Again, Dangerous Visions Part 25

Apart from "Harry the Hare" and "The Box" (published in Dare Dare, December 1967) he has made money at the usual mundane jobs writers seek out while waiting for the world to discover them: newspaper boy, soda jerk, food service worker in a boys' dormitory, rental housing inspector for the city of Iowa City, a.s.sistant foreman on a thinning crew in the Bitterroot National Forest in Montana; and following in the footsteps of such fine writers as John Steinbeck, Clifford Odets and Jack Williamson, Mr. Hemesath has forayed into the nitty and/or gritty working with his hands as an asphalt paver, concrete paver, on a sewer gang, and with a section gang raising track for the Chicago and Northwestern along the Cedar River.

His first contact with the Muse was during his junior year at the University of Iowa, working under Mary Carter, author of A Fortune in Dimes A Fortune in Dimes and and The Minutes of the Night The Minutes of the Night. In her fiction writing course he was required to hand in a three hundred word scene every day, and later, a short story every day, thereby proving there are other teachers of writing besides your editor who feel most theory is bulls.h.i.+t and the only way you can become a writer is to write write. Mr. Hemesath insists I mention that his three favorite stories are Poe's "The Pit and the Pendulum," s.h.i.+rley Jackson's "The Lottery" and "A Boy and His Dog" by your editor. He gave me no option in relating this, stating that if I really wanted to note germinal influences on him, those three needed to be entered for posterity. I found no difficulty in meeting his request. Being linked with Poe and Jackson fixes me for the rest of the week. And maybe into next week, as well.

He concludes his biographical notes with the remark that he hopes one day to write a novel that takes place in Iowa.

Of "Harry the Hare" I will only say, it is at once bizarre, funny, alarming and tragic. I suspect it is a story Ray Bradbury might have liked to've written, and one I know he will enjoy. I suspect you will, too.

HARRY THE HARE.

James B. Hemesath Inside the dimly lit movie theater, there was a m.u.f.fled sound, then one of the swinging doors from the outer lobby opened, and a short, fat man began walking down the aisle toward the stage. It was early in the day, before the show had started. The short, fat man strode the descending length of the aisle, climbed the steps to the stage, and walked up close to the great white rectangle of the movie screen.

"h.e.l.lo, Bijou...I've returned," he said softly, almost reverently. He tentatively poked a finger at the screen, and chuckled. "Nothing but a sheet of perforated plastic? Ridiculous."

"Good afternoon." The voice came from the rear of the theater. "Do you have business here? We're not open yet." The short, fat man had turned at the first words. Now he stared up and back at the rear of the theater. It was too dim back there, but now he could barely see, barely make out, something. A gloved hand rested on the hinged window of the projection booth.

"I want to see Harry." The man hand-shaded his eyes and squinted.

"He's at lunch." The window hinges squeaked. "Should be back for the matinee."

"Good. I'll wait." The man sat cross-legged on the stage. Hand-cupped his chin. Rocked. "The matinee's at one. Isn't it?"

"Why do you want to see Harry?" Two gloved hands rested on the window sill. "Are you a friend?"

"Yes," the man replied. "I've always loved Harry the Hare cartoons." Smiled. "As a child I came every Sat.u.r.day afternoon. Right here. To the Bijou."

"Really? A test." The gloved hands held a piece of string. "What am I making?"

"A cat's cradle?" The man stumbled to his feet. Squinted. "Yes! That's it. A cat's cradle." Paused. "But that trick belongs to Harry the Hare."

"Most certainly. But now." The string floated to the floor. "Look at my hands. What do you see?"

"Only four fingers!" The man rubbed his eyes. "And gloves. Brown gloves." He jumped from the stage. "So that means-"

"Most certainly. I'm Harry the Hare." The gloved hands waved. "Forgive me for lying." Silence. "You know. About being out to lunch." The gloved hands became two fists. "But I must be careful. They're after me."

"Who are they?"

"My creators. The people who drew me." The gloved hands clenched each other. "The studio stopped making cartoons. I was to be buried-"

"But you escaped." The man's eyes swelled with tears. "Why do they want you back?"

"Because I'm copyrighted." The gloved hands became limp. "They own me."

"But I need you. I love Harry the Hare."

"Many people do. And they come here. Just to see me."

My name is Jack Jackson and I am a lawyer for Blue Wing Films, the former producers of Harry the Hare animated shorts. Two months ago Harry the Hare escaped from the Blue Wing Museum of Motion Picture Cla.s.sics. The ensuing manhunt ended yesterday during the Sat.u.r.day Matinee at the Bijou. The theater was crowded with middle-aged people.

Harry the Hare stood on the stage and I shouted, "Blue Wing Films owns Harry the Hare." I sat next to a short, fat man. He started to cry. I handed him my handkerchief. "Harry the Hare must return to the museum."

"I shall never return. The people own me." Harry the Hare s.h.i.+fted his weight from one foot to the other. "The people-"

"But Blue Wing Films holds the copyright. I have called the police."

"The people need Harry the Hare. My cartoons are no longer exhibited. They only have me me."

"I am sorry, but the law says..." Most of the people were crying. The siren on the police car became louder. I sat down.

Harry the Hare smiled and listened. He snapped his fingers and a scissors appeared. Then he said, "The people shall have me." And snipped off his right foot. Followed by his left foot. Both ears. And his left arm below the elbow.

I stood up and shouted, "Blue Wing Films owns Harry the Hare."

Then I sat down. The aisle was packed.

Afterword.

The first half of Harry the Hare Harry the Hare was written in Iowa City sometime during the winter of 1968. The second half-the Jack Jackson segment-I wrote the following summer at the University of Colorado Writers' Conference. The very first paragraph of was written in Iowa City sometime during the winter of 1968. The second half-the Jack Jackson segment-I wrote the following summer at the University of Colorado Writers' Conference. The very first paragraph of Harry the Hare Harry the Hare belongs to Harlan Ellison. The rest I can say is mine. belongs to Harlan Ellison. The rest I can say is mine.

The era of the big studio cartoon is past. Within the United States, production of quality theatrical cartoons has virtually ceased.

What killed the cartoon? Rising production costs. Low box office potential. And public apathy.

But I-James B. Hemesath-miss Daffy Duck, Tweety & Sylvester, and the other cartoon characters of the 1950s. They were my friends. Need I say more?

Introduction to WHEN IT CHANGED.

I'm writing this 32,000 feet in the air, on American Airlines flight 194 to Chicago. I'm spending this flight happily broken into segments of writing introductions to stories by people I love, and by reading the advance galleys of Keith Laumer's new Scribner's novel, Dinosaur Beach Dinosaur Beach. And with one of those wicked little coincidences that the Universe tosses at me frequently, I find something in Keith's book that sparks me into the prefatory words for Joanna Russ and her story.

The item that strikes the spark is a pa.s.sage from page 48, in which two agents of a far-future timesweeping force find themselves stranded back in the Jura.s.sic Period. It goes like this: "Why haven't they made a pick-up on me?" she said, not really talking to me. Her voice was edging up the scale a little.

"Take it easy, girl," I said, and patted her shoulder; I knew my touching her would chill her down again. Not a nice thing to know, but useful.

"Keep your hands to yourself, Ravel," she snapped, all business again. "If you think this is some little desert island scene, you're very wrong."

"Don't get ahead of yourself," I told her. "When I make a pa.s.s at you, that'll be time enough to slap me down. Don't go female on me now. We don't have time for nonsense."

Now Keith is a close friend of mine, and a h.e.l.luva good writer, and those of you who know he had a debilitating stroke late last year will be delighted to know he's recovering strongly, but if Joanna Russ ever got within smiting distance of Keith, I'm sure she'd belt him one up alongside his pudding-trough for those paragraphs, because they are pure-and-simple male chauvinist pig writing.

I'm not trying to start a fight here, you understand, but like newly-converted Jews or Catholics, like lifetime cigarette smokers who've put down, like alcoholics now on the wagon, those of us who've spent the greater part of our lives as male chauvinists get terribly zealous in pointing out the gentlemen in our midst who are still wrong-thinking offenders.

In case you aren't aware of how insulting those paragraphs can be to a woman, fellas, consider the following: These agents, male and female alike, are specially trained, ultraefficient, tougher than h.e.l.l, get bounced here and there through time battling a formidable enemy, as well as time itself, and yet the woman is portrayed as weak, sniveling, semi-hysterical, Puritanical, illogical, inefficient and silly. The man has to take hold and show her the way. The narrator keeps referring to himself and other males as men men, but keeps referring to the woman as a girl girl. If Keith were consistent, he'd call himself (as narrator), and the other males in the novel, boys boys. And the most glaring evidence of the author's unconscious male chauvinism is his telling her, when she gets sappy and illogical-which I contend is out-of-character for the character-don't go female on me.

Ugh. Kate Millett and Germaine Greer and Mary Reinholz and, I'm sure, Joanna Russ would belt Keith soundly with their picket signs had they but access to him. I urge Keith to stay down there in his Florida sanctuary, while the rest of us, who've been "saved," try to head off the lynch party.

It all ties in so well with Joanna's story, it must be fate. Because Joanna has here written a story that makes some extraordinarily sharp distinctions between the abilities and att.i.tudes of the s.e.xes, while erasing many others we think immutable. It is, in the best and strongest sense of the word, a female liberation story, while never once speaking of, about, or to the subject. And it points out why I think women's lib is one of the three or four most potent and influential movements to spring up in our country during these last decades of social upheaval.

Keith and a few others may pillory me for this, but as far as I'm concerned, the best writers in sf today are the women. Most of them are represented in this volume-Kate Wilhelm, Ursula Le Guin, Josephine Saxton, Lee Hoffman, Joanna-and others were featured in the original Dangerous Visions- Dangerous Visions-Sonya Dorman, Carol Emshwiller, Miriam Allen deFord. Others will make their appearances in The Last Dangerous Visions The Last Dangerous Visions. Now when I say I think the ladies are the best of us currently, I'm quick to add I don't even care to make the cop-out reservation that held for so many years. It went like this: "This Leigh Brackett/C. L. Moore/Katherine Maclean/Margaret St. Clair/E. Mayne Hull (fill in the appropriate name for your own past sins, guys) is a h.e.l.luva writer. She writes so good you think it's a man. You can't tell the difference."

Well, that was nonsense, too. Another glaring example of what we did to our women writers for so many years. We made them feel-and quite rightly-that their s.e.x would lobby against their receiving serious consideration or their work being judged from the git-go on the same plane as a man's. George Sand and George Eliot were not alone in having to a.s.sume male pseudonyms in self-defense. G.o.d knows what such charades did to the talents and personal lives of not only Amandine Aurore Lucie Dupin and Mary Ann Evans but all the potential s.h.i.+rley Jacksons and Dorothy Parkers against whose s.e.x restrictions were were placed. For no one knows how many hundreds of years in literature-in-general, and for almost fifty years in speculative fiction, we have denied ourselves perhaps placed. For no one knows how many hundreds of years in literature-in-general, and for almost fifty years in speculative fiction, we have denied ourselves perhaps half half the great writers who might have been. By insisting that women could only write well if they wrote as men, by hardboiling themselves, by subscribing to the masculine world-view, we have disenfranchised and even blotted out an infinitude of views of our world as seen through eyes different and wonderful. the great writers who might have been. By insisting that women could only write well if they wrote as men, by hardboiling themselves, by subscribing to the masculine world-view, we have disenfranchised and even blotted out an infinitude of views of our world as seen through eyes different and wonderful.

Happily, that situation is disappearing. Not nearly fast enough for me, but happening nonetheless. There is still a great deal of what was commonly referred to as "ladies' writing" going on, mostly in the major slicks intended to be read under hair dryers; but that is no more representative of the lofty level of quality attained by serious women writers than is the adolescent Ruark-muscle-flexing of stories in the "men's adventure magazines" typical of the best of serious writing being done by men. Hopefully both idioms will be recognized for what they are: sheer pandering to the lowest possible common denominators of fiction-need by women and men.

The reasons for my joy at the ever-stronger position being a.s.sumed by women writers in our genre, and my feelings that women's lib in general is a G.o.dsend not only for literature but for the world as a whole, are one and the same.

Men have had it their way for thousands of years. The machismo machismo concept, the dominant male att.i.tude, the picture of women as weak and essentially brainless, the deification of Mars as G.o.d of war and male supremacy...these have led us to a world of futility, hatred, bigotry, s.e.xual confusion, pollution and despair. Perhaps it is time the women took a turn at bat. They can certainly do no worse. And while I am not unmindful that women can proliferate even these unsavory cultural att.i.tudes (Mothers who send their sons out to battle with the admonition that they return concept, the dominant male att.i.tude, the picture of women as weak and essentially brainless, the deification of Mars as G.o.d of war and male supremacy...these have led us to a world of futility, hatred, bigotry, s.e.xual confusion, pollution and despair. Perhaps it is time the women took a turn at bat. They can certainly do no worse. And while I am not unmindful that women can proliferate even these unsavory cultural att.i.tudes (Mothers who send their sons out to battle with the admonition that they return with with their s.h.i.+elds or their s.h.i.+elds or on on them, and then pay homage to the ruins returned to them in plastic bags from Viet Nam by the display of tacky gold stars in living room windows, strike me as little better than ghouls), still I see more kindness and rationality in the average woman than in the average man. them, and then pay homage to the ruins returned to them in plastic bags from Viet Nam by the display of tacky gold stars in living room windows, strike me as little better than ghouls), still I see more kindness and rationality in the average woman than in the average man.

Surely I am in the truest tradition of the Utopian by conceiving of a world saved by women, and equally surely I'm laying an unfair responsibility on women to clean up what men have sullied. (I'm reminded of the young college student who, when advised sappily by a gray-haired elder that the salvation of the world rested with her and her "more aware generation," responded with the urging that the nice old gentleman go f.u.c.k himself: why is it up to me, she demanded? You had all the time in the world and you screwed it, and now it's up to me me to clean up your garbage dump. No thanks, dad. Her point was well taken.) to clean up your garbage dump. No thanks, dad. Her point was well taken.) Still, I cannot escape the feeling that if women had but the oneness of purpose of the ladies of Lysistrata Lysistrata, they could end war in half a day.

Don't tell me. I know. I'm expecting a n.o.bility of females that men certainly don't possess, and I'm expecting them all to think the same on major issues. I said I was an Utopian, didn't I?

But I can hope.

I can hope that the world, seen through the minds and eyes of women, will come to be a more pleasing and acceptable view than the one we men have proffered all these centuries. And it is this view, wholly new and different, because it comes from a different systemic orientation, that forms the core of the best new writing in sf and outside the field, by our pa.s.sionate and dedicated women writers.

Not the least of whom is Joanna Russ.

Terry Carr, editor of the Specials at Ace Books, once told me that Joanna's first novel, the excellent Picnic on Paradise Picnic on Paradise, was rejected by every major hardcover house before he saw it and snapped it up for publication. I may be wrong about the specifics, but I would be willing to bet that at least one of those hardcover editors, males all, unconsciously put the kibosh on the novel because it came from a woman. I have absolutely no evidence to back up that theory, and I don't even know to what houses the book was submitted, but I've been in this business a couple of minutes and I've encountered ingrained prejudices that are imbedded so cellularly they are wholly unknown to the men from whom they leach so much fairness and rationality.

How sad and silly those editors now seem, having pa.s.sed up a novel of clearly such eminence. Picnic on Paradise Picnic on Paradise was nominated for, and missed winning by a hair, the 1969 Nebula award as best novel of that year. With her first novel, Joanna Russ found herself in the first rank of major sf talents, up against compet.i.tion like James Blish, Philip K. d.i.c.k, Robert Silverberg, R. A. Lafferty, John Brunner and that year's winner, Alexei Pans.h.i.+n. was nominated for, and missed winning by a hair, the 1969 Nebula award as best novel of that year. With her first novel, Joanna Russ found herself in the first rank of major sf talents, up against compet.i.tion like James Blish, Philip K. d.i.c.k, Robert Silverberg, R. A. Lafferty, John Brunner and that year's winner, Alexei Pans.h.i.+n.

The promise of Picnic on Paradise Picnic on Paradise was kept with her second novel, was kept with her second novel, And Chaos Died And Chaos Died, in 1970. Stronger even than her first book, it too was nominated for a Nebula, and though once again it missed copping the award (making Joanna's work for the second time a bridesmaid rather than a bride), it was clear only a matter of time separates Joanna Russ from the prizes and the greater glory.

Born in the Bronx in 1937, Joanna Russ spent most of her infanthood being wheeled around the Botanical Gardens. Of her schooling she reports, "I got into Science High School but did not go, due to family insanity, and ended my four years somewhere else by becoming one of the top ten Westinghouse Science Talent Search winners in the country, for growing fungi that looked beautiful but made my mother hysterical because I stored them in the refrigerator. I went to Cornell very conventionally as an English major, but when I got out decided to stop being a good girl, and took a Master of Fine Arts degree in Playwriting at Yale Drama School."

Joanna wrote what she calls "bad plays" for three years and then, in 1959, had her first story published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, "Nor Custom Stale." Since that time she has sold several dozen short stories to markets as diverse as...o...b..t Orbit and and Manhattan Review Manhattan Review. She has done copy-editing, typing and copywriting for house organs, addressed cards for Office Temporaries, worked as a secretary to an irritable psychiatrist, and finally drifted into teaching. Drifting-mostly out of desperation, Joanna puts it-she taught something she knew nothing about, speech, at a community college in New York City, and knew it was the right thing after one day in the cla.s.sroom. She has been teaching Creative Writing at Cornell University for the last four years.

Joanna Russ has had four one-act plays produced: three, on one bill, Off-Off-Broadway and one at Princeton, as well as a radio play produced by WBAI, Pacifica's New York station, in 1967. Apparently feeling that there is more to the theater than the writing of "bad plays," Joanna has acted in community theater, Off-Off-Broadway productions, typed programs, run lights, sewed costumes and, one summer, she even made seventy-five pairs of Roman sandals for Joseph Papp's cast of Julius Caesar Julius Caesar, for the New York Shakespeare Festival.

All of the foregoing, of course, is background to an understanding and appreciation of the woman who wrote the story you are about to read. As such, it is relevant, but hardly important. What Joanna Russ was, or what she set out to be, is not what she is.

What she is, is a fine writer, getting better every year. What she's proving-and "When it Changed" will serve in large measure to further that proof-is that speculative fiction up till now has undisputedly belonged to the men, but squatter's rights to the territory simply aren't good enough any more. Not with talents like Joanna Russ around.

And further, she looks infinitely better in a bikini than any of the editors who rejected her novel.

WHEN IT CHANGED.

Joanna Russ Katy drives like a maniac; we must have been doing over 120 km/hr on those turns. She's good, though, extremely good, and I've seen her take the whole car apart and put it together again in a day. My birthplace on Whileaway was largely given to farm machinery and I refuse to wrestle with a five-gear s.h.i.+ft at unholy speeds, not having been brought up to it, but even on those turns in the middle of the night, on a country road as bad as only our district can make them, Katy's driving didn't scare me. The funny thing about my wife, though: she will not handle guns. She has even gone hiking in the forests above the 48th parallel without firearms, for days at a time. And that does does scare me. scare me.

Katy and I have three children between us, one of hers and two of mine. Yuriko, my eldest, was asleep in the back seat, dreaming twelve-year-old dreams of love and war: running away to sea, hunting in the North, dreams of strangely beautiful people in strangely beautiful places, all the wonderful guff you think up when you're turning twelve and the glands start going. Some day soon, like all of them, she will disappear for weeks on end to come back grimy and proud, having knifed her first cougar or shot her first bear, dragging some abominably dangerous dead beastie behind her, which I will never forgive for what it might have done to my daughter. Yuriko says Katy's driving puts her to sleep.

For someone who has fought three duels, I am afraid of far, far too much. I'm getting old. I told this to my wife.

"You're thirty-four," she said. Laconic to the point of silence, that one. She flipped the lights on, on the dash-three km. to go and the road getting worse all the time. Far out in the country. Electric-green trees rushed into our headlights and around the car. I reached down next to me where we bolt the carrier panel to the door and eased my rifle into my lap. Yuriko stirred in the back. My height but Katy's eyes, Katy's face. The car engine is so quiet, Katy says, that you can hear breathing in the back seat. Yuki had been alone in the car when the message came, enthusiastically decoding her dot-dashes (silly to mount a wide-frequency transceiver near an I.C. engine, but most of Whileaway is on steam). She had thrown herself out of the car, my gangly and gaudy offspring, shouting at the top of her lungs, so of course she had had to come along. We've been intellectually prepared for this ever since the Colony was founded, ever since it was abandoned, but this is different. This is awful.

"Men!" Yuki had screamed, leaping over the car door. "They've come back! Real Earth men!"

We met them in the kitchen of the farmhouse near the place where they had landed; the windows were open, the night air very mild. We had pa.s.sed all sorts of transportation when we parked outside, steam tractors, trucks, an I.C. flatbed, even a bicycle. Lydia, the district biologist, had come out of her Northern taciturnity long enough to take blood and urine samples and was sitting in a corner of the kitchen shaking her head in astonishment over the results; she even forced herself (very big, very fair, very shy, always painfully blus.h.i.+ng) to dig up the old language manuals-though I can talk the old tongues in my sleep. And do. Lydia is uneasy with us; we're Southerners and too flamboyant. I counted twenty people in that kitchen, all the brains of North Continent. Phyllis Spet, I think, had come in by glider. Yuki was the only child there.

Then I saw the four of them.

They are bigger than we are. They are bigger and broader. Two were taller than me, and I am extremely tall, 1m, 80cm in my bare feet. They are obviously of our species but off off, indescribably off, and as my eyes could not and still cannot quite comprehend the lines of those alien bodies, I could not, then, bring myself to touch them, though the one who spoke Russian-what voices they have!-wanted to "shake hands," a custom from the past, I imagine. I can only say they were apes with human faces. He seemed to mean well, but I found myself shuddering back almost the length of the kitchen-and then I laughed apologetically-and then to set a good example (interstellar amity, I thought) did "shake hands" finally. A hard, hard hand. They are heavy as draft horses. Blurred, deep voices. Yuriko had sneaked in between the adults and was gazing at the men the men with her mouth open. with her mouth open.

He turned turned his his head-those words have not been in our language for six hundred years-and said, in bad Russian: head-those words have not been in our language for six hundred years-and said, in bad Russian: "Who's that?"

"My daughter," I said, and added (with that irrational attention to good manners we sometimes employ in moments of insanity), "My daughter, Yuriko Janetson. We use the patronymic. You would say matronymic."

He laughed, involuntarily. Yuki exclaimed, "I thought they would be good-looking! good-looking!" greatly disappointed at this reception of herself. Phyllis Helgason Spet, whom someday I shall kill, gave me across the room a cold, level, venomous look, as if to say: Watch what you say. You know what I can do Watch what you say. You know what I can do. It's true that I have little formal status, but Madam President will get herself in serious trouble with both me and her own staff if she continues to consider industrial espionage good clean fun. Wars and rumors of wars, as it says in one of our ancestors' books. I translated Yuki's words into the man's the man's dog-Russian, once our dog-Russian, once our lingua franca lingua franca, and the man the man laughed again. laughed again.

"Where are all your people?" he said conversationally.

I translated again and watched the faces around the room; Lydia embarra.s.sed (as usual), Spet narrowing her eyes with some d.a.m.ned scheme, Katy very pale.

"This is Whileaway," I said.

He continued to look unenlightened.

"Whileaway," I said. "Do you remember? Do you have records? There was a plague on Whileaway."

He looked moderately interested. Heads turned in the back of the room, and I caught a glimpse of the local professions-parliament delegate; by morning every town meeting, every district caucus, would be in full session.

"Plague?" he said. "That's most unfortunate."

"Yes," I said. "Most unfortunate. We lost half our population in one generation."

He looked properly impressed.

"Whileaway was lucky," I said. "We had a big initial gene pool, we had been chosen for extreme intelligence, we had a high technology and a large remaining population in which every adult was two-or-three experts in one. The soil is good. The climate is blessedly easy. There are thirty millions of us now. Things are beginning to s...o...b..ll in industry-do you understand?-give us seventy years and we'll have more than one real city, more than a few industrial centers, full-time professions, full-time radio operators, full-time machinists, give us seventy years and not everyone will have to spend three quarters of a lifetime on the farm." And I tried to explain how hard it is when artists can practice full-time only in old age, when there are so few, so very few who can be free, like Katy and myself. I tried also to outline our government, the two houses, the one by professions and the geographic one; I told him the district caucuses handled problems too big for the individual towns. And that population control was not a political issue, not yet, though give us time and it would be. This was a delicate point in our history; give us time. There was no need to sacrifice the quality of life for an insane rush into industrialization. Let us go our own pace. Give us time.