Birthday Review: Stories (and a novel) by Christopher Anvil

Christopher Anvil (real name Harry Crosby) was born 11 March 1925. He died in 2009. He began writing under his own name in 1952, but started selling to John Campbell in 1956 under the Anvil name. He became well known for very Campbellian "Stupid Aliens outsmarted by Smart Humans" stories. John Clute, in the Science Fiction Encylopedia, suggests that his non-Campbell stories show a more interesting side -- be that as it may, he was mostly a Campbell writer, kind of a low-rent Eric Frank Russell clone, and I confess I never found his work that interesting. Here's a look at a couple of his short stories, and a fixup novel

Astounding, December 1957

Anvil's "Truce by Boomerang" is a slight story, not really convincing even on its own terms, about a means of enforcing peace between neighboring nations. For some convoluted reason, a not very useful matter transmitter can be adapted to automatically return any missiles, etc., launched by one side to its own territory (perhaps explicitly to the bigwigs' headquarters). I never really understood how this worked, however ...

Analog, July 1961

The other story is from Christopher Anvil: “The Hunch” (5300 words). Stellar Scout James Connolly is assigned to figure out why two new model scout ships have disappeared recently. Pirates are suspected, but the route they were taking avoided known pirate haunts.

He and his boss set out to follow the same route, and in so doing they encounter issues with the advanced new equipment on the new model ship … more or less the sort of mildly amusing stuff I expected.

Galaxy, October 1968

Christopher Anvil (real name Harry Crosby) was an Analog regular (I think of him as John Campbell's "Eric Frank Russell replacement"), and "Behind the Sandrat Hoax" really does look like a story aimed at Campbell. There is a persistent rumor that eating a sandrat on Mars will allow one to survive if marooned without water in the Martian desert, and when a man does survive in impossible circumstances, there is an investigation into how he might have survived. But the scientific authorities can't believe in the silly "sandrat" notion -- the man is sent to an asylum, while the scientist who dares to give some credence to the notion that eating a sandrat could help one get water in a desert has his career ruined, as a series of letters reveal the bureaucrats suppressing evidence, etc. A bit over-obvious, with over the top villains.

Pandora's Legions

(Cover by Patrick Turner)

I was warned.  Recently I mentioned that I might find something of interest in Eric Flint's planned reissue of some Christopher Anvil stories, and Greg Feeley asked, incredulously it seemed, why I would think these stories would be of any interest.  Well, you see, I'd hardly ever read any Anvil, only a story or two, and I don't mind Eric Frank Russell, held to be an influence on Anvil, and ... well, I was curious.  So I bought Pandora's Legions, a clumsy fixup novel consisting of one shorter novel and several short stories about the invasion of Earth by the Centran Empire, and the aftermath, as the Centrans try to deal with their uneasy new conquest.

It sucks.  To put it crudely.  It sucks bowling balls through a coffee stirrer. The story opens with a novelette published in Astounding in the mid-50s, "Pandora's Planet".  Earth is besieged by the overwhelmingly powerful Centrans, humanoid aliens who have a huge empire.  But them thar plucky Earthmen won't give up, and not only that, they are just plain smarter than Centrans.  The Centrans fear them for their brains, but they eventually realize that human intelligence carries a disadvantage: humans are less apt to cooperate with each other.  The Centrans end up winning, only by using incredible force of numbers, and they plot to take advantage of human intelligence by allowing humans to be spread thinly through part of their empire, hoping that the human ideas will be beneficial.  In a way, this story was OK, though not very good, as low-grade Eric Frank Russell imitation.

In the early 70s Anvil expanded it into a novel.  In the novel, the humans spread through the Galaxy are portrayed as causing all sorts of chaos.  The viewpoint character,\ Centran general Klide Horsip, must deal with humans who have introduced fascism, rampant capitalism, communism, and all sorts of evils.  But humans, by subverting the Centrans on the planets they take over, are becoming way too strong.  Luckily, a loyal human has a plan ... an unconvincing one, mind you, but still.  More luckily still, all this is really what the true powers behind the Centran throne have intended all along.  Plus the climax involves a clumsily introduced menace that has historically kept Centrans from getting too smart.  Eh?  It's a bad novel.

Eric Flint has admitted that the novel is bad (or, at least, not real good). His solution?  He has interleaved a three mostly unconnected stories set in the same universe with the chapters of the novel.  These stories are Analog-style problem stories, where human John Towers, working for the Centrans, deals with problems in subverting other dangerous alien races, such as a race of teleporters, or a race of beings who have evolved to constantly fight for food and who will not communicate.  These are novelettes published in Analog in the 60s.  They aren't particularly good, though they aren't horrible.  They are, again, low-grad Eric Frank Russell imitations.  They are symptomatic of what was wrong with Analog in the 60s -- Campbell couldn't get Russell to write any more, it seems, and so he tried to find substitutes. Anvil was a substitute, but the ersatz nature of the product shows.  But mixed into the novel they are just silly.  They really don't fit.  Basically, you end up reading the novel in pieces, taking time out to read the novelettes. What was going through Flint's mind I have no idea.  There is also a short, added at the end, also set in the Centran empire but otherwise unconnected, which was apparently rejected by Campbell. It ran in If, and it's a screed against psychiatry.  It seems beating the patient until he is cured is a preferable approach.