| Article: 397
From: dani@netcom.com (Dani Zweig)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews
Subject: REPOST: Belated Reviews PS#10: Eric Frank Russell
Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest)
Date: 11 Oct 93 02:32:36 GMT
Belated Reviews PS#10: Eric Frank Russell
Eric Frank Russell's best work appeared in the forties and fifties, mostly
in the form of short stories. They're an odd mix: Many of them display a
strong xenophilic streak, emphasizing the essential oneness of all races,
and all intelligences. As long as said intelligences aren't messing with the
human race. When that happens, his stories become exceedingly Campbellian:
The aliens become targets, to be wiped out or at least cut down to size in
a satisfying manner. (It typically takes one human per alien race.)
Russell's writing also reflects a strongly anti-authoritarian bias, which
manifests itself in various ways. Despots, bureaucrats, and senior military
officers are frequently targets of satire, tending to become victims of
their own self-contradictions. Authority figures, in general, are rarely
portrayed sympathetically in his stories.
Russell's stories have aged better than those of many of his contemporaries,
because they are less dependent upon gimmicks. The ones that worked because
they were witty are still witty, and his better serious stories had more...
heart than was often the case at the time. His more typical sf-adventure
stories don't read as well today. I'd rate Russell as a second-tier
author. His better works are worth finding and reading, but they're mixed
in with a good deal of dross. And even among those better works, there's
no single extraordinary one which can serve to make him a must-read.
(Digression: Many of the 'classics' of science fiction are, or are
composed of, short stories or novellas, because the dominant medium of the
sf genre use to be the magazine. Today, by contrast, books dominate.
What's more, the market for anthologies isn't very good. (I'm part of
this trend myself; I read many novels, but relatively few short stories.)
This makes reviewing an author like Eric Frank Russell problematic. I
can't -- as I could with Zenna Henderson, for example, or Cordwainer
Smith -- just point to a couple of anthologies and say "get those". His
better stories often have to be dug out of uneven anthologies. In this
review, when I discuss a story, I'll generally identify the anthology
which has *my* copy of that story, but it should be taken for granted that
the stories can be found elsewhere, as well.)
Russell's novels don't stand up as well as his stories. The best of them
is the fixup novel "The Great Explosion" (***), about an expedition sent
out to contact a number of 'lost colonies' that would as soon stay lost.
The best part of the novel is the last story (novella?), titled "And Then
There Were None" (***+). The ship finds a planet whose society is a
functioning anarchy. There is no 'government', no 'leadership', no
obvious medium of exchange -- and a general lack of interest in having
anything to do with the expedition's brass hats. None of this seems as
unreasonable to the expedition's rank and file, which begins to desert.
(I assume this story helped inspire Hogan's "Voyage to Yesteryear" a couple
of decades later. Russell has the lighter touch, however.)
EFR started out as an earnest Fortean, and the notion of creatures
hovering just over the edges of human perception pops up periodically in
his writing. Its first, and rawest appearance is in his early novel
"Sinister Barrier" (*+), a piece of Fortean paranoia in which everything
from the mystery of Kaspar Hauser to the existence of war is attributed to
invisible malevolent beings which feed upon humanity. Similar entities appear
in his later novel "Sentinels of Space" (**-), only in that novel they turn
out to be *protectors* of humanity. ("Sentinels of Space" is also a prototype
for his one-man-vs-a-world stories.) The best use of such creatures, though,
was in a lighter vein:
"The Space Willies" (***-), alternatively titled "Next of Kin" (and based
on the story "Plus X"), is also one of his Terra-uber-alles novels. Terra
and its allies are at war with an enemy alliance, and scout pilot John
Leeming is captured, and becomes a prisoner of war of one of the enemy's
less brilliant races. Having nothing better to do, Leeming sets out to wage
psychological warfare, and to convince his captors that every human has an
intangible symbiont (known as a Eustace) capable of wrecking poltergeist
havok upon his enemies. It's a cute, if silly, short novel.
"Six Worlds Yonder" (***) (my copy is the other half of the Ace Double in
which "The Space Willies" first appeared) is one of EFR's more solid
anthologies. All six of its stories are at least amusing. "The
Waitabits" (***) is about a Terran expedition to a planet whose
discoverer laconically described it as "unconquerable", and neglected to
give any more details. Sure enough, a species whose time sense is a
couple hundred times slower than ours is, for all practical purposes,
unconquerable. "Diabologic" (***+) is a better working out of one of the
"Space Willies" themes: A spaceman who truly understands bureaucracies
lands on an alien world and proceeds to make life miserable for the local
rulers. (Well, think about it. Suppose an alien spaceship landed at
Canaveral and its pilot, speaking perfect English, just walked out and
started ordering people around, ignoring protocol, puncturing preconceptions,
and generally treating the authorities in as cavalier a manner as
possible: Who would have the nerve to call his bluff as long as no damage
was being done? Mind, the beings Russell sets up as his straight men are
a bit slow, but it's not clear that we'd do better.) Russell uses the
same theme a third time, to poorer effect, in the novella "The Ultimate
Invader" (**), which appears in the anthology of the same title.
The anthology "Somewhere a Voice" (***-) has a mix of better stories and
weaker ones. The best of these is "Dear Devil" (***), in which a
Martian poet comes to a post-holocaust Earth, and stays to help the
remaining humans survive. "Displaced Person" (***) is a very short story
with an effective punchline -- about a despot who has won the ultimate
propaganda victory. "I Am Nothing" (***-) and "Somewhere a Voice" (***-)
are touching stories in which people overcome their petty hatreds to reach
for something better. Both stories are weakened, however, by thin plotting
and thinner characterization -- both of which were general weaknesses in
Russell's writing, and are particularly felt in his less 'clever' stories.
Weakness of plot and characterization are probably why EFR doesn't belong
in the first tier of sf authors. The surprising thing is that his writing
is as good as it, given those usually fatal weaknesses. In his lighter
work, wit compensates. His better serious stories combine a reliance on
idea with -- in the better sense of the term -- humanity. One of the best
of these is "Fast Falls the Eventide" (***+). (My copy is in the 1952
"Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories"). The time is the distant
future, and Earth is dying. Soon the sun will go nova, and there is no
spare real-estate to which humanity could move if it wished to. So
humanity -- evolved from today's, but still recognizably human -- finds a
way to make itself indispensible.
"Allamagoosa" (***+) (It's a 1955 Hugo short-story winner, so it's easy to
find) is a good example of what I meant by 'clever'. The crew of the
spaceship Bustler is informed that they are about to be Inspected, so
naturally they take inventory before the inspector can. And come up
short. And come up with what looks at first to be a clever way to hide
the shortfall. And (because they are missing one important piece of
information) bury themselves deeper and deeper in what it would be tactful
to call red tape. (The short story "Top Secret" (***-), in the aforementioned
"Six Worlds Yonder", is a less polished handling of a similar theme.)
If Eric Frank Russell were alive and writing his stories today, instead of
forty or fifty years ago, they'd undoubtedly be different. Genre conventions
are different today. (For example, it's no longer good form to have your
explorers test an atmosphere by opening the hatch and taking a sniff.)
Our scientific preconceptions are different. (We find punched-card sorting
machines, or robots which are essentially metal humans, distracting.) What
we expect from our short stories has changed. Not surprisingly, much of
Russell's writing has failed the test of time. His better stories, though,
while showing their age, still make for pleasant reading.
%A Russell, Eric Frank
%T And Then There Were None
%O from the novel, The Great Explosion
%T The Space Willies
%O aka Next of Kin
%O short stories
%T The Waitabits
%T Diabologic
%T Fast Falls the Eventide
%T Allamagoosa
=============================================================================
The postscripts to Belated Reviews cover authors of earlier decades who
didn't fit into the original format -- whether because the author seemed
an inappropriate subject, or because I was unfamiliar with too much of the
author's work, or whatever -- or sometimes just isolated works of such
authors. The emphasis will continue to be on guiding newer readers
towards books or authors worth trying out, rather than on discussing them
comprehensively or in depth. I'll retain the rating scheme of ****
(recommended), *** (an old favorite that hasn't aged well), ** (a solid
lesser work), and * (nothing special).
-----
Dani Zweig
dani@netcom.com
"The death of God left the angels in a strange position."
--Internal documentation, programmer unknown
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