Strange talents, useful quirks: Dickson's Mutants

Gordon Dickson. Mutants (1970) A collection chosen by Dickson himself. It includes the classic “Warrior”, reprinted by Dickson in at least one other collection, and  anthologised several times elsewhere. Dorsai Commandant Ian Graeme comes to New York to seek justice for 32 men under his command who were led into unacceptable danger by their officer. The story draws a distinction between the merely military man and the man of war, or warrior.
     Another classic, “Danger – Human!”, explains both why humans have managed at least three times to build Galaxy-dominating empires, yet have failed to make them last.  Some aliens kidnap Timothy Parker,  a man from Vermont, alter his physiology and psychology to prevent death and madness, and keep him in a triply-secured cage to find out what makes humans tick. He gets out, steals a spaceship, and heads for home, where its technology will no doubt be used for a fourth excursion into interstellar space and the building of a rapacious empire.
     Dickson writes thematic stories, fables or parables really. But he has a knack for meshing character and plot so well that the didactic purposes rarely interfere with the believability of his tales. He sets his stories in several different futures, carefully imagined and plausible. He writes well, exemplifying Strunk and White’s advice to avoid adjectives and the passive voice. I’ve never been disappointed in one of his stories. Recommended. *** to ****

Seven Fables about War: 7 Conquests (Poul Anderson)

Poul Anderson. 7 Conquests (1970) Anderson had a rather bleak view of human nature: War, chicanery, criminal intent and a propensity to violence are inbred in our species. This collection’s seven parables about the nature of war explore his thesis that war is species-specific behaviour. Or at any rate inevitable once our species achieved a city-based social system.
     The first tale, “Kings Who Die” meditates on Campbell’s Hero of a Thousand Faces. In “Cold Victory”, the contested thesis is that individuals cannot guide the course of history, that the great currents of social change merely carry them along. The story shows that the two propositions are compatible. It also mourns the tragedy of a family caught on opposite sides. “Inside Straight” posits an extreme version of the Libertarian fantasy of absolute individual freedom and responsibility, presented as a society in which almost every transaction is a wager. It’s contrasted with a rigidly authoritarian society, whose representative misreads the absence of centralised control as military weakness.
     A good collection. ** to ***

An Andre Norton anthology

     The Book of Andre Norton (1975) In hardback, The Worlds of Andre Norton. A good collection: five short stories; an essay by Norton about reading and writing fantasy; a critical analysis of her writing by Brooks; a bibliography, compiled by Jakusz-Hewitt; and two “novelettes”, better described as longish short stories. A good introduction to Norton’s work and reputation, and recommended for that reason alone.
     So how does Norton’s work look now? She wrote most of it the 1950s to 1970s, a time when SF expanded beyond its existing boundaries of fantasy, wowser technology, and swashbuckling adventure. The mostly male writers dabbled in everything from careful extrapolations of current technology, to adaptations of older genres, to sociological speculation, to future and alternative histories. It was the Golden Age because the writers showed SF, redubbed “speculative fiction”, was a mode rather than a genre, and like any mode could be used for any genre and any literary purpose.
     Norton preferred fantasy, and (as Brooks remarks) doesn’t like hard science and machine technology. But she has no qualms imagining energy-beam weapons. She likes magic and mind-talk, and alliances between humans and other animals. She uses the old mythologies to tell stories of ethical quandaries.
     There’s a strong romantic streak in her writing, with handsome and chivalrous warrior heroes and beautiful strong and wise women to match with them after the usual interference from fate, or evil or merely stupid humans. The short stories are better focussed than the longer pieces, which often have the feel of role-playing games, with one damn thing after another preventing the hero and heroine from reaching their goal. They are entertainment very much of their time. SF then catered to the taste for adventure stories in which the reader could identify with the hero. Nowadays, SF is more likely to engage one’s political indignation and confirm one’s curmudgeonly despair over the human race’s follies.
     Recommended for any Norton fan, and for anyone who wants a taste of what at 50 or 60 years old is already ancient literature. ** to ***

The state of corona virus knowledge as of today (May 3, 2020)

SARS-CoV-2 (the virus) and covid -19 (the illness)

Here’s what “we” know and don’t know as of 2020-05-01. “We” are the people who’ve collected and interpreted the data. “We know” means the data strongly support the conclusion. “We don’t know” means there are insufficient data to draw a conclusion. Compiled from reports in science news magazines, media reports, and Q & A sessions with experts.-WEK

A)    We know: Some people are infected with the virus but don’t get sick.
    We don’t know: how many.

B)    We know that the effects of the virus range from zero to death; and mild to lethal complications.
    We don’t know: Why the virus has such a wide range of effects.

C)    We know: there is a time between infection and symptoms during which a person will be infectious.
    We don’t know: the actual range of both time and severity of this infectious state.

D)    We know: that people who’ve been infected will have anti-bodies in their blood;
    We don’t know: whether the presence of antibodies gives immunity, nor what degree  of immunity, nor how long such immunity might last.

E)    We know: there will be second wave of infection, and probably a third and fourth one,
    We don’t know: how bad these subsequent waves will be.

F)    We know: that some of the economic and social effects will be permanent.
    We don’t know: which effects, nor how these effects might change over time, nor what  the knock-on effects will be.

G)    We know: covid-19 will become another infectious disease that will take its yearly toll.
    We don’t know: when that will happen, nor how common or lethal covid-19 will be.

H)    We know: that some anti-viral treatments show some activity against SARS-CoV-2.
    We don’t know: whether that activity will be good enough for effective tretament.

I)    We know: effective treatments and a vaccine will reduce the danger of covid-19 to that of the flu.
    We don’t know: which treatments will be effective.
    We don’t know: whether a vaccine is possible, and if possible, how well it is likely to work.

J)    We know: the counter-measures have reduced infection rates.
    We don’t know: how effective those counter measures actually were.

K)    We know: that a combination of dry cough and high fever, with some other signs such as difficulty breathing, indicate covid-19. But only a test can confirm the diagnosis.
    We don’t know: what other signs and symptoms may be indicators of covid-19.

Update 2020 05 04: UK doctors have observed covid-19 patients with low and extremely low blood oxygen levels, but without the usual distress. Another puzzle.

Humans rule, except when they don't: A Fred Pohl collection

Frederik Pohl. The Abominable Earthman (1963) Collection of some of Pohl’s early pieces. The title story tells about a sociopathic but genial ne’er-do-well who inadvertently becomes humankind’s saviour when he discovers how to control the insectoid invaders (from a planet trailing Sirius) by offering them regular hits of CO2, which for them is an addictive and mind-addling drug.
     Several of the other stories have an equally shaggy-dog denouement, e.g. Punch, which warns us to beware of aliens bearing gifts. This genre was very popular at the time, and Pohl’s work is better than most, I think because he takes his serious themes seriously, even in his comic writing. He uses SF to explore what it means to be human. Like Ambrose Bierce, he “sees things as they are, not as they are supposed to be.” Which makes him a cynic, but an entertaining one. In his longer, more ambitious works (like the novella, Whatever Counts, included here) he tends to portentousness.
    Still, he’s one the best writers of the era, and any of his books is worth reading. ** to ****.

L'amour pot boiler: Cattle drive, murder, gold.

Louis L’Amour. North to the Rails (1971) Tom Chantry comes West to buy cattle. He was raised in the East by his mother after his father, a marshal, was killed by three outlaws. She impressed him with her horror of violence, which leads to his refusing a fight, and having to redeem his reputation. This he does on the cattle drive, after partnering with French Williams, a man of dubious integrity. A subplot involving Williams' equally dubious cousins complicates the story enough to fill the usual 200 or so pages of a mass market paperback.
     Here L’Amour is writing to formula. He’s best in his sparse but intense descriptions of the landscape, the work, the weather. The characters and the plot provide just enough scaffolding to prevent the story from collapsing. Below average for L’Amour, which makes it merely average for the genre. *½

Early Andre Norton fantasy about a gemstone

Andre Norton. The Zero Stone (1968). Morduc Jern inherits a ring with a strange home-seeking stone from his gem-dealer father. His master dies when a weird priesthood targets them both as potential sacrifices. And then one complication after another tangles the path of Murdoc and Eet, a mind-talking and -reading entity that commandeered the ship’s cat to produce a cat-like body for itself.
     They’re marooned on a planet that may have been colonised by the Old Ones, the stone behaves as no stone should, and so on. There’s double-crosses and hidden agendas and the Thieves Guild and such. Pretty good fantasy, but the plot is basically that of a role-playing game: hero must find his way to the prize. Which he does, and the denouement hints at future adventures of the intrepid pair.
     Norton writes well, so that most readers will likely read as I did, turning the pages to find out how Murdoc and Eet would escape whatever predicament they’re in, only to tumble into another one. Well done example of the genre. **½