The Best From Fantasy & Science Fiction Part 20

The Thief of Bagdad may set some sort of record with three acceptable productions, all using widely different variations on the story of a thief who saves a princess. The silent 1924 Thief, with Douglas Fairbanks, looks pretty primitive in places but also has some special effects that can still awe. Alexander Korda's 1940 Thief doubles that in spades (the giant flying genie is just one of many), plus it hasmonumentally lavish sets. Even the Steve Reeves version seems to have been made with more care and wit than the rest of Mr. Reeves' spaghetti spectaculars, containing some good film magic of its own and a resounding score with one of those epic romantic themes (based, it must be said, on a theme from the Rozsa music for Korda).

Invasion of the Body s.n.a.t.c.hers is the first "little" '50s s/f film to have the honor of a remake (or at least an acknowledged one). They should have left well enough alone in this case. Color instead of b&w, a big city for the claustrophobic small town, and six chases for every one in the original did not make it better, just bigger.

Here Comes Mr. Jordan was a whimsical film fantasy of the 1940s about a boxer taken to Heaven before he was due; as compensation, he was redelivered into another man's body, with all sorts of supposedly humorous complications. I didn't think it was very funny then, and I didn't think it was very funny when it reappeared as Heaven Can Wait, though Warren Beatty did a nice job as the dumb athletic type (a football player now) and Dyan Cannon shrieked to great effect a couple of times.

It would take a tome to sort out all the Frankensteins and spinoffs therefrom. Only a handful, of course, are directly based on Mary Sh.e.l.ley's novel itself; of these, only one besides the great cla.s.sic of 1931 is worth mentioning. That is Frankenstein: The True Story. Coscripted by Christopher Isherwood, it takes enough liberties to almost qualify as a variation, but is wonderfully literate and contains some of the most beautiful photography that has ever graced a science fiction film.

There are more that I haven't mentioned; two films of She, two of The Lost World, innumerable versions of Midsummer Night's Dream. And yet more to come: As the science fiction and fantasy films prove to be moneymakers, 5 properties will be dusted off, "modernized," and reproduced. l' can see the piece I'll do for The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction: 50th Series, sorting out several versions of The Thing, grumbling about the musical remake of 2007: A s.p.a.ce Odyssey, and commenting on the new production of Star Wars, featuring Mark Hamill as Obi-wan Ken.o.bi.

Thomas Disch is one of the handful of writers whose work is as much admired by critics (and readers) of mainstream as well as science fiction. He wrote six fine stories for F&SF in the 1960s.

Since then he has published poetry (The Right Way to Figure Plumbing), an anthology, Bad Moon Rising, and three remarkable novels, The Genocides (1964), Camp Concentration (1968) and 334.

He has just completed a new sf novel, On Wings of Song.

The Man Who Had No Idea

THOMAS M. DISCH.

At first he'd a.s.sumed that he'd failed. A reasonable a.s.sumption, since he had struck out his first time to bat, with a shameful 43. But when two weeks had gone by and there was still no word from the Board of Examiners, he wondered if maybe he'd managed to squeak through. He didn't see how he could have.

The examiner, a wizened, white-haired fuddy-duddy whose name Barry instantly forgot, had been hostile and aggressive right from the word go, telling Barry that he thought his handshake was too sincere. He directed the conversation first to the possible dangers of excessive sunbathing, which was surely an oblique criticism of Barry's end-of-August tan and the leisure such a tan implied, then started in on the likelihood that dolphins were as intelligent as people. Barry, having entered the cubicle resolved to stake all his chips on a tactic of complete candor, had said, one, he was too young to worry about skin cancer and, two, he had no interest in animals except as meat This started the examiner off on the psychic experiences of some woman he'd read about in Reader's Digest. Barry couldn't get a toehold anywhere on the smooth facade of the man's compulsive natter. He got the feeling, more and more, that he was keeping score and the old fart was being tested, an att.i.tude that did not bode well. Finally, with ten minutes left on the clock, he'd just up and left, which was not, strictly speaking, a violation. It did imply that some kind of closure had been achieved, which definitely was not the case; he'd panicked, pure andsimple. A fiasco from which he'd naturally feared the worst in the form of a letter addressed to Dear Applicant. ("We regret to inform you, etc. . . .") But possibly the old fart had been making things deliberately difficult, testing him, possibly his reactions hadn't been that entirely inappropriate. Possibly he'd pa.s.sed.

When another two weeks went by without the Board of Examiners saying boo, he couldn't stand the suspense any longer and went down to Center St. to fill out a form that asked basically where did he stand. A clerk coded the form and fed it into the computer. The computer instructed Barry to fill out another form, giving more details. Fortunately he'd brought the data the computer wanted, so he was able to fill out the second form on the spot After a wait of less than ten minutes, his number lighted up on the board and he was told to go to Window 28.

Window 28 was the window that issued licenses: he had pa.s.sed!

"I pa.s.sed," he announced incredulously to the clerk at the window.

The clerk had the license with his name on it, Barry Riordan, right there in her hand. She inserted it into the slot of a gray machine which responded with an authoritative chunk. She slid the validated license under the grille.

"Do you know-I still can't believe it. This is my license: that's really incredible."

The clerk tapped the shut-up b.u.t.ton pinned on the neckband of her T-shirt.

"Oh. Sorry, I didn't notice. Well. . .thanks."

He smiled at her, a commiserating guilty smile, and she smiled back, a mechanical next-please smile.

He didn't look at the license till he was out on the street Stapled to the back of it was a printed notice: IMPORTANT.

Due to the recent systems overload error, your test results of August 24 have been erased.

Therefore, in accordance with Bylaw 9(c), Section XII, of the Revised Federal Communications Act, you are being issued a Temporary License, valid for three months from the date of issue, subject to the restrictions set forth hi Appendix n of the Federal Communications Handbook (18th edition).

You may reapply for another examination at any time. An examination score in or above the eighth percentile will secure the removal of all restrictions, and you will immediately receive your Permanent License. A score in the sixth or seventh percentile will not affect the validity of your Temporary License, though its expiration date may be extended by this means for a period of up to three months. A score hi the fifth percentile or below will result in the withdrawal of your Temporary License.

Holders of a Temporary License are advised to study Chapter Nine ("The Temporary License") in the Federal Communications Handbook. Remember that direct, interactive personal communications are one of our most valuable heritages. Use your license wisely. Do not abuse the privilege of free speech.

So in fact he hadn't pa.s.sed the exam. Or maybe he had. He'd never find out.

His first elation fizzled out and he was left with his usual flattened sense of personal inconsequence.

Tucking the license into his ID folder, he felt like a complete charlatan, a n.o.body pretending to be a somebody. If-he'd scored in the first percentile, he'd have been issued this license the same as if he'd scored in the tenth. And he knew with a priori certainty that he hadn't done that well. The most he'd hoped for was another seven points, just enough to top him over the edge, into the sixth percentile.

Instead he'd had dumb luck.

Not to worry, he advised himself. The worst is over. You've got your license. How you got it doesn't matter.

Oh, yeah, another and less friendly inward voice replied. Now all you need are three endors.e.m.e.nts.

Lots of luck.

Well, I'll get them, he insisted, hoping to impress the other voice with the authenticity and vitality of his self-confidence. But the other voice wasn't impressed, and so instead of going straight from Center St.

to the nearest speakeasy to celebrate, he took the subway home and spent the evening watching first a fascinating doc.u.mentary on calcium structures and then Celebrity Circus, with w.i.l.l.y Marx. w.i.l.l.y had four guests: a famous prost.i.tute, a tax accountant who had just published his memoirs, a comedian who did a surrealistic skit about a speakeasy for five-year-olds, and a novelist with a speech impediment who gotinto an argument with the comedian about whether his skit was essentially truthful or unjustifiably cruet In the middle of their argument Barry came down with a murderous headache, took two aspirins, and went to bed. Just before he fell asleep, he thought: I could call them and tell them what I thought.

But what did he think?

He didn't know.

That, in a nutsh.e.l.l, was Barry's problem. At last he had his license and could talk to anyone he wanted to talk to, but he didn't know what to talk about. He had no ideas of his own. He agreed with anything anyone said. The skit had been both essentially truthful and unjustifiably cruel. Too much sunbathing probably was dangerous. Porpoises probably were as smart as people.

Fortunately for his morale, this state of funk did not continue long. Barry didn't let it. The next night he was off to Partyland, a 23rd St. speakeasy that advertised heavily on late-night TV. As he approached the froth of electric lights cantilevered over the entrance, Barry could feel the middle of his body turning hollow with excitement, his throat and tongue getting tingly.

There was only a short line, and in a moment he was standing in front of the box office window.

"Ring?" the window asked. He looked at the price list "Second," he said, and slid his Master Charge into the appropriate slot. "License, please," said the window, winking an arrow that pointed at another slot.

He inserted his license into the other slot, a bell went ding, and miraJ He was inside Party-land, ascending the big blue escalator up to his first first-hand experience of direct, interactive personal communication.

Not a cla.s.sroom exercise, not a therapy session, not a job briefing, not an ec.u.menical agape, but an honest-to-G.o.d conversation, spontaneous, unstructured, and all his own.

The usher who led him to his seat in the second ring sat down beside bun and started to tell him about a j.a.panese department store that covered an entire sixteen and a half acres, had thirty-two restaurants, two movie theaters, and a children's playground.

"That's fascinating, isn't it?" the Usher concluded, after setting forth further facts about this remarkable department store.

"I suppose it is," Barry said noncommittally. He couldn't figure out why the usher wanted to tell him about a department store in j.a.pan.

"I forget where I read about it," the usher said. "In some magazine or other. Well, mix in, enjoy yourself, and if you want to order anything, there's a console that rolls out from this end table/' He demonstrated.

The usher continued to hover, smiling, over his chair. Finally Barry realized he was waiting for a tip.

Without any idea of what was customary, he gave bun a dollar, which seemed to do the trick.

He sat there in his bulgy sponge of a chair, grateful to be alone and able to take in the sheer size and glamor of the place. Partyland was an endless middle-cla.s.s living room, a panorama of all that was gracious, tasteful, and posh. At least from here in the second ring it seemed endless. It had a seating capacity, according to its ads, of 780, but tonight wasn't one of its big nights and a lot of the seats were empty.

At intervals that varied unpredictably the furniture within this living room would rearrange itself, and suddenly you would find yourself face-to-face with a new conversational partner. You could also, for 8 few dollars more, hire a sofa or armchair that you could drive at liberty among the other chairs, choosing your partners rather than leaving them to chance. Relatively few patrons of Partyland exercised this option, since the whole point of the place was that you could just sit back and let your chair do the driving.

The background music changed from Vivaldi's Four Seasons to a Sondheim medley, and all the chairs in Barry's area suddenly lifted their occupants up in the air and carried them off, legs dangling, to their next conversational destination. Barry found himself sitting next to a girl in a red velvet evening dress with a hat of paper feathers and polyhedrons. The band of the hat said, "I'm a Partyland Smarty-pants."

"Hi," said the girl in a tone intended to convey a worldly-wise satiety but achieved no more than blank anomie. "What's up?"

Terrific, just terrific," Barry replied with authentic warmth. He'd always scored well at this preliminary stage of basic communication, which was why, at the time, he'd so much resented his examiner's remarkabout his handshake. There was nothing phoney about his handshake, and he knew it.

"I like your shoes," she said.

Barry looked down at his shoes. "Thanks."

"I like shoes pretty much generally," she went on. "I guess you could say I'm a kind of shoe freak."

She snickered wanly.

Barry smiled, at a loss.

"But yours are particularly nice. How much did you pay for them, if you don't mind my asking?"

Though he minded, he hadn't the gumption to say so. "I don't remember. Not a lot. They're really nothing special."

"I like them," she insisted. Then, "My name's Cinderella. What's yours?"

"Is it really?"

"Really. You want to see my ID?"

"Mm."

She dug into her ID folder, which was made of the same velvet as her dress, and took out her license. It was blue, like his (a Temporary License), and, again like his, there was a staple in the upper left-hand comer.

"See?" she said. "Cinderella B. Johnson. It was my mother's idea. My mother had a really weird sense of humor sometimes. She's dead now, though. Do you like it?"

"Like what?"

"My name."

"Oh, yeah, sure."

"Because some people don't. They think it's affected. But I cant help the name I was born with, can I?".

"I was going to ask you-"

Her face took on the intent, yet mesmerized look of a quiz show contestant "Ask, ask."

"The staple on your license-why is it there?"

"What staple?" she countered, becoming in an instant rigid with suspicion, like a hare that scents a predator.

"The one on your license. Was there something attached to it orignally?"

"Some notice ... I don't know. How can I remember something like that? Why do you ask?"

"There's one like it on mine."

"So? If you ask me, this is a d.a.m.ned stupid topic for a conversation. Aren't you going to tell me your name?"

"Uh. . .Barry."

"Barry what?"

"Barry Riordan."

"An Irish name: that explains it then."

He looked at her questioningly.

That must be where yon got your gift of gab. You must have kissed the Blarney stone."

She's crazy, he thought But crazy in a dull, not an interesting way. He wondered how long they'd have to go on talking before the chairs switched round again. It seemed such a waste of time talking to another temp, since he could only get the endors.e.m.e.nts he needed from people who held Permanent Licenses. Of course, the practice was probably good for him. You can't expect to like everyone you meet, as the Communications Handbook never tired of pointing out, but you can always try and make a good impression. Someday you'd meet someone it was crucial to hit it off with and your practice would pay off.

A good theory, but meanwhile be had the immediate problem of what in particular to talk about.

"Have you heard about the giant department store in j.a.pan?" he asked her. "It covers sixteen acres."

"Sixteen and a half," she corrected. "You must read Topic too."

"Mm."

"It's a fascinating magazine. I look at it almost every week. Sometimes I'm just too busy, but usually Iskim it, at least"

"Busy doing . .,. ?"

"Exactly." She squinted across the vast tasteful expanse of Party-land, then stood up and waved. "I think I've recognized someone," she said excitedly, preening her paper feathers with her free hand. Far away, someone waved back.

Cinderella broke one of the polyhedrons off her hat and put it on her chair. "So I'll remember which it is," she explained. Then, contritely, "I hope you don't mind."

"Not at all."

Left to himself be couldn't stop thinking about the staple he'd seen on her license. It was like the seemingly insignificant clue in a detective story from which the solution to the whole mystery gradually unfolds. For didn't it strongly suggest that she too had been given the benefit of the doubt that she'd got her license not because her score ent.i.tled her to it, but thanks to Bylaw 9(c), Section XII? The chagrin of being cla.s.sified in the same category with such a nitwit! Partyland was probably full of people in their situation, all hoping to connect with some bona fide Permanent License holder, instead of which they went around colliding with each other.

A highly depressing idea, but he did not on that account roll out the console to select a remedy from the menu. He knew from long experience that whatever could make him palpably happier was also liable to send him into a state of fugue in which conversation in the linear sense became next to impossible. So he pa.s.sed the time till the next switchover by working out, hi his head, the square roots of various five-digit numbers. Then, when he had a solution, he'd check it on his calculator. He'd got five right answers when his chair reared up, G.o.d bless it, and bore him off toward . . . Would it be the couple chained, wrist to wrist, on the blue settee? No, at the last moment, his chair veered left and settled down in front of an unoccupied bent-wood rocker. A sign in the seat of the rocker said: "I feel a little sick.

Back in five minutes."