Authors: Elizabeth Anne Hull
Gateways
GATEWAYS
BOOKS EDITED BY ELIZABETH ANNE HULL
Tales from the Planet Earth
(coedited with Frederik Pohl)
Gateways
EDITED BY
E
LIZABETH
A
NNE
H
ULL
A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK
NEW YORK
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This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in these stories are either products of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously.
GATEWAYS
Copyright © 2010 by Elizabeth Anne Hull
All rights reserved.
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
Tor
®
is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
ISBN 978-0-7653-2662-1
First Edition: July 2010
Printed in the United States of America
0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
“A Dream of Frederik Pohl” copyright © 1995 by David Lunde. Reprinted by permission of the poet.
“Shoresteading” copyright © 2008, 2010 by David Brin.
“Von Neumann’s Bug” copyright © 2010 by Phyllis Eisenstein and Alex Eisenstein.
Appreciation by Isaac Asimov: From
I, Asimov: A Memoir
by Isaac Asimov, copyright © 1994 by The Estate of Isaac Asimov. Used by permission of Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc.
“Sleeping Dogs” copyright © 2010 by Joe Haldeman.
“Gates (Variations)” copyright © 2010 by Larry Niven.
Appreciation by Gardner Dozois, copyright © 2010 by Gardner Dozois.
“Tales from the Spaceship
Geoffrey
” copyright © 2010 by James Gunn.
“Shadows of the Lost” copyright © 2010 by Abbenford Associates and Elisabeth Malartre.
Appreciation by Connie Willis, copyright © 2010 by Connie Willis.
“A Preliminary Assessment of the Drake Equation, Being an Excerpt from the Memoirs of Star Captain Y.-T. Lee” copyright © 2010 by Vernor Vinge.
“Warm Sea” copyright © 2006 by Greg Bear. Afterword copyright © 2010 by Greg Bear.
Appreciation by Robert J. Sawyer, copyright © 2010 by Robert J. Sawyer.
“The Errand Boy” copyright © 2010 by Frank M. Robinson.
“King Rat” copyright © 2010 by Gene Wolfe.
Appreciation by Robert Silverberg, copyright © 2010 by Agberg Ltd.
“The Stainless Steel Rat and the Pernicious Porcuswine” copyright © 2010 by Harry Harrison.
“Virtually, A Cat” copyright © 2008 by Jody Lynn Nye.
Appreciation by David Marusek, copyright © 2010 by David Marusek.
“The First-Born” copyright © 2010 by Brian W. Aldiss.
“Scheherezade and the Storytellers” copyright © 2010 by Ben Bova.
Appreciation by Joan Slonczewski, copyright © 2010 by Joan Slonczewski.
“The Flight of the
Denartesestel Radichan
” copyright © 2010 by Sheri S. Tepper.
“The [Backspace] Merchants” copyright © 2010 by Neil Gaiman.
Appreciation by Emily Pohl-Weary, copyright © 2010 by Emily Pohl-Weary.
“On Safari” copyright © 2010 by Mike Resnick.
“Chicken Little” copyright © 2010 by CorDoc-Co., Ltd. Some rights reserved under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 license.
Afterword by James Frenkel, copyright © 2010 by James Frenkel.
I dedicate this
festschrift
to my beloved husband, Frederik, of course; and to those who are still alive but couldn’t contribute—you know who you are—and to those I couldn’t even ask, including Fred’s boyhood friend Isaac (I would have loved to have had a story from you, and thanks to Janet, we do have your chapter on Fred from
I, Asimov
); Jack Williamson (no one jerked beef or made overnight oatmeal to equal yours); Judith Merril (my co-grandmother to the Canadian clan); Robert Sheckley (Fred always regretted not being your Best Man); Algis (A. J.) Budrys (a treasured friend before I ever met Fred); Charles N. Brown (how I wish I could share this book with you as we’ve shared so many others in our travels); Ian Ballantine (whom I used to translate for Fred when Ian spoke obliquely); Elsie (my “other mother”) and Donald A. Wollheim; Judy-Lynn Benjamin (Fred’s one-time assistant) and Lester Del Rey (our Best Man); Poul Anderson (who probably got as frustrated as Fred at the Poul/Pohl confusion among readers); Forrest J. Ackerman (no one else addresses me as Auntie Sci Fi now); Robert A. Heinlein (who thought I called him a prude even though I didn’t); Fred W. Saberhagen (another pre-Fred friend); Frank Herbert (who graciously agreed with my critique of the movie
Dune
); Hal Clement (fellow teacher), Roger Zelazny (who shopped while we waited on the bus); Philip José Farmer (so nearby yet seldom visited except at cons—bless the cons!), and many, many more in the extended family that is the global SF community.
—E
LIZABETH
A
NNE
H
ULL
to Fred, of course
I’m sorry, Fred. I didn’t mean to frighten you.
It wasn’t until I was on my way down,
free-falling, and saw the look on your face
that I realized this was the sort of thing
could make a person’s heart stop.
It was just an impulse, Fred—there I was
on the balcony, thirty feet up,
looked down, saw you, thought
there’s Fred
and jumped. I was already feeling guilty
before impacting, ungainly meteorite,
four inches in front of your twisted features.
God, I’m sorry, man. You said something then
but gladly I don’t remember what.
Your words were lost in the screams
as I turned to look up as you had before
and saw the little girl’s leap
into space just beyond the clutch
of her mother’s fingers.
My fault,
my fault, my fault,
I thought
in time with her giddy plunge.
I’ll never forget the sound of her femurs shattering.
But it’s okay, Fred, it was just a dream,
a stupid dream of unpremeditated acts,
falling bodies, and pointless guilt.
It has nothing to do with real life,
nothing to do with us at all.
CONTENTS—David Lunde
A Dream of Frederik Pohl •
DAVID LUNDE
Introduction
•
ELIZABETH ANNE HULL
PHYLLIS AND ALEX EISENSTEIN
• Von Neumann’s Bug
LARRY NIVEN
• Gates (Variations)
JAMES GUNN
• Tales from the Spaceship
Geoffrey
GREGORY BENFORD AND ELISABETH MALARTRE
• Shadows of the Lost
FRANK M. ROBINSON
• The Errand Boy
Appreciation
•
ROBERT SILVERBERG
HARRY HARRISON
• The Stainless Steel Rat and the Pernicious Porcuswine
JODY LYNN NYE
• Virtually, A Cat
BRIAN W. ALDISS
• The First-Born
BEN BOVA
• Scheherazade and the Storytellers
SHERI S. TEPPER
• The Flight of the
Denartesestel Radichan
NEIL GAIMAN
• The [Backspace] Merchants
GATEWAYS
GATEWAYS
AN INTRODUCTION
“You two should know each other. You have a lot in common,” Tom Clareson said. We were at a meet-the-authors party around the hotel pool on the first night of MidAmericon, the 1976 (and my first) Worldcon, in Kansas City. I had been teaching SF at my college for three years at that point and knew Tom, through the Midwest Modern Language Association and the Popular Culture Association annual meetings, and for his editing of the journal
Extrapolation.
I also knew of Fred already by his editing and by my reading his fiction, such as
The Space Merchants
. Over the years since then, I’ve always wondered what Tom saw in each of us that made him think we had anything significant in common. Fred was considerably older than I was, so I really don’t imagine he thought we’d be
romantically
interested in one another. Years later, Tom told me that introducing us was one of his most proud accomplishments!
As we chatted, I reminded Fred that I had sent him a letter to attend the next year’s PCA meeting, for which I was chairing the SF and fantasy track, to be interviewed by Tom. I boldly asked why he hadn’t answered my request, one way or the other. At first he denied ever having seen that letter, but by the end of the weekend, Fred agreed that he would attend the PCA meeting the following April.
As it turned out, we soon realized that we saw the world from a similar political bias, although in the ensuing thirty-three years, we have not always agreed perfectly on every issue. We bonded as friends almost immediately when I offered to share my stash of instant coffee in my room. My roommate, Mary Kenny Badami, and I had planned a room party later that evening with some friends of ours from Madison and the Chicago area, and of course the BNF (Big Name Fan) Fred graciously agreed to join us even though Mary and I were relative neos to the world of fandom. My feet were killing me from traipsing around Kansas City in high heels, so I propped them up on the bed and demanded—where did I ever get the nerve?—that
he massage them. I won’t say I fell in love then and there, but I sure thought he was something special with his sensitive magic fingers.
At the time, Fred was still married and trying to make a go of it after having been separated from and reconciled with Carol. He told me, “At this point in my life it’s easier to be married than not married.” I responded that for me it was easier to be single, as I had been for over fifteen years at that time. Although we recently celebrated our silver anniversary, it’s still true—he’s a lot of work—but he certainly is worth it. We haven’t had an easy or simple life, but it sure has been an interesting journey together.