Dance band on the titani.., p.1
Dance Band on the Titanic and Other Stories, page 1
DANCE BAND
ON THE TITANIC
A Collection of short stories
By
Jack Chalker
DEL REY
Contents
INTRODUCTION: THE WRITING GAME
INTRODUCTION TO “NO HIDING PLACE”
NO HIDING PLACE
INTRODUCTION TO “WHERE DO YOU GET THOSE CRAZY IDEAS?”
WHERE DO YOU GET THOSE CRAZY IDEAS?
INTRODUCTION TO “FORTY DAYS AND NIGHTS IN THE WILDERNESS”
FORTY DAYS AND NIGHTS IN THE WILDERNESS
INTRODUCTION TO DANCE BAND ON THE TITANIC
DANCE BAND ON THE TITANIC
INTRODUCTION TO “STORMSONG RUNNER”
STORMSONG RUNNER
INTRODUCTION TO “IN THE DOWAII CHAMBERS”
IN THE DOWAII CHAMBERS
INTRODUCTION TO “ADRIFT AMONG THE GHOSTS”
ADRIFT AMONG THE GHOSTS
INTRODUCTION TO “MOTHS AND CANDLE”
MOTHS AND CANDLE
AFTERWORD: ON TRANSFORMATIONS AND OTHER LAST WORDS
THE OFFICIAL JACK L. CHALKER HANDOUT BIBLIOGRAPHY
A Del Rey Book Published by Ballantine Books
Copyright© 1978, 1979, 1984, 1988 by JackL. Chalker
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States of America by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Portions of this text were originally published in various magazines and anthologies: “Dance Band on the Titanic” was originally published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine and World’s Best Science Fic-tion 1979; “In the Wilderness” was originally published in Analog; and “In the Dowaii Chambers” was originally published in The John W. Campbell Awards Nominees, Vol. 5.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to re-print previously published material:
A.C. Projects, Inc.: letter from John W. Campbell, Jr. to Jack L. Chalker.
Copyright © 1985 by Perry Chapdelaine and George Hay from The John W. Campbell Letters, Vol. 1.
Reprinted by permission of A.C. Projects, Inc.
The Mirage Press, Ltd.: annotated bibliographic material by Jack L. Chalker from A Jack L. Chalker Bibliography.
Copyright © 1984, 1985 by JackL. Chalker.
Random House, Inc.: “No Hiding Place,” edited by Judy-Lynn Del Rey from Stellar 3.
Copyright © 1977 by Random House, Inc.
Reprinted by permission of Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc.Stuart David Schiff.
“Stormsong Runner” by Jack L. Chalker from Whisper II by Stuart David Schiff, Doubleday, 1979. Reprinted by permission.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 87-91885 ISBN 0-345-34858-3
Manufactured in the United States of America
First Edition: July 1988
Cover Art by Darrell K. Sweet
This book has to be dedicated to
Ben Bova, Harry Brashear, John W. Campbell Jr., Judy-Lynn del Rey, Martin L. Greenberg,
George R.R. Martin, Mark Owings, Stuart David Schiff, George Scithers, Suzy Tiffany,
and Bob Tucker, all of whom had something to do with these stories in one oblique way or another.
BRIEF BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES FOR THE INTERESTED ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
“No Hiding Place,” copyright 1977 by Judy-Lynn del Rey for Stellar 3, Del Rey Books, 1977.
“Forty Days and Nights in the Wilderness,” originally published as “In the Wilderness,” copyright 1978 by Conde Nast Publishing Co. for Analog, July, 1978.
“Dance Band on the Titanic,” copyright 1978 by Davis Publishing Co. Inc. from Isaac Asimov’s Science Fic-tion Magazine, July-August 1978. Version in this book copyright 1979 by Donald A. Wollheim for World’s Best SF 1979 edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Ar-thur Saha, Daw Books, 1979.
“Stormsong Runner,” copyright 1979 by Stuart David Schiff for Whispers II, Doubleday, 1979.
In the Dowaii Chambers,” copyright 1984 by George R.R. Martin for The John W Campbell Awards: Vol-ume 5, Blue Jay Books, 1984.
Letter from John W. Campbell, Jr., to Jack L. Chalker, copyright 1985 by Perry Chapdelaine and George Hay, from The John W. Campbell Letters, Volume 1, AC Projects, 1985. Reprinted by permission.
Annotated bibliographic material copyright 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, by Jack L. Chalker from The Official Jack L. Chalker Handout Bibliography, Mirage/TCC. By permission of The Mirage Press, Ltd.
INTRODUCTION: THE WRITING GAME
WHENEVER ONE OF THOSE LITTLE FORMS COMES IN for credit or information or whatever, under “occupation” I invariably write “novelist” in the blank because that’s what I do. Not “writer” or “author” (except the latter on immigration forms when going to other countries since it gets you nicer treatment), because I am basically a novelist. I think long; I’m generally much more comfortable with novel lengths and beyond than with the short form. This might be because I’m a veteran ham and former teacher and don’t like to be restricted to short takes, but whatever the reason, I am far more comfortable with unrestricted space.
I’m probably best known as an author of series, although some of my editors say “serials.” I have only three sets of related books that I think of as series-that is, each novel is complete by itself but all concern the same characters in the same basic universe-and these are the Well World books, the Dancing Gods books, and the G.O.D., Inc. books. Even the Well World books don’t quite fit; there are five of them but there are only three novels, the second and third volumes being one continuous narrative and the fourth and fifth another. These were broken up due to the vagaries of the publishing industry-it’s more profitable to sell two $3.50 paperbacks than one $4.95 paperback-on direct order rather than by my design or preference.
There are also serials, which means one humungous book broken up into a bunch of smaller books for the same reasons as above. These include Four Lords of the Diamond, The Rings of the- Master, the Soul Rider books, and the Changewinds books. Most of those individual volumes do not read independently but are part of a continuous narrative. An aside: The Rings of the Master is not my title; my title was The Malebolge Rings, but editors ordered that changed since they argued that readers wouldn’t know how to pronounce Malebolge and still make it a great sounding title but would read it instead as Malebolge in which case it sounds idiotic. You do know how to pronounce it, don’t you? Well, do you at least know why you should know?
The difference between writing short fiction and writing novels, even half a million word novels, is at least as great as the difference between being a champion billiards player and a world-class pool player. Both billiards and pool are played on the same sized table with the same cues and balls, but while the object of one is to put specific balls into specific pockets, the other game doesn’t even have pockets. Very few champions at one can be equal champions at the other. When I grew up in Maryland, bowling meant duckpins; that other game that was scored the same but had the huge balls and the equally huge scores was tenpins and was played by ham-handed dolts who couldn’t appreciate the subtler duck-pin game. A world champ tenpin bowler is lucky to get eighty in ducks; a duckpin champ often can’t break a hundred in tens. They are scored the same and look somewhat the same (although you get three balls per frame in duckpins and it still doesn’t help) but they are totally different games requiring totally different skills.
By the same token, there are born novelists and born short fiction writers in the sense that authors tend to be far better at one form than the other. The watchword of the short story is economy; it is built around a central idea or concept and has no room to stray from it, and if characterization is required it must be developed with an economy of words during the course of getting to the object of the story itself. This is one reason why most short fiction masters do, at best, mediocre novels. The novel is not a big short story; it is an entirely different form requiring pacing, a broad structure, interrelated sub-plots, and often a multiplicity of themes. A good novel is not an expanded or “long” short story but must be crafted differently to work. The short story author trying a novel all too often tries building it along a short story structure (that is, around a single theme or idea that can not justify the length) or gets lost in all that verbiage and pads and plods.
Now, a novelist is used to thinking of multiple themes and tracks and painting on a broad canvas; when writing short, the novelist tends to feel restricted, limited, the mind seeing endless possibilities for going this way or that and feeling uncomfortable with the limitations the short form imposes and the comparatively large amount of time it takes to craft a work that is generally no longer than a single chapter. Often he or she feels like a mural painter asked to engrave the Sistine Chapel ceiling on the head of a pin. The short story is extremely difficult to do well, since a tremendous amount must be accomplished with just a few well-chosen words and with little or no margin for error.
There are, of course, rare individuals who do both equally well, but even for them, the one who is essentially a novelist will gravitate to the long form quickly while leaving the short form only for those ideas that must be developed but can not stand the extra length. The short story writer may have one or two novel successes but, after that, failures. In earlier days, the short story was king and there were l
Thus, every short story writer I know today is a profitable hobbyist-they get paid for short stories but they do something else for a living. The lucky ones also write for their “real” money, but they tend to write for Hollywood and often under mysterious pseudonyms so you, the readers, and The Critics won’t find out. It’s astonishing, though, to find the number of familiar names bylining episodes of He-Man: Master of the Universe and Challenge of the Go-Bots. Hollywood is not all Twilight Zone and The Hitchhiker, but it pays well. It is even more amazing to discover some of the familiar (and mostly male) names behind those flowery pseudonyms on popular romance novels.
I originally started in the short form, as you’ll see, but with only encouragement and no sales. Of course, I wasn’t very ambitious in the writing game when young, and rarely aggressively tried to sell anything that I wrote. I never got a form rejection slip-it was always one of those nice letters of encouragement (one of which is reproduced elsewhere in this book), although once I actually got a bill (see my introduction to “No Hiding Place”).
I’ve been an editor, a publisher, and a packager of SF and fantasy, as well as a bibliographer and creator of novelties. I’ve been around this field and in this atmosphere since I was thirteen, even though my first original fiction sale wasn’t until I was almost thirty. When I did turn to writing seriously, starting with a novel, I sold it the first time out. Since then, I’ve had a couple of ideas that never became books either because editors didn’t like them or mostly because editors demanded massive changes that made the ideas no longer interesting. You might call these (all two of them) the Lost Novels, although elements of them are in several other stories of mine-all the good parts-and two parts of one are here.
As I write this, I have thirty novels, book-length or longer, under my belt, but this book you hold contains my entire professional short story output. Short fiction comes hard to me; it’s far more work than it seems and for far less money than it should pay considering the sweat and labor. There is also the concern of the marketplace. A writer writes to communicate with a vast and largely anonymous public. A short story might take weeks or even months to craft well, go to a magazine, then be published there and have a store shelf life of just under one month. Then, unless the story is anthologized or continually reprinted, it’s gone. Again, at this writing, only one of these stories is currently or even recently in print, while every single book-length work I have ever written is in print and available-and earning money and communicating. Thus, I turn to short stories only when a concept or idea demands the short form.
I don’t write merely because I hate to get up in the morning; I write because I have things to say, and I hope I reach the people capable of understanding them. Publishing this way is a scattershot approach, but it reaches a vast audience and is no more scattershot than teaching. Novels sell well and have very long lives; short stories sell relatively poorly and even some of the greatest lapse into obscurity very quickly. I get paid an awful lot of money for my novels because they sell so well; I get paid a pittance for short fiction in comparison because the sales aren’t heavily influenced by the short story names inside a magazine or anthology. If I want to both communicate broadly and long and live in a very comfortable manner, novels are the way to do it. I once had a winner of many Nebulas and Hugos dispute that on a panel and brag that one short story of his made fourteen thousand dollars including a TV sale. But it was his only story that made that kind of money, the sum was made over a period of years, and if that same sum were offered for a novel of mine, my agent would laugh and then say, “Now, seriously…”
I am constantly besieged by requests to do another Well World book or another Four Lords book or sequels to many of my independent novels. Many if not most of my readership get to know and like the characters, themes, and worlds that I have created, which is gratifying, and want more. On the other hand, I have seen talented careers go down the toilet as good authors, lured by money and an automatic market, write volume twenty-five of a good three-book series. Now, some have lots of money and a few even have fan clubs or conventions devoted to those series, but they are not writing the good books they are capable of, and all the time and energy devoted to those hack series of endless novels means they are really at a self-imposed creative dead end.
Since attaining some degree of fame and financial security, I have rigidly held to the principle that a story takes as long as it takes and that’s it. If it takes only 6000 words, that’s how long it takes. If it takes 40,000 words, that’s okay, too. If it takes 100,000 or 500,000, so be it. I have had offers from some editors to expand some of the stories herein into novels, but I have been unable to justify it. I could lengthen them, but I could not improve them or add anything by so doing. Indeed, while I’m certain there must be some, I can not offhand think of any examples of a really fine short story that was expanded to novel length where the longer version was preferable or superior or added anything except money to the author’s pocket.
And yet, the few stories here are important to me. My sometimes collaborator on nonfiction works and occasional alter-ego, Mark Owings, calls these “the good stuff.” They range from my earliest surviving attempt at fiction writing (“No Hiding Place”) to my own personal favorite of all the words, long and short, that I’ve written to date, (“Dance Band on the Titanic”). I do a number of readings of “Dance Band” since it’s not only my personal favorite but also reads well aloud in under an hour, and I find in every audience that there are at least a few people who had read the story initially and remember the story fondly because it touched them in just the ways it was intended to-only nobody remembers that I wrote it. I very much dislike the idea of communicating anonymously; I spend far too much time cooped up alone in my office with a CRT screen and keyboard to deny the little recognition due me when a story works.
If anyone wants to know why I don’t spent more time on short fiction, the low pay, relatively short public availability, and anonymity even when the story works are the main reasons. Another is the tendency to be typecast (see my notes on “In the Dowaii Chambers”) so that the people for whom the story is intended simply do not read it. And, of course, I have discovered time and again that people read and like a short story but do not remember the author, while those who purchase novels know exactly who they are reading. And, then, there is also you out there-you don’t buy short story collections very much (and I expect even this one will be among my smaller sellers) or anthologies, either. This is not the way to encourage more short fiction output nor support such work.
