The Toynbee Convector by Ray Bradbury

The Toynbee Convector
By Ray Bradbury
Copyright 1988

The Toynbee Convector
A journalist is excited to be interviewing the world’s one and only time traveler on his 130th birthday and on the day in a future passed that he arrived in a distant time to find that man has conquered the demons of pollution, war, international strife, and bad economies. The journalist, confident he is getting the story of a lifetime, finds the story isn’t quite what he thought.

One could see the twist coming, but it was nonetheless an enjoyable morality tale told the way Bradbury tells them best. This was an episode of the Ray Bradbury Theater.

Trapdoor
A woman awakens to find a doorway to an attic that she’d never noticed before even though she’d lived in the house for ten years. She’s afraid to go into the attic because it seems to be inhabited by rodents. She calls an exterminator who finds the job to big for him. . .

This was a rather banal story. Not loathsome, but below par for Bradbury.

On the Orient North
A middle aged nurse has a chance meeting with a ghost – a corporeal ghost – as she travels north on the Orient Express. She pities him because he is dying a slow and miserable “death.” He is dying because, in the modern world, embracing the rational has squeezed out faith in what we cannot see. The nurse sets out with the ancient, stately being to find that faith and belief in ghosts that will sustain him.

This was a fantastic tale, worthy of being ranked among Bradbury’s best. The ghost as a sympathetic, lonely creature is nothing new. But Bradbury puts a delightfully refreshing twist on it by adding social commentary about the death of imagination in an increasingly secular world. This story was made into one of the finest episodes in the six year run of the Ray Bradbury Theater.

One Night in Your Life
A newly divorced man heads east from Los Angeles en route to New York to start his life over. As he contemplates the misery of his marriage that was, he finds a young woman wandering along the side of the road outside a small Iowa town. He stops and passes the day – just one day – with the woman of his dreams.

There are a couple themes here common in Bradbury stories. The man is miserable in Los Angeles with his wife who loves the big city. He enjoys driving his convertible along the open vistas of America. His wife hates it. Finding happiness in the openness of middle America is a common thread in Bradbury stories. The other is the pure happiness that is limited in its time by a supernatural force. This is a wistful and romantic story.

West of October
The matriarch of a farm family has the power to send her family member on adventures by transporting their souls into the bodies of others. She transports her two young nephews to explore the minds of inmates of a nearby insane asylum. While they are gone, their bodies are destroyed in a fire. The woman must deposit their souls into the head of their grandfather until new bodies can be located for them. The boys adolescent fantasies torture and embarrass their grandfather who is driven nearly mad.

Imagine being an old man with two adolescents living inside your brain! Bradbury weaves a fanciful tale that is humorous, a bit racy (at least for Bradbury), and original.

The Last Circus
Two boys hear that a circus is coming to town. As one of the boys talks excitedly of the circus at breakfast, the boy’s father laments the development of ever increasingly powerful atom bombs. The boys go to the circus and take in all of the acts. After the circus is over, they watch as the workers take down the tents, pack their gear, and head off for the next destination. As they walk home, one of the boys, perhaps pondering his father’s worry of the growing atomic menace, tells his buddy there will be no more circuses. This was the last.

I think we’re supposed to get from this story that atomic war is coming to wipe out the world, and therefore there will be no more circuses. The link between the father’s lamentations and the boy’s conclusion is tenuous, but it is there.

The Laurel and Hardy Love Affair
A slightly overweight man and a slightly undersized woman meet at a cocktail party and instantly fall in love. The call each other Stan and Ollie and we never learn their real names. For a year, they rejoice in their love and fondly embrace their repartee of the old movie duo. However, Stan decides she wants a commitment which Ollie is not willing to give, and she leaves, promising to come back to the steps where Laurel and Hardy performed their famous piano moving sequence once each year to see him. Ollie shows up at the appointed time for a couple years, but Stan doesn’t show. He skips a couple years, then goes back. He finds a bottle of champagne with a note from Stan saying she won’t be returning. Years later, they pass each other in a Parisian street by chance, each accompanied by their respective families. As they pass, Ollie says to Stan, “This is another fine mess you’ve gotten me into,” and keeps walking.

This is a romance story pure and simple and Bradbury writes a few of these which are always passable and sometimes good. He rewrote and retitled it for the Ray Bradbury Theater and injected a sinister supernatural element which made the screen version better.

I Suppose You Are Wondering Why We Are Here?
A man prepares a fine feast at a restaurant for his parents who reside just up the road – in a cemetery. They are coming back for a visit and to tell him something. They tell him that he bores them.

I love Ray Bradbury. I really do. But sometimes, there’s just no point. This is one of those instances.

Lafayette, Farewell
A World War I airman, getting on in years repeatedly walks into his next door neighbor’s home, mistaking it for his own. He often sits and reminisces fondly of his former comrades in arms like Eddie Rickenbacker. But on this night, as he nears the end of his life, he wants to honor his enemies, including Baron von Richtofen, who he says fought honorably and bravely.

This was a story that provided an interesting commentary on the nature of war and who actually does the fighting. Most soldiers in World War I didn’t know Kaiser Wilhelm from Hoyt Wilhelm (yes, I know it was before Hoyt Wilhelm’s time, but you get the idea). They had no political ideology – just a job to do. One can admire the honor and glory of a vanquished foe.

Banshee
A screenwriter reports to his director’s home deep in the moors of Ireland with his latest submission. The director is a boastful, arrogant man who talks constantly of his conquests over women. As the director and screenwriter talk, they can hear a plaintive wail out in the fog. The director says it’s the wail of a Banshee and invites the young screenwriter to investigate. The screenwriter finds the pitiful creature bemoaning being used and jilted by a resident of that home a century prior. She longs for revenge. The screenwriter convinces her that the current occupant is deserving of a little revenge on behalf of all women used by cads.

This was a taut, well paced story with sufficient character development in its scant pages to make the reader want to see a little vengeance dished out by the undead woman. The story served as an episode of the Ray Bradbury Theater.

Promises, Promises
A man shows up at his mistress’s door to tell her that his daughter has nearly died of a head injury sustained in a fall at home. Whilst she clung to live in the hospital, he prayed and promised God he’d give up the thing must precious to him in the world in exchange for his daughter’s life – his mistress.

This is purely mainstream fiction and a passable story. It is a commentary on one of the many ways people find their way to faith.

The Love Affair
One of the last Martians left after the chicken pox epidemic admires from afar a young earth woman who inhabits a lonely radio outpost on the surface of Mars. He revels in her beauty, but is certain that, if he makes his presence known or makes contact, he will fall prey to the same disease as did most of his people.

It’s always fun to revisit Mars with Ray Bradbury. This Martian is like Ylla from the first installment in The Martian Chronicles. He is attracted to humans.

One for His Lordship, and One for the Road
A British lord with the greatest wine cellar known to man dies. His will stipulates that he indeed will take it with him and the minister starts to pour the rare vintages over his casket in his grave. But a careful reading of the will by the patrons of a nearby bar reveals that it need not go with him in any precise form. They begin to partake of his stock, promising to leave it with him.

As the saying goes with beer and wine, you don’t own it, you rent it. A humorous innuendo here.

At Midnight, in the Month of June
A serial killer stalks and attacks his last victim. As he wraps up his crime, he thinks back to games of hide and seek he played as a child and how accomplished he was at hiding from the seeker. Now, he decides it’s time for all in free. He leaves clear clues at his last crime scene and toddles off to an all night diner for some milk and graham crackers – his favorite childhood treat.

This was a creepy story that was a delight to read. Serial killers of various kinds have been done to death by horror writers. Leave it to Bradbury to find the fresh take, linking the heinous deed to a childhood game.

Bless Me, Father, for I Have Sinned
A priest awakens in the middle of the night, certain that someone is coming to confess. He dresses and walks to the church. Sure enough, a penitent comes to the confessional and confesses a childhood sin. The priest finds this old man’s sin to be very much like his own from years past.

This was a Christmas story. And like all Christmas stories, it is about redemption and forgiveness. No one is ever going to compare it to A Christmas Carol, but it’s a well told tale nonetheless.

By the Numbers!
A man on a train sees a stranger who immediately reminds him of an incident years before at a hotel when he observed a hotel maintenance man who had a strange and methodical means of disciplining his son. The man learns that, in the end, that rigid discipline didn’t pay off for either the father or the son.

There’s nothing supernatural in this tale, but it is indeed strange. Perhaps a commentary on what can happen if excessive discipline is taught to a child.

A Touch of Petulance
A man on a train meets himself, 25 years older. His older self has come back to tell him that, 25 years from now, he’ll murder his wife. His wife will drive him insane with her petty whining. The younger man, newly married man, is incredulous, claiming he loves his wife dearly. He invites his older self home to see.

Was expecting a twist here that never came. But the last sentence makes the story work. This story was redrafted for an episode of the Ray Bradbury Theater.

Long Division
A man arrives at his former home to divide up the marital property as he and his wife finalize their divorce. When he arrives, she finds that she has already decided who gets what books. They argue over and trade books for hours. Finally, after hours of haggling, the man prepares to leave and reminds his wife that, at some point, they will have to discuss who gets the children.

Some people really love their books! Of course, I don’t love them as much as my children, but I do take very good care of my books and don’t lend them out easily. When I finally have to part with a volume, I worry it might go someplace where the owner will fold pages to mark places or worse yet, lay the book face down to mark a place.

Come, and Bring Constance
A man receives an invitation to attend a self help seminar. At the bottom is scrawled, “Come, and bring Constance.” Problem is, his wife’s name isn’t Constance. Sometimes he has trouble remembering his wife’s name, but he knows it isn’t Constance. The wife wants to know who Constance is. When Constance arrives on her doorstep, she finds out.

This story didn’t seem to have a point, a theme, or underlying message. A rare swing and a miss from Bradbury.

Junior
An elderly man awakens to find that he has the first erection he’s had in years. He calls three elderly women with whom he used to cavort in his salad days to come over and admire it.

Bradbury uses G-rated language to tell a PG-13 story just wonderfully! I don’t dig reading comedy, but Bradbury hits the mark here.

The Tombstone
A man and a woman are traveling and stop by a boarding house to spend the night. The room they have reserved has a tombstone in the middle of it. The proprietor explains that the room’s last tenant was a stonecutter who carved tombstones and had left this one behind because he misspelled the name. The woman is upset, convinced the room is haunted, but her husband makes her stay. In the middle of the night, the stonecutter returns to claim his stone. He has located a recently deceased for whom the stone will serve perfectly.

I don’t know if this was a story Bradbury wrote in the 1980s for this book or if it was an older one from the 1950s or 60s. It has a retro feel to it. The woman is hysterical like many women from 1950s literature. The couple is staying at a boarding house (who stayed at boarding houses in the 1980s?). Even the language was somewhat archaic. It was a story best enjoyed by a younger audience. This story was an episode in the final year of the Ray Bradbury Theater.

The Thing at the Top of the Stairs
A traveling man decides to stop by his old home town of Green Town, IL. While there, he visits the house in which he grew up. It now stands vacant. He goes inside to confront the not-quite disbelieved imaginary monster of his childhood.

This was an undertold story. There was a lot to work with here and Bradbury gives us the bare minimum to make it interesting. Stephen King once stated that Bradbury over wrote much of his work. The story and the monster had so much more room for development to make a truly terrifying tale. It's interesting that as I envisioned this story unfolding, I envisioned it in black and white, perhaps linking it in my own mind to The Twilight Zone for which it would have made an excellent episode.

Colonel Stonesteel’s Genuine Home-made Truly Egyptian Mummy
A bored little boy appeals to an old man to help him make the final days of summer interesting and exciting. The old World War I veteran builds an fake mummy out of materials from around the house. The kid plants the mummy in a field. When it is discovered, excitement ensues.

This was not a terribly interesting tale, but it had a moral. Life’s excitement is not generated by the events around you, but what you make of those events. This story was rewritten and retitled for the Ray Bradbury Theater.

Of the Bradbury collections I've read, this one was the weakest. It had one truly great story and several good ones. Bradbury rarely produces a clunker, but there are a couple here.

One can't help but wonder if Bradbury wrote many of these stories with an eye on the television screen since, at the time this book went into publication, his television show was in full swing on HBO.

The Toynbee Convector is certainly not one of his best works. But it is worth reading -- especially for hardcore Bradbury fans.

Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness in the West

Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness in the West
By Cormac McCarthy
Copyright 1985

Cormac McCarthy’s story – such as it is – tells the tale of The Kid and exploits with the notorious Glanton Gang who hunted Apache Indians for fun and profit in Mexico following the U.S. -- Mexican War. The book is a very loose tale and might be called a character study except that the principle characters are absent for long periods during the narrative.

The book opens with The Kid (we never know his name which is typical in a McCarthy novel) being born in Tennessee during the Leonids Meteor Shower. In the next scene, he is older and attends a tent revival. A strange, hairless, albino like man enters the tent and accuses the preacher of having sex with a goat and a young girl. The man’s accusations stir the crowd at the revival into a frenzy and they attack and kill the preacher.

Flash forward a few more years, and The Kid is an older teenager or a young adult making his way toward the Texas territory The kid first joins a group of Army men whose filibuster against Indians roving the Mexican landscape meets with doom. He and a pal then join the Glanton Gang.

The Glantons were just the sort of people the American government were trying to keep out of the Texan territory and Mexico following the war. They killed in impunity. They were hired by locals to take care of local Indian problems and they hunted Indians, killing every Apache man, woman, and child they find. The Glanton Gang actually existed and McCarthy is said to have drawn on a semi-historical account of the Glanton Gang raids.

With the Glanton Gang rides The Judge – or Judge Holden. McCarthy makes us believe that there is something extra-human or supernatural about Judge Holden. When the men are holding off attacking Apache, they run low on gunpowder. Standing at the edge of a volcano, upon the brimstone, the Judge concocts a form of gunpowder using the sulpher and other minerals there. The key ingredient is urine. When they load their rifles with Holden’s gunpowder, they never miss a single shot.

Also traveling with the Glanton Gang is an ex-priest named Tobin (he was actually just a novitiate and never an actual priest) whose company The Kid enjoys. Both are fascinated with the Judge and his peculiar habits of walking around the Mexican sun naked, his white flesh exposed to the sun and his need to catalogue and log everything they see.

As far as a story, it’s pretty thin. The gang goes one place and they kill and scalp Indians. Then they go another place and kill and scalp Indians. They arrive at a town and they get drunk and trash the place before moving on to the next town to get drunk and trash the place. Most of the events of the book could be placed in any order and the story would not have changed.

McCarthy’s story is violent beyond comprehension. Kids are raped and murdered. The blood and violence flow freely through McCarthy’s highly intricate prose that often lead you to rereading entire paragraphs to grasp the action.

Finally, the gang seizes a ferry from some white men. They operate the ferry for awhile at a great profit, but are attacked by Yuma Indians who kill most of the gang and scatter the rest. The Kid wanders the Arizona-Mexican borderlands for awhile until he encounters the Tobin and another buddy. They encounter Judge Holden, but in the Judge’s mind, their interests no longer lie together and he tries to kill them to take their guns and gold. The Judge kills Tobin, but The Kid eventually make it to San Diego where he is arrested.

The Judge arrives a few days later and visits The Kid in jail. Judge Holden tells The Kid that he has told the authorities that The Kid was responsible for leading the atrocities carried out by the Glanton Gang. The Kid eventually reveals to his jailers where they can find the wealth amassed by the gang and they set him free. He then wanders about, eventually making his way to Los Angeles to coincidently be on hand when two of his old traveling buddies are hanged for their crimes in Mexico.

We then flash forward to 1878 – almost 40 years into the future. The Kid is now a man past middle age and McCarthy now call him, “The Man.” He is working as a mercenary in the American southwest.

One evening, he enters a saloon and finds his old friend, Judge Holden. They talk about their days of hunting Indians and Judge Holden declares the Man to be a disappointment and failure for holding pity and mercy in his heart for a heathen race. The Man tells the Judge that he’s nothing. The Man then leaves the bar and goes to the privy where he is surprised to find Judge Holden in the privy, naked, waiting for him. The Judge kills the man. Holden then returns, under the Leonids Meteor Shower, to the bar to join the whores in dance.

An epilogue follows that makes no sense and seems to have no bearing on the story at all.

This was the book of the month for our book club and I was the guy who nominated it. I nominated it because Cormac McCarthy is held in such high regard by so many readers and this was supposed to be his best work. I thought The Road was better.

I have mixed emotions about Blood Meridian. I am glad I read it. It made me reach intellectually to grasp McCarthy’s arcane prose. I finally decided to quit consulting the dictionary for words I didn’t know lest I never finish the book. It is good and proper to challenge one’s intellect in such a way occasionally.

I find McCarthy's disregard for standard punctuation to be pretentious bullshit. He doesn't use quotes and he doesn't use apostrophes for contractions. I read somewhere that he thinks these little marks clutter up a page. I think the key broke off his keyboard.

But I did not enjoy the book. When I read fiction, I want a good story. I don’t enjoy character studies which is why I assiduously avoid Hemmingway. Also, when I read fiction, I don’t want to have to work to hard at it. A story that challenges the intellect is fun. A story that scares you, makes you laugh, or moves you in some way is great. This book’s story was incredibly thin. There’s not a lot of there, there.

Most of the book club agreed with this assessment. The only person entirely captivated by it was the English professor in our group who was kind enough to explain to us the allusions to Faust, The Heart of Darkness, and others. It was his third reading of the book, so he knew it well going into the reading for book club.

I saw The Judge as the Devil and McCarthy put in front of the reader all of the traditional satanic symbols for the reader. The fire and brimstone of the volcano rim, the red desert setting, a goat off in the distance. Judge Holden was Mephistopheles as far as I was concerned.

Perhaps he was supposed to be the embodiment of American attitudes toward the American Indian during the 19th century. That Americans perpetrated the greatest evils ever committed by our government and our culture upon the American Indian is not in doubt. Perhaps that was the allusion McCarthy was going for.

I know this book is held in high regard by American literati. Time ranked it 22nd on its list of 100 great novels of the 20th century. I wouldn’t call it a great novel or even a great book. I won’t read it again, but I’m glad I read it once.

Supermind by A.E. Van Vogt

Supermind
By A.E. Van Vogt
Copyright 1977

This book is what is called a fix-up of three short stories written by Van Vogt in his career. The stories are redrafted, incorporating new material to link them. In the case of this muddled, confusing book, the short stories should have been left alone because, as hard as Van Vogt works to meld them into a story, the stories are too dissimilar and incongruous to make for a good short novel. The three stories in the fix-up are Asylum, first published in 1943; The Proxy Intelligence first published in 1968; and Research Alpha, first published in 1965.

The “story” centers around beings of advanced I.Q. in the galaxy and how they migrate. Spanning the story is an organization based on earth called Research Alpha which is a repository of the knowledge of the Great Galactics whose role it was to protect lesser developed solar systems from being overwhelmed by greater ones.

In the first segment of the story, two fugitive Dreeghs – energy vampires that suck blood and use energy – land on Earth. They are in dire need of blood and attack two humans right away to restore themselves. They then bury their spaceship under a New York restaurant where they dwell.

The murders shock the people on earth because murder is almost unheard of since Dr. Ungarn – currently residing on an asteroid near the Jupiter moon of Europa – devised serum to rid most of mankind of its murderous impulses. The story is investigated and reported by one of the world’s most recognized reporters – Bill Leigh. Soon after the publication of his article, he is invited by a stranger to his favorite New York restaurant to dine in a private room.

Leigh arrives and soon is joined by a young woman who hastily takes him through a secret door to a subterranean chamber where the Dreeghs are living. The young woman confronts them and warns the Dreegh that Earth is to be left alone. As a lower, fugitive race, the Dreegh will be dealt with most harshly.

Leigh is stunned and isn’t sure how to report this story and make it believable. But before he can, he is kidnapped by the Dreegh who use their mental powers to convince him to travel to the asteroid where Dr. Ungarn lives to destroy him and his daughter. The Dreegh suspect that the Ungarns are agents of the Great Galactics who will prevent them from settling and taking over Earth.

Leigh manages to hitch a ride on the freighter that routinely transports supplies to Dr. Ungard’s laboratory near Jupiter with no idea what his real intentions are, other than to find the girl who he met on Earth that he is sure is Patricia Ungard. They arrive on the asteroid and just as they are meeting with the Ungards, the two Dreegh arrive and capture them. They inform the group that more Dreegh are on the way and that this vanguard against their invasion of this solar system will be destroyed.

As the Dreegh prepare to draw the life force out of their three victims, a powerful mental force awakens in Leigh and he is able to slay the Dreegh before they can harm Patricia or her father. He is then contacted by a higher intelligence that informs him that he has never really been Bill Leigh, reporter. He learns that it is he who is one of the supreme beings of the Great Galactics. Leigh, unable to comprehend all this, jumps into a small space shuttle and flees to earth, ending the first portion of the book.

In a chapter in between, two scientists at Research Alpha discuss the events that have just unfolded and the awakening of one of the Great Galactics, thought to be gone from material existence. They see Leigh’s victory over the two Dreegh as a positive development in their quest to raise the I.Q’s of certain beings to that of the supreme beings.

The second phase of the story opens with the freighter captain, who was captured and bound by the Dreegh on the asteroid, escaping his bonds. He joins Patricia and her father who are awaiting the arrival of Patricia’s betrothed – a man she has never met before. When he arrives, it turns out he is an advance scout for the Dreegh invasion party.

The Dreegh captures the Ungards and Captain Hanardy. The Dreegh drains some life force from Hanardy and puts him into a stupor. Nine more Dreegh arrive and they appropriate Hanardy’s freighter to stage an invasion of the spaceport on Europa where they plan to tap into the blood supply of the humans there.

But like Leigh, the somnolent Hanardy finds a great intelligence inside himself – intelligence planted there by Research Alpha – and he is able to seize control of the minds of the Dreegh. After they take blood from almost 200 residents of Europa, Hanardy acts to drive them away. Using his vast mental power, he propels the Dreeghs thousands of light years away from our solar system.

In the third segment, which bears upon the previous two not at all, a Research Alpha scientist decides to test a serum he has developed to expedite the evolution of man’s mental abilities. He first injects it into a typist who works for the laboratory’s chief administrator, then into her boyfriend. He hopes to watch them evolve together and perhaps create offspring.

The young woman immediately notices she is smarter and more mentally sharp. She suspects that the strange pinch she felt on her shoulder when the doctor was standing behind her has something to do with what is happening to her. Her boyfriend, whose shot didn’t quite take, becomes lethargic and ill.

The scientist keeps his subjects under close observation and decides to inject them with a second, higher level serum. The young woman’s mental powers increase dramatically and draw the attention of the head of Research Alpha and his assistant who try to monitor the woman’s evolution to determine if she will act as an agent of good or an agent of evil.

The boyfriend also receives a second injection, but his condition deteriorates. The scientist decides he must die and tries to kill him by drowning him. But the leaders are able to save him and bring him back to the laboratory.

Meanwhile, the young typist finds her new mental abilities astounding. She is able to send her consciousness out into the universe to observe cosmic events. She can delude people into believing whatever it is she would have them believe. While she is not evil, she is undisciplined and the heads of Research Alpha – they themselves mentally superior beings – decide they must reign her in. They set a trap for her, using the boyfriend as bait, to bring her back to the lab.

She returns to the lab, knowing that the snare is set, but not caring. She has enough humanity in her to be concerned about her boyfriend. The lab director shows her her boyfriend who has physically devolved into a 22 inch tall, dwarvish creature. The lab director explains that the serum effects the genetic code of every person differently because every person has a different genetic code.

She asks her old boss what he has planned for her. He says that there is a man here on Earth that she will marry and mate with to start a race of Great Galactics on Earth. His name is William Leigh.

There ends the story.

I would like to read Asylum as a stand alone story because its elements of intergalactic vampires coming to Earth to take over has great appeal to me. The story was well written except where obviously new material was injected into it to link it and transition it to the second phase of the story.

The Proxy Intelligence might have well been a decent stand alone story. Here, it is a mishmash of the original with a great deal of obviously injected and incongruous new material that makes it disjointed and hard to follow. Van Vogt may have developed the character of Patricia in his original story as a strong willed, self sufficient woman. In Supermind, she is that at times, but at other times hopelessly weak and indecisive for no explicable reason.

Research Alpha – even in this fix up book – is a great stand alone story and reveals what a great teller of short stories A.E. Van Vogt was. The characters are interesting and complex. In most stories of this sort, we see illustrated the old maxim of how absolute power corrupts absolutely. In the case of the young typist, it does corrupt her to some degree because she enjoys her omniscience. However, she retains her essential humanity and makes conscious decisions not to harm anyone. While it is long for a short story, it is well paced with no wasted words or actions.

Van Vogt is one of the more prolific writers of the Golden Age of Science Fiction. While many names from that era like Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, and Isaac Asimov are recognized by most people today, Van Vogt has faded from the notice of even most science fiction fans.

Van Vogt wrote action oriented stories with thin characters. This was acceptable in the pulps of the 1940s and 1950s. More refined readers of today expect more. Bradbury, Asimov, and even the technically oriented Heinlein developed greater characters and greater settings for their tales. They also incorporated human emotion, human heroism, and human frailties into their tales. Van Vogt comes up short in this area most of the time.

I have several of these thin pulp books on my bookshelf authored by Van Vogt. While horribly dated, some are quite enjoyable. Supermind does not rank among Van Vogt’s enjoyable books. It reads like an author who has quickly and haphazardly pieced together unrelated stories to get a book to market.

Book to Radio: There Will Come Soft Rains

Book to Radio: There Will Come Soft Rains
By Ray Bradbury from his book, The Martian Chronicles
Adapted to radio by George Lefferts
Dimension X broadcast, June 17, 1950

In June of 1950, radio show Dimension X featured two stories by one of the “new young writers of science fiction, Ray Bradbury.” The first of these was There Will Come Soft Rains. The other was Zero Hour from The Illustrated Man which I will review later

There is no reference in the script to Mars. This empty house is on a post-atomic Earth.

The story opens with the real estate agent pitching the house and all its features in the futuristic year of 1980. The house came equipped with self warming blankets, beds that make themselves, talking book recordings, "mouse things" that take away all the dust. Set the menu on the oven for the week and it will prepare all of your meals.

The automated house goes about its day, preparing breakfast. The writer of the script and the director demonstrate real talent in the presentation with the discordant rhymes the house chants, backed with discordant music as the house announces the time and the tasks to be performed.

Narrator Norman Rose goes on to describe the dark shadows scorched onto the walls of the house – remnants of the bodies scorched into the surface by atomic energy.

The narrator’s voice picks up speed. The house performs its tasks ever faster until evening arrives when the home finally asks which poem the residents would like to hear. Not hearing a response, it selects Sarah Teasdale’s There Will Come Soft Rains. The pace slows as Teasdale's soothing prose unfolds.

However, a tree falls outside and spills solvent onto the stove. The house catches fire. The house begs for help. It begins to maniacally carry out its tasks before the wiring burns. It eventually crashes into dust and rubble.

The story ends as Teasdale poem ends – with no one mourning the passing of mankind.

Norman Rose is a gifted radio voice talent and his narration, growing more frantic with the discordance going on behind him makes this absolutely creepy. It deviates far from Bradbury’s text, but writer, George Lefferts shows his genius in taking this chapter from Bradbury’s book and making it into something disturbing.

Book to Radio: Mars is Heaven

Book to Radio: Mars is Heaven
by Ray Bradbury from his book, The Martian Chronicles
Adapted for radio by David Friedken
Escape! radio broadcast
Original Broadcast: June 2, 1950

Escape was the first radio show to adapt Ray Bradbury’s tale of the third mission to Mars to radio. To do so, they completely rewrote Bradbury’s story, changing it a great deal, but keeping the essential story intact.

The show was adapted for Escape by David Friedkin and starred Ben Wright.

The Escape broadcast opens with the news of the launch of the first manned mission to Mars (as opposed to the third). People of all faiths and creeds have come together to pray for the success of the mission and the astronauts aboard the rocket.

The characters from the crew are limited to the ship’s captain and the doctor who are the only two allowed to leave the ship. It is they who quickly discover that Mars bears a striking resemblance to their homes on earth. A resident tells them they are in Green Lake, Ohio.

The doctor finds his grandmother living in the house she lived in when he was a kid. She explains that Mars is a “second chance.” They soon hear a parade, complete with a brass band, leading the crew away from the ship. The Captain sees his old girlfriend among the crowd and decides to join her in an emotional reunion.

The Captain is sitting on the porch swing on a quiet summer evening when he starts to develop a hypothesis. He tells her, if the Martians wanted to manipulate the crew, they would use their memories and fondest desires to entrap them. The girlfriend tries to dissuade him. But when the Captain decides he’s got to talk to the doctor about his hypothesis, Phyllis turns on him and kills him.

After the astronauts have all been dispatched, the Martians hold a town meeting to analyze and discuss what has transpired.

This broadcast was the first of this Bradbury story (and perhaps the first of any Bradbury story), but it is also the weakest. The Dimension X and X Minus One broadcasts are far superior, relying on larger casts and sticking closer to the Bradbury story.

The Wounded Land by Stephen R. Donaldson

The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever
The Wounded Land
By Stephen R. Donaldson
Copyright 1980

Ten years have passed since Thomas Covenant defeated Lord Foul at Foul’s Creche and saved The Land. Now, he lives on his farm where he has resumed his writing career.
Linden Avery is a young physician with a tragic backstory. Her father committed suicide when she was just 10. She found him hanging from the attic rafters. Her mother lived out her years a slothful, self pitying creature who longed for death. She and Covenant will be linked in a new effort to save The Land now completely under the sway of Lord Foul.

Linden’s mentor, the chief of staff at the local hospital, beseeches her to visit Thomas Covenant and check on him. He is dealing with a problem which he refuses to divulge, but wants Linden to ascertain how he is doing. Linden reluctantly agrees.
On her way to Haven Farm, Linden notices that there are several people dressed in burlap and rags in town. They are holding signs that tell people they must repent now. As she turns into the drive leading to Covenant’s farm, she sees and old man standing alongside the drive, dressed in ochre robes. Upon Linden seeing him, he collapses to the ground.

Linden starts CPR and is able to resuscitate him. After regaining consciousness, the man whispers to her, “You will not fail, no matter how he may assail you.” He then disappears.

Startled and unnerved, she makes her way to Covenant’s house. As she stands at the door, waiting for Covenant to answer, she can hear the plaintive screams of a woman inside the house. Covenant answers the door and tells her to get lost, that he doesn’t want her help or her company. She tells him about the man in the ochre robe and Covenant is startled enough to let her into the house.

There, she finds Joan, Covenant’s ex-wife, bound to a bed, screaming and raving. Covenant is trying to care for her. Covenant releases one of her arms and she scratches him and then licks the blood from her nails. Joan apologizes, saying, “He’s in my head, Tom.”

Linden is horrified and insists that Joan be taken to a hospital. Covenant will not have it. He will take care of Joan – alone. Covenant tells Linden that Joan has recently had a breakdown. It started as a sudden devotion to religion. She took their son, left her parents’ house, and joined a commune. But she soon left, returning to the farm she once shared with Thomas Covenant and tried to claw him to pieces. Since then, Covenant has been caring for her while keeping her restrained. “He,” is using her Covenant tells Linden, to torture Covenant. Linden quickly comes to believe that Covenant himself is mentally ill.

She leaves Covenant’s house and travels down the drive toward the main road, her thoughts troubled by how the old man suddenly disappeared and by Covenant’s madness. Linden Avery, the cold and aloof physician whose life is dedicated to science and logic, must find the rational explanation to the riddle. She parks her car and heads back toward Covenant’s house on foot.

As she approaches the house, she sees that Covenant has company. An old man dressed in burlap tells Covenant that the master has demanded his soul and asks him to come. To Linden’s astonishment, Covenant goes willingly with the man.

They travel through the woods to a clearing. There, Linden sees men, women, and children, all dressed in burlap, standing around a stone alter. Staked to that alter is Joan Covenant. Thomas Covenant is brought forward and asked if he will take Joan’s place. Covenant does so willingly. He is placed on the alter.

Linden is horrified that Covenant is so willing to lay down his life. Just as the leader of the strange cult is preparing to plunge a knife into Covenant’s chest, she begins to scream. Her scream distracts the followers, but the knife continues its downward course into Covenant’s chest.

Covenant feels the knife pierce his chest. But before he can die, his once again summoned to the Land where he is greeted by Lord Foul’s voice, just as he was when he first ventured to the Land 10 years prior. Foul tells him he is now powerless and eventually, will willingly hand over the white gold wedding ring to him.

Covenant finds himself high atop Kevin’s Watch, just as before. However, Linden has made the trip with him. Her highly rational mind can’t grip what she’s seeing. Covenant tries to explain briefly where they are, but they are caught in a fierce electrical storm and cover is their first order of business.

They descend from Kevin’s Watch and are greeted by an old man who takes them to his lonely, remote stone home. He tells Covenant that, for generations, his father and his fathers before him for thousands of years have awaited the return of the White Gold Wielder. He tells Covenant he must put right what is wrong in the Land.

The old man says he must travel to Mithil Stonedown to tell the people that the White Gold Wielder has returned and sets off, leaving Covenant and Linden to wrap their minds around what has happened. Covenant immediately recognizes that he has no earth sense – no vision of what is right and what is corrupt in the Land as he did in his first journey here. Linden tries to cope with the fact that she does have earth sense. To her rational mind, it is nearly too much to bear to be able to see disease and corruption as she sees in Covenant’s leprosy.

Covenant decides to head off to Mithil Stonedown himself. As they depart, the find the old man slain by a knife in the back. Linden is nearly overcome with the horror of the corruption in the act. They continue to the stonedown. Once they arrive, they are immediately taken prisoner by the stonedowners and locked in a room without explanation.

After a few hours, they are summoned to the center of the village and surrounded by the stonedowners who simply stare silently at them. Covenant starts asking questions and making demands. All the while, they stonedowners look on without reaction.

Finally, a voice from the back demands that their blood be spilled. Another man says that he is the graveler of the stonedown and the ritual of silence is his to begin and end. When, in his stream of consciousness ramblings, Covenant mentions the name, Mhoram, the voice from the rear says that since Covenant has named the na-Mhoram as friends, he must die. He launches an attack. But the attack is quickly put down by the graveler using a glowing rock of power. The man is led away and Covenant and Linden are returned to their prison.

Linden says she saw utter corruptness in the man who tried to attack them. Covenant immediately recognizes by her description that the man was held by a Raver – one of Foul’s three disciples who can inhabit the body of the unsuspecting. He also recognizes the graveler’s stone as an orcrest –a magical stone that uses earth power.

The graveler joins them later that evening and tells them that they are to be sacrificed and their blood used to benefit the stonedown. The graveler, who introduces himself as Sunder, the son of the old man who greeted Covenant, says that the blood will be used to control the Sunbane so that the people can extract water and crops from the land which does not yield such without the spilling of blood.
Covenant explains to the young graveler that his father was right and using the man’s orcrest, is able to display the power of the white gold. Sunder is stunned. Covenant implores Sunder to help guide them to Revelstone so that Covenant may learn what went wrong and put it right.

Revelstone, Sunder tells Covenant that Revelstone is where the Clave, the controllers of the naMhoram make their home and the place from which the Sunbane emminates. Covenant insists upon going there. Convinced by Covenant’s display of power, Sunder agrees. They set off under the cover of darkness.

As they travel north along the dry bed of the Mithil River, Covenant learns how wicked the Sunbane is. Sunder must cut himself and draw blood to use his orcrest to summon water on days of desert sun. On days of the sun of pestilence, one must take cover out of the sun or stand on solid stone lest their flesh be corrupted and they converted into horrible monsters.

As they are traveling, Covenant is beset upon by a strange reptilian like humanoid that bites him and injects him with venom. Linden tries to extract the venom, but is unsuccessful. Sunder explains that the being who attacked Covenant was the man who tried to kill them back at Mithil Stonedown. As punishment, he was left to be corrupted under the sun of pestilence and became this creature.

The venom infects Covenant and he becomes ill. In his delirium, he is unable to control his wild magic. Through the use of treasure berries, Linden is able to nurse him back to health, but while the venom is dormant, it is still present.

As they come to the end of the Mithil River, Covenant shows them Andelain and tells them it is a place of beauty and wonder. Sunder is unwilling to enter Andelain, having heard tales of Andelain driving people mad. Covenant ventures forth to see if the Sunbane has infected Andelain as well as the rest of the land.

Covenant finds that the inherent beauty of the Land is still present in Andelain. He wanders about with the venom still coursing through his veins. He eventually encounters the last forrestal, his old friend Hile Troy. With Troy are all of Covenant’s dead from his previous time in the Land. Elena, Saltheart Foamfollower, Mhoram, and Bannor. Bannor implores Covenant to save his people whose plight is an abomination. They give him a gift, an ur-vile to accompany him. He is the last of his kind. The forrestal tells Covenant that his name is Vile, and his purpose is his own. However, he can be commanded just once to carry out Covenant’s wishes.

Covenant returns from Andelain to find his friends are gone. He tracks them to a nearby stonedown where he learns that they have been seized by the Clave and taken to Revelstone. He sets out to rescue his friends who have a large head start on him.
Soon, he is picked up by a rider of the Clave who bears him to Revelstone. There, the na-Mhoram profess to be the only protection between the Sunbane and total destruction of the Land. They invite Covenant to shed a little of his own blood to learn more about the Sunbane. He volunteers and is trapped. His blood flows freely into the banefire while he watches the history of the land unfold; how a raver took control of the lords and corrupted them and the land to create the Sunbane. He also learns that the blood that feeds the Banefire most potently is that of the Haruchi – the Bloodguard.

As his life force dwindles, the white gold, which he can no longer control or harness, kicks in. It wipes out the members of the Clave in the room and he is released. Delirious from blood loss, he only can think of his friends imprisoned in the dungeon. He heads there where he is able to free Linden and their friends as well as several Haruchai.

They head north from Revelstone to Glimmermere Lake which remains untouched by the Sunbane. There, Covenant recovers the Krill of Loric – a magical weapon effective against Ravers. Covenant then decides he must leave the land and search for the One Tree so that a new Staff of Law can be fashioned to help restore the Land to its former glory. Covenant, Linden, the ever silent and implacable Vile, and several Bloodguard head west toward Coerci – the home of the lost giants who died at the hands of the ravers thousands of years before.

As they near the coast, they encounter Giants who are part of an expedition seeking out a source of ill in the world Covenant convinces them that the only way to rid the world of the Sunbane is to use their ship and take him abroad so that he may find the One Tree. After much arguing and convincing, they agree.

The party heads for Coerci and the giants are horrified at the tale Covenant tells them about the giants willingly laying down their lives in shame at what had become of their three brothers. Covenant uses his white gold to bring forth the dead of Coerci and each completes the rite of Camora – a rite where giants immerse their flesh in fire to relieve guilt and anguish. The grief of the dead of Coerci is released and these new giants proclaim Covenant Giantfriend.

Covenant tells Sunder and Hollian – a stonedowner captured with Linden and the others, to take the Krill and return to the Land to fight the Sunbane. He promises to return with the Staff of Law to put things right. The book ends with Covenant and Linden setting sale with the giants, in search of the One Tree.

Donaldson gives us a whole new Land with this second trilogy. Juxtaposed against the Land as we knew it in the first trilogy, this is a vile place. Blood is shed to commit even small acts of survival. The weak are killed and bled so that their friends and neighbors can survive. Hostages are taken to Revelstone – once an icon of love of earthlore – to be bled to feed the Sunbane.

While Donaldson wrote from a few points of view in the first trilogy, it was clear that Covenant was the focal point of the story. In the second trilogy, we get a sense that Linden Avery is a greater focal point than is Covenant. She has earth sense. It is she that perceives and it is she that can reveal knowledge. Covenant, perhaps because he’s dead back in the real world – has not these abilities anymore.
Donaldson tries to make Linden an emotional cripple the equivalent of Covenant in the first trilogy and doesn’t quite get there. Yes, she is sullen, emotionally detached from other people, and excessively deliberative. But she lacks Covenant’s status as an anti-hero. There’s no reason to dislike Linden as there was with Covenant. Therefore, she is a weaker hero in this trilogy (so far) than was Covenant in the last.

There is a profound change to Thomas Covenant’s character in the second trilogy. He is much more proactive. In the first trilogy, everyone else laid out the plans and decided what was to be done. Covenant was always passive; going where he was told to go and complaining about his plight all the way.

In this book, it is he who is decisive, dictates action, and fights. Donaldson brings forward this transformation admirably. We learn how much Covenant has come to love the Land since he left it ten years before and how he has come to love those with whom he fought for its safety. The transformation of Covenant from a pitiful whiner (albeit effective anti-hero) into a decisive, heroic figure, is the most remarkable trait of the new trilogy.

Instead of transporting us back to the real world at the end of this book, we stay in the Land. This is good. While the first trilogy was superb in its execution, these seams in the story were a distraction. It is apparent that our entire story is going to take place in the Land – or at least in the world in which it exists.
The next book covers the search for the One Tree. It is aptly titled, The One Tree. In it, we will learn about other lands exist outside the Land and we will learn of the source of the Staff of Law – and Vain’s purpose.