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    Of All Possible Worlds
    Of All Possible Worlds
    Of All Possible Worlds
    Ebook23 pages24 minutes

    Of All Possible Worlds

    By William Tenn

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    It was a good job and Max Alben knew whom he had to thank for it-his great-grandfather. "Good old Giovanni Albeni," he muttered as he hurried into the laboratory slightly ahead of the escorting technicians, all of them, despite the excitement of the moment, remembering to bob their heads deferentially at the half-dozen full-fleshed and hard-faced men lolling on the couches that had been set up around the time machine.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherStart Publishing LLC
    Release dateMar 3, 2016
    ISBN9781681465340
    Of All Possible Worlds

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    • 3/5
      My reaction to reading this collection in 1998. Spoilers may follow.“Introduction: On the Fiction in Science Fiction” -- A defense of science fiction. First, he argues that, contrary to critics, sf is about people as individuals or representatives of a “collective community”. Second, popular art, which sf is, is helpful in attaining aspirations of artistic immortality. (Tenn interestingly notes, as people still are more than 30 years later, that “serious fiction” is not doing well in the marketplace. He also argues that “a scientific error or two” would not mar classic sf. (He explicitly mentions Robert A. Heinlein Beyond This Horizon, Frederik Pohl and Cyril Kornbluth''s The Space Merchants, Ward Moore’s Bring the Jubilee, and Isaac Asimov’s Pebble in the Sky as classics). Responding to the old charge of sf as escapism, Tenn notes that new literary genres (be they novels or Elizabethean plays) are always denounced as dangerous by an intellectual elite invested in the old forms. Tenn doubts that people read any fiction to learn more about their “unfulfilled” lives or gain a moral perspective. He thinks that people read fiction for escape, believable escape. Responding to the old (and still present) charge that sf has produced no Shakespeare, Cervantes, or Fielding, Tenn notes that Elizabethean dramatists produced nothing equivalent to Aeschylus (which is the standard they were aiming for). Good popular art has a certain primitive vitality and vulgarity, Tenn argues, which causes it to endure longer than boring art polished to the point of perfection. “Down Among the Dead Men” -- This story, like Alfred Bester’s “Disappearing Act published a year earlier in 1953, is a satire about the Cold War. Essentially both stories depict a society totally mobilized for war – and the qualities of those societies being destroyed in the act of defending them. I use to regard these stories as somewhat liberal whining about fighting the Cold War, but, in learning more about the total mobilization of America in WWII (which, of course, Tenn and Bester would have known first hand) and the encroachments of the government on liberty during the war and since, I appreciate these stories now. Here a decades long war with the alien Eoti has radically changed Earth’s society. Not only are millions dead and all of Earth mobilized, but, in a satirical point derived from the recycling drives of WWII, human soldiers, dead soldiers, are revived as ever increasingly sophisticated “soldier surrogates” or, in popular parlance, zombies. (Sexual mores have changed drastically since earth’s women need to pump out as many babies as possible. The narrator, his reproductive organs wounded – and the wound one of the few that are irreparable, is excluded from these fruitless couplings. The story is interesting conceptually (and is skillfully written technically) because the story’s main horror comes from the narrator overcoming his initial revulsion and reluctance. Indeed, he finds a common ground with them since they resent humans since they are sterile too. The story ends with them calling him “Pop”, and I’m unsure whether to be glad he has found a purpose and family (albeit a surrogate one) or horrified that familial and human sensibilities have been so distorted or wonder that humans are so adaptable. “Me, Myself and I” -- A time travel story whose contortions (Tenn evidently specialized in time travel stories) are reminiscent of Heinlein’s earlier “All You Zombies” or Robert Silverberg’s later Up the Line, but it’s justifiably not as well remembered because it has little wit outside of plot contortions.“The Liberation of Earth” -- This justifiably revered tale is not just a witty, classic story and a satire of Cold War politics with its war by surrogate but of imperialism generally going back to at least the British Empire and the 20th Century’s fight against fascism. Earth suffers under the rotating yoke of two alien warring races, the Dendi and the Troxxt, who set up their own installations, force evacuations of land areas, and kill large numbers of people thought to collaborate with the enemy. The alien races do not directly correspond in their actions and slogans with any human power bloc. The story is wonderfully told as a tale by humans living on a trashed Earth (its orbit has become very eccentric) of deserts, little air, and giant rabbits. The narrator naively notes that Earth is “as thoroughly liberated as it is possible for a race and a planet to be.” The human race has suffered greatly under aliens purporting to be acting in its best interests. “Everybody Loves Irving Bommer” -- This story about a man who disastrously gets his wish to be sexually irresistible to women could easily have been a Twilight Zone episode. “Flirgleflip” -- Another of Tenn’s time travel stories. This one involves the Temporal Embassy, far down the timestream, foiling a researcher’s effort at time travel before the “appointed” time. This tale evokes humor through having the narrator haplessly failing to adapt to our time. He is a very overspecialized academic. “The Tenants” -- A fantasy tale about a real estate agents and his mysterious tenants who rent the technically non-existent 13th floor of his building. “The Custodian” -- A tale of a custodian studying man’s great art (and religions) before it is destroyed in an impending nova. Man has divided into two camps: the Affirmers, who have sacrificed everything not deemed to be absolutely essential to man evacuating Earth and settling elsewhere, and the Custodians who study all the cultural artifacts left on Earth. The narrator of the story is one such Custodian who rejects the “single-minded biological idiocy” of simple survival. He looks forward to being alone on Earth for a year before the nova comes. (The rest of his fellow Custodians were supposed to stay too, but the Affirmers broke their promise and carted them away.) The Custodian notes “That Man’s sentimentality is not to be frustrated”. But his plans are upset when he takes responsibility for an infant. I have a lot of sympathy for the Old Custodian, a failed artist, who thinks that he can accomplish little with his life but perhaps the child has the potential for beauty so he must live to try to fufill it. The Custodian takes an old starship out of a museum, loads it with great treasures (or parts of them – he takes only parts of the Sistine Chapel) and sets off with the knowledge that man will eventually long for these items, that he is an “esthetic Noah”, destined for a unique place in art history. A poignant, funny tale.

    Book preview

    Of All Possible Worlds - William Tenn

    Of All Possible Worlds

    by William Tenn

    Start Publishing LLC

    Copyright © 2015 by Start Publishing LLC

    Cover image © noseforpics..

    All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

    First Start Publishing eBook edition July 2015

    Start Publishing is a registered trademark of Start Publishing LLC

    Manufactured in the United States of America

    10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

    ISBN 13: 978-1-68146-534-0

    It was a good job and Max Alben knew whom he had to thank for it—his great-grandfather.

    Good old Giovanni Albeni, he muttered as he hurried into the laboratory slightly ahead of the escorting technicians, all of them, despite the excitement of the moment, remembering to bob their heads deferentially at the half-dozen full-fleshed and hard-faced men lolling on the couches that had been set up around the time machine.

    He shrugged rapidly out of his rags, as he had been instructed in the anteroom, and stepped into the housing of the enormous mechanism. This was the first time he had seen it, since he had been taught how to operate it on a dummy model, and now he stared at the great transparent coils and the susurrating energy bubble with much respect.

    This machine, the pride and the hope of 2089, was something almost outside his powers of comprehension. But Max Alben knew how to run it, and he knew, roughly, what it was supposed to accomplish. He knew also that this

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