Retro Review: "Arena" by Fredric Brown

Astounding's covers were hit and miss in the 1940s, but this one, courtesy of William Timmins, falls on the "hit" side of the equation.

I'll continue my reviews of the 1945 Retro Hugo finalist with "Arena", a science fiction novelette by Fredric Brown that was published in the June 1944 issue of Astounding Science Fiction and is a finalist for the 1945 Retro Hugo Award. The story may be read online here. This review will also be crossposted to Retro Science Fiction Reviews.

Warning: Spoilers beyond this point.

"Arena" opens in medias res with a man called Bob Carson awakening on his back in the sand of the titular arena. Of course, Carson has no idea that he is in an arena yet – though he notes that he has awoken in some kind of circumscribed area. Carson takes stock of himself and his surrounding and realises that he is completely naked, that it's hot and that the sand is blue, which tells him that he is not in Kansas – pardon, the pulp science fiction shared solar system – anymore.

Carson has no idea how he came to be in the place with the blue sand, but while he tries to figure it out, he also gives us one of those infodumps that 1940s Astounding was so fond of. We learn that Carson was the pilot of a one person scout ship, deployed near Pluto, where the mighty Earth armada of ten thousand ships and half a millions soldiers is about the face off against the invading Outsiders. As alien naming practices go, Brown's creativity leaves something to be desired.

Since this is a 1940s issue of Astounding, Carson also gives us an infodump about the Outsiders, what they look like (no one knows), the history of humanity's interactions with them so far (unprovoked raids with no survivors, occasional skirmishes and finally a fully fledged invasion fleet) as well as their strengths and weaknesses (the Earth ships have better weapons, while the Outsider ships are faster and more manoeuvrable)

The clash of the two fleets would have been the decisive battle of the undeclared war (a fact that has nothing to do with current world events in 1944, I'm sure) between the humans and the Outsiders. And Carson and his scout ship would have been at the forefront of that battle. Carson still is at the forefront of that battle, though he doesn't know it yet.

The last thing Carson remembers before awakening in the blue sand is that the alarm in his scout ship went off, as his sensors detected a scout ship of the Outsiders. Brown now treats us to a pitched space battle between Carson and the Outsider scout ship.

Contrary to popular belief, space battles are comparatively rare in golden age science fiction. At any rate, I have found only a handful of space battles in the more than thirty stories I reviewed for the Retro Reviews project. And if space battles do occur, they are mostly kept off stage. Either the scene fades to black just before the battle begins, as in "The Big and the Little", which contains one of Isaac Asimov's comparatively few space battle scenes (or battle scenes of any kind) or the story picks up after the battle is already over, with a spaceship going down in flames, as in Leigh Brackett's "The Citadel of Lost Ships" (though that story does contain a brief space battle) or her later story "Lorelei of the Red Mist". Meanwhile, Ray Bradbury's superb "Morgue Ship" begins with the two-man crew of the titular ship literally picking up the corpses left floating in space after the battle is over. And while the protagonist of Bradbury's 1945 Retro Hugo finalist "I, Rocket" is a warship, we never see the rocket actually engaged in battle.

I'm not sure why space battles are so uncommon during the golden age, especially since spaceship crashes (not all of them due to battle) or physical fights are both extremely common. Part of the reason might be that no one in the 1940s had any idea what a space battle would look like, but then we no more know what a space battle would truly be like than the writers of the golden age did, but that doesn't stop modern science fiction writers from penning endless battle scenes. Furthermore, the most common models for space battles, i.e. eighteenth and nineteenth century naval warfare and WWI and WWII aerial dogfights, were already plentiful in the pulps as well as in the more respectable fiction of the era. The Horatio Hornblower series by C.S. Forester as well as Rafael Sabatini's various maritime swashbucklers were already in full swing by 1944, while the aviator hero G-8 and His Battle Aces had been fighting aerial battles against extremely colourful antagonists in a version of WWI that never was for eleven years by this point. So it's not as if the models didn't exist. It's just that science fiction writers of the era did not use them.

I now wonder when space battles became common in science fiction. Was it Star Wars, whose space battles were famously based on the aerial battles in the 1955 British war movie The Dam Busters, that made space battles an integral part of science fiction? Or did science fiction's fascination with space battles start before 1977?

Because "Arena" features a battle between two scout ships, Fredric Brown chooses the aerial dogfight model for his space battle. By 1940s standards, the battle is quite detailed, even though Brown tells us that a space battle lasts three seconds, because a lightly armoured scout ship like Carson's only has time to fire a single shot, cause once the opponent fires their single shot, it's all over. Carson fires his single shot and misses. Since his antagonist misses as well, Carson tries to get in another shot, when both the Outsider ship and his own suddenly dive towards the ground – ground where there should be no planet, asteroid or other celestial body, since the plethora of Transneptunian objects would not be discovered until much later.

Carson explores the blue landscape in which he finds himself, when he suddenly receives a telepathic message from a highly evolved alien being. This being informs Carson that both humanity and the Outsiders have the potential to evolve into something like the alien's own species, but only if the battle between the Earth fleet and the Outsider fleet is stopped now. For the two fleets are too evenly matched, so that any victory will be a Pyrrhic one. Not only the losing species will be destroyed, but the winner will have suffered such great losses that they will regress and never reach their full potential either. The aliens want to prevent this and so they picked a representative of each species and dumped them naked and unarmed into the titular arena, an environment that is equally alien and equally unpleasant to both, to fight it out as the champions of their respective people. The winner's species will survive, while the loser's fleet and species will be destroyed. And because "Arena" was published in Astounding, the alien also informs Carson that "brain-power and courage will be more important than strength".

However, Carson doesn't have much of a chance to think about all this, because he has his first encounter with his Outsider opponent. And this opponent is – no, not a two-meter tall green Reptilian alien – but a featureless, bright red rolling sphere, which also has retractable tentacles. The sphere rolls towards Carson who grabs a sharp-edged blue rock to defend himself. But before the sphere can reach him, it suddenly hit an invisible barrier and bounces off. It turns out that the two opponents are separated by a force field.

Both Carson and the alien – Carson calls it a "Roller" for its way of moving – check whether there is a way under, over or around the forcefield, but neither can find anything. Then Carson tries something else. He tries to project a telepathic message of peace to the roller. The Roller responds by sending waves of hatred at Carson, a hatred so intense that Carson almost collapses under its vehemence.

Since the Roller has no interest in peace, but is clearly telepathic, Carson tries telepathically killing it next, with zero success except giving himself a headache. Carson then watches as the Roller examines a bush and laboriously breaks of twigs and then as it captures a lizard and begins to rip off the legs the critter.

The Roller's pointless cruelty disgusts Carson, as he tries to figure out how to kill it. Meanwhile, the Roller throws the dead lizard towards Carson. The lizard lands at Carson's feet, which leads Carson to believe that the force field is down. However, when he tries to launch himself at the Roller, improvised stone knife in hand, Carson only succeeds in running into the barrier.

The Roller and Carson now graduate to throwing rocks at each other. The Roller's throwing tentacle is weak, though it does manage to hit Carson in the leg. Carson tries hurling his stone knife. He does not draw blood, but his missile clearly hurts the creature enough for it to flee to safety.

With the Roller out of range, Carson examines his injured leg and finds it bleeding. He also tests the barrier and finds that it is impermeable to living beings, but that inorganic objects and dead organic objects can pass through without problems. Carson also realises that he is thirsty, so he goes in search of water, but finds none. This means that Carson has to finish the fight, before he passes out and dies of thirst, taking the entire human race down with him.

The Roller is still keeping its distance, so Carson binds the wound in his leg with the leaves of one of the bushes. He also makes himself another stone knife with a wooden handle, fashions a belt from plant tendrils to hold the knife and starts to collect rocks suitable for throwing. Carson also holds a brief chat with a lizard and tries to dig his way under the barrier, without success.

Meanwhile, the Roller has done the logical thing and built a catapult, which it uses to hurl rocks at Carson. None of the rocks come even close to hitting, but Carson can't take out the catapult either. Worse, he is steadily weakening from thirst, exhaustion and blood loss.

When one of the Roller's missile strikes a stone and generates sparks, Carson has an idea. He builds a fire, using the bushes as tinder and striking sparks for ignition. Then he builds a slingshot and hurls firebombs at the Roller and its catapult. The Roller is not hurt, but the catapult goes up in flames.

Next, Carson builds a harpoon from stones, wood and plant fibres. But his condition is worsening, so he lies down to sleep as far away from the barrier as possible. When he awakes, he finds that his leg is badly swollen, the wound infected. Carson has to finish the fight quickly, before he succumbs to sepsis and takes down the whole human race with him.

One of the lizards suddenly starts talking to Carson. Carson naturally thinks that he's hallucinating, but the lizard won't go away, until he follows. So Carson follows the lizard, crawling on all fours, because he is too weak to walk, and finds one of its pals. The lizard is obviously in pain, its legs missing. The other lizard wants Carson to euthanise its fellow, which he does. Carson realises that it's the same lizard that the Roller tore to pieces and threw through the barrier at Carson. Only that the lizard wasn't dead, it was only unconscious. Now Carson realises that the force field is a mental barrier, which is why an unconscious lizard could pass through, but a conscious one couldn't. This gives him an idea.

Carson grabs his harpoon and his knife and crawls right up to the barrier, to a place where the ground slopes downward. Then he hits himself in the head with a stone and lets his briefly unconscious body roll down the slope on the other side. Of course, if Carson hits too hard and blanks out for longer than a few seconds, he's dead and so is humanity. However, this harebrained scheme is his – and humanity's – only chance.

It works, too. Carson briefly passes out – long enough to pass through the barrier, but short enough that he comes to again before the Roller has the chance to kill him. The Roller comes closer to investigate. Once it is in range, Carson hurls his harpoon at the Roller. The wounded creature tries to get away, but Carson uses the harpoon's rope, which he tied to his wrist to pull himself closer to the creature. Once he's close enough, he stabs the Roller, again and again, until it is finally still.

Carson passes out once more and wakes out in the cockpit of his scout ship – thirsty, but otherwise perfectly healthy. However, there is a new long scar on his leg as well as lots of smaller scars all over his torso.

Carson is still not sure whether his experiences in the arena were real, when his commanding officer calls him and tells him to return to the ship, because the war is over and humanity won.

The first salvo the human fleet fired, so his commander tells him, ignited the Outsider fleet and caused it to go up in flames. A material flaw, most likely. Carson knows better, of course, but decides to keep his mouth shut, for who would believe him?

This cover for the German edition of "Arena" in Pabel Utopia Magazin is striking, though not at all accurate. And what is that mummy doing there?

I imagine that "Arena" must have been a lot more impactful in 1944, when the mystery of Carson waking up naked in the blue sand still was a genuine mystery rather than a story everybody already sort of knows. For these days, "Arena" is better known for its 1967 TV adaptation as an episode of the original Star Trek.

That said, there are several differences between the Star Trek episode and the story that may or may not have inspired it (screenwriter Gene L. Coon claimed that he hadn't knowingly read the story, when a Desilu executive noticed the similarities). For starters, the arena itself is a blue sand landscape in the story and Vasquez Rocks in Star Trek, though Vasquez Rocks supposedly can be hot as hell as well. In Star Trek, the opponent is a Gorn, a two metre tall reptilian alien. In the story, the opponent is a red blob with tentacles. Nor is there a barrier in the Star Trek episode, since Kirk and Gorn initially engage in a physical fight. Finally, William Shatner does not materialise naked at Vasquez Rocks – to the disappointment of many fans, I'm sure.

A lot of these changes are due to the technical limitations of 1960s television. A landscape with blue sand and blue vegetation would have been a lot more expensive to recreate in a studio than shooting on location at Vasquez Rock. Nudity was out completely (and would still be out today, unless Star Trek somehow ended up on HBO or Starz), so both Gorn and Kirk wear clothes. And while 1960s special effects could theoretically have recreated the Roller – The Blob, which features a very similar creature, was made in 1958, after all – a two metre tall reptilian creature like Gorn was a lot more photogenic and probably cheaper to do as well.

However, there is one change between the novelette "Arena" and the eponymous Star Trek episode that is not due to the technical limitations of 1960s television and that is the ending. Because the ending of the Star Trek episode is completely different from the ending of the novelette. In the novelette, Carson kills his opponent and the mysterious, unseen aliens who kidnapped them both to make them fight hold true to their word and destroy the Outsider fleet. In the Star Trek episode, Kirk gains the upper hand, but refuses to kill the Gorn and decides to spare him instead. This unexpected display of mercy persuades the not-so-unseen aliens (in Star Trek, they're called Metrons and appear as a semi-translucent special effect in glittering togas) not to destroy the Federation (as they'd planned to do, because the winner is clearly more dangerous than the loser), because Kirk has proven that humanity is more civilised than it looks at first glance and that there may be hope for its evolution. Personally, I vastly prefer the Star Trek ending and was actively pissed off at the ending of the original story. Others feel differently, e.g. Adventures Fantastic prefers the novelette to the Star Trek episode in their review, as does Paul Fraser of SF Magazines in his review.

A stirking seventiestastic cover for an anthology, in which "Arena" appeared, even though the Roller is not a bug-eyed monster. Gorn, on the other hand, very much is.

The different endings of the original novelette and the Star Trek episode based upon it are largely due to the very different geopolitical situations in which the respective versions of the story appeared. Both versions of the story appeared at a time when the US was at war, but the novelette was published at the height of WWII, a war that was considered just and had broad popular support, while the Star Trek episode appeared at the height of the Vietnam war, a war that was hugely unpopular and that not even its supporters ever considered just. These two very different situations gave birth to these two very different endings for the same story: One ending where exterminating the enemy is completely justified, because they are cruel and hateful and utterly alien and peace cannot be possible, and another ending, where showing mercy and abandoning the war is the right solution, because the enemy turns out to have been misunderstood and acting in what they felt was self-defence. As someone who would have been a candidate for total extermination due to the mere fact of my nationality, it's obvious why I prefer the Star Trek ending. Never mind that genocide is never an acceptable solution, even if the enemies are rolling red balls of hatred.

That said, I'm pretty sure that Brown would never have gotten a Star Trek ending past John W. Campbell in 1944, even if he had been inclined to write one. Just as Gene L. Coon wouldn't have gotten a genocide (let's call it what it is) ending past Gene Roddenberry in 1967. And indeed, Steve J. Wright points out in his review that the different endings are very representative of the venues where they appeared.

The very different nature of the alien opponent in either version of the story also predicts the respective ending. Brown's Outsiders/Rollers are unknowable, utterly other aliens in the Cthulhu mode. There can be no peace or understanding with them – and to be fair, Carson at least tries – because they are just too different. Between this and the malevolent parasitic earrings of "And the Gods Laughed…" or the microscopic aliens of "The Star Mouse", Fredric Brown certainly created some of the more inventive aliens of the golden age. And because the Outsiders are literally rolling red balls of hatred, who tear lizards apart for fun, few readers complain about the genocide. After all, who worries about the fate of murderous rubber balls?

Gorn, on the other hand, is a far more conventional type of alien, a huge, somewhat goofy looking green lizard. Of course, Reptilian aliens were (and still are) usually evil during the era of the original Star Trek. However, Gorn can also talk and express his grievances ("The Federation built an outpost in our territory. We consider that the precursor for an invasion"), while the Roller remains silent. Nonetheless, audiences would likely have been a lot more resistant to the Gorn being exterminated than to a race of rolling red balls of hatred getting exterminated, if only because Gorn feels more humanoid. And indeed, the fact that Gabriel Lorca has a Gorn skeleton in his ready room/cabinet of horrors is one of the many little hints that Star Trek Discovery drops regarding Lorca's true identity.

Another great cover and another anthology, in which "Arena" was reprinted.

However, the different depictions of the antagonist and the different endings of both versions of "Arena" also show how the depiction of the Other in speculative fiction has evolved in the past seventy-five years. The Outsiders (even the name the humans give them show that they are other) are just an evil to be exterminated. Understanding them, let alone peace with them, is not possible, because they are just too different, too other. And while few aliens of the era – with the possible exception of Cthulhu – were quite as alien or nasty as the Outsiders, genocide as a solution to intergalactic conflicts was depressingly common during the golden age. Fredric Brown isn't even the worst offender, compared e.g. to the genocidal war criminal Richard Seaton from the Skylark novels by E.E. Smith. But while there were sympathetic aliens during the golden age – and bug-eyed monsters were very common on the covers, but rare in the stories themselves – aliens were mainly something to shoot with your ray gun.

These "Shoot all the aliens" stories still exist and there is an audience for them, as the flood of cookie cutter military science fiction novels in the Kindle store proves. However, speculative fiction has gradually moved towards humanising the Other, as the different versions of "Arena" show. The alien antagonist has gone from unknowable, absolutely evil thing to be killed in 1944 to other, but with understandable motives to be spared in 1967. A contemporary version of the story would probably have the antagonists teaming up to outwit those who have pitted them against each other (who are the true evil in this story IMO). Or we would have gotten the story from the POV of the alien antagonist. During the same time period, vampires and werewolves went from soulless undead evil in the 1930s/40s via tortured soul that doesn't want to do bad things, but cannot help it in the 1960s/70s to viable romantic prospect in the 2000s. Robots and artificial intelligences have POVs now. Cthulhu is now a cuddly plush toy and new Lovecraftian writers are telling us that the elder gods are not the greatest evil a protagonist can face.

This is not the Roller, obviously, but Mitkey Mouse from "The Star Mouse"

I've spent a lot of time comparing Brown's "Arena" to the eponymous Star Trek episode and analysing the historical context of both stories. However, one thing I haven't done is discuss whether "Arena" is a good story.

Well, it's certainly a competent story. Brown was a skilled writer and "Arena" is testament to his skill. Both the adrenaline fuelled space battle as well as Carson's ordeal in the blue sand and his anguish at the fate of the entire human race hinging on him are viscerally described. And while there are infodumps – this is a 1940s Astounding story, after al – they are much less intrusive than with many other stories of the period. Bob Carson is a bland protagonist – the only things we learn about him is that he's a scout ship pilot and that he's white – but that's hardly unusual for the period.

Of all the stories I've reviewed for the Retro Reviews project, "Arena" is the story that most matches the stereotype of what Astounding was like during the golden age. The protagonist is a competent white, presumably straight and presumably American man, who uses his brains and technical skills to triumph over the aliens and thus asserts humanity's superiority. And though the sequence of try and fail circles goes on a little too long – "Arena" could easily have been cut down to short story size without losing anything – the story is never boring. The eventual solution is a little contrived – it relies both on telepathic lizards and Carson knocking himself out, after all – but Brown does his best to make it work. I also liked the fact that it's intelligence rather than brute strength that decides the contest, though Carson does eventually bring his brute strength to bear on the Roller, when he stabs it to death with a sharpened rock.

Would "Arena" be as well remembered as it is, if not for the Star Trek episode? I'm not sure. The story has been reprinted several times over the decades, including long before Star Trek was a gleam in Gene Roddenberry's eye. And Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg selected it for their anthology The Great SF Stories Vol. 6 – 1944. Furthermore, Fredric Brown shows up quite frequently on the Retro Hugo ballot, twice this year alone, so he certainly is still popular among the Retro Hugo electorate. Nonetheless, the "Arena" most people know is the Star Trek version and not the original novelette.

"Arena" is a well written science fiction story that is probably the closest thing to a stereotypical Astounding story on the 1945 Retro Hugo ballot. I'm not at all surprised that it was nominated, though given how strong the competition in the novelette category is, I would be very surprised if it were to win.

Retro Review: "Far Centaurus" by A.E. van Vogt

I'm continuing my reviews of the 1945 Retro Hugo finalists with "Far Centaurus", a science fiction short story by A.E. van Vogt that was published in the January 1944 issue of Astounding Science Fiction and is a finalist for the 1945 Retro Hugo Award. The story may be read online here.

Warning: Spoilers beyond this point.

"Far Centaurus" starts with the first person narrator – we later learn that his name is Bill Endicott – awakening from suspended animation. Over the next page or so, we learn that he is a crewmember aboard a sublight spaceship bound for Alpha Centauri and that he has been asleep for fifty-three years, seven months and two days. Our narrator muses that everybody he knew back on Earth, including his old classmates and the girl he kissed at a party just before take-off, are all old or dead now, while he is unchanged due to a handwavium medication called "the Eternity drug".

While Bill eats some soup, we learn that the four crewmembers – all men, of course, and all college friends – are woken up approximately every fifty years for brief periods to look after the ship, before taking another dose of the drug and going back to sleep. Altogether, the trip to Alpha Centauri will take five hundred years.

However, the Eternity drug has a certain failure rate, as our narrator finds out to his shock, when he finds one of his fellow crewmembers – Pelham, inventor of the Eternity drug – dead in his quarters. There is a grisly moment, as Bill tries to prepare Pelham's body for a space burial, only that the body is so badly decayed that pieces keep falling off. Then Bill radios his report to Earth, where it will be received in five months. He also enters Pelham's death as well as a note for the next crewmember to be woken, engineer Jimmy Renfrew, into the ship's log. Then he goes back to sleep, this time for one hundred and fifty years.

There is a jump ahead in time and our narrator Bill wakes up again. This time, two hundred and one years have passed since take-off. Bill immediately heads for the log book to see what his fellow crewmembers have written. Jimmy Renfrew, the next to wake, has only logged instrument and made no personal comments at all. His entry reads like a robot's, Bill muses. Even the death of Pelham, who was a close friend of Renfrew's, doesn't seem to bother him. This worries Bill, because Jimmy Renfrew was always a sensitive soul.

Bill is not the only one worried about Renfrew. For the other crewmember, Ned Blake, has left a letter for Bill in the log book, instructing him to tear out and destroy the sheet when he has read it. In this letter, Blake confesses his worries about Renfrew's mental state. Back on Earth, Renfrew was rich, charming, a brilliant engineer and a ladies man (we learn that he has three ex-wives who are not so ex, at least according to Blake). Both Blake and Bill were already worried about Renfrew's reaction upon awakening from his drug-induced sleep only to realise that everybody he'd ever loved, including the three ex-wives, was dead. They assumed that Pelham would act as psychological support for Renfrew, only that Pelham is dead, too. Blake closes the letter by urging Bill to think what to do about the unstable Renfrew, since they will have to live with him, once the ship reaches Alpha Centauri.

Bill destroys the letter as instructed, does his routine work and checks on Blake and Renfrew who are asleep and still alive. He still has no idea what to do about Renfrew, but there still is time, so our narrator goes to sleep for the third time.

When Bill wakes for the third time, the ship's alarm is ringing. Once he makes it to the cockpit, he sees a great ball of fire on the viewscreen, which set off the proximity alarm. Bill initially thinks that the ball of fire is an unknown star, but he eventually realises that it is a giant spaceship on fire. He assumes that the spaceship hails from Alpha or Proxima Centauri, which must have inhabited planets. Thrilled that they won't be all alone when they reach Alpha Centauri, but that they will encounter an alien civilisation there, Bill goes back to sleep.

The next time Bill wakes up, he is not alone. The ship is about to reach its destination and Ned Blake is already up and walking about with a grim look on his face. He feeds Bill, who's still dizzy from his long sleep, soup and informs him that Renfrew has gone mad and had to be restrained. Bill is shocked, for while Renfrew was prone to depression, he didn't expect that the knowledge that everybody he ever knew and loved was dead would drive him to insanity.

"It isn't only that," Blake says and tells Bill to prepare for the greatest shock he ever had. For when Blake awoke and saw Bill's report about the strange spaceship, he checked if he could receive some radio signals from Alpha Centauri. He found hundreds of radio stations, all broadcasting with perfect clarity. Renfrew couldn't take the news and promptly went mad. Blake also informs Bill that a ship is coming from Alpha Centauri to meet them. Blake still hasn't told Bill what precisely the problem is, but Bill – and at least this reader – can already guess what's up.

Spoiler alert: In the five hundred years it took Bill, Blake and Renfrew to get to Alpha Centauri, humans developed lightspeed and got there before them. The Alpha Centauri system is settled and has been for a long time. Though the Centauri were kind enough to name four planets orbiting Alpha Centauri A and B as well as Proxima Centauri after the four brave explorers who were late to arrive.
Not long after this revelation, Bill and Blake are met by a giant spaceship and instructed to land in its onboard hangar. This ship, they learn, can make the trip from Alpha Centauri to Earth – a trip which took Bill, Blake and Renfrew five hundred years – in three hours.

Aboard this ship they are ushered into a luxurious parlour, where they meet a heavily perfumed man called Casellahat, who informs them that he has studied the language and customs of the mid American period since early childhood solely for the purpose of welcoming the visitors from the past. Because not only has technology advanced in five hundred years, language has changed, too. The visitors from the past are honoured guests on Alpha Centauri and will be given a luxurious penthouse and well as five million credits. However, Casellahat keeps wrinkling his nose and finally tells Blake and Bill that they should not interact with the Centauri population directly, because they stink. Which is really mean. After all, Blake and Bill haven't had a shower in five hundred years, so of course they smell.

The Centauri have been able to restore Renfrew's mind to sanity. Bill and Blake hug him, overjoyed to see their friend finally well again. In fact, Renfrew is well enough to ask Casellahat science questions, which leads to roughly two pages of the technobabble that John W. Campbell so loved and most others skip (Leigh Brackett said so in 1944). There is something about bachelor suns that don't tolerate anything in orbit around them and their tenuous connection to the universe. We also get a crash course in the development of the interstellar drive and the history of the settlement of Alpha Centauri. Oh yes, and the burning spaceship that Bill saw upon his third awakening was a tragic accident, but one that advanced spaceship technology a lot, so they shouldn't feel bad about accidentally having caused the explosion.

Bill and Blake are feeling morose, because they still have a good fifty years or so left to live in a world where other people, including women, find them disgusting and where they cannot even figure out how the simplest machines work. They are torn out of their ruminations by Renfrew who announces that he has purchased a spaceship and that all three of them will go on a trip.

Bill and Blake go along with the plan, but even the wonders of cruising through space cannot shake the melancholy the two of them feel. Only Renfrew is permanently cheerful, but then Renfrew was mentally unstable to begin with.

One day, Renfrew enters Bill's cabin with a gun in his hand. He ties up Bill and Blake, so they won't interfere with his plan. Now Bill – and the reader – finally learns that the Centauri psychologists managed to cure Renfrew by telling him that Bill and Blake had gone insane because of the shock. The sense of responsibility for his friends shocked Renfrew back into sanity and now he has found an ingenious solution to their dilemma. He is going to pilot the spaceship into one of the bachelor suns that Renfrew and Casellahat technobabbled about earlier.

Bill and Blake manage to free themselves and try to stop him – after all, Renfrew is  insane and even if they wasted their lives on a futile dream, they don't want to die just yet. But try as they might, they cannot get the ship into orbit around the bachelor sun, because bachelor suns don't like anything orbiting them. Meanwhile, Renfrew babbles something about how contact with the bachelor and its tenuous hold upon the universe will throw them all back in time by four hundred and ninety years and seven months.

Bill finally realises just what Renfrew is planning. He's taking them all back to their own time, one and a half years after they left. "But what about the ship?" he asks. Wouldn't bringing back a hyper-advanced starship from the future change the course of history?

Renfrew says that won't be a problem, because no one can understand how the future technology works anyway. They'll keep the ship for their own use to jaunt around the universe and otherwise let history take its course.

Bill is still unsure, but Renfrew tells him that the girl he kissed at the good-bye party just before the launch, the girl Bill has been pining for every time he woke up again, that girl will be sitting right next to him, when Bill's first radio message from space finally reaches Earth some fifty years from now.

The story ends with the line, "That's exactly what happened"

Now I have to admit that I'm not a huge A.E. van Vogt fan. I know that he was one of the most popular authors of the golden age, but his stories just don't work for me. And I certainly tried. I tried Slan and The Worlds of Null-A and The Weapon Shop/The Weapon Makers and didn't care for any of them. As a result, my reaction whenever A.E. van Vogt puts in an appearance on the Retro Hugo ballot is, "Oh no, I have to wade through another one of those." I have much the same reaction to C.S. Lewis' appearances on the Retro Hugo ballot, by the way.

Coincidentally, I was stunned that A.E. van Vogt, who would have celebrated his 108^th birthday on April 26, lived until 2000, until the ripe old age of 88. For van Vogt is so associated with the 1940s and 1950s that I assumed he died much earlier. According to ISFDB, his publication frequency drops drastically from the mid 1950s on, but he still published stories and novels well into the 1980s.

There are three A.E. van Vogt works on the 1945 Retro Hugo ballot, one of them co-written with his wife E. Mayne Hull. I decided to start with "Far Centaurus", because it is the shortest. To my surprise, I found that I liked the story. It's probably the best story by van Vogt I have read so far. True, the story does suffer from van Vogt's well-known weaknesses such as inconsistent or rather non-existent plotting and random plot twists every eight hundred words or so. But by some miracle, van Vogt's random plotting technique works this time around and results in a satisfying story.

As Paul Fraser points out in his review, the best part of the story by far is the first half with Bill waking up every couple of decades aboard the starship. Van Vogt's prose tends towards the purple, but he does manage to convey the sheer scale of the journey that our three explorers are undertaking very well. He also manages to convey the sense of loneliness and isolation that Bill feels as he thinks about the people he's known who are now old and later dead and of the girl he kissed the night before and fell in love with. This girl is the only female character in the entire story, by the way, and she never even gets a name.

The clock announcing how much time has passed and Alpha Centauri growing brighter and bigger, as our sun grows dimmer in the viewport are nice touches, as are the notes that Bill and Blake leave for each other. The death of Pelham is a genuine shock and for a moment I assumed we were in for a murder mystery in space a la 2018 Hugo finalist Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty, especially since one of our three explorers is supposedly mentally ill. However, Six Wakes is a story that could only happen after stories about century long space journey at sublight speeds had become an old enough hat that a sublight ship could serve as a backdrop for a completely different story.

However, in 1944 a journey through space lasting five hundred years was still a brand-new idea and must have teased that good old sense of wonder hard. After all, golden age science fiction rarely ventured beyond the boundaries of the solar system. With so much excitement and adventure to be found on Venus, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter and elsewhere, Alpha Centauri is indeed far out. And indeed, several people who first read the story when they were young report how it blew their minds. I imagine it would have blown mine as well, if I had first read it at fifteen.

Talking of which, I was surprised that it was already known in 1944 that Alpha Centauri is a triple star system consisting of Alpha Centauri A and B as well as Proxima Centauri, since I thought this was a later observation. However, it turns out that the binary nature of Alpha Centauri was discovered as early as 1689 by Jean Richaud. Proxima Centauri was discovered in 1915 by Robert T.A. Innes. So that part of the story was based on known science. Even the fact that the triple star system has habitable planets is not that far out, since a potentially habitable exo-planet was discovered in orbit around Proxima Centauri in 2016.

Most authors would probably have ended the story with the revelation that later generations of humans had beaten our three brave explorers to Alpha Centauri and that the system had long since been colonised – a revelation that likely was a lot more shocking in 1944 than today.

A.E. van Vogt, however, just keeps on writing and takes a story into a completely new, if not entirely unexpected direction, as our three explorers finally reach their destination and find that they don't fit into the brave new world of Alpha Centauri at all. Not only does everybody around them think they smell horrible, they also cannot understand the local language, let alone the most basic principles of science. Of course, you cannot blame them for the latter, since the science of bachelor stars and adeledicnander stardrives is complete and utter gobbledegook.

Once the three got on the starship towards the end, I expected the story to go for a downer ending with a triple suicide in the flaming heart of the bachelor star. But maybe I shouldn't have skimmed over the page of technobabble earlier in the story, because that's not what happens at all. Instead, Jimmy Renfrew – who clearly is the most brilliant of the three explorers and probably never was mentally ill at all – has found a way to take them all back to a time they understand.

And so the story comes to a neat and surprisingly satisfying ending. Steve J. Wright points out in his review that given van Vogt's plotting or lack thereof, the fact that the story comes to a satisfying ending is most likely an accident. Nonetheless, it works.

Everybody gets home, Casellahat is probably very relieved to be rid of those smelly ancient humans and Bill gets the girl he's been pining after for five hundred years. Of course, it's amazing that the girl waited for him for one and a half years, especially since she thought that Bill was gone forever on a five hundred year trip to Alpha Centauri. Not to mention that she said, "A kiss for the ugly one, too" just before she kissed Bill, which doesn't exactly sound like the prelude to a great, time- and space-spanning romance. On the other hand, Bill did pine for her for five hundred years and flew straight into a star to get back to her, which should soften even the hardest of hearts. And indeed, Adventures Fantastic notes in his review that the last two paragraphs stuck with him for a long time.

As so often with science fiction stories of the golden age, particularly those published in Astounding, the characters are largely cyphers. We learn next to nothing about our narrator Bill except that he ended up on the expedition team, because he was friends with the other three explorers in college, and that he pines after a girl he kissed at a party the night before take-off. We don't even know what he looks like, except that he's apparently less attractive than his friends. Ned Blake is even more thinly sketched and basically serves only as a sounding board for Bill. Jimmy Renfrew gets a bit more characterisation and we even learn what he looks like. However, we only ever see Jimmy through the eyes of Bill and Ned Blake who to equal parts admire Jimmy and are jealous of him, because he is rich, brilliant, handsome and gets all the girls. It's not even clear if Jimmy Renfrew truly was mentally ill or whether Bill and Blake just think that he is.

In many ways, the idea of four friends, two of whom just happen to be brilliant scientists, building a spaceship together to explore the cosmos (like you do) is a throwback to the very early days of science fiction, when scientists/explorers like Richard Seaton or Hans Zarkov built spaceships in their backyard to explore the universe. By 1944, it would have been obvious that space travel would not be achieved by enthusiasts tinkering in their garages. Though the trope of brilliant scientists building spaceships and taking their friends for a ride into space without waiting for official authorisation did last well into the era of actual space exploration. After all, this is the origin story of the Fantastic Four in 1960 (and we know that Stan Lee and Jack Kirby were heavily drawing on pulp science fiction). In fact, I now imagine Bill looking like Ben Grimm pre-transformation. After all, he is "the ugly one".

This is probably the most stereotypically Campbellian story on the 1945 Retro Hugo ballot. We have a trio of competent men, even if one them may be mentally ill (and let's not forget that Campbell was very interested in psychology and hoped to turn it into a more exact science, so the cure narrative would have appealed to him). We have humans triumphing over adversity as well as a positive view of human progress – after all, what our explorers find on Far Centaurus are not aliens, but advanced humans. We have neat central idea, which is grounded in the actual science of the day, and a lot of technobabble, which is not connected to any actual science at all.

On the other hand, the prevailing mood of the story is not one of boundless optimism and marvel at human ingenuity – no, it's melancholy. Melancholy at having left everybody and everything they knew behind, melancholy at no longer fitting into the world of the far future (compare this e.g. to Buck Rogers who becomes a hero within days of waking up in the future). Come to think of it, melancholy was the prevailing mood in several of the stories from Astounding that I read for the Retro Reviews project ("No Woman Born", "The Children's Hour", "Desertion", "The Huddling Place", even the Galactic Empire section of "The Big and the Little"), which is certainly interesting. Finally, the story ends not in the far future on Alpha Centauri, but in the much nearer future with an elderly couple looking up at the stars.

In fact, I have come to suspect by now that our idea of what Campbellian science fiction was like is very much a myth. Because so far, pretty much every story that was published in Astounding Science Fiction that I read for the Retro Reviews project was atypical in some way.

"Far Centaurus" is a surprisingly good story from an author whose work I normally don't much care for. It has been reprinted several times over the years and Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg also selected it for the 1944 volume of their Great Science Fiction Stories anthology series. "Far Centaurus" certainly a worthy Retro Hugo finalist. Let's hope that the other two van Vogt stories on the ballot are as good as this one.

Retro Review: "Desertion" by Clifford D. Simak

"Desertion" is a hard science fiction short story by Clifford D. Simak, which was first published in the November 1944 issue of Astounding Science Fiction and is therefore eligible for the 1945 Retro Hugos. The magazine version may be found online here. "Desertion" is part of Simak's City cycle and has been widely reprinted.

Warning: Spoilers beyond this point!

"Desertion" is something of the odd one out in the City cycle, because unlike the other City stories, "Desertion" doesn't take place on Earth, but on a human research station on Jupiter. Kent Fowler is head of the Dome No. 3 Jovian Survey Project and has a problem. For none of the four intrepid explorers that he sent out into the wilds of Jupiter, their bodies altered to suit the atmospheric conditions, have ever returned. And now Fowler is about to send out the fifth explorer, one Harold Allen, who most likely won't come back either.

Fowler is not happy about this, but he feels that he has no choice but to send people out into the deadly Jovian atmosphere, because otherwise the human colonists on Jupiter will be stuck in enclosed domes that are almost impossible to maintain considered the atmospheric conditions as well as the high pressure and gravity of Jupiter. This being a hard science fiction story published in Astounding, we get a detailed description of the conditions on Jupiter with its high pressure and gravity and its corrosive ammonia rains. This being a Clifford D. Simak story, these descriptions are much better written than usual.

Miss Stanley, who is in charge of converting the explorers into their Jupiter-adapted form, is even less happy about the whole mission than Fowler and flat out accuses Fowler of sending young men to their death, while he himself sits safe in his office inside the dome, all so Fowler can become a great man, the one who opened Jupiter to human colonisation.

Miss Stanley is the rare example of an older woman character in a golden age science fiction story who is not someone's mother, aunt or grandmother, but a highly skilled specialist (the best conversion operator in the solar system) in her own right. Miss Stanley also takes absolutely no shit from anybody, least of all Fowler. She knows a man who's chasing glory and doesn't care whom he sacrifices along the way when she sees one. And yes, I'm certain that it is total coincidence that the argument between Fowler and Miss Stanley about the ethics of sacrificing young men for some nebulous greater good was written towards the end of WWII, when the Fowlers of our world were sending young soldiers out to die by the thousands.

To no one's surprise, Harold Allen does not come back, but vanishes without a trace. Fowler tries to deflect the blame onto the conversion machine and the biologists who programmed it, based on a Jovian lifeform the humans call "Loper". But Miss Stanley declares that nothing is wrong with her machine and the biologists offer an undoubtedly lengthy explanation why their data is correct that Simak thankfully spares us.

Unlike some of the more bloodthirsty and ruthless WWII generals of the era, Fowler does have a conscience. As a result, Miss Stanley's accusation that he is sitting there high and dry, while he is sending young men to their deaths has clearly gotten to him. Therefore, Fowler decides that the next person to go out into the Jovian atmosphere will be Fowler himself. Though he won't be going alone. Instead, he'll take his faithful dog Towser with him, because Fowler would feel bad about leaving him behind.

And so Fowler and Towser step onto the Jovian surface in their new bodies. Fowler realises that unlike the hell world his human mind had envisioned, Jupiter is a pleasant and beautiful place, when experienced in the body of a Loper. The massive gales are a light breeze, the corrosive ammonia downpour is a light and gentle rain, the toxic atmosphere smells of lavender.

When Fowler tries to call for Towser, he realises that he's telepathic and that he can talk to Towser now. And Towser, who's very happy with his new body, because it is so much better than his aging dog body, can answer him.

"You're… talking to me", a stunned Fowler exclaims, whereupon Towser replies that he always talked to Fowler, only that Fowler could never understand him.

Fowler and Towser engage in a friendly race to an ammonia waterfall that crashes over a cliff of frozen oxygen and realise that their minds are changing as well and that they know things they never knew before about Jovian colours and how to make metal withstand the Jovian atmosphere better. "Maybe…" Fowler muses, "…humans are the morons of the universe, naturally slow and foggy."

Fowler also realises why none of the people he sent out ever came back. Because life is simply so much better as a Loper, the surface of Jupiter is beautiful and there are so many mysteries to explore.

Towser declares that he won't go back, because they would only turn him into a dog again. Fowler pities the people in the dome who have no idea how wonderful life as a Loper really is. But he also realises that he couldn't live in his old human body anymore, not even for a short while, because its limitations would simply be too much to bear, now he knows how much better life can be.

And so Fowler and Towser head off into the sunset (or the Jovian equivalent thereof) to have amazing adventures on Jupiter, while back at the dome, Miss Stanley and the others wonder what happened to them.

For some reason, I haven't read much of Clifford D. Simak. At least based on "Desertion", I should probably remedy that, because "Desertion" is a wonderful story. It's also that rare beast, a hard science fiction story published in Astounding that manages not to be clunky and filled with infodumps and exposition, but beautifully written. And "Desertion" absolutely is hard science fiction based on what was known about Jupiter at the time, even if the conversion machine is very much handwavium.

In fact, I was stunned that "Desertion" (and the other City stories, for that matter) was published in Astounding, because even though it is hard science fiction, "Desertion" is not at all what you'd expect to find in Astounding and not just because it is better written than approximately ninety percent of the other stories in the magazine. No, "Desertion" also violates John W. Campbell's famous dictum that humans must always triumph. Because the humans in "Desertion" are not superior at all. Instead, they are small-minded, blinkered and – to quote Fowler – "the morons of the solar system". Even a random Jovian critter the Earth scientists are not even sure is intelligent is superior to humans.

Add to that Miss Stanley (who's awesome, by the way, and who I hope gets a Loper body and great and glorious adventures of her own) blatantly criticising men (and they almost always are men) sending out others to die, just so they can make their mark in the world, and I honestly wonder how on Earth this story came to be published by John W. Campbell in Astounding? Was Campbell too busy writing manuals for sonar systems or annoying the FBI that month, so that his assistant Kay Tarrant (who according to contemporary accounts had more than a little of Miss Stanley in her) took over and picked this one out of the slush pile? On the other hand, as I've noted before, John W. Campbell published quite a lot of stories that were a far cry from what we now consider Campbellian science fiction.

Stylistically, Simak is much closer to Ray Bradbury as well as Leigh Brackett and C.L. Moore's solo works than to Isaac Asimov, George O. Smith, A.E. van Vogt and the other mainstays in Campbell's stable during the war years. And like the Bradbury stories I have reviewed for the Retro Reviews project, "Desertion" feels very timeless and with a few tweaks wouldn't seem out of place in a contemporary issue of Lightspeed, Clarkesworld or Tor.com. But unlike the various Bradbury stories, "Desertion" is hard science fiction, which usually dates much worse than softer science fiction or outright fantasy.

A beautiful story about friendship, dogs and what it feels like to be alive. Highly recommended.

Retro Review: "Catch That Rabbit" by Isaac Asimov

"Catch That Rabbit" is a short story by Isaac Asimov, which was first published in the February 1944 issue of Astounding Science Fiction and is therefore eligible for the 1945 Retro Hugos. The magazine version may be found online here. "Catch That Rabbit" has also been widely reprinted in I, Robot, The Complete Robot and other Asimov robot collections.

Warning: Spoilers beyond this point!

"Catch That Rabbit" is one of five stories Asimov wrote about Mike Donovan and Gregory Powell, a pair of troubleshooters in the employ of United States Robots and Mechanical Men Inc. "Catch That Rabbit" is also the last of the Powell and Donovan stories except for "First Law", a 1956 "tale told in a bar" story that Asimov himself has called a spoof and the 1945 short story "Escape", wherein Powell and Donovan work with and are upstaged by Dr. Susan Calvin.

In "Catch That Rabbit", Powell and Donovan are tasked with field-testing DV-5, a robot of US Robots' brand-new line of mining robots. What makes DV-5 – or "Dave", as Powell and Donovan call him – special is that he controls six smaller robots via his positronic field. What's a positronic field? Don't ask, cause Powell and Donovan have no idea and neither does Asimov. However, the smaller robots are not independent, instead Powell and Donovan liken them to the fingers of a human body.

Dave passed all factory tests with flying colours. But when he is deployed on an asteroid for field tests, along with Gregory Powell and a grumbling Mike Donovan, Dave and his "fingers" sometimes fail to mine any ore at all. Worse, Dave can't or won't explain what the problem is. Instead, he claims he can't remember what happened.

In my review of "The Big and the Little", I said that many of Asimov's early stories – both robot and Foundation stories – are structured like mysteries. But instead of figuring out whodunnit, the investigators are tasked with figuring out why a robot malfunctioned. "Catch That Rabbit" is an excellent example, because it is essentially a science fiction mystery with Powell and Donovan trying to figure out what the blazes is wrong with Dave.

Gradually, the clues pile up. For starters, Dave only malfunctions, when neither Powell nor Donovan are around. This, of course, makes it difficult to figure out what is wrong. Tests reveal no problem with Dave's positronic brain. Questioning Dave doesn't help either, because Dave claims amnesia, though Donovan at least is sceptical about the veracity of his claims. But then, Donovan is given to panic and wild speculations, whereas Powell is much more practical.

Gregory Powell comes up with the idea to install a kind of viewscreen, called "visiplate" in the story, so they can remotely watch what Dave and his subordinates are doing. And so one day while they are bickering (and Powell and Donovan bicker a lot), they spot Dave making his subordinates march up and down the mine tunnels in a military formation. Donovan worries that this might be a prelude to the robot revolution, but Powell assures him that this is impossible and uses the opportunity to remind Donovan and the reader of the Three Laws of Robotics.

When our dynamic duo heads out to the mining site, the robots promptly return to normal, once they detect the presence of Powell and Donovan. Worse, Dave once more claims to have no idea what happened. Since the robots only malfunction when no humans are present, Powell suspects that the reason for the problems may lie in Dave's personal initiative circuit. Dave's decision making facilities are overloaded, because there are no humans supervisors around to defer to.

Powell and Donovan finally decide to interview one of Dave's subsidiaries. Unlike Dave, the subsidiary remembers what happened and reports that during difficult or potentially dangerous situations, he would receive an order from Dave, which would be immediately superceded by another, nonsensical order. However, the subsidiary has no idea what the original order was.

So our dynamic duo decides to figure out which specific order causes Dave to malfunction. There is only one problem. They cannot observe Dave and his subsidiaries directly, because Dave only malfunctions when there are no humans around. And because Dave communicates with his subsidiaries via a positronic field, they cannot intercept his orders either. Therefore, Powell and Donovan agree to take turns watching Dave and his subsidiaries via the visiplate.

For the next eight days, Powell and Donovan keep the robots under continuous supervision. But while there are malfunctions, neither of them can tell what causes them. For the image on the visiplate is too small and too blurry to make out clearly what Dave and his subsidiaries are doing. Our dynamic duo needs to take a closer look at the robots, preferably at the exact moment a malfunction occurs. Luckily, Donovan has a plan for causing Dave to malfunction deliberately.

For by now Donovan has figured out what at least this reader had already figured out a few pages ago, namely that Dave only malfunctions in particularly difficult or potentially dangerous situations such as when the robots are laying explosives or there is a cave-in. Donovan now suggests deliberately provoking a dangerous situation and causing Dave to malfunction.

So our dynamic duo put on their spacesuits and head out into the mine to cause a small cave-in. However, they miscalculate and manage bring down the roof upon themselves rather than upon an empty section of mine tunnel. Now Powell and Donovan are trapped, their oxygen is limited and the only help – Dave and his subsidiaries – have malfunctioned once again and are performing a bizarre ballet in the mine. If you're thinking at this point that Powell and Donovan are idiots, you're not alone.

Donovan points out that if they can get close enough to Dave that he detects them, the robot will function normally again and can dig them out. And luckily, Dave and his chorus line of subsidiaries move right into the direction of our dynamic duo, only to turn around right before they get close enough to detect the two men. Donovan hollers to attract Dave's attention, only to be reminded by Powell that he's wearing a spacesuit and they're on an airless asteroid, so how the hell should Dave hear him? Okay, so Mike Donovan really is an idiot.

However, Gregory Powell has an idea that might just save them. He draws his blaster, aims through a convenient hole in the rubble and shoots one of Dave's subsidiaries. And guess what? Dave immediately snaps back to normal and proceeds to rescue the dynamic duo.

Donovan begs his partner to explain what just happened and Powell – being a protagonist in a hard science fiction story published in Astounding – is of course only too willing to oblige. After all, they already knew that the problem lies with Dave's personal initiative circuit and that the malfunctions only occurs in difficult or dangerous situation, which require Dave to use a lot of personal initiative. Powell now deduced that Dave's decision making facilities were overloaded with controlling six subsidiaries. He could manage the six subsidiaries in ordinary situations, when some of them were engaged in routine tasks which require little to no supervision. But in emergencies, when Dave must make decisions for and give orders to all six subsidiaries, he freezes up and malfunctions. Powell shooting one of the subsidiaries lightened the decision load on Dave and turned him back to normal.

"But why…" Donovan wants to know, "…did Dave make his subsidiaries perform those marches and dances?" "Well, that's obvious", Powell replies. After all, the subsidiaries are Dave's fingers and when unsure what to do, Dave simply twiddled his fingers.

As a solution to a science fiction mystery, Powell's explanation is weak. Of course, it makes sense that Dave's malfunctions are caused by the cognitive demands of controlling his subsidiaries and in fact, I suspected that the subsidiaries were the cause of the malfunctions long before Powell and Donovan did. But how could Powell possibly know that the correct number of subsidiaries was five rather than three or four (beyond the fact that human hands usually have five fingers)? And how will US Robots – whose motto is "No employee makes the same mistake twice – he's [Asimov's pronoun choice, not mine] fired the first time" – react to react to Powell shooting what is presumably a very expensive prototype robot? Especially since keeping one subsidiary behind at the base and checking if the malfunctions still occur would have been a much more cost effective and less risky way to test the hypothesis. Okay, so getting trapped by the cave-in forced Powell's hand, but the only reason Powell and Donovan got trapped by the cave-in in the first place is because they're idiots. So is this the true reason why appearances of Powell and Donovan became scarce after this story? Because US Robots and Mechanical Men Inc. finally fired those two idiots?

Isaac Asimov would eventually go on to become a fine mystery author and he was clearly already interested in the mystery form at this early point in his career. But – as I also pointed out in my review of "The Big and the Little" – he wasn't yet very good at writing mysteries. Unlike in "The Big and the Little", Asimov does at least give the reader all the information they need to solve the mystery and indeed, I solved it before Powell and Donovan did. Even the groanworthy "finger" pun at the end was set up from the beginning, as the subsidiary robots are referred to as "fingers" throughout the story. Indeed, the main problem with "Catch That Rabbit" is not that the clues are set up badly, but that the investigators are too stupid to interpret those clues.

As a teenager, I read my way through pretty much Asimov's entire science fiction oeuvre. The stories and novels impressed me deeply and I find that I often have pretty clear memories of these stories even thirty years later. However, when rereading Asimov's stories for the Retro Hugos and for Retro Reviews, I find that I have comparatively few memories of the Powell and Donovan stories. Maybe that's because Powell and Donovan simply aren't very memorable compared to Susan Calvin or Elijah Baley and R. Daneel Olivaw.

That said, the two troubleshooters do have distinct personalities. Mike Donovan complains a lot, is given to outbursts of temper (at one point, he even smashes the visiplate) and blind panic. Gregory Powell is calmer and the more rational of the two. As always with Isaac Asimov, we are only given very sparse descriptions of our two protagonists, though Donovan is repeatedly described as red-haired. Red hair and a volatile temper are of course common stereotypes about the Irish, something which went completely over my head, when I first read this story as a teen.

As for Gregory Powell, the only physical descriptions we ever get of him is that he is older than Donovan and has a moustache which he fingers a lot (and one point tries to finger, only to realise that he is wearing a spacesuit). However, my teen self was absolutely convinced that Gregory Powell was a black man. Even now, when rereading the story, I still picture Powell as black, though his skin colour is not mentioned either in this nor in any other story featuring Powell and Donovan and the interior artist portrays both men as white (but then pulp artists routinely portrayed even unambiguous characters of colour like Eric John Stark as white). I have no idea why I imagined Powell as black, though I suspect that when I first read the stories, I mainly associated the name Gregory with actor and singer Gregory Hines, who was indeed black and had a moustache. So sorry, no diversity points for Asimov, because Gregory Powell is only black in my mind, not on the page.

While on the subject of diversity, once again there are no female characters in this story at all. Even the robot is referred to by a male name and masculine pronouns. And indeed, in the three science fiction stories Asimov published in 1944, there are only two female characters, one of which has neither a name nor any lines, while the other is a strictly secondary character. The stereotype that golden age stories are all about white male characters doing heroic things in space is not necessarily true, not even if you look only at Asimov's oeuvre – after all, Asimov also created Susan Calvin, Bayta and Arkady Darell, Jessie Baley and Gladia Delmarre during this period. But it is absolutely true for his 1944 output. Though the lack of female characters in "Catch That Rabbit" grates less than in "The Wedge" or "The Big and the Little", because "Catch That Rabbit" only has two human characters.

In my review of "The Big and the Little", I noted that the story contained some homoerotic vibes that went completely over my head, when I first read it as a teenager. Considering that the protagonists of "Catch That Rabbit" are a two-man team of troubleshooters, are there similar vibes between Powell and Donovan? Well, I didn't notice any, but then Powell and Donovan are way too busy to take turns watching Dave to get down to more interesting business such as nude sunbathing and cigar smoking. However, when I checked out the other Powell and Donovan stories, I didn't notice any overt homoerotic vibes there either. The closest any of the stories comes is when Powell suggests to Donovan that they go to bed – no mention of how many beds there are. However, I'm pretty sure that if you want to read about Powell and Donovan doing more exciting things than spouting technobabble, AO3 has you covered.

Considering that "Catch That Rabbit" is comparatively long – I suspect it lies at the upper edge of the short story range – there isn't a whole lot of plot. Nor is there a whole lot of action. Clues are doled out, there are two interviews – one with Dave and one with one of his subsidiaries – and there is the climactic cave-in. But most of the story's nineteen pages (in the magazine version) are taken up by Powell and Donovan talking and bickering. Now Asimov was never much of a stylist and the dialogue he gives his two protagonists sounds like nothing anybody ever said either in 1944 nor in the future where the story is set (which should be around 2020, come to think of it). But even though the dialogue in "Catch That Rabbit" feels about as natural as the dialogue in a Silver Age Marvel comic, i.e. not very, it is nonetheless snappy and zips along. I had fun reading this story, even if not much actually happens and the protagonists are idiots besides.

Isaac Asimov is not normally a writer associated with humorous science fiction. Nonetheless, at least at this early point in his career, Asimov did write funny stories. And while "Catch That Rabbit" is not nearly as funny as "Victory Unintentional" and "Robot AL-76 Goes Astray" – both of which sadly failed to make the 1943 Retro Hugo ballot, even though they were better than the Asimov story which did make the ballot – it is nevertheless an example of the lighter side of Asimov's work. Even the title – a reference to the saying "If you want to make rabbit stew, you must first catch a rabbit" – would have brought Bugs Bunny to mind more than anything else in 1944, for Bugs thwarted four would-be makers of rabbit stew that year alone.

Most of the humour comes from our heroes bickering, though we also get moments such as Donovan enjoying "a non-too-nutritious diet of fingernail" or an anecdote about Powell jumping out of the window of a burning house with nothing but a pair of shorts and the Handbook of Robotics – and if necessary, he would have foregone the shorts (sadly, Asimov never wrote that particular story). And yes, Powell is certainly aware that Donovan is an idiot and I'm pretty sure that Asimov is aware that both his protagonists are idiots.

Asimov is also poking fun at the conventions of what passed for hard science fiction in the 1940s in general and at the sort of stories published by John W. Campbell in Astounding Science Fiction with their endless infodumps (see Steve J. Wright's review of Cleve Cartmill's "Deadline" for a prime example) and "As you know, Bob…" dialogue in particular. For example, Asimov unmasks the "positronic field" via which Dave controls his subsidiaries as the technobabble it is by having Powell state that there isn't a roboticist at US Robots who knows what a positronic field is or how it works and neither do Powel and Donovan. All that matters is that it does work. As for the competent men that Campbell wanted as protagonists for the stories he published, Gregory Powell and Mike Donovan are many things, but competent is not one of them.

At this early point in his career, Asimov wasn't yet skilled enough to avoid "As You Know, Bob…" dialogue altogether, but he at least tried to use it in interesting ways. And so a painfully clumsy "As you know, Bob – pardon, Jain…" conversation on Seldon crises in "The Big and the Little" actually turns out to be an important clue to the central mystery, because it reveals that a character is not who he claims to be or he wouldn't have needed a primer on what a Seldon crisis is. And in "Catch That Rabbit", Asimov points out how ridiculous characters telling each other things they should both already know really is by having Donovan interrupt Powell's "As you know, Mike…" monologue with "I know that", whereupon Powell shushes him with, "Shut up! I know that you know that, but I'm just describing the hell of it".

I will always have a soft spot for Isaac Asimov, because his work was pretty much the first serious adult science fiction I discovered – all earlier science fiction reads were YA, Star Wars novelisations and some Anne McCaffrey. However, rereading some of those old Asimov stories for the Retro Hugos, I also realise that they hold up better for me than many other books I read around the same time.

"Catch That Rabbit" is not a particularly good story. It's not even the best Asimov story of 1944, for "The Wedge" is better. However, "Catch That Rabbit" is the story I enjoyed reading the most and the one that has suffered the least from a visit by the suck fairy, maybe because even my teenaged self realised that Powell and Donovan were bumblers and idiots and pretty much the science fiction equivalent of Laurel and Hardy.

Retro Review: "The Big and the Little" a.k.a. "The Merchant Princes" by Isaac Asimov

"The Big and the Little" is a novelette by Isaac Asimov, which was first published in the August 1944 issue of Astounding Science Fiction and is therefore eligible for the 1945 Retro Hugos. The magazine version may be found online here. Most readers will probably know the story under its alternate title "The Merchant Princes", which is how it appeared in Foundation, the first book of the eponymous trilogy.

Warning: There will be spoilers in the following.

I already recapitulated the Foundation series so far in my review of "The Wedge", the story which directly precedes this one. So rather than repeat everything again, I'll just direct you over there.

"The Big and the Little" takes place approximately thirty years after the events in "The Wedge" and also focusses on the traders, who peddle the Foundation's atomic powered gadgets and spread its influence along the galactic periphery. One of those traders is Hober Mallow, the protagonist of "The Big and the Little".

Like Limmar Ponyets from "The Wedge", Hober Mallow is also something of an outsider on the margins of Foundation society. Like Ponyets, he was born in one of the four kingdoms the Foundation controls via its fake religion and was later given a lay education. But even though Mallow has enjoyed the benefits of a Foundation education, he is still not considered a true Foundation citizen, because he was not born on Terminus. Asimov rarely bothers to give us physical descriptions of his characters, but what little he tells us about Mallow's appearance suggests that he also looks different than other Foundation citizens. For starters, he still dresses in the style of his homeworld Smyrno. And in one scene, while Mallow is hanging out naked (!) with a male friend in his private sun room in what is surely just a harmless discussion about politics, his skin is described as brown. So it's at least possible that Hober Mallow is a man of colour. It is also possible that he is not straight, because the homoerotic vibes in that sun room scene are very strong (at one point, Mallow's friend places a phallic object – a cigar – in Mallow's mouth), even though this went completely over my head when I first read the story as a teen.

At the beginning of the story, Mallow is approached by Foundation politician Jorane Sutt, who worries that a Seldon crisis – one of the flashpoints in Foundation history where Hari Seldon's hologram shows up to prove the protagonist right – is approaching. Now Sutt wants Mallow to head to the Korellian Republic – the Star Wars associations of the name were not lost on my teen self – to investigate the disappearance of three Foundation trading ships in Korellian space. Because the Foundation are the only ones who are supposed to have atomic power on the galactic periphery, attacking and destroying Foundation ships should be impossible. Unless the Korellian Republic also has atomic power, that is. And if the Korellian Republic really has atomic power, the question is how they got it. Sutt fears that there may be a traitor in the ranks of the Foundation, maybe one of the traders who aren't "real citizens" anyway. Maybe even Mallow himself.

So Mallow sets out for the Korellian Republic with his ship, the Far Star, a politically ambitious trader named Jaim Twer in tow. Mallow rightly suspects that Twer may be a spy for Sutt, but takes him along anyway. The Korellian Republic is a republic in name only, but has been ruled by members of the same family for generations now. The latest leader, Commdor Asper Argo calls himself "the well-beloved", but resides in a fortress-like estate and surrounds himself with bodyguards.

Even though Mallow is an official envoy of the Foundation, the well-beloved Asper Argo keeps him waiting. One day, a man claiming to be a Foundation priest shows up on the landing field, begging for help. For while the Korellian Republic tolerates Foundation traders, they forbid Foundation missionaries from entering their territory on the penalty of death, since the fate of the four kingdoms and Askone, the world from "The Wedge", has made all other polities on the galactic periphery wary of the Foundation's fake religion. Mallow's crew lets the wounded priest aboard – against Mallow's explicit orders. Mallow now finds himself in a similar situation to Limmar Ponyets from "The Wedge" – he has to deal with a Foundation citizen who wilfully flaunts the laws of other worlds. Unlike Ponyets, however, Mallow makes no attempt to save the priest. Instead, he delivers him to the mob baying for his blood outside the ship, to the horror of both Jaim Twer and his crew.

I had completely forgotten the episode with the priest. Upon rereading the story, I was stunned by Mallow casually abandoning the man to certain death. Of course, the priests of the Foundation's sham religion are not particularly likeable, but that doesn't mean that you want to see one of them get lynched. Mallow justifies his actions by telling Twer that he believes that the episode with the priest was a deliberate trap. After all, the Far Star has landed in a largely deserted area. So where did the priest and the mob pursuing him suddenly come from? All these are good questions, if there had been any hint regarding these facts, before Mallow brings them up. In the end, Mallow is proven right, too. But even though the plot is rigged in Mallow's favour, the casual cruelty with which he throws the priest to mob still left a bad taste in my mouth. Not to mention that Mallow seem to believe in the "rum, sodomy and the lash" school of captaincy, pulls a blaster on his own crew and even remarks at one point that while he may be a democrat at home, aboard the Far Star he is a dictator. All of the protagonists of the early Foundation stories are jerks, but Hober Mallow is more open about it than either Salvor Hardin or Limmar Ponyets.

Soon after the episode with the priest, Mallow is suddenly given an audience with the Commdor, which he takes as further proof that his instincts were correct. During that meeting, Mallow assures the well-beloved Asper Argo that he has zero interest in spreading the Foundation's religion, all he wants is to sell his wares for mutual benefit. Mallow's dislike for the Foundation's fake religion seems genuine, most likely because as someone born in the four kingdoms he was once on the receiving end of that religion.

The one scene in the story that I clearly remember some thirty years after I first read it also occurs during this meeting, when Mallow demonstrates one of his products, a necklace and belt combination that glows thanks to the miracles of atomic power, on an unnamed female servant in the Commdor's household. This female servant is one of only two female characters in this story (and the entire first Foundation book, for that matter), the other being the Commdor's wife, who is married to him in a political union. The Commdor's wife even gets a few lines – mostly nagging her admittedly awful husband – while the female servant only gets to model pretty glowing jewellery. I remember this scene so clearly thirty years on, because a) this set of glowing jewellery sounded awesome and I would have loved to have one, and b) wearing a belt with a miniature nuclear reactor in the buckle also sounded incredibly dangerous and like a recipe for cancer. However, if someone had managed to make the glowing jewellery without the nuclear reactor, I would have been so there. I clearly wasn't the only person who was fascinated by that scene, because William Timmins' cover illustration shows a hand, presumably Mallow's, holding the glowing necklace aloft.

But Mallow doesn't only have nuclear powered trinkets for sale, he also has more practical wares, which he'd be only too happy to demonstrate to the Commdor, provided he could be given access to a steelwork. The idea behind this is that if the Korellians have atomic power, an industrial facility like a steelwork would be the place to find it, though don't ask me why Mallow expects to find evidence of nuclear power at a steelwork. The Commdor agrees quickly, too quickly, and so Mallow gives his demonstration. He also finds evidence of atomic power, though not in the way he had expected. For the Commdor's bodyguards are armed with atomic blasters bearing the crest of the Galactic Empire.

Once Mallow knows where the Korellians got atomic weapons from, he sets out to investigate further, heading for a world called Siwenna that was once the capital of an Imperial province. But all he finds is an impoverished world under the thumb of a cruel Imperial viceroy who has ambitions to become Emperor himself. Failing that, the viceroy is planning to build up an empire of his own on the periphery and has already married off his daughter to Commdor Asper Argo of the Korellian Republic.

Mallow learns all that from an impoverished and disgraced Imperial patrician who just happens to be the first person he encounters on Siwenna. But contrived as this encounter seems, the story the old man tells about a succession of increasingly weak emperors and ambitious viceroys, about rebellions, counter-rebellions, massacres and genocide is powerful, even if all the action once more happens off stage, as is common with Asimov's work.

But Mallow not only learns that the Galactic Empire, while still existing, is in dire straits, he also learns that the Foundation's technology is more advanced than the Empire's, that most of the Empire's technology are legacy systems which the maintenance techs can't even repair, should they break down, and that the Foundation are believed to be a semi-mythical group of space magicians this far from their sphere of influence. Viewed from the POV of our current information society, where every bit of news travels around the world in seconds and it is possible to have a conversation on Twitter with participants on four different continents, the complete breakdown of communication between the remnants of the Empire and the Foundation as well as the mutual ignorance of each other (Mallow is surprised that the Empire still exists) seems unlikely. I suspect it would have seemed unlikely even in 1944, where Asimov himself had a map in his office at the Navy Yard marking frontlines and troop movements on the other side of the world. If anything, the mutual ignorance of the Empire and the Foundation of each other reminded me of the tendency in the Star Wars universe to treat events that occurred only a few decades ago as ancient and quasi-mythical history.

Armed with this knowledge, Mallow returns to Terminus to build factories to fulfil the lucrative trade contracts he brought back from his trip to the Korellian Republic, accumulate wealth and run for office. But Mallow's political ambitions anger Jorane Sutt, who then brings up the death of the priest in the Korellian Republic to have Mallow arrested and tried for murder.

Now the story takes a sharp turn into courtroom drama territory with the murder trial of Hober Mallow. Mallow takes the stand and proceeds to tear the case apart. First, he presents a hitherto unknown recording of the incident with the priest, which conveniently reveals that the supposed priest has a black light tattoo (something I for one did not know already was a thing in 1944) marking him as an agent of the Korellian secret police. Mallow further reveals that Jorane Sutt was trying to set him up and is planning to use the Foundation's fake religion and the associated church to topple the secular government. Finally, Mallow reveals that his travelling companion Jaim Twer was a spy for Sutt all along and is not a trader, but a Foundation priest. As for how Mallow knew that Twer had to be a priest, in a conversation early in the story, Twer did not know what a Seldon crisis was and Mallow had to explain it to him, even though anybody who'd enjoyed a Foundation lay education would have known about Seldon crisises.

Like many golden age authors, Isaac Asimov wrote in more than one genre and was also a mystery writer. Now Asimov would not start writing straight mysteries until the 1970s and his 1953 science fiction crime novel The Caves of Steel is generally considered his first foray into the mystery genre. Nonetheless, many of Asimov's early science fiction stories are structured like mysteries, even if the puzzle to be solved is "Why does this robot misbehave?" rather than a classic whodunnit. "The Big and the Little" is a good example, especially since there actually is a crime to be solved here.

But even if "The Big and the Little" is a science fiction mystery, it's not a very good one. For even though Mallow's deductions are all logical and make sense, the reader is not given the chance to make the same deductions, because they are not given the same information. Mallow might wonder how an escaped priest and an enraged mob come to show up at the largely deserted landing place of the Far Star, but the reader never learns that the area is deserted until Mallow tells us. Nor does Asimov ever mention that the fake priest's robes are uncommonly new and clean, until Mallow decides to let us know. The incriminating tattoo comes completely out of nowhere as well. And the initial mystery of the vanished trader ships is resolved almost as an afterthought with a single line: "It was the Korellians using Imperial technology. Who else could it have been?" However, I do have to applaud Asimov for turning the incredibly awkward "As you know, Bob…" dialogue to explain what a Seldon crisis is into a vital clue to the central mystery.

Mallow is acquitted, since no crime was committed, and also elected mayor, since his political rival Jorane Sutt was revealed to have been plotting treason all along. However, there still is that pesky Seldon crisis to deal with, which finally arrives two years later, when the Korellian Republic declares war on the Foundation by attacking its trading ships with the much larger and more powerful Imperial dreadnoughts that Asper Argo, the well-beloved, managed to inveigle out of his father-in-law, the ambitious Imperial viceroy. If you've been hoping for a big space battle, you'll be disappointed though, because once more Asimov keeps the action off stage and only gives us a short scene of a crewmen aboard a doomed trading ship getting his first glimpse of a gigantic Imperial warship.
Hober Mallow responds to the Korellians' attack not by launching a counterattack, because this will only put the Foundation into the crosshairs of the Empire (which is what happens in the following story "Dead Hand") and the Foundation is not yet strong enough to deal with the Empire. Instead, Mallow declares a trade embargo against the Korellian Republic. Then he sits back and waits until first the nuclear powered gadgets he sold to the Korellians break down and then the larger, industrial systems as well. And since Mallow knows that the Empire, though allied with the Korellians, does not have the technology to repair or replace the broken Foundation tech, he need only wait until the Korellian economy fails and the populace revolts.

"The Big and the Little" is the story which introduced me to the concept of economic embargos and the logic behind it. And as explained by Mallow, it all makes sense and neatly works out, too. There is no shooting and no bombing, the Korellians back down eventually and hardly anybody is hurt. Of course, reality is never quite so simple, but then the plot of the Foundation stories is always rigged in favour of the Foundation –until it isn't.

Even though there is a Seldon crisis in "The Big and the Little", Hari Seldon himself does not appear in this story. I assume that Seldon's hologram does appear at some point to explain why Hober Mallow is right and Jorane Sutt is wrong, but for some reason we never get to see this moment. Instead, Mallow himself explains to his old enemy Sutt and his friend, sounding board and occasional nude sunbathing partner Ankor Twael that the Foundation will henceforth move away from conquest and domination via religion towards conquest and domination via trade. Sutt, a steadfast adherent to the old ways, is outraged, while Twael worries what will happen during the next Seldon crisis, when domination and expansion via trade stops being effective. Mallow agrees that his tactics will eventually cease working, but since it's not likely that there will be another Seldon crisis in his lifetime (though Salvor Hardin got two), that's a problem for someone else to worry about.

Upon rereading this story, I realised that I remembered very little about it apart from the scene with the glowing necklace and that this was the story with the economic embargo. Part of the reason for this may be that "The Big and the Little" (the title refers to the big but lumbering Empire and the small but nimble Foundation) is something of a mess. The story is long – at the upper edge of the novelette range – and somewhat disjointed. It almost feels as if Asimov – who was after all only twenty-four, when he wrote this story – bit off more than he could chew with "The Big and the Little". Asimov juggles lots of plot strands – there is the central mystery of where the Korellians are getting their weapons from and what they're up to, the political manoeuvring and backstabbing between the various fractions in the Foundation, the Seldon crisis and the shift in Foundation policy as well as setting up the conflict with the Empire, which will come to a head in the next story "Dead Hand" – so it's no surprise that he doesn't tie up all of those many plot strands in a satisfying manner. What is more, the four stories that make up the first book in the Foundation trilogy are mainly set up. The truly memorable Foundation stories – "The Mule", "Now You See It…", "…And Now You Don't" – all come later in volumes two and three. If Asimov had never written another Foundation story after "The Big and the Little", I doubt that the series would be remembered as fondly as it is today.

Isaac Asimov has always stated that the Foundation series was inspired by The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon and the parallels are certainly notable, particularly in the latter story "Dead Hand". However, the Foundation series also bears strong parallels to the course of European imperialism and colonialism, which began with sending missionaries (though unlike the Foundation's fake religion, the Catholic missionaries sent out by the Spanish and Portuguese empires were absolutely sincere) and eventually came to focus on trade. Like the Foundation, Europe's colonial powers also exported trinkets and imported the raw materials they lacked. And just like Hober Mallow, people from the colonised countries were never quite viewed as real citizens, even if they had been educated in the colonising country. Finally, the tactics used by the Foundation are also eerily reminiscent of American postwar policy, where the US tried to dominate its sphere of influence both via trade and also via exporting its political, if not religious beliefs (and occasionally those, too, or how else did South Korea come to have a sizeable number of evangelical Christians?).

In fact, the thing that most struck me upon rereading the Foundation stories was how political the series is and how very much it is about imperialism, particularly the American variety thereof. Not that my younger self did not realise that the Foundation series was political, but I mostly viewed it as a blueprint for preventing/reversing social and technological decline (and I was very worried about this at the time, viewing every empty shop and every broken neon sign as a symptom for decline, because Hari Seldon points out broken neon signs as symptom for the decline of the Empire in Prelude to Foundation) and bringing about a better future. And indeed, there is something very seductive about the idea of the Foundation using its superior technology as well as every trick in the book to make the universe a better place and bring about a political aim that none of the characters will ever see.

This is the reason that so many politically interested people – figures as different as Paul Krugman, Newt Gingrich and Osama Bin Laden have all cited the Foundation series as an influence – have been inspired by the Foundation series, when they read it at a young age. I don't even exclude myself there. My love for the Foundation series was the reason why I picked sociology as my secondary subject at university, because I wanted to do what Hari Seldon did, predict the future and find a way to make it better. Of course, I quickly figured out that it doesn't work that way in reality and that psychohistory is far more fiction than science.

The Foundation series will always remain a classic of political science fiction. However – and this is something my younger self missed – the vision of politics the series presents is not necessarily a good one and the Foundation is not necessarily right.