The Classic Philip Jose Farmer. 1952 - 1964 Part 1

The Cla.s.sic Philip Jose Farmer.

1952-1964.

Edited and Introduction by Martin H. Greenberg.

Retrieving the Lost

by Isaac Asimov

The history of contemporary science fiction begins with the spring of 1926, when the first magazine ever to be devoted entirely to science fiction made its appearance. For a quarter-century thereafter science fiction continued to appear in magazines-and only in magazines.

They were wonderful days for those of us who lived through them, but there was a flaw. Magazines are, by their very nature, ephemeral. They are on the newsstands a month or two and are gone. A very few readers may save their issues, but they are fragile and do not stand much handling.

Beginning in 1950, science fiction in book form began to make its appearance, and some of the books retrieved the magazine short stories and serials in the form of collections, anthologies and novels. As time went on, however, it became clear that the vast majority of science-fiction books were in paperback form, and these, too, were ephemeral. Their stay on the newsstands is not entirely calendar-bound, and they can withstand a bit more handling than periodicals can-but paperbacks tend to be, like magazines, throwaway items.

That leaves the hardback book, which finds its way into public libraries as well as private homes, and which is durable. Even there, we have deficiencies. The relatively few science-fiction books which appear in hardback usually appear in small printings and few, if any, reprintings. Out-of-print is the usual fate, and often a not very long delayed one, at that.

Some science-fiction books have endured, remaining available in hardcover form for years, evendecades, and appearing in repeated paperback reincarnations. We all know which these are because, by enduring, they have come to be read by millions, including you and me.

It is, of course, easy to argue that the test of time and popularity has succeeded in separating the gold from the dross, and that we have with us all the science-fiction books that have deserved to endure.

That, however, is too easy a dismissal. It is an interesting and convenient theory, but the world of human affairs is far too complex to fit into theories, especially convenient ones. It sometimes takes time to recognize quality, and the time required is sometimes longer than the visible existence of a particular book. That the quality of a book is not recognizable at once need not be a sign of deficiency, but rather a sign of subtlety. It is not being particularly paradoxical to point out that a book may be, in some cases, too good to be immediately popular. And then, thanks to the mechanics of literary ephemerality, realization of the fact may come too late.

Or must it?

Suppose there are dedicated and thoughtful writers and scholars like George Zebrowski and Martin H.

Greenberg, who have been reading science fiction intensively, and with educated taste, for decades. And suppose there is a publisher such as Crown Publishers, Inc. which is interested in providing a second chance for quality science fiction which was undervalued the first time round.

In that case we end up with Crowns Cla.s.sics of Modern Science Fiction in which the lost is retrieved, the unjustly forgotten is remembered, and the undervalued is resurrected. And you are holding a sample in your hand.

Naturally, the revival of these cla.s.sics will benefit the publisher, the editors, and the writers, but that is almost by the way. The real beneficiaries will be the readers, among whom the older are likely to taste again delicacies they had all but forgotten, while the younger will encounter delights of whose existence they were unaware.

Read- And enjoy.

Introduction.

by Martin H. Greenberg

un/con/ven/tion/al. Not adhering to convention con/ven/tion. General usage or custom Philip Jose Farmer certainly did not and does not adhere to the thematic and stylistic conventions of science fiction; in fact, he was personally responsible for changing several of the most important and long-lasting conventions in the field. Science fiction had ignored one of the most important of all human concerns-s.e.xuality-partly because pulp science fictions audience was considered to be adolescent boys (a strange reason on the face of it), and partly because the men who controlled the field didn't think the readers.h.i.+p wanted strong doses of it mixed in with the adventure and the technology.

Farmer proved them wrong with his first published work, "The Lovers," which appeared in the August 1952 issue of Startling Stories. It's gripping depiction of love and s.e.x between a man and an alien insectlike creature had a tremendous impact on the field, broadening what was "acceptable" and opening up the market for others to explore. Largely because of this single story, he was voted a Hugo Award for 1953 as New Writer of 1952." It was the first of what to date const.i.tutes a body of work totaling more than forty novels and collections, characterized by originality, inventiveness, and a use of symbolism thathas yet to be equalled.

Philip Jose Farmer was born in Terre Haute, Indiana, in 1918 but was raised in Peoria, Illinois, where he spent the bulk of his life. He enrolled at Bradley University in 1941 but had to drop out due to lack of funds. He later returned to school as an evening student, earning a degree in 1950; he also worked in a steel mill for many years. Farmer began to write in the mid-1940s, and "The Lovers" was published when he was thirty-four, an advanced age by the standards of the science-fiction community. However, he quickly made up for lost time by an astounding^rolificity, although he did not write for considerable portions of time during the first decade of his career.

His major literary themes and obsessions were clear from early on and have been noted by all who have written on him-a concern with s.e.xuality and reproduction in all its variety; the good and evil that he seems to believe resides in all of us; an interest in religious beliefs and imagery, especially with matriarchal religions; parasitology, frequently coupled with s.e.xuality; and a deep love of American popular culture and the books he read and adored as a child and as a young man, especially Burroughs, Baum, and Twain but also including the characters and magazines of the pulp era. Indeed, he has reworked these stories and characters in his own writing to the extent that he has produced a whole body of work about parallel universes, parallel places, and parallel people, books where Samuel Clemens, Tarzan, Odysseus, and Doc Savage all interact, and most are even related to one another.

His writing is characterized by rapid pacing, some weakness of plot, a wonderful use of puns, protagonists who are deeply flawed-a quality especially true in his "heroic" figures-and a deep cynicism that pervades even his humorous work.

But most of all, Farmer (like the late Philip K. d.i.c.k) writes of the real, the unreal, and the maybe real, combining and integrating them into the same story in ways that have revolutionized one corner of modern science fiction. Few writers have been as daring so early as Farmer, few so willing to shock, in his case usually to good effect. One of his most important critics, Mary T. Brizzi, has commented that "He is certainly among the brightest stars in the science fiction sky," and that "His early works were beautifully crafted, exploring unconventional themes in a sensitive way." His work has also been called "nauseating."

"filthy," and "obscene." John W. Campbell, Jr., said that one of his stories (which he didn't buy) made him "want to throw up." He notes that other, more admiring critics have noted the powerful influence of Freud and Jung in his work, but he rejects these references saying that "The term Farmerian should be good enough." Indeed it is.

This volume collects what I consider to be representative selections of his best work from the years 1952 to 1964, years that saw the publication of several important longer works and collections, including The Green Odyssey (1957), Flesh (1960, revised 1968; a novel which gives new meaning to the term father-figure), A Woman A Day (1960, also revised 1968), The Lovers (expanded and published in 1961 and revised again in 1979), Cache from Outer s.p.a.ce (1962), Inside Outside (1964, a major work), and Tongues of the Moon (1964).

Outstanding examples of his best work since 1964 will be included in a future volume in this series. For now, we offer you such stunning stories as "Sail On! Sail On!," based on a recurring dream Farmer had in which he says "I saw the tiny galleon of the Portuguese Prince Henry the Navigator (A.D.

1394-1460). It was sailing along in a heavy sea and on a dark night. A small building was on the p.o.o.pdeck; in it sat a very fat monk. He had earphones on and was tapping out a coded message, in Latin, on a spark-gap transmitter..."

"Mother" contains many of the themes and obsessions mentioned earlier, including some of theunderground pa.s.sages that are partially responsible for his reputation as a Freudian, and the family relations.h.i.+ps that were so important in all his early work. The story later became the centerpiece of his collection Strange Relations (1960).

"My Sister's Brother" (originally published as "Open to Me, My Sister") is especially important to Farmer, and he considers it one of his two favorites-the other is "Riders of the Purple Wage," included in the following volume in this series. Like "The Lovers," this story had a difficult time finding a publisher, being rejected by the major magazines because of its s.e.xual content. Robert P. Mills took it for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction after having rejected it when first submitted to him-times had changed, and Farmer had changed them, a rare example of a writer developing a market for his own work. Farmer says that this powerful story is "a hardcore science-fiction tale. But it is also about an Earthman's hangups, extraterrestrial ecosystems, s.e.xobiological structures, and religion."

The remarkable "The Alley Man" is one of the best pre-historic-man-in-modern-times stories ever written. It finished a close second to Daniel Keyes' "Flowers for Algernon" in the voting for the Hugo Award in 1960. One of the many amazing features of Farmers career is the incredible number of series he has sustained-his ideas are simply too big for even very large novels.

"The King of Beasts" is a gem of a short-short, while "The G.o.d Business" is one of those stories that is much better read than discussed.

If you have not encountered Farmer or these stories before you are in for a treat. In the words of Leslie Fiedler, "Thanks for the feast."

Sail On! Sail On!

1952.

FRIAR SPARKS SAT wedged between the wall and the realizer. He was motionless except for his forefinger and his eyes. From time to time his finger tapped rapidly on the key upon the desk, and now and then his irises, gray-blue as his native Irish sky, swiveled to look through the open door of the toldilla in which he crouched, the little shanty on the p.o.o.p deck. Visibility was low.

Outside was dusk and a lantern by the railing. Two sailors leaned on it. Beyond them bobbed the bright lights and dark shapes of the Nina and the Pinta. And beyond them was the smooth horizon-brow of the Atlantic, edged in black and blood by the red dome of the rising moon.

The single carbon filament bulb above the monk's tonsure showed a face lost in fat-and in concentration.

The luminiferous ether crackled and hissed tonight, but the phones clamped over his ears carried, along with them, the steady dots and dashes sent by the operator at the Las Palmas station on the Grand Canary.

"Zzisss! So you are out of sherry already... Pop!... Too bad... Crackle... you hardened old wineb.u.t.t... Zzz... May G.o.d have mercy on your sins...

"Lots of gossip, news, et cetera... Hisses.'... Bend your ear instead of your neck, impious one... The turks are said to be gathering... crackle ... an army to march on Austria. It is rumored that the flying sausages, said by so many to have been seen over the capitals of the Christian world, are of Turkish origin. The rumor goes they have been invented by a renegade Rogerian who was converted to the Muslim religion... I say... zziss ... to that. No one of us would do that. It is a falsity spread by our enemies in the Church to discredit us. But many people believe that..."How close does the Admiral calculate he is to c.i.p.angu now?

"Flas.h.!.+ Savonarola today denounced the Pope, the wealthy of Florence, Greek art and literature, and the experiments of the disciples of Saint Roger Bacon... Zzz/... The man is sincere but misguided and dangerous... I predict he'll end up at the stake he's always prescribing for us...

"Pop... This will kill you... Two Irish mercenaries by the name of Pat and Mike were walking down the street of Granada when a beautiful Saracen lady leaned out of a balcony and emptied a pot of... hiss!...

and Pat looked up and... Crackle... Good, hah? Brother Juan told that last night...

"PV... PV... Are you coming in?... PV... PV... Yes, I know it's dangerous to bandy such jests about, but n.o.body is monitoring us tonight... Zzz. ... I think they're not, anyway..."

And so the ether bent and warped with their messages. And presently Friar Sparks tapped out the PV that ended their talk-the "Pax vobisc.u.m." Then he pulled the plug out that connected his earphones to the set and, lifting them from his ears, clamped them down forward over his temples in the regulation manner.

After sidling bent-kneed from the toldilla, punis.h.i.+ng his belly against the desks hard edge as he did so, he walked over to the railing. De Salcedo and de Torres were leaning there and talking in low tones. The big bulb above gleamed on the page's red-gold hair and on the interpreter's full black beard. It also bounced pinkishly off the priest's smooth-shaven jowls and the light scarlet robe of the Rogerian order. His cowl, thrown back, served as a bag for scratch paper, pens, an ink bottle, tiny wrenches and screwdrivers, a book of cryptography, a slide rule, and a manual of angelic principles.

''Well, old rind," said young de Salcedo familiarly, "what do you hear from Las Palmas?"

"Nothing now. Too much interference from that." He pointed to the moon riding the horizon ahead of them. "What an orb!" bellowed the priest. "It's as big and red as my revered nose!"

The two sailors laughed, and de Salcedo said, "But it will get smaller and paler as the night grows, Father. And your proboscis will, on the contrary, become larger and more sparkling in inverse proportion according to the square of the ascent-"

He stopped and grinned, for the monk had suddenly dipped his nose, like a porpoise diving into the sea, raised it again, like the same animal jumping from a wave, and then once more plunged it into the heavy currents of their breath. Nose to nose, he faced them, his twinkling little eyes seeming to emit sparks like the realizer in his toldilla.

Again, porpoiselike, he sniffed and snuffed several times, quite loudly. Then satisfied with what he had gleaned from their breaths, he winked at them. He did not, however, mention his findings at once, preferring to sidle toward the subject.

He said, "This Father Sparks on the Grand Canary is so entertaining. He stimulates me with all sorts of philosophical notions, both valid and fantastic. For instance, tonight, just before we were cut off by that"-he gestured at the huge bloodshot eye in the sky-"he was discussing what he called worlds of parallel time tracks, an idea originated by Dysphagius of Gotham. It's his idea there may be other worlds in coincident but not contacting universes, that G.o.d, being infinite and of unlimited creative talent and ability, the Master Alchemist, in other words, has possibly- perhaps necessarily-created a plurality of continua in which every probable event has happened."

"Huh?" grunted de Salcedo."Exactly. Thus, Columbus was turned down by Queen Isabella, so this attempt to reach the Indies across the Atlantic was never made. So we could not now be standing here plunging ever deeper into Ocea.n.u.s in our three c.o.c.kle-sh.e.l.ls, there would be no booster buoys strung out between us and the Canaries, and Father Sparks at Las Palmas and I on the Santa Maria would not be carrying on our fascinating conversations across the ether.

"Or, say, Roger Bacon was persecuted by the Church, instead of being encouraged and giving rise to the order whose inventions have done so much to insure the monopoly of the Church on alchemy and its divinely inspired guidance of that formerly pagan and h.e.l.lish practice."

De Torres opened his mouth, but the priest silenced him with a magnificient and imperious gesture and continued.

"Or, even more ridiculous, but thought-provoking, he speculated just this evening on universes with different physical laws. One, in particular, I thought very droll. As you probably don't know, Angelo Angelei has proved, by dropping objects from the Leaning Tower of Pisa, that different weights fall at different speeds. My delightful colleague on the Grand Canary is writing a satire which takes place in a universe where Aristotle is made out to be a liar, where all things drop with equal velocities, no matter what their size. Silly stuff, but it helps to pa.s.s the time. We keep the ether busy with our little angels."

De Salcedo said, "Uh, I don't want to seem too curious about the secrets of your holy and cryptic order, Friar Sparks. But these little angels your machine realizes intrigue me. Is it a sin to presume to ask about them?"

The monk's bull roar slid to a dove cooing. "Whether it's a sin or not depends. Let me ill.u.s.trate, young fellows. If you were concealing a bottle of, say, very scarce sherry on you, and you did not offer to share it with a very thirsty old gentleman, that would be a sin. A sin of omission. But if you were to give that desert-dry, that pilgrim-weary, that devout, humble, and decrepit old soul a long, soothing, refres.h.i.+ng, and stimulating draught of lifegiving fluid, daughter of the vine, I would find it in my heart to pray for you for that deed of loving-kindness, of encompa.s.sing charity. And it would please me so much I might tell you a little of our realizer.

"H.

Not enough to hurt you, just enough so you might gain more respect for the intelligence and glory of my order."

De Salcedo grinned conspiratorially and pa.s.sed the monk the bottle he'd hidden under his jacket. As the friar tilted it, and the chug-chug-chug of vanis.h.i.+ng sherry became louder, the two sailors glanced meaningfully at each other. No wonder the priest, reputed to be so brilliant in his branch of the alchemical mysteries, had yet been sent off on this halfbaked voyage to devil-knew-where. The Church had calculated that if he survived, well and good. If he didn't, then he would sin no more.

The monk wiped his lips on his sleeve, belched loudly as a horse, and said, "Gracias, boys. From my heart, so deeply buried in this fat, I thank you. An old Irishman, dry as a camel's hoof, choking to death with the dust of abstinence, thanks you. You have saved my life."

"Thank rather that magic nose of yours," replied de Salcedo. "Now, old rind, now that you're well greased again, would you mind explaining as much as you are allowed about that machine of yours?"

Friar Sparks took fifteen minutes. At the end of that time, his listeners asked a few permitted questions.

"... and you say you broadcast on a frequency of eighteen hundred k.c.?" the page asked. "What does'k.c.' mean?"

"K stands for the French kilo, from a Greek word meaning thousand. And c stands for the Hebrew cherubim, the 'little angels.' Angel comes from the Greek angelos, meaning messenger. It is our concept that the ether is crammed with these cherubim, these little messengers. Thus, when we Friar Sparkses depress the key of our machine, we are able to realize some of the infinity of'messengers' waiting for just such a demand for service.

"So, eighteen hundred k.c. means that in a given unit of time one million, eight hundred thousand cherubim line up and hurl themselves across the ether, the nose of one being brushed by the feathertips of the cherubs wings ahead. The height of the wing crests of each little creature is even, so that if you were to draw an outline of the whole train, there would be nothing to distinguish one cherub from the next, the whole column forming that grade of little angels known as C.W."

"C.W.?".

"Continuous wingheight. My machine is a C.W. realizer."

Young de Salcedo said, "My mind reels. Such a concept! Such a revelation! It almost pa.s.ses comprehension. Imagine, the aerial of your realizer is cut just so long, so that the evil cherubim surging back and forth on it demand a predetermined and equal number of good angels to combat them. And this seduction coil on the realizer crowds 'bad' angels into the left-hand, the sinister, side. And when the bad little cherubim are crowded so closely and numerously that they can't bear each other's evil company, they jump the spark gap and speed around the wire to the 'good' plate. And in this racing back and forth they call themselves to the attention of the 'little messengers,' the yea-saying cherubim. And you, Friar Sparks, by manipulating your machine thus and so, and by lifting and lowering your key, you bring these invisible and friendly lines of carriers, your etheric and winged postmen, into reality. And you are able, thus, to communicate at great distances with your brothers of the order."

"Great G.o.d!" said de Torres.

It was not a vain oath but a pious exclamation of wonder. His eyes bulged; it was evident that he suddenly saw that man was not alone, that on every side, piled on top of each other, flanked on every angle, stood a host. Black and white, they presented a solid chessboard of the seemingly empty cosmos, black for the nay-sayers, white for the yea-sayers, maintained by a Hand in delicate balance and subject as the fowls of the air and the fish of the sea to exploitation by man.

Yet de Torres, having seen such a vision as has made a saint of many a man, could only ask, "Perhaps you could tell me how many angels may stand on the point of a pin?"

Obviously, de Torres would never wear a halo. He was destined, if he lived, to cover his bony head with the mortar-board of a university teacher.

De Salcedo snorted. "I'll tell you. Philosophically speaking, you may put as many angels on a pinhead as you want to. Actually speaking, you may put only as many as there is room for. Enough of that. I'm interested in facts, not fancies. Tell me, how could the moons rising interrupt your reception of the cherubim sent by the Sparks at Las Palmas?"

"Great Caesar, how would I know? Am I a repository of universal knowledge? No, not I! A humble and ignorant friar, I! All I can tell you is that last night it rose like a b.l.o.o.d.y tumor on the horizon, and that when it was up I had to quit marshaling my little messengers in their short and long columns. The Canary station was quite overpowered, so that both of us gave up. And the same thing happened tonight.""The moon sends messages?" asked de Torres.

"Not in a code I can decipher. But it sends, yes."

"Santa Maria!"

"Perhaps," suggested de Salcedo, "there are people on that moon, and they are sending."

Friar Sparks blew derision through his nose. Enormous as were his nostrils, his derision was not smallbore. Artillery of contempt laid down a barrage that would have silenced any but the strongest of souls.

"Maybe"-de Torres spoke in a low tone- "maybe, if the stars are windows in heaven, as I've heard said, the angels of the higher hierarchy, the big ones, are realizing-uh-the smaller? And they only do it when the moon is up so we may know it is a celestial phenomenon?"

He crossed himself and looked around the vessel.

"You need not fear," said the monk gently. "There is no Inquisitor leaning over your shoulder.

Remember, I am the only priest on this expedition. Moreover, your conjecture has nothing to do with dogma. However, that's unimportant. Here's what I don't understand: how can a heavenly body broadcast? Why does it have the same frequency as the one I'm restricted to? Why-"

"I could explain," interrupted de Salcedo with all the brash-ness and impatience of youth. "I could say that the Admiral and the Rogerians are wrong about the earth's shape. I could say the earth is not round but is flat. I could say the horizon exists, not because we live upon a globe, but because the earth is curved only a little ways, like a greatly flattened-out hemisphere. I could also say that the cherubim are coming, not from Luna, but from a s.h.i.+p such as ours, a vessel which is hanging in the void off the edge of the earth."

"What?" gasped the other two.

"Haven't you heard," said de Salcedo, "that the King of Portugal secretly sent out a s.h.i.+p after he turned down Columbus' proposal? How do we know he did not, that the messages are from our predecessor, that he sailed off the world's rim and is now suspended in the air and becomes exposed at night because it follows the moon around Terra-is, in fact, a much smaller and unseen satellite?"

The monk's laughter woke many men on the s.h.i.+p. "I'll have to tell the Las Palmas operator your tale. He can put it in that novel of his. Next you'll be telling me those messages are from one of those fire-shooting sausages so many credulous laymen have been seeing flying around. No, my dear de Salcedo, let's not be ridiculous. Even the ancient Greeks knew the earth was round. Every university in Europe teaches that. And we Rogerians have measured the circ.u.mference. We know for sure that the Indies lie just across the Atlantic. Just as we know for sure, through mathematics, that heavier-than-air machines are impossible. Our Friar Ripskulls, our mind doctors, have a.s.sured us these flying creations are ma.s.s hallucinations or else the tricks of heretics or Turks who want to panic the populace.