Adventures in Time and Space
An Anthology of Science Fiction Stories
EDITED BY Raymond J. Healy and J. Francis McComas
A Del Rey Book
BALLANTINE BOOKS • NEW YORK
A Del Rey Book
Published by Ballantine Books Copyright 1946 by Random House, Inc.
Copyright renewed 1974 by Random House, Inc.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada, Limited, Toronto, Canada.
ISBN 0-345-28925-0
This edition published by arrangement with Random House, Inc.
Manufactured in the United States of America
First Ballantine Books Edition: August 1975
Third Printing: December 1979
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
For permission to reprint copyrighted material the following acknowledgments are gratefully made to:
Street Smith, Inc., publishers of Astounding Stories, and to the Editors of that magazine for the following stories:
“Requiem” by Robert A. Heinlein, “Forgetfulness” by Don A Stuart, “Nerves” by Lester Del Rey, “The Proud Robot” by Lcwis Padgett, “Black Destroyer” by A. E. Van Vogt, “Symbiotica” by Eric Frank Russell, “Heavy Planet” by Lee Gregor, “Time Locker” by Lewis Padgett, “The Link” by Cleve Cartmill, “Mechanical Mice” by Maurice A. Hugi, “V-z: Rocket Cargo Ship” by Willy Ley, “Adam and No Eve” by Alfred Bester, “Nightfall” by Isaac Asimov, “As Never Was” by P. Schuyler Miller, “Q. U. R.” by Anthony Boucher, “Who Goes There?” by Don A. Stuart, “The Roads Must Roll” by Robert A. Heinlein, “Asylum” by A. E. Van Vogt, “Quietus” by Ross Rocklynne, “The Twonky” by Lewis Padgett, “Time Travel Happens!” by A. M. Phillips, “The Blue Giraffe” by L. Sprague de Camp, “Flight into Darkness” by Webb Marlowe, “The Weapons Shop” by A. E. Van Vogt, “Farewell to the Master” by Harry Bates, “Correspondence Course” by Raymond F. Jones, “By His Boot Straps” by Anson MacDonald, copyright, Street Smith Publications, Inc., 1937, 1938, 1939, 1940, 1941, 1942, 1943, 1945.
P. Schuyler Miller, author, for “The Sands of Time,” from Astounding Stories, copyright, Street Smith Publications, Inc., 1937.
Raymond Z. Gallun, author, and his agent Julius Schwartz, for “Seeds of the Dusk,” from Astounding Stories, copyright, Street Smith Publications, Inc., 1938.
Harry Bates, author, for “A Matter of Size,” from Astounding Stories, copyright, Street Smith Publications, Inc., 1934.
Robert Moore Williams, author, for “Robot’s Return” from Astounding Stories, copyright, Street Smith Publications, Inc., 1938.
R. De Witt Miller, author, for “Within the Pyramid” from Astounding Stories, copyright, Street Smith Publications, Inc., 1937.
Henry Hasse, author, for “He Who Shrank” from Amazing Stories, copyright, Teck Publications, Inc., 1936.
Fredric Brown, author, and his agent, Harry Altshuler, for “The Star Mouse,” from Planet Stories, copyright, Love Romances Publishing Co., Inc., 1942.
S. Fowler Wright for “Brain.” Hitherto not published in the United States.
FOR ANNETTE AND MIDGE
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION
REQUIEM -- Robert A. Heinlein
FORGETFULNESS -- Don A. Stuart
NERVES -- Lester del Rey
THE SANDS OF TIME -- P. Schuyler Miller
THE PROUD ROBOT -- Lewis Padgett
BLACK DESTROYER -- A. E. Van Vogt
SYMBIOTICA -- Eric Frank Russell
SEEDS OF THE DUSK -- Raymond Z. Gallun
HEAVY PLANET -- Lee Gregor
TIME LOCKER -- Lewis Padgett
THE LINK -- Cleve Cartmill
MECHANICAL MICE -- Maurice A. Hugi
V-2-ROCKET CARGO SHIP -- Willy Ley
ADAM AND NO EVE -- Alfred Bester
NIGHTFALL -- Isaac Asimov
A MATTER OF SIZE -- Harry Bates
AS NEVER WAS -- P. Schuyler Miller
Q. U. R. -- Anthony Boucher
WHO GOES THERE? -- Don A. Stuart
THE ROADS MUST ROLL -- Robert A. Heinlein
ASYLUM -- A. E. Van Vogt
QUIETUS -- Ross Rocklynne
THE TWONKY -- Lewis Padgett
TIME-TRAVEL HAPPENS! -- A. M. Phillips
ROBOT'S RETURN -- Robert Moore Williams
THE BLUE GIRAFFE -- L. Sprague de Camp
FLIGHT INTO DARKNESS -- Webb Marlowe
THE WEAPONS SHOP -- A. E. Van Vogt
FAREWELL TO THE MASTER -- Harry Bates
WITHIN THE PYRAMID -- R. De Witt Miller
HE WHO SHRANK -- Henry Hasse
BY HIS BOOTSTRAPS -- Robert A Heinlein
THE STAR MOUSE -- Fredric Brown
CORRESPONDENCE COURSE -- Raymond F. Jones
BRAIN -- S. Fowler Wright
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INTRODUCTION
SCIENCE-FICTION CONCERNS itself with the world of the future, a world whose political, social and economic life has been shaped by the expansion of scientific knowledge. In depicting this world, science-fiction very nearly falls between two stools. Is it literature? Or is it prophecy?
We contend that it is both. Literature should certainly reflect the conditions of its time. Our time is both conditioned and challenged by the quiet men in the laboratories. The war demonstrated that God is no longer on the side of the heaviest battalions, but on that of the heaviest thinkers. The atomic explosions have destroyed more than Japanese cities; they have broken the chains that have held man earthbound since his beginning. The universe is ours. Over and above all problems of imperialism, racism, economic and political instability, is the question: what shall we do with that universe? For once in his history, the most average of men is concerned with more than his own immediate future. The world of tomorrow is the problem of today, and writing that reflects this factor of our life reflects a most fascinating and complex condition of our time.
While there may be many tests for literary quality, there is only one sure method of proving the validity of prophecy. Has it “come true”?
At this writing, 1945, science-fiction writers have seen two of their early and much-used prophecies translated into fact. The use of rockets as motive power for space ships and the use of atomic energy are established and accepted fact. We do not know, of course, how far man has already progressed in his harnessing of atomic power for constructive use. We do know that the Nazi V-2, a rush job produced under the most adverse conditions, was fundamentally a cargo-carrying rocket ship, whose limit of flight into space was determined only by its fuel capacity. Certainly, the realization of these science-fiction predictions is no small claim to prophecy.
However, more important to us than either of these aspects of science-fiction in offering this collection is our conviction that this field offers readers an entirely original and enjoyable adventure in reading. Here are new concepts of what is adventurous, fanciful or mysterious. The writer of science-fiction knows, literally, no limits. What may be a cautious, tentative theory of the speculative scientist is presumed by the author to be concrete achievement. In the hands of a good writer, when probability is accepted as fact, high romance is the result. The future is previewed in a fine story!
Science-fiction reaches further back in the past than one might imagine. From the very beginnings of astronomy man has dreamed of checking his theories by actual visits to the other planets of his universe. Among its many other attributes, that lovely satellite, the moon, has been a p
erpetual challenge to the would-be voyagers of space. One if the first science-fiction novels was written (in Latin) by the great astronomer, Kepler. His means of inter-spatial locomotion was a daemon, or spirit, who bore the traveler in his demonic arms to the noon.
There have been many imaginary flights since Kepler’s time, but he pioneer of modern science-fiction as a form was Jules Verne. Science had begun to march in Verne’s day. He was influenced by its seven-league strides. His characters visited the moon by the device of an immense cannon and, during the course of their adventures, traveled around the satellite and saw its dark side. His tales of adventure constantly reflected an imaginative use of the scientific theory of his time. Verne’s emphasis, however, remained on the adventure aspect and science-fiction as such was never quite realized in his writings.
It is to the imagination and intellect of Herbert George Wells that science-fiction owes its initial establishment as a mature branch of literature. Although none of Wells’ work appears in this book, for reasons to be told later, no discussion of science-fiction is possible without full recognition of the debt the field owes to him. Wells was he first to carry interplanetary tales out of the sheer adventure realm. He recognized the sociological implications of interplanetary communication. He depicted brilliantly and logically the tensions and trains which might result when cultures of different planets collide in his story of a trip to the moon, the emphasis is on the psychological complications of such a flight. Some of the scientific theory behind his writing was, to say the least, implausible. The existence of “cavoite,” the material that made his space ship possible (“The First Men n the Moon”) is demonstrably impossible. In spite of any inaccuracies if scientific thought, however, to Wells goes the credit for giving form, logic and an intellectual approach to this field.
Once the way had been indicated, many writers began developing he field. Today, with the rapid acceleration of scientific knowledge, he approach to science-fiction has become infinitely varied. The dealngs with the future now fall into many categories, for the authors, like the scientists themselves, have all of time and space to mull over.
Perhaps the most popular, with author and reader alike, is still the interplanetary story.
The fundamental fascination of the interplanetary tale is not alone in means of motive power. It is the use of the author’s prime protagonist, Man, in this setting. The space traveler’s adventures are—for the present at least—completely alien to our existence. Most fiction deals with man’s conflict with man—or woman. The interplanetary story deals with Earth man’s conflict with Venus man, or with the things that may inhabit Venus, Mars, Jupiter or one of the planets that revolve around Sirius. No more exciting challenge can be given to the reader’s imagination than to identify himself with the voyager landed on Mars, for example, confronting an utterly foreign environment, where there are two moons in the sky, the air is too thin to breathe and, questioning the newcomer’s presence, there may be a repulsive crab-like object who possesses an I.Q. of 240 and can communicate with the earthling telepathically.
Another fascinating development within the field has been the modern time-travel story. To Wells again goes the credit for pioneering in this direction. The definition of time has preoccupied philosophers as far back as Pythagoras. In our time, the scientists have elaborated the theories of the philosophers and have applied to them the theoretical mathematics that is, perhaps, man’s greatest intellectual achievement. The problem, however, is still unanswered.
Is a time machine possible? Escapists that we are, all of us yearn either for past or future—anything to carry us out of the dull or unbearable present. We cannot help being charmed with the idea, even while we are aware of the grave complications such a machine might have on the pattern of events. History is a complex web of interrelated facts. If a citizen of the present day went back and altered the condition of a single strand of that ancient web, how would it affect us now? Could the time-traveler affect the present by the visiting of the future? And what would he find? What’s done or to be done cannot be undone. Or can it?
One answer possibly to this provocative mass of questions is that time travel (without benefit of machine) has happened! One of the two non-fiction pieces in this book is a fully documented account of a journey to the past taken by two sane, level-headed English ladies.
If this answer does not please you, you will still continue to be titillated by the haunting paradoxes that lie inherent in the question; what is time?
From the limitless range of time and space we turn to another aspect of the field in our own, immediate world. In dealing with its future, the modern science-fiction writer has elaborated probabilities for which his predecessors can offer no counterpart. There are other machines than those serving as vehicles for travel through space and time. The effect of such on our future is incalculable. The struggle of man with his machine properly began with James Watt and will be brought to its climax with the manufacture of the robot, or manlike machine.
If you consider the idea of robots to be sheer balderdash, stop and think a moment. The automatic pilot on an airplane is a robot. It is a mechanical brain that, within a set of limitations, thinks for itself.
The potentialities for good in such a machine are infinite. The robot can be the greatest labor-saving device of all time. Most writers on the subject, however, following the pattern set by Mary Shelley (Frankenstein’s monster was a robot), consider catastrophe a more likely result. No matter which viewpoint is taken, one result is certain —the kernel of a good story.
Space, time, robots, atomic power—all these are shaping and will shape the world to come. Writers have pictured it as a world of inter-space travel, a world that has completely solved the mysteries of the atom, of time travel, of the fourth (and fifth and sixth and seventh) dimensions, a world whose towering cities arc thronged with visitors from outer galaxies. Who will dominate such a world? What will become of modern man, confused, selfish, emotionally unbalanced, victor over disease, environment, time, distance—yet, master of nothing. Can he, will he learn?
Some writers say yes, others no. The pessimists have pictured the brave new world run by robots. Or, they predict no new world at all, expecting, rather, the disappearance of mankind in one last, grand atomic explosion. Or they see humanity reverting to the primitive with only the crumbling ruins of its cities to stir a dim racial memory of former greatness. These are somber themes, but not beyond the range of probability. Equally probable (we hope) is the optimistic view that man will one day rise to the occasion of his scientific attainment.
A third speculation sees the world surviving, all right, but it will be ruled by man’s ultimate descendant, superman. Superman is foreseen as a sudden mutation from ordinary homo sapiens. Mutations occur constantly in Nature. Many paleontologists now believe that there was no such thing as Darwin’s “missing link.” Man occurred as a sudden, direct mutation from the apes. There is no indication that there will be no further mutations. Nature may be experimenting now and one day, superman, homo superior, will take his place on earth., How will we recognize him? Externally, he may present so few differences from a healthy member of the human species that recognition will be difficult. But internally—ah! The science-fiction writers universally give homo superior the power of controlled telepathy. Quite naturally, superman will have a vastly higher I.Q. than ours. Very probable is a more efficient arrangement of internal organs. And so on.
Eventually we shall recognize him and the war will be on. That war is a basic theme of all stories dealing with this man of the future, for the science-fiction writer knows how mankind hates anything alien and strange. For a most exciting and penetrating forecast of the defensive, underground war superman may have to wage against man, we urge you to read Alfred Van Vogt’s superb story, “Slan.” Unfortunately, it is too long to include in this book.
This collection of thirty-five stories is not intended as a f
inal and definitive anthology. We consider it merely a starter, a pump-primer. There will be, we hope, many more collections of these stories that challenge both the imagination and the intelligence; that portray logically and well man’s existence-long flight against space, time, his machines—and himself.
We conclude on a note of self-defense. Anthologists, like critics, in offering their choices and opinions must expect the coals of dissent and the bitter bile of contumely upon their heads. We realize that we are no exception to that dread rule. We, too, will be subjected to censure for the twin sins of omission and commission.
The works of the masters such as Wells, Verne and Stapledon were not included for two reasons. One, they have been re-published and anthologized countless times. Two, our aim has been to introduce modern science-fiction taken almost exclusively from the magazine field. The modems, men like Anthony Boucher, Robert A. Heinlein, Don A. Stuart and Alfred E. Van Vogt, are writers whose craftsmanship and imagination, we believe, rank them with any whose works are now regarded as “classic.” They write far more than entertaining “thrillers,” or “gadget” stories whose chief merit is the concocting of a mechanical wonder. They can write!
We wish to thank especially Bernard E. Witkin, Francis T. Laney and Harry E. Maule. They gave us wise counsel, invaluable advice and much leg-work in hunting down material. We couldn’t have done the book without them.
Raymond J. Healy
J. Francis McComas
Los Angeles, 1945
REQUIEM
Robert A. Heinlein
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