First published in
Galaxy Science Fiction, May 1953.
This is a great little
story that’s on a par with the enjoyable Hands Off! that was in
volume three of the History of the Science Fiction Magazine. These
two stories remind me of how much I enjoyed Sheckley’s stories when
I was a kid. In the olden days he was one of the relatively few
writers who I’d bother with in single-author collections.
By coincidence, both of
these stories focus on a key SF idea: the convincing and sympathetic
portrayal of aliens. These types of story seek to answer one of the
key questions of science fiction: if man is not unique in creation,
what do other men look like?
This story begins on a
space ship manned entirely by highly specialised aliens. Each
individual is a different race particularly adapted to their role. As
well as crew such as Doctor, Talker, Eye or Thinker, the Ship itself
is alive, but distinct from the Walls or Engine.
Through Eye’s seeing organ, Talker watcher the storm. He translated Eye’s purely visual image into a direction for Engine, who shoved the Ship around to meet the waves. At appreciably the same time, Talker translated direction into velocity for the Walls who stiffened to meet the shocks.
As we meet them,
they’re halfway through a delivery run when disaster strikes: the
specialised alien known as ‘Pusher’ that forces them to
hyper-light speeds gets killed in a photon storm.
Sheckley avails himself
of the ‘space as a workplace’ theme (which I discussed in my last
quarterly reading update) to make his aliens sympathetic and real to
us. We identify with the workaday motivations of the characters –
Talker plans to use his pay to build a treehouse, Walls typically
blow theirs on booze – and the signs of daily drudgery of the
day-job. Talker is the Everyman protagonist of the story. He’s the
fixer, the facilitator, the one the turns ideas and observations into
instructions for the acting parts of the ship.
Sheckley is
particularly deft at this; he gives his aliens an appealing
vernacular voice in both this story and Hands Off! that’s
intelligent and humane and does much to endear them to the reader.
One of the Walls suggested that they get good and drunk. This unrealistic solution was vetoed at once. It was typical of Walls’ attitude, however. They were fine workers and good shipmates, but happy go lucky fellows at best. When they returned to their home planets, they would probably blow all their wages on a spree.
When we study aliens we're really looking at ourselves and both stories contrast
their aliens with humans. In Hands Off! it’s the piratical Captain
Barnett and his crew. Here it’s the confused and somewhat terrified
man the alien crew find when their search for a new Pusher leads them
– inevitably – to Earth. Both leave us with the impression of
moral, competent aliens while the space pirates are evil and the new
Pusher reacts like a terrified cave man to the aliens’ attempts to
communicate.
They’re both little
moral fables with a light touch. Sheckley wraps it all in a generous
wit and unobtrusive prose that makes them a pleasure to read. This
and the classic sci fi assumptions prevent the stories from feeling
stodgy or dated. In fact they could easily be retold today with
minimal work: the space pirates are comedy villains of the Home Alone
type, while Specialist could be the basis of a charming CGI kids’
cartoon.
Themes: space as a
workplace, teamwork, moral fable.
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