Wiki Fiction: The Hurria I Go

In 1957 Isaac Asimov published a short story called "The Gentle Vultures" in Super-Science Fiction. I first read "The Gentle Vultures" about fifty years ago in Nine Tomorrows, but the story was included in many other collections of stories such as Contact (published in 1963). For fun summer-time reading, I decided to investigate all of the old alien contact stories that were featured in Contact.

In Asimov's "The Gentle Vultures", planet Hurria is home to mild-mannered three-foot-tall primate-like creatures who have spread out into the galaxy. The Hurrians now control an interstellar empire including worlds that are home to about 1,000 other species, mostly "large primates" who have had to go through devastating atomic wars before being pacified and incorporated into the Hurrian empire. Now the Hurrians are waiting for humans to suffer through a nuclear catastrophe before they make contact.

interior art by Ed Emshwiller

I never accepted Asimov's suggestion that an alien humanoid with advanced technology (such as the Hurrians) would simply stand by and watch while a planet like Earth experienced a devastating nuclear war. Part of the downfall of Asimov's story is that the Hurrians are so similar to we humans in terms of their level of technological development.

In the Ekcolir Reality. Original
cover art by Yasuda and Courtney.

Later, writing in 1983 (essay: "The All-Human Galaxy"), Asimov described the fact that the universe is very old, concluding: "The chance of encountering a civilization, then, that is at some level near our own would have to be very small. And yet (and this is Clement's Paradox), science fiction writers consistently show alien civilizations to be fairly close in technological level to Earth's. They might be a little more primitive or a little more advanced, but considering the rate at which technology advances on Earth these days, it would seem that the aliens are not more than a few thousand years behind us at most, or a few hundred years ahead of us at best. How enormous the odds are against that! As far as I know, however, science fiction writers didn't worry about this. Certainly, I didn't."

creature by Ken Barthelmey

I Forgot. In Contact, Asimov's story "The Gentle Vultures" was collected in one volume along with several other stories such as "Lost Memory" by Peter Phillips. I gave a few comments on "Lost Memory" in my previous blog post. It is implied in Phillips' story that the robots who are contacted by space travelers from Earth actually originated on Earth themselves, so this really is not a first contact story.

Readers of "Lost Memory" are asked to believe that the robots have forgotten that they originated from a spaceship that was sent out long ago from Earth. This silly plot device was also used in the Star Trek episode "The Changeling".

cover art by Malcolm Smith

The oldest story in Contact is "Invasion from Mars" (1938) by Howard Koch. We now know that there is no alien invasion force assembled on Mars and ready to strike Earth. I started reading science fiction stories in the early 1970s, so it has always been very difficult for me to enjoy stories about alien civilizations on Mars or Venus. For me, first contact stories must be concerned with creatures from another star system.

The oldest interstellar space travel tale in Contact was "First Contact" published by Murray Leinster in 1945. Leinster's "First Contact" is annoying on two levels. First, the spaceships in "First Contact" are like World War II submarines and the crew is quite ready to use their blasters upon meeting the first aliens ever discovered by Humanity. That's right, we just made the most amazing discovery in the history of Humanity: so let's blast 'em!

interior art for "Knock" (Napoli)

Even more annoying, this story is like the old joke about the first two automobiles in Kansas City crashing into each-other. The space aliens and the Earthlings are at exactly the same level of technological development. In a real needle-in-the-haystack event, two spaceships (one from Earth) bumble upon each-other. For "First Contact", there is nothing like a SETI program for finding alien communications... all you have to do is go out into the vastness of outer space and you will soon bump into other spaceship from some distant planet.

Of course, it is much more likely that when two different space-faring species meet, one will be much more technologically advanced than the other. I first read "First Contact" in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame.

image source

When I began writing my own science fiction stories, I started with the fundamental idea that if humans ever meet space aliens, they will almost certainly be "ancient" aliens with advanced technology and it is likely that they will view we humans as primitive beasts.

No Spoilers. Also collected in Contact was a short story called "Knock" that was originally published by Fredric Brown in the December 1948 issue of Thrilling Wonder Stories. I'll point to "Knock" as an excellent example of an absurd kind of alien invasion story in which the technologically superior aliens end up being defeated by pitifully weak humans. In "Knock", the alien invaders wipe out all animal life on Earth during an afternoon by using their super-duper disintegrator ray. However, the downfall of the aliens is that they saved a couple hundred animals and put them in a zoo.

interior art for "Limiting Factor".

Among the animals remaining in the alien zoo are a man and a woman who figure out how to drive off the invading aliens and then it is implied that the victorious couple will begin re-populating Earth. You'll have to read the story yourself to see how the aliens are driven away from Earth. The whole story is so absurd and silly I can't even bring myself to write down the details. "Knock" was widely anthologized, so someone must have liked it.

Both "Knock" and "First Contact" were made into episodes of the Dimension X radio show and were later re-done for X Minus One. Another X Minus One story was a radio version of the story "Hostess" by Asimov. When I first read "Knock" I guessed it was going to lead to an Earthly virus driving away the evil aliens, but no.

a better alien archeology story

The Crows of Space; Alien Archeology. Also in Contact was "Limiting Factor", a 1949 short story by Clifford D. Simak. "Limiting Factor" was first published in Startling Stories, November 1949, along with "The King of Thieves", a Magnus Ridolph story by Jack Vance. "Limiting Factor" reminds me of four other stories: The Last Question, Assignment: Nor'Dyren, "The Nine Billion Names of God" and Forbidden Planet. The human explorers in "Limiting Factor" never meet any aliens. They explore an abandoned star system and the enigmatic ruins of an alien civilization. In 1949, computers were large and cumbersome calculating machines. For "Limiting Factor", Simak imagined a gigantic computer that covered an entire planet to a depth of 20 miles. Sadly, we never learn what the aliens may have accomplished with their huge computer. It does seem likely that "abandoned" planets with the remnants of civilizations should exist in the universe, but "Limiting Factor" is not a very satisfying alien archeology story. I much prefer Assignment: Nor'Dyren in which a "lost alien race" is brought back from "extinction".

cover art by Robert Clothier

Formula: select your favorite creature of Earth or Earthly mythology and transform that creature into a space alien who makes first contact with Earth. Fine, but among all the creatures known to Earth, who would choose a plant as their model for a space alien? One of the stories in Contact was "Chemical Plant", originally published in the Winter 1950 issue of New Worlds. I've complained previously about science fiction stories in which space aliens are depicted as insects, but an even more mystifying choice is to turn your alien into a plant. This was the sorry choice that was made by Ian Williamson for his story "Chemical Plant".

go green

For those who like plants, 2020 finally brought us Plants in Science Fiction about which we are told "its original essays argue that plant-life in SF is transforming our attitudes toward morality, politics, economics and cultural life at large – questioning and shifting our understandings of institutions, nations, borders and boundaries; erecting and dismantling new visions of utopian and dystopian futures". Wow, that gushing statement almost makes me want to read a science fiction story about plants. Related Reading: The Triatom from Planet Klyz.

from the 2015 TV adaptation

More exciting than a plant. In that same 1950 issue of New Worlds was "Guardian Angel" by Arthur C. Clarke, apparently written in 1946 and repeatedly rejected from various science fiction magazines. For his first contact story, Clarke made his aliens take the form of a devil-like creature from Earthly mythology.

in the Ekcolir Reality
Original cover art by Lawrence Stevens

Clarke had so much trouble selling "Guardian Angel" that his agent went ahead and had James Blish modify the story, so it was also published in an alternative, edited version in Famous Fantastic Mysteries.

It is not hard to understand why Clarke's "Guardian Angel" was repeatedly rejected. Is there anything more mind-numbing than fictional politics? Clarke framed his story as an overly-long tease, hiding the alien visitors to Earth while two utterly futile political factions of Earth struggle against each-other. The United Nations had just been created in 1945 so Clarke made the main character of his story be Secretary-General Stormgren, he of the "famous uranium paperweight".

depiction of the devil from the 1400s (source)

Deployed against Stormgren and marching in the streets are the members of the Freedom League, boat-rockers who resent the peace and prosperity that has been imposed on Earth by the aliens.

Stormgren is the only person on Earth who gets to visit one of the alien spacecraft for casual chats with the alien leader, Karellen, Supervisor of Earth. Nobody, including Stormgren can understand why the alien visitors to Earth never show themselves. Even while Stormgren is speaking directly to Karellen, the alien always hides his physical form. Eventually (it takes Clarke a very long time to make the reveal) readers learn that Karellen has a physical appearance that reminds people of a devilish creature out of Earth's religious mythology.

image source

"Guardian Angel" suggests that the aliens have been watching Earth for a long time and readers are free to imagine how some previous contact between humans and the aliens may have revealed their physical form to humans, resulting in Earth legends about devils with horns and pointed tails.

Eventually, Clarke expanded "Guardian Angel" to book length (Childhood's End). In the end, Clarke implies that human legends about a devil that looks like the aliens was a racial premonition of how the human species would be helped to transcend physical existence and merge with the "Overmind". I've read several of Clarke's novels (described here), but I've still never read Childhood's End. However, I do like the idea of advanced aliens who help more primitive creatures transcend their biological existence and I use that as a major plot element in my stories that are set in the Exodemic Fictional Universe.

magic

Exactly how technologically advance were the aliens in "Guardian Angel" compared to we humans? As Clarke described the situation, the aliens had gigantic spacecraft that could float endlessly above the major cities of Earth.

At one point in the story, Karellen gets Stormgren out of a tight spot by "paralyzing" his captors: "...the man opposite neither moved nor spoke. He sat with lips half open, his eyes now lifeless as well as blind. Around him the others were equally motionless, frozen in strained, unnatural attitudes." Karellen patiently explains this magical paralysis: "You can call it a paralysis, but it’s much subtler than that. They’re simply living a few thousand times more slowly than normal. When we’ve gone they’ll never know what happened."

Meet your Overlord.

I've previously complained about this kind of plot device when science fiction stories portray characters as moving a thousand times faster than usual. This seems like a prime example of Clarke's 3rd Law: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." The "paralysis field" appears to come from Karellen's spherical flying drones. Readers are told that before being sent to Earth, Karellen was professor of astropolitics on the distant planet Skyrondel. Karellen speaks perfect English and is such a master of human psychology that by occasionally giving speeches to the people of Earth, only 7% of the human population is opposed to Karellen's gentle Overlordship.

cover art by Dean Ellis

Fantasy in 1951. I first read Ray Bradbury's "The Fire Balloons" in the mid-1970s as a school reading assignment. At that time, as a fan of Isaac Asimov's science fiction, I was disgusted by the fact that my teacher had given me a book (see image to the left) proclaiming that Bradbury was the "greatest living science fiction writer". In my thinking, Bradbury simply was not playing the science fiction game when he wrote stories like "The Fire Balloons".

drawing by Malcolm Smith

Look at the interior artwork shown to the right. Father Peregrine steps out of an Ohio cornfield and onto the surface of Mars. Bradbury could not be bothered to provide a sensible depiction of environmental conditions on Mars for his story.

However, it is not too difficult for a reader like me to imagine shifting the setting of the story from Mars to some distant exoplanet. Ignoring the distraction of Bradbury's fantasy version of Mars, I do like the idea that it might become possible for a technologically advanced life-form to migrate from its original biological form to some type of artificial life. In Bradbury's imagination, this idea leads to mysterious blue lights on Mars, the Old Ones, who, because they now lack physical bodies, have also escaped from sin. "The Fire Balloons", published in 1951 as "In this Sign..." is similar to A Case of Conscience which was published by James Blish in 1953. In Blish's story, it is Father Ramon Ruiz-Sanchez on the distant exoplanet Lithia who must fret over the fact that Lithians don't sin.

In the Ekcolir Reality

In the case of Asimov's Hurians, I'm offended by the idea that a technologically advanced species would passively watch Earth and wait for Earthlings to suffer through a nuclear war. In contrast, Bradbury's Old Ones won't let Father Peregrine be hurt. When he steps off of a cliff, the Old Ones make sure that he lands safely at the bottom of the cliff.

For my own stories, the immortal Huaoshy have long since transcended their biological existence, but guided by their ethical rules, they help primitive creatures like we humans. For stories set in the Exodemic Fictional Universe, I go a step further and assume that the Huaoshy and their helpers, the pek, actually guided the creation of the human species, but that is a detail. The Huaoshy feel obligated to help all intelligent species in the universe.

interior art by Seymour Augenbraun

There were two short stories in Contact that had originally been published in 1953, "Intelligence Test" by Harry Walton and "Specialist" by Robert Sheckley. "Specialist" seems to pick up right where the Freedom League in "Guardian Angel" left off in 1950. An alien spaceship arrives at Earth and offers to stop all of Earth's endless wars. An indignant human soldier tells the aliens: "I don't want anyone making us stop [fighting wars]... I'd rather fight."

"Specialist" (originally published in the May 1953 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction) does not make much sense, but it seems to be about an automated spaceship from galactic empire that comes upon Earth. Magically, a human being is just what the spaceship needs in order to activate its interstellar drive and return to base at Galactic Central.

interior art by Seymour Augenbraun

"Intelligence Test" (Science-Fiction Plus, May 1953) seems to have been in tight competition with "Specialist" for maximum silliness in May of 1953. Harry Walton tells readers that an alien spaceship arrives on Earth and the alien space-traveler begins studying humans. One of the objects of study is a journalist who was sent out to investigate a UFO sighting. The reporter and several other Earthlings find themselves trapped inside a force field, but the reporter figures out how to use a ring of metal to make a hole in the force field, allowing the human captives to escape.

Death to Aliens! Of course, in a conventional alien contact story, the primitive Earthlings must magically defeat the technologically advanced aliens. The reporter then puts the metal ring around the alien's force field-protected observation cube and the alien dies.

"Turn off that light!" drawing by Frank R. Paul

Hugo Gernsback was about 70 years old when, as the editor of the magazine, he put "Intelligence Test" into the pages of Science-Fiction Plus. Gernsback also included his own story "Electronic Baby" in the May 1953 issue. Apparently "Electronic Baby" was written in 1946. The story describes a fictional device that can gestate human embryos to term (see the image to the right on this page).

I previously observed that had Isaac Asimov been aware of how easy it is to achieve in vitro fertilization, then his story The Naked Sun might have been written quite differently. I was surprised to discover Gernsback's old article about test tube fertilization of human eggs and the imaginary ectogenetic-electronic gestation apparatus. I wonder if Asimov ever saw "Electronic Baby". The drawing by Frank R. Paul reminds me of my own "embroids".

Jason and Carlos in bed; drawn by Tom O'Reilly

Another unusual find in the May 1953 issue of Science-Fiction Plus is the story "Worlds in Balance" by Floyd Wallace. This story caught my attention because it goes in a direction that is the opposite of how I treat telepathy in stories like The Alastor Network and Meet the Phari. In my stories, I imagine that human telepathy evolved as a tool for generating social cohesiveness among humans.

Wallace imagined that humans could develop a form of subconscious telepathic communication that would cause two populations of people to never get along.

Miss Carlos disguised as a rosling (left). Right: Airsta

In "Worlds in Balance", Wallace suggests that humans are gradually evolving telepathic abilities, but what kind of evolutionary process could create a type of telepathic linkage that causes two human populations (in this case, the people of planet Merhaven and the people of planet Kransi) to endlessly engage in warfare?

Biological plausibility was seemingly the last thing on Wallace's mind when he wrote "Worlds in Balance".

In the Ekcolir Reality.
Merhaven vs Kransi

Jason is a hybrid: his father was from Merhaven and his mother from Kransi. Jason eventually solves the mystery of his birth and why his parents were able to fall in love: the people of a third planet, Restap, could use a secret device to selectively suppress the telepathic antagonism between his parents. Jason's investigation of Restap is nearly thwarted by Airsta, but Carlos, disguised as a long-haired pet rosling, saves the day.

In the Uranium Age. For centuries, the people of Restap have profited from the antagonism between Merhaven and Kransi. I've previously complained about science fiction stories in which the economies of planets are built upon a single resource. Wallace tells his readers that the only available natural resource on Merhaven is worthless uranium. Throughout the galaxy, other, better energy sources have been found, seemingly making the uranium of Merhaven worthless.

Jason and the psychocomputer.

However, Restap secretly sends uranium to Kransi where a process of transmutation turns the uranium into "goop", a magical organic substance that allows the bald people of Kransi to grow hair and disguise themselves as fur-covered roslings.

The whole contrived economic system that keeps the three planets "in balance" makes no sense and only leads Wallace to a silly pun about Jason and the golden fleece of Carlos.

IBM 710

I've jokingly called the years 1950 - 1983 the "uranium age" of science fiction and Wallace gave uranium a prominent role in "Worlds in Balance". It wasn't until 1953 that commercial computer sales began with the IBM 701, so it is fun to see how older Sci Fi stories dealt with computers. Asimov had coined the term "psychohistory" and in "Worlds in Balance", Jason makes use of his father's old "psychocomputer".

The psychocomputer can speak and chat with Jason and when it is provided with all existing data about the question of why the people of Merhaven and Kransi are continually at war, the device complains that it needs even more data. However, the chatbot is helpful and it suggests where Jason can go in order to collect more data. The speaking psychocomputer can use different voices including one intriguingly called "mistress'.

interior art by Bowman

It is a good thing I don't mind humor in science fiction stories because "What's He Doing in There?" by Fritz Leiber was one of the stories included in Contact. The entire story (mercifully it is short) is just a silly comedy skit about a Martian who likes to sleep while submerged in water.

The image shown to the right depicts the high science fiction adventure found in this story as the professor and his family wait for the visiting Martian to come out of the bathroom. The Martian has a long trunk-like nose, so he can almost completely submerge in the bath tub while sleeping and continue breathing through the snout.

interior art by Virgil Finlay

The stories collected in Contact were all published between 1938 and February 1960 with "The Large Ant" by Howard Fast being the last and least of the stories, appearing in Fantastic Universe. Also appearing in 1960 was the film Sparticus, based on a novel written by Fast.

"The Large Ant" is possibly not a first contact story in the traditional sense. The story does not explain where the large ant-like creatures are from and it is suggested that they might actually be native to Earth. Eight different people have met one of the ant-like creatures and each person quickly killed it out of fear. However, close inspection reveals that the "ants" carry a set of enigmatic and finely crafted tools. At the end of the story, folks in the government are nervously waiting to find out if the "ants" are visiting aliens who will not take kindly to having their emissaries murdered.

Startling Story

In Howard Fast's story, all the dead "ants" end up in bottles of formaldehyde in a museum. In 1953 the double helical structure of DNA was recognized and Earth entered its age of molecular genetics. In "The Large Ant", all we read about is the stinky mess made by a smashed "ant" brain and there is no attempt to do molecular analysis of the possibly alien "ants". "The Large Ant" contributes to the excessively large catalog of science fiction stories about aliens who have the form of an Earthly insect.

Also: be sure to sleep with a golf club by your bed because you just never know when you'll wake up and suddenly have to bash a giant alien ant who was watching you sleep.

And... the world of giant ~~ants~~aunts...