Short Story Writers From Canada

"They see something they may never have seen before: a normal human reacting normally to a traumatic situation. Livia, these people have been insulated within inscape their whole lives. They have lived in a world where their merest whim could be granted with a thought. Reality has always conformed to their desires—never the other way around. Now they find themselves in a world that obstinately refuses to change itself to fit their imagination. They literally have no idea how to respond."

"“You know I was once a human being, too, Doran. I remember how hard it was to marshal all the resources I needed to cure myself of the affliction. I also remember, quite clearly, how I always told people I had no interest in self-deification. It was a useful and sometimes necessary shield against interference.” “Blow off,” said Doran. “Unless you have some specific threat you want to use on me.” Choronzon laughed. “Not a threat. Just curiosity as to why someone so violently opposed to improving on the human model should decide to go against all his principles.” “Sometimes,” said Doran icily, “mature people do things they don’t want to do. It’s called following higher principles. But someone without mortal concerns, say, like yourself, wouldn’t understand that.”"

"“The fact is, there’s no such thing as an ultimate state of consciousness. It’s a myth; sentience has meaning only insofar as it’s connected into the physical world... If you’d like to see it, here’s a view of the Omega Point.” It gestured to open a large inscape window in the sky. Instantly Doran’s head was filled with an undifferentiated roar; white noise matched in the window by endless video snow. Choronzon laughed. “The more information there is in a signal, the more it resembles noise. You’re looking at infinite information density, gentlemen, a signal so packed with information that it has become noise. These idiots pushed so far in one direction that they ended up at the opposite pole... Perhaps the fanatics of Omega Point had gotten their wish, but if so they had been mistaken in thinking that the Absolute was something that hadn’t been there all along. Absolute meaning, it seemed, was no different from no meaning at all."

"Even the gods fight boredom in vain."

"In such a way she had done what her people prized above all else: she had given her respect to those different from herself."

"Idiots. They were losing everything because of their short-sightedness. Maybe they deserved to lose it."

"The being was trying to get him to think about what he was saying, not just recite."

"“Something’s wrong.” Axel shrugged. “That statement probably applies to every second I’ve spent on this blasted world.”"

"“Then you have no more wish to rule? The country needs you now more than ever.” She shook her head. “I’ve been crushed under the weight of power all my life. I think I’m going to enjoy missing it.” She laughed at the lightness with which she dismissed royal power. Every moment was a surprise, these days. She hoped that that feeling would never end."

"Her own sincerity returned to her now like the remembrance of a crime."

"“I am the Government,” she said. “I am a force of omniscience and unparalleled power within the human part of the Archipelago. I am a public-domain distributed artificial intelligence. I have made all human institutions redundant, for I am the personal and intimate friend of each and every one of the trillion humans under my domain. I am the selfless advocate of each of them, from the lowliest to the greatest. The only problem is...Well, nobody listens to me much anymore.”"

"The richest billionaire has to realize that the gods next door take no more notice of him than he would a bug."

"He was acutely aware of how little attention the people who lived here actually paid to their immediate environment. They seemed cut off from their own senses, cocooned away from their bodies in the infinite spaces of inscape. Cybernetic realities were more real to most people now than their own lives, it seemed. And any connection between those internal spaces and the physical world seemed entirely accidental."

"When she looked around, she saw the same expression of mindless fear in the eyes of the men with her. They were all in the same boat—carried forward by habits of training, minds blank with fear hence too stupid to sensibly turn and run. It was this stupor of fear that would later be counted as courage."

"“All sound is music,” he had said, “and there is no place without sound.”"

"In the end, her written ideology, the philosophy and new morals she had preached, were all means to an end. That end could never be reached; Armiger had taught her that. If so, then what mattered their disappointment, their disillusionment? They would hate her for leaving them alive, but they would be alive, and a life lived in bitterness was still better than a death colored by useless fanaticism."

"“It’s time to abandon the plans of the entity that enslaved me all these centuries,” he said. “And time to start making my own.”"

"“It’s not that simple.” “Ah! That phrase is Male for ‘I’m afraid to.’”"

"“Humans become violent when they feel their interest are threatened.” Galas scowled. “They were never threatened! Parliament is a rumor mill staffed by trough-fed clods who abuse the tongue of their birth every time they open their mouths. They all gabble at once and confuse one another mightily, and when this confusion is committed to paper they refer to it as ‘policy.’”"

"“Which do you prefer?” Armiger leaned over her and kissed her cheek. “Which what do I prefer?” “Do you prefer making love or reading?” Her voice held a teasing note, but he had learned there were frequently hidden needs behind her teasing questions. “To read is to make love to the world,” he said. “But to make love to a woman is to feel like the world is reading you.” She smiled, not comprehending, and fell asleep."

"She started threatening the stability of the ruling classes, at least in their own eyes. No ruler who does that ever stands for long."

"“What if they don’t surrender?” “My Lady,” he said, “you never ask that question after you’ve gone to war.”"

"“So why did you do it?” August stared at the ceiling pensively. “It gets easier to risk your life as you get older. I think women understand that when they have children. Suddenly they know they would give their life for their child, and it doesn’t bother them. With men it’s different, but we…trade our allegiance in the same way. At some point, if you’ve grown up at all, you have to decide that something outside yourself is more important than you are. Otherwise you’ll be a miserable bastard, and you’ll die screaming.” He closed one eye and peered at Jordan. “That make sense?” “I don’t know,” Jordan said uncomfortably. “You get perspective. You can stand outside your own death, a little. Not while you’re dying, though.”"

"But what good's abundance if nobody can experience it?"

"Just because something is convincing, that does not make it true. It is merely convincing."

"“We’re all pretending; that’s what events like this are all about.” “Why are we doing it at all?” “To fit it. Better that we be there to be spoken to than absent to be spoken about.”"

"She looked up at the towering wisdom and felt a sudden love for it—as if these books were family."

"Each technology equated to some human value or set of values, she saw. She’d known that. But on Earth, in the Archipelago and everywhere else, technologies came first, and values changed to accommodate them. Under the locks, values were the keys to access or shut away technologies... The locks proclaimed that there were no neutral technologies. The devices and methods people used didn’t just represent certain values—they were those values, in some way."

"That’s what being human means: to be master of your own fate."

"His lantern guttered and finally went out. “Shit,” he said, shaking it. “Excuse me.” “You’re not afraid of the dark, are you?” she asked, chiding. “No, ma’am. I’m afraid of what’s in it.”"

"One night, in a fever dream, I sit up and say to the walls, "Hey, how about A. E. Van Vogt?" When I heard myself say it, I realized I was feverish, and I lay back down again quickly. I'm malaise that can cause symptoms like that should not be fooled with. But the next day, the thought persisted. I argued with myself. I said, first of all, Van is in the middle of a bunch of new novels and won't have the time. Yeah, but what a weird story you two could turn out, I answered. Sure, sure I agreed, but why in the world would the man who wrote "Slan" and "The Weapon Shops of Isher" and "The World of Null-A" and books that were classics before I could hold a pencil properly, want to link up with me, ya snotnose. Yeah, but what a weird story you two would turn out, I answered. But we don't write anything alike, I argued. Van thinks in these blocks of concepts, and he's hip to all kinds of technology and stuff what I don't know a spanner from a toilet plunger; what are you trying to do, make me look like some kind of nitwit, approaching a man like Van Vogt? Yeah, but want a weird — So I called Van and suggested it, thinking he would drop me down an airshaft somewhere but damned if he didn't dig the idea."

"The Golden Age of SF is universally dated from the July 1939, issue of Astounding because that's when "Black Destroyer," A. E. van Vogt's first SF story, appeared. Isaac Asimov's first story also appeared in the same month but nobody — as Asimov himself admits — noticed it. People noticed "Black Destroyer," though, and they continued to notice the many other stories that van Vogt wrote over the following decade. … What as much as anything set van Vogt off from other SF writers (of his day and later) was the ability to suggest vastness beyond comprehension. He worked with not only in space and time, but with the mind. Van Vogt knew that to describe the indescribable would have been to make it ludicrous, and that at best description turns the inconceivable into the pedestrian. More than any other SF writer, van Vogt succeeded in creating a sense of wonder in his readers by hinting at the shadowed immensities beyond the walls of human perception."

"Alfred E. van Vogt, since the appearance of his first two stories — "Black Destroyer" and "Discord in Scarlet" (Astounding Science Fiction, July and December 1939) the most memorable debut in the long history of the genre — has been a giant. The words seminal and germinal leap to mind. Sadly, at this juncture. the words tragedy and farewell also insinuate themselves. … Van is still with us, as I write this, in June of 1999, slightly less than fifty years since I first encountered van Vogt prose in a January 1950 issue of Startling Stories, but Van is gone. He is no longer with us. … Because the great and fecund mind of A.E. van Vogt has fallen into the clutches of that pulp thriller demon, Alzheimer's. Van is gone. … Anyone's demise or vanishment is in some small way tragic but the word "tragedy" requires greater measure for its use. … Van' s great mind now gone. Tragedy. The ultimate tragic impropriety visited on as good a man as ever lived. A gentle. soft spoken man who was filled with ideas and humor and courtesy and kindness. Not even those who were not aficionados of Van's writing could muster a harsh word about him as a human being. He was as he remains now, quietly and purposefully, a gentleman. But make no mistake about this: the last few decades for him were marred by the perfidious and even mean spirited and sometimes criminal acts of poltroons and self-aggrandizing mountebanks and piss-ants into whose clutches he fell just before the thug Alzheimer got him. … I came late to the friendship with Van and Lydia. Perhaps only twenty-five or so years. But the friendship continues, and at least I was able to make enough noise to get Van the Science Fiction Writers of America Grand Master Award, which was presented to him in full ceremony during on of the last moments when he was cogent and clearheaded enough understand that finally, as last, dragged kicking and screaming to honor him, the generation that learned from what he did and what he had created had, at last, fessed up to his importance. Naturally, others took credit for his getting the award. They postured and spewed all the right platitudes. Some of them were the same ones who had said to me — during the five years it took to get them to act honorably — "we'd have given it to him sooner if you hadn't made such a fuss." Yeah. Sure. And pandas'll fly out of my ass."

"I started reading SF when I was about twelve and I read all I could, so any author who was writing about that time, I read. But there's no doubt who got me off originally and that was A.E. van Vogt. There was in van Vogt's writing a mysterious quality, and this was especially true in The World of Null A. All the parts of that book did not add up; all the ingredients did not make a coherency. Now some people are put off by that. They think that's sloppy and wrong, but the thing that fascinated me so much was that this resembled reality more than anybody else's writing inside or outside science fiction. … Damon feels that it's bad artistry when you build those funky universes where people fall through the floor. It's like he's viewing a story the way a building inspector would when he's building your house. But reality really is a mess, and yet it's exciting. The basic thing is, how frightened are you of chaos? And how happy are you with order? Van Vogt influenced me so much because he made me appreciate a mysterious chaotic quality in the universe which is not to be feared."

"Even the brightest star shines dimly when observed-from too far away. And human memory is notoriously unreliable. And we live in ugly times when all respect for that which has gone before suffers crib death beneath the weight of youthful arrogance and ignorance. But a great nobility has at last, been recognized and lauded. Someone less charitable than I might suggest the honor could have been better appreciated had it not been so tardy, naming its race with a foe that blots joy and destroys short-term memory. But I sing the Talent Electric, and like aft the dark smudges of history, everything but the honor and die achievement remains for the myth-makers. Alfred E. van Vogt has been awarded the Grand Master trophy of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. He is not the to first person to receive this singular accolade…given only to those whose right to possess it is beyond argument or mitigation. Were we in 1946 or even 1956, van Vogt would have already been able to hold the award aloft. Had SFWA existed then and had the greatest living sf authors been polled as to who was the most fecund, the most intriguing, the mast innovative the most influential of their number, Isaac and Arthur and Cyril and Hank Kuttner and Ron Hubbard would all have pointed to the same man, and Bob Heinlein would've given him a thumbs-up. Van Vogt was the pinnacle, the source of power and ideas; the writer to beat. Because he embodied in his astonishing novels and assorted stories what we always say is of prime importance to us in this genre-the much vaunted Sense of Wonder. Van Vogt was the wellspring of wonder. … That's how important he was. … And then came the dark years during which the man was shamefully agented and overlooked; and even the brightest star loses its piercing light if observed through the thickening mists of time and flawed memory. Now it is lifetimes later, and the great award has, at last, been presented. To some, less charitable than I, something could be said about a day late and a dollar short, but not I. I am here to sing the Talent Electric, and it is better now than never. He is the Grand Master, A.E. can Vogt, weaver of a thousand ideas per plot-line, creator of alien thoughts and impossible dreams that rival the best ever built by our kind. This dear, gentlemanly writer whose stories can still kill you with a concept or warm you with a character, now joins the special pantheon."

"He originated many of the themes we now take for granted: how many monsters have infested spaceships — since "The Black Destroyer"? And although "Slan" — that wish-fulfillment dream of all S.F. fans (interesting resonance there!) was not the first superman story, it Is the one which has had the greatest impact."

"The truth of the matter seems to be that van Vogt's withdrawal into himself took place over a considerable period of time. The beginning of it may lie in the fact that young Alfred was a highly idealistic small town boy with a number of wide-eyed notions about right and truth and justice in his head. When the world failed to conform to his expectations, he found that a substantial shock. Beyond this, it was also true that Alfred was a boy who had something a little strange and left-footed about him. He didn't think or talk exactly like everyone else, and reaction to this may have had its effect on his developing personality."

"You really don't understand. We don't worry about individuals. What counts is that many millions of people have the knowledge that they can go to a weapon shop if they want to protect themselves and their families. And, even more important, the forces that would normally try to enslave them are restrained by the conviction that it is dangerous to press people too far. And so a great balance has been struck between those who govern and those who are governed." Cayle stared at her in bitter disappointment. "You mean that a person has to save himself? Even when you get a gun you have to nerve yourself to resist? Nobody is there to help you?" It struck him with a pang that she must have told him this in order to show him why she couldn't help him. Lucy spoke again. "I can see that what I've told you is a great disappointment to you. But that's the way it is. And I think you'll realize that's the way it has to be. When a people lose the courage to resist encroachment on their rights, then they can't be saved by an outside force. Our belief is that people always have the kind of government they want and that individuals must bear the risks of freedom, even to the extent of giving their lives."

"At the end of June in 1939 I took a bus east to New York to attend the first World Science Fiction convention. On the bus with me I took the June of Astounding Science-Fiction in which the short story by A.E. van Vogt appeared. It was an astonishing encounter. In that same issue with him were C. L. Moore and Ross Rocklynne, a fantastic issue to take with me on that long journey, for I was still a poor unpublished writer selling newspapers on a street corner for ten dollars a week and hoping, someday, to be an established writer myself, but that was still two years off. On the way I drank in the words of A.E. Van Vogt and was stunned by what I saw there. He became a deep influence for the next year. As it turned out, I didn't become A.E. Van Vogt, no one else could, and when I finally met him was pleased to see that the man was as pleasant to be with as were his stories. I knew him over a long period of years and he was a kind and wonderful gentleman, a real asset to the Science Fantasy Society in L.A., where there are a lot of strange people. A.E. Van Vogt was not strange, he was kind. He gave me advice and helped me along the road to becoming what I wanted to become."

"The weapon shops were founded more than two thousand years ago by a man who decided that the incessant struggle for power of different groups was insane and the civil and other wars must stop forever. It was a time when the world had just emerged from a war in which more than a billion people had died and he found thousands of people who agreed to follow him. His idea was nothing less than that whatever government was in power should not be overthrown. But that an organization should be set up which would have one principal purpose — to ensure that no government ever again obtained complete power over its people. A man who felt himself wronged should be able to go somewhere to buy a defensive gun. You cannot imagine what a great forward step that was. Under the old tyrannical governments it was frequently a capital offense to be found in possession of a blaster or a gun. … What gave the founder the idea was the invention of an electronic and atomic system of control which made it possible to build indestructible weapon shops and to manufacture weapons that could only be used for defense. That last ended all possibility of weapon shop guns being used by gangsters and other criminals and morally justified the entire enterprise. For defensive purposes a weapon shop gun is superior to an ordinary or government weapon. It works on mind control and leaps to the hand when wanted. It provides a defensive screen against other blasters, though not against bullets but since it is so much faster, that isn't important."

"Because he was a reader, a writer, and a thinker, van Vogt regarded himself as an intellectual. But if he was an intellectual, it was not of the usual sort. He wasn't silver-tongued or swift-witted. He had very little ability to remember a precise fact or an exact niggle, and no talent at all for linear thought and logical analysis. He was not a conventional man of reason. Rather, van Vogt's usual method was to fix on some question or subject in a highly single-minded way — to surround it and dwell upon it and absorb it. He might get nowhere with a problem for the longest time, but then at last the penny would drop and some insight would pop into his mind. When van Vogt had enough insights accumulated on a topic, they would assemble themselves into what he would come to think of as a system — a methodology or mode of approach that had its own consistency, if only in the manner in which it was applied by him. In later days, van Vogt would even take pride in describing himself as "Mr. System.""

"But the possible extent of the disaster couldn’t make any difference. Way back in 1944 people had learned that lesson. Horror must be ignored, unflinchingly faced; and patient preparation made for the hour when evil could be ended in one devastating and overwhelming blow."

"Religion, you see, is not in its roots adoration of a god or a goddess. Religion is fear. Religion is the spark that issues forth when the thought of death or danger strikes the individual. It’s personal. It grows out of darkness and uncertainty."

"Thank the goddess! What a monstrous obscenity. Thank the goddess! Vile, lecherous, lascivious witch! Wretched debauched, wanton, bloody, devil woman!"

"I read Harlan Ellison's stories and also John Wyndham, Arthur C. Clarke, A. E. Van Vogt, Isaac Asimov-all the SF classics, whatever I got my hands on."

"Give me a title and we'll start from there."

"Childhood was a terrible period for me. I was like a ship without anchor being swept along through darkness in a storm. Again and again I sought shelter, only to be forced out of it by something new."

"He had a sense of having been saved from the necessity of making a decision rather than of having made one."

"Holroyd took her hand gingerly. It felt warm, almost tinglingly alive, as if the life force behind it had flame in it, an electric, vibrant fire. The thought came; what an experience it would be to kiss a woman who was so alive! He looked sharply at the girl. Had that subtle suggestion flowed from her mind along her arm? He decided it hadn’t. He was perfectly capable of having such a thought all by himself."

"Religious habits had in their texture a conservatism unmatched by any other human institution."