Yondering. Jack Dann
The first borgo press Book of science fiction stories
robert reginald, Editor
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
Editing Copyright © 2011 by Robert Reginald
Published by Wildside Press LLC
www.wildsidebooks.com
A number of these pieces have been previously published, in whole or in part, and are reprinted by permission of their authors, authors’ estates, or agents:
“Introduction,” by Robert Reginald, is published here for the first time. Copyright © 2011 by Robert Reginald.
“The Quills of Henry Thomas,” by W. C. Bamberger and Aja Bamberger, is published here for the first time. Copyright © 2011 by W. C. Bamberger and Aja Bamberger.
“The Gizzard Wizard,” by Rory Barnes, is published here for the first time. Copyright © 2011 by Rory Barnes.
“The Darkfishers,” by John Gregory Betancourt was originally published in Aboriginal Science Fiction, July/August, 1987. Copyright © 1987, 2011 by John Gregory Betancourt.
“Guinea Pigs,” by Sydney J. Bounds was originally published in Fantasy Adventures 13, ed. by Philip Harbottle, Wildside Press, 2008. Copyright © 2008, 2011 by the Estate of Sydney J. Bounds.
“Outside Looking In,” by Mark E. Burgess, is published here for the first time. Copyright © 2011 by Mark E. Burgess.
“Siegfried,” by Victor Cilincă, translated by Petru Iamandi, was originally published in Atlantida #1, 1991. Copyright © 1991 by Victor Cilincă; Copyright © 2011 by Victor Cilincă and Petru Iamandi.
“The Calling of Iam’Kendron,” by Michael R. Collings was originally published in Three Tales of Omne: A Companion to Wordsmith, by Michael R. Collings, Borgo Press, Wildside Press, 2010. Copyright © 2010, 2011 by Michael R. Collings.
“Evergreen,” by Arthur Jean Cox, was originally published in Universe 15, ed. by Terry Carr, Doubleday, 1985. Copyright © 1985, 2011 by Arthur Jean Cox.
“Mohammed’s Angel,” by Jack Dann, was originally published in Overland #196, Spring 2009. Copyright © 2009, 2011 by Jack Dann.
“Ultra Evolution,” by John Russell Fearn, was originally published under the author’s pseudonym, “Polton Cross,” in Startling Stories, January 1948. Copyright © 1948 by John Russell Fearn; Copyright © 2011 by Philip Harbottle.
“Miles to Go,” by Sheila Finch, was originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, June 2002. Copyright © 2002, 2011 by Sheila Finch.
“The Little Finger of the Left Hand,” by Mel Gilden, was originally published in Bruce Coville’s Alien Visitors, ed. by Bruce Coville, Avon Camelot, 1999. Copyright © 1999, 2011 by Mel Gilden.
“The Next Generation,” by Ardath Mayhar, was originally published in Fantastic Collectibles #117, July 1993. Copyright © 1993, 2011 by Ardath Mayhar.
DEDICATION
To the Memory of Donald A. Wollheim,
Editor Extraordinaire,
and
For Mary, with all my love.
INTRODUCTION
“SUCH A SIMPLE REQUEST”
It seemed like such a simple request. My publisher wanted me to put together two anthologies featuring short stories by authors from my Borgo Press list. One of the books would include science fiction tales, and the other mystery pieces. The volumes would be distributed as near-gratis ebooks on the internet, with inexpensive print-on-demand versions as well, to help publicize some of the good folks who were publishing full-length books with us.
Easy, right? Well, yes and no.
Getting the material wasn’t difficult at all. I suddenly found myself overwhelmed with quality submissions, both reprints and originals. I quickly adopted a policy of only one story per writer per volume—and still they kept coming! In the end, I received sixty-three tales by sixty-six writers—thirty-seven SF and twenty-six crime stories. The total wordage was enormous. But the books had now become too large. So what to do?
“Divide them into more workable pieces,” was the suggestion, and so that’s what I’ve done. One SF volume became three: Yondering, To the Stars—and Beyond, and Once Upon a Future; and the crime book became Whodunit? and More Whodunits, with appropriate linking subtitles.
* * * *
This first anthology in the sequence, Yondering, includes a baker’s dozen of great pieces by fourteen writers. What struck me about this volume—and the others in the set—is the huge variety of themes, styles, and settings for the individual tales. There’s quite literally something here for just about everyone.
In “The Quills of Henry Thomas,” W. C. and Aja Bamberger give us a glimpse of a future in which music is created by DNA computing. “The Gizzard Wizard,” Rory Barnes’s sequel to his marvelous young adult SF novel, Space Junk, reintroduces those delightful characters, Em and Ned, now refugees fleeing a rundown future Earth. John Gregory Betancourt’s imaginative and engaging “The Darkfishers” features a shanghaied Earth colony stranded on the back of a huge crustacean on an ocean world. In “Guinea Pigs,” Sydney J. Bounds portrays a dystopian future in which the corporations dominate the world.
“Outside Looking In,” by Mark E. Burgess, takes the “world in a bottle theme”—and flips it on its head! Victor Cilincă’s “Siegfried” demonstrates quite clearly the danger of taking the “primitive” aliens too lightly. Michael R. Collings’s “The Calling of Iam’Kendron” is a stirring prequel to his classic fantasy novel, Wordsmith. In Arthur Jean Cox’s “Evergreen,” we find that long life is not always what it’s cracked up to be.
Jack Dann depicts, in “Mohammed’s Angel,” an all-too-plausible future in which cultures, sensibilities, and terrorism are inextricably mixed. “Ultra Evolution,” by John Russell Fearn, is a cautionary tale of the advancement of science and the advancement of man—not always a good thing! Sheila Finch’s “Miles to Go” is the moving story of a wheelchair marathoner presented with the choice of getting new legs. Mel Gilden relates mankind’s first encounter with an alien race in “The Little Finger of the Left Hand.” Finally, in Ardath Mayhar’s poignant “The Next Generation,” a nearly extinct human race must decide what its future will be.
—Robert Reginald
13 June 2011
THE QUILLS OF HENRY THOMAS, by W. C. Bamberger & Aja Bamberger
Henry had gone inside, gone inside the antique music and brought out the quills’ cell. Henry only needed the one to create an entire new piece, because musical cells were irrepressible. Henry would start with that single cell and then more cells (his own interest might be musical, but they all behaved the same, didn’t they?) would lock into, echo, mirror, or fractally expand outward from that first compact cell, expand like the interlock of crystals or the links of chain mail until they filled his predetermined compositional space as completely as possible. To crowd strict musical beauty into every audio space was any good composer’s ideal. And Henry Thomas 2018 was starting with a beautiful little twelve-bar cell, one lifted from Henry Thomas 1928.
Henry remembered the intellectual curiosity he had felt in first-year music history when his audio-lab partner Stachel had found that there had been another musical Henry Thomas, a black blues singer who had recorded almost a century before. That Henry Thomas had been a singer, guitar picker, and had played the quills—a folk panpipe made from stalks of cane, hollowed out and stoppered at one end like a row of cane whistles, all in a rack that held them near his mouth. It was on these quills that Henry Thomas 1928 played the cell that Henry Thomas 2018 had taken out.
The thirty-three note cell was as segmented as a bar graph, symmetrical almost to the point of being sing-song, but melodic enough to carry it off. The only shortcoming was that for all its squarish, boxy beauty the quills’ cell also conveyed an overarching tone of exuberant happiness, one that stubbornly refused to be damped. Henry didn’t