Hot Times in Magma City - 1990-95 - The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg Volume Eight

by Robert Silverberg

  I might have asked for Joseph Conrad, I suppose. He was a friend of Wells’s and lived nearby at the time Wells was writing War of the Worlds. But I’ve already done plenty of Conrad-channeling (the novel Downward to the Earth, which was a replay of “Heart of Darkness” set on another world, the novella “The Secret Sharer” that’s loosely based on his story of the same name, and a section of my novel Hot Sky at Midnight that tangentially re-explores a theme out of Lord Jim.) And Wells, at the turn of the century, had another friend and neighbor whose writing, very different from Conrad’s in all ways, I also admired greatly. The notion of retelling Wells’s tale of Martian invaders as if the invasion had been experienced at first hand by pudgy, timid Henry James was too good to resist.

  I didn’t resist at all. I’ve rarely had so much fun writing a story.

  Omni purchased magazine rights, but very shortly afterward that publication vanished into cyberspace, where I wasn’t spending much time back then, so I had no idea whether they used it or not in their short-lived electronic edition—though bibliographical sources tell me that they did, in May, 1996. In any case the story’s first appearance in print was in Kevin Anderson’s The War of the Worlds: Global Dispatches, published in June, 1996.

  ——————

  Editor’s Note:

  Of all the treasures contained in the coffin-shaped wooden sea chest at Harvard’s Widener Library in which those of Henry James’s notebooks and journals that survived his death were preserved and in the associated James archive at Harvard, only James’s account of his bizarre encounter with the Martian invaders in the summer of 1900 has gone unpublished until now. The rest of the material the box contained—the diaries and datebooks, the notes for unfinished novels, the variant drafts of his late plays, and so forth—has long since been made available to James scholars, first in the form of selections under the editorship of F.O. Matthiessen and Kenneth B. Murdock (The Notebooks of Henry James, Oxford University Press, 1947), and then a generation later in the magisterial full text edited by Leon Edel and Lyall H. Powers (The Complete Notebooks of Henry James, Oxford University Press, 1987.)

  Despite the superb latter volume’s assertions, in its title and subtitle, of being “complete,” “authoritative,” and “definitive,” one brief text was indeed omitted from it, which was, of course, the invasion journal. Edel and Powers are in no way to be faulted for this, since they could not have been aware of the existence of the Martian papers, which had (apparently accidentally) been sequestered long ago among a group of documents at Harvard associated with the life of James’s sister Alice (1848-1892) and had either gone unnoticed by the biographers of Alice James or else, since the diary had obviously been composed some years after her death, had been dismissed by them as irrelevant to their research. It may also be that they found the little notebook simply illegible, for James had suffered severely from writer’s cramp from the winter of 1896-97 onward; his handwriting by 1900 had become quite erratic, and many of the (largely pencilled) entries in the Martian notebook are extremely challenging even to a reader experienced in Henry James’s hand, set down as they were in great haste under intensely strange circumstances.

  The text is contained in a pocket diary book, four and a half inches by six, bound in a green leatherette cover. It appears that James used such books, in those years, in which to jot notes that he would later transcribe into his permanent notebook (Houghton Journal VI, 26 October 1896 to 10 February 1909); but this is the only one of its kind that has survived. The first entry is undated, but can be specifically identified as belonging to mid-May of 1900 by its references to James’s visit to London in that month. At that time James made his home at Lamb House in the pleasant Sussex town of Rye, about seventy miles southeast of London. After an absence of nearly two years he had made a brief trip to the capital in March 1900, at which time, he wrote, he was greeted by his friends “almost as if I had returned from African or Asian exile.” After seventeen days he went home to Lamb House, but he returned to London in May, having suddenly shaven off, a few days before, the beard that he had worn since the 1860’s, because it had begun to turn white and offended his vanity. (James was then fifty-seven.) From internal evidence, then, we can date the first entry in the Martian journals to the period between May 15 and May 25, 1900.

  [Undated] Stepped clean-shaven from the train at Charing Cross. Felt clean and light and eerily young: I could have been forty. A miraculous transformation, so simply achieved! Alas, the sad truth of it is that it will always be I, never any younger even without the beard; but this is a good way to greet the new century nevertheless.

  Called on Helena De Kay. Gratifying surprise and expressions of pleasure over my rejuvenated physiognomy. Clemens is there, that is, “Mark Twain.” He has aged greatly in the three years since our last meeting. “The twentieth century is a stranger to me,” he sadly declares. His health is bad: has been to Sweden for a cure. Not clear what ails him, physically, at least. He is a dark and troubled soul in any case. His best work is behind him and plainly he knows it. I pray whatever God there be that that is not to be my fate.

  To the club in the evening. Tomorrow a full day, the galleries, the booksellers, the customary dismaying conference with the publishers. (The war in South Africa is depressing all trade, publishing particularly badly hit, though I should think people would read more novels at a time of such tension.) Luncheon and dinner engagements, of course, the usual hosts, no doubt the usual guests. And so on and on the next day and the next and the next. I yearn already for little restful, red-roofed, uncomplicated Rye.

  June 7, LH [Lamb House, Rye]: Home again at long last. London tires me: that is the truth of things. I have lost the habit of it, je crois. How I yearned, all the while I was there, for cabless days and dinnerless nights! And of course there is work to do. The Sacred Fount is now finished and ready to go to the agent. A fine flight into the high fantastic, I think—fanciful, fantastic, but very close and sustained. Writing in the first person makes me uneasy—it lends itself so readily to garrulity, to a fluidity of self-revelation—but there is no questioning that such a structure was essential to this tale.

  What is to be next? There is of course the great Project, the fine and major thing, which perhaps I mean to call The Ambassadors. Am I ready to begin it? It will call for the most supreme effort, though I think the reward will be commensurate. A masterpiece, dare I say? I might do well to set down one more sketch of it before commencing. But not immediately. There is powerful temptation to be dilatory: I find a note here from Wells, who suggests that I bicycle over to Sandgate and indulge in a bit of conversation with him. Indeed it has been a while, and I am terribly fond of him. Wells first, yes, and some serious thought about my ambassadors after that.

  June 14, Sandgate. I am at Wells’s this fine bright Thursday, very warm even for June. The bicycle ride in such heat across Romney Marsh to this grand new villa of his on the Kentish coast left me quite wilted, but Wells’s robust hospitality has quickly restored me.

  What a vigorous man Wells is! Not that you would know it to look at him; his health is much improved since his great sickly time two years ago, but he is nonetheless such a flimsy little wisp of a man, with those short legs, that high squeaky voice, his somewhat absurd moustaches. And yet the mind of the man burns like a sun within that frail body! The energy comes forth in that stream of books, the marvelous fantastic tales, the time-machine story and the one about Dr. Moreau’s bestial monsters and the one that I think is my favorite, the pitiful narrative of the invisible man. Now he wants to write the story of a journey to the Moon, among innumerable other projects, all of which he will probably fulfill. But of course there is much more to Wells than these outlandish if amusing fables: his recent book, Love and Mr. Lewisham, is not at all a scientific romance but rather quite the searching analysis of matters of love and power. Even so Wells is not just a novelist (a mere novelist, I came close to saying!); he is a seer, a prophet, he genuinely wishes to tra
nsform the world according to his great plan for it. I doubt very much that he will have the chance, but I wish him well. It is a trifle exhausting to listen to him go on and on about the new century and the miracles that it will bring, but it is enthralling as well. And of course behind his scientific optimism lurks a dark vision, quite contradictory, of the inherent nature of mankind. He is a fascinating man, a raw, elemental force. I wish he paid more attention to matters of literary style; but, then, he wishes that I would pay less. I dare say each of us is both right and wrong about the other.

  We spoke sadly of our poor friend and neighbor, Crane [Stephen Crane, the American novelist], whose untimely death last week we both lament. His short life was chaotic and his disregard for his own health was virtually criminal; but The Red Badge of Courage, I believe, will surely long outlive him. I wonder what other magnificent works were still in him when he died.

  We talk of paying calls the next day on some of our other literary friends who live nearby, Conrad, perhaps, or young Hueffer, or even Kipling up at Burwash. What a den of novelists these few counties possess!

  A fine dinner and splendid talk afterward.

  Early to bed for me; Wells, I suppose, will stay awake far into the night, writing, writing, writing.

  June 15, Spade House, Sandgate. In mid-morning after a generous late breakfast Wells is just at the point of composing a note to Conrad proposing an impromptu visit—Conrad is still despondently toiling at his interminable Lord Jim and no doubt would welcome an interruption, Wells says—when a young fellow whom Wells knows comes riding up, all out of breath, with news that a falling star has been seen crossing the skies in the night, rushing high overhead, inscribing a line of flame visible from Winchester eastward, and that—no doubt as a consequence of that event—something strange has dropped from the heavens and landed in Wells’s old town of Woking, over Surrey way. It is a tangible thunderbolt, a meteor, some kind of shaft flung by the hand of Zeus, at any rate.

  So, instanter, all is up with our visit to Conrad. Wells’s scientific curiosity takes full hold of him. He must go to Woking this very moment to inspect this gift of the gods; and, willy-nilly, I am to accompany him. “You must come, you must!” he cries, voice disappearing upward into an octave extraordinary even for him. I ask him why, and he will only say that there will be revelations of an earthshaking kind, of planetary dimensions. “To what are you fantastically alluding?” I demand, but he will only smile enigmatically. And, shortly afterward, off we go.

  June 15, much later, Woking. Utterly extraordinary! We make the lengthy journey over from Sandgate by pony carriage, Wells and I, two literary gentleman out for an excursion on this bright and extravagantly warm morning in late spring. I am garbed as though for a bicycle journey, my usual knickerbockers and my exiguous jacket of black and white stripes and my peaked cap; I feel ill at ease in these regalia but I have brought nothing else with me suitable for this outing. We arrive at Woking by late afternoon and plunge at once into—what other word can I use?—into madness.

  The object from on high, we immediately learn, landed with an evidently violent impact in the common between Woking, Horsell, and Ottershaw, burying itself deep in the ground. The heat and fury of its impact have hurled sand and gravel in every direction and set the surrounding heather ablaze, though the fires were quickly enough extinguished. But what has fallen is no meteorite. The top of an immense metallic cylinder, perhaps thirty yards across, can be seen protruding from the pit.

  Early this morning Ogilvy, the astronomer, hastened to inspect the site; and, he tells us now, he was able despite the heat emanating from the cylinder’s surface to get close enough to perceive that the top of the thing had begun to rotate—as though, so he declares, there were creatures within attempting to get out!

  “What we have here is a visitation from the denizens of Mars, I would hazard,” says Wells without hesitation, in a tone of amazing calmness and assurance.

  “Exactly so!” cries Ogilvy. “Exactly so!”

  These are both men of science, and I am but a littérateur. I stare in bewilderment from one to the other. “How can you be so certain?” I ask them, finally.

  To which Wells replies, “The peculiar bursts of light we have observed on the face of that world in recent years have aroused much curiosity, as I am sure you are aware. And then, some time ago, the sight of jets of flame leaping up night after night from the red planet, as if some great gun were being repeatedly fired—in direct consequence of which, let me propose, there eventually came the streak of light in the sky late last night, which I noticed from my study window—betokening, I would argue, the arrival here of this projectile—why, what else can it all mean, James, other than that travelers from our neighbor world lie embedded here before us on Horsell Common!”

  “It can be nothing else,” Ogilvy cries enthusiastically. “Travelers from Mars! But are they suffering, I wonder? Has their passage through our atmosphere engendered heat too great for them to endure?”

  A flush of sorrow and compassion rushes through me at that. It awes and flusters me to think that the red planet holds sentient life, and that an intrepid band of Martians has ventured to cross the great sea of space that separates their world from ours. To have come such an immense and to me unimaginable distance—only to perish in the attempt—! Can it be, as Ogilvy suggests, that this brave interplanetary venture will end in tragedy for the brave voyagers? I am racked briefly by the deepest concern.

  How ironic, I suppose, in view of the dark and violent later events of this day, that I should expend such pity upon our visitors. But we could tell nothing, then, nor for some little while thereafter. Crowds of curiosity seekers came and went, as they have done all day; workmen with digging tools now began to attempt to excavate the cylinder, which had cooled considerably since the morning; their attempts to complete the unscrewing of the top were wholly unsuccessful. Wells could not take his eyes from the pit. He seemed utterly possessed by a fierce joy that had been kindled in him by the possibility that the cylinder held actual Martians. It was, he told me several times, almost as though one of his own scientific fantasy books were turning to reality before his eyes; and Wells confessed that he had indeed sketched out the outline of a novel about an invasion from Mars, intending to write it some two or three years hence, but of course now that scheme has been overtaken by actual events and he shall have to abandon it. He evidences little regret at this; he appears wholly delighted, precisely as a small boy might be, that the Martians are here. I dare say that he would have regarded the intrusion of a furious horde of dinosaurs into the Surrey countryside with equal pleasure.

  But I must admit that I am somewhat excited as well. Travelers from Mars! How extraordinary! Quel phénomène! And what vistas open to the mind of the intrepid seeker after novelty! I have traveled somewhat myself, of course, to the Continent, at least, if not to Africa or China, but I have not ruled such farther journeys completely out, and now the prospect of an even farther one becomes possible. To make the Grand Tour of Mars! To see its great monuments and temples, and perhaps have an audience at the court of the Great Martian Cham! It is a beguiling thought, if not a completely serious one. See, see, I am becoming a fantasist worthy of Wells!

  (Later. The hour of sunset.) The cylinder is open. To our immense awe we find ourselves staring at a Martian. Did I expect them to be essentially human in form? Well, then, I was foolish in my expectations. What we see is a bulky ungainly thing; two huge eyes, great as saucers; tentacles of some sort; a strange quivering mouth—yes, yes, an alien being senza dubbio, preternaturally other.

  Wells, unexpectedly, is appalled. “Disgusting…dreadful,” he mutters. “That oily skin! Those frightful eyes! What a hideous devil it is!” Where has his scientific objectivity gone? For my part I am altogether fascinated. I tell him that I see rare beauty in the Martian’s strangeness, not the beauty of a Greek vase or of a ceiling by Tiepolo, of course, but beauty of a distinct kind all the same. In this, I think, my
perceptions are the superior of Wells’s. There is beauty in the squirming octopus dangling from the hand of some grinning fisherman at the shore of Capri; there is beauty in the terrifiant bas-reliefs of winged bulls from the palaces of Nineveh; and there is beauty of a sort, I maintain, in this Martian also.

  He laughs heartily. “You are ever the esthete, eh, James!”

  I suppose that I am. But I will not retreat from my appreciation of the strange being who—struggling, it seems, against the unfamiliar conditions of our world—is moving about slowly and clumsily at the edge of its cylinder.

  The creature drops back out of sight. The twilight is deepening to darkness. An hour passes, and nothing occurs. Wells suggests we seek dinner, and I heartily agree.

  (Later still.) Horror! Just past eight, while Wells and I were dining, a delegation bearing a white flag of peace approached the pit, so we have learned—evidently in the desire to demonstrate to the Martians that we are intelligent and friendly beings. Ogilvy was in the group, and Stent, the Astronomer Royal, and some poor journalist who had arrived to report on the event. There came suddenly a blinding flash of flame from the pit, and another and another, and the whole delegation met with a terrible instant death, forty souls in all. The fiery beam also ignited adjacent trees and brought down a portion of a nearby house; and all those who had survived the massacre fled the scene in the wildest of terror.

  “So they are monsters,” Wells ejaculates fiercely, “and this is war between the worlds!”