The Best of Bova: Volume I
To Toni and Tony and the radiant,
resplendent, romantic Rashida.
And to Lloyd McDaniel,
without whose unstinting help this book
would never have seen the light of day.
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
INTRODUCTION
Here it is, a lifetime’s work in three volumes containing eighty stories published over fifty-four years, from 1960 to 2014. They range from the Baghdad of The Thousand Nights and a Night to the eventual end of the entire universe, from the green hills of Earth to the fiery surface of a dying star, from corporate board rooms to a baseball field in heaven. With plenty of stops in between.
Re-reading these stories—some of them for the first time in decades—I am struck with a bitter-sweet sadness, recalling friends who have died along the way, passions and problems that drove the invention of the various tales. It’s as if I’m a ghost visiting departed scenes, people whom I have loved, all gone now.
Yet they live on, in these stories, and perhaps that is the real reason why human beings create works of fiction: they are monuments to days gone by, memories of men and women who have been dear to us—or visions of what tomorrow may bring.
Every human society has had its storytellers. There is a fundamental need in the human psyche to produce tales that try to show who we truly are, and why we do the things we do.
Most of the stories in this collection are science fiction: that is, the stories involve some aspect of future science or technology that is so basic to the tale that if that element were removed, the story would collapse.
To me, science fiction is the literature of our modern society. Humankind depends on science and technology for its survival, and has been doing so since our earliest ancestors faced saber-toothed cats. We do not grow fangs or wings, we create tools. Tool-making—technology—is the way we deal with the often-hostile world in which we live.
Over the past few centuries, scientific studies of our world have led to vastly improved technologies, better tools with which to make ourselves healthier, richer and more free. Science fiction is the literature that speaks to this.
Every organism on Earth is struggling to stay alive, to have offspring, to enlarge its ecological niche as widely as possible. We humans have succeeded so well at that quest that there are more than seven billion of us on this planet, and we are driving many, many of our fellow creatures into extinction.
The stories in this collection examine various aspects of humankind’s current and future predicaments. Some of the tales are somewhat dated: written half a century ago, they deal with problems that we have already solved, or bypassed. Many of the stories tell of the human race’s drive to expand its habitat—its ecological niche—beyond the limits of planet Earth. Many deal with our interactions with our machines, which are becoming more intelligent with every generation.
The people in these stories include heroes and heels, lovers and loners, visionaries and the smugly blind.
I hope you enjoy their struggles.
—Ben Bova
Naples, Florida
November 2016
THE LONG WAY BACK
My first short story to be published in a national magazine, this tale appeared as the lead story in the February 1960 issue of Amazing magazine.
Looking back on it, I am somewhat surprised and terribly pleased to see how prophetic this story is. Not that we have had a nuclear war, of course. But the idea of energy shortages as central to the continued development of civilization, and the idea that is now known as the Solar Power Satellite, are both embedded in this tale, together with a few other goodies.
Notice that I carefully referred to this as «my first published science fiction short story.» It is not the first short story of mine ever published, nor is it the first science fiction short story of mine to be bought by a magazine. My earliest short fiction was written while I was on the staff of the nation’s first teen-age magazine, Campus Town, which a few friends and I created right after we graduated from high school, in 1949. We sold every copy of the magazine we printed, but somehow after three issues we had gone broke.
During that glorious time, however, I cranked out a couple of short stories that my colleagues deemed worthy of publication—my first fiction in print.
Shortly after we had all headed for college, I sold a science fiction short story to a local Philadelphia magazine. A check for the princely sum of five dollars arrived in the mail one morning. Babbling with excitement, I cashed the check at the nearest bank and hopped a trolley car for the offices of the magazine; I wanted to meet the geniuses who recognized my literary talent, and offer them new prodigies of prose.
Alas, their office was padlocked; the magazine had gone bankrupt. My five dollars was probably the last check of theirs to be cashed.
The disappointment taught me an important lesson: cash all checks immediately! Don’t wait for the publisher to go into receivership.
I’ve lost track of that particular story. I doubt that it was very good, or I would have held on to it. So, herewith, is my first published science fiction short story.
Tom woke slowly, his mind groping back through the hypnosis. He found himself looking toward the observation port, staring at stars and blackness.
The first man in space, he thought bitterly.
He unstrapped himself from the acceleration seat, feeling a little wobbly in free fall.
The hypnotic trance idea worked, all right.
The last thing Tom remembered was Arnoldsson putting him under, here in the rocket’s compartment, the old man’s sad soft eyes and quiet voice. Now 22,300 miles out, Tom was alone except for what Arnoldsson had planted in his mind for post-hypnotic suggestion to recall. The hypnosis had helped him pull through the blastoff unhurt and even protected him against the vertigo of weightlessness.
Yeah, it’s a wonderful world, Tom muttered acidly. He got up from the seat cautiously, testing his coordination against zero gravity. His magnetic boots held to the deck satisfactorily.
He was lean and wiry, in his early forties, with a sharp angular face and dark, somber eyes. His hair had gone dead white years ago. He was encased up to his neck in a semi-flexible space suit they had squirmed him into Earthside because there was no room in the cramped cabin to put it on.
Tom glanced at the tiers of instrument consoles surrounding his seat—no blinking red lights, everything operating normally. As if I could do anything about it if they went wrong. Then he leaned toward the observation port, straining for a glimpse of the satellite.
The satellite.
Five sealed packages floating within a three-hundred foot radius of emptiness, circling the Earth like a cluster of moonlets. Five pieces sent up in five robot rockets and placed in the same orbit, to wait for a human intelligence to assemble them into a power-beaming satellite.
Five pieces orbiting Earth for almost eighteen years; waiting for nearly eighteen years while down below men blasted themselves and their cities and their machines into atoms and forgot the satellite endlessly circling, waiting for its creators to breathe life into it.
The hope of the world, Tom thought. And little Tommy Morris is supposed to make it work … and then fly home again. He pushed himself back into the seat. Jason picked the wrong man.