The Complete Dangerous Visions

by Anthology

  In any case, Piers was too late for DV, but he wrote a very long, very perceptive review of the book for one of the fanzines, and in it he mentioned that if there was to be a sequel, he would rain fire and brimstone on me if he was overlooked. At that point, contemplating no companion volumes, I regretted having closed the book just before the advent of Anthony, because I was deeply impressed by Chthon.

  And later, when Larry Ashmead shunted my little red wagon onto the spur leading to A,DV and it became obvious I should not repeat anybody who’d been in the first volume, I started drawing up a list of writers I wanted in this book. The first name on the list was Piers Anthony. He seemed to embody all the qualities necessary for an appearance in a book intended to carry forward the ideas of DV: he had come to prominence during the period of “the new wave” (God forgive my use of that phrase), he wrote in a style and with a verve peculiarly his own, he had a sound grounding in the disciplines of the best sf of the past, he was outspoken, his themes were fresh and different, and he was brave.

  So I solicited a story from him.

  He sent me a manuscript titled “The Barn” and I liked it very much. I made a few suggestions for revision and wondered if he’d mind adding “In” to the title.

  Here, in part, was his response, included with this introduction to the man himself, as a (hopefully) interesting insight into how an editor and a writer can work together.

  October 14, 1968

  Dear Harlan,

  When I saw the ms of “The Barn” back, I knew my work had bounced . . . yet again, and of course that particular piece had no real hope of publication elsewhere. You had nicely preserved the ms by backing it with cardboard, though, and used your own envelope. I had enclosed postage but not envelope because I had figured you would want the story. Ah, well, and I took the story out—and discovered that the cardboard was instead a six-page cardboard-colored letter accepting the story. You, bastard, you shook me up again.

  Business first: can do. You ask for revision not deleting the meaty portions, but intensifying them by increasing the protagonist’s personal involvement. You are talking my language. Fact is, the version of the story I showed you I knew was sketchy, because I concentrated on the brutality, the shock value. As it stood, I did not consider it high-class literature—yet it seemed to me it could be improved quite a bit by filling in more on the hero (?), Hitch. His own background, a frustrated love affair, some kind of emotional parallel to what he saw in the barn—but I didn’t do it a) because it would have lengthened the story, that might already be unacceptable because of what it described, and b) because it would have required additional work and craftsmanship, and I’ve put my full skill into my work only to have it bounced by all markets too many times already. One does hesitate to open his vein too far if he suspects his blood is draining not into a patient clinging to life but a rank sewer.

  OK—it seems to me now that we see eye-to-eye on this story, that lengthening and strengthening of personal involvement will not be effort wasted on you, and I shall go to it. You suggest that Hitch might fuck (that word won’t be used in the story: not because I’m prudish, but because it would strike at a different cerebral level than I’m aiming for in this story) her, and feel an attachment. So what I have in mind is to run through the sick scene—hand-milking, anal temperature, heated erection (what is the term for perpetual and painful erection? I needed it for this story, couldn’t remember it, and couldn’t find it listed. I thought it was peripeneurises or some such, but found no such word in my dictionary. Damn frustrating, to know the word exists but not be able to pinpoint it.) pretty much as before, then have the contact with Iota, the teen-aged breeder, be too much . . . .

  Main reason I stick to novels now is that I have yet to fail to sell an sf novel, yet still can not sell more than about one story in five, though it is the same skill applied to each form. Seems as though the magazines are determined to bounce anything with any reasonable spark of originality or imagination—but let’s not get back into that gripe. You proved the truth of any complaints I might make when you published DV. (You know, I haven’t seen any other editor claim he would have published “Riders of the Purple Wage” either. They still claim it is a wide-open market, but they don’t mention that . . . )

  You say you created A,DV just for me? I find that hard to believe. How about this: you are afraid that if you don’t include me, I will review it again . . . anyway, whatever the weight of various factors, I’m glad you had the first and will have a second. The field does need this type of shaking up. Even more, the field needs the replacement of about four magazine editors . . . but that’s another matter. You realize, I trust, that you won’t be able to come up with another “Purple Wage,” and that all the people who condemned it will then condemn you for not duplicating the feat? Yeah, you know.

  Lastly, the baby. She’s a year old now, been walking since 9½ months, has shoulder-length hair, is impossibly cute. My prejudice, of course—except that everyone who sees her agrees. Name is Penelope—“Penny”—kind of you to inquire. I can’t do much writing on the days I am taking care of her (my wife works 3 days a week, thus I work the remaining 4), but should be able to handle the “Barn” revision this coming weekend. You should be hearing from me again, then, in about a week.

  Sincerely,

  Piers

  And then, just five days later, I received the following . . .

  October 19, 1968

  Dear Harlan,

  Here, 4,000 words longer, is “In the Barn.” I incorporated your notions and mine, and have what I believe is a superior version. I have not proofread it, so there will be typos etc., but wanted to get it out to you as soon as possible. Hurricane Gladys passed by here in the last day, and we were without power for 17 hours, so portions of the manuscript were typed by kerosene lamplight.

  This revision helped take my mind off a different problem. Four days ago I had a call from the last publisher I submitted my novel Macroscope to, Avon. He was ready to offer an advance of $5,000 without significant revision . . . but it turned out he hadn’t read the last 90 pages. Since those very pages made another publisher change its mind, I advised him to finish the ms, then make his offer again if he still felt the same. He said ok, he’d call back in a day or two . . . and that was the last I heard. Ouch! Did I scare him off?

  Piers

  As it turned out, Piers had not scared off Avon’s editor, George Ernsberger, and Macroscope was published in 1969 to mixed, but controversial, reviews.

  In the last few years Piers has run afoul of the Recession-produced wearies even longer-established, bigger-name writers have come to know. (We can thank Messrs. Nixon, Agnew, Mitchell, Rogers et thugs for that condition of life: possibly the most innovative method yet devised for “balancing the economy.” They may balance it so well that within a short time we’ll all be back on the barter system, which might not be a bad idea at that. Anyhow . . . ) Yet he has continued to write, and his work continues to be marked by vigor, innovation and a commendable fearlessness.

  I think “In the Barn” will surprise, delight and possibly even shock a few of you; but whatever its final judgment by critics and posterity, it holds for this editor the essence of what this book attempts to do in advancing sf and the fiction of the imagination.

  As for the man behind the story, I include here his autobiographical musings, in many ways as fascinating as the stories they helped produce. Friends, I give you Piers A. D. Jacob.

  “I was born in Oxford, England on August 6, 1934, thus (I think) beating out John Brunner for the honor of being the first contemporary sf writer to be born in that particular locale by about six weeks. Both my parents graduated from Oxford University, which is why I happened to be there at the time. They both went on to obtain Ph.D’s in America, while I went on to become an, er, science fiction writer. Happens in the best of families. I lived in England to about the age of four, when I joined my parents in Spain. They were doing relief work under the auspic
es of the AFSC (American Friends Service Committee), feeding milk and food to the hungry children during the Spanish civil war. I believe my father, Alfred Jacob (brother, that fouls up my pseudonym, doesn’t it) was head of the Spanish AFSC relief project. When Franco took over, things became dubious; my family’s sympathies were with the Loyalists, who lost that war. One day my father disappeared. After several days he managed to smuggle out a note, and thus was documented what the new government had denied: he had been thrown in jail. One of those holes with a trench for sanitary facilities and no separate bathrooms for the female prisoners: the sort you read about in novels but don’t really believe exist. They do exist. He got out, but the agreement was that he would depart the country. That spared the Fascists having to admit they had made a mistake. I don’t know what happened to the stores of food for the starving children after that, but I doubt they went where intended. We boarded the Excalibur (this is from memory, so I don’t guarantee ship or spelling, but I think that’s it) and steamed for America in August, 1940. It happened to be the same ship and the same voyage that the Duke of Windsor made, going to the Bahamas. Remember, he was King Edward VIII of England, who reigned for less than a year until he abdicated in order to marry an American divorcee. I had my sixth birthday on that voyage, celebrated by a cake made of sawdust (they were short of party supplies: WW II, you know) and a harmonica present. I played the latter endlessly, and I wonder to this day whether the one time King of England had to grit his teeth at the interminable racket.

  “School in America was no fun. I attended five schools while struggling through first grade, flunking it twice. Those first grade schools were in five states, too: Pennsylvania, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine and New York. If I were to judge states by that sampling, I would rate Pennsylvania at the top, New Hampshire in the middle, and the rest at the bottom. In New York they were trying to teach me to pronounce my words correctly—not realizing that it was my English accent they were attempting to eradicate.

  “College was a kind of paradise. All the food I could eat (and I ate more than any person my size I know, without gaining weight) and almost complete freedom. It was a no-grade system, so there was no class pressure except the student’s own desire to learn, and my desire was not particularly strong at first. Much of that freedom was wasted, as I did not achieve puberty until age 18 and did not shave until 21, but I did learn the essentials, as demonstrated by the fact that I got married upon graduation. For my thesis I wrote a science fiction novel, at 95,000 words the longest thesis in the history of the college until that time, 1956. It never sold, but years later I reworked one segment of it for a contest and won $5,000. I was drafted into the army in March, 1957, took basic at Ft. Dix and Survey training at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma.

  “The army was not paradise. I, as a pacifistically inclined vegetarian, barely made it through basic (about a third of my cycle didn’t—illness, mostly). They called me ‘No Meat.’ When the time came for me to make PFC they pulled a battery rank-freeze. I went to the battalion C.O. and next day exactly one PFC stripe came down: mine.

  “In 1959 we moved to Florida, where we stayed. We had medical problems, so that we were married eleven years before we had a baby survive birth. Our first, Penny, came in 1967, and our second, Chery, in 1970; both bright, cute little girls well worth waiting for. Penny walked at 9½ months and spoke 500 words by 18 months; not sure I can do as much myself, some days! We’re basically settled and happy, and now I’ve even conformed to the writer’s image by growing a beard.

  “My writing career has been similar to other aspects of my life. I wrote on and off for eight years before selling my first story late in 1962, for $20.

  “I have sold stories to all the major sf magazines in this country (hard to count exactly, because some have been republished as portions of a novel)—a score or so, I guess. Eleven novels at this writing, with four more on the market, and more in progress, since I earn my living by writing. They range from juvenile sf to pornographic fantasy, though my ultimate aspiration is to write straight history. Six have sold in England, and I have a few translation sales: Holland, Germany, Japan.

  “Titles of novels: Chthon (Ballantine 1967); Sos the Rope (F&SF, Pyramid, 1968, contest winner); The Ring (with Robert Margroff; Ace Special 1968); Omnivore (Ballantine 1968, SF Book Club 1969); Macroscope (Avon 1969); The E.S.P. Worm (w/Margroff; Paperback Library 1970; Orn (serialized in Amazing magazine, 1970; Avon 1971? SF Book Club 1971?); Hasan (serialized in Fantastic magazine, 1969–70; bought by a book publisher but written off without publication in 1971); Var the Stick (Bantam 1971?); Prostho Plus (the dental series novelized; Berkley 1972?); Neq the Sword (Bantam 1972?). Question marks indicate my guess when they will be published. One novel, Chthon, was in the running for both Nebula and Hugo, but made neither; Macroscope was on the Hugo ballot but lost, and one of the dental stories, ‘Getting Through University,’ was also on the Hugo ballot.”

  In the Barn

  The barn was tremendous. It was reminiscent, Hitch thought, of the red giants of classical New England (not to be confused with the blue dwarfs of contemporary farming), but subtly different. The adjacent fences were there as usual, together with the granary and corncrib and round silo and even a standard milkhouse at one end. To one side was a shed with a large tractor and cultivating machinery, and to the other were conventional mounds of hay. But the curves and planes of the main structure—a genuine farmer could probably have called out fifty major and minor aspects of distinction from anything known on Earth-Prime.

  Hitch, however, was not a connoisseur of barns, EP or otherwise; he was merely a capable masculine interworld investigator briefed in farming techniques. He could milk a cow, fork manure, operate a disc-harrow or supervise the processing of corn silage—but the nuances of bucolic architecture were beyond him.

  This, mundane as it might appear, was it: the site of his dangerous inter-earth mission. Counter-Earth #772, located by another fluke of the probability aperture, and for him a routine investigation into a nonroutine situation. Almost a thousand Earth-alternates had been discovered in the brief decade the aperture had operated reliably, most quite close to Earth-Prime in type. Several even had the same current U.S. President, making for rather intriguing dialogues between heads-of-state. If, as some theorists would have it, this was a case of parallel evolution of worlds, the parallels were exceedingly close; if a case of divergence from Earth-Prime (or if EP represented a split from one of the other worlds—heretical thought!), the break or series of breaks had occurred quite recently.

  But only Earth-Prime had developed the aperture; only EP could send its natives into alternate frameworks and bring them back whole, live and sane. Thus it claimed the title of stem-world, the originator, and none of the others had been able to refute it. None—yet. Hitch tried not to think too much about the time when a more advanced Earth would be encountered—one that could talk back. Or fight back.

  On the surface, #772 was similar to the other worlds he had visited during past missions, except for one thing. It was retarded. It appeared to have suffered from some planetary cataclysm that had set it back technologically thirty years or so. A giant meteor-strike, a recent ice-age—Hitch was not much on historical or geological analysis, but knew that something had severely reduced its animal life, and so set everything back while the people readjusted.

  There were no bears on #772, no camels, no horses, sheep or dogs. No cats or pigs. Few rodents. Man, in fact, was about the only mammal that remained, and it would be centuries before he had any overpopulation problem here. Perhaps a germ from outer space had wiped the mammals out, or a bad freeze; Hitch didn’t know and hardly cared. His concern was with immediacies. His job was to find out how it was that livestock was such an important enterprise, dominating the economics of this world. Barns were everywhere, and milk was a staple industry—yet there were no cows or goats or similar domesticants.

  That was why he now stood before this barn. Within it must lie the sec
ret to #772’s sinister success.

  So—a little innocuous snooping, before the official welcome to EP’s commonwealth of alternates. Earth-Prime did not want to back into an alliance with a repressive dictatorship or human-sacrifice society or whatever other bizarrity might be manifested. Every alternate was different, in some obvious or devious manner, and some were—well, no matter what Io said, that was not his worry. She liked to lecture him on the theoretical elements of alternistic intercourse, while cleverly avoiding the more practical man-woman intercourse he craved. In the months he had known her; he had developed a considerable frustration.

  Now he had to make like a farmhand, in the name of Earth-Prime security and diplomacy. A fine sex-sublimation that promised to be! He could. contemplate manure and dream of Iolanthe’s face.

  He kicked a clod of dirt and advanced on his mission. Too bad the initial surveyor had not taken the trouble to peek into a barn. But virgin-world investigators were notoriously gun-shy if not outright cowards. They; popped in and out again in seconds, repeating in scattered locations, then turned their automatic cameras and sensors over to the lab for processing in detail while they resumed well-paid vacations. The dirty work was left to the second-round investigators like Hitch.

  Behind the barn were long corrals extending down to a meandering river. That would be where the livestock foraged during the day. But the only photograph of such an area had evidently been taken of a cleanup session, because human beings had been in the pastures instead of animals. Typically blundering surveyor!

  No, he had to be fair, even to a first-rounder. The work was risky, because there was no way to tell in advance what menaces lurked upon an unprobed alternate. The man might land in a cloud of mustard-gas or worse, or in the jaws of a carnosaur, and pop back into EP a blistered or bloody hulk. He had to keep himself alive long enough for his equipment to function properly, and there was no time to poke into such things as barns. Robotic equipment couldn’t be used because of the peril of having it fall into inimical hands. The first investigator of #772 probably had not even been aware of the shortage of animals, nor would he have considered it significant. Only the tedious lab analysis had showed up the incongruity of this particular world.