Scene One
Events alternate between fictional caverns on one of Jupiter’s moons and a small bedroom in New York City. It is late afternoon, August 1937.
SOUND: THE ROAR OF ROCKET SHIP ENGINES GROW LOUDER AND THEN SUBSIDE AS WE HEAR ITS MASSIVE LANDING FINS DIG DEEP INTO THE ALIEN SOIL. THERE IS A HISSING SOUND AS THE HULL OF THE ROCKET COOLS AND A DEEP METALLIC ECHO AS THE MAIN HATCHWAY OPENS.
STEEL: (to himself) So here I am on one of Jupiter’s moons…
SOUND: A SOFT CRUNCH AND DUSTY FOOTSTEPS AS STEEL JUMPS DOWN AND WALKS OUT ONTO THE SURFACE OF THE MOON.
STEEL: …I just hope the readings from my mentaloscope are accurate. Otherwise…
EVIL ALIENS: (a bunch of them) Die, terrestrial scum!
SOUND: TINY DYNAMOS POWER UP AS STEEL ACTIVATES HIS WEAPON.
STEEL: Get back, you inhuman, slavering hordes! I have an atom blaster here—capable of imploding your nucleic structure even from distances exceeding 700 zardons…
EVIL ALIENS: We have no fear of your pathetic human toys!
SOUND: AN EERIE HOWL RISES AS THE EVIL ALIENS MOVE CLOSER.
STEEL: In the name of Science, I’m warning you! Stay back, you mutated monstrosities, you!
ISAACS: (echoes) …even though… it seemed as if certain doom…
SOUND: THE SOUND OF SLOW, HUNT AND PECK TYPING IS HEARD IN THE BACKGROUND.
ISAACS: (cont’d) …leaked from every… fissure… of… the Jovian caverns… Space Patrolman… Alexander Steel… felt fear… sorry! Felt… no… fear… As a leader of the… United Earth States… Solar Police… he knew he… could fail… damn! Could not… fail…
STEEL: Die seditious beings!
SOUND: RAPID BURSTS OF ATOMIC FORCE AS STEEL FIRES HIS BLASTER. THE ALIENS SCREAM AS THEY IMPLODE.
STEEL: Such is the fate of all who oppose the rule of Technology!
SOUND: THE SOUND OF THE TYPING RISES A LITTLE OVER THE CONTINUING SCREAMS.
ISAACS: …and with each sweep of his blaster beam… powerful bursts of… charged particles emerging from… (suddenly sounds very confident) …a miniature controlled fission reaction would stream out, striking the bad… no… no… the insidiously vile… aliens… causing them to dissolve into… into… pools of a soup-like… pus…
CLYDE: Pus? That’s disgusting!
ISAACS: …their death agonies… rendering fearful payment… for their hideous crimes against… against… everybody…
CLYDE: (sarcastic) Oh, that’s good.
ISAACS: …um… how about… against… man… I know… scientific man! Glancing down… at the smouldering pool of extraterrestrial gunk… Alexander Steel reminded himself that the defence… of the Interplanetary Republic… could sometimes… be a dirty business…
STEEL: (grimly) But now, I have another mission to attend to…
MRS. ISAACS: (distant) Sheldon! Sheldon Isaacs! What are you doing up there?
ISAACS: (mutters) Aw, geez. (calling) Nothing, Ma!
MRS. ISAACS: Come down here and help your sister! You can play with your friend later!
SOUND: ISAACS PUSHING HIMSELF UP FROM THE TABLE AND WALKING TO THE DOOR.
ISAACS: I have to go. Finish this one, okay?
CLYDE: Sure.
SOUND: DOOR CLOSES, CLYDE STARTS TYPING… WITHOUT MUCH HESITATION BECAUSE HE CAN TOUCH-TYPE. DRAMATIC SPACE OPERA MUSIC STARTS TO RISE.
CLYDE: Steel’s mission was profoundly dangerous with certain death lurking in every corner. It was a difficult three-part assignment, only given to the bravest and most intelligent Space Patrolmen. Steel would have to: 1) Baby-sit his little sister; 2) Finish his homework; and 3) Run some errands for his mother. But Steel was supremely confident. He knew that he was up to the challenge. Soon the women of Earth would forget all about that bed-wetting problem of his…
SOUND: HEROIC THEME STOPS SHORT.
STEEL/ISAACS: (in unison/horrified) What?!
Scene Two
Somewhere beyond time and space.
SOUND: STRANGE OSCILLATIONS THAT INDICATE NARRATIVE NON-TIME.
CLYDE: (VO, mature) That’s essentially a true story. Sheldon was living vicariously through this ultra-phallic, totally represented superhero we created. And somehow he was sure that together, we could get someone to publish the adventures of space-dork here. I didn’t know any better, so I agreed to help.
ISAACS: (B.G., still a teenager) …just a minute… just a minute…
CLYDE: The trouble was that he got so obsessed with the project that he wouldn’t let me do any of the writing unless he absolutely had to.
ISAACS: …but I’ve really got to get these ideas down…
CLYDE: So I did what any idealistic and reasonably articulate adolescent would do. I wanted until he was vulnerable and I tried to humiliate him.
ISAACS: (upset) Hey! What did you write this silly stuff for?!
SOUND: SHIFTING FORCES OF NON-TIME GROW FASTER AND MORE COMPLEX.
CLYDE: This story is pretty much autobiographical. It has aliens, spacecraft, mind control, dreams of galactic conquest, movie contracts and divorce settlements that cover property acquired over the last three billion years. You know, post-modern social realism.
This part of the story takes place in New York City. It is the year 1937. I’m 17 years old and my friends and I are all aspiring, but unpublished, writers in the artistic field that will some day be referred to as science fiction. We were strange kids—with our thick glasses, bad clothes and haircuts and acne—we were prototype geeks who really worried about what would happen to us if the Earth were suddenly sucked into a galactic whirlpool. We called ourselves “The Fabulists” and we kept ourselves going by self-publishing in these mimeographed newsletters called “fanzines” while we waited for human intelligence to evolve to a state where others could understand the true merit of our work.
Scene Three
The office of Stewart D. McReady, editor of Tremendous Stories of Super Science. A few days after the events at Sheldon Isaacs’ home.
McREADY: Miss Williams, have you seen my cigarette holder?
WILLIAMS: Is it on the crystal radio?
McREADY: No, I already looked there.
WILLIAMS: How about under your microscope?
SOUND: SHUFFLING OF OBJECTS AND PAPERS ON MCREADY’S DESK.
McREADY: No, not there.
WILLIAMS: Try the gyroscope.
McREADY: Good god! What’s it doing there?
SOUND: MCREADY LIGHTS A MATCH AND INHALES.
McREADY: I wonder what it was doing there.
CLYDE: (V.O., mature) Then this gentlemen appeared on the creative landscape: Stewart D. McReady, the new editor of Tremendous Stories of Super Science. McReady was one of our favourites. He wrote about space ships bigger than New Jersey, Brain Steelers from Saturn and cities on the Moon powered by the energy from thought itself. This guy wrote about stuff that really mattered! We Fabulists knew that McReady was our big chance.
McREADY: Would you like to play with my electric gyroscope, Miss Williams?
SOUND: WHIR OF THE GYROSCOPE.
McREADY: It really is quite a remarkable apparatus.
WILLIAMS: No, thanks.
SOUND: WHIR OF THE GYROSCOPE DEEPENS AND RATTLES A LITTLE AS MCREADY SETS IT ON HIS DESKTOP. THE WHIR CONTINUES IN THE B.G. AS MCREADY SPEAKS.
CLYDE: (V.O.) Here was a guy who would appreciate our genius.
McREADY: Very well, let’s resume dictation. (inhales on his cigarette) Where were we?
WILLIAMS: (reading back from her notes) “…I regret that I cannot consider your manuscript for publication in its present form…”
McREADY: Right. (in a more formal voice) Although your story does manage to avoid any gross scientific or technical errors, the future society you postulate is implausible in the extreme. Frankly, these problems go beyond mere implausibilities and I can only regard them as outright predictive howlers. (inhales) Miss Williams, I want you to underline the word “howlers” throughout this letter. Do you understand?
WILLIAMS: Yes, underline “howlers”.
McREADY: Now, these howlers include the idea that the United States will enter another World War in the near future. This will just not happen, Mr. Mitchell, America will never enter another foolish European squabble and the world of the future will be too rational and well ordered to allow war to escalate to this extent again.
SOUND: MCREADY PAUSES TO TAKE A LONG DRAG OF HIS CIGARETTE. HE THEN EXHALES FOR AN EQUALLY LONG TIME.
McREADY: Besides, the horror of poison gas is simply too great a deterrent to the all-out war experienced in 1917 and ’18. Today, no one nation could ever emerge as the clear winner, etc. etc.
WILLIAMS: Do you want me to type in the last five paragraphs of your letter to Mr. Heinlein about right here?
McREADY: Yes, but be sure to underline the “howlers” from there as well.
SOUND: A SMALL SWITCH IS FLIPPED. THE WHIRRING SOUND GROWS FASTER.
McREADY: Look, Miss Williams, I can increase the gyroscope’s speed.
WILLIAMS: Yes.
McREADY: (back in his dictation voice) Another thing, Mr. Mitchell, why do you always make the fascists in your stories look so bad? Personally, I don’t know why people are so bothered about Hitler. As far as I can see, all the man wants to do is establish a rational society. This thing about race and anti-Semitism is just a public relations problem—
SOUND: SUDDEN AND DULL THUD. THE GYROSCOPE FALLS OFF MCREADY’S DESK AND SPINS ACROSS THE FLOOR AND OUT THE DOOR.
McREADY: Miss Williams! You kicked my desk!
WILLIAMS: Sorry, my foot slipped.
McREADY: Well, try to be more careful. (back in dictation voice) Don’t believe everything you read in the papers, son. And I want to make science fiction the literature of ideas. So why don’t you write me a story where the Nazis get to be the good guys?
SOUND: THE RECEDING WHIR OF THE GYROSCOPE AS IT INSANELY WHIZZES DOWN THE HALL.
© 2023 Hugh A. D. Spencer
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