The Future Is Ours
Page 1
Table of Contents
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
NOVELS BY ED HOCH
INTRODUCTION, by Steve Steinbock
STRANGE FUTURES
ABOUT “ZOO”
ZOO
ABOUT “THE LAST PARADOX”
THE LAST PARADOX
ABOUT “THE WOLFRAM HUNTERS”
THE WOLFRAM HUNTERS
ABOUT “THE TIMES WE HAD”
THE TIMES WE HAD
ABOUT “GOD OF THE PLAYBACK”
GOD OF THE PLAYBACK
ABOUT “CASSIDY’S SAUCER”
CASSIDY’S SAUCER
ABOUT “UNNATURAL ACT”
UNNATURAL ACT
ABOUT “THE BOY WHO BROUGHT LOVE”
THE BOY WHO BROUGHT LOVE
ABOUT “CENTAUR FIELDER FOR THE YANKEES”
CENTAUR FIELDER FOR THE YANKEES
FUTURE CRIMES
ABOUT “CO-INCIDENCE”
CO-INCIDENCE
ABOUT “VERSUS”
VERSUS
ABOUT “THE FUTURE IS OURS”
THE FUTURE IS OURS
ABOUT “THE FORBIDDEN WORD”
THE FORBIDDEN WORD
ABOUT “COMPUTER COPS”
COMPUTER COPS
ABOUT “NIGHT OF THE MILLENNIUM”
NIGHT OF THE MILLENNIUM
ABOUT “THE HOMESICK CHICKEN”
THE HOMESICK CHICKEN
ABOUT “THE DALTONIC FIREMAN”
THE DALTONIC FIREMAN
TALES OF THE DARK
ABOUT “THE MAZE AND THE MONSTER”
THE MAZE AND THE MONSTER
ABOUT “IN THE STRAW”
IN THE STRAW
ABOUT “EXÚ”
EXÚ
ABOUT “THE WEEKEND MAGUS”
THE WEEKEND MAGUS
ABOUT “JUST ONE MORE”
JUST ONE MORE
ABOUT “BIGFISH”
BIGFISH
ABOUT “REMEMBER MY NAME”
REMEMBER MY NAME
HISTORY RETOLD
ABOUT “THE LAST UNICORN”
THE LAST UNICORN
ABOUT “WHO RIDES WITH SANTA ANNA?”
WHO RIDES WITH SANTA ANNA?
ABOUT “THE MAIDEN’S SACRIFICE”
THE MAIDEN’S SACRIFICE
ABOUT “THE OTHER PHANTOM”
THE OTHER PHANTOM
ABOUT “DRACULA 1944”
DRACULA 1944
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
Copyright © 2015 by Patricia Hoch.
All rights reserved.
Published by Wildside Press LLC.
www.wildsidebooks.com
NOVELS BY ED HOCH
The Blue Movie Murders (as Ellery Queen)
The Fellowship of the Hand
The Frankenstein Factory
The Shattered Raven
The Transvection Machine
SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS
City of Brass (Simon Ark)
Diagnosis: Impossible (Dr. Sam Hawthorne)
Ellery Queen Presents the Spy and the Thief (Jeffrey Rand/Nick Velvet)
The Iron Angel (Michael Vlado)
The Judges of Hades (Simon Ark)
Leopold’s Way (Captain Leopold)
More Things Impossible (Dr. Sam Hawthorne)
The Night People
The Night, My Friend
Nothing Is Impossible (Dr. Sam Hawthorne)
The Old Spies Club (Jeffrey Rand)
The Quests of Simon Ark (Simon Ark)
The Ripper of Storyville (Ben Snow)
The Sherlock Holmes Stories of Edward D. Hoch
The Spy Who Read Latin (Jeffrey Rand)
The Thefts of Nick Velvet (Nick Velvet)
The Velvet Touch (Nick Velvet)
INTRODUCTION, by Steve Steinbock
Stories ask—and then answer—questions. Science fiction stories typically ask the question “what if?” Mysteries are usually about “whodunit?” Both mysteries and science fiction sometimes ask “how?” How can a horse-drawn carriage enter a covered bridge and disappear? How can a man leap from an office window and land on the street four hours later? How can a man be stabbed to death while alone in a locked room? These are some of the questions that the late Edward D. Hoch solved in his short stories.
Ed Hoch was and is the undisputed master of the mystery short story. His total output of published short fiction hovers just under 1,000 stories (estimates are in the neighborhood of 960 stories). Hoch (pronounced “Hoke”) is best remembered for his fair-play and impossible crime short stories, particularly the series featuring Dr. Sam Hawthorne, a small-town physician who unraveled seemingly impossible “problems” in 1920s New England. His other popular series characters included British Intelligence codebreaker Jeffrey Rand and thief-for-hire Nick Velvet.
Ed’s talents extended well beyond the traditional mysteries for which he is so well remembered. His rough-edged crime noir stories appeared in Manhunt, Michael Shayne Mystery Magazine, The Saint Mystery Magazine, Adventure, Double Action Detective, and Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Still, it was in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine (EQMM) that over 450 of Hoch’s stories appeared. Every issue of EQMM for an unbroken thirty-four year span contained at least one story by Hoch. When more than one of his stories appeared, it would usually be under one of his pseudonyms. You’ll find two stories in this volume—“God of the Playback” and “The Future is Ours”—written under the name “Stephen Dentinger,” a combination of Hoch’s confirmation name and middle name. Editor Frederic Dannay (half of the “Ellery Queen” collaboration and longtime editor of EQMM) recognized in Hoch a talent for devising clever stories spun from Hoch’s never-ending supply of ideas.
Ed was a veritable font of ideas. He could look at the shadows of a building or the way doors were hinged and a myriad of stories would emerge. True story: In the 1990s, a pallet of cargo disappeared from an airplane’s cargo hold—apparently midflight over Europe. Having heard of Hoch’s deductive skills, a foreign government consulted with him on how such a theft might have occurred. Hoch didn’t catch the thieves, but he was able to create a wonderful short story, “The Liverpool Kiss,” from the incident.
It’s reputed that as Ed stepped onto an escalator, a fan asked him how a particular “impossible” crime might have been conducted. By the time he reached the next floor, Ed had devised three separate solutions.
While a vast majority of Ed Hoch’s stories were mysteries, he enjoyed horror and science fiction. Of his nine-hundred-plus output, he wrote several handfuls of horror and sci-fi stories that appeared in various magazines and anthologies. It could be argued that his first published story, “Village of the Dead” (which appeared in the December 1955 issue of the pulp magazine Famous Detective Stories), is as much horror as it is a mystery. In that story, the mass suicide of an entire village is investigated by Simon Ark, a mysterious—possibly two-thousand-year- old—Coptic Priest.
* * * *
During his long career as a short story writer, Edward Hoch wrote five novels, only four of which were under his own name. (The fifth, The Blue Movie Murders, was ghostwritten for Ellery Queen after Manfred Lee—the other half of the Ellery Queen team—passed away in 1971). Three of those five novels (The Transvection Machine, 1971; The Fellowship of the HAND, 1972; and The Frankenstein Factory, 1975) were set in the mid-21st century, and featured a task force dedicated to cyber-crimes. (This
was written a decade before the Apple II series computer was introduced, and well before “Internet” was a household word.)
It is Hoch’s work outside of the mystery genre that is the subject of the book you now hold in your hands. At least sixteen collections of Edward Hoch’s mystery stories have been published in the U.S., but this is the first book of his science fiction and horror. Approximately half of these stories were written by Hoch for magazine publication. Some of them—most notably, “Zoo”—have been republished in anthologies. Other stories were commissioned for various anthologies.
Ed was a kind and playful man up to his death. You’d almost swear there was a precocious eleven year old beneath the gray-haired exterior. His creative faculties were well matched with his curiosity, and the joy that he put into his writing. As you read the following stories, I expect you will get a sense, as I did, of the elfish mirth that flowed from Ed Hoch’s fingertips onto the keys as he typed. His stories posed probing questions and addressed them with thoughtful intellect, but he enjoyed every word of it.
Hoch interweaved elements of history, technology, and culture into all of his writing. When the story called for it, Hoch wore the turban of a philosopher social-anthropologist. In “The Wolfram Hunters,” for example, a story set ninety years after civilization has been decimated by nuclear holocaust, we peer in on a community of tungsten miners in the Rio Grande, where religion, culture, and social structure are tightly bound. Two conflicting world views, both borne out of Christianity, are both the basis of a crime and its resolution. In stories like “Computer Cops” and “Night of the Millennium,” we see the interplay of technology, social unrest, and conspiracy. Stories like “The Boy Who Brought Love,” “The Maze and the Monster,” and “The Maiden’s Sacrifice” demonstrate Hoch’s ear for folktales and oral tradition used to create hauntingly believable worlds.
* * * *
Gathering the stories in this collection was a treasure hunt. Nearly all of the sources are rare magazines or out-of-print anthologies, so I spent a good deal of time scouring library catalogs and eBay, as well as sorting through the Hoch basement. The pleasure of finding the stories was only exceeded by reading them.
Categorizing Hoch’s stories proved challenging. First I had to determine which stories to include. Much of his work, including nearly all of the “Simon Ark” stories, featured situations that appear supernatural. But in nearly all of these, a live human face is found behind the monster’s mask. Many of the stories that I included are mysteries or crime stories, but I’ve included them because of the futuristic setting in which they take place.
The stories fell roughly into four categories. The first category, STRANGE FUTURES, covers general science fiction and fantasy. It includes time travel, dystopias, space travel, and alien visitations.
The second section—FUTURE CRIMES—contains eight mystery stories either set in the future, or in the case of “Co-Incidence,” using an Asimovian technology. You’ll find several story-length conspiracy thrillers, most notably “Night of the Millennium.” The 1969 story “Computer Cops,” about the hacking of computer stock trades, introduces the detectives of the Computer Investigation Bureau that Hoch would later feature in three novels. Another detective, Barnabus Rex, solves technological mysteries in “The Homesick Chicken” and “The Daltonic Fireman.”
Classic horror is the theme of the seven tales in TALES OF THE DARK. Several stories (“In the Straw,” “The Thing at the Lake,” “The Weekend Magus,” and “Just One More”) feature unique monsters. “Exú” explores voodoo gods and devils in Brazil. “Bigfish” is a mystery with a brilliantly dark twist ending. “Remember My Name” is a ghost story with a backdrop of beauty pageants.
The stories in HISTORY RE-TOLD are not precisely Alternative History tales. But each one looks at events—historical or mythological—and gives them a twist. In “Dracula 1944” the great vampire sinks his fangs into Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp. A famous Parisian opera house spectre helps solve a copycat murder in “The Other Phantom.” My personal favorite is “Who Rides with Santa Anna?” in which, on the eve before his horrific siege of the Alamo, the Mexican general gets encouragement from a surprising source.
STRANGE FUTURES
ABOUT “ZOO”
It’s fitting to begin this collection with the story that has been reprinted more often than any other story by Edward Hoch and is one of his earliest science fiction stories. It has appeared in thirty-seven different textbooks and collections between its publication in 1958 and its inclusion in a 2002 Oxford University Press collection. The story is short. Very short. It has a fun “Twilight Zone”-style quality and gives readers an example, from early in Hoch’s career, of the author’s playfulness with perspectives.
First publication—Fantastic Universe, June 1958.
ZOO
The children were always good during the month of August, especially when it began to get near the twenty-third. It was on this day that the great silver spaceship carrying Professor Hugo’s Interplanetary Zoo settled down for its annual six-hour visit to the Chicago area.
Before daybreak the crowds would form, long lines of children and adults both, each one clutching his or her dollar, and waiting with wonderment to see what race of strange creatures the Professor had brought this year.
In the past they had sometimes been treated to three-legged creatures from Venus, or tall, thin men from Mars, or even snake-like horrors from somewhere more distant. This year, as the great round ship settled slowly to earth in the huge tri-city parking area just outside of Chicago, they watched with awe as the sides slowly slid up to reveal the familiar barred cages. In them were some wild breed of nightmare—small, horse-like animals that moved with quick, jerking motions and constantly chattered in a high-pitched tongue. The citizens of Earth clustered around as Professor Hugo’s crew quickly collected the waiting dollars, and soon the good Professor himself made an appearance, wearing his many-colored rainbow cape and top hat. “Peoples of Earth,” he called into his microphone.
The crowd’s noise died down and he continued. “Peoples of Earth, this year you see a real treat for your single dollar—the little-known horse-spider people of Kaan—brought to you across a million miles of space at great expense. Gather around, see them, study them, listen to them, tell your friends about them. But hurry! My ship can remain here only six hours!”
And the crowds slowly filed by, at once horrified and fascinated by these strange creatures that looked like horses but ran up the walls of their cages like spiders. “This is certainly worth a dollar,” one man remarked, hurrying away. “I’m going home to get the wife.”
All day long it went like that, until ten thousand people had filed by the barred cages set into the side of the spaceship. Then, as the six-hour limit ran out, Professor Hugo once more took microphone in hand. “We must go now, but we will return next year on this date. And if you enjoyed our zoo this year, phone your friends in other cities about it. We will land in New York tomorrow, and next week on to London, Paris, Rome, Hong Kong, and Tokyo. Then on to other worlds!”
He waved farewell to them, and as the ship rose from the ground the Earth peoples agreed that this had been the very best Zoo yet.…
* * * *
Some two months and three planets later, the silver ship of Professor Hugo settled at last onto the familiar jagged rocks of Kaan, and the queer horse-spider creatures filed quickly out of their cages. Professor Hugo was there to say a few parting words, and then they scurried away in a hundred different directions, seeking their homes among the rocks.
In one, the she-creature was happy to see the return of her mate and offspring. She babbled a greeting in the strange tongue and hurried to embrace them. “It was a long time you were gone. Was it good?”
And the he-creature nodded. “The little one enjoyed it especially. We visited eight worlds and saw many things.�
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The little one ran up the wall of the cave. “On the place called Earth it was the best. The creatures there wear garments over skins, and they walk on two legs.”
“But isn’t it dangerous?” asked the she-creature.
“No,” her mate answered. “There are bars to protect us from them. We remain right in the ship. Next time you must come with us. It is well worth the nineteen commocs it costs.”
And the little one nodded. “It was the very best Zoo ever.…”
ABOUT “THE LAST PARADOX”
Time travel mishaps—ranging from the “butterfly effect” and the “grandfather paradox” to Heinlein’s “bootstrap paradox”—have long been a staple in science fiction. This story features a frightening twist on the theme.
First Publication—Future Science Fiction, October 1958.
THE LAST PARADOX
“It’s too bad that G.K. Chesterton never wrote a time-travel story,” Professor Fordley lamented as he made the final careful adjustments on his great glass-domed machine. “He, for one, would certainly have realized the solution to the paradox inherent in all travel to the past or future.”
John Comptoss, who in a few moments would become the first such traveler outside the pages of fiction, braced the straps of his specially-designed pressure suit. “You mean there is a solution? You don’t think I’m going to end up in the year 2000 and be able to return with all sorts of fascinating data?”
Fordley shook his head sadly. “Of course not, my boy. I didn’t tell you before, because I didn’t want to alarm you; but when you step out of my time machine you will not be in the year 2000.”
“But…but that’s what it’s set for, isn’t it?”
Fordley gestured at the dials. “Certainly it’s set for thirty-five years in the future, but there is one slight fact that all the writers about time travel have overlooked till now.”
John Comptoss looked unhappy. “What’s that, Professor? You think I’ll come out in the middle of the Cobalt War or something?”