The Playboy Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy Read online

  ~ * ~

  The Playboy Book of

  Science Fiction and Fantasy

  Selected by the Editors of Playboy

  No copyright 2011 by MadMaxAU eBooks

  ~ * ~

  CONTENTS

  Preface

  The Fly george langelaan

  Blood Brother charles beaumont

  Love, Incorporated robert sheckley

  A Foot in the Door bruce jay friedman

  The Vacation ray bradbury

  The Never Ending Penny Bernard wolfe

  Bernie the Faust william tenn

  A Man for the Moon leland webb

  The Noise ken w. purdy

  The Killer in the TV Set bruce jay friedman

  I Remember Babylon arthur c. clarke

  Word of Honor robert bloch

  John Grant’s Little Angel walt grove

  The Fiend frederik pohl

  Hard Bargain alan e. nourse

  The Nail and the Oracle Theodore sturgeon

  After henry slesar

  December 28th Theodore l. thomas

  Spy Story robert sheckley

  Punch frederik pohl

  The Crooked Man charles beaumont

  Who Shall Dwell h. c. neal

  Double Take jack finney

  Examination Day henry slesar

  The Mission hugh nissenson

  Waste Not, Want Not john atherton

  The Dot and Dash Bird Bernard wolfe

  The Sensible Man avram davidson

  Souvenir J. g. ballard

  Puppet Show fredric brown

  The Room ray russell

  Dial “F” for Frankenstein arthur c. clarke

  ~ * ~

  PREFACE

  PRIOR TO 1954, science fiction and fantasy were almost totally restricted to specialized, small-circulation pulp magazines devoted exclusively to these two related genres. The big magazines—big in format, wealth, prestige and circulation— rarely gave room to such stories.

  What happened in 1954 to change all this? playboy happened. For the first time, a major periodical, a “slick” magazine, began to consistently publish extrapolative stories, realistically inexplicable tales—the entire spectrum of science fiction and fantasy. And, also for the first time, writers of this fiction found themselves in receipt of certain delightful, desirable things they had long lacked: (a) wide recognition and (b) money.

  More importantly, playboy offered them a chance to stretch their talents beyond the relatively narrow confines of the run-of-the-newsstand genre magazines with their arcane, in-groupish attitudes and the kind of overtechnical, picayune pickiness best illustrated by the solemn sci-fi buff who scorned The Martian Chronicles because Ray Bradbury unforgivably had the moons of Mars rising from the wrong horizons. Bradbury’s evocative story, The Vacation, in this book, probably would have been declined by the specialized magazines on the grounds of “not enough science.”

  Quality of writing, too, became a goal writers could take time to strive for, now that economic pressures were eased, and this attracted not only the stellar talents of the science-fiction and fantasy fields—the Sturgeons, the Pohls, the Tenns—but also writers of the so-called “mainstream,” such as Bruce Jay Friedman (see his A Foot in the Door and The Killer in the TV Set), Bernard Wolfe (represented here by The Never Ending Penny and The Dot and Dash Bird), Hugh Nissenson (The Mission), Leland Webb (A Man for the Moon) and many more. Some writers found playboy such a welcome haven that they graduated from the little genre publications and began to write almost exclusively for our pages, as did the late Charles Beaumont, on hand here with a light fantasy the sober pulps would have found “too frivolous” (Blood Brother) and a science-fiction story that would have shocked them ( The Crooked Man).

  This latter attraction—freedom from censorial taboos—is invigorating to writers and readers accustomed to the paradoxical prudishness of an otherwise adventurous field. For, as Kingsley Amis points out in his book, New Maps of Hell, “Science-fiction writers are evidently satisfied with the sexual status quo . . . the sentimental consensus that this is perhaps the only part of human nature that can never be changed ... is a disappointing trait in science-fiction writers.” In the pages ahead, Robert Sheckley’s Love, Incorporated is just one story that looks at sex with new eyes; others include the aforementioned The Crooked Man and The Mission.

  playboy’s lack of sexual and other taboos is undoubtedly due to its being edited by men, for men and for that estimable distaff contingent (bless them all) who care and are curious about what their men care about. And this ties in quite happily with the indisputable fact that (for reasons we do not intend to explore here and now) these fictional genres, and especially science fiction, are enjoyed and written by far more men than women—the obvious exceptions, of whom we will name only that first-rate writer-anthologist Judith Merril, serve merely to prove the rule. Possibly this high appeal science fiction has for men has something to do with the kind of demonstrable reality the male intellect demands—prophetic reality of the sort Arthur C. Clarke, for one, provides in I Remember Babylon and Dial “F” for Frankenstein.

  Nowhere is this masculinity factor more lucidly illustrated than in a curious anomaly of the French language (and let us not forget, en passant, that science fiction’s greatest pioneer, Jules Verne, was French): Although the French words for “science” and “fiction” are both nouns of feminine gender (la science, la fiction) when combined they mysteriously become masculine (le science-fiction).

  But it is the Italian language to which we are indebted for a useful word that most aptly describes the contents of this book. The Italians do not speak of science fiction or of fantasy; they speak of fantascienza, a fine word that glitters with the missiles and magic of both genres, conjuring up images of Things From Outer Space as well as Things That Go Bump In The Night.

  So, with our usual exhortations to browse and enjoy, we offer this volume of the very best fantascienza published in playboy—which means the very best published anywhere.

  —the editors of playboy

  <>

  ~ * ~

  THE FLY

  BY GEORGE LANGELAAN

  George Langelaan was a real-life James Bond long before the fictional 007 was a twinkle in the eye of Ian Fleming. An Englishman reared, in France, he became a British Intelligence agent during World War Two, underwent facial surgery more than once to disguise his identity, parachuted into Axis-occupied France, did battle with German 88s, was captured and condemned to death by the Nazis, escaped, returned to England in time to participate in the Normandy landings—true adventures he chronicled vividly and with salty humor in his book, “The Masks of War.” To many, however, he will always be known as the author of the propulsively entertaining novelette, “The Fly.” This science-fiction tale was an unprecedented hit with playboy readers when it first appeared in June 1957. It won the playboy Best Fiction Award and was selected for the “Annual of the Year’s Best Science Fiction.” “The Fly” was immediately snapped up by 20th Century-Fox and made into a successful same-name movie. But the test of a good story is whether or not it can stand on its own merits. “The Fly” can. Read it and see.

  ~ * ~

  TELEPHONES and telephone bells have always made me uneasy. Years ago, when they were mostly wall fixtures, I disliked them, but nowadays, when they are planted in every nook and corner, they are a downright intrusion. We have a saying in France that a coalman is master in his own house; with the telephone that is no longer true, and I suspect that even the Englishman is no longer king in his own castle.

  At the office,
the sudden ringing of the telephone annoys me. It means that, no matter what I am doing, in spite of the switchboard operator, in spite of my secretary, in spite of doors and walls, some unknown person is coming into the room and onto my desk to talk right into my very ear, confidentially— and that whether I like it or not. At home, the feeling is still more disagreeable, but the worst is when the telephone rings in the dead of night. If anyone could see me turn on the light and get up blinking to answer it, I suppose I would look like any other sleepy man annoyed at being disturbed. The truth in such a case, however, is that I am struggling against panic, fighting down a feeling that a stranger has broken into the house and is in my bedroom. By the time I manage to grab the receiver and say: “Ici Monsieur Delambre. Je vous ecoute,” I am outwardly calm, but I only get back to a more normal state when I recognize the voice at the other end and when I know what is wanted of me.

  This effort at dominating a purely animal reaction and fear had become so effective that when my sister-in-law called me at two in the morning, asking me to come over, but first to warn the police that she had just killed my brother, I quietly asked her how and why she had killed Andre.

  “But, Francois! ... I can’t explain all that over the telephone. Please call the police and come quickly.”

  “Maybe I had better see you first, Helene?”

  “No, you’d better call the police first; otherwise they will start asking you all sorts of awkward questions. They’ll have enough trouble as it is to believe that I did it alone . . . And, by the way, I suppose you ought to tell them that Andre . . . Andre’s body, is down at the factory. They may want to go there first.”

  “Did you say that Andre is at the factory?”

  “Yes . . . under the steam-hammer.”

  “Under the what!”

  “The steam-hammer! But don’t ask so many questions. Please come quickly Francois! Please understand that I’m afraid . . . that my nerves won’t stand it much longer!”

  Have you ever tried to explain to a sleepy police officer that your sister-in-law has just phoned to say that she has killed your brother with a steam-hammer? I repeated my explanation, but he would not let me.

  “Qui, Monsieur, oui, I hear . . . but who are you? What is your name? Where do you live? I said, where do you live!”

  It was then that Commissaire Charas took over the line and the whole business. He at least seemed to understand everything. Would I wait for him? Yes, he would pick me up and take me over to my brother’s house. When? In five or ten minutes.

  I had just managed to pull on my trousers, wriggle into a sweater and grab a hat and coat, when a black Citroen, headlights blazing, pulled up at the door.

  “I assume you have a night watchman at your factory, Monsieur Delambre. Has he called you?” asked Commissaire Charas letting in the clutch as I sat down beside him and slammed the door of the car.

  “No, he hasn’t. Though of course my brother could have entered the factory through his laboratory where he often works late at night ... all night sometimes.”

  “Is Professor Delambre’s work connected with your business?”

  “No, my brother is, or was, doing research work for the Ministere de l’Air. As he wanted to be away from Paris and yet within reach of where skilled workmen could fix up or make gadgets big and small for his experiments, I offered him one of the old workshops of the factory and he came to live in the first house built by our grandfather on the top of the hill at the back of the factory.”

  “Yes, I see. Did he talk about his work? What sort of research work?”

  “He rarely talked about it, you know; I suppose the Air Ministry could tell you. I only know that he was about to carry out a number of experiments he had been preparing for some months, something to do with the disintegration of matter, he told me.”

  Barely slowing down, the Commissaire swung the car off the road, slid it through the open factory gate and pulled up sharp by a policeman apparently expecting him.

  I did not need to hear the policeman’s confirmation. I knew now that my brother was dead, it seemed that I had been told years ago. Shaking like a leaf, I scrambled out after the Commissaire.

  Another policeman stepped out of a doorway and led us towards one of the shops where all the lights had been turned on. More policemen were standing by the hammer, watching two men setting up a camera. It was tilted downwards, and I made an effort to look.

  It was far less horrid than I had expected. Though I had never seen my brother drunk, he looked just as if he were sleeping off a terrific binge, flat on his stomach across the narrow line on which the white-hot slabs of metal were rolled up to the hammer. I saw at a glance that his head and arm could only be a flattened mess, but that seemed quite impossible; it looked as if he had somehow pushed his head and arms right into the metallic mass of the hammer.

  Having talked to his colleagues, the Commissaire turned towards me:

  “How can we raise the hammer, Monsieur Delambre?”

  “I’ll raise it for you.”

  “Would you like us to get one of your men over?”

  “No, I’ll be all right. Look, here is the switchboard. It was originally a steam-hammer, but everything is worked electrically here now. Look Commissaire, the hammer has been set at 50 tons and its impact at zero.”

  “At zero . . . ?”

  “Yes, level with the ground if you prefer. It is also set for single strokes, which means that it has to be raised after each blow. I don’t know what Helene, my sister-in-law, will have to say about all this, but one thing I am sure of: she certainly did not know how to set and operate the hammer.”

  “Perhaps it was set that way last night when work stopped?”

  “Certainly not. The drop is never set at zero, Monsieur le Commissaire.”

  “I see. Can it be raised gently?”

  “No. The speed of the upstroke cannot be regulated. But in any case it is not very fast when the hammer is set for single strokes.”

  “Right. Will you show me what to do? It won’t be very nice to watch, you know.”

  “No, no, Monsieur le Commissaire. I’ll be all right.”

  “All set?” asked the Commissaire of the others. “All right then, Monsieur Delambre. Whenever you like.”

  Watching my brother’s back, I slowly but firmly pushed the upstroke button.

  The unusual silence of the factory was broken by the sigh of compressed air rushing into the cylinders, a sigh that always makes me think of a giant taking a deep breath before solemnly socking another giant, and the steel mass of the hammer shuddered and then rose swiftly. I also heard the sucking sound as it left the metal base and thought I was going to panic when I saw Andre’s body heave forward as a sickly gush of blood poured all over the ghastly mess bared by the hammer.

  “No danger of it coming down again, Monsieur Delambre?”

  “No, none whatever,” I mumbled as I threw the safety-switch and, turning around, I was violently sick in front of a young green-faced policeman.

  ~ * ~

  For weeks after, Commissaire Charas worked on the case, listening, questioning, running all over the place, making out reports, telegraphing and telephoning right and left. Later, we became quite friendly and he owned that he had for a long time considered me as suspect number one, but had finally given up that idea because, not only was there no clue of any sort, but not even a motive.

  Helene, my sister-in-law, was so calm throughout the whole business that the doctors finally confirmed what I had long considered the only possible solution: that she was mad. That being the case, there was of course no trial.

  My brother’s wife never tried to defend herself in any way and even got quite annoyed when she realized that people thought her mad, and this of course was considered proof that she was indeed mad. She owned up to the murder of her husband and proved easily that she knew how to handle the hammer; but she would never say why, exactly how, or under what circumstances she had killed my brother. The great m
ystery was how and why had my brother so obligingly stuck his head under the hammer, the only possible explanation for his part in the drama.

  The night watchman had heard the hammer all right; he had even heard it twice, he claimed. This was very strange, and the stroke-counter which was always set back to nought after a job, seemed to prove him right, since it marked the figure two. Also, the foreman in charge of the hammer confirmed that after cleaning up the day before the murder, he had as usual turned the stroke-counter back to nought. In spite of this, Helene maintained that she had only used the hammer once, and this seemed just another proof of her insanity.

  Commissaire Charas who had been put in charge of the case at first wondered if the victim were really my brother. But of that there was no possible doubt, if only because of the great scar running from his knee to his thigh, the result of a shell that had landed within a few feet of him during the retreat in 1940; and there were also the fingerprints of his left hand which corresponded to those found all over his laboratory and his personal belongings up at the house.