Asimov's Science Fiction: July 2013 (21 page)

When I lie awake, the bed sweaty
from a nightmare tussle with Cantorian infinities,
and mathematical artifice sits heavy on my chest,
I gasp for air like an overweight wrestler
with sleep apnea, and dream
of Richard Feynman. In his office at Caltech,
alone, surrounded by dusty tomes,
the dance of sub-atomic particles
chalked on the blackboard
(later airbrushed
on his mustard-yellow Dodge Maxivan),
one hip canted, muscles bunched
like a cluster of neutrons, an arm uplifted
as if to mimic the escape of a photon.
He says, "I can live with doubt...
I don't have to have
an answer.... don't feel frightened
by not knowing things..."
I breathe the mysteries of infinities
and uncertain dawns recede.
Accompanied by imagined voices
of Tuvan throat singers, I go back to sleep.

—Karin L. Frank

You probably deserve this.
You've riled the shit-stirrers,
the grinning spirits that nudge
those things swaying on the cusp of chaos.

Smarter souls would've ducked the evil eye,
bored it with talismans of tidiness:
neat hard drives, documents copied and dated,
protocols held like umbrellas on sunny days.
These shields don't deflect disaster,
but the possibility of it
being interesting.

Now here you are, Sisyphus,
backing your stone up,
up, up the hill.
If he passes by here,
curse whatever smarmy asshole said
it's the journey, not the destination.

Play a sad song
for the god of lost data
and hope for the best.
If he lets you leave his domain
with a whited-out temp file
floating like a ghost against your screen,
don't turn back to
scratch your head in bewilderment, no,
never look a miracle
in the eye.

—Peter Chiykowski

I have a fading color photograph of my three sisters and myself on the night of July 20, 1969. The photo must have been damaged in the camera. There is a swath of white obstructing the bottom of the picture, yet the image clearly shows the four of us lying on the floor of our parents' bedroom watching TV. At three, even the youngest of us is fixated with what appears to be a blank screen. What's playing is no mystery, though. It's Neil Armstrong about to become the first human being to set foot on the Moon.

Tensing Norgay and Edmund Hillary reached the summit of Mt. Everest three years before I was born. They were heroes to my father, but their deed seemed as distant to me as Roald Amundsen's 1926 expedition to the South Pole. As a twelve-year-old, I could appreciate their valor, just as I could appreciate the ultimate price paid by George Mallory and Robert Falcon Scott in their quests to push the bounds of human endurance and discovery. Still, these deeds were all acts of history, their outcomes were known. They weren't going to keep me up half the night tingling with excitement.

At four and five, I'd been too young to grasp the enormity of Yuri Gargarin, Alan Shepherd, and John Glenn's accomplishments in space. At twelve, I was caught up in the mania for the first voyage to the Moon that swept most of the United States.

My friends and I all had our favorite Beatle and our favorite Star Trek character, and I'm sure we each had a favorite astronaut as well. Michael Collins, the man with the loneliest job in the solar system, was mine. Solo and sometimes out of contact with the other astronauts and Earth, he would be the one piloting
Columbia,
Apollo 11's command module, around the Moon while the other men claimed the surface and the glory. Family lore held that we were related by his marriage to a distant cousin.

Still, despite my loyalty to my alleged cousin-in-law, it was obvious that the two men with the most exciting jobs in the universe were lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin, and mission commander, Neil Armstrong. The commander later said, "I always knew there was a good chance of being able to return to Earth, but I thought the chances of a successful touchdown on the Moon surface were about even money—fifty-fifty.... Most people don't realize how difficult the mission was."

The public was concerned with their safety. We were worried that the
Eagle,
the lunar landing module, would sink into mounds of Moon dust, or fail to lift off for its assignation with the command module. The astronauts and NASA all appeared so confident and competent, though, that mostly we were reassured that the men would be returning to Earth without incident.

Along with the rest of the world, I have waited breathlessly to see human ingenuity, bravery, and perseverance successfully rescue Baby Jessica from a Texas well, and thirty-three Chilean copper miners from their sixty-nine day ordeal under ground. In 2002, I burst unexpectedly into tears when I picked up my newspaper and learned that after seventy-eight hours, all nine coalminers had been located and rescued from the Quecreek mine in Pennsylvania. These events may be the only ones in my conscious lifetime that carried the same emotional resonance as watching NASA put men on the Moon and safely bring them back home.

There are big differences between waiting for unfortunate people to be rescued from unforeseen circumstances and watching the Apollo astronauts explore the Moon. The astronauts were on a well-planned adventure. They had bravely chosen their lot and their voyage was the result of the work of thousands of well
trained scientists and engineers. In the wake of Apollo 13's ill-fated journey and the
Challenger
and
Columbia
disasters, we are more aware of the hazards of space travel. Yet, even in 1969 we knew these men were heroes. Space and the Moon were a huge unknown. Anyone willing to be strapped to a Saturn V rocket and blasted into orbit had to be among our most courageous.

Eventually, I had a chance to meet the gregarious Buzz Aldrin. The retired astronaut had co-written a science fiction novel,
Encounter With Tiber,
with John Barnes. Soon after it came out, Colonel Aldrin attended the Science Fiction Writers of America's annual New York reception for authors and editors. It was a thrill to shake hands with a man who had left his boot prints on the Moon.

Alas, like nearly everyone else, my path never crossed Neil Armstrong's. Upon his death last summer, his family released a statement that said he was "a reluctant American hero who always believed he was just doing his job. He served his Nation proudly, as a navy fighter pilot, test pilot, and astronaut." They added, "While we mourn the loss of a very good man, we also celebrate his remarkable life and hope that it serves as an example to young people around the world to work hard to make their dreams come true, to be willing to explore and push the limits, and to selflessly serve a cause greater than themselves."

I have always thought that NASA chose well the first man on the moon. When reporters repeatedly asked whether Edmund Hillary or Tenzing Norgay was the first person to summit Mount Everest, Colonel John Hunt, the expedition leader, answered, "They reached it together, as a team." Millions of people watched as Neil Armstrong became the first person to walk on Earth's traveling companion, but this daring astronaut always seemed to recognize that his great achievement was due to a tremendous team effort.

Humans have been enchanted by Luna since the dawn of time. The passing of Neil Armstrong gives us one more opportunity to celebrate a hero and to honor everyone who pushed the limits and successfully transported our astronauts from the Earth to the Moon.

The science fiction field lost a sharp and perceptive voice when Steven Utley died from cancer on January 12, 2013. Steven started publishing fiction in 1972. During
Asimov's
first year, he contributed two poems and a short story to the magazine and he went on to sell us dozens more of each.

Steven liked to call himself the rong>Spring 2013). Both books are available from Ticonderoga Publications."Internationally Unknown Author," and it is true that his collections of short stories were never best-sellers. Yet, his works appeared in most of the major SF markets. His best-known tales were set deep in the pre-dinosaur Silurian era. The first of these, "There and Then," was published in
Asimov's
in 1993. The newest collections of these stories are
The 400-Year-Itch
(2012) and
Invisible Kingdoms
(Spring 2013). Both books are available from Ticonderoga Publications.

Not all of Steven's stories were set in the distant past. In tales like "Race Relations" and "The Glowing Cloud," he wrote about social injustice and the sad consequences of human folly. Every penny that he made from his 1992 story, "Haiti," was spent in support of humanitarian aid organizations.

A few of his stories and poems even concerned the future. His most recent
Asimov's
tale, "Shattering," was about a man's lonely interstellar journey. Steven's email address was taken from his poem "This Impatient Ape." Published in
Asimov's
in 1997, it was also the title poem of one of his collections of poetry. Steven called himself a "cranky old secular humanist," but I'd like to believe that somehow he's finally found a way to visit with the folks in Andromeda.

—Sheila Williams

by Steven Utley

Andromeda's light, as ancient as mastodons, travels too slowly.

This impatient ape wants to see what the folks there are doing right now.

Apernicious scam—a hoax that might be said to have taken on some aspects of a Messianic cult—spread through the United States during the scorching summer of 2012, when thousands of people convinced themselves that the American government was willing to pay up to one thousand dollars toward their utility bills. East and west, north and south, the joyous news spread across the Internet and by automated telephone calls, by text messages, and even by the quaint old process of stuffing printed fliers into your mailbox. People made haste to tell their friends about it through Facebook and the other social media.

It all sounded very plausible, too. Our benevolent government, deeply concerned about the utility-payment crisis at a time of such economic difficulty across the land, had supposedly set aside a huge fund to help out with the bills. All you had to do, upon learning of this wondrous new benefit, was to supply a little personal information: your Social Security number, your credit-card number, your checking—account number. You would then be given a bank routing number and checking—account number to use when paying your next utility bill. The fake number would be rejected by the bank within a day or two, but meanwhile the scammers would be busy cleaning out your bank account or going to town with your credit card.

The scheme worked particularly well in New Jersey, where ten thousand customers of Public Service Electric & Gas fell for it, despite warnings from the utility and various government agencies. The trouble was that nobody seems to pay much attention to such warnings, whereas the happy reports of the bonanza spread rapidly through all the electronic media that make communication of misinformation such an easy matter in the modern world. People hear what they want to hear. A PSEG spokesman said that the victims thought it was "a legitimate federally sponsored program, and, of course, that can become confusing, because there
are
legitimate federally sponsored programs."

It became confusing, all right. Two thousand customers of Entergy Corp. in Louisiana and Texas signed up for their government checks, as did fifteen hundred customers of Duke Energy in the Carolinas, and bunches of others in Wisconsin, Mississippi, Michigan, and Iowa. How many more were duped before the con men called off their campaign is uncertain, but the total damage probably was considerable.

In a country where, as the PSEG spokesman said, "there
are
legitimate federally sponsored programs," and new ones have been proposed regularly as the financial crisis that began in 2008 deepened, it is reasonable to expect people bedeviled by debt on all sides to grasp at such straws without stopping to consider that the administrators of legitimate federal programs would very likely not need to have their checking—account numbers and surely would have no need for their credit—card numbers. Evidently there are no limits to contemporary gullibility, though. The whole episode summons to mind a somewhat similar adventure in optimism that spread through in the islands of the South Pacific in the early twentieth century and came to have the general name of the cargo—cult religion: the belief that a messiah from the heavens would come to the islanders, bringing them their share of the material wealth that European colonial settlers so obviously enjoyed.

The earliest of the cargo cults seems to
have arisen on New Guinea, where the myth of a culture—hero named Mansren originated as far back as 1857. It was said that Mansren, a mysterious figure who was creator of the islands and their peoples, had sailed off into the stars long ago, but now was due to return, bringing with him all the dead ancestors, and inaugurate an apocalyptic age of miracles. The black Papuan natives would turn white, the white European settlers would turn black, and ships would arrive to bring the people the fabulous goods that only the white people had previously had—knives, guns, lamps, clothes, bicycles, and ever so much more, the much—coveted "cargo" for which the islanders longed. After that, a golden age would begin for the islands, in which the whites would leave, old age, illness, and death would likewise disappear, there would be no further need for anyone to work, and the islanders would enjoy riches and good health to the end of time.

Since the Mansren myth had certain aspects that paralleled Christianity—it included the virgin birth of a miraculous child, engendered by Mansren by magical means—the Christian missionaries who came to New Guinea in the late nineteenth century chose not to make any very strenuous attempts to suppress it, thinking that belief in Mansren might provide an easy transition to belief in the Christian God. What it led to, though, was an expansion of belief in Mansren, or in similar mythical figures known by other names, who would, like Mansren, appear out of the sky bearing the rich gifts that were generally known as "cargo."

Throughout the 1930s the cargo cult spread from island to island, updated now to specify delivery by airplane of such modern marvels as radios and telephones. One place where it became solidly rooted was the island group called Vanuatu, then known as the New Hebrides: when American troops landed there in the early years of World War II they found the natives hard at work building what they said were roads, docks, and airfields in preparation for the arrival of the magical ships and planes that would bring the cargo treasures from America. The newly arrived troops did indeed come with immense quantities of cargo—the military supplies out of which they would build the bases they needed for the battle against Japan—and distributed small gifts to the natives of the island, and all this helped to reinforce the hope that the promised savior was on his way. It was on Tanna, one of the eighty islands making up the New Hebrides, that the cult messiah acquired the name of John Frum—perhaps because one of the GIs had introduced himself to them as "John from America." Many of the incoming troops were black, which led to the belief that John Frum himself was a black man, and the slogan "John Frum, he come" spread through the land.

To hasten the coming of the cargo the islanders discarded their recently adopted western ways, thinking that they were offensive to the cargo gods. They gave up European dress, reverting to loincloths and body paint; they threw their money into the sea; and in their confidence that once the cargo had arrived all their needs would be provided for, they abandoned their farms and slaughtered their livestock. They erected mock radio antennae made of bamboo and rope to pick up announcements of the journey of the cargo-bearers to their island, and stockpiled great mounds of firewood to see them through the three promised days of darkness that would precede the millennial moment. They held great dance festivals at which they implored the cargo gods to come, erecting wooden altars to which they brought flowers and other offerings, and they spent hours staring out to sea or looking up into the sky, searching for the vessels that were to bring the miraculous gifts.

John Frum did not come. Now and then a false messiah would arise, claiming to be he, and the European colonial authorities would arrest him and transport him to some other island. The chief impact of this was to intensify the devel
opment of these messianic cults throughout the region. Anthropologists have identified a host of such movements: the Taro Cult of New Guinea, the Tuka Cult of the Fiji Islands, the Vailala Madness of Papua, and many more. They still thrive today on some islands, for believers in messianic cults can be patient people. In the Vanuatu archipelago, February 15 is celebrated every year as John Frum Day, the day on which he will eventually arrive. There is ceremonial dancing, the altars are decorated, sacred relics of the wartime occupation such as military dog—tags and soldiers' helmets are brought forth and displayed. Some years ago Chief Isaac Wan Nikiau, then the leader of the John Frum Movement, was quoted as saying that John Frum was "our God, our Jesus," and would eventually return. By now the movement seems to have become political and cosmopolitan: its leader, as of December 2011, was Thitam Goiset, a woman of Vietnamese origin whose brother, Dinh Van Than, is a powerful local businessman.

I'm pretty sure that the cargo-cult phenomenon inspired more than one science fictional story, with the scene transferred to some lush, bejungled alien planet where the "natives" pray daily for the arrival of a spaceship bearing marvelous cargo for them. I even may have written such a story myself. (So many stories, so long ago: I have some difficulty now in remembering all the work I did fifty-odd years back.) Certainly it would have been a logical theme for the pseudo-anthropological SF that was so popular in the 1950s.

It's easy, of course, to chuckle at the idea that the simple native folk of these islands may still be painting their faces, beating the tribal drums, and imploring mysterious gods to bring them television sets and smartphones aboard gleaming airplanes descending from the heavens. But we ought not to be too condescending here. What is the utility—bill scam of 2012 but the naïve belief that our benign government will reach out to suffering citizens and pay the cost of those unusual air—conditioning bills of that torrid summer? How many millions, or is it billions, of dollars do Americans ship every year to places like Nigeria and Kazakhstan and Mali in the naïve and never to be fulfilled hope that a cargo of money will come thundering into their bank accounts from some far—off benefactor? John Frum, he will not come. But variations on the cargo—cult dream have been with us since the earliest days of humanity, and, I suspect, they will still be acquiring followers when the sun is a mere dim red ball in the dark chilly sky of the end of days.