New Anthology of Science Fiction
L. Sprague de Camp
Introduction
The main difficulty in editing an anthology like this one is that it is never long enough. All the time there is the necessity to select, to reject, to differentiate between stories according to some standard of value. With the work of Sprague de Camp there is so much material from which to choose that I feel I must give reasons for this particular selection. But there is no difficulty about that. I chose these stories because I think that they entertain.
Some stories make you think. They make you think so much that you begin to forget they are stories and start to believe their messages. Which may be a good thing. Or a bad thing.
And there have been so very many collections of "serious" stories—I edited one myself—that 1 feel something in a lighter vein will be welcome. It is so easy for people to think that science fiction deals only with death and destruction and doom. It does not.
This book proves it. For here we have some of the cream of science fiction humour. Sprague de Camp can, when he wishes, exhibit the pertness of Parker, the whimsy of Wodehouse, the baloney of Benchley and the nuttiness of Nash; and when it comes to jabberwocky he can stand without shame beside Lewis Carroll. Yet through it all runs a warm murmur of human kindness reminding us of the stories of O. Henry—a criterion of true humour.
And this is fitting, for our author's Christian name, Sprague, is an old English name from Upwey, Dorset, meaning "lively"; while his surname, de Camp, is Norman-French—a spritely lot. Perhaps there is, after all, something in a name!
Jabberwocky will be found in Calories, one of Sprague's famous Krishna stories. Nuttiness, of a quiet kind, appears in The Saxon Pretender, where the British throne is threatened by an American descendant of the king who got an arrow in his eye. Baloney, wild and wonderful, sweeps through the pages of Space Clause, and gives us a small hint at our pomposity. Whimsy is the keynote of Colourful Character—so colourful, such a character! Pertness peeps out in every line of Juice, one of the most probable impossible stories of our age. And in Proposal the basic kindness wells up at the end into something like a tear—and then you laugh!
Science fiction is an adult form of literature, and the humour in these stories is adult, too. It does not take you back to the eggs-in-the-bed days of childhood, or make you split your sides—which, after all, would be uncomely. But it stirs up a sort of rumble in the nether regions of the thorax; it brings a gleam to the eye, a twitch to the lips and seems to make life a little more worth while.
In a word, these stories—entertain.
I hope you like them.
H. J. Campbell,
London, 1953.
Calories
SlNGER took a quick look up and down the street. Few were abroad in the long spring twilight, especially since a light snow had begun and the wind whipped a thin surface-drift over the cobbles. Nothing to hold a footprint yet, so he'd be sweet for a while before the Johns mooched along.
Hoping the stories of Syechas's hospitality to fugitives were true, he darted through the door with more agility than one would expect of a man of his bulk. Inside, the sweet smell of nyomnigë met his nose. Luckily he didn't have to worry about letting that drug get him. A difference between the superficially human-looking Krishnans and Earthmen was that instead of giving the latter visions of love, wealth, and other fine things, nyomnigë simply made them sick.
Syechas loomed in the gloom, his shaven skull reflecting feeble yellow lamplight. "Yes?"
Singer swept off his heavy fur cap, baring his own polished pate. Since coming to Nichnyamadze he had taken up this local custom, because it saved an Earthman a picnic in the form of messing around with green hair-dye.
"My name is Dinki," said Singer in stumbling Nichnyami. "They say that you—that you shelter people who wish to be left—uh—severely alone."
"They say many things," said Syechas, bulking immovably before him.
"I can pay," said Singer with a smile.
Syechas raised his antennae. "How much?"
Singer felt into his surcoat and brought out one of the two platinum candlesticks.
"Hm," said Syechas, narrowing heavy-lidded eyes as he held the bauble up to the lamp in the wall-bracket. "This is from the high priest's palace." He turned the object so that the jewels threw little sharp beams of light here and there.. "It would be risky to sell."
"Still," said Singer, "it should be worth—let us say—sixty days' lodging at—at a minimum? In strict—uh—privacy?"
"Have you another?" said Syechas, looking at Singer's big gold ring.
"No," replied Singer, feeling the other hard against his chest.
"Then make it forty days' minimum and I will take you."
"Done."
"Come then." Syechas led down the dark corridor. From the rooms on either side came silence or various sounds: -song here, mutterings there. Singer would have liked to have dropped an eave, since Syechas was said to have a finger in every conspiratorial pie in the city of Vyutr. However, he dared not annoy his new landlord by lagging.
Up a flight of dingy stairs they went; up another; into a room containing an unmade bed and a few crude movables. Syechas took a step-ladder out of the closet and set it up directly under a trapdoor in the ceiling, climbed, and rapped. Then he pushed up the trapdoor, came down, and said: "Up there."
Singer climbed. When he put his head through the opening he found it not quite so dark as an attic should be. He climbed the rest of the way and saw why: a table against a partition on which stood a lamp shaded by a piece of board.
Somebody was breathing.
Singer whirled, hand on his knife, and hit his head on a rafter. As the stars cleared he saw a man crouching in the gloom with a thing in his hand.
"Who are you?" said Singer.
"I might ask the same question."
"Stsa!" came Syechas's heavy voice. "Carve each other not; you're in like condition. Dinki, I'll fetch you a pallet. Have you supped?"
"No," said Singer.
"Very well." Sounds indicated that Syechas was securing the ladder. "Close the trap, and open not save on my knock: two, and again three."
"All right now," said Singer. "As I'm a—a fugitive like yourself, you can put up that thing. What is it, a pistol?" He picked the board off the table, so that the little oil-lamp shone unimpeded.
He saw a short man with a flat oriental-looking face and shaven head—typical Nichnyami. The man looked younger than Singer. However, you couldn't tell with Krishnans, who, lacking the benefits of Earthly science, seldom surpassed a century and a half, Earth time. The man held what he now saw to be a cocked crossbow-pistol. He shook out the bolt, let down the string, and said:
"As you see, no. Where should I get the magic weapons of the Earthmen?" Then after a pause: "Syechas played me foul, putting another in my suite—" (he indicated the attic with a faint smile) "—when I'd paid him for exclusive use. But he has us by the antennae. Whence hail you, stranger? From your accent I'd say not from Nichnyamadze."
"You're right. I—"
Singer paused, watching the other twirl one finger round his right antenna, and then take that organ of smell between thumb and finger and tug it gently, thrice.
Singer casually did likewise. This was a high-sign among Earthmen travelling in disguise on the planet Krishna, implying their feelers were false and glued on.
"Do you speak Portuguese?" said the stranger in that tongue.
"Sim, senhor" replied Singer in the language of the spaceways. "Enough to get by."
"Was your original language by any chance English?"