain in a nearly dead world.

What if the dreams are not just dreams? He and his sister Leesa break another of their society's rules and attempt to directly communicate with two beings in the middle world. Guess which two?

The Earth of 1975 is cleverly and presciently explained to the reader in the form of a news broadcast played on a (hydrogen) car radio at the beginning of the story. The "Paris Conference" continues apace, with no sign of a breakthrough, and the Pan-Asian delegate is called back to Moscow to receive instructions on the Siberian agreement. The new slot-machine divorce law has just gone into effect in Nevada. The Speaker of the House was reprimanded for shooting fellow delegates with a bubblegum pea shooter. A New Jersey landlady has murdered six of her tenants with a steak tenderizer and is still at large. The new beachwear for women in France is halters-only, and the latest drink craze is Wilkins' Mead, a non-alcoholic, non-habitforming beverage that "cures boredom through a simple process of intensifying ... reception to stimuli... You have never really seen a sunset, enjoyed a kiss, tasted a steak until you have had your handy lip-sized bottle of Wilkins' Mead!"

MacDonald tells this tale with his typical style and suspense, drawing characters who seem real and who act, even for a science fiction story, like real people do. The reader is swept along in a plot with suspense and surprise, and the world of the Dreamers is imaginatively created and becomes strikingly real. In the end, it's less of a story about the future than a tale of people interacting for a better good and their ultimate happiness. It is for this reason, I believe, that this book resonates so well with readers not used to a steady diet of science fiction.

Wine of the Dreamers, probably because of it's genre (and the fact that it came out in hardcover), was the most widely reviewed of MacDonald's early novels. Indeed, it is the only novel written before 1953's Dead Low Tide to receive any contemporaneous reviews, with the exception of Ballroom. Most of the reviews were positive, and he even got a few lines in the New York Times Book Review, which called Dreamers "taught and suspenseful ... [with] real excitement and more depth than most." Many of the science fiction magazines of the time also reviewed it favorably.

That MacDonald felt it necessary to include an Afterward with the 1968 re-release shows a bit of unease on his part at how the books would be viewed after nearly 20 years, and reveals something about why he abandoned writing science fiction years ago:

"Herein there are no bug-eyed monsters, except for the ones forever-resident in the human heart. There are no lovlies being rescued by space explorers from giant insects who talk in clicks and carry disintegrators. No methane atmospheres. Nothing emerging from the evil swamps. Not even a single dutiful robot, harboring either electronic love or the cross-wired circuitry of rebellion. Because of these omissions I may well be responsible, also, for turning off the hard-core aficionado of science fiction who, because these are more about people than things, might also term them 'silly.'"
 

This upset at least one s-f fan, who wrote in the pages of Yandor, a s-f fan publication, "In the afterword, the author manages to insult science fiction and display a none-too-well founded smugness about his books... the characters are no more and no less cardboard than the characters in the rest of science fiction in those days." Another wrote, in a different fanzine, "It is typical of the poorer, amateurish writing of the time. MacDonald does a great deal to prove his ignorance of modern science fiction... Before he acts as a critic of science fiction, I suggest he read some. I received the impression he quit reading [it] around 1955 and has coasted along until now, when he got out his old book and a soapbox to speak from."

Yet both reviewers recommended reading it.

MacDonald's Afterword was really written for his regular fans, not the readers of science fiction. No better testimony could be given for anyone who enjoys a good story and good writing, no matter what the context.

"Ring Around the Redhead"

"Ring Around the Redhead" was originally published in the November 1948 issue of Startling Stories. One of the best and most enjoyable of MacDonald's science fiction work, it was good enough to be included in an early s-f anthology (Science-Fiction Adventures in Dimension, 1953) and in 1967's Science Fiction Yearbook. It was included as well in MacDonald's own anthology, Other Times, Other Worlds. Ultimately, it was adapted for television as an episode of George Romero's Tales From the Darkside in 1985.

"Ring" takes place in a single setting, a courtroom where amateur inventor Bill Maloney is on trial for the murder of his next door neighbor. While no corpse has been found, the discovery of bits of hair and brain matter, as well as the testimony of a busybody neighbor from across the street are enough for the district attorney to bring charges. We learn through her testimony that Bill has been living with a beautiful young woman who was first seen wearing a strange, metallic garment, and who appeared to be deaf. We also learn that she witnessed Bill and his missing neighbor arguing soon after the girl appeared. The busybody, Miss Anita Hempflet, did some asking around and determined that the girl didn't come to town on a plane, bus or taxi. "I figure that any woman who'd live openly with a man like Maloney must of hitchhiked into town. She didn't come any other way." We also learn that there was a recent mishap with an atomic bomb an a nearby military base.

Maloney eventually takes the stand to testify in his own defense. He testifies that the bomb explosion opened a strange, futuristic room in his basement and in there he discovered a large, metallic ring. After some tinkering he discovers the ring to be a portal to another world or, perhaps another dimension. He is able to reach in a pull out objects, such as uncut rubies and other strange artifacts, and he makes the mistake of telling his next door neighbor about it. Ultimately Bill pulls out Rejapachalandakeena, a beautiful young woman from this other place, who is naturally scared and confused and, they discover, unable to return to her world through the ring. Bill calls her Keena for short, and begins teaching her English. He learns she has come from an advanced civilization where war and disease are things of the past, and where the people have honed their mental abilities to the point where they can materialize objects and read each others' thoughts. She warns Bill that her people will come looking for her.

Bill and Keena fall in love, the next door neighbor steals the ring and... read the rest for yourself. I won't spoil it.

The story is delightfully written and a joy to read. MacDonald's plot is masterfully constructed, with revelations of the happenings in Bill's house told piecemeal through court testimony. His descriptive abilities are, after only two years of story writing, sharp and succinct. He describes Anita Hempflet as "fiftyish, big-boned, and of the same general consistency as the dried beef recommended for Canadian canoe trips." The judge is "a puffy old citizen with signs of many good years at the brandy bottle, the hundreds of gallons of which surprisingly had done nothing to dim the keenness of eye or brain." The story's climax is exciting, satisfying, and ends on a very humorous note.

All of which is missing in the television adaptation. Probably due to budget restraints, the setting is changed from a courtroom to a prison cell, where Bill has already been convicted and is awaiting execution. A female reporter visits him and the story is told to her in flashback. John Heard credibly plays Bill, but Penelope Ann Miller's Keena is portrayed as more of a ditz than a superior being from another world (this was, perhaps forgivably, her first screen appearance). The one attempt at humor is pretty lame and is nowhere to be found in the original story. The episode is poorly staged, the special effects (if you can call them that) are something out of a dinner theater production of Little Shop of Horrors, and the entire episode has the cheap look of an Ed Wood film. The poor job Paramount did in transferring the shows to DVD doesn't help either.

All of the character interplay that made the original story so engaging is gone, and the finale is almost embarrassingly mishandled. The show is available on DVD for purchase or rental -- I rented the episode from Netflix. Worth checking out for the JDM completist, but once again, a wonderful opportunity to adapt a great MacDonald story is muffed.