The Love Machine & Other Contraptions (13 page)

The Story Ends

“Please don’t tell me you write science fiction,” he said, and distractedly dropped some ash from his pipe onto the big pile of manuscripts spread out on his desk. That’s how he greeted me when I came in for the job interview at the moldy and book-laden Tel-Avivian basement, in which we would later spend many days together. That was at the end of January or the beginning of February, nineteen ninety-five.

“No, not at all,” I lied. I was young and foolish, and very keen to have the job, which for some reason seemed to me to be glorious in its marginality and fascinating in its monotony. “I mean, I read a lot, and also many things which aren’t science fiction, like...”

He gave me an inquisitive stare from under—almost through—his bushy gray eyebrows. His face wore an expression which, a few months later, I would be able to identify as amusement mixed with slight distaste, the kind of expression you would find on the face of the owner of a poodle which has just had its way with someone else’s Persian rug. “What would those be, then?”

“Eh...
Don Quixote
,
Moby Dick
, some things by Dickens...”

“Things?” he said, and his brow rose threateningly.

“Eh, books.”

“Books, indeed. Books are not just things. Give them the respect they deserve.”

“I’ve lots of respect for books!” I said. On the one hand, this was absolutely true. On the other hand, had Katzenberg declared on this occasion that it was about time to burn all the books in the world, it’s possible that I would have agreed with that, too.

“Very good,” he said and almost smiled. “And which of Dickens’
books
, pray, have you read?”

“Eh, for instance The Pickwick Papers, and Mr. Copperfield, and Between Two Cities, and...”

“And besides Mr. Dickens’ work?”

“Some Russian literature, you know, Gogol, Dostoyevsky,” I babbled. “Right now I’m in the middle of
Crime and Punishment
, and... eh...”

“And what is your opinion?”

“Of who?”

“The book.”

“What, of Crime and Punishment?”

He sat there quietly and stared at me. “Eh,” I said. “The book is, eh... it’s...”

“Yes?”

“Look, it’s a bit hard to describe...”

“Please try. I’m very interested in hearing the educated opinion of a veteran reader such as you, regarding
Crime and Punishment
.”

His seemingly innocent expression almost took the sting out of his words. I had no idea how to answer him. Desperate, I decided to tell the truth.

“In fact,” I said, “it’s really boring.”

Katzenberg stayed quiet, and I wanted to bury myself. My vision of a brilliant career in the wonderful world of publishing was gone with one stroke of a lousy Russian writer.

“Well,” Katzenberg said at last, “you’re right.”

“What?”

“Indeed, it’s quite boring.”

“Really?”

“That is what you’ve just said,” he answered patiently. “Do you regret your answer?”

“Eh... no.”

“Very well. You’re hired.”

That was ridiculously easy. Later I learned that there weren’t many other candidates, if any. Maybe it was what he thought was mere intuition which made him abandon the position of initial story filtering to an innocent Schlock such as myself; but intuition isn’t the right term, in his case. I don’t know. Until I decide to do something about it, I will not know.

~

Heavens Publishing, Inc. had existed—unhurriedly, privately and almost anonymously—since the seventies. At its peak, between seventy-seven and eighty-one, it published four science fiction books a year, as well as a short-lived magazine named
Wonder of Wonders,
whose issues became, in later years, hot collectors’ items in the rapidly evolving Science Fiction community, though it never reached the fame of some of its contemporaries, such as
Fantasia 2000
or
Cosmos
. But then came the Lebanon War, and interest in science fiction all but vanished. Heavens Publishing Inc. had had to switch to theoretical science books.

“I arrived here exactly one month too late,” Katzenberg told me once, but wouldn’t explain what he meant. He also never made it clear what a person like him had to do with the genre. It was rumored that he had a doctorate in physics or some high degree in mathematics or something of the sort, but when I asked him about it he denied everything. However, the scope of his interest was much wider than mine, or at least than that of the person I was at the time. As for myself, I accepted his involvement in the genre as a given, as if it was a law of nature.

~

When I was seven years old, we moved from one suburb, Kiryat Ata, to another, Kiryat Bialik. One of the first actions my parents took upon moving was to get me a library card. On my first visits there I failed to grasp the wide selection available to me, and returned every time with books belonging to some silly series for kids. Who knows how long I would have continued doing that, were it not for my father who, one evening, returned from work just as I was spreading my library loot on the table. He read the titles, gave me a strange look, and the following day took me to the library and gave me a tour.

I remember walking between the shelves—shelves which I hadn’t bothered to notice before, when I was going like a little automaton to the place when they stored that children series. My father went directly to one particular shelf, a higher one marked “M,” and took out a book. Then he went to the “V” shelf and took another book. Both of those he had read himself, in his childhood. Both changed my life. Loving your parents is one thing, and appreciating the things they did for you, those without which you wouldn’t be the person you are today, is quite another. This was one of those things. When we left the library that day, I was holding in my hands
Old Shatterhand
by Karl May and
The Mysterious Island
by Jules Verne.

That was the beginning.

After I finished reading all the Verne and May books the library had in stock, I found out that I could discover other books, other authors, by myself. I found hair-raising adventures, mysteries, love stories which I failed to understand and detective stories which I thought I did. And then, one rainy day when I had nothing better to do than sit in the warm library and read, I found on one of the shelves a science fiction book by one Robert Heinlein.

It was love at first sight.

Years later, when I was more interested in that sort of thing, I read the book again and this time noticed the name of the person who had translated it into Hebrew: Nathan Katzenberg.

~

“Here’s your desk,” said Katzenberg, this time with his reading glasses on, and pointed to a part of his desk that really didn’t look any different from the rest of it, being covered with papers and ash. An ancient swivel chair had been placed to the side, so that Katzenberg and I would sit in a right angle to each other. I sat down in it. When I raised my head I saw, through the pipe smoke cloud, the long bookshelves behind Katzenberg’s seat, which hosted some very rare specimens which I’d have loved to add to my own collection, including some books whose existence I had never suspected before.

Katzenberg pushed a big stack of paper in my direction. “Those are the stories we received last week,” he said. “You can start.”

I remember thinking to myself,
That’s it
.
Now you’re a member of the editorial staff of a science fiction and fantasy magazine.
And not just any magazine, but the famous
Starlight
, no less. It was a dream come true.

I wanted to smile crazily, but I didn’t dare. I pulled from the stack a packet of stapled pages and started reading.

The Alien

By Rami Arbel

One evening I’m sitting like this on the porch drinking, like, some whiskey, you see, and suddenly I hear this noise outside. So OK, so I’m used to all sorts of noises because here, in the Karney Gil Kibbutz, we always have weird stuff happening, like when Shula the cow ran away from the barn and there was one crazy mess, and all sorts of stuff.

So anyway I hear this noise and I’m telling myself Haim this doesn’t sound like Shula running out of the barn, so I ran out and just as I run I was seeing lights which look like a big spotlight you know, lighting up the whole area and the haystack I got ready for tomorrow, and there’s this big vvvoooom like a tractor with a defective motor and before I know what’s going on I’m flying in the air and there’s this huge flying saucer above me which is pumping me up! So ok, so I’m flying like this and I’m so in shock that I even don’t scream or anything, even so I go very high, and then I’m in this white room, like. So somehow, I don’t really know how, I’m lying in a bed now and then I see him coming—the alien!!! Now, as you know I’m not really gay or anything, but I have to tell you that I was scared shitless even so he looked really small but is totally white with huge eyes and with no mouth. And then something opened in his belly, like this very scary hole, and he says to me—

“Well? Is the story good?”

“Eh, not really,” I said. “That is, really not.”

“You seem fascinated,” Katzenberg said. “You’ve read more than a few sentences.”

“I thought I was supposed to read every story from beginning to end, in order to know whether it has the potential to be published.”

Katzenberg smiled. “Maybe initially you should do so,” he said. “But after you gain some experience, you’ll notice the quality of a story immediately. In fact, you’ve noticed it right now, but you still do not trust yourself enough. That is no problem. Continue reading.”

“Shouldn’t we give a chance to a story with a good idea, even if it’s written badly?” I asked. In fact I never believed that myself—I was always a horrible snob as far as style was concerned—but I believed, without any supporting evidence, that this was a standard editor’s approach.

“Do you think that the story you are reading now shows any sign of a good idea?” Katzenberg said.

“Eh, no.”

“Read the rest of it and let’s see whether you were right.”

~

“Take me to your leader,” the alien commands the protagonist. The hero—heroically, of course—resists. The alien threatens him, but our hero is fearless, and gives up only after the alien threatens to hurt his family. Using this important information, the saucer flies towards Jerusalem, hovers over the Knesset building and destroys the parliament, but the alien is unaware that there’s no one inside due to the late hour—the hero kept that vital information to himself. Then the hero manages to get free of his restrains, fights the alien, overcomes it and forces it to return to the Kibbutz and land there. At this point the Israeli Air Force interferes, some fighter jets attack the saucer, and the hero is saved at the last moment when he jumps from the burning spaceship straight into the haystack he has prepared for tomorrow.

The End.

~

“Were you right?”

“Almost,” I said. “I kind of liked the idea of jumping from a flying saucer into a haystack.”

“Is this your idea of a good idea?” Katzenberg said, and one of his eyebrows rose reproachfully.

“Well, no, it’s not a real idea,” I hastened to say, “but it made me laugh.”

“It is my opinion at this stage, that it doesn’t take much to make you laugh. Never mind, though. In fact, I even envy you a little.”

I had no idea what he was talking about, but didn’t dare say anything.

“Fine,” he said. “Read more stories. Let’s see if you can find something worthy of publication.”

~

No one knows how Heavens Publications Inc. survived to the middle of the nineties. The science fiction and fantasy genres were almost totally dead, from a publisher’s point of view, and the theoretical science books were never that profitable—at least, the kind of books that Katzenberg published. But while the publishing house’s survival is slightly surprising and somewhat improbable, what happened later is on the verge of impossible: in ninety-four Katzenberg decided, just like that (or due to some vision of the future to come) to establish a new magazine for science fiction and fantasy. He called it
Starlight
. It looked like commercial suicide, and indeed it would have been, except that somehow Katzenberg found a sponsor to finance the magazine. Maybe this sponsor planned to use it as a tax write-off, or a money laundry, or maybe just a conversation starter at parties. Whatever the reason was, as far as he was concerned, and as far as many science fiction fans were concerned—many more than anyone had realized, at the time—
Starlight
was a dream come true.

I was one of those fans. By some strange coincidence, that was the year in which I finished my obligatory service in the Israeli Air Force, left my parents’ house and moved to the big city, to Tel Aviv.

The first issues of the magazine contained translated stories, never original Hebrew ones, and articles which Katzenberg wrote himself. At the same time, a community of fans and lovers of the genre started crystallizing, growing more and more as the internet made its appearance in Israel, making it easier for them to find each other. Katzenberg started receiving original Hebrew stories by mail. Some writers tried to send him stories by email, but he refused to accept them. “I read only from paper,” he said. Science fiction or not, Katzenberg never agreed and will never agree to read a story from a computer screen.

But that wasn’t the major problem he had with the stories he received.

Starlight, Issue 12

Editor’s Note

Dear Readers,

Recently we have begun receiving science fiction stories written by Israeli authors. We are pleased, of course, when science fiction enthusiasts attempt to hold the writer’s pen, and are sure that in the future we shall have Israeli writers of a stature no less than that of the giants of the genre, such as Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke, Ellison and their peers. However, since the field of local science fiction is still in its infancy, we found most of the received stories to be lacking in several respects. Therefore we allow ourselves to exploit this editor’s note, as opposed to our usual custom, to give some basic advice to the beginning writers.