BST OF RAYMND Z GALLUN [Mass Market Paperback]

I stumbled upon this book in a used bookstore on the way to a train station. I had just finished the book I'd been reading and I couldn't face a long commute on the DC metro system without something to read. So I ducked in and quickly scanned the clearance shelf. And here was this beat-up old paperback with goofy cover art. It was obviously a science fiction collection. But it was by an author I'd never heard of and I consider myself a veteran SF fan. But beggars can't be choosers and it was less than a buck so I grabbed it.

And what a surprising pleasure I had reading it! One story after another of golden age of SF style writing from the 1930s (and a couple late stories from the 1950s). Fun stories of sweeping imagination. Gallun wasn't afraid to imagine big with stories where the Earth is destroyed, or from the perspective of alien beings where the the humans are the mysterious ones (or the bad guys). I was amazed that I'd never heard of Raymond Z. Gallun. He's an under appreciated figure of early science fiction. This little collection gets my highest recommendation.

Let us start with a few words about that concept much admired by science fiction readers, the good old sense of wonder. Damon Knight (1967) offers one of the best definitions of the term that I have run across. It is "some widening of the mind's horizons, no matter in what direction-- the landscape of another planet, or a corpuscle's-eye view of an artery, or what it feels like to be in rapport with a cat" (13). It is a sensory experience felt by the reader of a story that is radically different from that of his or her everyday world. Knight argues, I think convincingly, that action oriented stories don't convey this feeling nearly as well as stories that are heavy on description.

Some readers and critics (like Sam Moskowitz and Forrest J. Ackerman) argue that the 1930s were the Golden Age of sensawunda tales and that science fiction has pretty much gone to hell ever since. I find this position to be, frankly, incredible. But there are a small handful of stories from the thirties that evoke a sense of wonder in me. (I do not guarantee that they will do the same for you.) They are: Charles R. Tanner's "Tumithak of the Corridors," Jack Williamson's "The Moon Era," Williamson's "Born of the Sun," John W. Campbell, Jr.'s "Twilight," Campbell's "Forgetfulness," Henry Hasse's "He Who Shrank," and Stanton M. Coblentz's "Missionaries From the Sky". All are fairly descriptive stories.

But one of my favorite sense of wonder practitioners of the thirties (though he wrote well after this time) is Raymond Z. Gallun (pronounced "Galoon"). _The Best of Raymond Z. Gallun_ (1978), edited by John J. Pierce offers a generous selection of such passages. Here is a scene from "Old Faithful" in which the Martian Number 774 visits his son in a crystal _creche_:

A score of nerve filaments, fine, almost, as a human hair, darted out of the chitinous shell that protected them and roved caressingly over the lump of protoplasm. Immediately it responded to the gentle touch of this strange creature that had sired it. Its delicate integument quivered, and a thin pseudopod oozed up from the jellylike form and enveloped the nerve filaments of Number 774. For minutes the two remained thus, perfectly motionless. (30-31)

This is an oft-quoted passage. But what about the encounter between a winged, metallic alien and a human baby in "Godson of Almaru"?

Its metal antennae groped over the slumbering child's forehead. The gentleness of its caress contrasted strikingly with its baroque form, glowing faintly phosphorescent in the gloom. Minute sparks, like electrical discharges, flickered about the ends of those fine, burnished filaments. But the child's healthy features relaxed in the dancing glow, and his breathing went on evenly. (94)

Both sections, it seems to me, capture a curious feeling of alien tenderness. Perhaps a bit more disturbing is the hero's first look at his undersea captors in "Davy Jones' Ambassador":

Through each [circular window], a pair of huge, glowing eyes and a Gorgon mass of black tentacles were visible. The ovoid bodies of the creatures were silhouetted against a nebulous luminescence originating from some unknown source beyond them. (64-65)

And the interior of the "Derelict" encountered by a traumatized spaceman is also properly awesome:

Dust and silence and motionless mechanical grandeur reminiscent of the tomb of a dead Cyclops-- that in brief was a description of the place... Through windows along one wall the sun shone, gilding inert engines whose monstrous forms seemed capable of generating sufficient power to tear a planet from its orbit. Huge cylinders of opalescent metal reared upward. Flywheels which on Earth would have weighed hundreds of tons, rested in their pivot sockets. (46)

But there is a major critical problem that emerges when we write about a "sense of wonder": It resides heavily in the reader. We can talk meaningfully about the plot, characterization, theme, or symbolism of a story, because they are all elements of a story. But a sense of wonder isn't simply a story element. It refers to how a reader _perceives_ a story. There is no such thing as a story that will magically produce a sense of wonder in everyone who reads it. Nor is there such a thing as a story that cannot produce a sense of wonder in anybody. To put it another way, a story that evokes a feeling of awe in you may leave me cold. A story that gives me a sense of the otherworldly may cause you to scratch your head in perplexity. The best that I can do is to say that Gallun's stories frequently elicited a sense of wonder in _me_. Maybe they will for you also. In any event, Gallun is a writer who deserves a look.

› Go to Amazon U.S. to see both reviews  4.5 out of 5 stars