Shiny Aliens, Atlanteans and Serendipitous Exiles from Space
Most of my reading lately has been taken up with George RR Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire as I try to catch up with the TV series and avoid spoilers (I'm into A Dance of Dragons), but a couple of events recently saw me in need of my e-reader as opposed to thick epic paperbacks. As a result I read two short stories from old pulps.
One was pretty dreadful if vaguely amusing. It was Hal K Wells' Cavern of the Shining Ones which appeared in Astounding back in 1932. The Shining Ones turn out to be a highly advanced alien race which came to Earth 10,000 years ago and went to war with the Atlanteans. They destroyed Atlantis but not before the Atlanteans had made the planet uninhabitable for them for 10,000 years. They went into suspended animation except for a small number who fled home so someone could come back one day and wake up the rest.
It has some moments of suspense early on, not highly effective but they're there. It also has a quite blood-thirsty battle, but it doesn't really fire and the plot is pretty weak.
The other story was more interesting; Judith Merril's Exile from Space. It was published in 1956 in Universe as a 'short novel' but I'm not sure it would even qualify as a novella these days. Regardless it was a well told story of the 'other' with some nice satire and social commentary. The exile of the title is the main character, a woman who comes to Earth for unknown reasons, sent by unknown others she just refers to as 'them'.
Much of the plot is taken up with rather mundane human experiences, most prominently a romance, but the exile's approach and insights are handled really well and make the piece a fun read. Merril also keeps a good level of intrigue as to who the woman is and neatly plants the suggestion that the whole story is true with some direct from the author narration.
I admit I also found reading this one slightly serendipitous as the observational style in some of the early passages reminded me of my City Sketches (shameless plug and link to the published copy of Sketch No 1 here). I find serendipity encouraging, so the City Sketches idea is certainly continuing. Eventually I'm hoping to put out a collection of them, interspersed with some photos and maybe some longer stories. The beauty of them is they're so short they don't take away from my bigger projects, particularly Hierophants' Fall which reached another milestone recently so progress continues.
Meanwhile, don't trust rude enigmatic scientists who wear goggles - they're probably shiny alien slugs hellbent on conquest - and keep your eyes open as you go about life, you never know what or who you're really looking at.
Keep dreaming!
One was pretty dreadful if vaguely amusing. It was Hal K Wells' Cavern of the Shining Ones which appeared in Astounding back in 1932. The Shining Ones turn out to be a highly advanced alien race which came to Earth 10,000 years ago and went to war with the Atlanteans. They destroyed Atlantis but not before the Atlanteans had made the planet uninhabitable for them for 10,000 years. They went into suspended animation except for a small number who fled home so someone could come back one day and wake up the rest.
It has some moments of suspense early on, not highly effective but they're there. It also has a quite blood-thirsty battle, but it doesn't really fire and the plot is pretty weak.
The other story was more interesting; Judith Merril's Exile from Space. It was published in 1956 in Universe as a 'short novel' but I'm not sure it would even qualify as a novella these days. Regardless it was a well told story of the 'other' with some nice satire and social commentary. The exile of the title is the main character, a woman who comes to Earth for unknown reasons, sent by unknown others she just refers to as 'them'.
Much of the plot is taken up with rather mundane human experiences, most prominently a romance, but the exile's approach and insights are handled really well and make the piece a fun read. Merril also keeps a good level of intrigue as to who the woman is and neatly plants the suggestion that the whole story is true with some direct from the author narration.
I admit I also found reading this one slightly serendipitous as the observational style in some of the early passages reminded me of my City Sketches (shameless plug and link to the published copy of Sketch No 1 here). I find serendipity encouraging, so the City Sketches idea is certainly continuing. Eventually I'm hoping to put out a collection of them, interspersed with some photos and maybe some longer stories. The beauty of them is they're so short they don't take away from my bigger projects, particularly Hierophants' Fall which reached another milestone recently so progress continues.
Meanwhile, don't trust rude enigmatic scientists who wear goggles - they're probably shiny alien slugs hellbent on conquest - and keep your eyes open as you go about life, you never know what or who you're really looking at.
Keep dreaming!
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