Robotic Dog

interior art for "A Boy’s Best Friend"

Last year, I commented on Isaac Asimov's 1985 story called "Hallucination" which featured telepathic aliens. In the March 1975 issue of Boy's Life magazine was "A Boy’s Best Friend", a story about a robotic dog. According to this page, the events depicted in "A Boy’s Best Friend" take place in the year 1995.

Vision. Did Asimov really imagine that families would be living on the Moon in 1995? This seems as silly as a booming commercial cryosleep industry for 1970 as depicted by Robert Heinlein in "A Door Into Summer".

I get it. A science fiction story writer might want to excite readers by hitting them in the face with the depicted arrival of a new technology in the near future.

living on the Moon in 1999

 Ego. Back in June when I was blogging about Arthur C. Clarke, I hinted that some of his "friends" would call him "Ego", apparently because even at a young age he was remarkably intense and very focused on his personal interests. The first time I ever saw Clarke was in the 1960s when he was asked to provide some commentary on the Apollo space program and the next steps for space exploration. In this video clip, Clarke seemed to expect manned orbital telescopes to allow exploration of the solar system, missing the role for robotic (unmanned spacecraft) exploration.

BIG 3

In the early days of science fiction, Asimov and Clarke had a friendly rivalry. One pithy statement attributed to Asimov is "People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do." and when commenting on a new idea that someone else came up with, Clarke wrote: "if it really was brilliant I’d have thought of it already".

I don't mind authors who have fun with ideas and who can craft fun and exciting stories for their readers. However, it is very hard to predict future technological progress, so science fiction story tellers face the risk of their works becoming dated. I love the process by which old story ideas are taken up by new story tellers and refreshed for a new audience. 

Image credits.

In that spirit, I've been engaged in writing fan-fiction stories such as The Historical Institute that are inspired by Asimov's old stories about positronic robots.

Ancient Interventions
One of the characters who appears in Chapter 10 of The Historical Institute is Empedocles, who may have had an ego to surpass even those of Clarke and Asimov. I love the idea that some people in Earth's history might have been Interventionists, sent to live among the people of Earth (see Old Time Gaming). 

In other cases, some Earthlings were simply able to use the Bimanoid Interface to obtain information bout the future from either the Hierion Domain or, sometimes, the Sedron Domain.

I had fun imagining that the entire life of Empedocles was changed by the arrival of an Asterothrope on Earth (her name is Synasyup). The Asterothropes are a human variant that was crafted and genetically engineered by positronic robots. 

The Historical Institute takes place in a fictional universe that includes time travel technology as depicted in Asimov's time travel novel, The End of Eternity, but it also includes positronic robots.

Through his interactions with Synasyup, Empedocles became aware of the fact that a few "lucky" humans were able to escape from from Earth and take up a privileged new existence at Observer Base. 

The Asimov Reality Simulator.

When I began imagining a fictionalized story about Empedocles, I was tempted to set the start of my story in the Asimov Reality. I imagined that the analogue of Empedocles might "escape" from the Asimov Reality and takes up residence at the Writers Block. As a resident of Observer Base, Empedocles was able to get himself converted into an immortal femtobot replicoid. In the fullness of Time, the replicoid copy of Empedocles was transferred over into the next Reality, the Ekcolir Reality. 

Making use of the Bimanoid Interface, the copy of Empedocles from the Asimov Reality passed along information to his analogue in the Ekcolir Reality, but for many centuries after that he continued to "work" at the Writers Block and eventually takes a particular interest in the writing career of Arabella Clarke. In the Ekcolir Reality, Empedocles passes information about the Fru'wu to Miss Clarke.

Arthur C. Clarke

In the Buld Reality, Grean assigns Empedocles the task of making sure that Arthur Clarke does not inform Earthlings about the arrival of a Buld spaceship on Earth. The efforts of Empedocles led to the development of a United Nations space program called Spaceguard. Clarke was asked to become the first director of Spaceguard. Later, when the Spaceguard radar system detects the arrival of the Buld spaceship, Empedocles was able to take control of Clarke's mind and prevent disclosure of the alien spaceship's existence. Based on his experience, Clarke wrote a fictionalized account of the Buld spaceship's visit to Earth that was published as a short story under the name The Brahmán Transmigration. In the Final Reality, Clarke instead wrote Rendezvous with Rama.

in the Buld Reality

 Something New
With all that background for Empedocles (described above) in mind, I began imagining a new science fiction story called Nothing New. In this story (set in the Final Reality), the Editor is taken into the future by Grean and given the chance to read copies of both The Brahmán Transmigration and a story that the Editor's analogue wrote in the Buld Reality. That "lost" story was a fantasy tale called Nothing New.

The only surviving account of the events "Nothing New" were to come from a story written by Cecilie Vedra. Cecilie's story (titled "The Pausanias Observation") was found in the archives of the Writers Block. Part 1 of "Nothing New" was to start with Manny trying to deal with a small problem in ancient Sicily...

Part 1 of "Nothing New"

The scene with Manny waiting at the dock in Catăna for the arrival of her agent, 'Mr. Smith', became Chapter 10 of The Historical Archive. I've previously written science fiction stories about Mary Shelley and I was not really interested in going down the same path with Empedocles.

Heading in a new direction, I started imagining that R. Nyrtia might need to step in and "put a patch on" the events depicted in "Nothing New".

image source

The more I thought about R. Nyrtia, the more I realized that it was time to investigate the origins of Nyrtia. For stories set in the Exode Saga, I always explicitly concern myself with the information sources that are available to the Editor. I began imagining a wealth of information about Nyrtia and the First Reality that might be found in The Historical Archive.

What is the Historical Archive? I hope readers will learn the answer to that question by reading the story.

In The Historical Archive, the Editor suspects that both he and his pet cats are being artificially controlled by Nyrtia.

The less personal and more general question concerns the human species and our relationship with folks like Nyrtia, Grean and Manny who have access to advanced technologies. The Editor can't help wondering if Nyrtia wants to attain god-like powers. Does she think of humans like pets?

image source

While writing my own stories about positronic robots, I am continuing my project of trying to read old science fiction stories that might have inspired Asimov's interest in robots. Also, I've been reading old positronic robot stories that I've never previously read, such as "A Boy’s Best Friend", mentioned at the top of this blog post.

Two such old Asimov stories about robots are "Robot AL-76 Goes Astray", (which is one of Asimov's stories that begins with a glitch in the usual routine operations of U.S. Robot and Mechanical Men Corporation) and "Lenny", about a robot that can learn (1958). "Robot AL-76 Goes Astray" seems like a technofantasy, not science fiction. The story "Lenny" is more interesting because it raises the question: should positronic robots be designed with rigid programming for just one specific job or might it be a good idea to have more flexible robots who can learn new tasks while out in the field?

R. Nyrtia turns 20

In "Lenny", robot LNE is accidentally manufactured with the mind of a baby. Rather than rolling off the assembly line with full pre-programmed knowledge of how to mine boron on asteroids, Lenny must learn to speak. The robot eventually learns to call Dr. Calvin 'mommy'. 

For The Historical Institute, I imagine that R. Nyrtia was built and sent out into the world in the body of a baby. She grew up with siblings as a member of a human family. Each year, Nyrtia's developing positronic brain was transferred to a new, larger body.  Why bother? As told on The Historical Archive, allowing for flexibility in positronic brains was required for the invention of time travel technology.

Next: infinity science fiction.

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Time Door

Door Into Summer

A movie about time travel and robots is not easy for me to resist. But what if it is based on a 1956 story by Robert Heinlein that features a cryosleep industry in 1970? Even worse, a movie that is going to force me to read English subtitles for two hours? I took a chance and watched The Door Into Summer and was pleased to find that Tomoe Kanno re-imagined the original Heinlein story, shifting everything further into the future... but not far enough.

For this 2021 film, you are asked to accept that there was a cryosleep industry in 1995. I don't think I'll ever understand why Heinlein imagined cryosleep in 1970. This movie also expects us to accept that there will be a horde of intelligent humanoid robots in 2025, each of them powered by a SuperCool™ battery that never needs recharging. Maybe these film makers have plans for a sequel that will show time travel being used to start a cryosleep industry in the 1980s.

Source1   Figure 1   Source2

Pete the cat

The film is a fun time travel romp, which could have been more fun except for reliance on two painful plot elements. First pain: the excruciatingly slow first half of the movie which is supposed to get us invested in the relationship between Soichiro and Riko. Much wasted effort there since viewers of the film are likely to become more invested in their pet cat, Pete, than the two star-crossed lovers. Second pain: this film double dips on one of the worst Sci Fi plot devices, the lone genius inventor. Working alone in his garage, the boy genius Soichiro invents intelligent humanoid robots, but wait... there is more. Also in the same film is another genius inventor! Doc Brown Professor Toi works alone for 30 years in his basement and builds a time travel machine.

Doc Brown Toi

The remaining annoyance is that after Professor Toi spends 30 years developing time travel technology, that technology is only ever used once: to make this movie. 

cover by Kelly Freas

How does this 2021 film compare to Heinlein's original story? I read "The Door into Summer" as originally published in the October, November and December 1956 issues of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

Heinlein really piled on the hard-to-swallow choices for his future world of 1970. Not only was there a booming suspended animation industry, but in Heinlein's world of 1970, Washington D.C. had been erased by a nuclear war and an automated traffic control system meant that travel by car was super fast and efficient. One of the ways you can tell that the story was really written in the 1950s is that Heinlein's protagonist, while planning how to have a long life, talks, eats, smokes and drinks like "real man" of the 1940s.

cover by Gino D'Achille

Uranium Age. The other temporal symptom of 1956 is that Heinlein describes a role for hypnosis in his fantasy suspended animation industry. I don't know who was selling stock in hypnosis during the 1940s and 1950s, but they sure made a fortune off of science fiction story tellers. According to Heinlein, the real trick to creating a suspended animation industry was to simply have the military hire a thousand scientists and put them to the task. Presto, you get a atomic bomb cryosleep industry.

Yes, Daniel Boone Davis is the genius who invents intelligent robots in his garage. Why, you might ask, does the military need 1000 scientist to invent cryosleep but building a robot only requires Dany boy? Really, you should know better than to ask such questions. Answer: plot... or as we can also say, highly contrived plot. When you write a novel in 13 days, these sorts of plot holes accumulate fast. Oh, and the "everlasting power pack" gets only a casual mention from Heinlein.

interior art by Kelly Freas

In 1940, Asimov's positronic robots had the positronic brain and by 1970, Heinlein's robots had the Thorsen memory tube™. There is the Kelly Freas depiction of Dan's first robot, a household cleaning robot (image to the left).

In the 2021 movie, Dan is rendered helpless by an injection of insulin. In Heinlein's fantasy world, we have "the zombie drug", used by both psychiatrists and Evil Accountants™ who take control of robotics companies. The Evil Accountant is Belle, whose cute breasts were Dan's downfall. 

Accounting 101: always carry your hypo with zombie drug

Because of Heinlein's contrived plot, Belle not only has a hypo with the zombie drug on hand, but she also has the shady connections needed to quickly put the zombie-drugged Dan into cryosleep. 

You know why the evil Belle does not simply kill Dan and have done with it: plot. In the end, Dan must get his revenge. Particularly after the Evil Belle tries to kill Pete the cat. But Pete has nine lives, so the Evil Belle can't skin the cat.

Figure 2. Editorial teaser for Part 2.

As long and drawn out as the start of the 2021 film is in dealing with the relationship between Soichiro and Riko, that was a good choice for a film compared to the tedious details about topics like nuclear war, business contracts and hypnosis that Heinlein included in Part 1 of his written story.

1957 Mel Hunter cover art

The big selling point for Part 2 of the story was: Gee wiz, just wait until next month when you see the amazing world of 2000! For readers in 2022, you probably want to know what happens to Pete the cat and why did Doc's Dan's car disappear. I wonder how many 1956 readers of Part 1 of the story were able to guess that time travel would be the "startling science fiction theme" of the future (see Figure 2, above).

Amazing 2000. Heinlein imagined that in the year 2000 there would be newspapers with printed 3D images, regular space shuttle traffic to the Moon, the return of the King in France and England would become a province of Canada. When The Door Into Summer was published as a novel in 1957, readers knew they were going to get a Sci Fi look at the Hi Tek™ future just by glancing at the book's cover art (image to the right). 

original cover art by William Timmins

Okay, I don't expect Sci Fi stories to predict the future, but I also expect Sci Fi story tellers to know better than to try to predict the future. Heinlein had an ego large enough to exceed that common expectation. Maybe for a reading audience in 1956, Heinlein's fantasy future was enough to provoke a sense of wonder, but we really do need a way to update old Sci Fi stories for later generations.

Intermission. I confess that when I moved to Part 2 of Heinlein's story in the November issue, I could not resist reading the Isaac Asimov short story "The Brazen Locked Room", a fantasy time travel story featuring a polite demon named Shapur. 

editorial blurb following "The Brazen Locked Room"

As shown in the image to the right, readers of "The Brazen Locked Room" were referred to Anthony Boucher's 1943 story "Elsewhen".

Mr. Partridge

Elsewhen. In Boucher's time travel story, a time travel device is built in the garage of Mr. Partridge, who uses time travel to commit a murder. One thing leads to another and Mr. Partridge ends up dead, his time machine destroyed.

Both "Elsewhen" and "The Brazen Locked Room" are constructed around "locked-room" mysteries. In both cases, the "solution" to the mystery involves time travel. Neither story takes itself too seriously and both authors were having fun with the concept. Boucher's story doubles down on the lone inventor plot element, depicting the discovery of time travel as a chance event and also depicting a portable time travel machine that can be carried to the scene of the murder.

image source

I love Sci Fi stories about fantastic imaginary technologies that are constrained by practicalities.  Boucher's imaginary time machine was seriously constrained in terms of the energy demands for traveling a great distance through time. This was amusing for me to see since I had just recently been including in The Historical Archive my own account of how much energy was needed for time travel (see the image to the right).

image source

Time Loop. Before Asimov's "The Brazen Locked Room" could be published, he had to ask permission from Theodore R. Cogswell who had published his story "Threesie" in 1956. In "Threesie", Joseph Cruthers sells his soul for three wishes. When his third wish is for three more wishes, he is put into a time loop that will again force him to experience the agonizing de-souling process.

I first read a story by Cogswell when I saw his humorous 1952 story "The Specter General" as reprinted in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame. That story was my introduction to the "collapsed galactic empire" genre that Jack Vance later made use of for his Durdane Trilogy.

cover by Barclay Shaw

 Back to 2000. Heinlein included a "Panic of '87" in his imagined future while there was Black Monday in the real 1987. Also in that fictional future was a cure for the common cold and anti-gravity technology ("NullGrav"). It is a long, long, long slog through Part 2 of "The Door into Summer", waiting and waiting and waiting for some indication that this is a time travel story. I suppose Heinlein had fun dragging out the mystery of Dan's time-twisted life, but the 2021 movie wisely condensed 40 pages of the novel into a single scene of the film. 

Twissell Twitchel. Finally, 50 pages into Part 2, Dan learns that Dr. Twitchel invented time travel, but the technology is a government secret and Twitchel is reluctant to use his machine with any other human test subjects since he can't control the direction of travel. Then, finally, 65 pages into Part 2, Dan uses the time machine. I suppose Part 2 seems particularly tedious because there is no Pete the cat.

cover by Gene Szafran

 Back to 1970. The start of Part 3 was also not included in the 2021 film. Dan arrives in 1970 and finds he has "landed" inside a nudist colony. Dan does what anyone would do under these circumstances: he sets to work building a robot. And quickly, because he is eager to get back to 2001. Just before entering cryosleep (for the second time), Dan rescues Pete and steals the robot design materials that his business partners had stolen from him.

A major difference between the 2021 film and Heinlein's novel is that Dan returns to 1970 alone. In the film, he travels through time with an amusing robot from the future. Another big plus for the film is that Riko has a much more sophisticated role in the story than Heinlein's "Ricky".

I agree with the comments shown in Figure 1, above; the 2021 film is true to Heinlein's story and the changes made were improvements over the original. 

Star crossed couple.

Had "The Door into Summer" been made in Hollywood it probably would have been larded up with meaningless shootouts, car chases and explosions. 

Even the one explosion that made it into the 2021 film seems like an improvement over Heinlein's original story where Dan throws his design for an early model robot into a canyon in order to deprive the Evil Accountant of any benefit from it. In the film, the robot from the future delivers Dan's early robot design materials to his new business partner and Dan's house is blown up in order to suggest the possibility that those materials were destroyed.

the time travel pregnancy paradox

It is rather horrifying to read online reviews of this film such as this one. I suspect that most people see "science fiction" and they expect a mindless 2 hours of explosions and light saber battles. Sadly, such Sci Fi fans can't figure out the time loop in "The Door into Summer" and they often wonder why anyone bothered to embed a love story in a Sci Fi movie. 😔

Romance. I have no objection to the insertion of a love story into a science fiction novel. Asimov also did it in his time travel novel The End of Eternity. In Heinlein's story, we get to witness a pubescent girl-scout making a 30-year-old man promise to marry her. Through the wonders of cryosleep, Ricky arranges to erase ten years of the age difference between herself and Dan. At the end of Heinlein's novel (back in the year 2000), Dan is so busy impregnating Ricky that he forgets all about the "other copy" of himself who is struggling to adjust to the year 2000. But that is for the best, because you would not want to disrupt the space-time continuum with a temporal paradox.

Next: Part 9 of The Historical Archive.

ET culture day

Human Variants

in the Ekcolir Reality

I just discovered that Michael Anthony Foster died last year. I remember M. A. Foster for his imagined human variant, the Ler. I read Foster's three novels about the Ler and two of his other novels (The Morphodite and Waves) in the late 1970s and early 1980s. 

Given my interests in biology, I greatly enjoyed Foster's fictional concept of a new human species (the Ler) that had been created by genetic engineering. Foster's story took place several hundred years in our future. Since the Ler could not get along with regular humans, they had to go off into outer space and find their own place to live.

I've long wished that Foster might have written a sequel to his 1970s Ler books, but I have to content myself with imagining that in another Reality, the analogue of Foster might have written more stories -or different stories- about the Ler.

selling Heinlein

A few years before I discovered Foster, I had read The Past Through Tomorrow, a collection of stories by Robert A. Heinlein. The last story in The Past Through Tomorrow was "Methuselah's Children", another story about a human variant that was forced to abandon Earth.

Sadly for Heinlein, he wrote "Methuselah's Children" before the molecular basis of heredity was known. Unable to imagine genetic engineering, Heinlein imagined that it could be possible to selectively breed humans for a long lifespan. Of course, humans have been selectively breeding animals for thousands of years. Imagine a sheep that could live for 200 years and produce wool for many decades. That's right, there is no such thing and you are just as likely to breed humans who live to be 200 years old, but that did not stop Heinlein from writing "Methuselah's Children" nor did it stop John Campbell from buying and publishing the story.

bio-electricity in 1939

Isaac Asimov praised Heinlein for bringing the mind-set of an engineer to his science fiction stories. However, an engineer will seldom have anything useful to say about biology. This was quickly made evident in Heinlein's story "Life-Line" in which he imagined being able to measure a person's lifespan in much the same way that an engineer might measure the length of a trans-Atlantic cable.

Heinlien's Foundation. I got in my time machine and went back to 1941 and read "Methuselah's Children" as originally published in Astounding. The story begins with Heinlein playing a trick on his readers who are told that Mary Risling appears to be about 30 years old. Then, on the next page, readers are told that Mary is actually 183 years old. What's going on here? Lucky for readers, they were immediately provided with a snippet of backstory in which Heinlein explained the origins of a secret human breeding project carried out by the Howard Foundation.

Ralph the psychometrician

Starting in 1874, the Howard Foundation selectively (and secretly) bred humans for long lives. Finally, in 2125, it was decided that the time had come to reveal the existence of the resulting 200-year-old humans to the people of the world. If you do the math, Heinlein is telling us that in just a few generations of selective breeding, it was possible to more than double the human lifespan.

Asimov was among the first to use the term "robotics". In "Methuselah's Children", Heinlein used the term "genes group", missing a prime opportunity to instead say "genetic group". In 1942, Asimov began writing his stories about the Encyclopedia Foundation and Hari Seldon, the first great psychohistorian. As shown in the passage to the left on this page, Heinlein's psychometrician, Ralph Schiltz, admits to having failed to predict the course of events in the future. 

future science of symbiotics

Heinlein's story has the "Speaker Trustee" Zaccur Barstow; in time, Asimov would create "First Speaker" Preem Palver of the Second Foundation.

For his story of the future, Heinlein invented the "law of psychological trends" and told his readers that in the future "symbiotics" began to allow psychometricians to better predict social trends. Heinlein was engaged in a bold act of handwavium, but he seemed to suggest that it was only by understanding intestinal bacteria that accurate predictions of human behavior would become possible.

I wonder if Heinlein's imaginary science of symbiotics was a tip of his hat to Olaf Stapledon's 1937 science fiction story Star Maker, which featured some telepathic symbiotic aliens called the "symbiotics". 

more images

In Stapledon's story about the alien symbiotics, there as a symbiotic relationship between a fish-like species and a crab-like species. For the Exode Saga, I imagine that humans are host to nanoscopic endosymbionts. 

In Heinlein's case, we can only wonder how "colloidal theory" contributed to progress for the struggling psychometricians of the Howard Foundation. In the real world, "colloidal theory" in biology developed in the late 1800s before scientists understood the molecular and organelle components of our cells. Miss Risling assures dubious readers that due to "symbiosis and gland theory" she will long retain her youthful appearance and active mind. The state of medical science has reached the point where she anticipates having a mere three months of senility at the end of her long life.

interior art by H. Rogers

This is all good news for Mary's new friend, Woodrow Smith who enthusiastically refers to her as 'girl' and assures her that she does not look old, although she has had dozens of children. Smith hatches a plan to use an interstellar spacecraft (the second one ever built) for the purpose evacuating the Howard Families from Earth. Tune in next month to find out if that plan will be implemented.

Heinlein spent many pages using his psychometricians's mumbo jumbo to explain why it would be impossible for people of the future to understand and accept that members of the Howard Families lived a long time because of their unique genes. And in the absence of genetic engineering in Heinlein's imaginary future, there is no discussion of identifying the longevity genes and providing them to anyone who wants them. If not genes, then what? A sciensy mystery!

Interstellar spaceship: New Frontiers.

Sadly for the Howard Families, none of the planets in Earth's star system would be a hospitable home. Heinlein imagined that there was a native species on Venus, but that planet was uncomfortably hot for humans. So, it was off into the galaxy in search of a new Earth-like planet. Since Heinlein could not imagine how to detect planets across interstellar distances, the New Frontiers would simply have to go visit another star and hope for a good planet. So that the trip does not take 100,000 years, Heinlein provides an "inertia-less spaceship drive".

Part 2. August 1941. After a 10 year trip, they find an Earth-like planet populated by a humanoid alien species (Zhachera) that has telepathic contact with one of the Earthlings. 

Friday

In Part 1, Heinlein introduced telepathic ability among a minority subset of the Howard Families and made use of it to send a warning to the family members when their secret (amazing longevity) was discovered.

My advice: skip part 2 of "Methuselah's Children" and read the summary provided at the start of part 3.

Part 3. September 1941. The members of the Howard Families are kicked off of the first habitable exoplanet that they found, but that is something of a blessing because in the process they learn that faster-than-light travel is possible. On the second planet that they visit, the telepathic residents help the Earthlings perfect a form of spaceship drive that allows them to return home to Earth in 3 weeks. Back on Earth, the secret of longevity has been found. Heinlein tells us that a big part of living hundreds of years is just believing that you will live a long life. He throws in some additional hand waving about: "the radioactive qualities of vitamins".

in the Ekcolir Reality

I suppose I should confess that when I finished reading The Past Through Tomorrow as a teenager (possibly in 1976), I did not read any more Heinlein until 1983 when I read Friday. Last year I read "Have Spaceship - Will Travel" and now having read "Methuselah's Children" again, I feel like I'm full up with Heinlein and it should be at least 2065 before I again feel the desire to try reading any more of his stories. In my case, I started reading Isaac Asimov before Heinlein and by 1977 I had discovered Jack Vance and dozens of other writers such as Michael Anthony Foster. I had no use for Heinlein.

in the Ekcolir Reality

I enjoy fantasizing about books that might have been written in another Reality by writers such as Vance, Asimov and Foster. Heinlein wrote about a fictional future in which President Nehemiah Scudder became the dictator of the United States in 2016. Instead, we got Trump.

Related Reading: "The Ultra-Elixir of Youth" by A. Hyatt Verrill - the fictional science of radiogens -and- discussion of Heinlein at BlackGate.

Next: The Last Evolution by John Campbell

The eXode-Files

X-7

Fifteen years ago I wrote my first fan-fiction story, "Fly Paper". At that time, I imagined that The X-Files television series was complete, but then we eventually had "seasons" 10 and 11. Back in 2018, half of the Mulder-Scully duo bowed out and said "no more X for me". So, why am I thinking about The X-Files here in 2020?

In 2015 I imagined a global-scale Y-Files television show that would depict fantasy scientific investigations in the spirit of The X-Files. Rather than feature entertaining agents of the FBI, why not expand the scope of the stories with an International Scientific Investigation Organization (ISIO)?

Replicoids in space.

Currently, I'm writing a new first chapter for A Search Beyond. I've decided to try starting the Exode Saga with the death of Nirutam, an alien visitor to Earth. At first, I imagined Nirutam quietly "disappearing" after having completed "her" mission on Earth. I was cheerfully writing about Nirutam's grave and a sad little pile of stones to cover her dead body. Then suddenly I realized that it might not be so simple to make Nirutam "disappear".

ISIO
I was ready to have two agents from ISIO appear and investigate the disappearance of Nirutam. But wait... not so fast!

Fitting The X-Files into the science fiction genre puzzle.

On second thought, maybe the idea of having ISIO agents appear within just a few days of Nirutam's death is too much of a coincidence. I don't really mind wild coincidences in science fiction stories when they advance the plot, but why ruthlessly drop needless coincidences on readers when you can avoid them?
                                                         For Example

1995 edition

In Heinlein's "Have Space Suit - Will Travel", we are taken into a future time when humans have begun to spread outward into space from Earth, having established a base on the Moon. A few wealthy tourists can even afford a trip to the Moon.

Peewee not wearing her spacesuit.
Original 1958 cover art
by Edmund Emshwiller

Heinlein's story reminds me of Vandals of the Void by Jack Vance and Asimov's Oceans of Venus. I hate the idea that science fiction authors in need of a paycheck would quickly write "juvenile" stories and not put much care into devising a sensible plot because, after all, the young kids reading it will not notice or care if there were absurd coincidences driving the plot.

First Contact Coincidence
In "Have Space Suit - Will Travel", right when Earthlings are just starting their Space Age, coincidentally, another species from a nearby star system has recently sneaked into the Solar System and those aliens casually kidnap some humans, including a young girl (Peewee).

cryovolcano on Pluto (1958)

Oh, and by the way, these sneaky aliens are ugly (the "wormface" species) and they like to eat humans. Heinlein wanted to depict some really Evil™ and easy-to-hate aliens for his young readers and then, in the end, give those Evil™ aliens the death penalty and kill off the entire wormface species in a planetary act of genocide. Just the ticket for young impressionable minds!

Another Coincidence
Meanwhile, back on Earth, another young Earthling (Kip) happens to be out for a walk one evening while wearing a space suit. An alien spaceship lands on him and out pops Peewee who has escaped from the aliens. Sorry, but even when I was 12 years old, these coincidences did not sit well with me.

Eliminated from our universe by
the warm and fuzzy Dr. M. Thing,
the Evil™ Wormface was
spun into the Dr. Whoverse

Double Abduction
Next, both of our young protagonists are abducted by the Evil™ aliens and we are off on an adventure to the Moon and then Pluto and then Vega and then another galaxy...

The alien abduction industry was ju$t getting $tarted in the 1950s (example) and Heinlein jumped on-board with "Have $pace $uit - Will Travel".

In Search of the Source
The 1946 comic "Futura" contained the same basic plot used by Heinlein in his 1958 "Have Space Suit - Will Travel". In "Futura", the spunky Marcia Reynolds is abducted by aliens, but she manages to escape by stealing an alien spaceship. In Heinlein's "Have Space Suit - Will Travel", the spunky Patricia Reisfeld (A.K.A. Peewee) is abducted by aliens, but she manages to escape by stealing an alien spaceship.

Marcia Reynolds is alien abduction Specimen 9 (Futura 1946)

Jose Chung's "The X-vengers".

More Alien Invaders, Please
Rumor has it that when he created The X-Files, Chris Carter had read only two science fiction novels, one of them written by Heinlein. Carter wanted a core theme in The X-Files that would involve mysterious alien visitors to Earth. After Carter was hired by Peter Roth, a tug-of-war began... would The X-Files be science fiction, horror, fantasy? Why not all of the above? Throw in the kitchen sink and even include some sexual tension.

The Avengers
I can remember my older brother intently watching The Avengers on television. That TV show had little meaning for me: I was too young to tune in to the sexual tension and as a budding science nerd I was put-off by its silliness.

Transformation of Peewee through time.

But Chris Carter was the same age as my older brother. While creating The X-Files, Carter wanted to include the kind of male/female partner dynamic that had been pioneered for television by The Avengers.

Yes, I confess; when I was 12 years old and in my personal Golden Age of discovering science fiction, I eagerly gobbled up several Heinlein stories (including Orphans of the Sky). And, like most viewers, I enjoyed the on-screen relationship between Mulder and Scully in The X-Files. However, I have a long history of impatience with silly alien invasion and alien abduction stories.

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Now that I'm dealing with my own alien invader (Nirutam), I want to avoid silly alien invasion tropes like aliens who eat humans and aliens are coming to raid Earth and take our gold.

eXode
For the Exode Saga, I'm now imagining two members of a tryp'At remnant group on Earth who pretend to be ISIO agents. They arrive on the scene soon after the death of Nirutam and they search the house of the Editor for Nirutam. The editor watches nervously while the guest house is searched, but Nirutam's severed finger is no longer in the freezer. Zeta notices that Nirutam's pet cat is now missing, too.

Next: Maturin the Selfie

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