Martin H. Greenberg (ed.) - NEW STORIES FROM THE TWILIGHT ZONE (Warner, 1992, pp295, £8.99)
Ironically, perhaps, what was once prediction has turned into alternate history. Very little of what Clarke described actually happened - radio relay stations are not vast space cities, space stations are nissen huts in space and not Taj Mahals, the only permanent residents have been unhappy Soviets stuck there by the collapse of the rouble economy. In Clarke's view the space race would unite Britain, the USA and USSR, in friendly rivalry; of course, it simply helped to extend the Cold War. On the other hand he saw the invasion of the media landscape - one of the stories revolves around a soft drink company invading a signal excercise from the Moon to the Earth, say in the way that they would annexe the Olympic Games in our timestream.
Clarke values humanity, and part of his optimisism must be due to his stressing the role of people and even animals. "Feathered Friend", part of "Other Side", involves a pet canary revealing a failed air-conditioning plant, the role birds filled in mines for hundreds of years, except that The Guardian this summer has had a frontpage photograph of one of the last mine canaries, machinery is replacing them. The air-conditioning unit stopped when it froze up, something that I suppose has become common in many computer rooms, though computers are something that Clarke uses in "Nine Billion Names" really as a vehicle for a joke.
So the result is that sideways view, the alternative universe, where these things almost happened. They are implicit in the technology, but not obvious. The opposite is fantasy like "All The Time In The World", where higher beings try to use a petty criminal to warn the earth, to no result, that it is going to be destroyed. The magical penetration of the world is what The Twilight Zone emphasises. This collection is called "New Strories From", but it is actually stories, some of them classics, including "The Star", used in the CBS TV series The New Twilight Zone in the late 1980s.
The twenty-one stories include Henry Slesar's "Examination Day", Theodore Sturgeon's "A Saucer Of Loneliness" and "Yesterday Was Monday", and Robert Silverberg's "To See The Invisible Man". The earliest of these classics dates from 1941, the latest from 1963. The series used newer stories from Parke Godwin, Roger Zelazny, Harlan Ellison, Joe Haldeman and Harlan Ellison. Three stories from Ellison appear here.
There may be fans of the TV series who want this colllection of the inspiration for the programs but it would perhaps be of equal use of anyone interested to know how a TV series is put together, and how scripts develop. Alan Brennert's introduction, "Two Years In The Twilight Zone" describes his involvement in the original suggestion for the series and then he worked on everything from the scriptwriting to the dubbing and the music soundtracks. Reading Kevin Brownlow's history of the silent movies, The Parade's Gone By, I was struck by the similarities in working methods between periods seventy years apart. Brennert may be over-emphasising his own role, but it sounds accurate.
Brennert's account ends with CBS considering the Nielson Ratings (viewing figures) and cancelling the show. It is no comfort to any would-be writer to know that that their work will end in the hands of such men. Yet, I would guess that the same type of men ran NASA too, and that one reason why space was not explored as Arthur C. Clarke envisaged was that every piece of rocket was sub-contraccted, and every retro-booster was the product of a lowest tender.
The cover blurb of Other Side mentions Clarke's power to raise "a sense of wonder" - what most of the astronauts had to wonder was if a cheapjack tender would get them home.
The first reference work I looked at said that the Richter Scale went from 1 to 9, and for a couple of days I thought that RICHTER 10 by its title must be putting itself in the realms of the science fantasy, but this evening another book has told me that the scale ends with 10 (although the greatest recorded intensity ever recorded was 9.5 in Iran in 1972) restating its scientific credentials. The scale does not measure destruction - although that is a concomitant - but the amplitude and frequency of the surface waves, while local intensity is measured on the Mercalli Intensity Scale, which runs from I to XII. Oddly enough for a novel about a seismologist who wins the Nobel Prize for his researches, I didn't learn any of this from RICHTER 10, and I think I should have been told. My encyclopedia is ten years old, but Doctor Richter was still alive in 1985 - it does not mention Signor Mercalli - if it was still possible I'd like to know their opinions of this book.
But to begin at the beginning: in his Introduction Arthur C. Clarke describes how, watching the Los Angeles earthquake of January 1994, he conceived and wrote quickly an 850 word movie outline. He wanted no more involvement - and his agent turned it not into a movie, but into a novel written completely by Mike McQuay. Here it is, with Clarke's Introduction, and his Outline as an Appendix. Mike McQuay died soon after completing this, having written (according to the sleevenotes) thirty- five novels, including MEMORIES which won the Philip K Dick Award in 1988 - though most of his work seems to have been in pseudonymous series, such as the Nancy Drew Mysteries.
What McQuay was given in the Outline was a series of events in the life of Lewis Crane - as Crane predicts more and more serious earthquakes. The book thus becomes a set of scenes, with some characters and themes common to each - this makes it a bit like 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. However, Crane has a personal life and has a sidekick who turns out to be an Iago-figure. In his outline Clarke says this character is jealous, but here McQuay adds a massive sub-text. In his future, Israel has destroyed itself and all the Middle East in a last Masada-like suicide with atomic bombs, and in North America, the Nation of Islam has absorbed almost all of the Black population. Daniel Newcombe, Crane's assistant is a Black academic who is drawn into the Nation of Islam, partly annoyed at losing his girl to Crane, and thus becomes ready to sabotage the anti-earthquake project.
Meanwhile all of North America is run by two rival Asian companies who place their stooges in the White House. Crane is exceptionally unfortunate in that the latest president is a Chinese trans-sexual who wants to keep her gender a secret, and so is easily subject to blackmail and manipulation. On the other hand Crane is lucky enough to be able to offer bets to the whole world on when the next earthquake will occur, win, and so become a billionaire who can continue to pay for his own experiments.
This book mixes massive physical changes with power-dealing politics - but none of the characters are fit to deal with them. Although Arthur C. Clarke never met Mike McQuay, what McQuay has done is what Clarke and Gentry Lee did when they wrote RAMA II - put together the most ill-fitted group possible and make them representatives of humanity having to face an enormous challenge. As in RAMA II, of course, these people are not up to it and the story suffers.
So, look at these enormous rival groups: the rich scientist, the Nation of Islam, the gangster companies - all their rivalry comes down to ... personal confrontations with Crane. No one ever seems to suggest that the threats facing them all (and everyone has to cover themselves against skin cancer because the Israeli bombs have destroyed the ozone layer, did I mention that?) should cause humanity to unite. And equally, Crane's response to all this is personal, too. When he marries in Chapter 15, he arranges to have it done in the Himalayas: "And today, this very afternoon, there would be the first quake since 1255 in this region... Only Crane would choose this day, this place for their wedding. It was perfect."
Clarke's outline mentions religious cultists, who want things left to God. He does not mention the Nation of Islam. But regardless of their associations, Mike McQuay added some other detail about their fundamentalism. So, they are opposed to the earthquake research or the attempts to prevent the quakes, and when they are able to occupy the southern states after the mid-west and the Mississippi are devastated, they farm on an almost organic scale. Yet they are not adverse to other technology: Mohammed Ishmael, their leader, doesn't attend meetings himself, he sends a hologram. No other character seems to suggest, nor does the author, that this is hypocritical. In fact, the tone of the whole of the book is morally neutral. Newcombe goes to prison at the end because Crane's son dies in the sabotage attempt - but Newcombe is not presented as a worse person. Crane's wife-to-be wants to marry him - I didn't find him very attractive. He may be trying to save the world in his way, a less destructive way than Sumi Chan or Mohammed Ishmael, but he mixes with those characters quite easily.
However, this book offers a challenge of another kind for potential authors. Read Clarke's Introduction and Outline first; go away and plan how you would do it. Then read Mike McQuay's novel. Afterwards, compare what he did with your notes, and ask yourself: did he do justice to the story he had to tell? It could be a rewarding exercise.