by J F Bone
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Collected Short Fiction
J.F. Bone
(custom book cover)
Jerry eBooks
Title Page
About Jesse Franklin Bone
Bibliography
Short Fiction Bibliography: chronological
Short Fiction Bibliography: alphabetical
Short Fiction Series
1957
SURVIVAL TYPE
QUARANTINED SPECIES
1958
ASSASSIN
THE TOOL OF CREATION
THE SWORD
THE FAST-MOVING ONES
TRIGGERMAN
1959
NOTHING BUT TERROR
INSIDEKICK
SECOND CHANCE
1960
CULTURAL EXCHANGE
THE ISSAHAR ARTIFACTS
FIREMAN
NOBLE REDMAN
TO CHOKE AN OCEAN
THE MISSIONARY
A QUESTION OF COURAGE
1961
A PRIZE . . . FOR EDIE
WEAPON
SPECIAL EFFECT
1962
PANDEMIC
FOUNDING FATHER
1963
FOR SERVICE RENDERED
ON THE FOURTH PLANET
1967
A HAIR PERHAPS
1971
THE SCENTS OF IT
1976
TECHNICALITIES
1978
PIÈCE DE RÉSISTANCE
TWEEN
Jesse Franklin Bone was born on June 15, 1916 in Tacoma, Washington was a highly successful vetenarian and active member of the U.S. Veterinary Corps until 1976; and subsequently a professor of veterinary medicine at the University of Oregon.
J.F. Bone began publishing sf with “Survival Type” for Galaxy in March 1957. Bone’s short fiction—thirty-one stories and one magazine-published novel—remains officially uncollected; his most-anthologized tale is “Triggerman” (Analog, December 1958), in which World War Three is narrowly averted after the destruction of Washington by, as it emerges, a meteor impact.
His first sf novel, The Lani People (1962), is his most memorable; perhaps for his depiction of the Alien Lani, human-like females only happy when naked and when pleasing males. In the end, his account of the costs to this folk of human exploitation is graphically related.
Later works, including three contributions to Roger Elwood’s Laser Books imprint, are more typical of the sf style of the time.
Jesse Franklin Bone died on January 6, 2006 in Sierra Vista, Arizona.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Novels
The Lani People (1962)
Legacy (1976)
The Meddlers (1976)
Gift of the Manti (1977)
Confederation Matador (1978)
Magazine-published Novels
Second Chance, Satellite Science Fiction, February 1959
Chapbooks
Pandemic (2008)
A Prize for Edie (2008)
A Question of Courage (2008)
The Issahar Artifacts (2009)
Noble Redman (2010)
To Choke an Ocean (2010)
Assassin (2010)
Insidekick (2010)
On the Fourth Planet (2016)
Founding Father (2016)
Survival Type (2016)
Collections
Jesse F. Bone Resurrected (2011)
Omnibus
Second Chance/Mission to a Distant Star (2011) with Frank Belknap Long
Special Effect/Warlord of Kor (2014) with Terry Carr
Minions of the Tiger/Founding Father (2015) with Chester S. Geier
SHORT FICTION BIBLIOGRAPHY
CHRONOLOGICAL
1957
Survival Type, Galaxy Science Fiction, March 1957
Quarantined Species, Super-Science Fiction, December 1957
1958
Assassin, If, February 1958
The Tool of Creation, Super-Science Fiction, April 1958
The Sword, Fantastic Universe, September 1958
The Fast-Moving Ones, Super-Science Fiction, December 1958
Triggerman, Astounding Science Fiction, December 1958
1959
Nothing but Terror, Fantastic, January 1959
Insidekick, Galaxy Science Fiction, February 1959
Second Chance, Satellite Science Fiction, February 1959
1960
Cultural Exchange, If, January 1960
The Issahar Artifacts, Amazing Stories, April 1960
Fireman, Fantastic, May 1960
Noble Redman, Amazing Stories, July 1960
To Choke an Ocean, If, September 1960
The Missionary, Amazing Stories, October 1960
A Question of Courage, Amazing Stories, December 1960
1961
A Prize . . . for Edie, Analog Science Fact -> Fiction, April 1961
Weapon, Amazing Stories, June 1961
Special Effect, Fantastic, November 1961
1962
Pandemic, Analog Science Fact -> Fiction, February 1962
Founding Father, Galaxy Science Fiction, April 1962
1963
For Service Rendered, Amazing Stories, April 1963
On the Fourth Planet, Galaxy Science Fiction, April 1963
1967
A Hair Perhaps, If, January 1967
1971
The Scents of It, Infinity Two, 1971
1974
Gamesman, Crisis, 1974
High Priest, Strange Gods, July 1974
1976
Technicalities, Amazing Stories, January 1976
1978
Pièce De Résistance, Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, May/June, May 1978
Tween, Amazing Stories, August 1978
SHORT FICTION BIBLIOGRAPHY
ALPHABETICAL
A
A Hair Perhaps, If, January 1967
A Prize . . . for Edie, Analog, April 1961
A Question of Courage, Amazing Stories, December 1960
Assassin, If, February 1958
C
Cultural Exchange, If, January 1960
F
The Fast-Moving Ones, Super-Science Fiction, December 1958
Fireman, Fantastic, May 1960
For Service Rendered, Amazing Stories, April 1963
Founding Father, Galaxy Science Fiction, April 1962
G
Gamesman, Crisis, 1974
H
High Priest, Strange Gods, July 1974
I
Insidekick, Galaxy Science Fiction, February 1959
The Issahar Artifacts, Amazing Stories, April 1960
M
The Missionary, Amazing Stories, October 1960
N
Noble Redman, Amazing Stories, July 1960
Nothing but Terror, Fantastic, January 1959
O
On the Fourth Planet, Galaxy Science Fiction, April 1963
P
Pandemic, Analog, February 1962
Pièce De Résistance, Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, May/June 1978
Q
Quarantined Species, Super-Science Fiction, December 1957
S
The Scents of It, Infinity Two, 1971
Second Chance, Satellite Science Fiction, February 1959
Special Effect, Fantastic, November 1961
Survival Type, Galaxy Science Fiction, March 1957
The
Sword, Fantastic Universe, September 1958
T
Technicalities, Amazing Stories, January 1976
The Tool of Creation, Super-Science Fiction, April 1958
To Choke an Ocean, If, September 1960
Triggerman, Astounding, December 1958
Tween, Amazing Stories, August 1978
W
Weapon, Amazing Stories, June 1961
SHORT FICTION SERIES
Arthur Lanceford
Survival Type
To Choke and Ocean
Edie
A Prize . . . for Edie
Founding Father
1957
SURVIVAL TYPE
Score one or one million was not enough for the human race. It had to be all or nothing . . . with one man doing every bit of scoring!
ARTHUR LANCEFORD slapped futilely at the sith buzzing hungrily around his head. The outsized eight-legged parody of a mosquito did a neat half roll and zoomed out of range, hanging motionless on vibrating wings a few feet away.
A raindrop staggered it momentarily, and for a fleeting second, Lanceford had the insane hope that the arthropod would fall out of control into the mud. If it did, that would be the end of it, for Niobian mud was as sticky as flypaper. But the sith righted itself inches short of disaster, buzzed angrily and retreated to the shelter of a nearby broad-leaf, where it executed another half roll and hung upside down, watching its intended meal with avid anticipation.
Lanceford eyed the insect distastefully as he explored his jacket for repellent and applied the smelly stuff liberally to his face and neck. It wouldn’t do much good. In an hour, his sweat would remove whatever the rain missed—but for that time, it should discourage the sith. As far as permanent discouraging went, the repellent was useless. Once one of those eight-legged horrors checked you off, there were only two possible endings to the affair—either you were bitten or you killed the critter.
It was as simple as that.
He had hoped that he would be fast enough to get the sith before it got him. He had been bitten once already and the memory of those paralyzed three minutes while the bloodsucker fed was enough to last him for a lifetime. He readjusted his helmet, tucking its fringe of netting beneath his collar. The netting, he reflected gloomily, was like its owner—much the worse for wear. However, this trek would be over in another week and he would be able to spend the next six months at a comfortable desk job at the Base, while some other poor devil did the chores of field work.
HE LOOKED down the rain-swept trail winding through the jungle. Niobe—a perfect name for this wet little world. The Bureau of Extraterrestrial Exploration couldn’t have picked a better, but the funny thing about it was that they hadn’t picked it in the first place. Niobe was the native word for Earth, or perhaps “the world” would be a more accurate definition. It was a coincidence, of course, but the planet and its mythological Greek namesake had much in common.
Niobe, like Niobe, was all tears—a world of rain falling endlessly from an impenetrable overcast, fat wet drops that formed a grieving background sound that never ceased, sobbing with soft mournful noises on the rubbery broad-leaves, crying with obese splashes into forest pools, blubbering with loud, dismal persistence on the sounding board of his helmet. And on the ground, the raindrops mixed with the loesslike soil of the trail to form a gluey mud that clung in huge pasty balls to his boots.
Everywhere there was water, running in rivulets of tear-streaks down the round cheeks of the gently sloping land—rivulets that merged and blended into broad shallow rivers that wound their mourners’ courses to the sea. Trekking on Niobe was an amphibious operation unless one stayed in the highlands—a perpetual series of fords and river crossings.
And it was hot, a seasonless, unchanging, humid heat that made a protection suit an instrument of torture that slowly boiled its wearer in his own sweat. But the suit was necessary, for exposed human flesh was irresistible temptation to Niobe’s bloodsucking insects. Many of these were no worse than those of Earth, but a half dozen species were deadly. The first bite sensitized. The second killed—anaphylactic shock, the medics called it. And the sith was one of the deadly species.
Lanceford shrugged fatalistically. Uncomfortable as a protection suit was, it was better to boil in it than die without it.
He looked at Kron squatting beside the trail and envied him. It was too bad that Earthmen weren’t as naturally repellent to insects as the dominant native life. Like all Niobians, the native guide wore no clothing—ideal garb for a climate like this. His white, hairless hide, with its faint sheen of oil, was beautifully water-repellent.
Kron, Lanceford reflected, was a good example of the manner in which Nature adapts the humanoid form for survival on different worlds. Like the dominant species on every intelligent planet in the explored galaxy, he was an erect, bipedal, mammalian being with hands that possessed an opposable thumb. Insofar as that general description went, Kron resembled humanity—but there were differences.
SQUATTING, the peculiar shape of Kron’s torso and the odd flexibility of his limbs were not apparent. One had the tendency to overlook the narrow-shouldered, cylindrical body and the elongated tarsal and carpal bones that gave his limbs four major articulations rather than the human three, and to concentrate upon the utterly alien head.
It jutted forward from his short, thick neck, a long-snouted, vaguely doglike head with tiny ears lying close against the hairless, dome-shaped cranium. Slitlike nostrils, equipped with sphincter muscles like those of a terrestrial seal, argued an originally aquatic environment, and the large intelligent eyes set forward in the skull to give binocular vision, together with the sharp white carnassal teeth and pointed canines, indicated a carnivorous ancestry. But the modern Niobians, although excellent swimmers, were land dwellers and ate anything.
Lanceford couldn’t repress an involuntary shudder at some of the things they apparently enjoyed. Tastes differed—enormously so between Earthmen and Niobians.
There was no doubt that the native was intelligent, yet he, like the rest of his race, was a technological moron. It was strange that a race which had a well-developed philosophy and an amazing comprehension of semantics could be so backward in mechanics. Even the simpler of the BEE’s mechanisms left the natives confused. It was possible that they could learn about machinery, but Lanceford was certain that it would take a good many years before the first native mechanic would set up a machine shop on this planet.
Lanceford finished tucking the last fold of face net under his collar, and as he did so, Kron stood up, rising to his five-foot height with a curious flexible grace. Standing, he looked something like a double-jointed alabaster Anubis—wearing swim fins. His broad, webbed feet rested easily on the surface of the mud, their large area giving him flotation that Lanceford envied. As a result, his head was nearly level with that of the human, although there was better than a foot difference in their heights.
Lanceford looked at Kron inquiringly. “You have a place in mind where we can sleep tonight?”
“Sure, Boss. We’ll be coming to hunthouse soon. We go now?”
“Lead on,” Lanceford said, groaning silently to himself—another hunthouse with its darkness and its smells. He shrugged. He could hardly expect anything else up here in the highlands. Oh, well, he’d managed to last through the others and this one could be no worse. At that, even an airless room full of natives was preferable to spending a night outside.
And the sith wouldn’t follow them. It didn’t like airless rooms filled with natives.
He sighed wearily as he followed Kron along the dim path through the broadleaf jungle. Night was coming, and with darkness, someone upstairs turned on every faucet and the sheets of rain that fell during the day changed abruptly into a deluge. Even the semi-aquatic natives didn’t like to get caught away from shelter during the night.
The three moved onward, immersed in a drumming wilderness of rain—the Niobian sliding easily over the surface of the mud, t
he Earthman plowing painfully through it, and the sith flitting from the shelter of one broadleaf to the next, waiting for a chance to feed.
THE trail widened abruptly, opening upon one of the small clearings that dotted the rain-forest jungle. In the center of the clearing, dimly visible through the rain and thickening darkness, loomed the squat thatch-roofed bulk of a hunthouse, a place of shelter for the members of the hunters’ guild who provided fresh meat for the Niobian villages. Lanceford sighed a mingled breath of relief and unpleasant anticipation.
As he stepped out into the clearing, the sith darted from cover, heading like a winged bullet for Lanceford’s neck. But the man was not taken by surprise. Pivoting quickly, he caught the iridescent blur of the bloodsucker’s wings. He swung his arm in a mighty slap. The high-pitched buzz and Lanceford’s gloved hand met simultaneously at his right ear. The buzz stopped abruptly. Lanceford shook his head and the sith fell to the ground, satisfactorily swatted. Lanceford grinned—score one for the human race.
He was still grinning as he pushed aside the fiber screen closing the low doorway of the hunthouse and crawled inside. It took a moment for his eyes to become accustomed to the gloom within, but his nose told him even before his eyes that the house was occupied. The natives, he thought wryly, must be born with no sense of smell, otherwise they’d perish from sheer propinquity. One could never honestly say that familiarity with the odor of a Niobian bred contempt—nausea was the right word.
The interior was typical, a dark rectangle of windowless limestone walls enclosing a packed-dirt floor and lined with a single deck of wooden sleeping platforms. Steeply angled rafters of peeled logs intersected at a knife-sharp ridge pierced with a circular smokehole above the firepit in the center of the room. Transverse rows of smaller poles lashed to the rafters supported the thick broadleaf thatch that furnished protection from the rain and sanctuary for uncounted thousands of insects.
A fire flickered ruddily in the pit, hissing as occasional drops of rain fell into its heart from the smokehole, giving forth a dim light together with clouds of smoke and steam that rose upward through the tangled mass of greasy cobwebs filling the upper reaches of the rafters. Some of the smoke found its way through the smokehole, but most of it hung in an acrid undulating layer some six feet above the floor.