The name inscribed over the bullpen is HARLAN, though the description is not necessarily physical. I was one of those who supposed his intellectual scrotum contained two jellybeans, but I learned that there were, after all, nitties in his gritty. Thus I applauded the potency of the first DANG VIS and clamored for admission to the second.
Why? Why:
Our field of speculative fiction, like our nation, like our world, becomes too complacent at times. Originality and candor are not always sought, not always appreciated, even when the need becomes critical. At such times there may be no gentle way to fertilize the willing medium; we have to call upon a bull-editor, a rampaging volume, and irate authors such as these you read here. Perhaps even so the mission will fail—but we must, must try. For it is in the expansion of our horizons, including especially these literary and moral ones, that our brightest future lies.
In the Barn is intended to be a shocker, of course. It could have been told without the, if you'll pardon the expression, vulgar detail. But the real shock should not stem from the portrayal of acts every normal person practices. It should be this: this story is a true representation of a situation that exists widely in America, and in the world, and that has existed for millennia. Only one detail has been changed: one form of mammal has been substituted for another in the barn.
Does human morality have to be defined in terms of humans? Is it impossible for us to recognize the inherent rights of nonhuman creatures? Surely, if we can show no more respect for cows, for chickens, for pigs, for any animal or color or philosophy—no more respect than this—surely we have defined our own morality unmistakably.
Introduction to
SOUNDLESS EVENING
Yesterday, speaking to a workshop group of hopeful writers at the University of Colorado, I was asked to explain why so much contemporary fiction (typified by the Updike/Cheever school as published in The New Yorker) was murky, seemingly pointless and devoid of plot . . .and I responded in my snotty manner that it was a perpetuation of the myth that people who say little, who speak rarely and who—when they do speak, orally or in their fiction—speak enigmatically are DEEP and MEANINGFUL.
Christian charity on the part of you readers will excuse this editor's frequent chauvinism and tendencies toward simplistic answers. A product of perfect toilet training in the Outback, I'm certain.
Because if that theory is true, then how to explain Ms. Lee Hoffman, a woman of incredible depth and awesome powers, who is verbally stingy?
If that theory is correct, how then does one explain Quandry, the single most mordantly witty fanzine ever to grace a mailbox, created and edited and nourished on the droll humor of Lee Hoffman?
If that theory is supportable, there is no explanation for the hours of stories told around midnight campfires concerning the legend of Lee Hoffman.
Clearly, your editor is either dead wrong in his belief, or Lee Hoffman is homo superior.
It is possible to be in Lee's company, in an oyster bar or cocktail lounge, and she won't say anything for forty minutes, lying back as it were, and allowing the more garrulous and egomaniacal members of the group to monopolize center stage. Then at minute forty-one point thirty-six she will slide one Dorothy Parker-like line into the conversation and everyone will fall down. At that point you will realize that Lee Hoffman is what has held the group together for three hours, that everyone has been vying to see her smile or get her to laugh or nod her head sagely. She is the glue that holds the Universe together.
I've known Lee so long now it seems as if I can't remember a time when I didn't. Beatley's On-The-Lake Hotel it was, Bellefontaine, Ohio, sometime back in the very early Fifties. It's gotta be twenty years Lee and I have known one another. Every five years she drops me a line informing me that another installment is due on my serial "!nissassa" for her magazine, Science fiction Five-Yearly. Oh God how I adore Lee Hoffman.
Here is what she's written, book-length: most of it has nothing to do with sf, despite the length and depth of time Lee has been a freak of the form. It is the beginning of a substantial body of writing in the field of the western novel. And she is good. So bloody good she won the Western Writers of American Spur award for The Valdez Horses in 1967. And if you think the only good writing in Westerns has been done by Steve Frazee and Dorothy Johnson and Jack Schaeffer and A. B. Guthrie and Elmer Kelton, then you have missed The Legend of Blackjack Sam and Gun-fight at Laramie (Ace, 1966), Bred to Kill (Ballantine, 1967), The Yarborough Brand (Avon, 1968), Dead Man's Gold (Ace, 1968), West of Cheyenne (Doubleday, 1969), Wild Riders (Signet, 1969), Return to Broken Crossing (Ace, 1969) and Loco (Dell, 1971). But if all you read is science fiction, then you'll like The Caves of Karst (Ballantine, 1969) and half of a Belmont Double edition containing Telepower (1967). You will not like the other half of that Belmont book, despite the fact (or perhaps because of the fact) that it is a short novel by your editor.
It is interesting to note—as a dumb sidelight—that the name Lee chose for the hero of Telepower, the short novel in the book we shared, was Beldone; and that just happened to be the phony name I used when running with a kid gang, many years ago. What was I saying about the karass a while ago?
But enough trivia. Here is Hoffman, for herself.
"I was born in Chicago, Illinois, in the neighborhood where Dillinger got it. I spent a good deal of my pre-school life in the local museums, which my mother loved to browse. I've never outgrown my fascination with things which are ancient, obsolete and in ruins.
"We moved to Lake Worth, Florida, in time for me to begin school a half term later than most kids. In Florida, I lolled about the beaches, played under Australian pines, and discovered comic books, which provided a good incentive for learning to read.
"Then we moved to Savannah, Georgia, where I continued my schooling, and eventually started my education. At 18 I completed the two years of junior college available in town. Until that time I'd had various ideas of what I wanted to do for a living: horse ranching, radio engineering, theatre, things like that. On leaving college, I hadn't the least idea of what I wanted to do.
"I ran through a batch of odd and occasionally peculiar jobs, as would seem to be customary with people destined to become professional writers: I worked as a puppeteer, a stage hand, a shill to a horse trader in Kansas, doing minor radio repairs, handfeeding a Gordon press, handling complaints for an importer of foreign cars, in printing production (ever notice how often writer-types have worked in printing? Something to do with a confusion between cause and effect, I suppose), and reading slush for the first science fiction magazine to publish Harlan Ellison. I did a stint as a reporter/photographer on assignment in the Bahamas with a borrowed camera, sold a few drawings for publication, and wrote a few articles for car magazines.
"As to writing fiction, well, my mother used to tell me stories. Then I started telling her stories. I began to put one on paper (ruled tablet paper with a soft lead pencil) when I was in the sixth grade. I never finished that one, but for a couple or three years I kept whupping off 500 word novels, having moved on to notebook paper and a pen. I did most of my writing in class, during lectures, when I wasn't busy thinking up excuses for my declining grades.
"After college, I had a job consisting mostly of sitting around waiting for the phone to ring. I read until I got tired of reading, and then started writing Westerns for my own amusement. I considered trying to sell some of the stuff, but decided I 'wasn't ready yet.'
"I put aside notions of writing fiction professionally for the time being, and eventually pretty much forgot them. I had a career planned in the printing trade. Then one day, Ted White suggested that we collaborate on a book. That idea never got anywhere, but it gave me a notion to try another book of my own. A Western. I did it and, clutching the ms. in my grubby little hands, rushed up to Ace to give it to Terry Carr.
"Terry liked it, but Ace hadn't yet passed judgment, when suddenly one day Terry phoned me with an assignment to do another Western. I grabbed at t
he chance.
"At the time, I'd quit my last job and was taking a few weeks off from nine-to-fiving. The next thing I knew I had one book sold, one contracted and another in the works. I decided not to go hunting a steady job again until the money started running low. Well, that was over six years ago and I'm still on the bum. So far I've sold sixteen books.
"As to me, I'm a pack rat. I collect things. I have at various times owned six horses, two motorcycles, one fifth of a racing go-kart, a quart of vintage Okefenokee swamp water, the largest labelled rusty nail collection in the neighborhood, and over 2,500 fossil sharks teeth (hand-collected), not to mention uncountable other odds and ends, mostly books.
"I live in genteel poverty in an extremely cluttered hole under a tenement on what was the Lower East Side when I moved in, but has since become The East Village, though I don't think I am in any way responsible for this.
"Mine is a life of occasional hectivity, much leisure, frequent confusion, and many pleasures. I count among my friends some of the finest people in the world. It is not always an easy life, but it is a good one."
SOUNDLESS EVENING
Lee Hoffman
The holovision was turned low, its play of colors muted to soft pastels, and the accompanying music barely audible. The windows, set at translucent, glowed with the warmth of the twilight beyond them. The ventilating system fed the room with air that was fresh and pure, pumped directly from outdoors. All the world was soft, and warm, and comfortable.
Settled in his favorite easy chair, Winston Adamson sipped a fresh vegetable-juice cocktail and spied on his daughter from the corner of his eye. He felt a pleasant amusement in watching her.
She stood beside the cat's bed, gazing with rapt curiosity at Tammy and the kittens. Five of them in the litter. Mewling, squirming little furry lumps of life. Tammy's first offspring. Even where he sat, Winston could hear Tammy's soft contented purring.
The child, Lorette, was Thea and Winston Adamson's third at the present. Not the third-born. There had been two others between the first two and this little girl. He found himself suddenly thinking of those two. Jimmy and Beth. Both gone now. But there was still Lorette. She had the same brightness of eye, the same small pouched mouth, the eager hands—always curious, always exploring. The pleasure he took in watching her was the same.
Charming children, he told himself with pride. It was a shame that kids couldn't stay that way—all cute and cuddly and small.
Something vaguely unpleasant touched the edge of his contentment, drawing a withered brown line along it. His oldest boy, Bob, wasn't turning out at all the way he had hoped. The boy was full of foolish ideas about wanting to change the world. Change perfection!
Dammitall, why?
But as the question formed itself, Winston shoved it away. He refused to examine it. He didn't like questions. He rarely asked them of himself. Most had been answered for him long before it might have occurred to him to ask. It was better this way. The chair was comfortable. The house was comfortable. The world was comfortable. Winston was satisfied. He couldn't understand why everyone else wasn't just as content.
Now his older daughter, Nancy, made perfectly good sense. She never seemed to think of anything but boys. A few more years, and she'd be married, with offspring of her own in the making. It pleased him to think of her.
Lorette glanced toward him. Catching his eyes on her, she smiled. He knew he was going to miss that smile, just as he missed Jimmy's. And Beth's. But he was still young. There would be more children, other smiles.
A bell chimed as the front door opened. That would be Thea back from her errands. As she came in from the entryway, Lorette ran to her. She gave the child a quick peck of a kiss, then turned to the mirror at her side. A light flicked itself on, illuminating her face. She removed her hat carefully, not disturbing the precise pattern of curls that capped her skull.
Lorette left her mother, returning her attention to the little life forms sucking strength from their own mother's body.
Thea said, "I confirmed our names on the waiting list, but it may be years before anything turns up."
"Too bad," Winston muttered with a shrug. "I'd rather have liked to keep this one."
Thea nodded, but she seemed distracted. Her eyes glittered. "You should have seen the people at Life Administration. Some of them were actually begging for permits. I mean it, Win, actually begging."
She dropped into her favorite chair with a sigh, and went on, "One woman cried. In public. Believe me, it was humiliating to see. And it's not as if they didn't know . . ."
Just the idea of seeing a person cry was disquieting. Winston recoiled from the thought. He didn't want to hear about it. But Thea seemed to be taking morbid delight in telling him all of the sordid details. He sat still, trying not to hear the words she poured at him.
The image of a woman crying in public persisted in his mind. He railed at it, resenting it. The woman had no right to do such a thing. She'd certainly known beforehand what the situation was. Everyone knew.
It was all so simple, so logical, so reasonable. There was a limit to the population the planet could support in comfort. That limit had been reached long ago. For a time, during the age of the Emotionalist Revolution, there had been chaos. But when the furor died down, cooler heads prevailed. With the return to sense and sanity, a logical solution had been sought—and found.
A life permit was issued to every individual. It entitled him to reproduce and rear one offspring—one human to take the place of one human. A pair of children to each couple. Simple. One for one.
Since not every individual did reproduce a replacement for himself, the permits of those who died childless could be redistributed, allowing some couples to rear a third child to its adulthood. The population balance was maintained constant.
But children were so—well—cute.
With or without logic, people wanted children. They wanted to fondle baby forms, cuddle toddlers, bask in the unquestioning and unqualified love given by the very young. So there was no official attempt to limit the number—not of little ones.
After all, very small children took up very little space and were a very small drain on the world's resources. It wasn't until they grew—not officially until they reached the age of five—that they were considered to become individuals, and a concern of society as a whole.
Lorette would be five tomorrow.
"I brought the capsule and arranged the pickup," Thea said.
Winston nodded. Looking toward his daughter, he said, "It's bedtime, honey."
"Now?"
"Yes, now."
"Can't I watch Tammy's babies? Just a while more?"
"No."
She pouted, but she didn't argue.
"Give daddy a big hug," he told her.
She came to him, throwing her arms around his neck. He felt the warmth of her body, and he remembered Jimmy and Beth.
"Come along to bed." Thea took the child's hand.
Laughing, Lorette began to tell her mother some story about Tammy and the kittens.
"Be sure you drink all your milk," Winston called after them as Thea led the child from the room.
He leaned back, sipping his cocktail and not thinking anything at all. He reclined in quiet, blank comfort, hardly aware of the soft music and Tammy's steady purr.
When Thea returned, he asked, "You gave her the capsule?"
Thea nodded. Wordlessly, she passed by him and went on into her bedroom.
He found himself getting to his feet. For no reason he went to Lorette's room. She was curled on her side in the bed, her hair in a loose tow tousle, her face soft and smooth by the dim nightlight. Small pink lips. Long pale lashes. A tiny ear, perfectly formed, half-hidden under stray hair. The sheet over her stirred slightly at the gentle shallow motion of her breathing.
Even as he watched, the motion stopped.
He turned his back. The collection service would be here soon. They would take care of everything now, just as th
ey had twice before. It was all very simple.
He walked back into the living room. Tammy was still purring. The silence seemed very deep, the purr very loud. He looked down at the squirming suckling pieces of Tammy's self that worked their dim-formed forepaws at her belly.
Suddenly, for no reason at all that he could understand, Winston began to cry.
Afterword
"Soundless Evening" is a nexus of a multitude of ideas, thoughts, theories and possible ramifications. It isn't a prophecy but an exploration. It is set in a future but, like most of Dangerous Visions and this book, it concerns now. With this particular story I must agree with Robert Silverberg, who said in DV that the story has to speak for itself. Anything else I might add would be superfluous. At least it should be, if the story is at all successful.
Introduction to
Many years ago, when the Earth was young and dinosaurs like Collier's, The Saturday Evening Post and Blue Book roamed the world, I was in Philadelphia for a sf convention. Or maybe it was New York. After a while all sf conventions look alike. At some, Heinlein makes a surprise entrance just as he wins a Hugo award, wearing a white dinner jacket, scaring the hell out of those who believed a) he was on the opposite coast and b) there is an order to the Universe. At others, fans fall through motion picture screens and make it difficult for Samaritans to he good. But that's another story. Sadly, as this is written, I learned that John W. Campbell, since 1937 editor of Analog (formerly Astounding), will never attend another convention: his death on July nth, 1971 has thrown the entire field into shock and, whether he was loved, admired, tolerated or disliked, there is no denying he was the single most important formative force in modern sf, a man who was very much his own man, who lived by his own lights and by dint of enormous personal magnetism influenced everyone in the genre. The overwhelming sentiment is that he will be sorely missed and we will never be the same again. Nor will conventions, where John Campbell's presence was always felt.
Again, Dangerous Visions Page 61