Murphy And Others

Which Poul Anderson short story to read or reread next? Homeward And Beyond (New York, 1976), like one or two other collections, also contains "Murphy's Hall," another atypical and difficult story. In fact, I found it both somewhat incoherent and emotionally unpleasant. I have read it maybe twice and perhaps not every word. I will comment from memory, not from a further rereading.

The story has three disparate elements:

an unexplained hereafter specifically for astronauts (!);
a succession of dystopian future scenarios in which social conditions deteriorate while space exploration declines;
a text that begins and ends with bleak closed comments by the narrator.

I will explain what I mean by this. The first incoherence is the discrepancy between the supernaturalism of survival after death and the scientific setting of the astronauts' hereafter. They stroll through the cosmos. The second is the transition from this implausible unreality to the all too plausible realism of the dystopian passages. But perhaps the hereafter passages should not be understood literally? Maybe they are an extension of the narrator's comments? (I am thinking this through further as I write.)

A dystopia is by its nature unpleasant so we cannot complain about this. However, the narrator's comments are additionally and unnecessarily unpleasant. By a "closed" comment, I mean one that explicitly rules out of court any alternative perspective. When the comment is also "bleak," what is being ruled out of court is any hope or optimism. The story ends, "Murphy's Hell." (p. 91) That is as closed and bleak as it is possible to be. ("Abandon hope all ye who enter...")

This narrator is not a character inhabiting the fictitious timeline of the story. He is the omniscient narrator of prose fiction. Yet, at the beginning and end, he speaks in the first person, thus becoming the author addressing the reader, telling us, I think, that the astronauts' hereafter is a lie, though he wishes it were not, and that he is glad that it is a lie that he is in the hopeless future described in the story. Or something. There are too many changes back and forth of perspective here. (In fact, I think that I am only starting to unravel some of them now.)

By the usual rules of writing, this kind of first person comment by a narrator who is clearly to be identified with the author should be edited out of a text that is to be published as fiction and should instead be published in a non-fiction article or essay. And the content of his comments sets up, I think, a false dichotomy between making "...everyone nice and safe and equal..." (ibid.) and exploring the universe. Society can surely aim for and afford:

the physical safety of all;
at least three equalities - of opportunity, of representation, before the law;
continued scientific research and exploration.

So I have problems with both the presentation and the content of "Murphy's Hall." But at the same time I commend the range of Anderson's writings and realize that his entire output cannot appeal equally to every reader.

When the author/narrator lectures us at the end, even addressing us as "...my friends...," he refers to Murphy's Law (ibid.). We have all heard of this but who was Murphy? Yet again, and ending on a much lighter note, I cannot avoid another reference to Neil Gaiman's The Sandman. The fabulous creatures inhabiting a Skerry of Dream refer to their world's creator as "Murphy." They turn out, of course, to mean Morpheus. I did not guess that although I should have. And, since I will soon be in bed, that is a good place to stop.

The Visitor

I have thought of compiling some lists. In each case, the heading would be the title of a short story and the list would comprise the titles of the volumes in which that story is collected: almost reverse contents pages. This would become rather tedious, however. But it is confusing and frustrating to re-encounter story titles when browsing through collections. It makes the collections seem incoherent although each is supposed to have a unifying theme.

I had intended to make some analysis of All One Universe and, as part of this, to read "The Visitor" - which I have no memory of ever having read before. However, I have instead read this story in Homeward And Beyond (New York, 1976) because that volume is a standard paperback size, thus more portable, fitting into a trouser pocket as I walked through Lancaster.

The story was based on a dream and its viewpoint character has unusually coherent dreams, recounting one of them for the benefit of two other characters and, of course, the reader. Here is another parallel with Neil Gaiman's graphic fiction series, The Sandman. Indeed, in some respects, there is an even closer parallel with a short story in a collection of original prose stories by other authors based on Gaiman's character.

One of the two minor characters in "The Visitor" is a researcher testing "'...Dunne's theory that dreams can foretell the future.'" (p. 169)

There is a very select list of literary works that refer to Dunne's theory:

JW Dunne knew HG Wells, sharing interests in time and aircraft;
Dunne's An Experiment With Time refers to Wells' The Time Machine;
Wells' The Shape Of Things To Come refers to An Experiment With Time.

Thereafter, works based on An Experiment With Time include:

The Gap In The Curtain by John Buchan;
Time And The Conways by JB Priestley;
Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce.

And works crucially referring to Dunne include:

"The Dark Tower" by CS Lewis;
"The Visitor" by Poul Anderson.

(Tom's Midnight Garden belongs to a very distinctive sub-sub-sub-genre: British juvenile historical fantasy time travel novels by women.)

Anderson discusses whether his story is fantasy because it deals with "psionics" (p. 166). I think that it is fantasy not for this reason but because it suggests survival after death. Anderson says that he found it hard to write and it is unlike anything else that I have read by him. Some of his short stories display the range of kinds of writing that he attempted. They cannot all appeal to a single taste and there are some that I prefer to others. This one can be difficult to read.