Game Simulation

original cover art by Terry Lee,
Janet Aulisio and Nicholas Jainschigg.

 In a recent blog post I commented on a set of old stories that include baseball either as a major plot element or, at the very least, make mention of baseball as a sport. Several of those stories have a setting in the far future when the game of baseball has largely been forgotten. Below, I discuss another such story in which a future fan of baseball makes use of a computerized baseball simulation system.

Time Travel. For my stories of the Exode Saga, I face the problem of explaining how investigative science fiction story tellers in the 21st century can become aware of events that took place in Deep Time. At first, I imagined that some folks from Deep Time could be protected by the Eternity time travel system and moved from past Realities into the Final Reality. For example, Trysta Iwedon, an Asterothrope from a past Reality ends up in the Final Reality where her special gene patterns become important for crafting human brains that have telepathic abilities. 

inside the Asimov Reality Simulator

 Simulation. Later, I imagined the Archives of the Writers Block, a collection of old data files that contain information from past Realities. Next, I conceived the idea that the Sedron Domain of the universe might contain information about past Realities and a few special alien-human hybrids such as Angela might be able to use their special telepathic abilities to access the Sedron Time Stream. 

Finally, I began making use of the Reality Simulation System at Observer Base to give Eddy and his collaborators access to simulations of past Realities such as the Asimov Reality.

image source

 Replicoids. When I first began writing stories about the Reality Simulation System, I concerned myself with how to keep a person's body alive while their mind was engaged with a simulation of Reality (for example, see "The Pasimov Project"). The person's body remained intact outside of the simulator and had continuing physiological functions and biological needs. Then I began making use of replicoids such as Azynov who could be fully inserted into the Reality Simulation System, without leaving any physical remnant behind in the real world.

Eventually, I began allowing Eddy to make use of an interface for the Reality Simulation System that includes advanced teleportation technology. Each time when Eddy enters a Simulation, his physical body is stored inside a teleportation buffer and there is no need to be concerned with that body's on-going physiological needs.

 Baseball. I'm currently writing a science fiction story called The Nanites of Love. This new story is part of Eddy's exploration of the relationship between human telepathy and human sexual behavior. I began writing The Nanites of Love several months ago and then, as an after-thought, decided to include baseball in the story as a plot element. I imagine that baseball originated from games that were used by the Grendels to help evolve humans with greater capacity for complex social systems and empathy. Only humans with an intense instinct for empathy and love can be allowed to have telepathic abilities.

original cover art by David B. Mattingly

Hussade. When I first began making use of the Reality Simulation System in my stories, I restricted its use to exploring the far future of the Asimov Reality. In the Asimov Reality, the Phari were allowed to construct and develop Alastor Cluster as a vast laboratory for experiments in creating telepathic humans. In that Reality, the sport of Hussade was used as a tool for selecting humans with telepathic abilities.

Here in this blog post, I'm going to discuss "Living in the Baseball Game", a story by Malcolm K. McClintick that concerns a Hi Tek™ device that is used for simulating baseball games. Also, I'm going to look back at Trullion, the story where Jack Vance introduced his fictional sport of Hussade. I finally got around to reading Trullion as it was originally published in Amazing Science Fiction.

interior art by Roger Raupp

"Living in the Baseball Game" was published in the January 1988 issue of Amazing Stories. Apparently, McClintick has published several novels that are not in the realm of science fiction, being in the murder mystery/police procedural genre (I've never read them). "Living in the Baseball Game" is a kind of future crime story.

"Living in the Baseball Game" concerns the rather miserable lives of Morton Fersting and his sexually adventuresome wife, Harriet. Morton has grown fat and bald and Harriet no longer remembers why she married him. Harriet has a provocative body and her hobby is having sex with every handsome man she knows. Her latest flame is Pete Hansen. Harriet and Pete openly flirt right in front of Morton, but they are playing with fire. Mysteriously, all of Harriet's affairs end badly, with the man seeming to disappear.

"Elementary My Dear Data". Data matches wits
with a computer simulation of Professor Moriarty.

 Future Technology. In the future world of "Living in the Baseball Game", some sort of simulation technology exists that seems similar to the Star Trek holodeck. The game of baseball is no longer played in this future, but Morton has created his own baseball simulation program. Having lost the interest of Harriet, Morton contents himself by playing with his 34 inch bat inside the baseball simulation program.

Sadly, McClintick never really explains how his imagined simulation technology works. However, Morton can entice his rivals such as Pete Hansen into the baseball simulation and trap them inside the "tape" for the simulation, then Morton sets all these used "tapes" on a shelf inside a locked cabinet. Towards the end of the story, Harriet finally figures out what has happened to all of her lovers. 

The end of baseball.

Harriet unlocks the cabinet, finds the storage tapes and releases Pete from the prison of the simulation system. Harriet and Pete then trap Morton inside the simulator. Thinking that he is now eternally trapped in the baseball simulation, Morton decides it will not be too bad living inside the simulator; after all, he likes baseball. 

But then in a cruel twist at the very end of the story, Harriet destroys the simulator and/or the "tape" that holds Morton, apparently erasing Morton from existence.

in the Ekcolir Reality

 And Climate Change, too. The idea is never fully developed in this short story, but McClintick seems to suggest that one contributing factor for the demise of baseball as a sport is that after the year 1999 there were nearly constant rain storms. This is apparently due to the effects of a nuclear war. Sadly, this fictional future scenario imagined by McClintick did not age well. By 1990 the Cold War was over and the Berlin Wall was being torn down. So: no nuclear war and no nuclear winter. Here in 2022, baseball still lives on.

Amazing Trullion. Jack Vance's novel Trullion was originally published in two parts, in the March and June 1973 issues of Amazing Science Fiction. I'm going to compare the original magazine version of the story to my Ballantine Books copy of the novel.

A Speshal Treet! Editorial comments for Trullion. The typesetter could not spell Emphyrio.

cover art by Mike Hinge

 Cover. I don't think that the cover illustration (image to the left) has anything to do with Vance's story. If you want to know what should have been on the cover, see this blog post.

The Ballantine Books edition of Trullion had a nice map of the Fens, the district on planet Trullion that is the setting of most of the story. For the magazine, Mike Hinge drew an illustration of what I'm forced to conclude is the Connatic's Palace on the planet Numenes (see Figure 1, below).

Textual changes begin right in the first paragraph of the story where Vance needed to introduce readers to Alastor Cluster. I view Alastor Cluster as one of Vance's greatest literary creations.

In the 1973 book version of the story, the last sentence of the first paragraph is:

dead stars in Amazing

"Dark stars wander unseen among a million subplanetary oddments of iron, slag and ice: the so-called 'starments.' "

I've long been puzzled by Vance's use of the phrase "dark star". I'll give Vance credit; mention of "dark stars" is more inviting than mention of "dead stars" (see image to the right) as a way to greet readers at the start of the story and introduce Alastor Cluster.

Figure 1. Interior art by Mike Hinge.

In Chapter 1 of the story, readers begin to learn about the game of hussade. A unique team member in the game of hussade is the sheirl. Vance puts his initial description of the hussade sheirl into a footnote:

2nd of 3 footnotes in Chapter 1

 

 Setting the Mood. Some of the differences between these two versions of the story are subtle. We are told that Glinnes, the protagonist, was in his youth, love-smitten by the "lovely Loel Issam", but in the magazine version her name is "Loel Zarchione" and her husband changes from "Lord Clois" to "young Lord Clois". Maybe Vance thought that the name "Issam" was more in tune with other names that he included in the story such as "Jeral Estang" and the Aude de Lys Tavern.

Mega-structure on Numenes (Ekcolir Reality).

Some of the changes made by Vance are interesting. "Merlank" replaces "Merland" as the name of the inhabited continent of Trullion. Vance added in an additional footnote explaining this name: a merlank is a lizard. Vance told readers that the continent Merlank clasps Trullion "like a lizard clinging to a blue glass orb".

Merlank - image source

At the start of Part 2 of Trullion in the June issue of Amazing there was another illustration (see Figure 2, below). My best guess is that this illustration might have something to do with events in Chapter 3 when Glinnes is serving in the Whelm. I suppose when Mike Hinge was asked to make some illustrations for the story, he may not have read past Chapter 3. Poor Vance must have been dismayed by this "artwork".

Who's Counting? Introductory blurb at the start of Part 2. Three hundred or five hundred?

Figure 2.

Since Part 2 of Trullion appeared several months after Part 1, there is a five page account of the first half of the novel, complete with footnotes. The transition in this "synopsis" between Vance's poetic prose from Part 1 and the editor's terse summary of plot elements is dramatic. Somehow the editor inexplicably went from the three hundred hostages who came from the local area of the Fens (as imagined by Vance) to the 500 "richest men on Trullion". I suppose a busy editor of a magazine can't be expected to accurately summarize a story that he is publishing.

first publication of Marune

 I feel bad for Vance who seems to have worked hard at his craft and then had to deal with sloppy presentations of his work by magazines. Having read Trullion as it first appeared in Amazing, I could not resist also looking at Marune, which first appeared in Amazing in July 1975.

cover art by Darrell K. Sweet

 The Unfortunate Waste. I own the Ballantine Books edition of Marune with cover art by Darrell K. Sweet (see the image to the right) so I'm spoiled and dismayed by the cover art by Stephen Fabian (shown here) for the July 1975 Amazing. Fabian also provided the interior illustration that is shown in Figure 3 (below).

For Marune, Vance crafted a new introduction to Alastor Cluster (see below) in which he described the orientation of the Cluster with respect to the Gaean Reach.

Vance introduces Alastor Cluster

                             

Figure 3. interior art by Fabian (see also)

In Marune, the setting is a world where there are multiple suns and darkness is rare. It is during the periods of darkness (Mirk) that the Rhune people of the planet Marune engage is sexual intercourse. 

Sex Scene. I suppose the internal art provided by Fabian (image to the right) is meant to depict such a nocturnal encounter. As described by Vance, the men typically wear a special costume when they approach a woman during Mirk. Sadly, since Amazing was rated PG, the woman's body is artfully hidden in this illustration. 

Figure 4. Typesetting error in Marune.

 Sebalism. As shown in the image to the left, in Figure 4, Vance explained the fact that members of Rhune royal families were traditionally expected to refrain from public displays of affection. Vance coined a new term that the Rhunes used to refer to sexuality: "sebalism".

Figure 5. The four suns of Marune.

Sadly, the typesetter for Amazing mistakenly rendered "sexuality" as "secuality". I suppose it is this sort of sloppiness that drove fans of Vance to create the Integral Edition, which restored and corrected Vance's published stories to their original intended forms.

Vance created a table (see Figure 5) to illustrate how lighting conditions changed on Marune with the rise and set of its 4 suns (Furad, Osmo, Maddar and Cise). At roughly monthly intervals, all the suns set at the same time and a period of Mirk began.

Fig. 6. Efraim's adversaries.

Near the start of Part 2 of Marune in the September issue of Amazing, Fabian provided one more illustration (see the image to the left). The protagonist of Marune is a young man, Efraim, who must deal with his conniving family members: Destian, Sthelany and Singhalissa. Caught up in the intrigues of life at Benbuphar Strang (Efraim's home) is Agnois, First Chamberlain. I believe that Figure 6 is meant to depict Agnois, Destian, Sthelany and Singhalissa. They conspire to kill Efraim, but end up murdering Efraim's friend, Lorcas. Efraim suspects that his father was killed by Destian.

 SPOILERS. Both Lorcas and Efraim are sexually attracted to Sthelany. Poor Lorcas cannot restrain his sebalism and his impetuous pursuit of Sthelany costs him his life. In the end, Efraim engineers a kind of revenge for the death of Lorcas: Agnois kills himself and Destian, Sthelany and Singhalissa are shaved bald and expelled from the Rhune lands.

Fig. 7. Jantiff and Kedidah;
cover art by Eric Ladd

In 1978, when Jack Vance had his third Alastor Cluster novel (Wyst) ready for publication, it went directly to book format without being published first in a magazine. The cover for my copy of Wyst is shown to the right. By this point in his career, Vance had a fan base and no longer needed to be published in magazines. Why could the DAW publishing company arrange to have meaningful cover art for Vance's novels while Sci Fi magazines like Amazing did not even try?

Ephthalotes Forever! In Wyst, Vance again included the game of hussade as a fairly significant plot element in the story. In that Eric Ladd cover illustration (Figure 7), the woman shown is named Kedidah. In the story, she becomes the sheirl for the Ephthalotes, one of the hussade teams of the planet Wyst. Vance also contrived a major role for the Connatic in Wyst. The social setting for Wyst is not as much fun as what Vance dreamed up for Trullion, but in the end, Vance's protagonist, Jantiff, gets the last laugh.

Next: Dr. Calicoo and Doctor... who?

Under Construction: Part 3 of The Nanites of Love.

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