Collected Short Fiction (Jerry eBooks)
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Collected Short Fiction
G.C. Edmondson
(custom book cover)
Jerry eBooks
About G.C. Edmondson
Bibliography
Short Fiction Bibliography: chronological
Short Fiction Bibliography: alphabetical
Fiction Series
1955
Blessed are the Meek
1956
Technological Retreat
1957
The Inferlab Project
The Status Quo Peddlers
The Demancipator
Rescue
Stop Being a Sucker
Renaissance
1958
A Pound of Prevention
1959
The Misfit
“From Caribou to Carry Nation”
1960
The Galactic Calabash
Ringer
The Sign of the Goose
1961
The Country Boy
1963
The World Must Never Know
1964
The Third Bubble
1970
Nobody Believes an Indian
1972
The Tempolluters
1973
One Plus One Equals Eleven
1974
Tube
1980
All that Glitters
1981
Written on the Water
1990
Strong Blood
1994
Tinhorn from Tarshish
G.C. Edmondson was the working name of science fiction author Garry Edmonson (full name “José Mario Garry Ordoñez Edmondson y Cotton”).
Born in Rachauchitlán, Tabasco, Mexico on October 11, 1922, his family moved to Washington state very early in his life.
G.C. Edmondson served as a U.S. Marine in World War II, where he honed his multi-lingual skills.
Although generally called a science fiction writer he also wrote Westerns (novels only) using the names Kelly P. Gast, J.B. Masterson, and Jack Logan. As he could also speak six languages he did translating work as well.
He published his first sf, “Blessed are the Meek” with Astounding in 1955, and was active in the magazines for the next decade, particularly in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, where his “Mad Friend” stories appeared. Later assembled as Stranger than You Think, they describe the effects their narrator’s mad friend manages to elicit from the world about him, and his explanations thereof. Edmondson’s first novel, The Ship that Sailed the Time Stream and its sequel, To Sail the Century Sea, are amusingly and graphically told “Fantastic-Voyage”[*] tales involving a US ship and its inadvertent time travels. They remain his most successful books.
Several writers, including Gardner Dozois, tend to consider him as a neglected author.
G.C. Edmondson died on December 14, 1995 in San Diego, California.
[*] The fantastic voyage is one of the oldest literary forms, and remains one of the basic frameworks for the casting of literary fantasies. Of the prose forms extant before the development of the novel in the eighteenth century, the fantastic voyage is the most important in the ancestry of sf.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Novels
The Ship That Sailed the Time Stream (1965)
Chapayeca (1971)
T.H.E.M. (1974)
The Aluminum Man (1975)
The Man Who Corrupted Earth (1980)
To Sail the Century Sea (1981)
Star Slaver (1983)
The Takeover (1984)
The Cunningham Equations (1986)
The Black Magician (1986)
Maximum Effort (1987)
Star Slaver (1983)
Chapbooks
Blessed Are the Meek (2007)
Collections
Stranger Than You Think (1965)
Omnibus
The Ship That Sailed the Time Stream/Stranger Than You Think (1965)
SHORT FICTION BIBLIOGRAPHY
CHRONOLOGICAL
1955
Blessed Are the Meek, Astounding Science Fiction, September 1955
1956
Technological Retreat, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, May 1956
1957
The Inferlab Project, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, February 1957
The Status Quo Peddlers, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, April 1957
The Demancipator, Science Fiction Stories, May 1957
Rescue, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, June 1957
Stop Being a Sucker, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, November 1957
Renaissance, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, December 1957
1958
The Way of the Hunter, Argosy, April 1958
A Pound of Prevention, Infinity Science Fiction, April 1958
The Man from Tarshish, Argosy, July 1958
The Will of Anselmo, Double-Action Detective and Mystery Stories, September 1958
1959
The Misfit, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, February 1959
“From Caribou to Carry Nation”, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, November 1959
1960
The Galactic Calabash, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, January 1960
Ringer, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, April 1960
The Sign of the Goose, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, August 1960
1961
The Country Boy, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, May 1961
1963
The World Must Never Know, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, April 1963
1964
The Third Bubble, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, June 1964
1967
A Question of Translation, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, December 1967
1970
Nobody Believes an Indian, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, May 1970
1972
The Tempolluters, Infinity Four, November 1972
1973
One Plus One Equals Eleven, Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, January 1973
1974
Tube, If, July/August, July 1974
1980
All That Glitters, Stellar #5: Science-Fiction Stories, May 1980
1981
Written on the Water, Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, August 31, 1981
1990
Strong Blood, Death’s Head Rebellion, December 1990
1994
Tinhorn from Tarshish, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, April 1994
SHORT FICTION BIBLIOGRAPHY
ALPHABETICAL
A Pound of Prevention, Infinity Science Fiction, April 1958
A Question of Translation, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, December 1967
A Time for Praying, [unpublished]
All That Glitters, Stellar #5: Science-Fiction Stories, May 1980
Blessed Are the Meek, Astounding Science Fiction, September 1955
The Country Boy, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, May 1961
The Demancipator, Science Fiction Stories, May 1957
“From Caribou to Carry Nation”, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, November 1959
The Galactic Calabash, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, January 1960
The Inferlab Project
, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, February 1957
The Man from Tarshish, Argosy, July 1958
The Misfit, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, February 1959
Nobody Believes an Indian, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, May 1970
One Plus One Equals Eleven, Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, January 1973
Renaissance, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, December 1957
Rescue, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, June 1957
Ringer, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, April 1960
The Sign of the Goose, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, August 1960
The Status Quo Peddlers, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, April 1957
Stop Being a Sucker, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, November 1957
Strong Blood, Death’s Head Rebellion, December 1990
Technological Retreat, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, May 1956
The Tempolluters, Infinity Four, November 1972
The Third Bubble, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, June 1964
Tinhorn from Tarshish, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, April 1994
Tube, If, July/August 1974
The Way of the Hunter, Argosy, April 1958
The Will of Anselmo, Double-Action Detective and Mystery Stories, September 1958
The World Must Never Know, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, April 1963
Written on the Water, Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, August 31, 1981
FICTION SERIES
[C] = Collection
[N] = Novel
[SF] = Short Story/Novelette
Cunningham Equations
The Cunningham Equations (1986) [N]
The Black Magician (1986) [N]
Maximum Effort (1987) [N]
Mad Friend
The Misfit (1959) [SF]
“From Caribou to Carry Nation” (1959) [SF]
The Galactic Calabash (1960) [SF]
The Sign of the Goose (1960) [SF]
The Country Boy (1961) [SF]
The World Must Never Know (1963) [SF]
The Third Bubble (1964) [SF]
Stranger Than You Think (1965) [C]
Nobody Believes an Indian (1970) [SF]
Written on the Water (1981) [SF]
Spaceways
Star Slaver (1983) [N]
The Ship That Sailed the Time Stream
The Ship That Sailed the Time Stream (1965) [N]
To Sail the Century Sea (1981) [N]
1955
Blessed are the Meek
Every strength is a weakness, and every weakness is a strength. And when the Strong start smashing each other’s strength . . . the Weak may turn out to be, instead, the Wise.
The strangers landed just before dawn, incinerating a good li of bottom land in the process. Their machines were already busily digging up the topsoil. The Old One watched, squinting into the morning sun. He sighed, hitched up his saffron robes and started walking down toward the strangers.
Griffin turned, not trying to conceal his excitement. “You’re the linguist, see what you can get out of him.”
“I might,” Kung Su ventured sourly, “if you’d go weed the air machine or something. This is going to be hard enough without a lot of kibitzers cramping my style and scaring Old Pruneface here half to death.”
“I see your point,” Griffin answered. He turned and started back toward the diggings. “Let me know if you make any progress with the local language.” He stopped whistling and strove to control the jauntiness of his gait. Must be the lower gravity and extra oxygen, he thought. I haven’t bounced along like this for thirty years. Nice place to settle down if some promoter doesn’t turn it into an old folks home. He sighed and glanced over the diggings. The rammed earth walls were nearly obliterated by now. Nothing lost, he reflected. It’s all on tape and they’re no different from a thousand others at any rate.
Griffin opened a door in the transparent bubble from which Albahez was operating the diggers. “Anything?” he inquired.
“Nothing so far,” Albahez reported. “What’s the score on this job? I missed the briefing.”
“How’d you make out on III, by the way?”
“Same old stuff, pottery shards and the usual junk. See it once and you’ve seen it all.”
“Well,” Griffin began, “it looks like the same thing here again. We’ve pretty well covered this system and you know how it is. Rammed earth walls here and there, pottery shards, flint, bronze and iron artifacts and that’s it. They got to the iron age on every planet and then blooey.”
“Artifacts all made for humanoid hands I suppose. I wonder if they were close enough to have crossbred with humans.”
“I couldn’t say,” Griffin observed dryly. “From the looks of Old Pruneface I doubt if we’ll ever find a human female with sufficiently detached attitude to find out.”
“Who’s Pruneface?”
“He came ambling down out of the hills this morning and walked into camp.”
“You mean you’ve actually found a live humanoid?”
“There’s got to be a first time for everything.” Griffin opened the door and started climbing the hill toward Kung Su and Pruneface.
“Well, have you gotten beyond the me, Charlie’ stage yet?” Griffin inquired at breakfast two days later.
Kung Su gave an inscrutable East Los Angeles smile. “As a matter of fact, I’m a little farther along. Joe is amazingly cooperative.”
“Joe?”
“Spell it Chou if you want to be exotic. It’s still pronounced Joe and that’s his name. The language is monosyllabic and tonal. I happen to know a similar language.”
“You mean this humanoid speaks Chinese?” Griffin was never sure whether Kung was ribbing him or not.
“Not Chinese. The vocabulary is different but the syntax and phonemes are nearly identical. I’ll speak it perfectly in a week. It’s just a question of memorizing two or three thousand new words. Incidentally, Joe wants to know why you’re digging up his bottom land. He was all set to flood it today.”
“Don’t tell me he plants rice!” Griffin exclaimed.
“I don’t imagine it’s rice, but it needs flooding whatever it is.”
“Ask him how many humanoids there are on this planet.”
“I’m way ahead of you, Griffin. He says there are only a few thousand left. The rest were all destroyed in a war with the barbarians.”
“Barbarians?”
“They’re extinct.”
“How many races were there?”
“I’ll get to that if you’ll stop interrupting,” Kung rejoined testily. “Joe says there are only two kinds of people, his own dark, straighthaired kind and the barbarians. They have curly hair, white skin and round eyes. You’d pass for a barbarian, according to Joe, only you don’t have a faceful of hair. He wants to know how things are going on the other planets.”
“I suppose that’s my cue to break into a cold sweat and feel a premonition of disaster.” Griffin tried to smile and almost made it.
“Not necessarily, but it seems our iron-age man is fairly well informed in extraplanetary affairs.”
“I guess I’d better start learning the language.”
Thanks to the spade work Kung Su had done in preparing hypno-recordings, Griffin had a working knowledge of the Rational People’s language eleven days later when he sat down to drink herb infused hot water with Joe and other Old Ones in the low-roofed wooden building around which clustered a village of two hundred humanoids. He fidgeted through interminable ritualistic cups of hot water. Eventually Joe hid his hands in the sleeves of his robe and turned with an air of polite inquiry. Now we get down to business, Griffin thought.
“Joe, you know by now why we’re digging up your bottom land. We’ll recompense you in one way or another. Meanwhile, could you give me a little local history?”
“At the beginning.”
“How long is a year on your planet?” Joe inquired.
“Your year is eight and a half days longer. Our day is three hundred heartbeats longer than yours.” Joe nodded his thanks. “More water?”
Griffin declined, suppressing a shudder.
“Five million years ago we were limited to one planet,” Joe began. “The court astronomer had a vision of our planet in flames. I imagine you’d say our sun was about to nova. The empress was disturbed and ordered a convocation of seers. One fasted overlong and saw an answer. As the dying seer predicted the Son of Heaven came with fire-breathing dragons. The fairest of maidens and the strongest of our young men were taken to serve his warriors. We served them honestly and faithfully. A thousand years later their empire collapsed leaving us scattered across the universe, Three thousand years later a new race of barbarians conquered our planets. We surrendered naturally and soon were serving our new masters. Five hundred years passed and they destroyed themselves. This has been the pattern of our existence from that day to this.”
“You mean you’ve been slaves for five million years?” Griffin was incredulous.
“Servitude has ever been a refuge for the scholar and the philosopher.”
“But what point is there in such a life? Why do you continue living this way?”
“What is the point in any way of life? Continued existence. Personal immortality is neither desirable nor possible. We settled for perpetuation of the race.”
“But what about self-determination? You know enough astronomy to understand novae. Surely you realize it could happen again. What would you do without a technology to build spaceships?”
“Many stars have gone nova during our history. Usually the barbarians came in time. When they didn’t—”
“You mean you don’t really care?”
“All barbarians ask that sooner or later,” Joe smiled. “Sometimes toward the end they even accuse us of destroying them. We don’t. Every technology bears the seeds of its own destruction. The stars are older than the machinery that explores them.”
“You used technology to get from one system to another.”