Emptiness of Space

by John Wyndham

  EMPTINESS OF SPACE

  from THE BEST OF JOHN WYNDHAM

  John Wyndham

  SPHERE BOOKS

  Published 1973

  ISBN 0 7221 9369 6

  Copyright© The Executors of the Estate of the late John Wyndham 1973

  INTRODUCTION

  AT a very tender age my latent passion for all forms of fantasy stories, having been sparked by the Brothers Grimm and the more unusual offerings in the children's comics and later the boy's adven­ture papers, was encouraged in the early 1930s by the occasional exciting find on the shelves of the public library with Burroughs and Thorne Smith varying the staple diet of Wells and Verne.

  But the decisive factor in establishing that exhila­rating ‘sense of wonder’ in my youthful imagi­nation was the discovery about that time of back numbers of American science fiction magazines to be bought quite cheaply in stores like Wool­worths. The happy chain of economic circum­stances by which American newstand returns, some­times sadly with the magic cover removed or mutilated, ballasted cargo ships returning to English ports and the colonies, must have been the mainspring of many an enthusiastic hobby devoted to reading, discussing, perhaps collecting and even writing, science fiction – or ‘scientifiction’ as Hugo Gerns­back coined the tag in his early Amazing Stories magazine.

  Gernsback was a great believer in reader partici­pation; in 1936 I became a teenage member of the Science Fiction League sponsored by his Wonder Stories. Earlier he had run a compe­tition in its fore­runner Air Wonder Stories to find a suitable banner slogan, offering the prize of ‘One Hundred Dollars in Gold’ with true yankee bragga­dacio. Discovering the result some years later in, I think, the September 1930 issue of Wonder Stories seized upon from the bargain-bin of a chain store, was akin to finding a message in a bottle cast adrift by some distant Robinson Crusoe, and I well remember the surge of jingo­istic pride (an educa­tional trait well-nurtured in pre-war Britain) in noting that the winner was an English­man, John Beynon Harris.

  I had not the slightest antici­pation then that I would later meet, and acknow­ledge as a good friend and mentor, this contest winner who, as John Wyndham, was to become one of the greatest English story-tellers in the idiom. The fact that he never actually got paid in gold was a disappoint­ment, he once told me, that must have accounted for the element of philo­so­phical dubiety in some of his work. Certainly his winning slogan ‘Future Flying Fiction’, al­though too late to save the maga­zine from foundering on the rock of eco­nomic depression (it had already been amalga­mated with its stable­mate Science Wonder Stories to become just plain, if that is the right word, Wonder Stories), presaged the firm stamp of credi­bility combined with imagi­native flair that charac­terized JBH's writings.

  John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris (the abundance of fore­names conve­niently supplied his various aliases) emerged in the 1950s as an important contem­porary influence on specu­lative fiction, parti­cularly in the explo­ration of the theme of realistic global catas­trophe, with books such as The Day of the Triffids and The Kraken Wakes, and enjoyed a popularity, which continued after his sad death in 1969, comparable to that of his illus­trious pre­decessor as master of the scientific romance, H. G. Wells.

  However, he was to serve his writing apprentice­ship in those same pulp maga­zines of the thirties, competing success­fully with their native American contributors, and it is the purpose of this present collection to high­light the chrono­logical develop­ment of his short stories from those early beginnings to the later urbane and polished style of John Wyndham.

  ‘The Lost Machine’ was his second published story, appea­ring in Amazing Stories, and was possibly the proto­type of the sentient robot later developed by such writers as Isaac Asimov. He used a variety of plots during this early American period parti­cu­larly favour­ing time travel, and the best of these was undoubtedly ‘The Man From Beyond’ in which the poign­ancy of a man's reali­za­tion, caged in a zoo on Venus, that far from being aban­doned by his fellow-explorers, he is the victim of a far stranger fate, is remark­ably out­lined for its time. Some themes had dealt with war, such as ‘The Trojan Beam’, and he had strong views to express on its futility. Soon his own induc­tion into the Army in 1940 produced a period of crea­tive inactivity corres­ponding to World War II. He had, however, previously established him­self in England as a promi­nent science fiction writer with serials in major period­icals, subse­quently reprinted in hard covers, and he even had a detec­tive novel published. He had been well repre­sented too – ‘Perfect Crea­ture’ is an amu­sing example – in the various maga­zines stemming from fan activity, despite the vicissi­tudes of their pre- and imme­diate post-war publish­ing insec­urity.

  But after the war and into the fifties the level of science fiction writing in general had increased consi­derably, and John rose to the challenge by selling success­fully to the American market again. In England his polished style proved popular and a predi­lection for the para­doxes of time travel as a source of private amuse­ment was perfectly exem­plified in ‘Pawley's Peepholes’, in which the gawp­ing tourists from the future are routed by vulgar tactics. This story was later success­fully adapted for radio and broad­cast by the B.B.C.

  About this time his first post-war novel burst upon an unsus­pecting world, and by utili­zing a couple of unori­ginal ideas with his Gernsback-trained atten­tion to logically based expla­natory detail and realis­tic back­ground, together with his now strongly deve­loped narra­tive style, ‘The Day of the Triffids’ became one of the classics of modern specu­lative fiction, survi­ving even a mediocre movie treat­ment. It was the fore­runner of a series of equally impressive and enjoyable novels inclu­ding ‘The Chrysalids’ and ‘The Mid­wich Cuckoos’ which was success­fully filmed as ‘Village of the Damned’. (A sequel ‘Children of the Damned’ was markedly inferior, and John was care­ful to dis­claim any responsi­bility for the writing.)

  I was soon to begin an enjoy­able asso­ciation with John Wyndham that had its origins in the early days of the New Worlds maga­zine-publish­ing venture, and was later to result in much kindly and essen­tial assis­tance enabling me to become a specia­list dealer in the genre. This was at the Fantasy Book Centre in Blooms­bury, an area of suitably asso­ciated literary acti­vities where John lived for many years, and which provi­ded many pleasu­rable meet­ings at a renowned local coffee establish­ment, Cawardine's, where we were often joined by such person­alities as John Carnell, John Chris­topher and Arthur C. Clarke.

  In between the novels two collec­tions of his now widely pub­lished short stories were issued as ‘The Seeds of Time’ and ‘Consider Her Ways’; others are re­printed here for the first time. He was never too grand to refuse mater­ial for our own New Worlds and in 1958 wrote a series of four novel­ettes about the Troon family's contri­bution to space explo­ration – a kind of Forsyte saga of the solar system later collected under the title ‘The Outward Urge’. His ficti­tious colla­borator ‘Lucas Parkes’ was a subtle ploy in the book version to explain Wyndham's appa­rent devia­tion into solid science-based fiction. The last story in this collection ‘The Empti­ness of Space’ was written as a kind of post­script to that series, especially for the 100th anni­versary issue of New Worlds.

  John Wyndham's last novel was Chocky, published in 1968. It was an expan­sion of a short story follow­ing a theme similar to The Chrysalids and The Midwich Cuckoos. It was a theme pecu­liarly appro­priate for him in his advancing matu­rity. When, with charac­teristic reti­cence and modesty, he announced to a few of his friends that he was marry­ing his beloved Grace and moving to the country­side, we all felt that this was a well-deserved retire­ment for them both.


  But ironically time – always a fasci­nating subject for specu­lation by him – was running out for this typical English gentle­man. Amiable, eru­dite, astrin­gently humo­rous on occasion, he was, in the same way that the gentle Boris Karloff portrayed his film monsters, able to depict the night­mares of humanity with fright­ening realism, made the more deadly by his masterly preci­sion of detail. To his great gift for story-telling he brought a lively intellect and a fertile imagi­nation.

  I am glad to be numbered among the many, many thou­sands of his readers whose ‘sense of wonder’ has been satis­facto­rily indulged by a writer whose gift to posterity is the compul­sive reada­bility of his stories of which this present volume is an essen­tial part.

  — LESLIE FLOOD

  EMPTINESS OF SPACE (1953)

  My first visit to New Caledonia was in the summer of 2199. At that time an exploration party under the leadership of Gilbert Troon was cautiously pushing its way up the less radio-active parts of Italy, investi­gating the prospects of recla­mation. My firm felt there might be a popular book in it, and assigned me to put the propo­sition to Gilbert. When I arrived, how­ever, it was to find that he had been delayed, and was now expected a week later. I was not at all displeased. A few days of com­fort­able lazi­ness on a Pacific island, all paid for and count­ing as work, is the kind of perquisite I like.

  New Caledonia is a fasci­nating spot, and well worth the trouble of getting a landing permit — if you can get one. It has more of the past — and more of the future, too, for that matter — than any other place, and some­how it manages to keep them almost sepa­rate.

  At one time the island, and the group, were, in spite of the name, a French colony. But in 2044, with the eclipse of Europe in the Great Northern War, it found itself, like other ex-colonies dotted all about the world, suddenly thrown upon its own resources. While most main­land colonies hurried to make treaties with their nearest power­ful neigh­bours, many islands such as New Cale­donia bald little to offer and not much to fear, and so let things drift.

  For two generations the surviving nations were far too occu­pied by the tasks of bringing equili­brium to a half-wrecked world to take any interest in scattered islands. It was not until the Brazi­lians began to see Aus­tralia as a possible challenger of their supre­macy that they started a policy of unobtrusive, and tact­fully mer­cantile, expan­sion into the Pacific. Then, naturally, it occurred to the Austra­lians, too, that it was time to begin to extend their eco­nomic influ­ence over various island-groups.

  The New Caledo­nians resisted infil­tra­tion. They had found in­depen­dence congenial, and steadily rebuffed temp­tations by both parties. The year 2144, in which Space declared for in­depen­dence, found them still resist­ing; but the pressure was now con­sider­able. They had watched one group of islands after another suc­cumb to trade prefer­ences, and there­after virt­ually slide back to colo­nial status, and they now found it diffi­cult to doubt that before long the same would happen to them­selves when, whatever the form of words, they should be annexed — most likely by the Aus­tra­lians in order to fore­stall the es­tab­lish­ment of a Brazi­lian base there, within a thousand miles of the coast.

  It was into this situation that Jayme Gonveia, speaking for Space, stepped in 2150 with a sugges­tion of his own. He offered the New Caledo­nians guaran­teed indepen­dence of either big Power, a con­sider­able quantity of cash and a prosp­erous future if they would grant Space a lease of terri­tory which would become its Earth head­quarters and main terminus.

  The proposition was not altogether to the New Cale­donian taste, but it was better than the alter­natives. They accepted, and the con­struc­tion of the Space­yards was begun.

  Since then the island has lived in a curious sym­biosis. In the north are the rocket landing and dispatch stages, ware­houses and engi­neer­ing shops, and a way of life fur­nished with all modern tech­niques, while the other four-fifths of the island all but ignores it, and con­tentedly lives much as it did two and a half centuries ago. Such a state of affairs cannot be preserved by acci­dent in this world. It is the result of care­ful contri­vance both by the New Cale­do­nians who like it that way, and by Space which dis­likes out­siders taking too close an interest in its affairs. So, for per­mission to land any­where in the group, one needs hard-won visas from both auth­orities. The result is no exploi­tation by tourists or sales­men, and a scarcity of strangers.

  However, there I was, with an unex­pected week of leisure to put in, and no reason why I should spend it in Space-Concession terri­tory. One of the secre­taries suggested Lahua, down in the south at no great distance from Noumea, the capital, as a rest­ful spot, so thither I went.

  Lahua has picture-book charm. It is a small fishing town, half-tropical, half-French. On its wide white beach there are still canoes, work­ing canoes, as well as modern. At one end of the curve a mole gives shelter for a small anchor­age, and there the palms that fringe the rest of the shore stop to make room for a town.

  Many of Lahua's houses are improved-tradi­tional, still thatched with palm, but its heart is a cobbled rectangle surrounded by entirely un­tropi­cal houses, known as the Grande Place. Here are shops, pave­ment cafes, stalls of fruit under bright striped awnings guarded by Gauguin-esque women, a state of Bougain­ville, an atro­ciously ugly church on the east side, a pissoir, and even a mairie. The whole thing might have been imported com­plete from early twentieth-century France, except for the inhabi­tants — but even they, some in bright sarongs, some in Euro­pean clothes, must have looked much the same when France ruled there.

  I found it difficult to believe that they are real people living real lifes. For the first day I was con­stantly accom­panied by the feeling that an unseen direc­tor would suddenly call ‘Cut’, and it would all come to a stop.

  On the second morning I was growing more used to it. I bathed, and then with a sense that I was begin­ning to get the feel of the life, drifted to the place, in search of aperitif. I chose a café on the south side where a few trees shaded the tables, and wondered what to order. My usual drinks seemed out of key. A dusky, brightly saronged girl approached. On an impulse, and feeling like a character out of a very old novel I suggested a pernod. She took it as a matter of course.

  “Un pernod? Certainement, monsieur,” she told me.

  I sat there looking across the Square, less busy now that the dejeuner hour was close, wonder­ing what Sydney and Rio, Adelaide and São Paulo had gained and lost since they had been the size of Lahua, and doubting the value of the gains...

  The pernod arrived. I watched it cloud with water, and sipped it cau­tiously. An odd drink, scarcely calcu­lated, I felt, to enhance the appe­tite. As I contem­plated it a voice spoke from behind my right shoulder.

  “An island product, but from the original recipe,” it said. “Quite safe, in mode­ration, I assure you.”

  I turned in my chair. The speaker was seated at the next table; a well-built, compact, sandy-haired man, dressed in a spot­less white suit, a panama hat with a coloured band, and wearing a neatly trimmed, pointed beard. I guess his age at about thirty-four though the grey eyes that met my own looked older, more expe­rienced and troubled.

  “A taste that I have not had the opportunity to acquire,” I told him. He nodded.

  “You won't find it outside. In some ways we are a mu­seum here, but little the worse, I think, for that.”

  “One of the later Muses,” I suggested. “The Muse of Recent History. And very fasci­nating, too.”

  I became aware that one or two men at tables within earshot were pay­ing us — or rather me — some atten­tion; their ex­pres­sions were not unfriendly, but they showed what seemed to be traces of concern.

  “It is —” my neigh­bour began to reply, and then broke off, cut short by a rumble in the sky.

  I turned to see a slender white spire stabbing up into the blue overhead. Already, by the time the sound reached us,
the rocket at its apex was too small to be visible. The man cocked an eye at it.

  “Moon-shuttle,” he observed.

  “They all sound and look alike to me,” I admitted.

  “They wouldn't if you were inside. The accele­ration in that shuttle would spread you all over the floor — very thinly,” he said, and then went on: “We don't often see strangers in Lahua. Perhaps you would care to give me the pleasure of your com­pany for luncheon? My name, by the way, is George.”

  I hesitated, and while I did I noticed over his shoulder an elderly man who moved his lips slightly as he gave me what was with­out doubt an encour­aging nod. I decided to take a chance on it.

  “That's very kind of you. My name is David — David Myford, from Sydney,” I told him. But he made no ampli­fica­tion regard­ing him­self, so I was left wondering whether George was his fore­name, or his sur­name.

  I moved to his table, and he lifted a hand to summon the girl.

  “Unless you are averse to fish you must try the bouillabaisse — spécialité de la maison,” he told me.

  I was aware that I had gamed the approval of the elderly man, and apparently of some others as well, by joining George. The wait­ress, too, had an approving air. J won-dered vaguely what was going on, and whether I had been let in for the town bore, to protect the rest.

  “From Sydney,” he said reflectively. “It's a long time since I saw Sydney. I don't suppose I'd know it now.”

  “It keeps on growing,” I admitted, “but Nature would always prevent you from confusing it with anywhere else.”

  We went on chatting. The bouilla­baisse arrived; and excel­lent it was. There were hunks of first-class bread, too, cut from those long loaves you see in pictures in old Euro­pean book. I began to feel, with the help of the local wine, that a lot could be said for the twentieth-century way of living.

  In the course of our talk it emerged that George had been a rocket pilot, but was grounded now — not, one would judge, for reasons of health, so I did not inquire further...