Before They Were Giants

by James L. Sutter

  ~ * ~

  Before They Were Giants

  Ed. by James L. Sutter

  No copyright 2012 by MadMaxAU eBooks

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Introduction: where it all began by James L. Sutter

  The guy with the eyes by Spider Robinson

  Fragments of a hologram rose by William Gibson

  A long way back by Ben Bova

  Possible to rue by Piers Anthony

  Craphound by Cory Doctorow

  Highway 61 revisited by China Miéville

  In Pierson’s orchestra by Kim Stanley Robinson

  Destroyers by Greg Bear

  Out of phase by Joe Haldeman

  The coldest place by Larry Niven

  Mirrors and Burnstone by Nicola Griffith

  Just a hint by David Brin

  A sparkle for Homer by R. A. Salvatore

  The boys by Charles Stross

  Ginungagap by Michael Swanwick.

  ~ * ~

  Where It All Began

  by James L. Sutter

  A

  uthors are, by their nature, exhibitionists.

  As has doubtlessly been observed before, the old aphorism about writing what you know is redundant. The act of writing itself draws pieces of you into your work, and there are no characters (at least, no believable ones) that don’t have a little piece of you at their core, that snippet of your essence that allows you to understand their motivations and make them come to life. In order to see through their eyes, you need to make them partially your eyes, and it’s not uncommon for a writer asked, “So which character is you?” to truthfully answer, “All of them.” In letting you read his work, an author gives you a glimpse of his soul, his unique worldview and his secret shames.

  But while that’s all true, it’s also a lot of metaphysical crap. That’s not the exhibitionism I’m talking about.

  I’m talking about the real thing: the trench-coat-flasher urge that leads a writer to take his work—work upon which he likely bases much of his self-esteem, and his ability to call himself an author with a straight face—and actually show it to people. To let it all hang out in a public forum, in which those viewing his pride and joy are equally as likely to point and laugh as to appreciate. It’s a terrifying thrill, and one that takes a thick skin, a touch of arrogance, and enormous—well, let’s call them “leaps of faith.”

  These conflicting desires to both show off a story and protect one’s pride only get worse when you know that the story in question isn’t your best work, or is old enough that it no longer reflects your ability as a writer. Do you try to sweep everything but your latest masterpiece under the rug? Or do you let the readers see the literary equivalent of embarrassing baby photos, hoping they’ll appreciate how far you’ve come?

  To their credit, all of the authors in this collection were brave enough to choose the latter. Within these pages you’ll find the first published science fiction and fantasy stories by fifteen of the field’s greatest living writers, along with interviews in which the authors themselves critique their debut stories, pass on some of what they’ve learned in the years since, and offer insight into how the stories came to be and how they assisted in establishing the authors’ future careers.

  All of the authors here have different relationships with their early work. Some of them see those first forays as perfectly adequate, and wouldn’t change a thing. (And some of them are even correct to feel that way—it turns out Ben Bova was always that good.) Others have practically disowned their freshman efforts, and aren’t keen to be reminded of them—petitioning Charles Stross to include “The Boys” in this anthology was like producing a dead cat and asking him to autograph it. Yet one way or another, as sterling example or dire warning, each of these stories is now back in the public eye, many after long years of obscurity. And we’re lucky to have them.

  Before They Were Giants was designed to serve several functions. First and foremost, it’s intended as entertainment—as with all books in the Planet Stories line, these stories aren’t included just because of their historical significance, but because they’re fun. Second, it’s intended as a teaching book, a chance for aspiring (or established) writers to receive words of wisdom from their literary heroes and, in watching the greats analyze strengths and flaws in their own work, to help us all identify these traits in our own. Third, of course, is the fanboy urge to collect all of our favorite authors’ work. In dredging up stories that until now were often lost in obscure and expensive back issues of out-of-print magazines, this anthology helps us all to rest easy knowing we’ve fully honored our completist compulsions.

  Yet there’s one last function of this book, a more subtle goal that trumps all the others.

  As children of the modern age, we have a strange relationship with celebrity. Thanks to mass communications, we’re confronted every day by a thousand images and sound bites about entertainment’s elite, the actors and artists—and, yes, writers—who’ve managed to make it big, and are now placed atop the neon pedestal. In ascending to the ranks of the noteworthy, these individuals often cease to seem real in the same way our friends and neighbors do. They are Names and Faces, the little gods of the information age, and though we may worship at their altars, it’s hard to identify with them. For aspiring artists, striving for our own chance to be heard, there are two common reactions to this phenomenon.

  One is resentment. When presented with works of beauty and genius, it’s neither comfortable nor heartening for the neophyte artist to consider the lifetime of work it takes to perfect such skill and mastery of the craft. It’s far easier to say, “Sure, they’re good, but I bet I’d be that good if I didn’t have to work/go to school/watch the kids and could focus on writing all day.”

  This, of course, is the rankest of fallacies—of all the authors in this collection, not one started out with writing fiction as his or her primary vocation. Somehow, each of these authors made writing a priority, and in reviewing where (and who) they were when they published their first stories, we can catch a glimpse of how they made the initial jump from amateur to professional.

  The second reaction is intimidation. It’s easy to be cowed when reading any of these authors’ current works, to throw up our hands in despair at the amount of artifice, talent, and creativity therein. Since all we ever see is the latest masterpiece, it’s easy to presume that the authors must have always had the gift, springing forth fully formed like Athena from the head of Zeus. Yet this is a lie as well, for all of them, regardless of how far they’ve come, were once no different than anyone else—just fans with dreams and typewriters.

  This book is about breaking those assumptions, and showing the giants in their formative years. Sometimes these beginning works are humble. Sometimes they’re astonishing in their completeness. But all of them represent the first steps down the road to science fiction greatness. And in seeing the first steps of those who have gone before, this book is ultimately about taking your own.

  Here’s your trench coat.

  James L. Sutter

  December 2009

  Seattle, WA

  <>

  ~ * ~

  The Guy with the Eyes

  by Spider Robinson

  C

  allahan’s Place was pretty lively that night. Talk fought Budweiser for mouth space all over the joint, and the beer nuts supply was critical. But this guy managed to keep himself in a corner without being noticed for nearly an hour. I only spotted him myself a few minutes before all the action started, and I make a point of studying everybody at Callahan’s Place.

  First thing, I saw those eyes. You get used to some haunted eyes in Callahan’s - the newcomers have �
�em - but these reminded me of a guy I knew once in Topeka, who got four people with an antique revolver before they cut him down.

  I hoped like hell he’d visit the fireplace before he left.

  ~ * ~

  If you’ve never been to Callahan’s Place, God’s pity on you. Seek it in the wilds of Suffolk County, but look not for neon. A simple, hand-lettered sign illuminated by a single floodlight, and a heavy oaken door split in the center (by the head of one Big Beef McCaffrey in 1947) and poorly repaired.

  Inside, several heresies.

  First, the light is about as bright as you keep your living room. Callahan maintains that people who like to drink in caves are unstable.

  Second, there’s a flat rate. Every drink in the house is half a buck, with the option. The option operates as follows:

  You place a one-dollar bill on the bar. If all you have on you is a fin, you trot across the street to the all-night deli, get change, come back and put a one-dollar bill on the bar. (Callahan maintains that nobody in his right mind would counterfeit one-dollar bills; most of us figure he just likes to rub fistfuls of them across his face after closing.)

  You are served your poison-of-choice. You inhale this, and confront the option. You may, as you leave, pick up two quarters from the always-full cigar box at the end of the bar and exit into the night. Or you may, upon finishing your drink, stride up to the chalk line in the middle of the room, announce a toast (this is mandatory) and hurl your glass into the huge, old fashioned fireplace which takes up most of the back wall. You then depart without visiting the cigar box. Or, pony up another buck and exercise your option again.

  Callahan seldom has to replenish the cigar box. He orders glasses in such quantities that they cost him next to nothing, and he sweeps out the fireplace himself every morning.

  Another heresy: no one watches you with accusing eyes to make sure you take no more quarters than you have coming to you. If Callahan ever happens to catch someone cheating him, he personally ejects them forever. Sometimes he doesn’t open the door first. The last time he had to eject someone was in 1947, a gentleman named Big Beef McCaffrey.

  Not too surprisingly, it’s a damned interesting place to be. It’s the kind of place you hear about only if you need to - and if you are very lucky. Because if a patron, having proposed his toast and smithereened his glass, feels like talking about the nature of his troubles, he receives the instant, undivided attention of everyone in the room. (That’s why the toast is obligatory. Many a man with a hurt locked inside finds in the act of naming his hurt for the toast that he wants very much to talk about it. Callahan is one smart hombre.) On the other hand, even the most tantalizingly cryptic toast will bring no prying inquiries if the guy displays no desire to uncork. Anyone attempting to flout this custom is promptly blackjacked by Fast Eddie the piano player and dumped in the alley.

  But somehow many do feel like spilling it in a place like Callahan’s; and you can get a deeper insight into human nature in a week there than in ten years anywhere else I know. You can also quite likely find solace for most any kind of trouble, from Callahan himself if no one else. It’s a rare hurt that can stand under the advice, help and sympathy generated by upwards of thirty people that care. Callahan loses a lot of his regulars. After they’ve been coming around long enough, they find they don’t need to drink any more.

  It’s that kind of a bar.

  ~ * ~

  I don’t want you to get a picture of Callahan’s Place as an agonized, Alcoholics Anonymous type of group encounter session, with Callahan as some sort of salty psychoanalyst-father-figure in the foreground. Hell, many’s the toast provokes roars of laughter, or a shouted chorus of agreement, or a unanimous blitz of glasses from all over the room when the night is particularly spirited. Callahan is tolerant of rannygazoo; he maintains that a bar should be “merry,” so long as no bones are broken unintentionally. I mind the time he helped Spud Flynn set fire to a seat cushion to settle a bet on which way the draft was coming. Callahan exudes, at all times, a kind of monolithic calm; and US40 is shorter than his temper.

  This night I’m telling you about, for instance, was nothing if not merry. When I pulled in around ten o’clock, there was an unholy shambles of a square dance going on in the middle of the floor. I laid a dollar on the bar, collected a glass of Tullamore Dew and a hello-grin from Callahan, and settled back in a tall chair - Callahan abhors barstools - to observe the goings-on. That’s what I mean about Callahan’s Place: most bars, men only dance if there’re ladies around. Of one sex or another.

  I picked some familiar faces out of the maelstrom of madmen weaving and lurching over honest-to-God sawdust, and waved a few greetings. There was Tom Flannery, who at that time had eight months to live, and knew it; he laughed a lot at Callahan’s Place. There was Slippery Joe Maser, who had two wives, and Marty Matthias, who didn’t gamble any more, and Noah Gonzalez, who worked on Suffolk County’s bomb squad. Calling for the square dance while performing a creditable Irish jig was Doc Webster, fat and jovial as the day he pumped the pills out of my stomach and ordered me to Callahan’s. See, I used to have a wife and daughter before I decided to install my own brakes. I saved thirty dollars, easy ...

  The Doc left the square-dancers to their fate - their creative individuality making a caller superfluous - and drifted over like a pink zeppelin to say Hello. His stethoscope hung unnoticed from his ears, framing a smile like a sunlamp. The end of the ‘scope was in his drink.

  “Howdy, Doc. Always wondered how you kept that damned thing so cold,” I greeted him.

  He blinked like an owl with the staggers and looked down at the gently bubbling pickup beneath two fingers of scotch. Emitting a bellow of laughter at about force eight, he removed the gleaming thing and shook it experimentally.

  “My secret’s out, Jake. Keep it under your hat, will you?” he boomed.

  “Maybe you better keep it under yours,” I suggested. He appeared to consider this idea for a time, while I speculated on one of life’s greatest paradoxes: Sam Webster, M.D. The Doc is good for a couple of quarts of Peter Dawson a night, three or four nights a week. But you won’t find a better sawbones anywhere on Earth, and those sausage fingers of his can move like a tap-dancing centipede when they have to, with nary a tremor. Ask Shorty Steinitz to tell you about the time Doc Webster took out his appendix on top of Callahan’s bar ... while Callahan calmly kept the Scotch coming.

  “At least then I could hear myself think,” the Doc finally replied, and several people seated within earshot groaned theatrically.

  “Have a heart, Doc,” one called out.

  “What a re-pulse-ive idea,” the Doc returned the serve.

  “Well, I know when I’m beat,” said the challenger, and made as if to turn away.

  “Why, you young whelp, aorta poke you one,” roared the Doc, and the bar exploded with laughter and cheers. Callahan picked up a beer bottle in his huge hand and pegged it across the bar at the Doc’s round skull. The beer bottle, being made of foam rubber, bounced gracefully into the air and landed in the piano, where Fast Eddie sat locked in mortal combat with the “C-Jam Blues.”

  Fast Eddie emitted a sound like an outraged transmission and kept right on playing, though his upper register was shot. “Little beer never hoit a piano,” he sang out as he reached the bridge, and went over it like he figured to burn it behind him.

  All in all it looked like a cheerful night, but then I saw the Janssen kid come in and I knew there was a trouble brewing.

  This Janssen kid - look, I can’t knock long hair, I wore mine long when it wasn’t fashionable. And I can’t knock pot for the same reason. But nobody I know ever had a good thing to say for heroin. Certainly not Joe Hennessy, who did two weeks in the hospital last year after he surprised the Janssen kid scooping junk-money out of his safe at four in the morning. Old Man Janssen paid Hennessy back every dime and disowned the kid, and he’d been in and out of sight ever since. Word was he was still using the stuff, but the co
ps never seemed to catch him holding. They sure did try, though. I wondered what the hell he was doing in Callahan’s Place.

  I should know better by now. He placed a tattered bill on the bar, took the shot of bourbon which Callahan handed him silently, and walked to the chalk line. He was quivering with repressed tension, and his boots squeaked on the sawdust. The place quieted down some, and his toast - “To smack!” - rang out clear and crisp. Then he downed the shot amid an expanding silence and flung his glass so hard you could hear his shoulder crack just before the glass shattered on unyielding brick.

  Having created silence, he broke it. With a sob. Even as he let it out he glared around to see what our reactions were.

  Callahan’s was immediate, an “Amen!” that sounded like an echo of the-smashing glass. The kid made a face like he was somehow satisfied in spite of himself, and looked at the rest of us. His gaze rested on Doc Webster, and the Doc drifted over and gently began rolling up the kid’s sleeves. The boy made no effort to help or hinder him. When they were both rolled to the shoulder - phosporescent purple I think they were - he silently held out his arms, palm-up.